For some, the hardest part of hitting the gym is lacing up their shoes. But for others, its the actual exercise that makes working out so excruciating. The labored breathing, sore muscles, and sweat dripping into your eyes can be a high or just one step above torture depending on which type of person you are. A new study aimed to determine what accounts for these differences, and it turns out your genetics might be to blame for how much you dread going for a run.

The British Psychological Societys Research Digest reports on a study at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands, which enlisted 115 pairs of identical twins, 111 pairs of non-identical twins, 35 siblings related to the twins and 6 sibling pairs not from families with twins. Everyone rode an exercise bike for 20 minutes and completed a 20-minute run, both at a comfortable pace. Researchers monitored breathing to ensure the workouts were low intensity, and a warm up and cool down accompanied the routines. Subjects also completed a second short ride on the exercise bike that was more vigorous.

The siblings completed assessments while exercising, answering how they felt while working out, how much effort they put in, and whether they were energetic, lively, jittery or tense. Additionally, participants were interviewed about how often they exercised and to what intensity. Using the responses, researchers determined the participants psychological state during physical activity.

Then, scientists looked at the data to determine whether identical twins, who also have identical genes, had similar responses to exercising compared to fraternal twins and non-twin siblings. This allowed them to theorizehow much genetics actually played a role in someone's mental state during physical fitness. They concluded that genetics could account for up to 37 percent of the differences in the way people experienced exercise. Unsurprisingly, people who enjoyed fitness were prone to doing it more. However, its important to note that the study doesnt show a cause and effect relationship.

While this new research indicates that somemay not be born to love fitness, theres no denying that we should still do it. Aside from helping maintain weight, working out can lift your mood, reduce stress and anxiety, strengthen bones and and reduce risk of certain diseases.

Thankfully, it is possible to actually enjoy physical activity. Health reports that the most important thing is to take up an activity you actually like (and yes, there is bound to be something). "Too often I see people who sign up to do something like running, even though they know they hate running," Shavise Glascoe, exercise physiologist at the Johns Hopkins Weight Management Center, explained to the magazine. Even non-vigorous activities like walking your dog or dancing in your room count as exercise.

Finding a workout buddy is an easy way to instantly make jogging, walking or lifting weights more interesting. A study from 2013 found that people who worked out with a spouse, friend or family member reported more enjoyment than doing it alone. If the activity took place around nature, people reported even more enjoyment and better moods. So, stop reading this, grab a buddy and hit your nearest walking trail.

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Genetics, Not Laziness, Might Be Why You Hate Exercising - Medical Daily

Human history is often something modern man only sees as through a glass, darkly. This is particularly the case when that history did not occur in the Mediterranean, the Nile Valley, India, or China, or when there is no written record on which scholars can rely. Exacerbating the disrupting effects of time on history can be when that history occurs in a region where extensive migration has disrupted whatever temporarily stable civilization happened to have taken root at that place at any particular time.

But humans leave traces of themselves in their history and a variety of such traces have been the source of reconstructions outside conventional sources. Luigi Cavalli-Sforza began the study of human population genetics as a way to understand this history in 1971 in The Genetics of Human Populations, and later extended these studies to include language and how it influences gene flow between human populations. More recent efforts to use genetics to reconstruct history include Deep Ancestry: The Landmark DNA Quest to Decipher Our Distant Past by Spencer Wells (National Geographic: 2006), and The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science that Reveals our Genetic Ancestry by Brian Sykes (Carrol & Graf: 2002). And even more recently, genetic studies have illuminated the "fine structure" of human populations in England (see "Fine-structure Genetic Mapping of Human Population in Britain").

