Two of the saddest words in the English language are "if only". I live my life with the goal of never having to say those words, because they convey regret, lost opportunities, mistakes, and disappointment.
My father is famous in our family for saying, "Take the extra minute to do it right." I always try to live by the "extra minute" rule. When my children were young and likely to cause accidents, I always thought about what I could do to avoid an "if only" moment, whether it was something minor like moving a cup full of hot coffee away from the edge of a counter, or something that required a little more work such as taping padding (衬垫) onto the sharp corners of a glass coffee table.
I don't only avoid those "if only" moments when it comes to safety. It's equally important to avoid "if only" in our personal relationships. We all know people who lost a loved one and regretted that they had foregone an opportunity to say "I love you" or "I forgive you." When my father announced he was going to the eye doctor across from my office on Good Friday, I told him that it was a holiday for my company and I wouldn't be here. But then I thought about the fact that he's 84 years old and I realized that I shouldn't give up an opportunity to see him. I called him and told him I had decided to go to work on my day off after all.
I know there will still be occasions when I have to say "if only" about something, but my life is definitely better because of my policy of doing everything possible to avoid that eventuality. And even though it takes an extra minute to do something right, or it occasionally takes an hour or two in my busy schedule to make a personal connection, I know that I'm doing the right thing. I'm buying myself peace of mind and that's the best kind of insurance for my emotional well-being.
Chinese writer and translator Yang Jiang died early on May 25, 2016 in Beijing at age 104. The longest-living Chinese woman writer, she was known for her modest, subtle and witty writing style.
Yang became a household name in China for her novels, essays, plays and translated works. Her most popular novel, Baptism, describing a group of intellectuals (知识分子) adjusting to a new society in the early 1950s, has been translated into French and English.
Yang began learning Spanish in 1959 at age 48, and started to translate Don Quixote in 1962. She was the first to translate Don Quixote into Chinese. The work was stopped twice due to the "cultural revolution". She completed it in 1976, and the Chinese edition was published in 1978 and has sold more than 1 million copies. In that year, the Spanish king and queen visited China, and then-leader Deng Xiao-ping gave the royal couple Yang's translation as a gift. Yang was received by Deng at the Great Hall of the People. While shaking hands, Deng asked her when she had completed the translation. "It's just published," she replied, having no time to tell the full story.
She was married to Qian Zhongshu, a well-known scholar and author of the best-selling novel Fortress Besieged. Yang's memoir about her family, The Three of Us, written after her husband and daughter died, in 1998 and 1997 respectively, was translated into German.
Yang never stopped writing. At 94, she started writing the book Walking onto the Edge of Life to reflect on her life. It won China's top book award in 2007. At 100, she was still writing articles for newspapers.
When it comes to generation gap (代沟), we usually think of different tastes in music, or pastimes. But now the generation gap is handwriting. After one teacher in Tennessee discovered that she had students who couldn't read what she was writing on the board, she posted it on the Internet saying that handwriting should be taught in schools.
Others who are against it claim that handwriting has become out of time in our modern world. Typed words have become a main form of communication. Once a practical skill, handwriting is no longer used by most of Americans. It is no longer taught in schools, and some claim that the time that it would take to teach it could be put to better use, for example, by teaching the technical skills.
But even in today's world there are still plenty of reasons to pick up a pen and write on the paper. In America, signatures (签字) by hand are still often required, for example, signing for a registered letter and buying a house. And original signatures are much more difficult to fake (伪造).
There is also strong evidence that writing by hand is good for the mind. It makes a different part of the brain active and improves fine moving skills in young children. People are also more likely to remember what they write by hand than what they type, and the process of writing by hand has been shown to stimulate ideas. Not only those, studies have shown that kids who write by hand learn to read and spell earlier than those who don't.
Yes, we live in a modern world, but we live in a modern world of basic and important values.
The yearly Academy Awards ceremony was once a private affair. Now, because of television, it is very much a public affair. Hundreds of people gather in Hoolywood to see the Oscars presented to outstanding actors, and others involved（参与） in the motion picture industry. Millions more watch on the television.
It all began on May 16, 1929, when 270 men and women sat down to dinner at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. There was no secret about the winners. The names of the winners had been known for months. Janet Gaynor, for example had won as Best Actress. Douglas Fairbanks presented her with the famous gold statue（塑像）. The little statue was not then called Oscar. Like a new actor, Oscar was unknown. About six years later, it somehow got that renowned name. A number of explanations have been offered for its origin(由来), but nobody knows the true story for certain.
