How is Anxiety Involved in the Longitudinal Relationship between Brooding Rumination and Depressive Symptoms in Adolescents?

A growing body of research supports the application of Response Styles Theory to adolescent populations. Although the essential dynamic, namely that rumination increases the incidence of depressive symptoms, has been demonstrated among adolescents, a number of important empirical questions remain, such as: what are the gender differences and developmental trends for brooding and reflective rumination?; does a reciprocal relationship exist between brooding or reflective rumination, on the one hand, and depressive symptoms and anxiety, on the other hand, over time? and how do additional variables (i.e., anxiety) impact upon the rumination-depressive symptoms relationship? In this study, self-reported levels of rumination (both brooding and reflective), and anxious and depressive symptoms were measured longitudinally across 4 months in a sample of 976 community adolescents (46 % females), aged 11–16 years old. Mean group differences showed that female adolescents reported engaging in more brooding rumination than male adolescents beginning at 13 years of age. A reciprocal brooding rumination to depressive symptoms relationship and a reciprocal brooding rumination to anxiety relationship were found over time, and they did not differ for boys and girls. We tested the possibility that anxious symptoms would function as a third variable, but the obtained model showed that brooding rumination and anxiety both contributed unique variance in predicting changes in depressive symptoms over time.     

The Last Good Chance: A Reassessment of U.S. Operations at Tora Bora

The inability of the United States to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and many of his top deputies at Tora Bora is widely recognized as one of the most significant missed opportunities of America's struggle with al Qaeda. However, the debate over U.S. actions at Tora Bora during Operation Enduring Freedom lacks in-depth analysis, especially concerning the commonly offered solution of more U.S. troops on the ground. This paper dissects the original operation against al Qaeda forces entrenched in the mountain complex in eastern Afghanistan in late 2001 and its impact on the debate over the Afghan model of warfare. An alternative plan involving U.S. conventional forces is presented that takes into account the considerable constraints of the scenario and analyzes the key make-or-break points of the operation. Although the challenges are far greater than most critics have allowed, the revised plan would likely have offered the best chance to capture or kill Bin Laden and a significant portion of the al Qaeda leadership.     

The scientific foundation of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models

DSGE-models provide a coherent framework of analysis. This coherence is brought about by restricting acceptable behavior of agents to dynamic utility maximization and rational expectations. The problem of the DSGE-models (and more generally of macroeconomic models based on rational expectations) is that they assume extraordinary cognitive capabilities of individual agents. In addition, these models need a lot of ad-hoc assumptions to make them fit the data. I argue that we need models that take into account the limited cognitive abilities of agents. One can introduce rationality in such models by assuming “trial and error“ learning. I propose such a model and I analyze its implications.     

Book note Résumé de livres

Richard A. Clarke,Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror. New York: Free Press, 2004. Pp. xiii, 304, index. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the U.S.,The 9/11 Commission Report, authorized edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., [2004]. Pp. xviii, 567, bibliographical references.     

George F. Kennan’s Realism

Recent studies of the career diplomat and distinguished historian George F. Kennan, and particularly a little noted intellectual biography by Lee Congdon, reveal a side of this figure that has often been neglected. Despite his reputation as a critic of the Cold War, Kennan was in fact a strong anti-Communist and profoundly conservative thinker. His conventional defenders have stressed his displeasure with vocal anti-Communism in order to create an image of him that is consistent with their left-of-center politics. This has come at the expense of playing down unfashionable opinions that Kennan expressed on a wide range of issues. Many of his opinions, which he viewed as eminently “realistic,” would have been unacceptable to his mainstream admirers even fifty years ago, were it not for his stands on the Cold War and for certain isolated statements drawn from his post-World War Two speeches mentioning racial inequality and industrial waste. What is now being published on Kennan’s life, however, provides a more balanced picture. Congdon and John Lukacs have both offered this necessary corrective to earlier views about their subject in recent biographical studies. These and other commentators are now highlighting the anti-modernist perspective from which he viewed and criticized the twentieth century.     

全球信息保密管理：在网络环境下的跨境信息流

美国隐私权项目与Paul M.Schwartz教授合作形成的《全球信息保密管理：在网络环境下的跨境信息流》报告,基于一系列结构化自我报告案例研究,介绍了六家公司计划及实施跨国个人信息保护的方案,展示了私人企业中国际信息安全的巨大变革,集中表现为三个方面：规模的改变,信息处理的转变,信息管理的转变。该报告提出,要致力于将案例研究与相关信息保护法政策研究有机结合,以寻求新的解决方案,其关键在于重视各项法规的具体实施,以及如何保证强有力的执行。