Morning Briefing

"Advocates for universal access to and use of basic personal sanitation hope their efforts will get a big boost in August, when the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation present several hygienic innovations developed through its Reinventing the Toilet Challenge," Scientific American reports in a feature article. "The foundation's involvement could do for sanitation what it has accomplished in the battle to eradicate malaria -- raise the visibility of a fundamental health care crisis and encourage new efforts to end it," the magazine writes.