LONGEVITY DIVIDEND UPDATE: Delayed aging is better investment than cancer, heart disease research.

PBS: Why slowing the aging process could save the U.S. trillions.

I wrote about this in Forbes half a decade ago.

OUT: DIVERSITY, GOOD FOR EVERYONE! IN: DIVERSITY ENRICHES THE BOSSES AT THE EXPENSE OF THE WORKERS! Boston Globe: Gender diversity increases productivity, decreases happiness.

Employees who work with a mix of male and female coworkers tend to be more productive but less happy than those who work in more homogenous environments, according to a recently published study coauthored by an MIT economist.

The findings contradict previous research showing that happier employees are more efficient.

Having a broad range of viewpoints and experience provides more tools to complete a task, leading to a healthier bottom line, noted coauthor Sara Ellison, a senior economics lecturer at MIT, and this diversity trumps happiness when it comes to heightened performance. Interestingly, employees who thought that their firm cared about gender diversity were more satisfied than employees who were actually in an office with a mix of men and women.

“They liked the idea of diversity more than they liked actual diversity,” Ellison said. “We all think that we want to be in this pluralistic society in a diverse setting. But when push comes to shove, when our coworkers don’t think like we do, that can cause some friction.”

Divide and rule.

WARBOTS AT SEA: The Navy’s Developing Little Autonomous Boats to Defend Its Ships.

HEALTH: Enterovirus 68: What Experts Are Learning.

HMM: FDA: Medical device cybersecurity necessary, but optional.

MICHAEL BELFIORE: It’s Been 10 Years Since the X Prize—So Where Is My Space Taxi?

I like one of the companies named here — XCOR Aerospace — enough that I’ve made a (small) investment in it. You can read more about XCOR here.

AT RANGER UP, an interview with Mark Rippetoe. “I think everybody in the military ought to be able to deadlift twice their bodyweight.”

I’m still following his routine.

ASHE SCHOW: What discussion about college majors would be complete without mentioning gender gap? “You’ve got to hand it to the writers at Vox — they know how to stay on message.”

EPIDEMIOLOGIST: Stop Flights From Ebola Countries Now. “Infected men and women may not be contagious on the plane, but they could wreak havoc when they arrive.”

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE: Mother-of-eight Diane Brimble tried to have sex with 10-year-old student in her house; Had his name tattooed on her chest in an infinity symbol.

The boy, who has Asperger’s Syndrome, believes Brimble has put a spell on him and won’t look at his parents. . . . Brimble had hugged the boy, who suffers from Aspergers, and asked if he wanted to have sex with her, but the boy pushed her hands away and told her that he was not old enough to have sex.

The teacher said ‘You are when you are at my house’, and kissed him on the cheek and told him that she loved him.

Sheesh.

THEY’VE BEEN WRITING A LOT OF THOSE PRESCRIPTIONS LATELY: Michael S. Greve: Prescription For A Banana Republic. “Why do we permit agencies to proceed in this underhanded, unreviewable fashion? The general idea is that in choosing to proceed by ‘guidance’ rather than formal, reviewable regulation, the agency is giving something up: the legally binding effect of its rulings. It’s not really coercing anybody, and so why bother the courts? That answer, however, wildly underestimates government’s ingenuity in giving real-world effect to supposedly informal documents.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Taller People May Have Lower Risk of Esophageal Cancer: Study.

SPENGLER: Why Are The Bushies Attacking Ted Cruz? “Cruz is a foreign policy hard-liner, not an isolationist, but he is a tough-minded realist in a party contaminated by the ideological impulse to export America’s political system to the Middle East. His way of looking at things is close to that of the original Reagan foreign policy team.”

MAYBE THIS SENSE OF PRIORITIES IS WHY THEY BLEW IT ON EBOLA: WHO Meets in Moscow, Plans New Cigarette Taxes.

SHIKHA DALMIA: California’s “Affirmative Consent” Law Will Ruin Good Sex For Women. And It Won’t Stop Rape.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 516.

PUTIN DOESN’T CARE; HIS MONEY IS IN DOLLARS AND EUROS: The Russian Ruble: How Low Can It Go?

The Russian ruble hit a new low against the dollar, breaking its previous record by a significant margin. At its nadir, it took seven rubles more to buy a single U.S. dollar than it did when we last checked a little over a month ago. . . .

The above quoted “fair ruble price” matches, not coincidentally, what a surveyed group of economists agreed was Russia’s breakeven price of about $100 dollars per barrel of crude oil.

