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West Africa is a poor region, struggling to improve its economic growth.

It had been succeeding. Last year, Sierra Leone and Liberia ranked second and sixth among countries with the highest growth in gross domestic product in the world.

But this year, growth has stopped because of the spread of the deadly Ebola virus. On Wednesday, the World Bank released a report saying the epidemic's economic cost could reach $32.6 billion by the end of 2015 if the outbreak spreads.

In such poor countries, that's a huge amount of money. The grim scenario is based on economists' estimates of costs, and it assumes that containment efforts will move slowly, allowing the disease to spread from hardest-hit Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone into neighboring countries. World Bank officials are hoping that "slow" scenario won't come true.

"With Ebola's potential to inflict massive economic costs on Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone and on the rest of their neighbors in West Africa, the international community must find ways to get past logistical roadblocks and bring in more doctors and trained medical staff, more hospital beds, and more health and development support to help stop Ebola in its tracks," World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said in a statement.

The World Bank study said that no matter what happens in coming months, Ebola is already having a huge economic impact. Right now, it is killing workers and causing "higher fiscal deficits; rising prices; lower real household incomes and greater poverty."

Over time, the disease will have indirect consequences as people change their behaviors, according to the report. When countries get hit with widespread fear of contagion, people become afraid to meet or even show up for work. That, in turn, "closes places of employment, disrupts transportation, motivates some governments to close land borders ... and motivates private decision-makers to disrupt trade, travel and commerce by canceling scheduled commercial flights and reduction in shipping and cargo service."

This week, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund are trying to call attention to the huge costs of Ebola. The organizations are holding their annual fall meetings in Washington. On Thursday morning, a news conference will feature the presidents of Liberia and Sierra Leone as well as the heads of the CDC, the World Bank, IMF, the United Nations.

Estimates of Ebola's potential economic damage come on top of Tuesday's release of the World Bank and IMF's assessment of annual global growth. The report noted that factors such as disease, debt, war and terrorist attacks are slowing global economic expansion. The forecast for this year's average global growth slid to 3.3 percent, down 0.4 percentage point from April.

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Broad channels of short-term economic impact from the Ebola epidemic, as laid out in the World Bank report. For a larger version, click here. Courtesy of the World Bank hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of the World Bank

Broad channels of short-term economic impact from the Ebola epidemic, as laid out in the World Bank report. For a larger version, click here.

Courtesy of the World Bank

Ebola,

World Bank

Two Americans and a German will share the Nobel Prize in chemistry for developing a new type of microscopy that allows researchers, for the first time, to see individual molecules inside living cells.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded Americans Eric Betzig and William Moerner and German scientist Stefan Hell the prize for "the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy," which "has brought optical microscopy into the nanodimension."

Nobelprize.org says:

"For a long time optical microscopy was held back by a presumed limitation: that it would never obtain a better resolution than half the wavelength of light. Helped by fluorescent molecules the Nobel Laureates in Chemistry 2014 ingeniously circumvented this limitation. Their ground-breaking work has brought optical microscopy into the nanodimension.

"In what has become known as nanoscopy, scientists visualize the pathways of individual molecules inside living cells. They can see how molecules create synapses between nerve cells in the brain; they can track proteins involved in Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and Huntington's diseases as they aggregate; they follow individual proteins in fertilized eggs as these divide into embryos."

YouTube/YouTube

The academy says it is awarding the prize for two distinct principles. Simulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy, which uses a laser to stimulate fluorescent molecules to glow and another laser to filter out all but a small portion of the result, allowing incredibly fine resolution. That research was carried out by Hell.

Working separately, Betzig and Moerner are credited with developing single-molecule microscopy, a "method [that] relies upon the possibility to turn the fluorescence of individual molecules on and off. Scientists image the same area multiple times, letting just a few interspersed molecules glow each time," according to Nobelprize.org.

Betzig is a group leader at Janelia Farm Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, Va., and Moerner is the Harry S. Mosher Professor in Chemistry and professor, by courtesy, of applied physics at Stanford University.

Hell is the director at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Gottingen, and division head at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, Germany.

Nobel Prize in chemistry

Two Americans and a German will share the Nobel Prize in chemistry for developing a new type of microscopy that allows researchers, for the first time, to see individual molecules inside living cells.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded Americans Eric Betzig and William Moerner and German scientist Stefan Hell the prize for "the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy," which "has brought optical microscopy into the nanodimension."

Nobelprize.org says:

"For a long time optical microscopy was held back by a presumed limitation: that it would never obtain a better resolution than half the wavelength of light. Helped by fluorescent molecules the Nobel Laureates in Chemistry 2014 ingeniously circumvented this limitation. Their ground-breaking work has brought optical microscopy into the nanodimension.