Two recent reports illustrate how genetics can inform history: the first, in the American Journal of Human Genetics entitled "Continuity and Admixture in the Last Five Millennia of Levantine History from Ancient Canaanite and Present-Day Lebanese Genome Sequences"; and a second in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, entitled "Genomic landscape of human diversity across Madagascar." In the first study, authors* from The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, University of Cambridge, University of Zurich, University of Otago, Bournemouth University, Lebanese American University, and Harvard University found evidence of genetic admixture over 5,000 years of a Canaanite population that has persisted in Lebanese populations into the modern era. This population is interesting for historians in view of the central location of the ancestral home of the Canaanites, the Levant, in the Fertile Crescent that ran from Egypt through Mesopotamia. The Canaanites also inhabited the Levant during the Bronze Age and provide a critical link between the Neolithic transition from hunter gatherer societies to agriculture. This group (known to the ancient Greeks as the Phoenicians) is also a link to the great early societies recognized through their historical writings and civilizations (including the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans); if the Canaanites had any such texts or other writings they have not survived. In addition, the type of genetic analyses that have been done for European populations has not been done for descendants of inhabitants of the Levant from this historical period. This paper uses genetic comparisons between 99 modern day residents of Lebanon (specifically, from Sidon and the Lebanese interior) and ancient DNA (aDNA) from ~3,700 year old genomes from petrous bone of individuals interred in gravesites in Sidon. For aDNA, these analyses yielded 0.4-2.3-fold genomic DNA coverage and 53-264-fold mitochondrial DNA coverage, and also compared Y chromosome sequences with present-day Lebanese, two Canaanite males and samples from the 1000 Genomes Project. Over one million single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were used for comparison.

These results indicated that the Canaanite ancestry was an admixture of local Neolithic populations and migrants from Chalcolithic (Copper Age) Iran. The authors estimate from these linkage disequilibrium studies that this admixture occurred between 6,600 and 3,550 years ago, a date that is consistent with recorded mass migrations in the region during that time. Perhaps surprisingly, their results also show that the majority of the present-day Lebanese population has inherited most of their genomic DNA from these Canaanite ancestors. These researchers also found traces of Eurasian ancestry consistent with conquests by outside populations during the period from 3,750-2,170 years ago, as well as the expansion of Phoenician maritime trade network that extended during historical time to the Iberian Peninsula.

The second paper arose from genetic studies of an Asian/African admixture population on Mozambique. This group** from the University of Toulouse, INSERM, the University of Bordeaux, University of Indonesia, the Max Plank Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Institut genomique, Centre Nacional de Genotypage, University of Melbourne, and the Universite de la Rochelle, showed geographic stratification between ancestral African (mostly Bantu) and Asian (Austronesean) ancestors. Cultural, historical, linguistic, ethnographic, archeological, and genetic studies supports the conclusion that Madagascar residents have traits from both populations but the effects of settlement history are termed "contentious" by these authors. Various competing putative "founder" populations (including Arabic, Indian, Papuan, and/or Jewish populations as well as first settlers found only in legend, under names like "Vazimba," "Kimosy," and "Gola") have been posited as initial settlers. These researchers report an attempt to illuminate the ancestry of the Malagasy by a study of human genetics.

These results showed common Bantu and Austronesian descent for the population with what the authors termed "limited" paternal contributions from Europe and Middle Eastern populations. The admixture of African and Austronesian populations occurred "recently" (i.e., over the past millennium) but was gender-biased and heterogeneous, which reflected for these researchers independent colonization by the two groups. The results also indicated that detectable genetic structure can be imposed on human populations over a relatively brief time (~ a few centuries).

Using a "grid-based approach" the researchers performed a high-resolution genetic diversity study that included maternal and paternal lineages as well as genome-wide data from 257 villages and over 2,700 Malagasy individuals. Maternal inheritance patterns were interrogated using mitochondrial DNA and patterns of paternity assayed using Y chromosomal sequences. Non-gender specific relationships were assessed through 2.5 million SNPs. Mitochondrial DNA analyses showed maternal inheritance from either African or East Asian origins (with one unique Madagascar variant termed M23) in roughly equal amounts, with no evidence of maternal gene flow from Europe or the Middle East. The M23 variant shows evidence of recent (within 900-1500 years) origin. Y chromosomal sequences, in contrast are much more prevalent from African origins (70.7% Africa:20.7% East Asia); the authors hypothesize that the remainder may reflect Muslim influences, with evidence of but little European ancestry.

