Four out of ten women who go on a diet end up heavier than they were when they started watching their waistline, a study has revealed.

A 'foot off the gas' approach to weightloss once a target is reached coupled with a lack of willpower means many dieters quickly pile weight back on.

Partners who cook or buy unhealthy food or big portions were also blamed for backfiring diets as was the 'office feeder' whose desk is crammed with cake and biscuits.

It also emerged a large percentage of women will start noticing the pounds creeping back on just 21 days after reaching their ideal weight.

So this means diets are scientifically bad for you right? Will someone pass me that Mars bar?

Scientists say they have carried out a "rigorous scientific analysis" of dance moves to discover what makes a man attractive to women.

Using 3D motion-capture technology to film dancers and create computerised 3D avatars the team showed the footage to 35 women to see what they liked.

It was found dance movements which indicate health and reproductive potential - including large and movements of the neck and trunk -  were seen as the most attractive.

Unsurprisingly the psychologists from Northumbria University say twitchy and repetitive "Dad dancing" with too much arm waving isn't cool and won't help you pull.

The results showed that eight movement variables made the difference between a “good” and a “bad” dancer… which is why whenever there is music playing we will be standing in the corner tapping out toes uncomfortably.

Mathematicians around the world are said to be celebrating today because the time and date have formed a sequential number.

At 12.34pm and 56.7 seconds the time and date read 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 -- because it's the eighth day of the ninth month of tenth year this millennium.

This was said to be the first ‘pure’ time and date sequence day since 01.23.45am on 6.7.89.

Other numerically interesting days celebrated include Pi Day (3.14) and square root days - when the value of the month and year are the same number that make the last two digits of the year when multiplied together.

Obviously in countries like America - where they can't write the date properly - they will now have a little longer to wait for the next pure Sequential Day.

A Belgian frite-frier has set a new world record by spending 83 consecutive hours frying chips… but he burnt his fingers in the process.

Chris Verschueren smashed the previous record by over 11 hours by producing and frying more than 1,500 kilos of chips.

But Verschueren says the record bid and processing all those potatoes left him with sore feet and wrists, and he brunt his fingers.

Record adjudicators allowed him to take a 100-minute break after 20 hours, but other than that he worked straight through.

Unfortunately for Verschueren he failed to set a new record for the amount of chips sold… meaning he now has his own personal potato mountain.

A 21ft speedboat has been converted into a pool table at a cost of £40,000… as a memorial to a dead waterskier.

Peter McKee, of Master Billiards in Australia was commissioned to make the table in memory of waterskier Brian Rix who died in 1999.

McKee says the job was incredibly difficult because he had to cut the slate to match the curve of the boat.

There was also the little matter of where to put the pockets, in the end he went with seven, six in a traditional pattern and then an extra at the end of the table.

This should make it easier for even bad players to sink the balls… which we guess is a particularly appropriate term.

A course in 'Zombie Studies' has been launched for students at the University of Baltimore.

But unfortunately for those wanting to learn how to survive the undead apocalypse, the class is actually part of the English curriculum.

As such, topics discussed will not include whether flame-throwers or shotguns are the preferred method of killing the undead.

Instead students will watch zombie movies and read comics or books featuring the creature, to analyse how literature and mass media work.

Course credits will be awarded for the writing of zombie movie scripts rather than essays... and if the course it scheduled before 2pm most of the students will look undead too.

School pupils who use social networks like Facebook and Twitter perform up to 20 percent worse in exams, claim researchers.

Academics say students active on Facebook also spend less time studying when they should be swotting up for the exams.

A team from the Open University Netherlands looked at 219 students and analysed their used of Facebook while they were studying.

It was found most were unable to multi-task, got distracted by what their online pals were doing and then performed worse in exams.

In fact grades were on average 20 percent lower than those who didn't use Facebook -- Newslite does not like this.

An artist has created an amazing set of high-speed photographs which capture the precise moment bullets pass through objects.

Lex Augusteijn from the Netherlands uses a Canon 40D DSLR camera along with a flash unit to take the stunning images.

His equipment is all electronically controlled to achieve precise timing (as is the gun) -- though it still requires a lot of patience to create the scene.

Lex says it can take hundreds of shots to get a scene just right… meaning his neighbours must think they live next to a war zone.

Scientists say they have calculated the true price of happiness as £50,000.

Researchers from Princeton University analysed over 450,000 responses to a quality of life study to see what makes people happy.

They found that while a persons life evaluation rose with annual income, happiness stopped rising beyond a salary of $75,000 (£50,000).

After that everyday experiences and things like family and friend relationships have more of an impact than additional cash.

Should the boffins want to test this finding, we are more than willing to put ourselves forward to accept a £100,000 salary… for purely scientific purposes you understand.

A police force has revealed a catalogue of more than 150 supernatural and paranormal cases which have been reported to them in recent years.

Details of investigations involving ghosts, UFO's, aliens and fairies were released by Devon and Cornwall Police after a Freedom of Information request.

In some examples people have called the police force to deal with spooks in their houses, or even to a field infested with fairies.

However, most of the paranormal reports revolve around UFO sighting, and peaked in 1996 when a variety of strangely shaped spaceships were spotted.

In odd news the 1996 peak also coincided with the release of the movie Independence Day and the popularity of the X Files on TV.