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Could good germs fight acne? A new study suggests so.

In a finding that teenagers all over the world will cheer, researchers say they have found a strain of “good” bacteria that may keep acne at bay.

Pimple-free volunteers have skin loaded with the friendly germ – and it’s a cousin of the nasty, zit-causing bacteria.

It might be possible to treat acne sufferers with the good strain and save them the agony of spotty skin, they report in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology.

"This P. [Propionibacterium] acnes strain may protect the skin, much like yogurt's live bacteria help defend the gut from harmful bugs," said Huiying Li, an assistant professor of molecular and medical pharmacology at the University of California Los Angeles David Geffen School of Medicine.

"Our next step will be to investigate whether a probiotic cream can block bad bacteria from invading the skin and prevent pimples before they start,” she added. "We hope to apply our findings to develop new strategies that stop blemishes before they start, and enable dermatologists to customize treatment to each patient's unique cocktail of skin bacteria." 

It’s not so far out. In recent years, scientists have discovered that people are completely colonized with bacteria that help digest food, protect from eczema, and even that distinguish one person’s belly button lint from another’s.

This so-called microbiome may affect your tendency to gain weight, and most recently, doctors have used transplants of helpful bacteria to cure patients with a deadly intestinal bug called Clostridium difficile.

So just as people are encouraged to eat yogurt to replace healthy bacteria after they take antibiotics, perhaps helpful skin bacteria could replace pimple cream.

Li’s team used skin-pore strips to take samples of the Propionibacterium acnes bacteria from the noses of 49 people with acne and 52 clear-skinned volunteers.

These particular bugs are found all over the body – on the skin, in the mouth, the eyes and the intestines. The UCLA researchers found they come in different strains, however. They sequenced the genes of 66 different strains.

"We learned that not all acne bacteria trigger pimples — one strain actually may help keep skin healthy," Li said in a statement.

"Two unique strains of P. acnes appeared in one out of five volunteers with acne but rarely occurred in clear-skinned people,” added Dr. Noah Craft, a dermatologist at UCLA who also worked on the study.

And then they made the promising find. "We were extremely excited to uncover a third strain of P. acnes that's common in healthy skin yet rarely found when acne is present," said Li. "We suspect that this strain contains a natural defense mechanism that enables it to recognize attackers and destroy them before they infect the bacterial cell."

Acne, which affects as many as 90 percent of teens and up to half of adults, is caused when pores become first blocked and then infected.

Doctors have shown it’s not caused by dirty skin – in fact overwashing can aggravate it in some cases. Nor is it caused by greasy food or chocolate, although hormones seem to be involved in production of the oily sebum than can block pores.

Treatments such as antibiotics and benzoyl peroxide aim to kill the bacteria, while salicylic acid dries the skin out and retinoic acid and isotretinoin are designed make the skin shed more quickly and reduce blockages. But none works perfectly, and the prescription drug Accutane can cause very serious side-effects and has been pulled from the market.

In 2010, a team at the University of Pittsburgh said they found evidence that bacteria-killing viruses called bacteriophages might fight acne.

Related:

• No joke: acne raises suicide risk
• Mites on your face may cause rosacea
• Super-zits on the rise

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Giving someone the silent treatment may not always be such a bad thing. It may actually be a good way to deal with someone who is acting like a jerk, a new study finds.

The research reveals there are benefits to cutting off conversation with a person who is being obnoxious: It's not as draining on your mental resources, you avoid conflict with someone offensive, and it's much simpler than getting into a heated discussion.

That's because the silent treatment can speak volumes, even when someone is not saying a word or limiting their conversation to short or one-syllable responses.

From a psychological standpoint, this brush-off technique is largely viewed in a negative light. It's considered a manipulative way to communicate dissatisfaction and a passive form of rejection.

But this new research has identified at least some situations when silence might  be golden: When people are strongly motivated to avoid social interaction with an undesirable person, giving the silent treatment may be as easy -- if not easier -- than a conversation.

The silent treatment is not always motivated by an intent to harm another person or punish their behavior, said study author Kristin Sommer, Ph.D, an associate professor of psychology at Baruch College, City University of New York. "It may be used as a way to offset feelings of fatigue or depletion associated with the expectation of an unpleasant interaction," she explained.

For this new study, published online in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, the researchers ran two different experiments involving 118 college students. In each study, they asked participants to either talk with or ignore another individual, who was in on the experiment and told to act in a highly likeable -- meaning polite, relaxed, and friendly -- or a highly unlikeable manner -- someone rude, prejudicial, and arrogant. 

After four minutes with the "nice guy" or "jerk," study participants had to complete a task that involved thought and self-control.