Admixture assessments support Southeast Asian (Indonesian) and East African source populations for the Malagasy admixture. These results provide the frequency of the African component to be ~59%, the Asian component frequency to be ~37%, and the Western European component to have a frequency of about 4% (albeit with considerable variation, e.g., African ancestry can range from ~26% to almost 93%). Similar results were obtained when the frequency of chromosomal fragments shared with other populations were compared to the Malagasy population (finding the closest link to Asian populations from south Borneo, and excluding Indian, Somali, and Ethiopian populations, although the analysis was sensitive in one individual to detect French Basque ancestry). The split with ancestral Asian populations either occurred ~2,500 years ago or by slower divergence between ~2,000-3,000 years ago, while divergence with Bantu populations occurred more recently (~1,500 years ago).

There were also significant differences in geographic distribution between descendants of these ancestral populations. Maternal African lineages were found predominantly in north Madagascar, with material Asian lineages found in central and southern Madagascar (from mtDNA analyses). Paternal lineages were generally much lower overall for Asian descendants (~30% in central Madagascar) based on Y chromosome analyses. Genome-wide analyses showed "highlanders" had predominantly Asian ancestry (~65%) while coastal inhabitants had predominantly (~65%) African ancestry; these results depended greatly on the method of performing the analyses which affected the granularity of the geographic correlates. Finally, assessing admixture patterns indicated that the genetic results are consistent with single intermixing event (500-900 years ago) for all but one geographic area, which may have seen a first event 28 generations ago and a second one only 4 generations ago. These researchers also found evidence of at least one population bottleneck, where the number of individuals dropped to a few hundred people about 1,000-800 years ago.

These results are represented pictorially in the paper:

In view of the current political climate, the eloquent opening of the paper deserves attention:

Ancient long-distance voyaging between continents stimulates the imagination, raises questions about the circumstances surrounding such voyages, and reminds us that globalization is not a recent phenomenon. Moreover, populations which thereby come into contact can exchange genes, goods, ideas and technologies.

* Marc Haber, Claude Doumet-Serhal, Christiana Scheib, Yali Xue, Petr Danecek, Massimo Mezzavilla, Sonia Youhanna, Rui Martiniano, Javier Prado-Martinez, Micha Szpak, Elizabeth Matisoo-Smith, Holger Schutkowski, Richard Mikulski, Pierre Zalloua, Toomas Kivisild, Chris Tyler-Smith

** Denis Pierrona, Margit Heiskea, Harilanto Razafindrazakaa, Ignace Rakotob, Nelly Rabetokotanyb, Bodo Ravololomangab, Lucien M.-A. Rakotozafyb, Mireille Mialy Rakotomalalab, Michel Razafiarivonyb, Bako Rasoarifetrab, Miakabola Andriamampianina Raharijesyb, Lolona Razafindralambob, Ramilisoninab, Fulgence Fanonyb, Sendra Lejamblec, Olivier Thomasc, Ahmed Mohamed Abdallahc, Christophe Rocherc,, Amal Arachichec, Laure Tonasoa, Veronica Pereda-lotha, Stphanie Schiavinatoa, Nicolas Brucatoa, Francois-Xavier Ricauta, Pradiptajati Kusumaa,d,e, Herawati Sudoyod,e, Shengyu Nif, Anne Bolandg, Jean-Francois Deleuzeg, Philippe Beaujardh, Philippe Grangei, Sander Adelaarj, Mark Stonekingf, Jean-Aim Rakotoarisoab, Chantal Radimilahy, and Thierry Letelliera

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Using Genetics to Uncover Human History - JD Supra (press release)

The opening of Hendrix Genetics in Grand Island on Aug. 15 is an excellent example of the power of markets supplemented by appropriate government policy.

Feeding a growing world population now estimated to be 7.5 billion provides both a challenge and an opportunity as food producers endeavor to meet the growing demand for food. For Hendrix Genetics this demand represents opportunity as it is a world leader in turkey, layer and trout breeding as well as a major player in swine, salmon and guinea fowl production.

