Psychological Symptoms, Marital Quality, and Environmental Stress in Newly-Married Couples

Cross-sectional relationships between psychological symptoms, marital quality, and stress experienced over the past week were explored using data from 310 newly married couples. Couples were recruited through newspaper ads and paid to participate. Couples were eligible if they had been married for less than six months and were not receiving therapy when they contacted the researcher. The Global Severity Index (GSI) of the Brief Symptom Inventory measured psychological symptoms. The Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS) measured marital quality, and scaled ratings of 11 types of stressors experienced over the previous week measured stress. Husband and wife measures were taken of each variable and the dyad was the unit of analysis.Correlations between the six variables ranged from 0.13 to 0.60, with 12 of the 15 relationships meeting the Bonferroni-corrected significance level of 0.003. In regression analyses with both DAS and stress entered as predictors of GSI, only stress remained significant for both husbands and wives. For wives, the negative relationship between symptoms and marital quality was more evident at lower levels of stress. In regression analyses with both GSI and stress entered as predictors of DAS, only GSI remained significant for husbands, and only stress remained significant for wives. For husbands, the negative relationship between GSI and DAS was more pronounced at lower levels of stress. At high levels of stress, husband DAS was uniformly low regardless of GSI. The interaction of partner and actor effects of GSI on DAS was significant for both husbands and wives, but the interaction of partner and actor effects of DAS on GSI was not

Forgiveness-Reconciliation and Communication-Conflict-Resolution Interventions Versus Retested Controls in Early Married Couples

The first 6 months of marriage are optimal for marriage enrichment interventions. The Hope-Focused Approach to couple enrichment was presented as two 9-hr interventions--(a) Handling Our Problems Effectively (HOPE), which emphasized communication and conflict resolution, and (b) Forgiveness and Reconciliation through Experiencing Empathy (FREE). HOPE and FREE were compared with repeated assessment controls. Couples were randomly assigned and were assessed at pretreatment (t1); 1 month posttreatment (t2) and at 3- (t3), 6- (t4), and 12-month (t5) follow-ups using self-reports. In addition to self-report measures, couples were assessed at t1, t2, and t5 using salivary cortisol, and behavioral coding of decision making. Of 179 couples who began the study, 145 cases were analyzed. Both FREE and HOPE produced lasting positive changes on self-reports. For cortisol reactivity, HOPE and FREE reduced reactivity at t2, but only HOPE at t5. For coded behaviors, control couples deteriorated; FREE and HOPE did not change. Enrichment training was effective regardless of the focus of the training

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead