Links - 26th March 2015

Gender Differences in Touch: An Empirical and Theoretical Review - "The literature on gender differences in touch is divided into the categories of observational studies of touch frequency, people's beliefs about frequency and meaning, data on qualitative differences in touch, and studies of response to touch. The observational studies reveal: (a) no overall tendency for males to touch females more than vice versa, though two studies of specifically intentional touch with the hand did find such asymmetry; (b) a tendency for females to initiate touch more than males; (c) a questionable tendency for females to receive touch more than males; (d) a tendency for more female same-gender touch than male same-gender touch (at least for white samples); and (e) a tendency for same-gender dyads to touch more than opposite-gender dyads, especially when the dyads are unlikely to be intimate... The literature shows a tendency for women to respond more positively to touch than men"

Women’s body image is about what men like, study finds - " When told that men desire full-bodied, voluptuous figures, women felt better about their own weight, say researchers at Southern Methodist University in the US. "A woman's body image is strongly linked to her perception of what she thinks men prefer," says lead author and social psychologist Andrea Meltzer of SMU. Heterosexual women, says Meltzer, tend to believe that men prefer the dieted-down, ultra-thin bodies that dominate the media. "Consequently, this study suggests that interventions that alter women's perception regarding men's desires for ideal female body sizes may be effective at improving women's body image""
So much for doing it for themselves

Obesity and body mass indices in Chinese, Malays and Indians in Singapore. - "For males there was little ethnic differences; for the 18-69 age group, the age-adjusted mean BMIs being Chinese 22.3, Malays 23.1 and Indians 22.5. However for females, Malays and Indians were considerably more obese than Chinese; for the 18-69 age group the age-adjusted mean BMIs in Malays (25.1) and Indians (24.6) were significantly greater (p less than 0.001) than in Chinese (22.2). The proportions categorised as overweight or obese (BMI equal to or more than 26 in males and 25 in females) were males (Chinese 16.7%, Malays 22.4%, and Indians 14.0%) and females (Chinese 21.2%, Malays 51.5%, and Indians 42.0%). Health education on the harmful effects of obesity should be targeted especially on Malay and Indian females."

Silence about sexual harassment in hospitals a major issue, doctors say - "Another practicing female surgeon, who spoke to Fairfax Media on the condition of anonymity, said the tight-knit profession was a patriarchal environment in which women faced constant obstacles. "They tolerate female general surgeons in small numbers, as long as they are single, childless and pretend to be men," she said. The surgeon said it was not uncommon for senior surgeons to publicly quiz trainees and other surgeons about if or when they were going to become pregnant. She said the idea of pregnancy was used as a weapon to undermine and discredit female colleagues by suggesting they would not be in the profession for the long-term. "I was told when I was an intern that there are only two types of women surgeons: women who shouldn't be surgeons and surgeons who shouldn't be women," she said. "Now, when young women ask me for advice, how can I not kill their dreams whilst still preparing them for the reality?" But other female surgeons said sexual harassment was no more prevalent in their field than others. Royal Melbourne Hospital neurosurgeon Kate Drummond, who is the deputy chair of the Women in Surgery Group at the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, said Dr McMullin's comments were "preposterous" and risked discouraging women from becoming surgeons. "If you want to put every remark that may or may not be off-colour, or a bit gendered, then it probably is a widespread problem, as it is in society in general," Associate Professor Drummond said. "I'm not saying it doesn't happen - of course it happens, it happens everywhere - [but] I don't think it is rife and rampant throughout the profession. And the one thing that will make the pockets of trouble better is to have as many female surgeons as possible, and comments like [Dr McMullin's] don't help that.""

'Tomboy gene' linked to promiscuity - "Girls who are tomboys grow up to have more lovers whether they are straight or gay, a study has found. For it seems the genes that make women more masculine may also make them more promiscuous, researchers say... The analysis showed that around 30 per cent of a woman’s sexual orientation is governed by her genes, the Journal of Sexual Medicine reports. It is thought the other 70 per cent can be explained by everything from peer pressure to conditions in the womb."
Original paper: Genetic and Environmental Influences on Female Sexual Orientation, Childhood Gender Typicality and Adult Gender Identity | Qazi Rahman

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Why would you get a leotard with a penis attached?!

mrbrown.com: Hey poor families, here are some one-year ST subscriptions for you! - "ST runs a VW auction (COE not included)… and the proceeds go towards sponsoring one-year subscriptions to ST for 1,000 low-income families. Liddat is called charity ah? Not even going into the SPH School Pocket Money Fund?... I am sure poor families are dying to read your paper, Warren Fernandez, but giving cash or groceries is probably more helpful, no? They can read your papers at the RC, CC or library what. Perhaps after the poor families collect enough of the donated newspapers, they can sell them to karang guni for a few bucks."

