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Workplace bullying is pervasive. A new study indicates that as many as half of all employees in the US have witnessed bullying at work, and 35 percent have been the target of bullying.

“Many bullies can be seen as charming and friendly, but they are highly destructive and can manipulate others into providing them with the resources they need to get ahead,” says the study’s co-author, Darren Treadway, associate professor of organization and human resources at the University at Buffalo School of Management.They use those skills to strategically abuse their coworkers, yet still receive positive evaluations from their supervisors, according to a recent study that is one of the first attempts to measure the relationship between being a bully and job performance.

It offers an initial explanation of why bullies thrive in the workplace despite organizational attempts to sanction bullying behaviors.

Full story at Futurity.

More research news from top universities.

Photo credit: Chelsea/Flickr

This list, compiled by Business Insider, should come as no surprise. Among the top 20 most valuable brands in the world are IBM, Google and Apple. But did you know that China Mobile and UPS are among them?

Check out this link for the full list and all the stats you wanted to know about them: Business Insider.

More stories about marketing.

Photo credit: China Mobile Display – WikiCommons

I’m terrible with this – I use dashes and hyphens all the time – and mostly incorrectly – but with much enthusiasm – and I’ve seen other posts similar to this one, but this particular one caught my eye.

For the uninitiated, here’s a short version: there are three types of dashes and hyphens – well, two dashes and one hyphen. They are an en-dash, an m-dash and a … hyphen. The “en” and the “em” harken back to the old days of typesetting and denote the width of the dash and thus presumably the pause, for the reader.

For writing buffs, this is actually one of those fun things.

Here’s the hyphen:

Hyphen (-)

The hyphen is the minus key in Windows-based keyboards. This is a widely used punctuation mark. Hyphen should not be mistaken for a dash. Dash is different and has different function than a hyphen.

A hyphen is used to separate the words in a compound adjective, verb, or adverb. For instance:

The T-rex has a movement-based vision.
My blog is blogger-powered.
John’s idea was pooh-poohed.

The hyphen can be used generally for all kinds of wordbreaks.

And the ubiquitous en-dash:

En Dash (–)

En Dash gets its name from its length. It is one ‘N’ long (En is a typographical unit that is almost as wide as ‘N’). En Dash is used to express a range of values or a distance:

People of age 55–80 are more prone to hypertension.
Delhi–Sidney flight was late by three hours.

In MS Word, you can put an En Dash either from the menu, clicking Insert->Symbol or by the key-combination, Ctrl + Num -. The ASCII code for En dash is “–”.

In expressing game scores, En Dash is used.

India beat Pakistan 250–190.

Use En Dash in compound adjectives in which the two participant terms themselves are compound.

Hyper-threaded–land-grid-array processor powers my PC.

And finally, the (in my case) much under-used em-dash:

Em Dash (—)

Em Dash gets its name from the width of it, which is roughly one ‘M’ long or two ‘N’ long (Em is a typographical unit twice the length of en—and almost the length of capital ‘M’). The Em Dash can be typed as two En Dashes. Alternatively, in MS Word, you can type two hyphens together to get an Em Dash. The ASCII code for this is “—”.

Em Dash is used to set off parenthetical elements, which are abrupt. This is different from commas separating parenthetical elements. For instance:

The tea—with cardamom and other spices—was delicious and fragrant.

Make sure you don’t use spaces around the Em Dash.

Em Dash also separates the final part of a sentence that is logically not part of the sentence (similar to the colon use in this context).

Several friends were present—Saurabh, Arun, and Smija, among them.

As I said, there are many sources for this information. This particular set up of information comes from a blog called CuteWriting.

See: CuteWriting.

More stories about writing.

Photo credit: Scribe in India – WikiCommons

The self-publishing revolution is in full swing because we’re at a great time when tablets have reached critical mass, connectivity is ubiquitous, and people want to spread, not horde, their knowledge. Thus, the time for every author to consider self-publishing is upon us.

