TOWARDS A COMPLEX SYSTEMS MODEL OF PSI PERFORMANCE

If psi is like any other human abiliry, and widely disrribured in rhe popularion, rhan psi performance may be modulated by many of the same facrors that affect other forms of human performance. To test rhis notion, 105 people participated in a series of four psi tests. Participants represented a broad range of age, belief. experience and personality type; data of 96 participants was adequate for further analysis. A rotal of 149 variables were tracked per participant, including psi performance, psychological, sociological, meteorological, and solar-geophysical facrors. The first test relied upon background ionizing radiation as the physical target, the second and third tests used electronic noise, and the fourth test involved a riming task. A single score was used to summarize each individual's psi performance in the four tests. An artificial neural network was trained on the data of 72 participants to see if psi performance could be predicted based on eight variables representing an aggregation of 24 environmental, sociological and psychological factors. The network successfully learned to predict the performance of the remaining 24 people (correlation between prediction and actual performance was r 0.47, p ; 0.01), suggesting that psi performance in the laboratory, and probably in life, is influenced by some of the same environmental factors that influence other forms of human behavior

ENVIRONMENTAL MODULATION AND STATISTICAL EQUILIBRIUM IN MIND-MATTER INTERACTION

Mind-matter interactions observed in laboratory experiments typically manifest as minute statistical flucruations from chance expectation. Meta-analyses suggest that these small flucruations reflect genuine, direct interactions between mind and matter, but lack of predictability of the effect has made systematic study of the phenomenon difficult. Two general factors that may contribute to erratic laboratory outcomes are (a) unavoidable environmental fluctuations and (b) a physical principle that tends to counterbalance mind-matter effecrs in time and space. Environment is used in the holistic sense, including cosmic, global, local, and personal variables. The physical principle is envisioned as a tendency for perturbations introduced into a system to be statistically balanced by opposing perturbations so as to maintain an overall condition of equilibrium. A longitudinal experiment with the experimenter as subject was designed to explore the possible influences of these twO factors in mind-matter interaction. The results found strong indicators of environmental modulation, including a successful demonstration that a neural network could learn to predict mind-matter interaction performance based upon eight environmental variables. Evidence for a time-and space-like equilibrium principle was also observed in the data

POSSIBLE INFLUENCE OF THE GEOMAGNETIC FIELD ON SPORTS PERFORMANCE

If human behavior and performance are affected by minute changes in the earth's geomagnetic field, as suggested by a growing body of evidence, then one might also expect to see such influences reflected in skilled physical performance, such as sports. To explore this possibility, scores from a mixed-gender, candlepin competitive bowling league were correlated with daily planetary geomagnetic flux. Results indicated that geomagnetic fluctuations the day before bowling accounted for a significant percentage (40%) of the variance in men's bowling scores. The same relationship was not independently significant for women's scores, but the correlation was opposite to men's scores

ENVIRONMENTAL MODULATION AND STATISTICAL EQUILIBRIUM IN MIND-MATTER INTERACTION

Mind-matter interactions observed in laboratory experiments typically manifest as minute statistical flucruations from chance expectation. Meta-analyses suggest that these small flucruations reflect genuine, direct interactions between mind and matter, but lack of predictability of the effect has made systematic study of the phenomenon difficult. Two general factors that may contribute to erratic laboratory outcomes are (a) unavoidable environmental fluctuations and (b) a physical principle that tends to counterbalance mind-matter effecrs in time and space. Environment is used in the holistic sense, including cosmic, global, local, and personal variables. The physical principle is envisioned as a tendency for perturbations introduced into a system to be statistically balanced by opposing perturbations so as to maintain an overall condition of equilibrium. A longitudinal experiment with the experimenter as subject was designed to explore the possible influences of these twO factors in mind-matter interaction. The results found strong indicators of environmental modulation, including a successful demonstration that a neural network could learn to predict mind-matter interaction performance based upon eight environmental variables. Evidence for a time-and space-like equilibrium principle was also observed in the data

POSSIBLE INFLUENCE OF THE GEOMAGNETIC FIELD ON SPORTS PERFORMANCE

If human behavior and performance are affected by minute changes in the earth's geomagnetic field, as suggested by a growing body of evidence, then one might also expect to see such influences reflected in skilled physical performance, such as sports. To explore this possibility, scores from a mixed-gender, candlepin competitive bowling league were correlated with daily planetary geomagnetic flux. Results indicated that geomagnetic fluctuations the day before bowling accounted for a significant percentage (40%) of the variance in men's bowling scores. The same relationship was not independently significant for women's scores, but the correlation was opposite to men's scores

LUNAR CORRELATES OF NORMAL, ABNORMAL AND ANOMALOUS HUMAN BEHAVIOR

From ancient times, people have believed that the moon affects human behavior. To test this belief, roral lunar cycle (29,5 day synodic period) was correlated against 35 variables recorded during the calendar year 1993, The variables included global geophysical factors, local weather in Las Vegas, NV, indices of ahnormal and criminal activities in Clark Counry, NV, fluctuations in mutual fund prices and lonery payour percentages for six US state loneries, All data were averaged to smooth out daily fluctuations, data related to criminal and abnormal human behavior were adjusted for day-of-week periodicities, and the financial data was de-trended. Three types of relationships were explored: Correlation with rota I lunar cycle; mean differences between the waning and waxing lunar cycles; and sudden changes on the day of the full moon, Besides obtaining expected correlations with some geophysical variables, statistically significant relationships were also observed with some behavioral variables, mutual fund residuals and state louery payour percentages. Bivariate spectral analyses confirmed the presence of 29.5 day cycles in the crisis calls, abnormal, financial and lottery payout behavior. Variables showing sudden changes on the day of the full moon included crisis calls, suicide, and psychiatric admission rates. Variables showing significam differences between the waning and waxing moon included homicide and crisis calls. We conclude that this dataset supportS popular beliefs about imerrelationships of lunar phase and human behavior

Modelling quasicrystals at positive temperature

We consider a two-dimensional lattice model of equilibrium statistical mechanics, using nearest neighbor interactions based on the matching conditions for an aperiodic set of 16 Wang tiles. This model has uncountably many ground state configurations, all of which are nonperiodic. The question addressed in this paper is whether nonperiodicity persists at low but positive temperature. We present arguments, mostly numerical, that this is indeed the case. In particular, we define an appropriate order parameter, prove that it is identically zero at high temperatures, and show by Monte Carlo simulation that it is nonzero at low temperatures

EFFECTS OF DISTANT HEALING INTEN'TION THROUGH TIME & SPACE: Two Exploratory Studies

Two double-blind experiments explored the effects of healing intention directed wwards a distant person. The distant person's respiration, heart rate, fingertip blood volume, and spontaneous electrodermal activity were continuously monitored during 20 randomly counterbalanced oneminute "treatment" and control epochs. The first experiment examined the effects of a group's healing intention directed in real-time at volunteers isolated 200 meters away. The second experiment studied the effects of Umbanda mediums who directed their healing intentions from Sao Paulo, Brazil wwards volunteers who wefe monitored two months earlier in Las Vegas, Nevada. The first study showed that the groups' healing intention was associated with an increase in breathing rate (p 0,053, two-tail) and a decrease in electrodermal activity (p 0.055, TWo-tail) in the distant volunteers. The second study showed that despite a separation of 6,000 miles in space and 'TWO months in time, the mediums' healing intention was associated with an increase in fingertip blood volume (p 0.013, TWo-tai/) and an increase in electrodermal activity (p 0.031, TWo-tail) in the distant volunteers. Possible alternative explanations for the reponed effects are considered, and the experimental outcomes and methodological implications are discussed