Purpose in life predicts better emotional recovery from negative stimuli

Purpose in life predicts both health and longevity suggesting that the ability to find meaning from life’s experiences, especially when confronting life’s challenges, may be a mechanism underlying resilience. Having purpose in life may motivate reframing stressful situations to deal with them more productively, thereby facilitating recovery from stress and trauma. In turn, enhanced ability to recover from negative events may allow a person to achieve or maintain a feeling of greater purpose in life over time. In a large sample of adults (aged 36-84 years) from the MIDUS study (Midlife in the U.S., http://www.midus.wisc.edu/), we tested whether purpose in life was associated with better emotional recovery following exposure to negative picture stimuli indexed by the magnitude of the eyeblink startle reflex (EBR), a measure sensitive to emotional state. We differentiated between initial emotional reactivity (during stimulus presentation) and emotional recovery (occurring after stimulus offset). Greater purpose in life, assessed over two years prior, predicted better recovery from negative stimuli indexed by a smaller eyeblink after negative pictures offset, even after controlling for initial reactivity to the stimuli during the picture presentation, gender, age, trait affect, and other well-being dimensions. These data suggest a proximal mechanism by which purpose in life may afford protection from negative events and confer resilience is through enhanced automatic emotion regulation after negative emotional provocation

Towards sustainable energy. Generation of hydrogen fuel using nuclear energy

The increasing demand for sustainable energy results in the development of new technologies of energy generation. The key objective of hydrogen economy is the introduction of hydrogen as main energy carrier, along with electricity, on a global scale. The key goal is the development of hydrogen-related technologies needed for hydrogen generation, hydrogen storage, hydrogen transportation and hydrogen distribution as well as hydrogen safety systems. It is commonly believed that hydrogen is environmentally clean since its combustion results in the formation of water. However, the technology currently employed for the generation of hydrogen from natural gas, does in fact lead to the emission of greenhouse gases and climate change. Therefore, the key issues in the introduction of hydrogen economy involve the development of environmentally clean hydrogen production technology as well as storage and transport. The clean options available for hydrogen generation using nuclear energy; such as advanced nuclear fission and, ultimately, nuclear fusion, are discussed. The latter, which is environmentally clean, is expected to be the primary approach in the production of hydrogen fuel at the global scale. The present work considers the effect of hydrogen on properties of TiO2 and its solid solutions in the contexts of photocatalytic energy conversion and the effect of tritium on advanced tritium breeders. © 2016 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC