Links - 5th July 2019 (2)

Cats killing billions of animals in the US - "Cats are one of the top threats to US wildlife, killing billions of animals each year, a study suggests.The authors estimate they are responsible for the deaths of between 1.4 and 3.7 billion birds and 6.9-20.7 billion mammals annually.Writing in Nature Communications, the scientists said stray and feral cats were the worst offenders.However, they added that pet cats also played a role and that owners should do more to reduce their impact.The authors concluded that more animals are dying at the claws of cats in the United States than in road accidents, collisions with buildings or poisonings. The domestic cat's killer instinct has been well documented on many islands around the world.Felines accompanying their human companions have gone on to prey on the local wildlife, and they have been blamed for the global extinction of 33 species."

The Collar That Can Stop a Bird-Killing Cat - "Brennan already knew George couldn’t become an indoor cat, but her past attempts to keep him away from birds had failed. She had tried tying extra bells on his collar, but it seemed the cat moved too stealthily for the bells to have any sort of warning effect on his prey.Then she recalled something she’d read about birds—they have excellent color vision... She took up her sewing tools and gathered some multi-patterned fabric, piecing together something that resembled a ruffled Elizabethan collar with a bright color scheme. She fastened it as a cover over George’s usual collar and let him outside... She began tinkering with the prototype and created a website to sell the collar, which she named Birdbesafe. Over the next few years, she used customer feedback to zero in on which colors and patterns worked best... Birdbesafe wasn’t just effective for birds—compared to control animals, cats wearing the collar killed 47 percent fewer animals with good color vision, a group that also includes reptiles... Willson believes that Birdsbesafe collars could be used in feral-cat colonies as well. Feral cats kill more birds than owned cats do, she said, and their numbers are huge"
Much cheaper to just cull the feral cats

Toxoplasmosis: how feral cats kill wildlife without lifting a paw - "Australian marsupials are very susceptible to toxoplasmosis. Species such as the eastern barred bandicoot typically die within 2-3 weeks of infection. As a result, toxoplasmosis has thwarted conservation attempts to introduce the species to French Island in Victoria. But bandicoots are not the only victims. Toxoplasmosis is a confirmed killer of other Australian wildlife, including Tammar wallabies, koalas, wombats, and several small dasyurids.In Tasmania, toxoplasmosis kills Bennett’s wallabies and pademelons, with infected animals found dead or stumbling around blindly during the day, vulnerable to predators or cars as they stumble onto busy roads... mothers infected with Toxoplasma have been found to give birth to more sons in both mice and humans... 84% of feral and stray cats tested in Tasmania were infected with the parasite. Previous studies have found a similarly high prevalence in feral cats on both Christmas Island and Kangaroo Island."

'Which hairstyle makes a woman look good at her job?' asks Japanese survey - "Tokyo-based AB&C Company, which manages the Agu hair salon chain, asked 200 Japanese human resource managers for their opinions.To start with, the majority, 63 percent, said they’ve been bothered by the hairstyles of new employees (who generally start working in April under Japanese hiring practices). However, only about half of the personnel managers, 52 percent, said they’ve actually cautioned an employee over their hairstyle’s appropriateness for a workplace environment... The respondents’ answers showed they’d place the most faith in the women who had neat, smoothly combed, but not heavily styled hair... permed, loose-hanging, and obviously dyed hair inspired the least confidence"

Buddhism and Islam in Asia: A Long and Complicated History - "At the root of this tension is the fear among Buddhists — not completely exaggerated — that Muslims will swamp them demographically. Many Buddhists also fear that their countries will lose their culture and become Muslim, as had been the case in many parts of modern day Central Asia, Xinjiang, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, which were majority Buddhist before the arrival of Islam in the 7th-11th centuries. Often, the arrival of Islam went hand-in-hand with the destruction of Buddhism. When the Muslim Turkic Qarakhanids captured the Buddhist city of Khotan in Xinjiang in 1006 CE, one of their poets penned this verse: “We came down on them like a flood/We went out among their cities/We tore down the idol-temples/We shat on the Buddha’s head.” In the Islamic world, a destroyer of idols came to be known as a but-shikan (بت شکن), a destroyer of but, a corruption of the word Buddha, as Buddhism was prevalent in much of what became the eastern part of the Islamic world... Buddhism was arguably the world’s largest religion a century ago, if one counts everyone who also followed Chinese folk religion, Shinto, Muism, and other East Asian religions. In the modern era, Buddhism has been particularly vulnerable, however, to both secularism and evangelism from other religions. According to a Pew survey, alone among the world’s major religions (including Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Chinese folk religion), Buddhism and its adherents are projected to decline both in terms of raw numbers, and as a percentage of the world population... In 845 CE, China’s Tang Dynasty launched the great anti-Buddhist persecution, stimulated in part by the fact that too many people were entering tax-free monasteries. Neo-Confucianism thereafter became the dominant philosophy among the elite in China; a similar process unfolded in Korea with the rise of the Joseon Dynasty in 1392, and in Japan, where the Tokugawa Shogunate (1603-1868) promoted Neo-Confucianism and Shinto at the expense of Buddhism, mostly for political reasons.Buddhism also all but vanished in South Asia, as folk Buddhism was reabsorbed into Hinduism, with the Buddha being acknowledged as an avatar of the god Vishnu. Hinduism was simultaneously less dependent on state promotion for its survival, and more attuned with the ritual and political needs of kingship, as well as being more aligned with folk beliefs. The destruction of the great Buddhist university at Nalanda in 1193 by Muslim Turkic invaders sealed its fate"