Researchers found that participants who  ignored an unlikable person or talked with someone likable did better on the task than those who were forced to converse with a jerk or snub a nice guy. Rebuffing a likable person and exchanging pleasantries with someone obnoxious both took a toll. It left participants feeling depleted and their performance suffered as a result.

"Our findings suggest that the silent treatment may be used as a strategy for conserving mental resources that would otherwise be exhausted by interacting with someone who is inherently aversive to be around," said Sommer.

These findings do not mean that you can now feel justified every time you give a cold shoulder to a spouse, family member, or best friend. The study only looked into its use as a short-term snub in a non-close relationship.

There is a greater potential for risks when using the silent treatment in close relationships.

"The use of the silent treatment may have save energy-saving benefits," Sommer explained, "but these benefits may come at a long-term cost to a relationship."

 Related:  

Why some people love the burn of hot chili peppers

Big sig? What your handwriting says about you

Nearly half of 3-D movie-goers feel sick

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Hulton Archive via Getty Images, file

4th July 1776: The signatures on the Declaration of Independence, a document in which American colonists proclaimed their political separation from British rule. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

John Hancock must have been an egomaniac. Large signatures are common among narcissists, finds new research from the University of North Carolina's Kenan-Flagler Business School and the University of Maryland. The study examined the signatures of more than 600 CEOs and found that the most outsized signers were among the highest paid, but were also more likely to run their companies into the ground. Those factors indicate an inflated sense of self, a disregard for people's input, and other narcissistic tendencies, explains study author Nicholas Seybert, Ph.D., an assistant professor at the University of Maryland. (Okay, it isn't a man's world anymore. Narcissism notwithstanding, are there any advantages to being guy?)

Past research shows large signatures reveal high self-esteem and social dominance among the general public. Why? People see a signature as a stand-in for themselves, and a bigger, more prominent moniker reveals a person's larger-than-average self-regard, the research explains. If you have a big autograph, you're not necessarily a narcissist--though you probably are an alpha male, Seybert says. But when applied to CEOs--a group already likely to favor people with inflated egos--big signatures are also likely to reveal narcissistic traits. (Avoid the 5 ways to ruin a first impression, and ace that crucial first date.)

Here are more strange clues into your personality.

If you love boiled eggs, you're more likely to be messy.
Boiled egg lovers are more disorganized and more likely to get divorced, shows a study of 1,100 people funded by the British Egg Industry Council and published by Mindlab International. Fried egg fans have the highest sex drive, the study finds. Poached-egg eaters are outgoing and happy, scrambled aficionados are guarded, and omelet lovers are self-disciplined, the study says.

If you drive a red car, you're more reckless.
People who drive red cars are more aggressive and reckless, shows a study from CW Marketing Research. The Oregon-based firm also found people with green cars have the most positive outlook on life, dark blue or silver-car owners are upbeat, and black car owners lack self-confidence. Why? A growing body of research shows certain visual cues--such as colors--are tied to emotional and behavioral cues in your brain. These cues can influence the colors you find appealing depending on your personality type, according to a University of Cambridge study. (And while you're in the car, make sure to eat smart. Grab a copy of Eat This, Not That! 2013 for your next road trip.)

If you have too many Post-it Notes, you're probably overwhelmed.
An empty or unpersonalized desk indicates a lack of dedication or job dissatisfaction, according to a University of Texas study. Excessive Post-it Notes mean you're overwhelmed, while a plant proves you have no plans to leave your gig, the UT study shows. The researchers say people see their personal space as extensions of themselves, and so how they arrange or design those spaces provide clues to their personalities. People who have candy bowls or lots of office supplies are more likely to be outgoing and social, and motivational items often reveal a worker who pushes himself, the study adds.

If you love Metallica, you're more likely to be lazy.
Classical, jazz, and heavy metal music lovers are all generally creative and at ease, but metal-heads are more likely to also be lazy and introverted, finds a study of 36,000 people from Scottish researchers. Blues fans tend to have high self-esteem, rap fans are pretty outgoing, and country lovers are generally hardworking, the study shows. Indie rock snobs tend to be harsh and lack self-esteem, the study found. (Discover the 6 crazy ways music improves your life.)

More from Men's Health: 
What Your Tweets Say About You
Find the Perfect Scent for Your Personality
What Your Drink Says About You

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Soe Zeya Tun / Reuters

The most common gripes among moviegoers watching 3-D movies were that their eyes felt tired or they had a headache. But nearly 11 percent felt like they wanted to puke.

If you found yourself feeling a little woozy while watching 3-D films like "Avatar" or "Tron," you won't be surprised to hear this. More than half the people who put on the special glasses and caught a showing of a 3-D flick reported the movie made them feel sick to some degree, a new study suggests.

Roughly 55 percent of viewers had at least one physical complaint after the experience, according to research recently published in the journal PLoS ONE.

