A study shows that middle-aged people who have negative expectations about themselves and their future, run a high risk of accelerating hardening their arteries. Such symptoms, researchers say may prove fatal in longer run. Susan Everson and her colleagues at the California Public Health Foundation, Berkeley, USA believe that such people have a 20 percent more arterial wall thickening than those with low helplessness scores ( The Lancet , Vol 350, No 9078).