Ben Palmer's weekend reads
Have you ever cried at work? You're not alone. Crying at work appears to be fairly common, according to a survey of 3,078 employees from career website Monster.com. More than 80% of respondents said they had cried at work, with more than 45% of them saying they cried at work because of their boss or colleague. The second most-common reason for crying at work was personal issues at 19%, followed by heavy workloads at 16% and workplace bullying at 13%. According to Vicki Salemi, a Monster.com career expert, if you find yourself crying at work, it may be a signal that you work in a toxic workplace or that you're overworked. It's important to "do an internal check-in: 'Why am I upset?'" Salemi said. "Get to the root of it, then figure out the solution."
Are women better multitaskers than men? Not necessarily. It's an old stereotype that women are better at multitasking than men, but according to a new study published in PLOS One, that may not be the case. For the study, researchers in Germany tested the speed and accuracy of 48 women and 48 men as they multitasked in two ways: doing two tasks at the same time and shifting attention among multiple tasks. They found that both the men and women made significantly more errors when trying to balance multiple tasks, and were even worse when trying to do two tasks simultaneously. So why does the stereotype that women are better than men at multitasking exist? According to Earl Miller, a professor of neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "It's probably [due] to the fact that women typically have more demand on them" and are commonly perceived as needing to do multiple things at the same time.
Danielle Poindexter's reads
The secret lives of extreme early-risers. Some people wake up so early that they don't need an alarm clock. These people, called "extreme larks" wake up at 5:30 a.m. or earlier, and new research shows that there are more of these extreme larks out there than we originally thought. The study, published in the journal Sleep, found that one out of every 300 individuals woke up by 5:30 a.m. The findings are based on questions University of Utah neurologist Christopher Jones asked 2,422 patients who visited his sleep clinic over a 10-year period. The researchers said the findings suggest being a morning lark isn't rare, and may even offer some benefits. According to the study, extreme larks wake up more easily than other people, are less likely to sleep in on weekends, and might be healthier than night owls, who face a higher risk of diabetes and heart disease.
Scientists just discovered a monster-sized penguin. Scientists in New Zealand found the fossil of an extinct penguin that was the size of an adult human, according to a paper published this week in Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Palaeontology. The scientists said the penguin lived about 60 million years ago, and was likely about five feet 2 inches tall, and weighed up to 176 pounds. According to Paul Scofield, co-author of the paper and senior curator at the Canterbury Museum, the extinction of dinosaurs and giant marine reptiles gave penguins the opportunity to grow. "The oceans were ripe for the picking with the lack of mega predators," Scofield said. "It looks like what was going on was that penguins were just starting to exploit that niche."