The most common gripes among moviegoers were that their eyes felt tired or they had a headache. But nearly 11 percent felt like they wanted to puke.

"I was surprised by the relatively high proportion of people who reported symptoms after a 3-D movie," said study author Angelo Solimini, Ph.D, an adjunct professor and research scientist in hygiene and public health at Sapienza University of Rome.

But there's no reason to shy away from a showing of movies like "Up" or the soon-to-be-released "Oz: The Great and Powerful." Solimini pointed out that viewer's symptoms were usually mild and seemed to disappear as soon as they took off their 3-D glasses -- except, perhaps if it triggered a headache.

Although Solimini has only seen one 3-D movie, "Despicable Me," he got the idea for this study after chatting with a group of parents. After taking their children to see a 3-D film, many of the mothers complained of physical discomforts, but their kids did not.

To look into these side effects, he rounded up 497 healthy adults in Italy, ages 18 to 65. Participants were asked to see one 2-D movie and one 3-D film during a three-week period. They could choose whichever movies they wanted as long as they didn't see the 2-D and 3-D flick on the same day.

Before and after seeing each flick, participants completed questionnaires about their movie-going experience, in which they rated their symptoms in three main areas: nausea, vision problems and dizziness.

Close to 55 percent of the viewers of the 3-D flick reported some level of sickness following the film compared to only 14% of those watching a 2-D film.

Nearly half of the 3-D viewers complained that the film hurt their eyes. It strained their eyes, blurred their vision, or made it hard to focus.

Slightly more than one in five 3-D moviegoers felt somewhat disoriented at the theater. They had a headache, or felt off-balance or dizzy, whether their eyes were open or shut.

About one in 10 3-D film attendees felt queasy during the show.

Some individuals were more prone to these unpleasant feelings than others. The study found that women, especially those with a history of car sickness, vertigo, or frequent headache, may be more vulnerable to these symptoms.

As for why some people find it harder to handle 3-D movies than others do, Solimini suggests it's because the distance at which our eyes converge is different from where they focus. This mismatch causes extra work for the visual system that for some individuals may result in these annoying side effects.

The most susceptible people, he explains, are those with unequal vision in both eyes or those with small vision misalignments.

Solimini draws an analogy between seeing a 3-D film and riding a roller coaster. Both are forms of entertainment in which some people may be willing to put up with an increase in symptoms and mild -- but temporary -- discomfort as part of the experience. 

Related:

 1 in 4 indulge bizarre late-night food cravings

Surprise side effect: New specs may fix color blindness

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Some of us were lucky enough to start the week with a paid day off (thanks, Presidents!). We started the workweek on Tuesday, excited for a short week and expecting the days to fly by. And instead ... they ... dragged. 

Why does a shorter workweek after a day off often end up feeling longer than a normal week? While no psychology research has directly examined the phenomenon, some evidence suggests that it's because we humans are easily thrown by disruptions in our routines. 

"If I had to venture a guess, I would say that it could be because four-day work weeks are much less common and are a deviation from the typical five-day work week," Marc Buehner, a psychologist at the U.K.'s Cardiff University who has studied the psychology of time perception, said in an email. "There are some laboratory studies that show that predictable events are perceived as shorter than unpredictable events."

Buehner points to an idea explored in a 2007 study published in the journal PLOS One: In one experiment, researchers showed participants a series of 10 images, nine of the same image with one oddball image thrown in. (For instance, the volunteers saw nine repeat images of a shoe and one image of a digital clock.) Each image flashed on a screen for 500 milliseconds. After watching the series of images, the study participants were asked whether the oddball image was on screen longer or shorter than the repeat images. Each one of them incorrectly thought the oddball image was on screen longer. 

But it's not just about the weird image sticking out just because it's, you know, weird. The idea works with any kind of predictable routine. "So if I present you with a stream of numbers, say, 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 8 - 6 - 7, all with the same duration, the 8 would appear to have lasted longer than the other digits," Buehner explains. "One explanation why this happens is that perhaps the nervous system suppresses activation to predictable or familiar events. This would make evolutionary sense because it would exploit predictability to conserve resources."

This brings us back to the seemingly endless four-day workweek: It may feel longer because it screws with our weekday rituals.

"People might have certain routines that feel familiar to them," said Buehner. "They start the workweek on Monday with particular things -- a teacher might always teach the same class on Monday morning, for example. Now when they start on a Tuesday, the routine is different. Perhaps then this deviation from the standard of what is expected makes the week appear longer."

Related:

Believing time is money will make you miserable

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By Marc Lallanilla
LiveScience

Did an Oklahoma man die of spontaneous combustion?

