This third week of the summer semester, Dr. V will be in Boston presenting the research that last summer's microbiology students did for a project. They showed that safe drinking water can be produced on dark days without fire by adding a few drops of shampoo to polluted fresh water, and then filtering it through newspaper. The shampoo kills most bacteria - importantly including all pathogenic ones, and the newspaper filters out the larger eukaryotic parasitic pathogens. The idea for this project was inspired by the 2004 Indonesian tsunami. The collaborating coauthors reasoned that only the most rudimentary low-tech methods would be acceptable. Students from Paul D. Camp and Thomas Nelson and Southside Virginia Community Colleges, as well as two high schoolers from Long Island, NY are the coauthors.

The research took less than an hour to accomplish, but when it was submitted to the American Society for Microbiology, their leadership deemed it worthy of presentation. Of approximately 9,000 submissions, only about 3,500 are accepted for presentation. What is more is that of those 3,500, eighty are chosen for highlighting to the international press. Their research was chosen as one of those eighty.

It is hoped that one of the projects done this summer might result in similar honors.

Note: this is not science fair stuff. This is the real thing! Other presenters at the meeting are from professional labs all over the world including some Nobel Prize winners.