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Years after initial tests, researchers are now racing to see if a vaccine developed in 2011 can help fight the current Bundibugyo outbreak in Congo. Fever was the first symptom to grip the crab-eating macaques in their high-containment laboratory on an island off Texas after being infected with the newly discovered Bundibugyo strain of ebola . Then came the weight loss, the rectal bleeding and nosebleeds, while scientists in space suits drew blood to see how the monkeys' immune systems struggled to fight the aggressive virus. But the three monkeys that had received a newly developed vaccine to protect against the understudied strain showed no symptoms of the disease, which eventually killed two-thirds of their unvaccinated companions. It was 2011, and virologist Thomas Geisbert's work developing the vaccine was done.

Caitlyn Jenner biographer and Robin Riker's ex William Hasley found dead on hiking trail at 78 Disgraceful texts'hot' teacher sent boy, 17, who she had illegal sex with where she moaned about her HUSBAND Everyone always said I cleared my throat a lot. But then I developed shoulder pain and doctors discovered the sinister cause... the world's deadliest cancer. Don't leave it too late like I did Urgent recall for 1.1m vehicles over fears they could spontaneously CATCH FIRE even when parked Moment Real Housewives star Lenny Hochstein's sexual assault accuser'dances' as she leaves Star Island mansion - before filing $100k civil lawsuit Leaked transcript of UNAIRED 60 Minutes interview exposes REAL reason'callous' CBS star Scott Pelley'deserved to be fired' Disturbing new death scene photos show tech whistleblower's haunting final moments... as forensic report casts doubt on suicide claims: 'Execution angle' 'Great' mom, 32, tried to gas herself and her three young kids to death after inviting them to'popcorn sleepover' in car, prosecutors allege The porn-fuelled fantasy middle-class husbands are desperate to try with their wives... and it almost always ends in divorce: JANA HOCKING The historic steel mill that helped build America was written off for dead. Medical student, 24, died by suicide in his white coat a day after he was suspended for alleged'inappropriate' behavior towards female patient, lawsuit alleges, as his heartbreaking goodbye note to parents is revealed John Oliver's private panic: Late-night curse spreads and host prepares for worst as insiders reveal his desperate'plan B'... and the industry whispers swirling about his fate Woke Vegas school compared boy to racist cross burner over pro-ICE stickers and expelled him... but did not punish pro-migrant students for class walkout, lawsuit alleges Gaming influencer Alex Cimo dies'very suddenly' aged 32 just a month after'refusing to accept his fate' Mother's final words before she was shot dead'by new husband' in front of her two young children All the backstage gossip from Miami Swim Week: Insider exposes'catty' VIP's diva demands... STEALING... and'morbidly embarrassing' celeb moment everyone is whispering about The World Cup could be a superspreader event: Experts warn the tournament will have the'perfect conditions' for infectious diseases - including Ebola, Covid-19, and STIs READ MORE: Who will win World Cup? Experts calculate chances for 48 teams The World Cup will have the'perfect conditions' for infectious diseases to spread, an expert has warned. The five-week event kicks off in just three days, with millions of fans set to descend on 16 cities across the US, Canada and Mexico .

Predicting where Ebola might strike next could become easier, thanks to a new computer model. The model tracks how changes in the environment and in human societies could affect the deadly virus's spread. It predicts that Ebola outbreaks could become as much as 60 percent more likely by 2070 if the world continues on a path toward a warmer climate and a cooling economy. Ebola, on average, kills half of all people who contract the virus. In previous outbreaks, the fatality rate has risen to as high as 90 percent.

The almighty dollar is a powerful factor in the current wave of artificial intelligence (AI) adoption. And why shouldn't it be? For millennia, companies have relied on technological progress to grow sales, cut costs, and improve customer satisfaction. But if we take a wider view, we see there is tremendous potential for AI to benefit society as a whole. Unfortunately, these "AI for good" projects often face big obstacles to success.

You could argue that our failure to focus on what's getting better suggests that the media generally is missing an enormous story. News by its nature is about a surprise. Which day do you cover malaria deaths being cut in half? Which day do you cover workplace accidents down by a factor of 50 over the 50-year period? It's society doing what it's supposed to do.

AI also raises the prospect of affordable healthcare for all. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 400 million people do not have access to one or more essential health services, and 6% of those in low and middle-income countries are pushed further into extreme poverty because of health spending. In the future, we will see physicians working in partnership with AI – enabling technology to free up their time to concentrate on treatment of the disease as opposed to the diagnosis. Here we look at areas where AI promises to have a real impact on chronic and infectious diseases, from diagnosis and treatment plans to containing the global outbreaks of the likes of SARs and Ebola. Nearly 18 million people die each year from cardiovascular disease, according to WHO.

The lifesaving drugs of the future may very likely be designed by robots. With the ability to test one million new compounds per day, this AI system demonstrates why that's a good idea. Artificial intelligence is helping transform every aspect of our lives, and drug discovery is no exception. AtomNet, a system created by San Francisco-based startup Atomwise, is designed to help with the goal of curing major diseases by predicting the bioactivity of small molecules using a deep learning neural network. New drugs, invented by robots.

We haven't figured out what Ebola virus selects as its natural host, but it's definitely not humans. Every once in a while, Ebola stumbles upon a human host, which ends up being a fatal mistake. When I say fatal, I mean for the virus. After all, Ebola is usually not highly efficient at sustaining infection or transmitting from human to human, and eventually that chain of transmission turns into a dead end. Every Ebola outbreak has ended, even the 2014-2015 West African epidemic.

Over the course of the past year or so, there have been a number of incredible tech projects aimed at stopping the spread of Ebola. One approach that we've never come across before, however, involves plotting the possible spread of Ebola and other "filoviruses" of the same family by predicting which bat species they're most likely to be carried by. That's exactly the goal of a team of scientists, who recently used machine learning techniques to build just such a model. Their work may help prevent future spillover events in which it is important to predict which species of wildlife help spread contagion. "This work entailed collecting intrinsic features describing the world's bat species -- 1,116 species altogether -- and training a machine learning algorithm on these data to learn which features best predict the bat species that carry filoviruses," lead author of the study Barbara Han, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, tells Digital Trends.