Bombs kill 25 at Nigerian drinking spot: sources (Reuters)

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Reuters) – Suspected members of a radical Islamist sect threw bombs at a drinking spot in Nigeria's northeastern town of Maiduguri on Sunday, killing around 25 people, witnesses and military sources said.

The attackers -- who the military said were suspected members of the Boko Haram sect -- threw three sets of explosives from the back of motorbikes at around 5 p.m. (1600 GMT) and appeared to be targeting police officers, witnesses said.

"Around 25 people have been killed in a multiple bomb blast in the Dala ward of Maiduguri," a military official said, asking not to be named.

The National Emergency Management Agency said it was working with other rescue teams to evacuate the injured but gave no further details.

Insecurity in parts of northern Nigeria has rapidly replaced militant attacks on oil infrastructure hundreds of kilometres away in the southern Niger Delta as the main security threat in Africa's most populous nation in recent months.

Boko Haram, which says it wants a wider application of strict sharia Islamic law in Nigeria, claimed responsibility for a bomb blast 10 days ago outside the national police headquarters in the capital Abuja.

The sect has been responsible for almost daily killings and attacks on police and government buildings in and around Maiduguri, which lies near Nigeria's remote northeastern borders with Chad, Cameroon and Niger.

Boko Haram's former leader, self-proclaimed Islamic scholar Mohammed Yusuf, was shot dead in police custody during a 2009 uprising in which hundreds were killed. His mosque was destroyed with tanks and the security forces claimed a decisive victory.

But low-level guerrilla attacks on police stations and assassinations, including of traditional leaders and moderate Islamic clerics, intensified in the second half of last year.

President Goodluck Jonathan, who was sworn in for his first full term in office a month ago, has voiced support for dialogue with Boko Haram.

But the group has an ill-defined command structure, a variety of people claiming to speak on its behalf, and an unknown number of followers. Some security analysts say its supporters number in the thousands.

West African Islam is overwhelmingly moderate and the sect's ideology is not widely supported by Nigeria's Muslim population, the largest in sub-Saharan Africa, but poverty and unemployment have helped it build a cult-like following.

(For more Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: http://af.reuters.com/ )

(Writing by Nick Tattersall; editing by Andrew Roche)

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Pa. sees threat to drinking water from natural gas drilling waste

s regulation of gas drilling and came the same day that an industry group said it now believes drilling wastewater is partly at fault for rising levels of bromide being found in Pittsburgh-area rivers.

Gas drilling that uses millions of gallons of chemical-laden water has rapidly grown in the past three years in Pennsylvania.

STORY: Pa. permit process is lax, AP saysSTORY: States scramble to prevent pollution from gas drillingIn other major gas-drilling states, drilling wastewater is kept out of rivers largely by injecting it deep underground into disposal wells. But in Pennsylvania, some wastewater is treated by sewer plants, largely in western Pennsylvania, and discharged into rivers.

Those wastewater plants, however, are ill-equipped to remove all the pollutants, and Pennsylvania still allows hundreds of millions of gallons of the partially treated wastewater to be discharged into rivers, from which communities draw drinking water.

The state Department of Environmental Protection cited elevated levels of bromide in rivers in western Pennsylvania in its announcement.

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Study: Spare time, drinking factors into school performance

And what about the students at elite colleges, known for their "work hard, party hard" ethos, who may use substances but make great grades while doing so? Turns out, they're not immune. "I was able to exactly replicate the previous finding with the work-hard, play-hard students," Wyatt said. "Although their grades are inflated to the point where they look super-smart ... you have to realize that they're probably still not recognizing their full potential."

That assertion caused some grief for Wyatt when he took it to a few Ivy League colleges (which he declined to identify). Officials at two of them blew him off, he said, saying that their students still get better grades than anyone else, so who cares?

Other colleges cannot even attempt to make that argument. There has been a decades-long decline in how much students study, Wyatt showed. In the 1960s, college students spent 24 hours a week studying. As of 2005, that number had dropped to 11. There are potential positive implications to students studying less: they're more socially competent, spending more time on leisure and sports, and participating in dynamic learning methods like group work.

But there are negative consequences, too: increased substance use, decreased academic engagement, and decreased professional preparedness. (Wyatt recalled his students in a developmental psychology class, who included text jargon and emoticons in their reflection papers.) "One of the main reasons why students aren't spending as much time studying is they don't know how to study," Wyatt said. "They don't know how to study efficiently."

To that end, Wyatt said, the most important thing to take away from his research is the importance of effective tutoring. "Although tutoring has been proven time and time again," he said, "it's a really hard nut to crack, simply because students resist it almost like it's a sickness. They see it almost as a punishment."

Some colleges are urging students to make tutoring appointments rather than agreeing to visit the lab during open hours. One college this year added an extra resident assistant on each floor of its freshman dorms, plus one "floater RA" per building who visits every room every night to talk with students about their studies. In this way, the RA forms a relationship with the resident and acts as an informal tutor/supervisor to students who might not otherwise seek help. The college, which Wyatt declined to identify because it plans to publish its own study on the experiment, has seen a decline in emergency room visits, campus vandalism, alcohol violations and sexual assault.

Mark Gehrke, a student at Boise State University, said he started a tutoring program at his fraternity this semester, and the average member's grade point average is now 3.5. When other Greek organizations saw the grades of those students, he said, almost all of them added in-house tutors. Gehrke also reinforced the idea that campus activities reduce the negative effects of drinking: when Gehrke got involved in student government, he said, it set his priorities in order, and that newfound passion trickled over into his classroom performance. Offering opportunities for students to socialize on-campus without alcohol — and doing so with something more compelling than "free pizza" — is a great way to improve student success, Wyatt said.

Officials at the session also expressed interest in using the study as a warning sign for new students and their parents — a red flag at freshman orientation to show that, "if you want to succeed," as Wyatt put it, "these are the two main predictors: studying hard and staying off the bottle. That's it."

Some attendees suggested other ideas to improve academic outcomes. "Having worked in housing for 13 years, I'm always thinking about how students spend their time," said Kevin Michael Kerr, general manager of student housing at Greenville Technical College, in South Carolina. At Greenville, starting next year, all students who intend to eventually transfer to a four-year degree program will be required to take a class in which they re-learn how to study and think critically. Halfway through the class's first semester, students are already coming back with better grades.

Wyatt approved. "Educating students to study better is the crux of our entire academic system," he said. "Just being able to say, 'You need to study more' isn't enough. You need to study better."

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