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A study found 4 different categories of couples. Where do you belong?

What if I told you someone did find a way to "categorize" your love style but with actual real science?

Image from Insomnia Cured Here/Flickr.

This movie couple definitely could have used some healthy therapy.

Ever fallen into one of those Internet dating quizzes? You know, the ones that promise to categorize you? Like "what your astrological sign says about your relationship style."

They can be fun, but we all know they're mostly fluff.

What if I told you someone did find a way to "categorize" your love style but with actual real science?

Three relationship scientists asked about 400 couples to track how they felt about their relationship and how committed they felt to marrying their partner. They followed each of the couples for nine months. Not, like, literally followed them — that would be creepy. Instead, they just asked them a few questions and asked them to keep track of how committed they were feeling over time.

At the end of the nine months, the scientists collected all the couple's responses and delved deep into the data. They found that couples did indeed tend to fall into one of four categories.

Prepare yourself for some soul searching because you might just be:

1. The Conflicted, but Passionate

Scarlett and Rhett from "Gone with the Wind."

Image from Insomnia Cured Here/Flickr.

This is the couple Facebook made the "It's Complicated" relationship status for. Their levels of commitment tend to go up and down over time, especially after arguments. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. These folks use those conflicts to help them make decisions about the relationship, and in fact, they didn't appear to be any more destined for a breakup than any of the other groups.

Also, as a bonus, they tend to follow those turbulent downs with passionate ups. "These couples operate in a tension between conflict that pushes them apart and passionate attraction that pulls them back together," said study author Brian Ogolsky.

2. The Partner-Focused

A nice night to have a couples walk.

Image from Yiannis Theologos Michellis/Flickr.

If your idea of a perfect date night is a long walk followed by eight hours of binge-watching "House of Cards" together, you might fall into this category.

Partner-focused couples tend to spend a lot of time together and share hobbies or leisure activities, and it's that shared time that tends to propel them forward. They tended to be more careful and thoughtful about their relationship decisions — more likely to build from the inside out — and tended to be the most satisfied overall.

3. The Social Butterflies

social butterfly, bar hopping, dancing, friendship

Dancing the night away...

Image from Esther Bubley, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection/Wikimedia Commons.

On the other hand, if your perfect evening with your partner involves grabbing all your friends and hitting the bars or breaking out Settlers of Catan for the hundredth time, this might be the category that best describes you. Social couples usually share a friend group and use that time spent with friends to inform and build their relationship as a couple.

"Having mutual friends makes people in these couples feel closer and more committed," said Ogolsky. They also tended to be pretty stable and have higher levels of love based on feelings of friendship toward each other, which can be a good indicator for long-term happiness.

4. The Dramatic

A little Renaissance kissing with oil

Image from Sofi/Flickr.

Unfortunately, not every couple's path is easy. Things may start out good, but tend not to stay that way for dramatic couples. This type of couple tends to make decisions based on negative experiences or stuff from outside the relationship.

"These couples have a lot of ups and downs, and their commitment swings wildly," said Ogolsky. "You begin to see little things eroding, and you start to see the relationship in a negative light, and soon you give up," said Ogolsky.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, dramatic couples tended to break up the most, twice as much as other couples.

So what's best? Well, here's where this article differs from a lot of those Internet quizzes. Because the answer is that there isn't a "best" kind of relationship.

couples therapy, love, marriage, biology

What do healthy relationships start and end with?

Image from Maryam Mgonja/Wikimedia Commons.

Different couples work and grow differently. These are different pathways and it'd be a mistake to assume there's a "correct" way to love someone. Or even that you're forever locked into a certain style of relationships. "These are not predefined, for-life patterns," said Ogolsky.

And even in a single relationship, these patterns aren't predictors of destiny — a dramatic couple may, in fact, outlast a social one, and a partner-driven couple may be as passionate as anyone you could ever meet.

And the researchers willingly admit in their paper that their study doesn't cover all relationships. Many very happy couples have no desire to marry, for instance. And, it should be noted, that it wasn't too long ago that the U.S. didn't even allow all couples to get married!

