The Conversation

Studies that deliberately exclude older adults from their samples render older adults' sexuality invisible. shutterstockBy Sue Malta, University of Melbourne

Want more working memory? Then you need to expand your brain. Credit: Flickr/Elena Gatti, CC BYBy Joel PearsonBefore we had mobile phones, people had to use their own memory to store long phone numbers (or write them down). But getting those numbers into long-term memory could be a real pain.

By Amanda Salis, University of SydneyDietary guidelines broadly recommend a daily intake of 10,000 kilojoules (2,400 calories) for men and 8,000 kilojoules (1,900 calories) for women. But what do these figures mean in the context of the number of kilojoules or calories you personally need to consume to attain and maintain a healthy body weight?I’m going to stick with kilojoules in this article because kilojoules – not calories – are the metric unit for measuring energy, just as kilograms – not pounds – are the metric unit for measuring body weight.

By Katy Bell, University of Sydney; Alexandra Barratt, University of Sydney, and Andrew Hayen, UNSW AustraliaCancer screening is beneficial when it’s able to prevent people dying from cancer. And it should clearly be adopted where there’s evidence showing this. But using cancer survival rates to promote screening, as is often done, is misleading.

Women are playing an increasing role in science today but there are still barriers that can prevent them from achieving success comparable to their male colleagues. This feeds the argument that there is a gender pay gap in earnings in science, although that doesn’t tell the full story of the challenges facing women scientists.The Institute of Public Affairs senior researcher Mikayla Novak took the opportunity on International Women’s Day to exhort us to “avoid sensationalist, but misleading average pay gap statistics”, and instead focus on individual choices.She argued that:

Not many people would know the peculiar vocabulary used to evaluate scientists.‘H index’, ‘impact factor’ and ‘citation number’ are some of the snazzy phrases that are now ubiquitous in the world of science. Not all scientific papers are born equal - some are ground-breaking, while most are an incremental advance – and these scales have been developed to help determine the ‘impact’ of the scientific articles that are published.

People with life-threatening or incurable diseases may be willing to try experimental drugs and unproven treatments. Credit: juicyrai/Flickr, CC BY-NC-NDBy Tina Cockburn, Queensland University of Technology and Bill Madden, Queensland University of Technology

Research undertaken on beagles and the contraceptive pill in the 1970s was found to be fabricated - there never were any beagles. Flickr/Understanding Animal Research, CC BY-SABy Mark Israel, University of Western AustraliaThere are a few things you might need for an experiment involving beagles and the side effects of contraceptive pills. Animal research ethics aside, beagles might be a good start.

If you're at high risk of skin cancer, check your skin regularly. Roman Königshofer/Flickr, CC BY-NDBy H. Peter Soyer, The University of Queensland and Anna Finnane, The University of Queensland

We don't actually know whether probiotics have a measurable impact on digestive health - and if it is positive. brownpau/Flickr, CC BY-SABy Paul Bertrand, RMIT University; Andrew Ball, RMIT University, and Kate Polglaze, RMIT University

In a radio interview , Prime Minister Tony Abbott raised what he described as the “potential health impacts” of wind farms.

There's no one universal 'intelligence gene' but many thousands each contributing a small increment – and here are three.Credit: Andrew Huff/Flickr (cropped), CC BYBy Beben Benyamin, The University of Queensland and Peter Visscher, The University of Queensland