It isn't just Americans concerned about science, though Europeans seem a little dramatic about it.   Currently, America can only employ 16% of its Ph.D.s in academia, what most academics regard as 'science', so there is a glut of post-docs and not enough grants to give them all jobs, but Europeans have a different sort of problem - young people are not going into science at all.

Is there still a gender gap in math?  There is if you are selling cultural drama but in actuality, not so much.  Complaints aside, the No Child Left Behind program accomplished its mission; by focusing on the same sort of educational system other countries use that allowed them to beat American kids in standardized tests - namely, teaching to the test - American children performed better in each international test and for the first time in history boys and girls achieved math parity.  That's a win.

But perceptions die hard - some people still insist Republicans are more anti-science than Democrats, for example, and some (not surprisingly the same people) use words like 'dismal' and 'failure' about American girls and math.  

BMC Neurology has published the results of the HYPNOS I clinical trial demonstrating the sedative action of the Cefaly medical device (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22035386).

The results show, in a statistically highly significant manner using four clinical measurement methods, a pronounced reduction in vigilance induced by the action of the Cefaly(R) Hypnos medical device, by comparison to a placebo.

This sedative action on the central nervous system is observed after application for 12 minutes in 83% of individuals whose mean increase in tiredness was of 73%.

36% of post-menopausal women who are treated for estrogen-sensitive breast cancer quit using drugs that help prevent the disease from recurring after four years.

Why? The first study to actually ask the women themselves reports those women quit early because of the medications' side effects, which are more severe and widespread than previously known. A new Northwestern Medicine survey reveals a big gap between what women tell their doctors about side effects and what they actually experience.

Babies love to communicate and they're great listeners, even early on.  

New research shows that during the first year of life, when babies spend so much time listening to language, they're actually tracking word patterns that will support their process of word- learning that occurs between the ages of about 18 months and two years.

A common belief among club-going men is that women choose less attractive friends to make themselves look better. See this clip from that important anthropological documentary "Hall Pass" for context:



Not so, says a group of scientists who have observed the opposite strategy in the Trinidadian guppy, a species of small freshwater fish  - instead, the uglier friends are choosing the prettier females to avoid unwanted male attention.