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Airs Tuesday, October 30, 2012 at 8 p.m. on KPBS TV

Ebola continues to spread in West Africa. The latest figures from the World Health Organization cite 1,848 cases of the deadly disease across the region, and 1,013 deaths.

By playing with the physics of wing color, scientists get a glimpse into how butterflies get their colors, and how quickly they can evolve from brown to brilliant.

Months after a girl took the company to task for its female toy figures, LEGO has released the Research Institute, a playset created by "real-life geophysicist, Ellen Kooijman," the company says.

Is this 2014 or 1348? The plague — yes, the infamous Black Death — was reported in China and Colorado. It's the same disease as the Middle Ages pandemic. Only now we know how to treat it.

What does a 20 percent chance of rain or snow actually mean? Interpreting probabilities in forecasts can be hard even for mathematicians and meteorologists — never mind the average person.

Turns out that for 7,000 years, snacking on nutsedge may have helped people avoid tooth decay. But at some point, the root it lost its charm. By the 1970s, it was branded "the world's worst weed."

Health officials are trying to convince families to bring the ill to health centers and to change the way their bury their dead to rein in the disease, which has killed hundreds across the region.

When it comes to living at extreme altitudes, Tibetans may have gotten a leg up from Denisovans, a species of archaic humans that lived about 50,000 years ago.

Passenger pigeons used to be the most abundant bird in North America. But hunters drove them to extinction, and by 1914, only one was left. A century later, that pigeon, named Martha, is on exhibit.