Mourning for Zahra (pbuh)

In the middle of the night, the cry of a hopeless sorrow flew out of this house. And then some more...

The women from the Ghorayche tribe, especially those from the Bani Hashem tribe, came out of their houses, and with hair flowing on their shoulders to show the depth of their sorrow, they began marching to Fatemeh's house, to make their condolences to Hazrat Ali and to Fatemeh's little children, now orphans¦

The men of Medina came by large groups to show their respect to Ali, and to mourn with him. Ali was sated in a corner, and Hassan and Hosseyn and Zeynab and Ommo kolssoum were crying unendingly...

The people, on seeing this sad scene began to cry. By what Fâtemeh had demanded from Ali, he announced to his friend Abuzar:" Tell these people that the funeral has been postponed"

Finally, nightfall came. Ali, with the help of Asma, washed the fragile and slim body of Fatemeh, and covered her with a shrine. When he wanted to close the shroud, he called out his children to come and see their beloved mother for the last time, and to bid farewell to her...

Some say that she was only eighteen, and some say that she was twenty eight years old when she died.

Hassan and Hosseyn, ran hopelessly and sorrowfully to touch once again the the dead body of their young mother... Gone so soon! They wanted to remain at her side and feel her presence near them. Minutes passed by, with only the sound of a tragic crying in the room. They talked lovingly and desperately to their mother, and verily, their sorrow was so deep that none can ever describe it. They said:" O Beloved Mother of Hassan! O Beloved Mother of Hosseyn! We shall feel your absence more deeply by each passing day, and also the absence of our beloved Grand father, Mohammad Mostafa [ Peace be upon Him! ]. When you reach the realm in which he lives now, please send our love to Him...! Tell him that we are left all alone in this whole world...! "

And then, Fatemeh's body was taken outside, and with the help of Hassan and Hosseyn, Ammar, Yasser, Meghdad, Aghil, Zobeyr, Abouzar, Salmân, and some of the Bani Hashemi tribe, they left town to take Fâtemeh's body to the graveyard.

Ali, most painfully and desperately, laid down his beloved wife on the ground, and with indescribable sorrow, bid her farewell...

After finishing what was expected of him, he threw with utter desperation and love, some dust on his wife's grave, and then looked sadly at the Prophet's grave. He then approached his grave and began a long confidence with him, which lasted a long time ...

Dreams Could Give Learning a Boost

Humans have long tried to figure out why we dream. In recent years, controversial research has suggested that we process our memories by dreaming. Now, a new study suggests that dreams also play a role in learning by processing what we've just experienced.

Researchers found that people who dreamed about a maze video game they'd just played did better the next time they tackled it, compared to those who didn't dream about it.

"There are parts of their brain which are actually replaying the memory of walking through the maze, and that will improve that memory and lead to a better performance," said study co-author Robert Stickgold, director of Harvard Medical School's Center for Sleep and Cognition.

Dreams have fascinated people for ages. "We started out a few thousand years ago thinking they were messages from God," Stickgold said. "Then Freud came along and said they're messages from our pernicious, immoral subconscious."

Scientists later thought dreams were "random firings of nerves in the brain stem," Stickgold said. Now, he said, "we're starting to say that at one level, as we've all sort of known all along, it's doing something with our memories."

In the new study, published online April 22 in the journal Current Biology, researchers asked 99 subjects to play a video game in which they had to find their way through a maze with the help of a three-dimensional depiction of it.

Then the participants either stayed awake for two hours or took a nap. They played the maze game again five hours later.

Four participants reported dreaming about the maze while they napped. They were among those who improved the most when they played the maze game for the second time, improving 10 times as much as others who napped.

So did the dreamers learn as they dreamed? It's not entirely clear how the dreams are connected to the experience of playing the maze game, but Stickgold thinks "the dream process reflects a type of underlying brain activity" that determines "what the learning experience means, not learning how to do it better."

There's another mystery: Why did so few people dream about the maze? Fewer than 10 percent of those who took naps did. By contrast, Stickgold said, about 86 percent of those who played an Alpine racer skiing game dreamed about it, he said.

Maybe the game "is not rich enough, not compelling enough," he said. Future research, he said, will try to figure out why that is.

For now, though, at least one brain researcher who is familiar with the study is unimpressed with the findings.

"There is no convincing evidence that sleep has any effects on consolidating memory," said Irwin Feinberg, a professor in residence who studies sleep at the University of California at Davis. Sleep clearly isn't necessary for people to remember things, he said.

But Stickgold said that's a misunderstanding of his research. "No one in the field suggests that you need to sleep to learn things or retain memories," he said.

Happy Life & Satistaction at work

If you're unhappy in life, you're unlikely to find satisfaction at work, say researchers who reviewed the findings of 223 studies conducted between 1967 and 2008.

All of the studies examined some combination of job satisfaction and life satisfaction, which is also known as subjective well-being.

"We used studies that assessed these factors at two time points so that we could better understand the causal links between job satisfaction and life satisfaction," Nathan Bowling, an assistant professor at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, said in a news release from the British Psychological Society. "If people are satisfied at work, does this mean they will be more satisfied and happier in life overall? Or is the causal effect the opposite way around?"

Bowling and colleagues found that the causal link between subjective well-being and subsequent levels of job satisfaction was stronger than the link between job satisfaction and subsequent levels of subjective well-being.

"These results suggest that if people are, or are predisposed to be, happy and satisfied in life generally, then they will be likely to be happy and satisfied in their work," Bowling said. "However, the flip side of this finding could be that those people who are dissatisfied generally, and who seek happiness through their work, may not find job satisfaction. Nor might they increase their levels of overall happiness by pursuing it."