Roxanne Jones: The 4th Year UCT medical students, in association with the Cancer Association of South Africa (CANSA), recently did a research project on hookah smoking.
The motivation behind the research was to gain a better understanding of the knowledge, attitudes and practices involved with hookah pipe smoking.
MARKO SVICEVIC: Picture the following: you have three assignments due this week, are writing two semester tests and are preparing for an upcoming exam. To top it off, you have a social with friends and are going clubbing on the weekend. A busy schedule is nothing new to students, but then again, neither is sleep deprivation. Although it is often not seen as a serious concern, lack of sleep has several detrimental effects.
Sibusiswe Nyanda: Last week’s episode of Intersexions on television had my girlfriends and me debating the issue of the line between trust and naiveté. Quick summary of the episode: a woman (Thandeka) trusted her husband (Godwin) and her young, beautiful au pair (Gadima) to maintain a professional relationship but they had an affair.
Anna Insam: Ever questioned the landings on the moon?
April Fools’ Day has come and gone, and perhaps we are all still feeling a bit sheepish for sniffing the Google logo hoping to smell something.
From spray-on skinny jeans, headphones for cats, Virgin’s glass-bottomed plane to Twitter charging users to use vowels, we really saw it all this year.
STAFF REPORTER: Despite its glamorous appeal (for those of you who aim to be model thin), drunkorexia is not a healthy way to have a good time, even if it saves you some cash.
Drunkorexia, as defined by Prof. Jacob Palme of Stockholm University, is the combination of “not eating almost any food during the day (anorexia nervosa) with drinking a lot of alcoholic beverages during night-time partying (alcohol abuse)”. However, Kobus du Plooy, a clinical psychologist at UP Student Support, says that drunkorexia is only “a social term and not an official clinical diagnosis”.
CARMI HEYMAN: For most students, university life can be directly linked to drinking alcohol – legally, that is.
However, if Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi has his way, students who are 21 years old or older may be the only ones who are allowed to drink legally. At a recent World Health Organisation meeting in Boksburg, Motsoaledi addressed numerous issues concerning alcohol and said that raising the legal drinking age from 18 to 21 is one of a range of measures being considered to reduce the harm caused by alcohol consumption.
ANLERIE DE WET: Single people are known as the third wheels, the best friend or the brother or sister. They dread being asked about their supposed love lives at family gatherings and sometimes respond with a tilt of the head or an “ag, shame” when they hear about the problems of others in committed relationships.
At some stage of your life, you will most probably find yourself in the awkward position of liking someone that your friend has liked/likes/dated/is currently dating or someone who is already taken.
It’s one of those situations that will put most of us in a bit of a pickle. Guys have it simple. How I met your mother taught us the rules of the Bro Code, but what do girls have – trust?
