Friday Roundup: Ebola, Malaria and Cellphones, Jean Tirole, Report on the Data Revolution, and Deworming

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The World Health Organization (WHO) said today that it was sending more experts to help Mali fight Ebola, a day after the first case of the disease was confirmed there.  Read more.

Martin Edlund, CEO of Malaria No More, writes in Devex.com about the big role cell phones can play in eliminating malaria, refering to it as a 'Swiss Army knife' for the disease.

John Cassidy writes in New Yorker magazine of Jean Tirole winning this year's Nobel prize in economics.  Cassidy says Tirole's essential insight is that regulation is an ongoing game between government and monopolies, both of whom have different goals and secrets that they can hide from each other. Tirole doesn't provide simple answers, adds Cassidy, but gets you asking the right questions: How much market power does a certain firm have? What is the information structure in the industry? And what incentives would a proposed regulation give to the regulated?
 
A draft report, titled 'A World That Counts,' of the UN Secretary General’s Expert Advisory group on the data revolution for sustainable development has been posted online, and all are welcome to comment by Monday 27th Oct (10am GMT+1).
 
Researcher Owen Ozier finds good news on the positive effect of deworming on performance in schools. Citing his own work, Ozier finds that children whose communities were dewormed before they were one year old perform markedly better on tests of reasoning than their counterparts in communities where deworming began later.