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A few years ago, some marketing and advertising experts were asked to name the best nickname for an American city. The winner was the nation's largest city, New York. The top nickname was The Big Apple.

You might wonder how New York got this nickname. In the early nineteen seventies, the city had many problems. The number of visitors was falling. So a campaign was launched to give the city a new image. The head of the New York Conventions and Visitors Bureau decided to call the city, The Big Apple.

There are several explanations for where this name came from. Language expert Barry Popik studied the question and wrote about it on his website. He says John Fitz Gerald, a writer for a New York newspaper, used the name the Big Apple to mean New York in the nineteen twenties. Mister Fitz Gerald wrote about horse races. He heard the name used by men who worked at a racetrack in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Mister Fitz Gerald wrote: "The Big Apple. The dream of every lad that ever threw a leg over a thoroughbred and the goal of all horsemen. There's only one Big Apple. That's New York."

In horse racing, the expression meant "the big time," the place where large amounts of money could be won. The Big Apple became the name of a night club in the Harlem area of New York City in nineteen thirty-four. It also was the name of a popular dance and a hit song in the nineteen thirties.

But it is not the only nickname for America's largest city. Barry Popik's website lists almost one hundred nicknames that describe New York. The best known are the Capital of the World. Empire City. Gotham. The City So Nice They Named it Twice. And the City That Never Sleeps. You can hear about the city in the song, "New York, New York" by Frank Sinatra.

What it would require, they say, is reducing the spread of malaria by ninety percent from two thousand seven rates.

An international team created mathematical models and maps of areas where the disease is gone or almost gone. Andrew Tatem, an assistant professor at the University of Florida, led the study. Professor Tatem says a number of things have helped countries successfully fight malaria.

ANDREW TATEM: " ... such as relatively low levels of malaria risk to start with, political stability, a good health system and low levels of population movement bringing in infections from elsewhere."

The study says malaria could be eliminated if countries are serious about using proven control measures. These include insecticides and bed nets.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation partly financed the research. The study appears in the Lancet medical journal in a series of reports on eliminating malaria.

Other malaria experts writing in the Lancet expressed concern about giving too much attention to eliminating malaria. They say such a goal could take many years, if it is possible at all. The concern is that resources for controlling malaria could be lost if the money is spent instead on trying to defeat it.

Years of efforts to eliminate another disease, polio, have largely succeeded. Now, the World Health Organization says a new vaccine combination will help in the fight to end polio in countries where it is still found.

That report, based on a study from India, also appears in the Lancet.

There are three kinds of polio virus. Vaccination campaigns normally use vaccines designed to protect against all three types.

But cases of the type two virus have not been seen in years. And the new study confirmed that the type two vaccine reduces the effectiveness of the other vaccines when given together.

To avoid that problem, the new combination contains vaccine only for the type one and type three polio viruses.