Wait, you're not going to tell me how to find the perfect, golden, eternally-happy relationship?! Why even study this then?

Because, in our hearts, humans are social creatures, Ogolsky explained. Love, friendship, passion, and commitment are part of the human experience. Understanding relationships can be as important to understanding ourselves as studying chemistry or biology. They can even affect your health!

As for what you can learn from all this, the important takeaway is that what you use to make decisions — whether from conflict, from the inside, from the outside, or from friendship — can influence your level of commitment. It might be useful for couples to think not just about their choices but how they make their choices.

So ... what's your category?

This article originally appeared on 02.15.16

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2 scientists turned a human organ into an art project. Here are 11 stunning images.

Greg Dunn and Brian Edwards are scientists-turned-artists.

In their new project "Self Reflected," Dunn and Edwards used a new technique called micro-etching to illuminate one specific organ in the human body.

The pair developed the technique, which combines hand drawing, gilding, and photolithography along with data visualizations to create amazing art. It allows dynamic control of an image and its colors using reflective gold surfaces.

They took a slice of tissue of this mystery human organ and magnified it 22 times. And what they created was beyond incredible.

Photo by Greg Dunn and Will Drinker.

The kaleidoscopic vividness is surreal, but the sheer beauty of the images is only part of the story.

Photo by Greg Dunn and Will Drinker.

Each image looks wholly unique, but all the images are from a single human organ.

Photo by Greg Dunn and Will Drinker.

Can you guess what organ it is? We'll give you a hint...

Photo by Greg Dunn and Will Drinker.

If you zoom out a bit you'll see that...

Self-reflected in violets — the entire self reflected in micro-etching under violet and white light. Photo by Greg Dunn and Will Drinker.

...it's the brain!

Surprising, I know. My eyes still don't believe that this is a slice of the visual cortex.

The visual cortex, the region located at the back of the brain that processes visual information. Photo by Greg Dunn and Will Drinker.

Or that this is a 22-times magnification of our brain stem.

Raw colorized micro-etching data from the reticular formation and brainstem. Photo by Greg Dunn and Will Drinker.

But that's the beautiful gilded truth.

The midbrain, an area that carries out diverse functions in reward, eye movement, hearing, attention, and movement. Photo by Greg Dunn and Will Drinker.

“Self Reflected was created to remind us that the most marvelous machine in the known universe is at the core of our being and is the root of our shared humanity,” they wrote on their site.

The thalamus and basal ganglia, sorting senses, initiating movement, and making decisions. Photo by Greg Dunn and Will Drinker.

Combined, all the images in the series show only 500,000 neurons and circuits of the billions in the human brain. The images were hand-gilded with 1,750 sheets of 22-karat gold leaf.

The pons, a region involved in movement and implicated in consciousness. Photo by Greg Dunn and Will Drinker.

The first version of "Self Reflected," which consists of 25 etched panels of the brain, is on permanent display at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. The micro-etching technique makes the appearance of the art completely dependent on lighting that can change the viewers’ experience each time they look at it.

The entire Self Reflected micro-etching under white light. Photo by Greg Dunn and Will Drinker.

The ornate beauty of these images offers much more than what's on its surface. They are a glimpse into the organ that sets us apart as a species, that allows us the ability to create and appreciate art like this.

What Dunn and Edwards have done with this project is more than science and more than art — they've examined the deepest areas of our mind and found beauty reflected back at them.

Watch the video below to learn more about the project:

Clarification 4/29/2017: The article was updated to clarify that this photo project shows about 500,000 neurons and circuits in the brain, but in total the brain contains millions of them.

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People are recreating famous works of art from home and some are seriously incredible - Upworthy ›

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Women were dying from childbirth at hospitals. This 19th-century doctor figured out why.

True

Today, we know that washing our hands is one of the most important steps we can take to avoid getting sick and spreading germs.

But how we came to know that is pretty fascinating.

Image via iStock.

Handwashing is actually a relatively new practice — even for doctors.