Sheriff Ron Lockhart of Sequoyah County hasn't yet determined that the death of 65-year-old Danny Vanzandt was definitely a case of spontaneous combustion — but he hasn't ruled it out, either.

"It's very unusual, and it's bizarre, andI can't explain it," Lockhart told KFSM. "I'm not saying this happened. I'm just saying that we haven't ruled it out."

Vanzandt's brother discovered the victim in the kitchen and immediately called 911, according to KFSM. Fire crews found a badly burned body, but no fire damage to nearby furniture or other items. There were no signs of a break-in, a struggle or any other cause of death.

Spontaneous combustion has long been the stuff of legend, but some researchers believe it's possible, though rare. In 2011, a coroner in Ireland ruled that the death of 76-year-old Michael Faherty was the result of spontaneous human combustion, or SHC. [The 9 Most Bizarre Medical Conditions]

For any item to combust, it needs at least two things: a source of ignition and fuel for a fire. In many alleged cases of SHC, the victims were smokers or were near open flames like candles or a burning fireplace.

And the fuel for SHC might come from the victims themselves. Fat will burn, and fatty tissue is often located directly beneath the skin. Clothing or hair can act as candle wicks, according to researcher Joe Nickell, who investigated several such cases in his book, "Real-Life X-Files" (University Press of Kentucky, 2001).

Alcohol abuse is an additional factor in many cases of spontaneous combustion, either because it causes the victims to "pass out" or sleep soundly, or because alcohol itself is flammable. According to KFSM, Vanzandt was a heavy drinker and a heavy smoker who also had "poor hygiene" and no running water in his house at the time of his death.

Investigators also noted that Vanzandt had burn marks in his trachea, indicating he may have inhaled a considerable amount of smoke and carbon monoxide, which can cause a person to lose consciousness and, in high concentrations, can be deadly, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Though the term "spontaneous combustion" sounds like a sudden burst of flames, Lockhart told KFSM the body appeared to have burned for up to 10 hours. Vanzandt's remains have been sent to the Oklahoma medical examiner's office in Tulsa, which will determine the cause of death.

Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We're also on Facebook  and Google+.

• Top Ten Unexplained Phenomena
• 7 Ways Alcohol Affects Your Health
• Top 10 Weird Ways We Deal With the Dead

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Ed Jones / AFP-Getty Images file

As the drums beat at machine gun speed and the guitars shred lightning fast, dozens of moshers flock to the center of the room and slam into one another. It looks like chaos as their bodies collide madly. 

Like others, Jesse Silverberg believed that mosh and circle pits were random groups of people dancing wildly (and a bit violently). But five years ago, he took his girlfriend to her first (and last) heavy metal concert. Instead of jumping into the mosh pit at the In Flames show, he stayed with her on the outskirts. As the band played louder and the moshers presumably got drunker, Silverberg observed a pattern. One person would bump into another and the movement would ripple across the mosh pit.

“The collision went from one side to the other,” he says, adding it looked like moshers followed the rules of collective motion. “I had a hard time focusing on the music for the rest of the evening.”

Several years later in a statistical mechanics class with James Sethna, professor of physics at Cornell, Silverberg recalled the ripple-like movement in the mosh pit and thought studying it might make an interesting experiment. With the help of a fellow graduate student, Matt Bierbaum, Silverberg examined whether humans in mosh pits and circle pits truly followed the rules of collective motion, which describes phenomena such as flocking as seen with birds or schools of fish. (In mosh pits, people bounce off one another and in circle pits they rush around in a circular motion.)

They watched and analyzed about 100 videos from YouTube of people participating in either mosh or circle pits.   

“I watched with pleasure,” says Silverberg. When he examined the dancers in mosh pits he realized that they behaved like gas particles bouncing around in the air in unpredictable ways. People in circle pits, on the other hand, dance in an ordered pattern, like flocks of migrating birds.

In addition to watching YouTube videos, the researchers used a computer simulation that measures collective behavior to see how moshers act. In the simulation, they created a fake concert venue and added a few conditions and Mobile Active Simulated Humanoids (what they call MASHers) —solid objects to resemble humans that enjoy dancing wildly to resemble moshers—to mimic real life concerts.

“If you just distribute the MASHers in the crowd they will [gravitate toward each other and begin moshing],” explains Bierbaum.   

One MASHer follows the behavior of the neighboring MASHer, moving collectively, which is exactly what happens to moshers. “You can mix a bunch of people who want to dance wildly and people who do not [throughout the room] and the moshers end up in the center,” says Sethna.

Silverberg believes that understanding collective motion of moshers helps experts understand how people behave in emergencies such as fires or riots. Researchers can’t put people in a dangerous situation to learn how they evacuate in a panic. When they try simulating such events with the participants’ knowledge, people file out calmly, which is certainly not how they act in emergencies. 