Black/white differences in perceived weight and attractiveness among overweight women. - "Black women reported lower perceived weight and higher attractiveness than White women, despite higher body mass for Black women. Furthermore, race moderated the relationship between BMI and perceived attractiveness; for White women, a negative relationship existed between BMI and attractiveness, whereas for Black women, BMI and attractiveness were not related. The study findings provide further support for the buffering hypothesis, indicating that despite higher body mass, overweight Black women are less susceptible to thin body ideals than White women."

Google: Our Robot Cars Are Better Drivers Than Puny Humans - "when a human was behind the wheel, Google’s cars accelerated and braked significantly more sharply than they did when piloting themselves. Another showed that the cars’ software was much better at maintaining a safe distance from the vehicle ahead than the human drivers were... Urmson dismissed claims that legal and regulatory problems pose a major barrier to cars that are completely autonomous. He pointed out that California, Nevada, and Florida have already adjusted their laws to allow tests of self-driving cars. And existing product liability laws make it clear that a car’s manufacturer would be at fault if the car caused a crash, he said. He also said that when the inevitable accidents do occur, the data autonomous cars collect in order to navigate will provide a powerful and accurate picture of exactly who was responsible. Urmson showed data from a Google car that was rear-ended in traffic by another driver. Examining the car’s annotated map of its surroundings clearly showed that the Google vehicle smoothly halted before being struck by the other vehicle. “We don’t have to rely on eyewitnesses that can’t act be trusted as to what happened—we actually have the data,” he said. “The guy around us wasn’t paying enough attention. The data will set you free.”"

How safe is commercial flight? - "Dr. Arnold Barnett, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has done extensive research in the field of commercial flight safety. He found that over the fifteen years between 1975 and 1994, the death risk per flight was one in seven million. This statistic is the probability that someone who randomly selected one of the airline's flights over the 19-year study period would be killed in route. That means that any time you board a flight on a major carrier in this country, your chance of being in a fatal accident is one in seven million. It doesn't matter whether you fly once every three years or every day of the year... Based on train accidents over the past twenty years, your chances of dying on a transcontinental train journey are one in a million. Those are great odds, mind you. But flying coast-to-coast is ten times safer than making the trip by train... Dr. Barnett of MIT compared the chance of dying from an airline accident versus a driving accident, after accounting for the greater number of people who drive each day. Can you guess what he found? You are nineteen times safer in a plane than in a car. Every single time you step on a plane, no matter how many times you fly, you are nineteen times less likely to die than in your car."
It's not just the risk per mile travelled

Airline Passengers in Developing Countries Face 13 Times Risk of Crash as U.S., First World, Says Transportation Science Study - "Prof. Barnett questioned why the economically-advancing countries in the Developing World did not have safety records closer to those in the First World, given that they approach First-World standards in life expectancy and per capita income. He cites research that indicates that, in terms of deference to authority and “individualism,” the economically advancing Developing-World countries are on average far from those in the First World but almost identical to other Developing-World countries. Prof. Barnett concedes that he should “not get too caught up in speculation,” but notes that one possible explanation for why the economically-advancing countries did not fare better is that “their economic shift towards the First World has not been accompanied by a corresponding cultural shift.”"

Extroverted men, neurotic women are the best baby-makers: study - "whether in Senegal or America, extroverted men tend to make more money and presumably have more sex. And more frequent sex leads to more babies. The findings, says study author Prof. Virpi Lummaa of Sheffield University in the U.K., suggest “that the link between extroversion and number of children in men is driven by the effects of extroversion on the probability of belonging to the high social class.” Other studies in “low fertility” nations such as the United States, where using contraception is commonplace, confirm the link. This leads Lummaa to theorize that these “effects might be universal across different societies.” So why do neurotic women make more babies? They tend to have “attachment anxiety” and so are very motivated to have sex with their husbands, according to Lummaa. And among couples not practicing birth control, this means more babies. Skeptics may wonder whether it's actually having the babies that makes a mom neurotic. Apparently not. The study authors concluded that being neurotic is likely responsible for a woman having many babies, rather than a consequence of having kids."
From the paper, Personality and reproductive success in a high-fertility human population: "extraversion is positively linked to the number of potential conceptions and the social class in men from low fertility populations. Note that
although the number of potential conceptions does not always predict fertility in such populations, social class does. Furthermore, leadership (a correlate of extraversion) during adolescence has been shown to predict men’s probability to have children in adulthood, which, along with the present results, suggests that extraversion is a universal predictor of fertility"
"previous research has linked neuroticism and its correlates of attachment anxiety to high sexual motivation and increased short-term mating in the United States and Western Europe" (crazy women are indeed wild in bed)