In fact, one of the first doctors to realize how important handwashing could be — Ignaz Semmelweis — didn’t discover this fact until 1847. And even after he did realize it, the battle to convince the rest of the medical community wasn’t easy.

The 19th century has been described by some historians as “a golden age of the physician and scientist” because for the first time, doctors were expected to have scientific training.

They were also expected to use symptom-based diagnoses to solve medical ailments. And to do this, of course, medicine relied on understanding what was happening inside the human body to get at the root of disease.

So, autopsies became all the rage.

Not only did they form a critical part of a doctor’s training, but the doctors who regularly performed them were the most respected in the medical community. An unfortunate byproduct of this, though, was the erroneous belief that the dirtier the doctor, the better the doctor.

In fact, there are accounts of doctors going directly from their last autopsy to deliver a baby or treat a patient without changing their clothes.

Enter Hungarian doctor Ignaz Semmelweis.

A portrait of Ignaz Phillip Semmelweis. Image via Jeño Doby/Wikimedia Commons.

In 1846, Semmelweis had just started his new job at the maternity clinic at Vienna General Hospital.

At that time, women were dying at staggering rates in hospitals shortly after giving birth from “childbed fever,” a disease also called puerperal fever. It was a cruel infection, causing raging fevers, painful abscesses, an infection in the uterus and birth canal, sepsis, and then finally, death — all within about three days of the baby’s delivery. And it was the single most common cause of maternal death at the time.

Being a man of science, Semmelweis wanted to understand why so many women were dying in his clinic. So he studied two maternity wards in the hospital — one staffed by doctors and medical students, the other by midwives — and recorded the number of deaths in each ward.

Vienna General Hospital, where Semmelweis worked. Image via Josef & Peter Schafer/Wikimedia Commons.

His results showed that women died at a rate nearly five times higher in the ward staffed by doctors and medical students.

But it wasn’t until one of his colleagues, a pathologist, got sick and died after pricking his finger in an autopsy of someone who had died from childbed fever that Semmelweis realized that anyone, not just mothers, could get sick from puerperal fever, and the reason the midwives' ward had fewer deaths was because they didn't do autopsies.

He theorized that there must be some “cadaverous particles” or “morbid poison” that doctors were getting on their hands during autopsies. And the doctors in the ward were then transferring these particles inside the women when they delivered the baby, which then made the women sick.

Today, these “cadaverous particles” are known as bacteria, such as streptococcus pyogenes.

A photomicrograph of streptococcus pyogenes bacteria, which causes puerperal fever. Image via the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/Wikimedia Commons.

Semmelweis immediately ordered the medical staff to start cleaning their hands and instruments before delivering babies.

They were told to use a chlorine lime solution, not soap, until they could no longer smell the bodies they had dissected.

And it worked — chlorine is actually a great disinfectant. The rate of puerperal fever fell drastically in the doctor’s ward.

The first edition of Semmelweis' published findings. Image via István Benedek/Wikimedia Commons.

Unfortunately, the Semmelweis' colleagues did not embrace his findings — they were outraged at the suggestion that they were the cause of their patients' deaths. Semmelweis was fired from the hospital and eventually committed to an asylum. He died at the asylum two weeks later. (Several historians believe that he died, after being beaten at the asylum, from sepsis — an infection in the bloodstream caused by germs.)

It would take about 20 years before his ideas would start to be accepted by the medical community. And even then, it was "germ theory" — and the work of Louis Pasteur in the late-1860s — that really convinced anyone of the importance of hygiene and handwashing.

Over a 150 years later, though, Semmelweis is finally getting the recognition he deserves because the simple act of handwashing is one of the most important tools we have in public health.

And its benefits extend well beyond the hospital. Washing your hands reduces the chances of getting diarrheal illnesses by 31%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It also reduces the occurrence of respiratory illnesses — including colds — by 16 to 21%.

That’s why in the 1980s, the first nationally endorsed hand hygiene guidelines were released by the CDC, after a series of outbreaks of food-borne and health care-associated infections. And over the next few decades, a number of other guidelines have followed to stress the importance to the general public.

