Nothing drives me more insane as a than seeing someone at the gym walk on the treadmill for over an hour. There they are when I walk in the door to warm up, and there they remain after my entire workout is over.

No wait, I take that back. Probably as equally frustrating is seeing people on the treadmill with the incline jacked up to 15 while hanging onto the machine for dear life.

Either way, just because the display on the treadmill says that you burned a certain amount of calories doesnt mean you actually did.

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For the first time, scientists have explained why individuals observing others flaws and norm transgressions experience vicarious embarrassment regardless of whether the person observed realizes their flaw or not.

Soren Krach and Frieder M. Paulus from Philipps-University Marburg, Germany, conducted the study in collaboration with Christopher J. Cohrs from Queens University Belfast, United Kingdom.

In two consecutive studies, using behavioral measures and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the authors show that the experience of vicarious embarrassment is linked to empathy and neural activations in brain areas constituting the affective component of the pain matrix: the anterior cingulate cortex and the left anterior insula.

The authors generated four kinds of everyday life situations eliciting vicarious embarrassment.

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A study has found that the only out-of-school activity that will really enhance a teenager’s career prospects is reading.

Oxford University academics have found that 16-year-olds who read books at least once in a month were significantly more likely to be in a managerial or professional job at 33 than those who did not read books at all.

No other activity, from sport to socialising with friends, going to museums and concerts, or doing practical activities such as cooking or sewing, affected their careers, unless they were also reading. <

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A breakthrough could turn millions of tonnes of waste chicken feathers into a perennial source of green, bio-degradable plastic.

Others have tried to develop thermoplastics from feathers. But none of them perform well when wet, said Yiqi Yang, study co-author from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, who led the research.

Chicken feathers are an excellent prospect, Yang explained, because they are inexpensive and abundant. Annually there are more than three billion pounds of waste chicken feathers in the US alone, according to a Nebraska statement.

Thermoplastics are one of two major groups of plastics, and include nylon, polyethylene, polystyrene, polyvinyl chloride, and dozens of other kinds.

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When the earliest rocks were formed in the solar system, they looked more like candy floss than the hard rock that we know today, according to a new research.

Researchers from Imperial College London and other international institutions made the discovery after highly detailed analysis of a meteorite fragment from the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars.

The ‘carbonaceous chondrite meteorite’ was originally formed in the early solar system when microscopic dust particles gathered around larger grain particles called chondrules, which were around one mm in size.

The findings show that the first solid material in the solar system was fragile and extremely porous – much like candy floss – and that it was compacted during periods of extreme turbulence into harder rock, forming the building blocks that paved the way for planets like Earth.

“Our study makes us even more convinced than before that the early carbonaceous chondrite rocks were shaped by the turbulent nebula through which they travelled billions of years ago, in much the same way that pebbles in a river are altered when subjected to high turbulence in the water. Our resea

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A new research has found that the incidence of melanoma appears higher in non-Hispanic white adolescent girls and young women living in higher socioeconomic neighborhoods than those living in lower socioeconomic areas.

“Melanoma is the most lethal form of skin cancer and represents a substantial cause of productive years of life lost to cancer, especially when occurring in young persons,” the authors write as background information in the study.

“Among non-Hispanic white girls and women aged 15 to 39 years in the United States, age-adjusted incidence rates of cutaneous melanoma among adolescents have more than doubled during a 3-decade period (1973-2004), with a 2.7 percent increase annually since 1992,” they add.

To assess the relationship between the incidence of melanoma and socioeconomic status and UV-radiation exposure, Amelia K. Hausaue

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Video game systems have been around for decades. I was just looking at old photos the other day from when I was very young and there was an Atari in the background! It is estimated that around 45% of adults play video games and it’s interesting that obesity rates are now at their highest levels yet. With that said, some may speculate that video games are partly to blame since people are basically sedentary during game play and some hardcore gamers play for hours on end.

The Nintendo Wii was first introduced in 2006 and remains very popular today. The game selection continues to grow at a rapid pace giving players a good variety to choose from. T

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