English Ivy is a species native to most of Europe and western Asia. It is an evergreen climbing plant, growing to 100 feet high where suitable surfaces such as trees, cliffs or walls are available. It climbs by means of aerial rootlets which cling to the substrate.

Recent research has used new imaging techniques to analyse the attachment process of English Ivy in detail. It was found that the plant makes initial contact with the object it will climb, which then triggers the second phase, when the plant’s roots change shape to fit the surface of the structure they will climb.

The roots alter their arrangement to increase their area of contact with the surface, then small structures called root hairs grow out from the root, coming into contact with the climbing surface. The plant then excretes a glue to anchor it to the substrate. Finally, the tiny root hairs fit into tiny cavities within the climbing surface. There, they dry out, scrunching into a spiral shape that locks the root hair into place.

English Ivy is considered an invasive species in a number of areas to which it has been introduced. Like other invasive vines, such as kudzu, it can grow to choke out other plants and create “ivy deserts”. State and county sponsored efforts are encouraging the destruction of ivy in forests of the Pacific Northwest. Its sale or import is banned in Oregon. In its mature form, dense ivy can destroy habitat for native wildlife and creates large sections of solid ivy where no other plants can develop.

Botta’s pocket gopher (Thomomys bottae) is a pocket gopher native to western North America. It is also known as the Valley Pocket Gopher, particularly in California. It is strictly herbivorous, and will often pull plants into the ground by the roots to consume them in the safety of its burrow, where it spends 90% of its life.

The species is highly adaptable, burrowing into a very diverse array of soils from loose sands to tightly packed clays, and from arid deserts to high altitude meadows. The burrows of this species may reach lengths of a hundred feet or more.

It is considered a pest in urban and agricultural areas due to its burrowing habit. However, it is also considered beneficial as its burrows are a key source of aeration for soils in the region. Evidence of the above ground burrows are sometimes called “gopher eskers.”

Main predators of this species include American Badgers, Coyotes, Long-tailed Weasels, and Snakes, but other predators include Skunks, Owls, Bobcats, and Hawks.

From Our Forests and National Parks, by John Muir, 1901

“The tendency nowadays to wander in the wilderness is delightful to see. Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, overcivilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.

Awakening from the stupefying effects of the vice of over-industry and the deadly apathy of luxury, they are trying the best they can to mix and enrich their own ongoings with those of Nature, and to get rid of rust and disease. Briskly venturing and roaming, some are washing off sins and cobweb cares of the devil’s.

Spinning all-day storms on mountains; sauntering in rosiny pinewoods or in gentian meadows, brushing through chaparral, bending down and parting sweet, flowery sprays; tracing rivers to their sources, getting in touch with the nerves of Mother Earth.

Jumping from rock to rock, feeling the life of them, learning the songs of them, panting in whole-souled involvement, and rejoicing in deep, long-drawn breaths of pure wilderness. So also is the growing interest in the care and preservation of forests and wild places.”

Essence is the attribute or set of attributes that make an object or substance what it fundamentally is, and which it has by necessity, and without which it loses its identity. Essence is contrasted with accident, a property that the object or substance has contingently without which the substance can still retain its identity.

Essence has often served as a vehicle for doctrines that tend to individuate different forms of existence as well as different identity conditions for objects and properties. In this eminently logical meaning, the concept has given a strong theoretical and common sense basis to the whole family of logical theories.

In existentialist discourse, essence can refer to physical aspect or attribute, to the ongoing being of a person (the character or internally determined goals), or to the infinite inbound within the human (which can be lost, can atrophy, or can be developed into an equal part with the finite), depending upon the type of existentialist discourse.

In metaphysics, essence is often synonymous with the soul, and some existentialists argue that individuals gain their souls and spirits after they exist, and that they develop their souls and spirits during their lifetimes.

The English word “essence” comes from the Latin essentia, which was coined from the Latin esse, “to be” by ancient Roman scholars in order to translate the Ancient Greek phrase “to ti en einai” (literally, “what it is for a thing to be”), coined by Aristotle to denote a thing’s essence.

Neuroticism is a fundamental personality trait in the study of psychology. It can be defined as an enduring tendency to experience negative emotional states. Individuals who score high on neuroticism are more likely than the average to experience such feelings as anxiety, anger, guilt, and clinical depression. They respond more poorly to environmental stress, and are more likely to interpret ordinary situations as threatening, and minor frustrations as hopelessly difficult.

Neuroticism appears to be related to physiological differences in the brain. Hans Eysenck theorized that neuroticism is a function of activity in the limbic system, and research suggests that people who score highly on measures of neuroticism have a more reactive sympathetic nervous system, and are more sensitive to environmental stimulation. Behavioral genetics researchers have found that a substantial portion of the variability on measures of neuroticism can be attributed to genetic factors.

A study with positron emission tomography has found that healthy subjects that score high on neuroticism tests tend to have high altanserin binding in the frontolimbic region of the brain, an indication that these subjects tend to have more of the 5-HT2A receptor in that location. Another study has found that healthy subjects with a high neuroticism score tend to have higher DASB binding in the thalamus, with DASB being a ligand that binds to the serotonin transporter protein.