“Mosh pits become a lens to look into extreme situations,” explains Silverberg, who funded the study himself (read: he bought all his own concert tickets).

The paper has been submitted for publication, but is available as a preprint online. 

Related: 

Why the whole bar sings along to certain songs

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John F. Kennedy took his to the White House; Michael Bloomberg to New York. You can hear it around Fenway Park, up and down the halls of the State House, in suburbia and even in Hollywood, where the bold-faced names from Beantown can turn it on when they need to. It’s the authentic Boston accent, and if you weren’t born with it, well, have fun trying to pull it off perfectly.

As the TODAY show took a Friday field trip to Boston, anchors Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie got a lesson in how to speak with a real Boston accent from speech-language pathologist Wendy Wiberg, who coaches people on how to lose their accents.

“No accents are wrong,” said Wiberg, who showed off her versatility by speaking with and without her accent. “But sometimes accents can be distracting,” and cause people to focus on the sound, not the meaning, of a person’s words.

Even as some research suggests that some accents across the nation are fading, the Boston accent is as wicked strong as evah.

The Boston accent, one of the nation’s most imitated and parodied, involves dropping the final ‘r” to make “car” sound like “cah,” pronouncing some short vowel sounds differently, and adding the ‘r’ sound to the end of words, to make “pizza” sound like “pizzer.”

“If you see Dunkin’ Donuts you've gone too fah (far) ... bang a uey (u-turn) and look foh (for) signs foh 93 Nohth,” one man said on TODAY through his heavy accent.

Native Bostonians blend their distinct accents with some unique dialect, too. Kids put jimmies, not sprinkles, atop their ice cream; they gulp water from the bubblah, not the water fountain; and cars travel around the rotary, not the traffic circle.

Perhaps the most famous Boston colloquialism of all, is that life isn’t just good when the Sox/Pats/Celts/Bruins win, it’s wicked good.

The accent even has different forms within the Boston area, the upper-crust Brahmin version, the Kennedy accent (think of John F. Kennedy's “Ask not ... ” speech), and one from South Boston — Southie as it’s called — as one man on TODAY showed off by speaking the old saying, “Birds of a feathah flock togetha.”

Parts of the accent can be traced back to the earliest settlements of New England and are related the parts of England that prominent Bostonians came from, Ben Zimmer, a linguist who writes about language for The Boston Globe, said on TODAY.

“The fact that you can so quickly identify the accent, it’s a kind of a calling card,” Zimmer said. “It adds some local color to speech and I think the more local color the better.”

Not everyone agrees that a Boston accent is charming, however. Speaking through a thick Boston accent can draw some negative stereotypes.

“Sometimes people can get the impression that people that speak with a Boston accent are uneducated, uncultured, rough around the edges,” Wiberg said in a phone interview with TODAY.com.

She often works with people who have foreign accents, and actors who don’t want to be typecast with playing Bostonians. But not everyone wants to lose their accent for good.

“I’ve worked with actors that say last thing in whole world they want to do is lose their Boston accent because it’s full of character and pizazz,” Wiberg said. “They want to learn an additional accent so they can turn it on.”

In her work, she evaluates speech, points out deviations from standard pronunciations and works with people to practice a new way of speaking, first by repeating words, then using the words in sentences and short conversations.

“If someone is really determined to take a serious bite out of their accent, it’s going to take about a month before they will begin to incorporate their new speech sounds they’ve practicing into spontaneous speech,” she said.

Wiberg doesn’t call her work “therapy,” nor does she think the accent should be eradicated. “There’s nothing wrong with a Boston accent,” she said. “It’s not a disorder.”

One fan is a famous face who grew up in the area without a Boston accent.

Actress Mindy Kaling told Guthrie that as a kid, everyone thought she was from Southern California. “I never had one growing up,” she said. “But I love it. I think it’s kind of sexy, actually.

And proving that saying “wicked” is just so wicked fun and a wicked hard habit to break, Kaling revealed the last of her remaining Boston lingo.

“For a woman in her 30s, I say 'wicked' more than I probably should,” she said.

As they say in Boston, “Oh God yuh!”

Related:

Mimicking accents may be innate talent

Like, California has hella accents, study finds

After a restless night of sleep, filled with nightmares where velociraptors and chainsaw-wielding maniacs chase you down, you wake up and wonder what caused such vivid, frightful dreams. Could it have been that spicy Thai food you had before bed?

Actually, there is some evidence that eating a spicy meal shortly before going to sleep can lead to some wacko dreams. In fact, eating anything too close to bedtime can trigger more dreams, because the late night snacks increase the body’s metabolism and temperature, explains Dr. Charles Bae, MD, a sleep medicine doctor at Sleep Disorders Center at the Cleveland Clinic. Heightened metabolism and temperature can lead to more brain activity, prompting more action during rapid eye movement sleep, or REM.