Here are some strategies to get you started writing your own book:

1. Write for the right reasons
2. Write every day
3. Start with a Kindle ebook
4. Build your marketing platform

Full article on Bare Essentials digital magazine

Looking for more self-publishing tips?

Photo credit teal typewriter By Amanda Schutz

Chemical changes in two genes reliably predict if a woman will develop postpartum depression.

A simple blood test foretelling depression after giving birth would give a woman and her doctors an opportunity to intervene before symptoms become debilitating.

“Postpartum depression can be harmful to both mother and child,” says study leader Zachary Kaminsky, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “But we don’t have a reliable way to screen for the condition before it causes harm, and a test like this could be that way.”

Full story at Futurity.

More research news from top universities.

Photo credit: Bridget Coila/Flickr

In the aftermath of yesterday’s devastating Oklahoma tornadoes and with sincere condolences to all who have suffered, Slate has taken a look at the US to discern where it’s safest to live. They asked:

Students at Humboldt State University in California examined 150,000 tweets that were coded for location, and that contained racist, homophobic, or otherwise offensive terms. They then plotted the data on a map that describes were the most bigoted people in the US reside.

Or, as the article says:

…at least, where they’re the most open about displaying their antisocial views.
The picture doesn’t look good for the Eastern states, although admittedly the bulk of the population is there as well. Areas in Virginia, North Carolina, Texas, and Alabama show up bright red on the map, as do areas in more central states Indiana, Iowa, and Minnesota.

Factoids:

• this map is part of a larger project by professor Dr. Monica Stephens
• taken from tweets posted between June 2012 and April 2013
• offensive words included: dyke, fag, chink etc
• students looked at each and every tweet that was pulled in by the algorithm built to capture them.
• to protect the identities of the haters, locations were “aggregated” up to the county level
• small towns registered more hate-tweets

Read more at Venture Beat.

More stories about tech.

Photo credit: Geography of Hate Map, from Venture Beat

They come in logos as well as phrases such as “LOL,” “WTF,” and “OMG.” This one is my favorite, though.

As we stand on the cusp of summer in the northern hemisphere, a season full of breathtaking panoramas are waiting on the horizon to be immortalized on film.

There’s a trick to capturing the beauty you see, though, or in the case of Digital Photography School‘s Joe Decker, six of them.

1. Get Close!

Because wide-angle lenses take in a bigger angle-of-view than other lenses, using a wide-angle lens at the same distance from your subject will render that subject smaller than it would otherwise. To compensate for this, you’ll have to move closer to your subject. Don’t be bashful about getting close, particularly with super-wides&mash;it’s almost impossible to get “too close” to your subject with a 14mm lens. This emphasis in size that wide-angle lenses give nearby objects means that …

2. It’s All about the Foreground

Contrary to what you might expect, this means that the most important element of your wide-angle landscapes is the foreground. While wide-angle lenses do capture the wider landscape, they also (almost inevitably, because of their wide field-of-view) capture quite a bit of foreground as well, and this foreground is emphasized by the wide-angle perspective. As a result, if your foreground isn’t interesting, your photograph won’t be interesting. This leads us naturally to the Josef Muench idea of the near-far composition, an image which uses a wide-angle lens to not only show a broad vista, but also to show one detail of that landscape in an up-close, intimate way. When you’re photographing wide, be sure to spend some time looking for the most interesting foreground available to combine with your grand vista.  (If there isn’t an interesting foreground, you might want to consider using a longer lens to leave out that less interesting foreground.)

Full story at Digital Photography School.

Getting the perfect shot.

Photo credit: Fotolia

Let’s face it, when most of us giggle at a pommel horse routine, it’s not in the best taste seeing as it usually contains a touch of malice at the stumbles of Olympians, preferably from a country other than our own.

Feel free to laugh out loud at this routine from the Japanese talent show Masquerade, though, without the least bit of guilt or risk of causing an international incident.

Full story at YouTube via Neatorama.

Fun and games.