Image via iStock.

Today, the battle to promote this public health tool is still not over.

Diarrhea and respiratory infections remain leading causes of death in the developing world — claiming about 3.5 million children every year — because people either don't know how important handwashing is or don't have access to a reliable, clean water source. There are also still over 1.4 million cases of health care-associated infections around the world. But through education initiatives, NGOs all over the world are hoping to bring about change with this one simple habit.

Proper hand hygiene is still one of the best ways to fight these infections and diseases — and we have Dr. Semmelweis to thank.

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In 1962, a chance encounter with Martin Luther King Jr. would transform the life of a young medical student named Larry Brilliant.

Larry Brilliant with an early Apple II computer. All images courtesy of HarperCollins.

Dr. Brilliant would go on to help eradicate smallpox, direct Google.org, help save 4 million people from blindness, and become one of the foremost experts in global pandemics.

But at 19 years old, Brilliant was holed up in his dorm room, subsisting on stale peanut candy and comic books, grief-stricken at the thought of losing his father to cancer.

One rainy Michigan day, Brilliant pulled himself out of his dorm and stumbled into an auditorium to see a black preacher from Atlanta, Georgia, speak of hope, truth, and justice.

Only 60 students stood in a cavernous room meant for 3,000. The school administrators were embarrassed by the low turnout, but Martin Luther King Jr. wasn’t. Chuckling warmly, he told the assembly, “Why don’t y’all come up here. That way, there’s more of me to go around.”

Martin Luther King Jr. at the University of Michigan, 1962.

Brilliant joined the others at King's feet and sat transfixed as a one-hour lecture turned into six.

“[King] famously talked about the arc of the moral universe that would bend towards justice, but it wouldn’t bend on its own. You have to jump up, drag it, twist it, pull it down towards justice. You have to influence that arc,” Brilliant said.

The experience changed Brilliant. He knew he couldn’t just lie around feeling unmotivated.

Brilliant started a journey of self-discovery and transformation that would help save the lives of millions in the process.

Inspired by King, Brilliant became an activist. He marched in civil rights rallies. In 1970, he delivered a Native American baby on Alcatraz Island during a standoff with the United States government. He even saved the life of a former Green Beret who attacked him on the island with a knife.

Larry Brilliant at Alcatraz Island.

Ensuing fame led to a call from Warner Brothers, and soon, Brilliant was starring in a "Woodstock on wheels" film called "Medicine Ball Caravan," playing a doctor alongside musical luminaries like Alice Cooper and B.B. King. Then, he ended up taking a caravan across the Khyber Pass with his wife, Girija, and his best friend, a hippie named Wavy Gravy.

Brilliant's adventures can seem too wild to be true. But, through it all, he was on the way to finding his destiny.

In 1972, Brilliant ended up in the Himalayas at the feet of a holy man. The guru, named Neem Karoli Baba, clasped Brilliant's hand and gave him the realization of a deep, profound, and universal love for everyone in the world.

Brilliant with his guru, Neem Karoli Baba.

“These machines that we live in, these bodies, they don’t come with an operating manual, and I did not know that mine was capable. I didn’t know where the on switch was that loved everybody. But he turned it on,” Brilliant said of their meeting.

The guru — who referred to Brilliant as "Dr. America" — told him that his destiny would be to work to cure one of the worst pandemics of all time: smallpox.

Smallpox killed over 300 million people in the 20th century, and it was wreaking havoc on families in India.

Following the instructions of his guru, the now 27-year-old Brilliant took the 17-hour train ride to the World Health Organization headquarters in New Delhi. But success didn't happen overnight for the young doctor.

“I was kicked out in 30 seconds," Brilliant said. "I walked in with a dress on, and a beard down to my knees, and it was a gown. But you know, they thought it looked like a dress. It was an ashram robe. And they kicked me out." 13 attempts later, he finally got the lowest paid job there.

In just a few years, Brilliant went on to lead a WHO team that would play a key role in eradicating smallpox.

Smallpox eradication team from Chota Nagpur.

