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.

Tree houses are buildings constructed among the branches, around or next to the trunk of one or more mature trees, and are raised above the ground. Tree houses can be used for recreation, work space, habitation or as temporary retreats. In some areas the wildlife, climate and illumination on ground level in areas of dense close-canopy forest is not well suited for human habitation, and tree houses are constructed to create improved conditions.

Because they do not require a clearing of a certain area of forest, tree houses are an option for building eco-friendly facilities in remote forest areas. In some parts of the tropics, ordinary houses are built in trees or elevated on stilts to keep the living quarters above hazards at ground level, and to keep the occupants and any stored food out of reach of scavenging animals. The Korowai, a Papuan tribe in the southeast of Irian Jaya, live in tree houses, some nearly 40 metres (130 ft) high, as protection against a tribe of neighbouring head-hunters, the Citak.

The tree house has been central to various environmental protest communities around the world, in a technique known as tree sitting. This method may be used in protests against proposed road building or old growth forestry operations. Tree houses are used as a method of defense from which it is difficult and costly to safely evict the protesters and begin work. Julia Butterfly Hill is a particularly well known tree sitter who occupied a Californian Redwood for 738 days, saving the tree and others in the immediate area. Her accommodation consisted of two 29 square foot platforms 200ft above the ground.

A very small number of planning departments have specific regulations for tree houses, which set out clearly what may be built and where. In some cases tree houses are given exemption from normal building regulations, as they are not considered to be a building in the normal sense of the word. There may be restrictions on height, distance from boundaries and privacy for nearby properties.

Negative affectivity is a general dimension of subjective distress and unpleasurable engagement that subsumes a variety of aversive mood states, including anger, contempt, disgust, guilt, fear, and nervousness. Individuals high in negative affectivity are characterized by distress, un-pleasurable engagement, and nervousness. Low negative affect is characterised by a state of calmness and serenity.

It has been defined as a mood-dispositional dimension that reflects pervasive individual differences in negative emotionality and self-concept. People who express high negative affectivity view themselves and a variety of aspects of the world around them in generally negative terms. Negative affectivity may influence the relationships between variables in organizational research.

Negative affectivity represents an affective state dimension. Research has demonstrated that individuals differ in negative emotional reactivity. Trait negative affectivity roughly corresponds to the dominant personality factor of anxiety and neuroticism within the major personality traits. Research shows that negative affectivity relates to different classes of variables: Self-reported stress and poor coping skills, health complaints, and frequency of unpleasant events.

Individuals high in negative affect will exhibit, on average, higher levels of anxiety and dissatisfaction, and tend to focus on the unpleasant aspects of themselves, the world, the future, and other people. In fact, the content similarities between these affective traits and life satisfaction have led some researchers to view negative affectivity and life satisfaction as specific indicators of the broader construct of subjective well-being.

Regeneration is the process an organism undertakes when a lost or damaged part regrows so the original function is restored. It is inversely related to complexity, where the more complex an animal is the less regeneration it is capable of. Whereas newts, for example, can regenerate severed limbs, mammals cannot. Limb regeneration in newts occurs in two major steps, first de-differentiation of adult cells into a stem cell state similar to embryonic cells and second, development of these cells into new tissue more or less the same way it developed the first time.

Studies in the 1970s showed that children up to the age of 10 or so who lose fingertips in accidents can regrow the tip of the digit within a month provided their wounds are not sealed up with flaps of skin, the usual treatment in such emergencies. They normally won’t have a finger print, and if there is any piece of the finger nail left it will grow back as well, usually in a square shape rather than round.

In August 2005, Lee Spievack, then in his early sixties, accidentally sliced off the tip of his right middle finger just above the first phalanx. His brother, Dr. Alan Spievack, was researching regeneration and provided him with a powdered extracellular matrix. Mr. Spievack covered the wound with the powder, and the tip of his finger re-grew in four weeks. The news was released in 2007. Mr. Spievack is the first documented case of an adult human regenerating fingertips.

