Alcohol and Substance Use in Adolescence and Young Adulthood: The Role of Siblings.

Interpersonal relationships both within and outside the family have been a central part of alcohol and substance use research. Many studies have focused on the role of parents and peers; fewer studies have focused on siblings. This paper examined siblings' roles in ATOD use patterns and trajectories in the context of familial and non-familial factors across time. First, intraclass correlations (ICCs) were used to examine the degree to which older siblings' ATOD use was associated with younger siblings' ATOD use. Second, hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to examine the degree to which individual, parent, sibling and peer factors over time were associated with adolescents' and young adults' ATOD use. It should be noted that developmentally proximal predictors were utilized in these models and within-family replication was also examined. Results demonstrate strong associations between older and younger siblings' ATOD use. Moreover, the developmentally proximal sibling variables were predictive of younger sibling ATOD use in the context of other variables across all substances. Study findings are discussed in terms of identifying promising and potentially malleable points of intervention for future investigators.

The consequences of antisocial behavior in older male siblings for younger brothers and sisters.

The contribution of younger male and female siblings' conflict and involvement in deviant activities with their older brothers to younger siblings' adolescent adjustment problems was examined in the context of parenting. Ineffective parenting during younger siblings' childhood had no direct effects on adjustment but facilitated their exposure to older brothers' deviant peers and activities. The effect of sibling conflict on adjustment was mediated by younger siblings' coparticipation in deviant activities with their older brothers during adolescence. Early sibling conflict and coparticipation in deviant activities synergistically increased the risk for younger siblings' adolescent adjustment problems. These empirical relations held in the context of parental discipline of younger siblings during adolescence. Sibling relationships entail a set of iterative social processes that strongly influence risk for adolescent antisocial behavior, drug use, sexual behavior, and traumatic experience. Variations in sibling influence were observed conditional on the gender combination of the sibling pair and on sibling age differences.

New developments in high-throughput resequencing and variation detection using high density microarrays.

We developed a high-throughput method for resequencing for single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) discovery using high-density microarrays. Over the two-year course of this study a number of improvements in sample preparation methods, hybridization assay, array handling, and analysis method were developed and implemented. DNA from 40 unrelated individuals of three different ethnic origins was amplified, labeled, and hybridized to arrays designed with probes representing genomic, coding, and regulatory regions. Protocol improvements including the use of long PCR and semi-automation reduced labeling and fragmentation costs by 33%. Automation improvements include the development of a scanner autoloader for arrays, a faster array wash station, and a linked laboratory tracking and data management system. Validation of a smaller feature size, 20 x 24 microns, allowed the simultaneous screening of 30-kb sense and 30-kb antisense DNA on each microarray, increasing throughput to 1.4 Mb per day per two laboratory personnel. More than 15,000 SNPs were identified in 8.3 Mb of the human genome using high-density resequencing and variation detection arrays (microarrays).

Eye-movements and ongoing task processing.

This study tests the relation between eye-movements and thought processing. Subjects were given specific modality tasks (visual, gustatory, kinesthetic) and assessed on whether they responded with distinct eye-movements. Some subjects' eye-movements reflected ongoing thought processing. Instead of a universal pattern, as suggested by the neurolinguistic programming hypothesis, this study yielded subject-specific idiosyncratic eye-movements across all modalities. Included is a discussion of the neurolinguistic programming hypothesis regarding eye-movements and its implications for the eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing theory.