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Although animal dreams are well investigated, little is known about images of animals in dreams. The present study explored the contents of animal dreams of 201 subjects (including 52 male) from China via the most recent dream method and analyzed them mainly through the Hall and Van de Castle (1966) System. The results showed: (a) the most frequent species found in dreams about animals were snakes, dogs, and cats. Moreover, compared with males, females dreamed of more snakes. (b) Typical images of animals in dreams may be described by four kinds of theme nodes (TNs): dreamers' experiences, social interactions, animal characteristics, and environmental characteristics. Dreamer's experience and social interactions were the rooting TNs that expressed dreamer's emotions, primarily negative emotions, but significant differences existed in various animals. Animal and environmental characteristics were the apparent TNs, such as their child nodes of color, activities, size, and settings, that provided specific narrative content related to the dreamers' emotions and interactions with animals. Negative images of typical images of snakes were most frequent in dreams, followed by dreams about dogs and cats. (c) The associations about animal dreams were mainly related to adverse life events, followed by daily contact experience with animals, in which the snake dream was significantly lower than expected. Such findings suggest that negative emotions and direct contact in waking life are both indispensable continuities to people's dreams of animals.

The study aimed to evaluate the potential of ginger essential oil in urea loading efficacy to prepare the controlled release chitosan microspheres. The ginger oil was extracted by applying the Clevenger apparatus for hydro-distillation, and the chemical composition was characterized by using FT-IR. The chitosan microspheres and urea loaded were formulated through modified emulsification and followed cross-linking procedure. Response surface test was used to evaluate various factors and levels related to preparation of microspheres. The nitrogen content, yield were observed in the present study. Furthermore, SEM and FT-IR were applied to characterize the microspheres. The results showed that the yield of the ginger oil was 6.0% and citral was observed as the most enriched compound, 89.05% in oil. Response surface analysis showed that the optimum preparation conditions were as follows: 2.094% of Span-80, 2.302% of acetic acid, and the crosslinking agent ratio of formaldehyde to glutaraldehyde was 1:8.148. Under these conditions, the theoretical value of nitrogen content of urea-loaded chitosan microspheres was 4.683%. The FT-IR results proved the authenticity of ginger oil, chitosan microspheres, and urea-loaded microspheres. The morphology of the microspheres was better in lower oil concentrations. The release test showed urea diffused uniformly in the microspheres after 48 hours. It is concluded that controlled release fertilizers can be formulated using ginger oil.

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