The great tradition: The spread of diplomacy in the ancient world

Diplomacy as we understand it to the present day — a sophisticated system for handling affairs of state and negotiating treaties, based on accredited envoys working within a framework of international law and protocol - emerged in the third millennium BCE in the ancient Near East at the same time as the development of writing and urban culture. Transmitted by the great cuneiform civilizations of Babylon and Assyria to Achaemenid Persia and classical Greece and Rome, the heritage of diplomacy continued to flourish in Byzantium, Rome, and Venice. The Renaissance provided the conditions for the spread of a tradition that had existed in many essential aspects for millennia.     

Role of budget impact in drug reimbursement decisions

There are three known criteria that underlie drug reimbursement decisions: therapeutic value, cost-effectiveness, and burden of disease. However, evidence from recent reimbursement decisions in several jurisdictions points to residual, unexplained variables, among which is budget impact. Budget impact refers to the total costs that drug reimbursement and use entail with respect to one part of the health care system, pharmaceutical care, or to the entire health care system, taking into account the possible reallocation of resources across budgets or sectors of the health care system. The economic and equity rationale for carrying out budget impact analyses is opportunity cost, or benefits forgone, measured in terms of utility or equitable distribution, by using resources in one way rather than another. In other words, by choosing to draw down the budget in one way, decision makers forgo other opportunities to use the same resources. Under a set of unrealistic assumptions, cost-effectiveness analysis accounts for opportunity cost while conveying to the decision maker the price of maximizing health gains, subject to a budget or resource constraint. However, the underlying assumptions are implausible, particularly in the context of pharmaceutical care. Moreover, budget impact analysis is more useful to the decision maker than cost-effectiveness analysis if the objective is not to maximize health gains subject to a budget or resource constraint, but to reduce variance in health gains. With respect to equitable distribution, budget impact analyses lay bare the individuals or groups who lose out - those who bear the opportunity cost of spending resources in accordance with one decision rule rather than another.     

The recovery of latent fingermarks and DNA using a silicone-based casting material

There are many techniques available for the recovery of fingermarks at scenes of crime including the possibility of taking casts of the marks. Casts can be advantageous in cases where other destructive recovery techniques might not be suitable, such as when recovering finger marks deposited on valued or immobile items. In this research, Isomark (a silicone-based casting material) was used to recover casts of finger marks placed on a variety of substrates. Casts were enhanced using cyanoacrylate fuming. Good quality marks were successfully recovered from a range of smooth, non-porous surfaces. Recovery from semi-porous surfaces was shown to be inefficient. DNA was subsequently extracted from the casts using QIAamp Mini extraction kits, amplified and profiled. Full DNA profiles were obtained 34% of samples extracted.     

Structural disadvantage and the concentration of environmental hazards in school areas: a research note

Research shows that environmental hazards are disproportionately located in poor and minority communities, but most of these studies examine the association between community demographics and the presence (and/or frequency) of one type of environmental hazard at a time. The current study extends the prior research by examining the concentration of multiple forms of environmental hazards and structural disadvantage of school areas. School area structural disadvantage is associated with an increase in the number of environmental hazards, but the magnitude of the association is relatively small. Implications for future research are discussed.

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Dual fingerprint reagents with enhanced sensitivity: 5-methoxy- and 5-methylthioninhydrin

"Dual fingerprint reagents" are chemical formulations which produce with latent fingerprints in a single step, impressions that are both colored and fluorescent. Pre-mixed solutions of the two commercially available ninhydrin analogues, 5-methoxyninhydrin (MN) and 5-methylthioninhydrin (MTN) with zinc or cadmium salts, are true dual reagents. They are much more sensitive than the parent dual reagent, ninhydrin/ZnCl(2). The main advantage of the new formulations is that they can be used at room temperature, with no need to cool the sample to liquid nitrogen temperature. At 0.05% concentration, which is 10-fold lower than the common ninhydrin working solution, MTN/ZnCl(2) is as sensitive as DFO in the fluorescence mode and considerably more sensitive in the color mode. MTN is also slightly cheaper than DFO.     

Increasing Family Reunification for Substance‐Abusing Mothers and Their Children: Comparing Two Drug Court Interventions in Miami

This study provides a quasi‐experimental test of 80 consecutive enrollments in the Miami‐Dade (Florida) Dependency Drug Court in order to examine the impact of a family‐based and gender specific intervention, Engaging Moms Program (EMP), on drug court graduation and family reunification. We compared EMP with case management services (CMS). Results indicated that 72% of mothers in the EMP graduated from drug court, and 70% were reunified with their children. In contrast, 38% of mothers receiving CMS graduated from drug court, and 40% were reunited with their children. EMP, then, appears to be a promising family drug court intervention.     

New Evidence on the Monetary Value of Saving a High Risk Youth

There is growing interest in crime prevention through early youth interventions; yet, the standard United States response to the crime problem, particularly among juveniles, has been to increase the use and resource allocation allotted toward punishment and incapacitation and away from prevention and treatment. At the same time, longitudinal studies of delinquency and crime have repeatedly documented a strong link between past and future behavior and have identified a small subset of offenders who commit a large share of criminal offenses. These findings suggest that if these offenders can be identified early and correctly and provided with prevention and treatment resources early in the life course, their criminal activity may be curtailed. While researchers have studied these offenders in great detail, little attention has been paid to the costs they exert on society. This paper provides estimates of the cost of crime imposed on society by high risk youth. Our approach follows and builds upon the early framework and basic methodology developed by Cohen (J Quant Criminol 14: 5–33, 1998), by using new estimates of the costs of individual crimes, ones that are more comprehensive and that significantly increased the monetary cost per crime. We also use new estimates on the underlying offending rate for high risk juvenile offenders. We estimate the present value of saving a 14-year-old high risk juvenile from a life of crime to range from $2.6 to $5.3 million. Similarly, saving a high risk youth at birth would save society between $2.6 and $4.4 million.

Correction to: (Sex) Crime and Punishment in the #MeToo Era: How the Public Views Rape

Political Behavior - The original version of this article mistakenly listed “the Foundations of Human Behavior Initiative at Harvard University” in Acknowledgements section. The proper...