But the real current price of the ruble, fair or not, is being dragged significantly lower than that by a global glut which is being fed in no small part by America’s huge uptick in energy production over the last several years, and which shows no signs of stopping. That spells trouble in the medium and long terms for the oil-dependent Russian economy and for Putin, whose regime derives its continued power from a compact with the people to ensure stability and economic prosperity.

More fracking! It weakens the Arabs and Iranians, too.

AUDIO: Dan Balz on Hugh Hewitt: Ebola plays into the notion that things have begun to spin out of control around the world.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: New Dating App Caters to Rich by Weeding Out the Poor.

AT AMAZON, fresh deals on Bestselling Products, updated every hour. There’s always something new!

Also, it’s the Kindle Daily Deal.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION, NORTH CAROLINA EDITION: Hagan’s Husband Used Stimulus Money To Hire His Own Company: Solar company formed weeks before Chip Hagan’s business received grant. “Sen. Kay Hagan’s husband and son created a solar energy contracting company in August 2010, and then, using $250,644 in federal stimulus grant funds, her husband hired that same company to install solar panels at a building he owns.”

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Dick Durbin and his lobbyist wife working together. “Among the areas of overlap in the Durbins’ careers: her firm getting a one-year contract with a housing nonprofit group around the time the senator went to bat for the organization and others like it; a state university receiving funds earmarked by Durbin when his wife was its lobbyist; and Durbin arranging federal money for a public health nonprofit when his wife was seeking state support for the same group.”

THE SOONER YOU ACT ON THIS STUFF, THE BETTER OFF YOU ARE: After Its First Ebola Case, Spain Seeks to Prevent Spread of Virus.

Spain intensified efforts on Tuesday to contain any spread of Ebola from an infected health worker as the government came under increased pressure from the political opposition and the European Union.

The health worker, a nurse who has not been identified, was described as being in a stable condition. Her husband was quarantined, and monitoring was extended to medical staff who came into in contact with her. The nurse contracted the illness while treating a Spanish missionary who was infected in Sierra Leone and flown to Carlos III Hospital in Madrid.

Opposition politicians said Tuesday that Ana Mato, the health minister, needed to explain any safety lapse, while some called for her immediate removal. Caridad García Álvarez, a lawmaker from the United Left party, wrote on Twitter that Ms. Mato needed to resign after ignoring warnings from health workers about inadequate safety measures. . . .

Carlos III Hospital had been specifically selected by Spain to welcome repatriated Ebola patients, and Yolanda Fuentes, a deputy director of the hospital, said Monday that the protective suits worn by health workers “comply perfectly with the protocol and the required protective measures for this disease.”

The European Commission wrote to the Madrid government requesting an explanation of how the nurse was infected, Agence France-Presse reported, citing Frédéric Vincent, a spokesman for the commission. A European health safety committee is set to meet on Wednesday to review the situation. Still, Mr. Vincent said it was “highly improbable” that the virus would spread further across Europe.

As an assistant nurse, the woman who became infected had only twice entered the room of Manuel García Viejo, a priest who died of Ebola, including once after his death, according to Antonio Alemany, a health official from the regional government of Madrid.

It’s not clear to me that the infection-control precautions for Ebola are sufficient to protect health workers, given how many of them have been infected.

UPDATE: Why Spanish nurse is such a troubling Ebola case.

Also: Spain investigates how nurse caught Ebola.

Related: Treat Ebola like smallpox? It would help to have a vaccine.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ebola in Spain raises questions about protection. “Three more people were under quarantine Tuesday for possible Ebola at a Madrid hospital after a Spanish nursing assistant became infected there, authorities said. More than 50 others were being monitored as experts pressed to figure out why Spain’s anti-infection practices failed. Health authorities were investigating how the nursing assistant, part of a special team that cared for a Spanish priest who died of Ebola last month, became infected. She was the first case of Ebola being transmitted outside of West Africa, where a months-long outbreak has killed at least 3,500 people and sparked social unrest. . . . Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University, said her case shows that health workers can be at risk not only in West Africa but in the sophisticated medical centers in Europe and the United States. . . . Rafael Perez-Santamarina, the hospital’s director, said authorities did not know yet how the nursing assistant got infected despite the use of internationally recognized precautions against Ebola.” Yes, the whole “we’re safe because Africans don’t have our sophisticated health care” argument isn’t looking exactly bulletproof.

Also: Ebola Is Bad But Flu Is Worse. I dunno. I’ve had my flu shot, but Walgreen’s was fresh out of Ebola Vaccine.