Hope as a Source of Resilience in Later Adulthood

This research provided a preliminary investigation of how variations in trait and state hope are associated with positive adaptation to stress in later adulthood. Trait hope and neuroticism were measured by questionnaires and state hope, stress, and negative emotions were assessed daily for 45 days. Results from multilevel random coefficient modeling analyses suggested that daily hope provides protective benefits by keeping negative emotions low, while also contributing to adaptive recovery from stress. The dynamic linkages between daily hope, stress, and emotion were further moderated by individual differences in trait hope. Compared with those low in trait hope, high-hope individuals showed diminished stress reactivity and more effective emotional recovery

The Universe of Chaos and Quanta

In recent papers it was shown that stochastic processes in the universe as a whole lead to discrete space time at Compton scales as also non-relativistic Quantum Mechanics. In this paper, we deduce the Dirac equation and thence a unified formulation of quarks and leptons. In the process several puzzling empirical results and coincidences are shown to be a consequence of the theory. These include the discreteness of the charge, handedness of quarks, their fractional charge, confinement and masses and the handedness of neutrinos, the so called accidental relation that the classical Kerr- Newman metric describes, the field of an electron including the purely quantum mechanical gyromagnetic ratio g=2, as also the many large number coincidences made famous by Dirac and Weinberg's mysterious empirical formula that relates the pion mass to the Hubble Constant. A cosmology based on fluctuations related to the above stochastic space-time discretization, consistent with latest observations is also seen to follow.Comment: 18 pages, Te

The study of the physics of cometary nuclei

A semiannual progress report describing the work completed during the period 1 September 1975 to 29 February 1976 on the physics of cometary nuclei was given. The following items were discussed: (1) a paper entitled ""A speculation about comets and the earth'', (2) a chapter entitled"" The physics of comets'' for ""Reviews of Astronomy and Astrophysics'', (3) continuing work on split comets, and (4) results dealing with a new application of nongravitational solar-radial forces as a measure of comet nucleus dimensions and activity

Anticipatory Semantic Processes

Why anticipatory processes correspond to cognitive abilities of living systems? To be adapted to an environment, behaviors need at least i) internal representations of events occurring in the external environment; and ii) internal anticipations of possible events to occur in the external environment. Interactions of these two opposite but complementary cognitive properties lead to various patterns of experimental data on semantic processing. How to investigate dynamic semantic processes? Experimental studies in cognitive psychology offer several interests such as: i) the control of the semantic environment such as words embedded in sentences; ii) the methodological tools allowing the observation of anticipations and adapted oculomotor behavior during reading; and iii) the analyze of different anticipatory processes within the theoretical framework of semantic processing. What are the different types of semantic anticipations? Experimental data show that semantic anticipatory processes involve i) the coding in memory of sequences of words occurring in textual environments; ii) the anticipation of possible future words from currently perceived words; and iii) the selection of anticipated words as a function of the sequences of perceived words, achieved by anticipatory activations and inhibitory selection processes. How to modelize anticipatory semantic processes? Localist or distributed neural networks models can account for some types of semantic processes, anticipatory or not. Attractor neural networks coding temporal sequences are presented as good candidate for modeling anticipatory semantic processes, according to specific properties of the human brain such as i) auto-associative memory; ii) learning and memorization of sequences of patterns; and iii) anticipation of memorized patterns from previously perceived patterns

Radio detections of cometary molecular transitions: A review

Radio detections of CH, OH, HCN, CH3CN, and several unidentified species in comet Kohoutek and the detection of H2O emission from comet Bradfield are discussed in terms of the similarities and differences between cometary molecules and interstellar molecules. Emphasis is placed on excitation and chemistry. The observed projected densities and resulting gas production rates are considered along with the feasibility of future radio molecular observations of comets

The Relationship between the Beveridge-Nelson Decomposition andUnobserved Component Models with Correlated Shocks

Many researchers believe that the Beveridge-Nelson decomposition leads to permanent and transitory components whose shocks are perfectly negatively correlated. Indeed, some even consider it to be a property of the decomposition. We demonstrate that the Beveridge-Nelson decomposition does not provide definitive information about the correlation between permanent and transitory shocks in an unobserved components model. Given an ARIMA model describing the evolution of U.S. real GDP, we show that there are many state space representations that generate the Beveridge-Nelson decomposition. These include unobserved components models with perfectly correlated shocks and partially correlated shocks. In our applications, the only knowledge we have about the correlation is that it lies in a restricted interval that does not include zero. Although the filtered estimates of the trend and cycle are identical for models with different correlations, the observationally equivalent unobserved components models produce different smoothed estimates.