A team of students at North Carolina State just created a nail polish designed to change colour when dipped into a cocktail spiked with commonly-used date rape drugs.
In Boston, a company is producing glasses and straws that light up after detecting similar drugs.
Critics have rightly argued both tactics are useless against rare or newlysynthesized drugs.
We applaud both the students and the company for putting up one more barrier to sexual assault, even if it's hard to think of a more depressing illustration of how frequently our technology surpasses our humanity.
The debate surrounding the new nail polish coincides with college kids heading to the pandemonium of Frosh Week.
To their credit, many Canadian universities are finally drafting sexual assault policies, offering counselling services, and trying to change what has sometimes been an exceedingly ugly culture.
UBC is a marvelous school, but it's also one of many universities where undergrads have cheerfully taken part in a misogynist chant.
It's possible the chanters weren't trying to perpetuate a rape culture. They may have just been drunk, brainless, or oblivious, but that's the trouble. For far too long, the wrong people have been loud and the right ones have been silent.
Sexual assault is a global problem. According to the United Nations, approximately 10 per cent of females under 20 around the world have suffered sexual violence. We can only wonder how many attacks go unreported.
Technology can help reduce incidents of sexual assault, but the real problem is still in us.
