Science

The Perfect Dream

In 2010, Professor Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire teamed-up with app developers YUZA to create 'Dream:ON' -- an iPhone app that monitors a person during sleep and plays a carefully crafted 'soundscape' when they dream. Each soundscape was carefully designed to evoke a pleasant scenario, such as a walk in the woods, or lying on a beach
The app was downloaded over 500,000 times and the researchers collected millions of dream reports. After studying the data, Professor Wiseman discovered that the soundsca-pes did indeed influence people's dreams.
"If someone chose the nature landscape then they were more likely to have a dream about greenery and flowers,” wrote Wiseman. “In contrast, if they selected the beach soundscape then they were more likely to dream about the sun beating down on their skin."
The Dream:ON app and all of the soundscapes are currently available free of charge.

Four in 10 infants lack strong parental attachments

In a study of 14,000 U.S. children, 40 percent lack strong emotional bonds– what psychologists call "secure attachment" – with their parents that are crucial to success later in life, according to a new report published by Sutton Trust, a London-based institute. The researchers found that these children are more likely to face educational and behavioral problems.
The report found that infants under the age of three who do not form strong bonds with their mothers or fathers are more likely to be aggressive, defiant and hyperactive as adults. These bonds, or secure attachments, are formed through early parental care, such as picking up a child when he or she cries or holding and reassuring a child.

Husband's health,attitude key to happy long-term marriages

A husband's agreeable personality and good health appear crucial to preventing conflict among older couples who have been together a long time, according to a study from University of Chicago researchers.
The report found that such characteristics in wives play less of a role in limiting marital conflict, perhaps because of different expectations among women and men in durable relationships.
"Wives report more conflict if their husband is in poor health," wrote the study's lead author, James Iveniuk. "If the wife is in poor health, there doesn't seem to be any difference in terms of the quality of the marriage for the husband."
The study which results from data analysed from 953 heterosexual couples was published by the Journal of Marriage and Family.

Promiscuity, Polygamy and 'Divorce' in Birds

Birds in female-dominated populations are more likely to ditch and 'divorce' their mates while promiscuity increases in predominantly male environments, according to new research by the University of Sheffield and the University of Bath.
However, when the number of males outweighed females, the frequency of extra-pair mating increased in socially monogamous birds.
"We a found that extra-pair mating was more common when there were more males than females -- this could be due to females 'shopping around' when they have more males to choose from.,” wrote the researchers, “Surprisingly, some of our results in birds have striking parallels in human societies – for example, the frequency of divorce is related to sex ratio in some human societies in the same way.