The human liver is one of the few glands in the body that has the ability to regenerate from as little as 25% of its tissue. This is largely due to the unipotency of hepatocytes. Resection of liver can induce the proliferation of the remained hepatocytes until the lost mass is restored, where the intensity of the liver’s response is directly proportional to the mass resected. For almost 80 years surgical resection of the liver in rodents has been a very useful model to the study of cell proliferation.

Zydeco, from the French le zaricot or “snap beans” is a popular form of American folk music. It evolved in southwest Louisiana in the early 19th century from forms of Louisiana Creole music. Usually fast tempo and dominated by the button or piano accordion and a form of a washboard known as a vest frottoir, zydeco music was originally created at house dances, where families and friends gathered for socializing.

For 150 years, Louisiana Creoles enjoyed an insular lifestyle, prospering, educating themselves without the American government and building their invisible communities under the Code Noir. The French created the Code Noir in 1724 to establish rules for treatment of slaves, as well as restrictions and rights for gens de couleur libres, a growing class of free people of color who had the right to own land, something few blacks in the American South had at that time.

The music arose as a synthesis of traditional Creole music, some Cajun music influences, and African-American traditions, including blues and gospel. It was also often just called French music. Zydeco’s rural beginnings and the prevailing economic conditions at its inception are reflected in many of the song titles and lyrics.

It moved to rural dance halls and nightclubs. As a result, the music integrated waltzes, shuffles, two-steps, and most dance music forms of the era. Today, the tradition of change and evolution in the music continues. It stays current while integrating even more genres such as hip-hop, ska, rock, and other styles, in addition to the traditional zydeco forms.

An instrument used in Zydeco music is the vest frottoir. It is usually made from pressed, corrugated aluminium and is worn over the shoulders. Other instruments common in zydeco include the old world accordion which is found in folk and roots music globally.

Polarity therapy is a synthesis of ancient Eastern and alternative medicine health care ideas, centered on the concept of a human energy field. Using touch, verbal interaction, exercise, nutrition and other methods, practitioners of polarity therapy seek to balance and restore the natural flow of energy which, it is claimed, flows from the universe and into the body through the chakras. The aim is to re-establish “balance”. In addition to polarity bodywork, specific polarity yoga exercises, counseling/positive thinking, and nutritional recommendations are claimed to enhance vitality.

Advocates and practitioners of PT claim that a subtle, invisible and intangible energetic system is the substrate for all phenomena. According to proponents, if the energetic flow is corrected and restored to its original design, the form will follow. Further, they claim that blockages in the flow of energy lead to pain and disease (directly contradicting the germ theory of disease), or be experienced as stuck emotions and lack of vitality. They claim that this is similar to the measurable and quantifiable electromagnetic bond between electron and proton that forms atoms, a claim which is not scientific, but pseudoscience. There is no scientific basis for this belief, nor any reproducible measurements of this system.

Polarity therapists claim to work with the reciprocal, complementary or “polarized” forces, which they describe with the traditional Chinese words yin and yang. Although the concept of polarity implies two forces in opposition, these dualities are said by some to be mediated by a subtle third neutral factor, leading to the idea that phenomena are essentially triune in nature. In Ayurveda, the three factors are known as Rajas, Tamas, and Satva.

Polarity therapy is often connected with other forms of alternative medicine, such as Oriental medicine, Ayurveda, craniosacral therapy and osteopathy, which all claim to explore the subtle energetic factors in health conditions from their particular cultural viewpoints. Polarity therapy has four distinct areas of technique, by which proponents believe life force energy can be influenced: touch (massage, acupuncture), stretching and exercise, diet, and mental-emotional process. Polarity practitioners registered with the American Polarity Therapy Association should be knowledgeable in all four areas. However, although most current APTA trainings cover the standard curriculum, some practitioners have different interpretations.