Rambling Man
Oh, those talkative women. Always gossiping, complaining, and pouring out their emotions onto strong, silent men. Well, perhaps not: A new study published in the journal Science concludes that women and men both utter an average of 16,000 words per day. Researchers used electronically activated recorders to track the number of words used by 396 university students. The subjects wore the recorders for several days, and the recorder taped 30 seconds of sound every 12.5 minutes. The authors found that the women spoke an average of 16,215 words a day and men a mean of 15,669; they say this difference is not statistically significant. While the researchers acknowledge that data from university students cannot necessarily be extrapolated to all people, they say their results pretty much rule out the possibility that women have evolved to be more talkative than men. The results also decidedly contradict the popular claim that women use about 20,000 words a day, while men use a mere 7,000.
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Cute, Yellow, Chubby, Valuable to Science
In 1992, nearly 29,000 bright yellow rubber ducks broke free of their bathtub-bound destinies and set off to sail the high seas. While the company whose cargo ship spilled the ducks likely counted the dump as a loss, the ducks have proved to be an ideal tracking device for researchers interested in studying ocean currents. Citizens of the world are unlikely to report the arrival of the boring floats scientists usually use to track currents, but when a swarm of rubber duckies lands on a beach, locals are more likely to contact the authorities. Retired oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer has been tracking the ducks as they have traveled over 17,000 miles, and he is currently predicting that the rubber flock will turn up on the beaches of South-West England this summer. After being dumped in the middle of the Pacific, the ducks were caught in the Subpolar Gyre and landed on the shores of Alaska. Over the next three years they headed to Japan and eventually came back to North America. Some adventurous ducks headed north across the pole and arrived in the Atlantic, visiting the wreckage site of the Titanic. Ducks have recently been reported on the eastern seaboard of the US, and Ebbesmeyer says the Atlantic currents should take them across the pond. Keep your eyes peeled, Brits: If you find a duck, The First Years company will give you a $100 (~£50) savings bond.