Interesting Links for 22-01-2016

[andrewducker]

• How Sarah Palin's support impacts Donald Trump's campaign
  • politics USA republicans viaBartCalendar
• Memory capacity of brain is 10 times more than previously thought
  • memory brain
• If you don't have a sensitivity to gluten, chances are that going gluten-free does nothing
  • gluten diet health
• Dog poo DNA test launches in Barking and Dagenham
  • dogs DNA faeces
• The alarming threat of Zika virus
  • virus disease
• Childhood trauma associated with worse impulse control in adulthood
  • self-control trauma abuse children
• Saudi Arabia is slowly getting women lawyers
  • law rights women saudiarabia
• Avoiding accidental bigamy, a legal guide
  • law marriage
• Where do cats actually like to be stroked?
  • cats
• Coca Cola let people caption their videos. THE FOOLS!
  • cocacola internet socialmedia OhForFucksSake
• Micro-SF stories. Some rather good.
  • scifi short_story
• England's longbow use was a massive advantage - why didn't Scotland and France use them?
  • bows technology war Scotland France England history
• Dropbox’s new Windows 10 app shows the limitations of the platform
  • dropbox Windows
• York man is banned from having sex unless he gives police 24 hours' notice
  • sex law UK
• 'It put me on antidepressants': welcome to GOMI, the cruel site for female snark
  • You'll note that the examples are of women attacking women...
  • bullying women internet harrassment
• What's actually going on with London's railways?
  • London transport trains

Comments

[jjhunter]

Am much amused that the news coverage of the cat stroking article did not once mention scent-marking, despite all the talk about different gland areas! There may well be an element of cats being more positive about scent-marking someone not already marked with their scent than about refreshing already existent scent marking on their owners. Also, there was no mention of cat sex & age as potential confounders (the actual published article says 13 male and 7 female cats were involved, ages 1-12, but lumps them all together as 'cats' as far as data reporting & analysis is concerned), and the study design is decidedly causal about accounting for the effect of any smells the humans (owners or strangers) might bring with them to a particular interaction - they "wash their hands" (with soap? with alcohol? not mentioned) before and after each 'stroking' session, and interactions with different cats are spaced at least a day apart, but there's no mention of, say, controlling for smells on clothes or the like. Also, these are all interactions done 'at home' for the cat, i.e. within their territory, and all the cats are indoor cats - it's a bit much to generalize to all cats and all human-cat stroking interactions from there.