Neuroticism, along with other personality traits, has been mapped across states in the USA. People in eastern states such as New York, New Jersey, West Virginia, and Mississippi tend to score high on neuroticism, whereas people in many western states, such as Utah, Colorado, South Dakota, Oregon, and Arizona score lower on average. People in states that are higher in neuroticism also tend to have higher rates of heart disease and lower life expectancy.

Furoshiki are a type of square Japanese wrapping cloth that were traditionally used to transport clothes, gifts, or other goods. Although possibly dating back as far as the Nara period, the name, meaning bath spread, derives from the Edo period practice of using them to bundle clothes while at the public baths. Before becoming associated with public baths, furoshiki were known as hirazutsumi, or flat folded bundle.

Eventually, the furoshiki’s usage extended to serve as a means for merchants to transport their wares or to protect and decorate a gift. Although there are still furoshiki users in Japan, their numbers declined in the post-war period, in large part due to the proliferation of the plastic shopping bag. In recent years, furoshiki has seen a renewed interest as environmental protection became a concern. They are still commonly used to wrap and transport bento lunch boxes and often double as a table mat for the lunch.

Modern furoshiki can be made of a variety of cloths, including silk, cotton, rayon, and nylon. Furoshiki are often decorated with traditional designs or by shibori, a method of dyeing cloth with a pattern by binding, stitching, folding, twisting, or compressing it, known in the West as tie-dye. There is no one set size for furoshiki, they can range from hand sized to larger than bed-sheets.

Each year billions of plastic bags end up as litter; reusable bags, such as furoshiki can help reduce the impact to our environment. Its versatility allows you to wrap almost anything regardless of its shape or size. In March 2006, the Japanese Minister of the Environment, Yuriko Koike, created a furoshiki cloth to promote its use in the modern world.

Strong optimism, is the overarching mental state wherein people believe that things are more likely to go well for them than go badly. Compare this with the valence effect of prediction, a tendency for people to overestimate the likelihood of good things happening rather than bad things. It is the demonstrated systematic tendency for people to be over-optimistic about the outcome of planned actions.

Personal optimism correlates strongly with self-esteem, with psychological well-being and with physical and mental health. Optimism has been shown to be correlated with better immune systems in healthy people who have been subjected to stress. Martin Seligman, in researching this area, criticizes academics for focusing too much on causes for pessimism and not enough on optimism. He states that in the last three decades of the 20th century journals published 46,000 psychological papers on depression and only 400 on joy.

Popular culture has reflected the link between optimism and well-being with works like the fable “The Moth and the Star”, and Barack Obama’s speech and book, The Audacity of Hope.

A number of scholars have suggested that although optimism and pessimism might seem like opposites, in psychological terms they do not function in this way. Having more of one does not mean you have less of the other. The factors that reduce one do not necessarily increase the other. On many occasions in life we need both in equal supply. 

Hope can become a force for social change when it combines optimism and pessimism in healthy proportions. John Braithwaite, an academic at the Australian National University, suggests that in modern society we undervalue hope because we wrongly think of it as a choice between hopefulness and naiveness as opposed to scepticism and realism.

Creative visualization refers to the practice of seeking to affect the outer world by changing one’s thoughts. It is the basic technique underlying positive thinking and is frequently used by athletes to enhance their performance. The concept originally arose in the US with the nineteenth century New Thought movement

One of the first Americans to practice the technique of creative visualization was Wallace Wattles who wrote The Science of Getting Rich published in 1910. In this book, Wattles advocates creative visualization as the main technique for realizing one’s goals, a practice that stems from the Hindu Monistic theory of the Universe that is subscribed to by the book.

Creative visualization is the technique of using one’s imagination to visualize specific behaviors or events occurring in one’s life. Advocates suggest creating a detailed schema of what one desires and then visualizing it over and over again with all of the senses. For example, in sports a golfer may visualize the perfect stroke over and over again to mentally train muscle memory.

In one of the most well-known studies on Creative Visualization in sports, Russian scientists compared four groups of Olympic athletes in terms of their training schedules:

• Group 1 = 100% physical training;
• Group 2 – 75% physical training with 25% mental training;
• Group 3 – 50% physical training with 50% mental training;
• Group 4 – 25% physical training with 75% mental training.

Group 4, with 75% of their time devoted to mental training, performed the best. The Soviets had discovered that mental images can act as a prelude to muscular impulses.

Creative Visualization is distinguished from normal daydreaming in that it is done in the first person and the present tense, as if the visualized scene were unfolding all around you, whereas normal daydreaming is done in the third person and the future tense. The “you” of the daydream is a puppet with the real “you” watching from afar.

Visualization practices are a common form of spiritual exercise, especially in esoteric traditions. In Vajrayana Buddhism, complex visualizations are used to attain Buddhahood. Additionally, visualization is used extensively in sports psychology.