About every 90 minutes people experience rapid eye movement sleep as they cycle through the stages of sleep. In REM, when people dream the most, the body’s muscle tone slackens. During REM the brain becomes active, like it does when awake, and the eyes flutter behind the lids. Nightmares only happen during REM and while nightmares are simply dreams with negative emotions, they stand apart because they rouse the sleeper. It’s one of the reasons why it’s easier to recall nightmares than run-of-the-mill dreams. While little is understood about nightmares, experts know that frequent nightmare sufferers often show dysfunction in the frontal lobe and it fails to control the amygdala, which regulates memory and emotions. Disturbances in these regions might impact people without problematic nightmares, contributing to vivid dreams.

So can that extra spicy Pad Thai lead to velociraptors tearing through your dreams?

Lisa Medalie, a clinical associate of psychiatry at University of Chicago Hospitals writes via email: “If our bodies are working hard to digest heavy or spicy foods, it interferes with sleep continuity. We typically advise patients to avoid heavy or spicy foods within [two to three] hours of their bedtime.”

It’s not a subject that has been studied often, but one Canadian report suggested that 8.5 percent of the 389 study subjects blamed bad dreams on food.

“It is … possible that spicy foods—or other foods such as dairy or greasy fast foods—at least occasionally induce nightmares or other bizarre dreams. It might be that some people are sensitive to the chemical composition of certain foods,” writes Tore Nielsen, professor at the Université de Montreal and director of the dream and nightmare laboratory at Sacré-Coeur Hospital, via email.

Related:

Sleep on your stomach and have sexier dreams?

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While reading “Life of Pi,” a reader might feel as if she is Pi, staring down the Bengal tiger, Richard Parker, on a small life raft, wondering when Richard might make a snack of her. If that sounds like the way you read fiction -- losing yourself in the story rather than simply reading it -- new research suggests you're more likely to be empathetic.

“I am a book lover, and for a long time I have been thinking about how books (and films) could influence our lives,” explains Matthijs Bal, an associate professor of organizational behavior at VU University in Amsterdam, via email. “I started with my basic idea that reading books might enhance our understanding of other people.”  

To comprehend how reading might impact empathy, Bal asked subjects to participate in one of two studies. In the first experiment, 36 students read the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle short story, “The Adventure of the Six Napoleons,” or newspaper articles about riots in Libya or the nuclear disaster in Japan. In the second, 50 subjects read an excerpt from Jose Saramago’s book “Blindness,” while 47 people read articles about riots in Greece and Liberation Day in the Netherlands. Bal says they selected fiction that would easily engross the readers.

After the participants finished reading the fiction or nonfiction, Bal measured what experts call emotional transportation—how emotionally involved someone is in a story; how much she sympathizes with the characters; and how removed she is from the real world when reading (all measuring how lost she is in the story). Also, the researchers measured empathy prior to reading, immediately after finishing the text, and a week after.

People who lost themselves in the fiction showed more empathy than people who did not become as involved in fiction or read nonfiction. 

“[W]hen we get lost in a book, we are in another world, in which we can freely experience the character’s feelings and thoughts as if they were our own, through which we ‘learn’ how other people think and feel about problems in life. This again can be transferred to real life, so by reading a book and getting involved in the story, we are able to sympathize with other people,” Bal says.

While it seems as if reading about real life situations might also breed empathy, Bal says that isn’t the case. He speculates that real stories make people feel guilty—and obligated to try to help. Not experiencing empathy for real events might be how people protect themselves from feeling helpless.  

But readers’ emotional involvement in fiction really struck Bal.  

“What most surprises us was that it was totally the emotional and not the cognitive involvement that mattered,” he says. “So pity for characters in a book who experience something nasty is something we have to really feel and not just think, ‘oh how sad for him’ without genuinely experiencing the emotion yourself.”

The study appears in the online journal PLoS ONE.

Related:

You are what you read, study suggests

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By Andrew Winner, NBCNews.com contributor

We all remember vuvuzelas, right? At the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, the omnipresent noisemakers gave the soccer stadiums an ambient sound that was charming -- or maddening, depending on your perspective. Actually, so many World Cup viewers complained about the noise that the several broadcasters worldwide adjusted their audio filters to drown out the sound many compared to a swarm of bees.

Using the vuvuzela as an example, recent research out of Boston puts forth an interesting hypothesis that may shed more light on prejudicial thinking. As social psychology PhD student Sarah Gaither writes in a paper published in International Review for the Sociology of Sport, perhaps there was “more to the pervasive anti-vuvuzela sentiment than sim­ple auditory irritation.”

