Embryonic stem cells transplanted into 18 patients with deteriorating eyesight restored some vision in more than half the volunteers, the longest study into the fledgling technology reported Tuesday.

Stem cells derived from embryos "could provide a potentially safe new source of cells for the treatment of various unmet medical disorders requiring tissue repair or replacement," its authors said.

The world is falling behind in a desperate race stop the deadly Ebola outbreak, a top UN official warned on Tuesday amid dire predictions that thousands of new infections are possible before year's end.

"Ebola got a head start on us," said Anthony Banbury, head of the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response.

Top athletes are often dogged by decaying teeth and gum disease, a performance-sapping problem in which sports drinks, high-carb diets and training regimes may play a part, specialists said Monday.

Experts from Britain and North America reviewed 39 published studies into the oral health of elite or professional sportsmen and women.

A Louisiana firm said Monday it will not accept medical waste from the late Ebola patient in Texas, even though it acknowledged the refuse is safe.

Liberian Thomas Eric Duncan was the first person diagnosed with Ebola outside Africa. Duncan was hospitalized September 28 and died of Ebola on Wednesday in Dallas.

The U.S. and U.N. leaders on Monday called for "more robust" international efforts to tackle Ebola, after medics in Liberia demanded danger money to treat patients in what officials termed the worst health crisis of modern times.

The call from U.S. President Barack Obama and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon came as doctors and nurses in Liberia, one of the worst-hit countries, went on strike to demand higher pay to care for Ebola patients there.

Their legacy already established in politics, Mitt Romney and his wife, Ann, are working to leave a lasting mark on neuroscience.

Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital on Tuesday will announce the launch of the Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases, a venture funded by the Romneys and their expansive political network that will assemble scores of the world's most accomplished doctors and scientists to collaborate in battling five neurological diseases that have no cure: multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's, ALS, Parkinson's and brain tumors.

A major anti-tobacco conference opened in Moscow on Monday aimed at agreeing higher taxes on cigarettes, a move being fiercely opposed by the tobacco industry.   

Russia, which has introduced strict anti-smoking legislation, was hosting a five-day World Health Organization conference that has brought together some 1,500 delegates from signatory countries of the international body's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. 

A major international research group rang alarm bells Monday over the scourge of hidden hunger, also known as vitamin and mineral deficiencies, which affects over two billion people with often devastating consequences.

In its Global Hunger Index report, which identified 16 countries with "extremely alarming" or "alarming" hunger levels, the International Food Policy Research Institute also stressed the challenge of fighting the often overshadowed form of malnutrition that occurs when people do not absorb enough nutrients.

Ugandan health officials said Monday that they are continuing to monitor five people feared to have contracted the Ebola-like Marburg virus, even though all suspected cases so far have tested negative.

A 30-year-old medical technician died from Marburg on September 28, 11 days after falling ill, at the Mengo hospital in the capital where he worked, sparking alarm in the east African nation.

Hundreds of thousands of workers in England's state-run National Health Service went on strike Monday for the first time since 1982 following the government's rejection of a blanket pay rise.

NHS staff including nurses, ambulance crews and midwives stopped working for four hours from 7:00 am (0600 GMT), some forming picket lines.