Nowadays the result of the Oscar voting are kept secret. Only two people know the winners before the names are announced at the ceremony. The counting of votes is not done by one group of people but by different groups. Nobody except two members of an accounting company sees the final results.
The information is not kept in open files. Winners' names are placed in closed envelopes. The accountants each carry a complete set of envelopes to the ceremony. One set is simply a spare to be used in case something happens to the other one.
Lemurs are cute animals that live on the island of Madagascar, the fourth-largest island in the world. Lemurs have big eyes, long noses, and long tails(except for the Indri) and live high in the trees of Madagascan forests. Lemurs are quite intelligent. They are the cousins of monkeys and look quite similar. They also swing through the trees and live in family groups.
There are different species of lemurs. Some lemurs (the Indri) sing like a whale, and some (the Sifaka) walk like a ballet dancer. Some lemurs are very small, like the Pygmy Mouse Lemur which weighs only 25-30 grams. Others, like the Indri, can weigh up to ten kilograms. Some lemurs are nocturnal, being awake at night and sleeping during the day, and some are not nocturnal but diurnal. Generally, the smaller lemurs are nocturnal, while the bigger ones are diurnal. All the species are unique to Madagascar.
However, all of the lemurs are endangered species. Many species have already disappeared in the last few centuries. There are not many of lemurs left. People in Madagascar have been destroying the forests where lemurs live. Local people also hunt lemurs for food. Some of the local people see lemurs as bringers of bad luck, so they kill lemurs.
At the moment, there are about 85 lemur species left. But many people fear that the number of species will fall quickly. Soon there may be no lemurs left if we do not make serious efforts to protect them.
While many countries love their tea, UK citizens are particularly proud of being “tea people”. The average UK citizen consumes nearly 2 kilograms of tea each year.
Tea only made its way to England in large quantities in the first years of the 17th century. Tea from China and a few other Asian countries was being sold more widely in England at that time. Then tea was getting more and more popular among different social classes.
There are many varieties of tea. Black tea mixtures are still the most common type drunk in the UK. Black tea is dark in colour, because the leaves have been allowed to oxidize (氧化) before drying. This is why we usually serve it with milk, although it is not uncommon to drink it black or with lemon. You may still find tea made with loose tea leaves, served up in a pot, and poured into the best china cups with saucers (茶托) for visitors.
Tea is still a large part of daily life in the UK today, but it seems to be on the decrease. The amount of tea sold in the UK fell by more than 10% in the five years leading up to 2002, and has been dropping ever since. Tea sales fell by 6% in 2014 alone, and most restaurants report selling more than twice as many cups of coffee as they do tea. More than ￡1 billion was spent on coffee in high street stores in 2013, more than twice what was spent on tea bags.
Still, what goes around comes around; it's sure to become fashionable again.
A biologist once criticized for stealing eggs from the nests of the rarest bird in the world has been awarded the "Nobel Prize" of conservation after his methods saved nine species from extinction.
Professor Carl Jones won the 2016 Indianapolis Prize — the highest accolade in the field of animal conservation — for his 40 years of work in Mauritius, where he saved an endangered kestrel from becoming the next Great Auk.
When the 61-year-old first travelled to the east African island in the 1970s, he was told to close down a project to save the Mauritius kestrel. At the time there were just four left in the wild, making it the rarest bird on Earth. However, he stayed, using the techniques of captive breeding (人工繁殖), which involved snatching eggs from the birds' nests and hatching(孵化)them under incubators, prompting the mothers to lay another set of eggs in the wild.
A decade later, the number of Mauritius kestrels had soared to over 300 and today there are around 400 in the wild. The biologist has also been necessary in efforts to bring other rare species back from the edge of extinction, including the pink pigeon, echo parakeet and Rodrigues warbler.
Prof Jones was awarded the $250,000 (£172,000) prize at a ceremony in London.
"As a young man in my 20s, I certainly didn't enjoy the stress and the tension of the criticism I received," reflecting on the start of his career, he said the Maurutius kestrel project had been seen as a "dead loss" at the time. In the 1970s there was fierce opposition to the captive breeding techniques, with critics arguing that they were too risky and took the emphasis off breeding in the wild.
Prof Jones has devoted his whole life to his work, only becoming a father for the first time eight years ago, at 53. He said receiving the prize was particularly important to him, because it proved that his work to save birds was right.
