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Ah, college. The beer pong, the all-nighters, the walks of shame, the pillow over your head so you can’t hear your roommate’s drunken hook-up…
Well, Tufts University has gone and ruined the last of these fond memories. A new campus policy is meant to deal with an issue that was previously managed via ear plugs and/or drinking so much that you’d sleep through an earthquake: roommate sex.
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Turns out you can no longer blame booze the next time you wake up in a coyote ugly situation. In fact, researchers at the University of Leicester in England found that drinking alcohol actually reduces the attractiveness of the opposite sex. Participants in the study, in various stages of intoxication, were shown photos of people and asked to rate their attractiveness. The results also showed that alcohol and make-up barely affect a man’s ability to guess a woman’s age.
This evidence will probably not be convincing to anyone who has woken up with a raging hangover and a debilitating sense of regret regarding the homely stranger snoring next to them in bed (and yes, this goes for both men and women). But perhaps what the study in fact tells us is that alcohol doesn’t make us believe we’re going home with a hottie — it just makes us care less. Which is actually kind of sweet, if you think about it: Alcohol makes us slower to judge and less susceptible to a pretty face. We’ll drink to that!
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World Water Week has just ended; the need for clean, safe drinking water in many parts of the developing world hasn’t, however. While some scientists and engineers have focused on high-tech solutions to this crisis, Dr. Jeffrey Amburgey and his students at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte ground their water purification research in the KISS principle: “… make it as simple as possible.”
Amburgey and team have focused on the development of a “rapid sand filter” system that allows for efficient, low-cost water treatment with readily-available materials. According to Amburgey, “All that is needed is some PVC pipe, sand and inexpensive treatment chemicals.”
The results so far: a 99% removal rate of Cryptosporidium oocysts, a parasitic organism that can work its way through other sand filtering systems (and cause some pretty nasty illnesses). Amburgey’s rapid filter system also has geographical flexibility built in: indigenous sands and crushed rocks can be adapted for use with the technology.
Flashy and cutting-edge? No. Inexpensive, appropriate, and probably life-saving? You betcha!
Source: UNCC via Science Daily and Lighter Footstep
Image: Dr. Amburgey’s students with the rapid sand filter, courtesy of University of North Carolina – Charlotte.
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