Gaither’s research at Tufts University found a correlation between attitudes toward the vuvuzela and attitudes toward racial minorities. While the usual disclaimers apply (correlation is not causation, etc.), the outcomes of the study could be considered foundational groundwork into the concept of ingroup/outgroup perceptions and symbolic racism.

“There are all kind of group compositions we have the world (political, religious, etc.) and a lot of times people like to claim that race and national identity—being from one country and not another—are not playing a role in these controversies,” Gaither said over the phone from Boston. “Our study at least shows the very basic, preliminary evidence that it might be slightly inaccurate to think that our national identity is not playing a role in these controversies.”

During the World Cup, Gaither surveyed 123 white Americans about their feelings toward the vuvuzela and compared that with their views on racial minorities, including Latinos and African Americans. What she found was that those who didn’t like the sound of the vuvuzela also had less positive views of racial minorities and a more general lack of openness to new things.

So if you don’t like the sound of a vuvuzela, does that mean you’re a xenophobe? Not necessarily. Gaither is quick to note that was not the purpose of the study. Instead, Gaither and her co-author, associate professor Samuel R. Sommers of Tufts, wanted to see if attitudes in worldwide controversies sometimes have deeper roots.

The idea for the study came to Gaither as she noticed the growing discussion over the vuvuzela trumpet during the World Cup. Made originally from the horn of a kudu or other antelope, the vuvuzela has been used all over Africa for a variety of purposes, such as the announcement of tribal meetings. However, the persistent blowing of the vuvuzela’s plastic, mass-produced descendant caused an audible drone during every match of the 2010 World Cup.

“As a social psychologist, I focus on intergroup relations,” Gaither said. “When the World Cup first started, I noticed two main things: First, it was the first World Cup hosted on the African continent, which I thought was a big deal on its own. Second, the controversy surrounding the use of these vuvuzela trumpets, much of which was coming from Westernized nations—the United States and Europe.”

“[This phenomenon] … made me wonder if all this controversy was not necessarily only linked to the fact that the vuvuzelas created a noise that bothered people but moreso linked to this idea of ingroup/outgroup perceptions that we sometimes see in sports, such as soccer.”

In her paper, Gaither theorizes that the outcry over vuvuzela could have been an episode of symbolic racism—racism’s more subtle, insidious cousin. While soccer continues to struggle with racism, specifically anti-black racism—United States national team forward Jozy Altidore was subjected to racist chants while playing for his club team in Holland recently—Gaither believes a better understanding and awareness of one's ingroup and outgroup perceptions could help mitigate some forms of intergroup conflict and racial bias.

The paper was published in the February issue of the International Review for the Sociology of Sport. 

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In some James Bond films, the spy and his enemies undergo various biometric screenings, such as retinal and handprint scans, to access important info or gain control a super secret weapon. The next time we see Bond, he could get a knee MRI to learn a covert code to stop a rogue evil weapon.  

Wait, what? A knee MRI could identify someone much like a fingerprint or eye scan? It's true - Lior Shamir, a professor of computer science at Lawrence Tech University, has discovered that people’s knees are as unique as our fingerprints or eyes.

“I used to work on genetics [research] and with genetics you start thinking about what makes people different,” he says. “[This could be] something, like a fingerprint and iris, [that] is so different—our external as well as our internal [traits are unique].”

Using an algorithm, Shamir looked at a database of knee MRIs from 2,686 patients. Each person received a baseline MRI scan and a second image two years later. The algorithm looks at the pixels that make up each MRI and each scan’s unique texture and compares it to the database of images. Even though the program looks at the images at a minuscule level, Shamir notes that in some cases, even an untrained eye can match some of the knees. The program, of course, is much more reliable than the naked eye, assuring 93 percent accuracy in matching a person’s first knee image to the second.

“The accuracy cannot compete with fingerprints and iris [scans],” he says. “It’s visionary … internal body parts can be [used in] biometrics.”

Even though knees change over time, with cartilage, meniscus, and ligaments wearing down, the algorithm can still match the original picture of the knee with its newer version. While Shamir was unable to compare the knees after longer periods of time, say like what might happen over a 20-year period, he thinks that it is more difficult for people to drastically modify their knees. He believes that using a knee to definitively identify a person could be more effective in cases where people were trying to dupe the system. Anyone who has seen the movie “Seven” remembers that the serial killer sheers off all his fingertips to avoid leaving prints at the scene. While this is an extreme case, there are ways that people can trick current biometrical technology—it’s much harder to modify knees without surgery.

“The knee needs to change substantially to trick the algorithm and that is not easy to do because it involves an invasive procedure. It is not like wearing gloves or wearing sunglasses,” he explains.

