News by Subject Social & Behavior

Women and men perform equally when required to switch attention between tasks or perform two tasks simultaneously, according to a new study in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Patricia Hirsch of Aachen University in Germany and colleagues. The finding adds to a growing literature that contradicts the widely held belief that women multitask better than men.

A simple, reversible chemical treatment can segregate X-bearing sperm from Y-bearing sperm, allowing dramatic alteration of the normal 50/50 male/female offspring ratio, according to a new study by Masayuki Shimada and colleagues at Hiroshima University, published on Aug. 13 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology. The study was performed in mice, but the technique is likely to be widely applicable to other mammals as well.

Doctors urgently need a fast and accurate test for diagnosing urinary tract infections (UTIs) to reduce overprescribing of antibiotics, according to health researchers.

The first ever chlamydia vaccine to reach phase 1 clinical trial has been found to be safe and able to provoke an immune response, according to a study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal. The randomised controlled trial of 35 healthy women demonstrates promising early signs of what could be an effective vaccine, but further trials are required to determine whether the immune response it provokes effectively protects against chlamydia infection.

Historically, conversion therapies have used electroshock therapy, chemical drugs, hormone administrations and even surgery. While these extreme practices are becoming rarer, many other harmful actions are still taking place, negatively impacting both children and adolescents as well as adults in the US, according to a perspective in this week's New England Journal of Medicine.

Erectile dysfunction (ED) was linked with loss of work productivity and with lower health-related quality of life in an International Journal of Clinical Practice study of more than 52,000 men from eight countries.

New Haven, Conn. -- Yale investigators have shown that the combination of a vaccine and a medicated cream is a promising strategy to dramatically reduce the recurrence of genital herpes. Their study, co-led by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and University of Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, was published in the journal npj Vaccines.