The numbers connected with Hendrix Genetics are impressive. They currently have 25 percent of the United States egg hatchery market and the new hatchery in Grand Island will serve 10 percent of the U.S. market. With good science and management, poultry production is an excellent way to provide quality food for both domestic and world markets.

Hendrix Genetics was willing and able to create the Grand Island plant because essential markets were available to meet their needs. After a nationwide search they determined that Grand Island was an excellent location. It provided needed isolation that was essential for the required biosecurity. In our area they found infrastructure for transportation needs, access to willing, affordable and capable labor and area producers to build and manage outlying barns as well as to provide feed.

For each component in the production process, prices, profits and wages had to be sufficient to bring together all the resources necessary to open and operate the plant.

Government policies had to align with needs of Hendrix Genetics and our community gave them an excellent invitation to grow our economy. The work of the Grand Island Area Economic Development Corporation was very important and we would add necessary and effective. Government and private enterprise had an effective partnership.

Also to be noted is that Hendrix Genetics is based in Holland and joins other industries in our community that are based in other countries such as New Holland-Italy and JBS-Brazil. Global interdependence is a reality and a plus for all those ready and willing to participate in the global economy.

America first may be effective political rhetoric in some parts of our country, but it is not good long term economic policy. Free trade and open borders will serve us better, particularly the food producers in the Midwest who are willing and able to feed the growing world population and rely on world markets.

This confluence of markets has added an $18 million investment to the city of Grand Island, more than 40 permanent jobs and an economic infusion estimated at $40 million.

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Hendrix Genetics is an economic 'win-win' for GI - Grand Island Independent

A white supremacist wears a shirt with the slogan European Brotherhood at a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S., August 12, 2017. Photo by Joshua Roberts/Reuters

Whether youre a white supremacist, a white nationalist or a member of the alt-right, much of your ideology centers around a simple principle: being white. The creation of a white ethnostate, populated and controlled by pure descendants of white Europeans, ranks high on your priority list.

Yet, when confronted with genetic evidence suggesting someone isnt pure blood, as white supremacists put it, they do not cast the person out of online communities. They bargain.

A new study from UCLA found when genetic ancestry tests like 23andMe spot mixed ancestry among white supremacists, most respond in three ways to discount the results and keep members with impure genealogy in their clan. Their reactions range from challenging the basic math behind the tests to accusing Jewish conspirators of sabotage.

Some argued their family history was all the proof they needed. Or they looked in the mirror and clung to the notion that race and ethnicity are directly visible, which is false.

But the real takeaway centers on a new, nuanced pattern within white supremacist groups to redefine and solidify their ranks through genetic ancestry testing, said Aaron Panofsky, a UCLA sociologist who co-led the study presented Monday at the American Sociological Associations 112th annual meeting in Montreal.

Once they start to see that a lot of members of their community are not going to fit the all-white criteria, they start to say, Well, do we have to think about what percentage [of white European genealogy] could define membership? said Aaron Panofsky, a UCLA sociologist who co-led the study presented Monday at the American Sociological Associations 112th annual meeting in Montreal.

And this co-opting of science raises an important reminder: The best way to counter white supremacists may not be to fight their alternative facts with logical ones, according to people who rehabilitate far-right extremists.

To catalog white supremacists reactions to genetic ancestry results, this study logged onto the website Stormfront. Launched in 1995, Stormfront was an original forum of white supremacy views on the internet. The website resembles a Reddit-style social network, filled with chat forums and users posting under anonymous nicknames. By housing nearly one million archived threads and over twelve million posts by 325,000 or more members, Stormfront serves as a living history of the white nationalist movement.

Over the course of two years, Panofsky and fellow UCLA sociologist Joan Donovan combed through this online community and found 153 posts where users volunteered the results of genetic ancestry tests. They then read through the subsequent discussion threads 2,341 posts wherein the community faced their collective identities.

No surprise, but white supremacists celebrate the test results that suggest full European ancestry. One example:

67% British isles18% Balkan15% Scandinavian100% white! HURRAY!