Recently, the organizers of the 2024 Paris Olympics have suggested that breakdancing be included in 2024, making it closer to becoming an Olympic sport. The other 3 sports-surfing, skateboarding and sport climbing-will all make debuts in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. That is to say, audience will be able to watch these three sports as Olympic events for the first time.
The organizers stressed that four sports had been chosen since they would reflect the city's identity and help take the Olympics to the street. They added that the purposes were to deliver a Games that was able to keep up with the times and encourage new audience and attract young people. Breakdancing is a typical example which can be played without the limitations of time and places in urban and other environments.
As one of the sports at the Young Olympic Games in Buenos Aires in 2018, breakdancing now could see its popularity greatly raised. But the International Olympic Committee(IOC) needs to approve the French suggestion before it can be formally added to the 2024 Paris Olympics sports programme.
With new IOC rules first introduced to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Host cities can select sports and propose them for inclusion in those Games if they are popular in that country and add to the Game's appeal.
Antonio Espinos Ortueta, the president of the World Karate Federation said, "Our sport has grown rapidly over the last years. We believe that we have met all the requirements and that we have the perfect conditions to be added to the sports programme. However, we have learned today that we still haven't had the chance to prove our value as an Olympic sport."
Former Starbucks Chairman and CEO Howard Schultz grew up in a poor family in New York City. As a child, he could hardly dream about starting an international business. In 1961, the whole family was left with no income because his father broke an ankle working as a truck driver. Watching his father lying on the bed, Schultz decided to do something different in life. Schultz played football in high school and managed to get an athletic scholarship to Northern Michigan University. He became the first graduate from university in his family.
Schultz's first job after finishing school was in sales at Xerox, where he sold word processors. Then he took another job in sales at Hammarplast, a housewares (家居用品) business. However, he grew impatient with these two jobs soon. Schultz first came across Starbucks while still working for Hammarplast. He was struck by the passion (热情) and courage of the founders Gerald Baldwin and Gordon Bowker. It took a whole year for Schultz to persuade Baldwin and Bowker to hire him as the head of marketing. The new position meant that Schultz was going to travel around the world and represent Starbucks.
His life changed when the company sent him to an international house wares exhibition in Milan. A new idea occurred to Schultz when he saw the Italian strong coffee tradition. The people in Italy had a personal relationship with coffee. After Schultz came back to America, he wanted to replicate the Italian tradition in Starbucks. The founders felt differently. He then decided to leave Starbucks to start his own coffee company. The new company caught on quickly. Eventually, it managed to buy Starbucks. Schultz became the CEO of Starbucks. Corporation and he is one of the wealthiest people on the planet.
Nowadays some companies are attempting to grow seafood from cells in a laboratory rather than harvesting it from the oceans.
With massive problems with overfishing worldwide and growing demand for shrinking supplies of seafood, the way fish currently makes its way to our plates isn't a long-term viable option. Between 1961 and 2016, the average annual increase in global food fish consumption outpaced population growth. Those are figures not sustainable for us, the fish or the environment as a whole.
Cellular seafood could be the answer. Just don't make the mistake of calling it lab-grown fish. ''None of us in the industry would call it lab-grown seafood, " says Mike Selden, CEO of Finless Foods. ''Finless Foods isn't lab-grown. We experiment and create our science in the lab, but don't produce there. Our products come from a production base much like a farm as a production base for animals."
Finless Foods is a tech company in San Francisco. Beginning in 2017, it's been working to bring to market a species of cultured bluefin tuna (蓝鳍金枪鱼) created using cellular technology. Shortly after that, the company produced its first pound of bluefin tuna meat for a cost of about $19,000. Since then, however, it's been working to bring that price down.
Selden terms what Finless Foods is doing as ''cell-based seafood''. ''We're growing seafood from real seafood cells,'' Selden explained. ''We take cells from a fish once, and then grow them endlessly from that. We do the same process that happens inside of a fish and make it happen outside of a fish.''
The goal of cellular seafood isn't to entirely destroy the current seafood industry. Instead, it's intended to augment it—and perhaps to help reduce some of the more harmful aspects of current fishing practices like overfishing and illegal fishing. And when it comes to certain sea species, this laboratory-based approach could help create a plentiful supply of certain fish without endangering the survival of certain overfished species as a whole.
The situation is that familiar — deadlines are approaching, time runs out, disorder and confusion fills the day. The feeling is just as familiar — a slightly faster heart rate, and shortness of breath. Yes, it is panic time.
