From p-branes to cosmology

We study the relationship between static p-brane solitons and cosmological solutions of string theory or M theory. We discuss two different ways in which extremal p-branes can be generalized to nonextremal ones, and show how wide classes of recently discussed cosmological models can be mapped into nonextremal p-brane solutions of one of these two kinds. We also extend previous discussions of cosmological solutions to include some that make use of cosmological-type terms in the effective action that can arise from the generalized dimensional reduction of string theory or M theory.