On the flip side, Panofsky and Donovan found that bad news was rarely met with expulsion from the group.

So sometimes, someone says, Yeah, this makes you not white. Go kill yourself,' Panofsky said. Much more of the responses are what we call repair responses where theyre saying, OK, this is bad news. Lets think about how you should interpret this news to make it to make it right.'

These repair responses fell into two categories.

Reject! One coping mechanism involved the outright rejection of genetic tests validity. Some argued their family history was all the proof they needed. Or they looked in the mirror and clung to the notion that race and ethnicity are directly visible, which is false, University of Chicago population geneticist John Novembre told NewsHour.

Genetically, the idea of white European as a single homogenous group does not hold up.

Though the genetics of whiteness are not completely understood, the gene variants known to influence skin color are more diluted across the globe than any random spot in the human genome. That is to say, humans appear, based on our skin pigmentation, to be much more different from each other than we actually are on a genomic level, Novembre said.

Others accused the ancestry companies of being run and manipulated by Jews, in an attempt to thwart white nationalism, but even other Stormfront users pointed out the inaccuracy of this idea.

Reinterpret:The biggest proportion of responses 1,260 posts tried to rationalize the result by offering an educational or scientific explanation for the genetic ancestry results. Many in the online community played a numbers game. If a genetic ancestry test stated someone was 95 percent white European, they would merely count the remaining 5 percent as a statistical error.

Many adapted this line of thinking to make exceptions for those with mixed ancestry. Nearly 500 posts made appeals by misapplying theories of genetics or by saying whiteness is a culture, not just biology an apparent contradiction to the mission of forming a pure ethnostate. This trend led some white supremacists to debate the boundaries of their ethnostate, Panofsky said.

They start to think about the genetic signs and markers of white nationalism that might be useful for our community, Panofsky said. [They say] maybe there are going to be lots of different white nations, each with slightly different rules for nationalism? Or an overlapping set of nations, that are genetically defined in their own ways?

But these arguments are moot, because these genetic ancestry boundaries are inherently built on shaky ground.

If it seems white supremacists are making arbitrary decisions about their ancestry tests, its hard to blame them. Direct-to-consumer ancestry testing is a slippery, secretive industry, built largely upon arbitrary scientific definitions.

Its black box because its corporate, said Jonathan Marks, biological anthropologist at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. The way these answers are generated depends strongly on the sampling, the laboratory work that you do and the algorithm that you use to analyze the information. All of this stuff is intellectual property. We cant really evaluate it.

White nationalists carry torches on the grounds of the University of Virginia, on the eve of a planned Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S. August 11, 2017. Picture taken August 11, 2017. Photo by Alejandro Alvarez/News2Share via REUTERS

Genetic ancestry companies assess a persons geographic heritage by analyzing DNA markers in their autosomal DNA (for individual variation), mitochondrial DNA (for maternal history) or their Y chromosome (for paternal history). The latter two sources of DNA remain unchanged from parent to child to grandchild, aside from a relatively small number of mutations that occur naturally during life. These mutations can serve as branch points in the trees of human ancestry, Panofsky and Donovan wrote, and as DNA markers specific to different regions around the world.

When genetic anthropologists examine the full scope of humans, they find that historical patterns in DNA markers make the case that everyone in the world came from a common ancestor who was born in East Africa within the last 100,000 to 200,000 years. Plus, groups intermingled so much over the course of history that genetic diversity is a continuum both within American and Europe, through to Asia and Africa, Novembre of the University of Chicago said.

WATCH: Years after transatlantic slavery, DNA tests give clarity

Genetically, the idea of white European as a single homogenous group does not hold up. The classic geographic boundaries of the Mediterranean, Caucasus, and Urals that have shaped human movement and contact are all permeable barriers, said Novembre. Most of the genetic variants you or I carry, we share with other people all across the globeIf you are in some ethnic group, there are not single genetic variants that you definitely have and everyone outside the group does not.

Commercial ancestry companies know these truths, but bend them to draw arbitrary conclusions about peoples ancestry, researchers say. They compare DNA from a customer to the genomes of people or reference groups whose ancestries they claim to already know.

