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"It seems like his brain isn't working quite properly and according to new findings, it may not be. Researchers have begun to explore the cognitive impairment that men experience before and after interacting with women. A 2009 study demonstrated that after a short interaction with an attractive woman, men experienced a decline in mental performance. A more recent study suggests that this cognitive impairment takes hold even w hen men simply anticipate interacting with a woman who they know very little about. Sanne Nauts ... Daisy Grewal is a researcher at the Stanford School of Medicine, where she investigates how stereotypes affect the careers of women and minority scientists."

"Based on data from a randomized sample of universities and online volunteers who completed a survey, men and women who pursue STEM degrees tend to become interested in science in elementary school. When asked which people and experiences helped to spark their interest, women were more likely than men to select a teacher, a class at school, solving math problems and spending time outdoors, whereas men were more influenced by tinkering, building and reading. As men and women enter college, passion for the field far outweighs all other influences as the main reason for their persistence"

People keep blaming the emergence of HIV on science, or at least medicine. For the longest time this came in the form of the claim that it was all due to contaminated polio vaccine. That turned out to be factually groundless. Now a group of scientists in the US thinks it may all be down to the greatest medical intervention of all: the eradication of smallpox.

"A more potentially useful observation about HIV and viruses comes from Jennifer Smith of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and colleagues in the 1 June issue of the Journal of Infectious Diseases, in which they report that men with HPV infection on their penis are nearly twice as likely to catch HIV than men without. They suspect the virus - which causes cervical cancer in women, and genital warts in men and women - attracts lymphocytes to the skin of the penis for HIV to infect, or creates micro-lesions where it can enter. That's good news, because we have a vaccine for HPV that appears to be completely safe. The team calculates that vaccinating men against HPV could prevent as many cases of HIV as more widely hailed circumcision efforts. It just goes to show that vaccination - already one of the biggest success stories of medicine - can continue to throw up unexpected benefits."

"(PhysOrg.com) -- A 'secret weapon' used by a minority of sportsmen and women and which could make the difference between winning and losing at sport has been revealed by a scientist at the University of Portsmouth."