While MRI identification of internal parts isn’t currently practical, if MRI technology advances quickly and becomes more affordable, it could be used to identify people at airports, for example.

The study appears in the International Journal of Biometrics.

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Melissa Sue Anderson played Mary Ingalls on the TV series "Little House on the Prairie." A new article in the journal Pediatrics says Mary's blindness wasn't caused by scarlet fever, but by an inflammatory brain disease called viral meningoencephalitis.

Scarlet fever plays the villain in some of the best children's books: It got "Little Women's" Beth March. It got the child in "The Velveteen Rabbit" (although the kid survives, so, really, the fever got the stuffed rabbit). And it robbed Mary Ingalls, sweet sister of "Little House" series author Laura Ingalls Wilder, of her sight. 

Or so we were told. But today, the journal Pediatrics asserts that it wasn't scarlet fever that caused Mary's blindness -- it was viral meningoencephalitis, an inflammatory disease that attacks the brain.

This is the sort of thing that is extremely interesting if you are interested in this sort of thing. And we'd wager many people are: The "Little House" books have remained in print ever since the initial publication of "Little House in the Big Woods" in 1932, and they're still popular today, with three titles landing on the School Library Journal's 2012 list of best children's chapter books. Even if you never read the books, you probably remember the TV series, which aired from 1974 to 1983.  

Dr. Beth Tarini, assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Michigan, and her co-authors make their claim after scouring epidemiological data on blindness and infectious disease around the time of Mary's illness, plus analyzing local newspapers and Laura's unpublished memoir, "Pioneer Girl." For Tarini, it's the culmination of a project she began in medical school 10 years ago, after a confusing conversation with a professor. 

"I was in my pediatric rotation, and we were talking about scarlet fever," says Tarini. She remembers commenting that scarlet fever can make you go blind. "The professor said, 'No ...,' and I said, 'But Mary Ingalls went blind!' ... So I got on a detective mission of sorts."

Mary Ingalls did indeed lose her sight when she was 14, in 1879. Here's the line from the "Little House" novel "By the Shores of Silver Lake": "Mary and Carrie and baby Grace and Ma all had scarlet fever. Far worst of all, the fever had settled in Mary's eyes and Mary was blind." 

Laura might've attributed Mary's blindness to scarlet fever to make it easier for children to understand, Tarini says. Readers were familiar with scarlet fever as literary device, but less so with "brain fever," as meningoencephalitis was called then. 

In the mid-1800s, scarlet fever was one of the most fatal infectious diseases among American children, with case fatality rates ranging from 15 percent to 30 percent. "As late as 1910, scarlet fever was cited as one of the top four causes of blindness, along with measles, meningitis, and 'other diseases of the head,'" the authors write in the Pediatrics article.

But just before "By the Shores of Silver Lake" was published, Laura wrote this in a 1937 letter to her daughter, Rose: "Mary had spinal meningitis [sic] some sort of spinal sickness. I am not sure if the Dr. named it. We learned later when Pa took her from De Smet, South Dakota to Chicago, Illinois to a specialist that the nerves of her eyes were paralyzed and there was no hope." And the register for Mary's school, the Iowa College for the Blind, lists the oldest Ingalls girl's cause of blindness as "brain fever."

Tarini and her co-authors matched these clues with the description of Mary's illness in Laura's memoir, and mentions in the town newspaper, and all signs pointed to meningoencephalitis. Mary probably caught the virus like any of us catch a virus today, with the added risk factor of living in close quarters, making it easier to spread diseases.

Mary's meningoencephalitis likely caused optic neuritis, or inflammation of her optic nerves, which resulted in her vision loss.

Besides settling a 10-year score with a med school professor, Tarini says the purpose of the paper is to remind physicians that their perception of a disease is often very different from their patients' perception. Even today, Tarini says, if she tells parents their child has scarlet fever, they get really worried: "They look aghast! And in my head, I'm thinking, scarlet fever today is no different than strep throat with a rash. But they say, 'Oh, scarlet fever! That's deadly!' And I'm like, it's the 21st century!'"

"So we, as physicians, look at disease in a very clinical way. But that's just my perspective," Tarini says. Meanwhile, say "scarlet fever" to a worried parent, and he or she hears something that's dire and dangerous, thanks to the stories they remember of Mary Ingalls' blindness or Beth March's death. "So I have to be attuned to that, and attuned to the fact that my diagnosis might be taken more out of proportion, and cause more anxiety, than I would think," she says.

It's nice to know someone is watching over the maladies of beloved characters in classic children's literature, but let's not neglect the fictional ones. Is anyone available to investigate Matthew Cuthbert's alleged "heart attack" in "Anne of Green Gables"?

Related: 

• Harry Potter's headache finally diagnosed

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