Relationship Maintenance Behaviors and Marital Stability in Remarriage: The Examination of Stepfamily Constellations and Associated Challenges

Research on stepfamily life in the 21st century reveals unexplored variables at every turn. This is important because around half of American adults report close step-relationships and the challenges and demographic and relational differences for different types of stepfamilies remains unexplored. The first of these studies explored data for 879 husbands and wives couples to explore how positivity, negativity, and sexual interest levels differ depending which of the couple, both partners, or neither had previous children. Wives reported higher levels of marital instability and positivity than husbands. Marital instability was linked with one’s own and one’s partners’ negativity, and inversely related to one’s own and one’s partners’ positivity and sexual interest. The marital instability of those with children was related with their partner’s negativity. The second study investigated how the marital stability of different stepfamily configurations is related to difficulties associated with the social and family dimension, the role of the spouse, the role of a parent, and the role of a stepparent. Wives’ scores of marital instability and difficulties being a parent and stepparent were higher than husbands’ across remarriage types. Stepmothers reported the highest levels of parenting and stepparenting strain, especially stepmothers without children of their own. This implies stepfamily challenges can impact family-related stress and marital instability, with the most profound effects found for stepmothers with no biological children of their own. We found that parents with children seem to be sensitive to negativity and sexual interest from their partners as a measure of relationship functioning. Stepmothers experienced higher levels of marital instability and difficulties associated with being a parent and a stepparent and this is especially true for stepmothers who did not have children of their own. These findings suggest couples may benefit from strategies that decrease negativity, increase positivity and sexual interest, and help manage the stresses associated with being a parent and stepparent, especially for stepmother

Romantic Relationship Quality and Technological Communication: Examining the Roles of Attachment Representations and Rejection Sensitivity

Understanding normative developmental patterns in romantic relationships within cultural-historical contexts is a vital research agenda, and contemporary relationships develop amid pervasive socio-technological advancements. The role of technology in relationship functioning is relevant as romantic relationships are among the most important types of relationships and technology may substitute proximity, a core imperative of the attachment system. This study described patterns of computer-mediated communication (CMC) in young adult romantic relationships. Specifically, we hypothesized that core relational and personality constructs were linked to participants’ interpretations and reactions to CMC. Participants were 97 college students who provided global scores for rejection sensitivity, attachment representations, relationship satisfaction, and data about CMC with their romantic partner. Participants were prompted twice daily for two weeks to respond to questions assessing the nature and reaction to their most recent CMC with their romantic partner. Participants used texting more than any other CMC and communicated with romantic partners more than all others combined. Participants’ high relationship and communication satisfaction remained relatively constant. The 97 participants completed 1,616 mobile responses. Reported response latency was higher for men than women. Significant negative correlations emerged between interaction ratings, rejection sensitivity, and both insecure attachment dimensions. Regression analyses revealed only main effects for response latency and insecure attachment in predicting interaction ratings for women. No significant interactions emerged between response latency and attachment/response latency. For men, insecure attachment representations and rejection sensitivity demonstrated direct effects on interaction ratings. Avoidant attachment and response latency demonstrated a statistically significant interaction. Response latency and the interaction rating were negatively related only for men who scored low in avoidance. This study contributes to the body of literature assessing outcomes and qualities of romantic relationships in emerging adulthood. Technological communication is a key feature of young couples’ communication and appears more prevalent in romantic relationships than other relationships. Additionally, core relational and personality characteristics are substantially correlated to interpretations of momentto- moment interactions via technology

Associations Between Relationship Maintenance Behaviors and Marital Stability in Remarriages

Nearly half of adults in the U.S. indicated they had a close step-relative that included stepparents, stepchildren, and other close relationships. The prevalence of stepfamilies is rapidly increasing and represents a population that remains largely understudied. This study explored the roles of socioemotional behaviors (positivity, negativity, and sexual interest) on marital stability for different remarriage constellations (depending on which of the couple, both partners, or neither had previous children). This study uses dyadic relationship data from 879 couples. It was hypothesized that positivity and sexual interest would be inversely related to marital instability, while negativity will be correlated with marital instability

Turfgrass Management for the Texas Panhandle.