Brilliant recalled that there were staff from 170 different countries in the WHO smallpox eradication program — all fighting the disease together despite deep division among many of their countries.

"In the middle of the Cold War, Russians and Americans worked together to eradicate smallpox, and the people sitting around the table were from every race, every religion, every language you could think of," Brilliant said.

The team was greater than the sum of their parts, and in 1975, they won. Brilliant saw the last case of killer smallpox with his own eyes: a girl named Rahima Banu. After contracting the disease at 2 years old, she was cured.

Rahima Banu, the last known smallpox patient.

Brilliant went on to mobilize friends — including Steve Jobs, whom he had met in his Guru's ashram in India — to do even more good.

He contacted former members from WHO and created Seva, an organization that gave sight to 4 million blind people.

He became executive director of Google.org and won the TED Prize. He laid out his wish for an early warning system to stop pandemics and helped create Google Flu Trends.

He chaired the Skoll Global Threats Fund, becoming one of humanity's greatest hopes in the fight against global pandemics.

Ultimately, Brilliant is one of the biggest heroes in global health today.

Larry Brilliant gives polio vaccine drops in Chitrakoot, Uttar Pradesh, India.

He's truly lived a "brilliant" life. Just like many of us, he’s struggled with depression and fear, and he's wondered what his purpose was — but he's always known to listen.

"I used to tell my students when I was a professor, always expect the imponderabilia. That’s a made-up word," Brilliant said. "It’s a little creature that comes upon you when you least expect it and whispers in your ear something you haven’t thought of. Always expect that little unexpected twist. Always be willing to listen."

Brilliant’s story teaches us that incredible human accomplishments can only be achieved through faith in ourselves and joining together with a common goal in mind. It takes all of us to bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice.

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The brilliant reason this dog trainer is having school teachers train service dogs.

A furry friend can do so much more than snuggle you when you've had a bad day.

Kathryn Oda has been living with anxiety and depression since she was 14.

There's no such thing as a quick fix for either, and given the symptoms of both, it's often difficult for people living with them to find the motivation to attempt treatment.

For Oda, everything changed when she adopted a furry little corgi named Buddy.

Buddy looks like quite the puddin in this pic! #rolleypolley #badangle #corgisgottacorg #cutiepie
A photo posted by Corgis Gotta Corg (They Must!) (@corgisgottacorg) on Apr 18, 2016 at 11:18am PDT

"Before Buddy, I couldn't bring myself to roll out of bed sometimes, especially when I was feeling down," Oda wrote in an email. "But Buddy's little face, his smile, his contagious joy, gets me up every day, even on the hardest ones, when the world feels dark and gloomy."

Buddy is not a trained psychiatric service dog, but he happened to be just what Oda needed. And Oda is far from the only person to have found the four-legged companionship of a dog soothing.

Many people living with mental illness need the support of a specially trained service dog. Which is where Abby Hill comes in.

As a professional dog trainer, Hill had many people come to her looking for help finding a service dog, especially for debilitating anxiety.

Photo courtesy of The Exceptional Partner Service Dogs.

About Buddy, Oda wrote, "having a companion who never judges, who is always happy to see you, who loves you unconditionally through the good and bad, is the most uplifting feeling in the world."

But trained service dogs are more than just companions — they're trained to do things like help stop panic attacks, lead their handler to the nearest exit if they are overwhelmed, and nudge them outside to run errands or for a walk to get exercise.

"When I started looking into ways to help these people, I found there was a two- to three-year wait nationwide for service dogs," said Hill. Not to mention, a certified psychiatric service dog costs $25,000 on average and is usually not covered by insurance.

Hill embarked on a mission to get people the help they needed without the extraordinary cost or lengthy wait time.

Meet Bella. Photo courtesy of The Exceptional Partner Service Dogs.

Hill is the founder of The Exceptional Partner Service Dogs (TEPSD), a nonprofit organization that offers service dogs to children and adults living with various mental illnesses. The program is based solely on donations, which means she is able to pair people with service dogs free of charge.

