2 questions: 1. The drugs themselves may not change the epidemic curve, but they may change the relationship the health care facilities and workers have with the community. What does "curve" mean here? 2. The world's nations are meeting in Lima this year in hopes of hammering out a global deal to combat climate change to be agreed upon in Paris in 2015. The new report is a reminder to world leaders that the stakes, like the seas, are high. What does "stake" mean here?Marked with *** Context for 1: 20141107-Plan Now for Future Ebola Outbreaks “Classic public health, isolation and respect and dignity for the people infected, and respect and dignity if individuals do die that they’re buried in appropriate manner, is absolutely critical to bringing this epidemic under control.” Jeremy Farrar is an emerging infectious disease expert and the director of the Wellcome Trust, a global charitable health foundation. He talked about the current Ebola epidemic in west Africa during a conference call webcast produced by the New England Journal of Medicine on October 22nd. “The society where these epidemics are occurring are ultimately going to be critical to bringing the epidemic under control. “I believe in the 21st century, the classic public health measures that are critical can be complemented by the addition of rapid diagnostics; by the development of vaccines, assessment of safety and efficacy and then deployment; and by the development of drugs. ***The drugs themselves may not change the epidemic curve, but they may change the relationship the health care facilities and workers have with the community. “If you offer hope to a previously untreated infection, you will change the way that people present, you will remove some of the stigma and you will be able to demonstrate that people can survive from Ebola. And I believe that is absolutely critical. Being a young doctor during the early stages of HIV in western Europe, it was amazing the change that occurred both in lives, but also in attitudes toward HIV, when we developed antiretroviral drugs.” Context for 2: 20141110-Clock Ticking on Climate Change Prevention Climate change is real. Carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels and clearing forests, among other human activities, is to blame. And more and more of that global warming pollution is being dumped in the atmosphere each year. So says the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's new synthesis report released on November 2. The synthesis reduces thousands of pages of scientific knowledge to their essence. That essence, however, has hardly changed since the last synthesis report in 2007. What has changed is the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which have now touched 400 parts per million. Pollution in the first decade of the 21st century grew twice as fast as it did in the last few decades of the 20th century. The resulting global warming poses risks ranging from rising sea levels that drown inhabited coasts to crop failures from stronger heat waves and drought. The IPCC has now offered a budget for how much pollution people can add to the atmosphere without too much climate change. Unfortunately, humanity has already used more than half of that budget. ***The world's nations are meeting in Lima this year in hopes of hammering out a global deal to combat climate change to be agreed upon in Paris in 2015. The new report is a reminder to world leaders that the stakes, like the seas, are high.