Optimism and Health: Resource or Delusion

There is a general, widely-held belief that optimism is always a good thing. While there is much previous research suggesting that optimists enjoy several health and wellness benefits, there is also a large body of research suggesting that optimism is not always advantageous. Examining how optimism develops and changes across the lifespan may give us insight into how we use optimism and allow us to determine if and when optimism is helpful or maladaptive. In this talk, I will review evidence debating the efficacy of optimism, as well as examine how optimism develops across the lifespan. I also discuss how life events may or may not impact the developmental trajectory of optimism. Lastly, I address currently unanswered questions and emphasize the contextual nature of optimism’s advantages. Ultimately, being persistently optimistic about the future is a nearly universal human trait. But the exact contexts in which this positive thinking is helpful--if ever--is an intriguing question that speaks to how we think about ourselves, how we think about others, and how we think about our many possible futures.

Good Regulation Reflects Words in Action

Given the impossibility of binary “yes” and “no” classical general legal rules to anticipate and address the future path of law, this paper imitates the adaptive human nature and frames future legal actions on it. Given this human trait, this paper presents some predispositions for substance and actions that are based on the systemic/cybernetic approach. The latter prioritises values, goals and their weights, with controllable thresholds that, based on feedback loops between events, facts, and intentions, activate different preestablished (legal) scenarios. The paper develops new responses to changed conditions (responsiveness, adaptability, agility and robustness); the first are needed in the law due to inevitability of dynamic changes to present some adaptive regulatory techniques, which could be implemented in practical systems. The paper concludes that such techniques can be used in the law used as sunset clauses, legal experiments, emergent strategies, negative scenarios, adaptable norms, Henry VII clauses, public opinion within collective intelligence and legal experiments. They all can address changed conditions in the environment.

The Structure of the Spinal Cord Ependymal Region in Adult Humans Is a Distinctive Trait among Mammals

In species that regenerate the injured spinal cord, the ependymal region is a source of new cells and a prominent coordinator of regeneration. In mammals, cells at the ependymal region proliferate in normal conditions and react after injury, but in humans, the central canal is lost in the majority of individuals from early childhood. It is replaced by a structure that does not proliferate after damage and is formed by large accumulations of ependymal cells, strong astrogliosis and perivascular pseudo-rosettes. We inform here of two additional mammals that lose the central canal during their lifetime: the Naked Mole-Rat (NMR, Heterocephalus glaber) and the mutant hyh (hydrocephalus with hop gait) mice. The morphological study of their spinal cords shows that the tissue substituting the central canal is not similar to that found in humans. In both NMR and hyh mice, the central canal is replaced by tissue reminiscent of normal lamina X and may include small groups of ependymal cells in the midline, partially resembling specific domains of the former canal. However, no features of the adult human ependymal remnant are found, suggesting that this structure is a specific human trait. In order to shed some more light on the mechanism of human central canal closure, we provide new data suggesting that canal patency is lost by delamination of the ependymal epithelium, in a process that includes apical polarity loss and the expression of signaling mediators involved in epithelial to mesenchymal transitions.

Grief and Stress Communication and Management in Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis

Communication, an essential human trait, is vital to develop a great connectedness among individuals as it helps to understand human mind and emotions. Grief and stress are communicated in different proportions in ancient Greek tragedies, which revolve around a plot that emanates grief. The characters in a Greek tragedy are affected by or are victims of a grieving situation central to the play. Aristotle maintained that tragic action must emanate pity and fear which are connected with grief and stress. Euripides, the revolutionary dramatist of Classical Athens, has empowered his characters to the effect of transmitting their sentiments freely. This feature is notable in his plays such as Alcestis, Electra, Ion, Orestes and Iphigenia in Aulis (IA). In IA, a well-established mythical account is presented as a simple family story. It is not just Iphigenia, who is affected by her impending tragedy. Almost all characters grieve in different proportions, while attempting to manage their grief and stress first by communicating it and then in ways peculiar to themselves. The strategies range from keeping a positive attitude, accepting the situations, to being assertive instead of being aggressive. This study examines the communication of grief and stress as a means of managing such sentiments with especial reference to Iphigenia in Aulis in order to understand how Euripidean tragedy could bring relief to its audience. In the process, the study observes how the dynamics of engagement of a character with others, their feelings, thoughts and intentions can contribute to manage grief and stress through effective communication of such sentiments. Keywords: grief and stress, communication, management, Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis

Putative role of PV and SOM interneuron subtypes in working memory

Working memory is an essential human trait required for all cognitive activities. Our previous model from \citet{mongillo_2008,mi_2017} uses synaptic facilitation to store traces of working memory. Thus memories can be maintained without persistent neural activity. A critical component of this model is a central inhibition which prevents multiple item representations from being active at the same time. We know from experimental studies that multiple genetically-defined interneuron subtypes (e.g. PV, SOM) with different excitability and connectivity properties mediate inhibition in the cortex. The role of these subtypes in working memory however is not known. Here we develop a modified model with these interneuron subtypes, and propose their functional roles in working memory. We make concrete testable predictions about the roles of these groups.

Confirmation Bias

This chapter examines confirmation bias, which refers to people’s tendency to attend only to information that agrees with what they already think is true. Confirmation bias is responsible for not only a great deal of denial of scientific evidence but also the actual generation and maintenance of incorrect scientific information. That is, scientific and medical professionals are as prone as anyone else is to “seeing what we believe,” making it especially difficult to help people sort out what is true science from the mistakes and outright fabrications. The chapter demonstrates how confirmation bias, although a highly adaptive human trait, often causes scientific misperceptions due to resistance to the often counterintuitive disconfirmation process of scientific inquiry. It then proposes some ways of countering confirmation bias.

On the Synonymy of Person-Identifying One-Word Idioms – An Analysis on the Example of Angsthase and its Synonyms

The subject of this article are selected German one-word idioms that describe the human trait of anxiety. At the center of the investigation is the question of the synonymy of the phraseologisms to be analyzed. The aim of the study is to show to what extent the analyzed phraseological units can be regarded as synonymous and consequently as interchangeable. The analysis is carried out on the basis of the data taken from the DeReKo. The background to the research on this question is provided by considerations over the definition of single-word idioms, which aim to show that, despite their monolexicality, German single-word idioms should be included in the subject area of phraseology. For this, various arguments are presented and discussed in the theoretical part of the article. The appearance of the synonyms in the lexicon is then explained in more detail, and the manner in which the synonymy is manifested in the phraseolexicon is also discussed. It is pointed out that phraseological units can be synonymous both with one another and with other units of the lexicon. However, it should be noted that only the first perspective of the synonymy of phraseological units is examined in the article.

Concept Analysis of Caring Personality for Nursing: A Review

Caring as a human trait means that a nurse should have a caring personality. As a personality, caring will be an enduring characteristic and behavior; so, a caring nurse always shows caring behavior throughout his or her lifetime. Although experts have studied and applied the concept of caring, studies on the concept of a caring personality are rare. The purpose of this article is to conceptualize the meaning and significance of a caring personality among nurses providing nursing care. To achieve this, we used the Walker and Avant concept analysis approach. The attributes of a caring personality include (1) altruism, (2) emotional intelligence, (3) emotional stability, (4) personal integrity, and (5) optimism. The antecedents of these attributes are biological bases, characteristic adaptation, and learning organization. Nurses with caring personalities will have an impact on professional caring and patient satisfaction. This article presents case examples and a definition of a caring personality. This study concludes that a caring personality in a nurse is an essential foundation for the provision of professional care and satisfaction of patients in nursing care and that the nurse must have a caring personality, in order to provide high-quality, humanized healthcare.