TESPD works with each person's therapist to make sure the dog's support skills match their specific needs.

Most of the TEPSD dog trainers are also teachers who bring the dogs into their classrooms to get used to working and being around lots of children and chaos.

Bridget Berechid is a TEPSD dog trainer and a science teacher at Newtown High School in Connecticut.

Berechid couldn't believe how calm and well-mannered her puppy-in-training, Jake, was right from the beginning. "Even though he was only four months old at the time, it was obvious the puppy already understood that when the vest was on, he was 'at work,'" Berechid wrote in an email.

Berechid with puppy Jake. Photo courtesy of The Exceptional Partner Service Dogs.

‌The puppies spend 15 months going through basic training with their teacher trainers, which includes a lot of public interaction with students.

Taking the puppies to school also encourages the students to ask questions about mental health.

"We’ve seen kids come up, ask about the dogs, then all of a sudden it starts a conversation about how they feel anxiety in certain situations," says Hill. "It's really helping break down the mental health stigma."

‌Photo courtesy of The Exceptional Partner Service Dogs.

Berechid also points out the regular presence of the dogs in classrooms is raising awareness around the importance of service dogs for any sort of disability.

In 2017, TESPD plans to launch a teen trainer program that will assign high school students a dog to train at intervals throughout the day to help them get a better sense of what kinds of benefits service dogs provide and how to work with them.

"By involving the community in the raising of these puppies, we are educating people about the lifesaving role these dogs play," Berechid said.

TESPD's unique classroom training method for service dogs means the dogs won't just help the person they're eventually paired with — they're helping entire classrooms of students along the way.

Because of the stigma that still exists around mental illness, many people in need don't reach out and ask for help when they need it. Normalizing discussions about mental health — and the idea that service dogs are what some people need to feel safe and functional in the world — to kids at a young age lets those kids know that there's nothing wrong with asking for help if you need it.

Even if the students don't end up needing service dogs themselves, their experience with TEPSD will make them more compassionate to anyone they encounter who lives with one. Compassion, much like a friendly dog, is one thing that can make a tough situation better.

‌Bella and her pup-raising family. Photo courtesy of The Exceptional Partner Service Dogs.

This little town decided to go green. And they did it without the government.

'By working together, we eliminated that feeling of being an environmental pressure group. Instead we made it normal to talk about energy savings.'

Welcome to Ashton Hayes — the small English town that's casually leading the way toward carbon neutrality.

Photo via Garry Charnock. Used with permission.

"Carbon neutrality" is a fancy way of saying that Ashton Hayes is working toward reducing its carbon footprint until it produces as much energy as it uses.

Upon first glance, Ashton Hayes may seem like any other countryside town, but when you take a closer look, you start to notice solar panels on roofs, clothes drying outside on clotheslines, and houses with glazed windows designed to improve insulation.

It might not sound like much, but these community efforts have effectively reduced the town's greenhouse emissions by approximately 40% in just 10 years.

The idea to make carbon neutrality a community-wide mission was planted by Ashton Hayes resident Garry Charnock, a former journalist and hydrologist.

He was attending a lecture at the Hay Festival of Literature & Arts, which called for the audience to think about what they could do to help curb climate change. While he said he was skeptical about a single individual being able to make any sort of significant impact, he wondered if his town as a whole could.

Photo via Ashton Hayes Going Carbon Neutral Project, used with permission.

Charnock asked the town's parish council if they would support a community-wide carbon neutrality pledge. On Jan. 26, 2006, in the presence of 60% of the town's adults (and a large percentage of the children as well), the idea was publicly proposed and accepted.

Ashton Hayes Going Carbon Neutral Project Launch in January, 2006. Photo courtesy of Garry Charnock.

Just like that, the people of Ashton Hayes took one significant step toward a greener future.

Members of the community started implementing small changes in their daily lives to promote carbon neutrality, and slowly but surely, their greenhouse emissions have shrunk.

They saved energy by turning things powered by electricity off as much as possible, switching to LED bulbs, relying on heat and air conditioning sparingly, walking more, and using public transport.

