Lucid dreaming is the term given to the state where the dreamer is aware they are dreaming, and has some control over how the dream progresses. Once considered a myth, science has confirmed lucid dreams exist, and found some methods work to increase the prospects people will have them.

Nevertheless, some of these require advanced equipment, while others are far from reliable. This is unfortunate both because people enjoy the dreams so much, and they are also considered a potential tool for healing traumas and controlling unhealthy behavior. Dr Denholm Aspy of the University of Adelaide wondered whether combining techniques would bring greater success.

Aspy instructed 169 participants in techniques developed to induce lucid dreaming. One of these, reality testing, gets people into the habit of regularly checking to make sure they really are awake. Mnemonic induction of lucid dreams (MILD) has participants set alarms to wake them after five hours and recite “The next time I am dreaming, I will remember that I’m dreaming” before going back to sleep. MILD practitioners also imagine what it would be like to be in a lucid dream.

In the journal Dreaming, Aspy reports reality testing on its own produced no benefit, but of those who tried the combination of reality testing and MILD, 53 percent had a lucid dream during the trial period, with 17 percent successful each night. He told IFLScience this exceeds any previous study conducted without interventions such as masks that shine lights in people’s eyes on detecting REM sleep.

Given the lack of benefit from reality testing alone, Aspy acknowledged the lucid dreams may be entirely attributable to MILD. He noted, however, his success rate exceeds that of previous studies of MILD, even those conducted by the inventor himself.

Approximately 55 percent of people have a lucid dream at some point in their life, but for most people these are rare. Aspy himself became interested in lucid dreaming after having one as a child, and changed his psychology PhD from studying non-verbal communication after having a lucid dream the night before he was to begin his doctorate.

Most lucid dreamers initially wake quickly but, Aspy told IFLScience, with experience can learn to extend them for up to an hour. Aspy is seeking volunteers for further studies, and told IFLScience he chose the one-week trial period in the hope of producing an effect quickly enough to be suitable for future studies of applications like treating nighmares.

Read more: http://www.iflscience.com

In 1997, ecologists Daniel Janzen and Winnie Hallwachs approached an orange juice company in Costa Rica with an off-the-wall idea.

In exchange for donating a portion of unspoiled, forested land to the Área de Conservación Guanacaste — a nature preserve in the country’s northwest — the park would allow the company to dump its discarded orange peels and pulp, free of charge, in a heavily grazed, largely deforested area nearby.

One year later, one thousand trucks poured into the national park, offloading over 12,000 metric tons of sticky, mealy, orange compost onto the worn-out plot.

The first deposit of orange peels in 1996. Photo by Dan Janzen.

The site was left untouched and largely unexamined for over a decade. A sign was placed to ensure future researchers could locate and study it.

16 years later, Janzen dispatched graduate student Timothy Treuer to look for the site where the food waste was dumped.

Treuer initially set out to locate the large placard that marked the plot — and failed.

“It’s a huge sign, bright yellow lettering. We should have been able to see it,” Treuer says. After wandering around for half an hour with no luck, he consulted Janzen, who gave him more detailed instructions on how to find the plot.

When he returned a week later and confirmed he was in the right place, Treuer was floored. Compared to the adjacent barren former pastureland, the site of the food waste deposit was “like night and day.”

The site of the orange peel deposit (L) and adjacent pastureland (R). Photo by Leland Werden.

“It was just hard to believe that the only difference between the two areas was a bunch of orange peels. They look like completely different ecosystems,” he explains.

The area was so thick with vegetation he still could not find the sign.

Treuer and a team of researchers from Princeton University studied the site over the course of the following three years.

The results, published in the journal “Restoration Ecology,” highlight just how completely the discarded fruit parts assisted the area’s turnaround.

The ecologists measured various qualities of the site against an area of former pastureland immediately across the access road used to dump the orange peels two decades prior. Compared to the adjacent plot, which was dominated by a single species of tree, the site of the orange peel deposit featured two dozen species of vegetation, most thriving.

Lab technician Erik Schilling explores the newly overgrown orange peel plot. Photo by Tim Treuer.

In addition to greater biodiversity, richer soil, and a better-developed canopy, researchers discovered a tayra (a dog-sized weasel) and a giant fig tree three feet in diameter, on the plot.

“You could have had 20 people climbing in that tree at once and it would have supported the weight no problem,” says Jon Choi, co-author of the paper, who conducted much of the soil analysis. “That thing was massive.”

Recent evidence suggests that secondary tropical forests — those that grow after the original inhabitants are torn down — are essential to helping slow climate change.

Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images.

In a 2016 study published in Nature, researchers found that such forests absorb and store atmospheric carbon at roughly 11 times the rate of old-growth forests.

Treuer believes better management of discarded produce — like orange peels — could be key to helping these forests regrow.

In many parts of the world, rates of deforestation are increasing dramatically, sapping local soil of much-needed nutrients and, with them, the ability of ecosystems to restore themselves.

Meanwhile, much of the world is awash in nutrient-rich food waste. In the United States, up to half of all produce in the United States is discarded. Most currently ends up in landfills.

The site after a deposit of orange peels in 1998. Photo by Dan Janzen.

“We don’t want companies to go out there will-nilly just dumping their waste all over the place, but if it’s scientifically driven and restorationists are involved in addition to companies, this is something I think has really high potential,” Treuer says.

The next step, he believes, is to examine whether other ecosystems — dry forests, cloud forests, tropical savannas — react the same way to similar deposits.

Two years after his initial survey, Treuer returned to once again try to locate the sign marking the site.

Since his first scouting mission in 2013, Treuer had visited the plot more than 15 times. Choi had visited more than 50. Neither had spotted the original sign.