Peer effects in sexual initiation: Separating demand and supply mechanisms - "peer‐group norms have a large effect on the timing of sexual initiation for both boys and girls. Changes in opposite‐gender search behavior (i.e., partner availability) also have a large impact on initiation rates for boys, but not for girls."
This is consistent with female mate choice

Habit Persistence and Teen Sex: Could Increased Access to Contraception Have Unintended Consequences for Teen Pregnancies? - "We develop a dynamic discrete-choice model of teen sex and pregnancy that incorporates habit persistence. Habit persistence has two sources here. The first is a “fixed cost” of having sex, which relates to a moral or psychological barrier that has been crossed the first time one has sex. The second is a “transition cost,” whereby once a particular relationship has progressed to sex, it is difficult to move back. We estimate significant habit persistence in teen sex, implying that the long-run effects of contraception policy may be different from their short-run counterparts, especially if the failure rate of contraception is sufficiently large. Programs that increase access to contraception are found to decrease teen pregnancies in the short run but increase them in the long run."

The Effects of Sex Education on Teen Sexual Activity and Teen Pregnancy - "enrollment in sex education was associated with earlier sexual activity for females in this cohart. Sex education also was associated with earlier pregnancy for some group of females, but these effects are smaller and not always statistically significant. For both types of transitions, the effect of sex education appears to have been larger for women with fewer alternative sources of sexual information. In contrast, sex education had much less impact on male transitions into sexual activity. Within‐family analyses using sibling data reveal qualitatively similar patterns. Overall, the evidence suggests that sex education in the 1970's had some causal impact on teen sexual behavior, probably in significant part by providing information that enabled teens to alter the risks of sexual activity."
This suggests that parental fears may be right - sex education is really sex instruction

THE EFFECTS OF STATUTORY RAPE LAWS ON NONMARITAL TEENAGE CHILDBEARING - "Many policy makers view the enforcement of statutory rape laws as a way to reduce teenage childbirths. This article considers whether unmarried teenage girls covered by a state statutory rape law are less likely to give birth than girls who are not covered by a statutory rape law. The presence of statutory rape laws is negatively correlated with nonmarital birthrates for white females but is not a significant predictor for black or Hispanic females. In contrast, the enforcement of statutory rape laws has a deterrent effect on teen childbearing for blacks and Hispanics but not for whites."

Random behaviour or rational choice? Family planning, teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections - "Rational choice models of teenage sexual behaviour lead to radically different predictions than do models that assume such behaviour is random. Existing empirical evidence has not been able to distinguish conclusively between these competing models. I use regional data from England between 1998 and 2001 to examine the impact of recent increases in access to family planning on teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection diagnosis rates. I find consistent evidence that access to family planning services is not associated with reductions in teenage pregnancy rates. I also find consistent evidence that increased promotion of emergency birth control in youth family planning clinics has not affected the relationship between clinic services and teenage pregnancy rates, but has significantly worsened the relationship between clinic services and teenage sexually transmitted infection diagnosis rates. Most of the observed relationships are inconsistent, with teenage sexual behaviour being the result of a random decision‐making process."
Family planning services don't reduce STI/STDs, and emergency birth control doesn't reduce teenage pregnancy, but worsens STIs/STDs. Basically teenagers are flighty

The economics of family planning and underage conceptions - "no evidence is found that the provision of family planning reduces either underage conception or abortion rates. Socio-economic variables such as children in care rates and participation rates in post-compulsory education are found to be significant predictors of underage pregnancies."

First the diploma, then the date: how China’s educated elites find love - "Jesse Fang, a veteran relationship expert and specialist in matching people with elite educational backgrounds, said some of her clients found the right match within two months;but others were not so lucky, particularly if the client was very picky.“A lot of girls in their 30s found themselves unhitched even though they have high pay,excellent education and their own flat,” Fang said. “They will not lower their standards and consider anyone out of their circle. But actually the men whom they consider to be in their circle tend to look for younger women.” Fang said many men in their late 30s think they can offer women material comfort and are therefore very picky about the woman’s looks. But they fail to consider that women can provide themselves with material comfort and expect good looking men... “Usually she was set up with older men and she would complain why bother to marry, at all?”Fan said. “She also insists her boyfriends must be very handsome. I told her to watch less television.”"

50 People On ‘The Most WTF Thing Someone Did While Hooking Up’ - "Guy I knew in college got super drunk and hooked up with a girl at her sorority house. He wakes up the next morning, still drunk – she’s gone and he can’t find his clothes. He assumes that she is fucking with him and decides that he must escape out the window to prevent the sorority-house humiliation. Before doing so, though, he decides the best course of action is to shit in her bed. After he finishes up and covers the mess with the sheets, she walks in and says, “hey, I cooked some breakfast if you want some. Also, your clothes had vomit on them so I put them in the wash.”"

What Childless Older People Give: Is the Generational Link Broken? - "the support networks of childless older people tend to be somewhat weaker than those of parents and that links with members of the younger generations in the family are stronger for parents than for those without children. The results also indicate, however, that the differences in transfer behaviour between parents and childless adults are small, and that the support networks of the childless are more diverse than those of parents, and characterised by stronger links with ascendants and lateral relatives and with non-relatives. Moreover, people without children tend to be more intensely involved in charities and comparable organisations."