According to Charnock, they cut their emissions by 20% in the first year by doing so.

When neighbors started sharing what solutions were working for them, the ideas grew in size and scope. Soon, solar panels began to pop up all over town.

Photo via Garry Charnock, used with permission.

Community members, like Kate Harrison, are seeing their energy bills plummet, but even more exciting is how this collaboration has unified the town under one common goal. "What I really enjoyed was getting together with other people and talking about what we did," Harrison says in a video on Ashton Hayes' carbon neutrality project.

Community cohesion has increased significantly since the carbon neutrality mission was adopted. One reason for this, Charnock suggests, is that the carbon neutrality mission was created by and for the people in the town, without the influence or direction of politicians (who are only allowed to listen at meetings if they attend).

Photo via Garry Charnock, used with permission.

There were never any community-wide mandates to contribute to the cause — just neighbors inspiring each other to make an effort here and there.

"We also felt that by working together, we eliminated that feeling of being an environmental pressure group. Instead we made it normal to talk about energy savings," Charnock wrote in an email.

The children of Ashton Hayes are also incredibly involved in the town's work to reduce its carbon footprint.

Photo via Ashton Hayes Going Carbon Neutral Project, used with permission.

"The primary school has been a catalyst for the project," Charnock wrote. "All our major meetings are held there and the kids always do a project that they demonstrate to the public."

Aside from harboring an active eco-team, the school's roof is made entirely of community-funded PV panels (photovoltaic solar panels), which in turn have helped the building become carbon negative between the months of May and September.

Involving the children in the project gives the next generation a firsthand look at just how simple it can be to reduce one's carbon footprint and have a real impact on the community overall.

With Ashton Hayes' efforts proving so effective, other towns have gotten in touch to ask for advice on how to start similar initiatives. Ashton Hayes is only too happy to help.

People from Ashton Hayes have given talks to over 150 communities in the United Kingdom alone on their work to lower emissions and they've made award-winning videos that've reached many more.

Photo via Ashton Hayes Going Carbon Neutral Project, used with permission.

According to the detailed diary on the Ashton Hayes town website that chronicles their progress, they've been contacted by towns all over the world that are looking for ways to lower their own carbon footprint. Little by little, the Ashton Hayes carbon neutrality movement is picking up steam.

With the onslaught of alarmist news about how harmful climate change is becoming and all the things we've done wrong up to this point, the mission to try to turn things around for the planet can often feel hopeless. When you look at a town like Ashton Hayes and see all that its members have accomplished in just 10 years, however, it's clear that hopelessness is far from true.

Sure, Ashton Hayes is just one small town, but imagine if every small town the world over followed in its footsteps. Sometimes all it takes is one simple, well-implemented idea to start a powerful trend that could change everything.

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What does bipolar disorder look like? This photographer will tell you.

Bipolar disorder affects over 5 million Americans, but actually living with it is a story in and of itself.

A few months after Danielle Hark had her first child, she fell into a deep depression.

Photo from Danielle Hark, used with permission.

Danielle is a professional photographer and writer. While everyone gets bad moods sometimes, this was different. It wasn't just a bad day or even a bad week. For two years, it felt like a weighted blanket had fallen over her. She had to fight that weight every day. Even simple things like getting out of bed or walking the dog required extra effort.

Meanwhile, her brain was whispering that she was a burden to the people around her. She pushed people away — friends, family, even her husband — not out of disaffection, but out of a misguided desire to save them from having to deal with her.

Eventually Danielle went to a doctor to try to get help overcoming this depression. They had a different diagnosis though: bipolar disorder.

We all have things we have to carry, and mental illness wasn't new to Danielle. She had been diagnosed with depression and anxiety in college. Still, bipolar disorder ... that felt like too much to accept.

"I pushed against it at first," said Danielle. She pictured bipolar people as violent or unstable. "I was like, no, that's not me."

But when Danielle looked closer, the diagnosis perfectly matched her symptoms.