"In what has become known as nanoscopy, scientists visualize the pathways of individual molecules inside living cells. They can see how molecules create synapses between nerve cells in the brain; they can track proteins involved in Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and Huntington's diseases as they aggregate; they follow individual proteins in fertilized eggs as these divide into embryos."

YouTube/YouTube

The academy says it is awarding the prize for two distinct principles. Simulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy, which uses a laser to stimulate fluorescent molecules to glow and another laser to filter out all but a small portion of the result, allowing incredibly fine resolution. That research was carried out by Hell.

Working separately, Betzig and Moerner are credited with developing single-molecule microscopy, a "method [that] relies upon the possibility to turn the fluorescence of individual molecules on and off. Scientists image the same area multiple times, letting just a few interspersed molecules glow each time," according to Nobelprize.org.

Betzig is a group leader at Janelia Farm Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, Va., and Moerner is the Harry S. Mosher Professor in Chemistry and professor, by courtesy, of applied physics at Stanford University.

Hell is the director at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Gottingen, and division head at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, Germany.

Nobel Prize in chemistry

Ben Hamilton walks down the salad dressing aisle at his neighborhood grocery store in west Denver. The human resources consultant usually seeks out organic options and scans nutrition information.

"I am a label reader. I think a lot of people read labels and really are curious to know what is in our food supply," he says. But Hamilton says he wants more information, specifically whether the food he buys includes ingredients derived from genetically modified crops, or GMOs.

Voters in Colorado and Oregon will decide this fall whether or not they want labels on foods containing genetically modified ingredients. The ballot measures this fall highlight a much larger national conversation about requiring labels on genetically modified foods.

Similar measures failed in recent years in California and Washington state, and Vermont is being sued for the labeling law it enacted earlier this year.

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Earlier this summer, Hamilton sat on a citizen review panel and heard from both sides of the labeling debate. The panel voted 11 to 9 in favor of labels.

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"I think this boils down to a consumer's right to know," says Hamilton. "So it's not to debate whether GMOs are safe or they're good for you or bad for you. But it is about a right to know what's in our food supply."

Hamilton's yes vote is right in line with some consumer groups, which say GMOs come with too many unanswered questions.

Oregon voters also will be voting on GMO labeling in this election. As in Colorado, there was a similar citizen review panel. Ernest Estes, a Portland lawyer who sat on that panel, has his doubts.

"I'm not convinced we need it at this point," Estes says. "And I'm not sure that it does much for Oregonians."

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Estes wasn't alone in that sentiment. The citizen panel in Oregon also voted 11 to 9, but in the opposite direction as the Colorado panel. They turned down the labeling proposal.

"If there is little or no risk to the public, I'm not sure that the government should be in the role of requiring things like this," Estes says.

Researchers so far have found no adverse health effects from eating genetically modified foods, findings supported by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the World Health Organization.

Many scientists worry labels could confuse consumers, especially given the proposals' exemptions. The meat or milk from a cow that had been fed GMO corn and hay wouldn't be labeled. Neither would chewing gum, alcohol or pet food.

Larry Cooper, leader of Colorado Right To Know, says the proposal had to be narrowly written.

"We had to be very careful what subjects we put in the ballot. Yes, we've eliminated some specific areas, but certainly they can be added later," says Cooper.

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But even with narrower language, if the proposals pass, lawsuits are likely inevitable.

"When you're compelling a business to say something, or a producer to say something, there has to be some governmental interest. There has to be a substantial government interest," says Justin Marceau, a law professor at the University of Denver.

"Why do we need this information? If it's idle curiosity, that we're all just really curious about what's in our food, that might not be good enough. If it is [that] GMOs are harmful? Well that's a different matter," he says.

Farmer Paul Schlagel grows genetically engineered — or GE — sugar beets outside Longmont, Colo. The sweet-tasting beets are turned into granulated sugar at a nearby plant. "Once it's processed," he says, "there's no GE material in the sugar" because there's no DNA or protein left in the final sugar product.

"The sugar is identical to conventionally grown sugar, sugar cane, even organic sugar," Schlagel says.

Despite that, if the Colorado's Proposition 105 passes, the sugar that's grown on Schlagel's farm will bear a label saying it was genetically modified.

"It's misleading. Prop 105 is — is a mistake, and I think, hopefully, the consumers can figure that out," says Schlagel.

Regardless of the outcomes in Colorado and Oregon in November, with more states taking up the issue, the national debate about GMO labeling is far from over.

GMO labeling

GMOs