TresSugar

Happy Caturday!

TresSugar — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 03:47:00 -0800

I love when cats go into crouching ~~tiger~~ kitten, hidden dragon mode on little bugs. They don't want to kill them, necessarily, they just enjoy little scurrying things. (OK, maybe they want to eff with them a teensy bit.) His flexibility is quite impressive, I have to say.

Très Cool! Babies Cry in Their Native Language

TresSugar — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 02:00:00 -0800

I've always found it fascinating that dogs "bark" in different languages. Though we say "ruff ruff" in English, that same noise is expressed as "ouah, ouah" in French. Now here's something even cooler: German researchers have started to think that babies' wails sound different depending on what language their parents speak.

The scientists observed 60 babies born to families speaking French and German and found that the infants could be absorbing their parents' accents from inside the womb. In the last three months of pregnancy, babies have already begun to memorize sounds, and based on the analysis of the babies' cry "melodies," the sounds mapped closely to the parents' accents:

The French newborns cried with a rising "accent" while the German babies' cries had a falling inflection.

Writing in the journal Current Biology, they say the babies are probably trying to form a bond with their mothers by imitating them.

The findings suggest that unborn babies are influenced by the sound of the first language that penetrates the womb.

Fascinating, right? Now I want to hang out with a big international gang of babies and see if their cries all sound different. Wait, that means being trapped in a room with a bunch of crying babies - nevermind!

Ruh Roh! Employee Sends Steamy Emails to Co-Workers

TresSugar — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 01:00:00 -0800

A tech consultant at Cornell did what we've all had nightmares about doing: he accidentally sent personal emails to everyone he works with. And they were quite the Freudian sends.

Gulp. But what makes it worse is that his emails were of a sexual nature. Big whoop, you say? Um, yeah. It gets more awkward. He's married - and so was his partner-in-crime.

Good lord. Has anyone ever done this? I can't imagine how humiliating this would be! Not to mention the fact that their marriages are probably over. Oh, the schadenfreude!

Are Teens Growing Up Too Fast or Too Slowly?

TresSugar — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:00:00 -0800

When I first saw this headline on Newsweek, "Why Teenagers Are Growing Up So Slowly Today," I thought, whaaa? With all the sexting and drugs, aren't teens growing up too fast?

Just because teens are doing adult things doesn't mean they are acting like adults, argue Joseph Allen and Claudia Worrell Allen, authors of Escaping the Endless Adolescence. By sheltering adolescents from work and other grownup issues in cookie-cutter high schools, we may be preventing their brains from maturing. Says Allen: "We don’t give teens enough ways to take risks that are productive." That results in bad risky behavior for cheap thrills and a generation of 25 year olds who act like teenagers. Do you think there's any truth to the argument that not treating teens like adults actually stunts their adulthood?

Très Trivia! Are You in the Know?

TresSugar — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:00:00 -0800

This week we took a look at Pakistan's fashion week. Do you know what other stories strutted their stuff this week? Find out!

Take the quiz