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A colorized scanning electron micrograph that shows Ebola virus filaments (blue) budding from a yellow infected cell. (credit: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease)

The 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in western Africa made the virus a major public health concern. It increased the push to develop an Ebola vaccine, but there’s also interest in developing a therapeutic treatment, which could limit any future outbreaks after they start.

A recent study published in Science shows that antibodies that target part of a protein on the surface of the Ebola virus makes an effective therapy for Ebola infection in mice. This finding is remarkable because researchers obtained the antibodies from a human survivor of an earlier Ebola outbreak.

Glycoproteins exist on the external shell of a virus and are often used by the virus to latch on to host cells. But their location also make them recognizable by the host’s immune system, which manufactures antibodies against them. The Ebola virus has its own distinctive glycoprotein, which is the only known target for a human antibody response.

(credit: Jerry Raia)

One of the obstacles to making the case for environmental policies is that the financial cost of an action can be easy to calculate, while the benefits can be much more difficult to fully quantify. Good deals can be made to sound like money pits when the costs are emphasized without the context of the benefits.

When it comes to action on climate change, there has been some effort to put numbers on the costs and benefits of certain courses of action. But a new study from Drew Shindell and Yunha Lee of Duke University and NASA’s Greg Faluvegi looks at the benefits of more aggressive US actions—ones that could actually put us on the path to meeting the goal of limiting climate change to less than 2ºC warming. While the 2ºC limit is the stated goal of international negotiations, it is quickly slipping out of reach. So what would happen if the US went for it?

The researchers look at a scenario in which the US cuts emissions to 40 percent below their current levels by 2030, focusing on energy and transportation. That’s a trajectory that would ultimately fulfill the US contribution to meeting a 2ºC goal, assuming it were continued. But for the purposes of this study, emissions stay steady after 2030 so that we’re purely talking about the benefits of actions in the next 14 years. This isn’t just about CO₂—all the other air pollutants that are emitted from the same smokestacks and tailpipes were analyzed as well.

Update: On at least some Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 cabinets, the EJB menu trick can also be used to set the cabinet to free play mode, letting you (and anyone else) grab a game without putting in any quarters, as shown in this video. Given that, it's probably a good thing for arcade owners everywhere that this trick remained secret for so long.

Original Story

Gamers of a certain age probably remember paging through dog-eared copies of GamePro and other monthly magazines to discover the numerous hidden characters and secrets embedded in the highly popular Mortal Kombat games. There's at least one Mortal Kombat secret that never made the pages of those magazines, however. It's a secret that was just recently revealed after over 20 years of secrecy.