It's too late to kick yourself with "I should have started on this sooner." or "It was a mistake to accept this tight deadline." The only thing left to deal with the situation is to panic more efficiently.
① Focus.
Panic happens when you are on an overload — too many things to do, too much pressure, too little time. But if you focus on the tasks that you need to take care of, and line them up in a logical list, you can have better control of a highly stressful and wild situation.
② Get rid of distractions.
Time wasters and unnecessary activities are the last things you need during this time. Let everyone know you are on panic mode and should not be disturbed unless it is an emergency.
③ Watch your time.
Don't be too engaged in one detail so that you reduce your timing for the other important details. Mind the time and deal with each task so that you can finish all of the required activities sufficiently.
Try to solve a panic situation as quickly as you can so that you can rest and get back your energy and strength for the next one.
One day when some government officials were rebuilding a barn, they found a mouse hole in a corner and used smoke to force the mice inside the hole to come out. A while later they really saw mice running out, one after another. Then, everyone thought that all the mice had escaped. But just as they began to clean up, they saw two mice squeezing out at the mouth of the hole. With some efforts, the mice finally got out. However, it was strange that after they came out of the hole, they did not run away immediately. Instead, one chased after the other near the mouth of the hole. It seemed that one was trying to bite the tail of the other.
Everyone was puzzled, so they stepped nearer to take a look. They realized that one of the mice was blind and could not see anything, and the other was trying to allow the blind mouse to bite on his tail so that he could pull the blind one with him to escape.
After seeing what happened, everyone was speechless and lost in thought. During the meal time, the group of people sat down in a circle and started to talk about what happened to the two mice.
One serious American official said, "I think the relationship between those two mice was that of king and guard." The others thought for a while and said, "That was why!"
A clever French said, "I think the relationship between those two mice was that of husband and wife." Again the others thought for a while, and all felt it made sense.
A Japanese said, "I think the relationship between those two mice was that of mother and son." Once again the others thought for a while, and felt this was more reasonable. So they expressed agreement another time.
At that moment, one Chinese asked, "Why did those two mice have to have a certain relationship?"
Suddenly, the group looked back at the Chinese and remained speechless. The American official, the French and the Japanese who had spoken earlier all lowered their heads in shame, and did not dare to answer.
In fact, true love is not built on friendship, loyalty or blood relationship. Instead, it is built on no relationship.
My dad passed away peacefully at home yesterday, surrounded by his family.
We are feeling grief but also gratitude. My dad's passing was not unexpected—he was 94 and his health had been failing—so we have all had a long time to reflect on just how lucky we are to have had this amazing man in our lives for so many years.
My dad had a great influence on my drive. When I was a kid, he never let me put very little effort into things I was good at, and he always pushed me to try things I hated. He modeled an amazing work ethic (道德准则) as one of the hardest-working and most respected lawyers in Seattle.
My dad's influence on our philanthropy (慈善行为) was just big. Throughout my childhood, he and my mom taught me by example what generosity looked like in how they used their time and resources. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation would not be what it is today without my dad. More than anyone else, he shaped the values of the foundation.
Finally, my dad had a positive influence on my most important roles—husband and father. When I am at my best, I know it is because of what I learned from my dad about respecting women and guiding children's choices with love and respect.
Dad wrote me a letter on my 50th birthday. "Over time," he wrote," I have told you and others not to overuse the adjective 'incredible'. This is a word with huge meaning to be used only in extraordinary settings. What I want to say, here, is simply that the experience of being your father has been...incredible.”
I know he would not want me to overuse the word, but there is no danger of doing that now. The experience of being the son of Bill Gates was INCREDIBLE. People used to ask my dad if he was the real Bill Gates. The truth is, he was everything I try to be. I will miss him every day.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, technologies are playing a crucial role in keeping our society functional in a time of lockdowns and quarantines (封锁和隔离). And remote work may have a long-lasting impact beyond COVID-19.
Many companies have asked employees to work from home. Remote work is enabled by technologies including virtual private networks（VPNs）, voice over internet protocols' (VoIPs), virtual meetings, cloud technology, work collaboration tools and even facial recognition technologies that enable a person to appear before a virtual background to preserve the privacy of the home. In addition to preventing the spread of viruses, remote work also saves commute time and provides more flexibility.
