Effect of Extraction Procedure and Gas Chromatography Temperature Program on Discrimination of MDMA Exhibits

Analysis of impurities in seized MDMA tablets can be used to determine the synthesis method used and to identify links among exhibits. However, no standardized method exists to generate impurity profiles, limiting comparisons among different laboratories. This research investigated the effect of extraction procedure and gas chromatography temperature program on the resulting impurity profiles. Five exhibits were extracted using liquid–liquid extraction (LLE) and headspace solid‐phase microextraction (HS‐SPME), then analyzed using two different temperature programs. Profiles were statistically assessed using principal components analysis. While LLE was more reproducible, more compounds were extracted using HS‐SPME, thus providing more informative chemical profiles. The longer temperature program (53 min vs. 36 min) allowed greater discrimination of exhibits, due to improved precision as a result of an extended hold time (12 min). This research further highlights the need for standardized extraction and analysis procedures to allow comparison of chemical profiles generated in different laboratories.     

Using birthing kits to promote clean birth practices in Ethiopia

This article explores three NGO projects that assemble and distribute clean birthing kits in Ethiopia. It contrasts the government's health strategy that aims to increase skilled birth attendance, with local realities as most women in rural and remote settings give birth at home, often in unhygienic conditions, and without skilled assistance. Many health facilities are also unable to provide hygienic conditions for birthing women. The findings indicate that clean birth kits have assisted the NGOs to effectively promote clean delivery at home or in health facilities, and to encourage antenatal care, and early referral to emergency obstetric and new-born care.     

Methodological considerations in the evaluation of offender interventions: the problem of attrition

Attrition from offender interventions presents methodological problems when the effectiveness of the intervention is under evaluation. This article proposes a treatment-received (TR) design, which incorporates one-to-one matching on criminogenic variables. This design permits the comparison of completer, noncompleter, and nonstarter groups with their paired comparisons and, hence, allows a more accurate evaluation of program completion and noncompletion effects. A sample of 173 offenders, referred to one of two general offending behavior cognitive skills programs within community settings, was matched one-to-one by criminogenic variables to offenders from an appropriate comparison group. Reconviction analyses were undertaken using intention to treat (ITT) analysis, TR analysis using the full comparison group, and TR analysis using matched comparison groups. The ITT design found no impact of group membership on reconviction. The TR designs, however, provided evidence of moderate effects of completion: For every three completers, five of the matched comparison group members were reconvicted. The analysis also suggested a noncompletion effect: Noncompleters were twice as likely as their matched comparison group to be reconvicted.     

Translating the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study into Public Policy: Progress and Possibility in Washington State

On June 15, 2011, Washington became the first state in the United States to enact legislation aimed at preventing adverse childhood experiences (ACE), reducing their prevalence, and mitigating their effects. House Bill 1965 (HB 1965) was established on the understanding among legislators and Washington communities of the need for policies aimed at preventing child abuse, promoting healthy development of children, and building community capacity to improve public health. Empirical examples of integrating ACE-related research with public policy and programmatic design are chronicled. The legislators who developed HB 1965 lay out questions that, if answered, would further improve policymakers' ability to craft public policy and programs that prevent ACE, reduce their effects, and promote a healthier, safer future.     

Prenatal diagnosis and eugenic ideology

The new techniques of prenatal diagnosis confront women with choices that are constrained by the social and economic realities of the societies in which we live. These societies take little, if any, responsibility for meeting the special needs of people with disabilities and, in fact, discriminate against them. Prejudices against people with disabilities, poor people, and immigrants during the nineteenth century generated a science of ‘race improvement’, called eugenics. In the United States, a number of eugenic measures were enacted early in this century, but it was in Nazi Germany that eugenics or ‘racial hygiene’ flourished. In the guise of furthering the health of the German people (the Volk), German scientists and physicians designed programs of ‘selection and eradication’ (Auslese und Ausmerze) that were initially implemented by sterilizing people who were judged unfit to have children. Next came euthanasia and finally mass extermination of ‘lives not worth living’ (lebensunwerte Leben). Present-day German women, looking at this history, are opposing the ideology that underlies the new technical developments in prenatal diagnosis and some feminists outside Germany share their misgivings. This paper tries to place the new technologies in the context of eugenics and to point out some of the ways in which the new,supposedly liberating, choices in fact limit women's control over our lives.