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Caenorhabditis elegans orthologs of human genes differentially expressed with age are enriched for determinants of longevity

We report a systematic RNAi longevity screen of 82 Caenorhabditis elegans genes selected based on orthology to human genes differentially expressed with age. We find substantial enrichment in genes for which knockdown increased lifespan. This enrichment is markedly higher than published genomewide longevity screens in C. elegans and similar to screens that preselected candidates based on longevity-correlated metrics (e.g., stress resistance). Of the 50 genes that affected lifespan, 46 were previously unreported. The five genes with the greatest impact on lifespan (>20% extension) encode the enzyme kynureninase (kynu-1), a neuronal leucine-rich repeat protein (iglr-1), a tetraspanin (tsp-3), a regulator of calcineurin (rcan-1), and a voltage-gated calcium channel subunit (unc-36). Knockdown of each gene extended healthspan without impairing reproduction. kynu-1(RNAi) alone delayed pathology in C. elegans models of Alzheimer's disease and Huntington's disease. Each gene displayed a distinct pattern of interaction with known aging pathways. In the context of published work, kynu-1, tsp-3, and rcan-1 are of particular interest for immediate follow-up. kynu-1 is an understudied member of the kynurenine metabolic pathway with a mechanistically distinct impact on lifespan. Our data suggest that tsp-3 is a novel modulator of hypoxic signaling and rcan-1 is a context-specific calcineurin regulator. Our results validate C. elegans as a comparative tool for prioritizing human candidate aging genes, confirm age-associated gene expression data as valuable source of novel longevity determinants, and prioritize select genes for mechanistic follow-up

On the benefits of the tryptophan metabolite 3-hydroxyanthranilic acid in Caenorhabditis elegans and mouse aging.

Tryptophan metabolism through the kynurenine pathway influences molecular processes critical to healthy aging including immune signaling, redox homeostasis, and energy production. Aberrant kynurenine metabolism occurs during normal aging and is implicated in many age-associated pathologies including chronic inflammation, atherosclerosis, neurodegeneration, and cancer. We and others previously identified three kynurenine pathway genes-tdo-2, kynu-1, and acsd-1-for which decreasing expression extends lifespan in invertebrates. Here we report that knockdown of haao-1, a fourth gene encoding the enzyme 3-hydroxyanthranilic acid (3HAA) dioxygenase (HAAO), extends lifespan by ~30% and delays age-associated health decline in Caenorhabditis elegans. Lifespan extension is mediated by increased physiological levels of the HAAO substrate 3HAA. 3HAA increases oxidative stress resistance and activates the Nrf2/SKN-1 oxidative stress response. In pilot studies, female Haao knockout mice or aging wild type male mice fed 3HAA supplemented diet were also long-lived. HAAO and 3HAA represent potential therapeutic targets for aging and age-associated disease

Combined search for the quarks of a sequential fourth generation

Results are presented from a search for a fourth generation of quarks produced singly or in pairs in a data set corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5 inverse femtobarns recorded by the CMS experiment at the LHC in 2011. A novel strategy has been developed for a combined search for quarks of the up and down type in decay channels with at least one isolated muon or electron. Limits on the mass of the fourth-generation quarks and the relevant Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix elements are derived in the context of a simple extension of the standard model with a sequential fourth generation of fermions. The existence of mass-degenerate fourth-generation quarks with masses below 685 GeV is excluded at 95% confidence level for minimal off-diagonal mixing between the third- and the fourth-generation quarks. With a mass difference of 25 GeV between the quark masses, the obtained limit on the masses of the fourth-generation quarks shifts by about +/- 20 GeV. These results significantly reduce the allowed parameter space for a fourth generation of fermions.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Search for a W' boson decaying to a bottom quark and a top quark in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

Results are presented from a search for a W' boson using a dataset corresponding to 5.0 inverse femtobarns of integrated luminosity collected during 2011 by the CMS experiment at the LHC in pp collisions at sqrt(s)=7 TeV. The W' boson is modeled as a heavy W boson, but different scenarios for the couplings to fermions are considered, involving both left-handed and right-handed chiral projections of the fermions, as well as an arbitrary mixture of the two. The search is performed in the decay channel W' to t b, leading to a final state signature with a single lepton (e, mu), missing transverse energy, and jets, at least one of which is tagged as a b-jet. A W' boson that couples to fermions with the same coupling constant as the W, but to the right-handed rather than left-handed chiral projections, is excluded for masses below 1.85 TeV at the 95% confidence level. For the first time using LHC data, constraints on the W' gauge coupling for a set of left- and right-handed coupling combinations have been placed. These results represent a significant improvement over previously published limits.Comment: Submitted to Physics Letters B. Replaced with version publishe

Compressed representation of a partially defined integer function over multiple arguments

In OLAP (OnLine Analitical Processing) data are analysed in an n-dimensional cube. The cube may be represented as a partially defined function over n arguments. Considering that often the function is not defined everywhere, we ask: is there a known way of representing the function or the points in which it is defined, in a more compact manner than the trivial one