23andMe, for instance, uses reference dataset that include genomes from 10,418 people who were carefully chosen to reflect populations that existed before transcontinental travel and migration were common (at least 500 years ago). To build these geographic groups, they select individuals who say all four of their grandparents were born in the same country, and then remove outliers whose DNA markers do not match well within the group.

These choices willfully bias the genetic definitions for both geography and time. They claim that a relatively small group of modern people can reveal the past makeup of Europe, Africa and Asia and the ancestral histories for millions of customers. But their reference groups skew toward the present and overpromise on the details of where people came from.

While 23andMe denounces the use of their services to justify hateful ideologies, they do not actively ban known white supremacists from their DNA testing.

A study by 23andMe reported that with their definition of European ancestry, there is an average of 98.6 percent European ancestry among self-reported European-Americans. But given all Ive said, we should digest this with caution, Novembre said. An individual with 100 percent European ancestry tests is simply someone who looks very much like the European reference samples being used.

Though ancestry companies cite research that claims genetic tests can pinpoint someone within 100 miles of their European ancestral home, thats not always the case. Marks offered the recent example of three blond triplets who took an ancestry test for the TV show The Doctors. The test said the triplets were 99 percent European. But one sister had more English and Irish ancestry, while another had more French and German. Did we mention they are identical triplets?

That shows you just how much slop there is in these kinds of of ancestry estimates, Marks said.

Marks described commercial ancestry testing as recreational science because its proprietary nature lacks public, academic oversight, but uses scientific practices to validate stereotypical notions of race and ethnicity.

While 23andMe denounces the use of their services to justify hateful ideologies, they do not actively ban known white supremacists from their DNA testing, BuzzFeed reported.

But white supremacists arent the only ones to buy into these wayward notions when genetic ancestry tests support their self-prescribed identities or reject the science when things dont pan out as expected. African-Americans do it too, as Columbia University sociologist Alondra Nelson found in 2008.

Consumers have what I call genealogical aspiration, Nelson told NewsHour. They often make choices among dozens of companies based on the kind of information theyre seeking. If youre interested in finding whether or not youre a member of the small group that has, for example, some trace of Neanderthal DNA, then youre going to go to a company that focuses on that.

She said Panofsky and Donovans study shows that white nationalists will engage in a process of psychic and symbolic negotiation when genetic ancestry results fail to satisfy their impossible idea for racial purity.

But Panofsky, who doesnt support or sympathize with white nationalists, believes these negotiations are not a reason to dismiss white nationalists as ignorant and stupid.

I think that is actually a dangerous view, Panofsky said. Our study reveals that these white nationalists are often engaging with genetic information in extraordinarily sophisticated ways.

Many white supremacists are dealing with toxic shame, a perpetual subconscious belief system where their sense of identity is negative.

White supremacists are trying to deal with the issue of identity as an intellectual problem, said Tony McAleer, the co-founder and board chair of Life After Hate, a counseling organization that rehabs white supremacists. But he said the rehab of white nationalist views doesnt start with challenging their mental gymnastics with data.

We need to deal with the emotional drivers first, McAleer said. University of Maryland did a study of violent extremists and what they found was the number one correlated factor with someone joining a violent extremist group was childhood trauma.

But McAleer continued that the emotional trauma fueling white supremacy extends past physical and sexual abuse. Many white supremacists are dealing with toxic shame, a perpetual subconscious belief system where their sense of identity is negative.

The person feels at a subconscious level theyre not good enough, McAleer said. One way to react to that is to perpetually spend all of your efforts to prove to the world that you are a winner.

So, Life After Hates antidote to this shame is compassion and empathy, he said. Rather than toss statistics about how Muslims arent flooding the country and do not lead to spikes in crime, they will take a white supremacist to an Islamic center and have them sit down and spend time there.

A personal connection is a much more powerful way to change the dynamics within a person, than it is to re-educate the dataset thats in their head, McAleer said.

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How white supremacists respond when their DNA says they're not ... - PBS NewsHour