Yet remote work also imposes challenges to employers and employees. Information security, privacy and timely tech support can be big issues. Remote work can also complicate labor law issues, such as those associated with providing a safe work environment and income tax issues. Employees may experience loneliness and lack of work-life balance. If remote work becomes more common after the COVID-19 pandemic, employers may decide to reduce rents and hire people from regions with cheaper labor costs.
Laws and regulations must be updated to accommodate remote work, and further psychological studies need to be conducted to understand the effect of remote work on people.
Further, not all jobs can be done from home, which creates disparity. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 25% of wage and salary workers worked from home at least occasionally from 2017 to 2018. Workers with college educations are at least five times more likely to have jobs that allow them to work from home compared with people with high school diplomas. Some professions, such as medical services and manufacturing, may not have the option at all. Policies with respect to data flows and taxation would need to be adjusted should the volume of cross-border digital services rise significantly.
Wearing a caveman mask, Dr. John Marzluff walks across the campus at the University of Washington in Seattle. Crows (乌鸦) circle and squawk (尖叫), diving at him and away.
Beneath the mask, he smiles. Days before, he and his students, wearing caveman masks, trapped them and placed colored plastic bands on their legs. Then they released the unhappy birds. When the researchers wandered around campus without the masks, the crows they had caught and banded did not react to them. But when the same humans walked by while wearing the masks, the crows scolded loudly and dived at their "enemies".
At first, only the banded birds reacted aggressively to the people in masks. But in later tests, more and more crows joined in, and even when the banded birds were not around. "Crows think and dream, fight and play, reason and take risks," he says. "Their antics confuse us."
This led him to study how crows' brains work. He and his students wore one type of mask as they captured crows and brought them into the lab, training them to link that face with danger. Then a different kind of mask for more positive activities, such as feeding and caring. Then he worked with scientists at the university who scan animal brains to see which parts of a crow's brain do certain tasks. Surprisingly, the scientists found that when the crow saw the "danger" mask, one part of its brain became active. When the crow saw the "care and feeding" mask, a different part of its brain lit up. The team has shown that crows use the same parts of their brains for recognition that humans do — something that was not known before!
More than 10 years after the first mask experiment, campus crows still scold the "cavemen". Crows also recognize people who are kind to them. Crows are always watching us... and they remember.
In England recently three foreign gentlemen came to a bus stop and waited. About five minutes later, the bus they wanted came along. They were just going to get on when suddenly there was a loud noise behind them. People rushed onto the bus and tried to push them out of the way. Someone shouted at them. The bus conductor came rushing down the stairs to see what all the trouble was about. The three foreigners seemed all at sea and looked embarrassed. No one had told them about the British custom of lining up for a bus that the first person who arrives at the bus stop is the first person to get on the bus.
Learning the language of a country isn't enough. If you want to have a pleasant visit, find out as much as possible about the manners and customs of your host country. You will probably be surprised just how different they can be from your own. A visitor to India would do well to remember that people there consider it impolite to use the left hand for passing food at table. The left hand is supposed to be used for washing yourself. Also in India, you might see a man shaking his head at another to show that he doesn't agree. But in many parts of India a shake of the head means agreement. Nodding your head when you are given a drink in Bulgaria will most probably leave you thirsty.
While elephants born without tusks (长牙)are not unheard of, they normally form just 2 to 6 percent of the population. However, that is not the case at Mozambique's Gorongosa National Park, where an astonishing 33 percent of female elephants born after the country's conflict ended in 1992 are tuskless. While that may appear to be just a coincidence, Joyce Poole, an elephant behavior expert, has another theory. The researcher thinks we may be witnessing unnatural evolution of the species due to the constant hunting of elephants for valuable ivory.
Poole says before the country's 15-year-long conflict, the park was home to over 4，000 elephants. However, by the time the conflict ended in 1992，about 90 percent of them had been killed for ivory to get money. Of the less than 200 survivors, over 50 percent of adult females had no tusks. Therefore, it is not surprising that the park's tuskless elephant population has grown greatly.
This is not the first time researchers have observed a great change in the population of elephants. At Zambia's South Luangwa National Park and Lupande Game Management Area, areas which were heavily hunted in the 1970s and 1980s, 35% of elephants 25 years old or older and 13% of those younger than 25 are now without tusks. A 2008 study published in the African Journal of Ecology found that the number of tuskless females at the Ruaha National Park in Tanzania went from 10.5 percent in 1969 to almost 40 percent in 1989，largely due to illegal hunting for ivory.
