The Quickest Way to Annoy a Coworker
There's no shortage of things that irritate us at work, and in some cases, a single annoyance can ruin an entire day. But the major sources of irritation sometimes pale in comparison to the small, day-to-day nuisances that come from our coworkers.

In a May survey on workplace habits, human resources research firm Randstad found that the most irritating pet peeves in coworkers were poor time management skills (43 percent), gossip (36 percent) and messiness in communal spaces (25 percent).

The most grating time-management pet peeves: people who abuse sick days (11 percent); scheduling meetings without agendas or structure (11 percent); meetings that cut into personal time (10 percent); meetings that start late or run over (10 percent); people who are distracted on their Blackberry or who text during a meeting (10 percent); and people who consistently miss deadlines (9 percent).

"The economic occurrences of the past 18-plus months seem to also have impacted what annoys people at work," Eileen Habelow, senior vice president of organizational development for Randstad, said. "Whether it is budget cuts or staff layoffs, employees are being asked to do more work with fewer resources, which directly affects how they view their time in the office... so it would only make sense they would be a bit bothered by coworkers who they believe are having an impact on their time, and, possibly company productivity."

Other top office pet peeves in 2010 include these: loud noises (21 percent); powerful odors (20 percent); overuse of electronic devices in meetings (15 percent); and misuse of e-mail (12 percent).

If you're worried about annoying your coworkers, the lesson here is to avoid wasting their time.

"Woodhenge" Discovered Near Stonehenge
As one of the most famous marvels of ancient engineering, Stonehenge has long attracted the attention of scientists and archaeologists. Now, just two weeks into a three-year international study, a research team has uncovered a second henge-like construction, made of wood, less than a mile away from the original landmark.

"The new monument — described as the most exciting find of its kind in a lifetime — was a vast circle of wooden posts up to 19ft tall, surrounded by a ditch and bank. It was built around the same time as its big sister and may have been used for ritual Bronze Age feasts," the United Kingdom's Daily Mail reports. "Just like Stonehenge, its entrances are aligned with the summer solstice, allowing the sun's rays to enter the centre of the circle on Midsummer's Day."

The monument was discovered by a team of British scientists attempting to map the Stonehenge site using high-tech imaging technology that provides virtual recreations of the original structure and its surroundings.

"Rather than giving us a map or plan of what is buried, this technology allows us to see it in three dimensions," Henry Chapman, a team member from the University of Birmingham in England, told CNN.com. "We can almost excavate the site virtually by peeling off five centimeters at a time to see what is there."

Scientists date the wooden henge's construction to around 4500 B.C. and expect to uncover more of these extraordinary structures over the course of their project. But, much as with Stonehenge, the specific purpose of the site and the Neolithic rituals conducted there remain a mystery.

A Self-Sustaining Robot that Eats (and Excretes)
Designing a robot that can sustain itself without human support is one of the major steps toward building independent, autonomous machines. Now, engineers have come closer to that goal by developing a robot that consumes biomass and waste to refuel itself, and then ejects the unused material.

Researchers from the Bristol Robotics Laboratory in the U.K. recently unveiled the EcoBot III, the first robot to feature an artificial gut that enables it to survive on a nutrient-rich sewage mixture and water for up to seven days without human intervention.

"The method is pretty simple: the 'bot navigates itself to a dispenser filled with the sewage mixture and takes in what it needs," Popular Science explains. "The mixture is distributed into 48 bacteria-filled MFCs [microbial fuel cells] where it is metabolized into hydrogen atoms that in turn migrate to an electrode where, through the magic of fuel cells, a current is generated."

Once every 24 hours, the robot has to purge its artificial digestive system by expelling waste into a special container, or "litter tray." The robot's developers, who hope to explore its potential for purifying sewage water, plan to expand its diet to more protein- and fiber-rich food, such as flies, according to Discovery News.

"If you think self-feeding robots are terrifying, EcoBot III can only extract about 1 percent of its food's chemical energy even after repeated recycling," CNET News reports. "So human flesh is off the menu for now."

The Largest Object Ever Found
Astronomers recently discovered the most massive and brightest stars ever detected, one of which qualifies as the largest object in the known universe. The existence of these "monster stars" defies some previously accepted rules governing celestial bodies and is already yielding insights on the formation of star systems.

A team of scientists from the U.K. discovered a cluster of young, massive and extremely hot stars in a neighboring galaxy, one of which — R136a1 — has a mass roughly 265 times that of our sun, though it may have been as much as 320 times as large when it first formed, BBC News reports.

R136a1, so far the largest object ever found, also has a surface temperature that exceeds our own sun's by more than 40,000 degrees, making it seven times hotter, and burns almost 10 million times brighter, according to a release from the European Southern Observatory (ESO). If the massive star were in our solar system, it would outshine the sun by as much as the sun currently outshines the moon, its high mass would reduce an Earth year to three weeks and its "incredibly intense ultraviolet radiation" would make life on our planet impossible.

Click image for larger view.
Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

The discovery, made using ESO's Very Large Telescope, was surprising due to the concept of solar mass limits, which led astronomers to believe that stars could not exceed 150 times solar mass, Nature.com explains.

Have a great weekend, folks.