In 2015, when Treuer, with the help of the paper’s senior author, David Wilcove, and Princeton Professor Rob Pringle, finally found it under a thicket of vines, the scope of the area’s transformation became truly clear.

The sign after clearing away the vines. Photo by Tim Treuer.

“It’s a big honking sign,” Choi emphasizes.

19 years of waiting with crossed fingers had buried it, thanks to two scientists, a flash of inspiration, and the rind of an unassuming fruit.

The post was updated 8/25/2017.

Read more: http://www.upworthy.com/

Stay single until you meet a guy who makes sure you walk on the inside of the sidewalk away from the street.

The guy who holds your hand shamelessly and will kiss you in public.

Stay single until you meet a guy who wants to bring you home to his parents.

Stay single until you meet the guy whose friend already knows about before you meet them.

Stay single until you meet the guy who will drop whatever to be wherever you need him.

The guy who says, “text me when you’re home safe,” and stays up until he knows you are.

Stay single until you meet the guy you’d proudly introduce to your father.

The one who doesn’t try and change you.

The guy who always texts back no questions asked.

Stay single until you meet a guy who doesn’t have time for games and is brutally honest always.

The one who pulls you close in public and kisses your forehead.

Stay single until you meet the guy pays out of respect for you and doesn’t let you touch your wallet.

Stay single until you meet the guy who keeps his word.

The one who knows when to apologize when he’s wrong.

The one who sends you flowers to your office, just because.

The guys who sends sweet texts in the middle of the meeting he knows you’re stressing over.

Stay single until you meet the guy who makes you want to be a better woman.

The one who motivates you to achieve more and be better.

Stay single until you meet a guy who is sure of you and never makes you doubt how he feels.

The one who is certain of you and his career and a future he wants you apart of.

The one who says I love you first just because he wants you to know.

Stay single until you meet the guy who never stops trying to keep you.

Because he knows getting you wasn’t the hard part but constantly giving you a reason to stay is what you deserve.

Stay single until you meet the guy who makes you feel more beautiful just standing beside him.

The one who still gives you butterflies when you walk in a room.

Stay single until you meet the guy who makes you not want to be.

The one who changes the standard you once had and suddenly no one can compare.

Until then. Stay single. 

Read more: http://thoughtcatalog.com/

At first blush, LaTia Bell is just like any other high school senior.

She likes school, especially science, and keeps her grades up with college applications just around the corner. She just started playing tennis, and in her free time, she likes to read books and learn about sharks — her favorite animal. Like most other students in the U.S., the pressure is on to keep up, stand out, and excel as competition to gain college admission continues to grow more fierce.

What you can’t see is that LaTia, despite all of her work ethic and enthusiasm, is chronically fatigued all the time.

When it’s cold — and even sometimes when it’s not — her entire body is wracked with pain. She misses weeks of school at a time in the hospital. Even though she strives to be like any other girl, LaTia’s sickle cell disease prevents that from being possible.

All photos courtesy of LaTia Bell, used with permission.

Sickle cell disease is a blood disorder that can, to put it bluntly, make life hellish.

“It seems I always get sick around the most important dates,” LaTia says, talking about her sickle cell disease like it’s a mischievous imp rather than a painful and difficult disease. “Usually when I’m sick, I miss at least three days of school. So it is really hard.”

Sickle cell disease is a genetic disorder that prevents a person’s red blood cells from becoming flexible, round, and healthy. Instead, they become rigid and crescent-shaped, unable to carry the amount of oxygen the body needs and dying off much faster than healthy blood cells do.

The result is that chronic fatigue LaTia is constantly faced with, along with other symptoms like intense, frequent pain resulting from a lack of oxygen being delivered to key body parts, causing muscles to seize up. People young and old living with sickle cell disease are also susceptible to strokes and infections and have to take medications that can take even more of a toll on the body.

The symptoms of sickle cell disease make even mundane tasks feel like impossible feats. Last year, LaTia missed weeks of school and more than a few tennis competitions because of her sickle cell crises.

But as a patient at the Aflac Center and Blood Disorders Center of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, where many young people are taught to manage their sickle cell disease, LaTia has been taught to manage her symptoms. It also helps that she has a lot of optimism and drive to do what she loves.

“I don’t really let it hold me back from my dreams and what I love to do,” says LaTia.

In spite of the challenges her disease causes, she has her heart set on studying biochemistry in college — knowing full well that stress is one of the primary factors that can trigger her disease and send her to the hospital.

Regardless, she’s choosing to aim high. “I want to be a hematologist and a marine biologist,” she says. “I expect it to be very stressful, but I’m just ready to take it on.”

LaTia also hopes that she can use her passion for learning and knowledge to someday help other people like her.

There’s no cure for sickle cell disease — only developments in pain treatment that can make the disease easier to manage. But she wants to help find a cure.

“Sickle cell doesn’t only affect the patients. It affects the families too,” she says. “No one in the family likes to see a child suffering from such a terrible disease.”

“I’m doing it for the patients and for the families.”

Though her disease is beyond her control, so far, LaTia has been able to do everything she wants — it’s just more of a challenge.

Supported by the Aflac Center and Blood Disorders Center, with compassionate care and patient education and counseling, she has been able to chase her dreams with confidence.

Heading into her future, she’s confident in her ability to keep on accomplishing. “I feel invincible,” she says.

Ultimately, she hopes that finding a cure is within her reach. “I do a lot of spreading awareness through social media and things,” she says. “I want people to be aware of sickle cell and maybe help make a change.”

One thing she’s certain of is that she’ll be one of the people helping make that change, regardless of the obstacles in her way. “Sickle cell has made me feel down a lot, but you can overcome anything,” she says. “That’s what I’ve learned — that anything can be overcome.”

To learn more about sickle cell disease or the Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center, visit choa.org/fightsicklecell.

Read more: http://www.upworthy.com/