The recent ban on ivory in both the US and China should help get rid of, or at least reduce, elephant hunting. However, scientists are not sure how long it will take for elephants with a higher rate of tuskless females, to change the trend.
Halloween is a great time in the lives of both children and adults. However, even the best Halloween can be ruined by trees filled with toilet paper and egg residues(残渣)that won't wash of. How can you keep your home safe on Halloween? There are some measures you can take.
Make it known that you're at home. Pranksters are less likely to play a trick if they know someone is at home. You may want to close the glass on your screen door and open your front door so that you can see everyone moving around outside. This also allows pranksters to see that you're at home.
Turn on the lights inside your home and outside. Having all the lights on lets pranksters know that you're not only at home, but you're awake. If a prankster knows you're awake, he'll be more likely to skip (快速溜走)your house and head for another one. Even if you need to get in bed early, keep all the lights on except in your bedroom. Pranksters aren't going to know which room is your bedroom.
Ask the police to patrol the area. It's a policeman's job to keep citizens safe, especially on Halloween. In some cities the crime rate can increase fast on October 31. A polite call to your local police station should get you the service you need. Above all, no pranksters are going to throw eggs at your house when the policemen are patrolling the area.
Set up a neighborhood watch. One of the best ways to keep your home safe on Halloween is to get the neighbors involved. No one wants his trees covered with toilet paper. Ask your neighbors to keep their eyes open and to follow the same steps you've taken to help keep your home safe. If the entire neighborhood is lit up, pranksters are less likely to stop by.
We sit too much，and researchers are discovering that even working out in a gym several times a week won't necessarily obviate serious problems if we're sitting for the rest of the time. From weight problems to poor blood glucose(葡萄糖) levels，even early death, the message is clear: we need to stop sitting for hours at a time. What to do？" Move more，" say the experts.
So we asked three fitness instructors for their preferred exercises that don' t require equipment and can be done throughout the day at home，in the office，in a hallway，waiting in line at a grocery store or watching TV.
"There are a lot of ways to build activities into a day," says Ottawabased fitness instructor Christine Dery, who focuses her classes on core muscle strength and balance. She reminds her students to seek ways to move more outside class，such as getting off the bus or an elevator ride a few stops earlier, or doing calf raises, wall squats and wrist stretches while watching TV. " We need to make exercise an important part of our day, " she says." It's about making yourself a priority."
Ben Gervais，a parttime personal trainer and former kung fu instructor in Ottawa，thinks that little moves matter. " Moves like mowing the lawn，doing work around the house, going for a walk with the kids and playing with the kids can all count as activities as long as you get up and move. " He recommends spending the twominute TV commercial breaks doing wall squats, pushups and situps, or stepping up and down on a step.
Stott Pilates trainer and instructor Michele Carini says breathing can be an exercise working abdominal(腹部的) muscles and neck and shoulder muscles. Focus on sitting tall and drawing air in, so the rib cage(胸腔) expands like an accordion while the stomach stays tense.
It is something one half of the population has long suspected and the other half always vocally denied– women really do talk more than men. In fact, women talk almost three times as much as men, with the average woman chalking up 20,000 words in a day – 13,000 more than the average man.
Women also speak more quickly, devote more brainpower to chit-chat, and actually enjoy hearing their own voices, a new book suggests. The book – written by a female psychiatrist, Dr. Luan Brizendine – says that inherent (生来就有的) differences between the male and female brain explain why women are naturally more talkative than men.
In The Female Mind, Brizendine says the differences can be traced back to the womb (子宫), where the sex hormone (激素) called testosterone moulds the developing male brain. The areas responsible for communication, emotion and memory are all reduced before a baby boy is born.
The result is that boys – and men – chat less than their female peers and struggle to express their emotions to the same extent. "Women have an eight-lane superhighway for processing emotion, while men have a small country road," said Brizendine.
There are, however, advantages of being the strong, silent type. Brizendine explains in her book that testosterone also reduces the size of the section of the brain involved in hearing – allowing men to become "deaf" to the most logical arguments put forward by their wives and girlfriends.
Other scientists, however, say many of the differences between the male and female personality can be explained by social conditioning, with a child's upbringing greatly influencing their character.
Deborah Cameron, an Oxford University linguistics professor with a special interest in language and gender, said the amount we talk is influenced by who we are with and what we are doing. "If you look through a large number of studies you will find there is little difference between the amount men and women talk," she added.
