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The first 3-D–-printed drug, a malaria vaccine approval and more!

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U.S.

The Food and Drug Administration approved the world's first 3-D-printed drug, for an epilepsy treatment called Spritam. The number of extruded layers determines the dosage per pill.

BRAZIL


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Analysis of 37 water samples from in and around Rio de Janeiro's Guanabara Bay, the planned site for some of the 2016 Summer Olympic events, revealed abnormally high levels of harmful bacteria, including human adenovirus, which causes intestinal and respiratory diseases.

U.K.

European regulators based in London green-lit for the first time a vaccine for malaria—a disease that kills more than 500,000 people a year, most of them children in sub-Saharan Africa. The World Heath Organization will further review the vaccine's effectiveness this month before distribution begins as early as 2017.

KENYA

On a tour of his father's homeland, President Barack Obama announced new rules that will ban almost all ivory sales within the U.S., the second-largest ivory market after China. Illegal poaching accounts for the deaths of at least 50,000 African elephants every year.

CHINA

The nation's space program began assembling a reflector for the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST)—set to become the world's largest single-dish radio telescope when completed sometime next year.

JAPAN

Engineers successfully drove a car over a mobile, expandable bridge inspired by origami. The 57-foot-long prototype is made from steel and aluminum alloy and could temporarily replace structures destroyed by floods or earthquakes.

Scientific American Magazine Vol 313 Issue 4This article was published with the title “Quick Hits” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 313 No. 4 (), p. 25
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1015-25

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