For some of us, "bipolar" probably conjures up images of Two-Face, the half-scarred Batman villain, whose mood can change on a coin flip. But the disorder actually looks a lot more human. Imagine someone suffering from clinical depression, except, every so often, their brain decides to throw an extra wrench into the works.

That wrench is mania. Mania is like the weird, upside-down cousin of depression and it can cause someone to feel jumpy or energetic. Some people feel overly irritable or prone to risky behavior, while others might get a rush of creative ideas.

Danielle will sometimes combine lights and clocks with long exposures to create light paintings like this one. Photo from Danielle Hark, used with permission.

As it turns out, that actually fit with Danielle's experience. Danielle said there were periods, especially when she was younger, that she'd find herself barely able to sleep. Instead, she'd pace around the house, feeling revved up and bombarded by ideas. During those times, she'd be compelled to take pictures, thousands of pictures — not stopping until the camera's SD card ran out. To her doctor, that sounded exactly like a manic episode.

Bipolar disorder sucks, plain and simple. And Danielle isn't alone in having to deal with it.

About 5.7 million Americans have some form of bipolar disorder, sometimes known as manic-depressive disorder.

It affects all races, classes, and genders in equal numbers, though there are actually a few different forms of the disorder. Some people get faster cycles, for example, or might get a milder version of mania called hypomania. Age-wise, it often appears in a person's mid-twenties, but can strike at any point in a person's life.

As for how and why it happens, medicine is starting to figure out both, but slowly.

Photo from Danielle Hark, used with permission.

Research suggests that bipolar might happen when there are changes in how a person's brain processes chemical signals between cells or when there are subtle changes in the wiring between brain regions.

Genetics isn't destiny ... there still needs to be some event or stress in a person's life to trigger the disorder.

As for why it happens? We do know it's at least partly genetic. We've known for more than a hundred years that bipolar disorder can run in families. Today, more than 80 genes have been identified that might contribute to someone's risk level.

This might seem like good news, scientifically, but for a mom like Danielle, it added a whole new layer of stress.

"Many people think that people with bipolar disorder shouldn't have children," said Danielle.

That said, genetics isn't destiny. There have been cases of identical twins, for instance, where one had it but the other didn't. Science suggests that some people who carry the genes may even have special changes in their brain's wiring to help avert the illness.

Experts think that while genes are a major contributor, there still needs to be some event or stress in a person's life to trigger the disorder.

Bipolar disorder is chronic, which means, unfortunately, most folks have to come to terms with it being part of their lives forever.

"The real struggle for me was accepting that I have bipolar disorder and accepting that that’s just a small piece of who I am," said Danielle. It's something she has to live with, but it doesn't take away from her identity as a photographer, or a mom, or a wife.

Photo by Danielle Hark, used with permission.

She says that she sees now that the diagnoses aren't meant to be labels, they're meant to be treatment plans. And medications, like lithium and antidepressants, can help, as can doing things like pinpointing and avoiding triggers or stresses and avoiding drugs or alcohol. Certain therapies, like dialectical behavioral therapy, can work too.

Danielle says she's actually found her photography work to be helpful as well. When she's stuck chasing intrusive thoughts, looking through a camera lens helps her focus on what's directly in front of her, breathe, and come back to the present moment.

Photo by Danielle Hark, used with permission.

Thanks to these techniques, Danielle's learned how to not only weather both the manic and depressive episodes, but head them off before they begin.

This is a story about bipolar, but it's also a story about humanity because we all have heavy things to carry.

Sometimes they're external, but sometimes they're internal too — like a brain that just decides to go a bit haywire. And the truth is, bipolar disorder is tough. It sucks. It's a difficult hand that's dealt to a lot of people who don't deserve it.

I wish this is something we could cure right now, but we can't — we can manage, but not cure. As research goes forward, though, we're continually getting better at understanding where it comes from and how to deal with it.

But for now, for this moment, what can we do? We can respect each other's loads.

We can try to practice a little empathy by listening to the stories of people like Danielle. We can help out where we're able. And, hopefully, we can all find a way to carry our own things just a little more lightly.

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