Researchers at the National Autonomous University of Mexico have been experimenting with ways to create lab-grown diamonds from organic solutions. In determining what compounds are ideal for creating diamonds, they realized that the proportions of chemicals are similar to those in tequila:

According to PhysOrg:

"To dissipate any doubts, one morning on the way to the lab I bought a pocket-size bottle of cheap white tequila and we did some tests," [Luis Miguel] Apátiga said. "We were in doubt over whether the great amount of chemicals present in tequila, other than water and ethanol, would contaminate or obstruct the process, it turned out to be not so. The results were amazing, same as with the ethanol and water compound, we obtained almost spherical shaped diamonds of nanometric size. There is no doubt; tequila has the exact proportion of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms necessary to form diamonds."

And, as much as tequila diamonds sound like a novelty (and are bound to inspire a lot of jokes about alch-emy), the discovery could greatly improve the industrial production of hard, heat-resistant diamond films. The research team is currently looking to contract with a tequila producer and plans to start large-scale production of its agave-derived diamonds in 2011.

Scientists Turn Tequila into Diamonds [PhysOrg]

For every 1,000 litres of alcohol sold in stores (there were no stats for what got sold in bars), numbers of violent assaults and deaths nearby increased by 13%. For young people, the risk increased by 21%. One could easily imagine a dystopian future where cities zone certain "undesirable" areas for more liquor stores, as a way of trimming down or crippling the population there.

What's particularly interesting about this study is how the researchers got their data. The Canadian province Ontario does an very accurate job of tracking alcohol sales in stores (not bars) because the government regulates stores that sell liquor. In addition, hospitals in the province keep highly-accurate records of assaults. So the region was basically a goldmine for data about how alcohol sales might impact assaults.

Alcohol Sales and Risk of Assault [PLoS Medicine]

Apparently the more you drink, the more your brain's neurological structure gets rewired to crave the drinkies. (This is something that people who study addiction have known for a while.) What nobody knew before was exactly how that re-wired affected sexual behavior. Turns out it causes "disinhibition," which makes flies more likely to try to mate — with anybody:

Among the team's discoveries is that male fruit flies, which typically court females, also actively court males when they are given a daily dose of [alcohol's active ingredient] ethanol.