Cost‐Effectiveness of Early Childhood Interventions to Enhance Preschool: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in Head Start Centers Enrolling Historically Underserved Populations

We evaluate the cost‐effectiveness of two early childhood interventions that use instructional coaching and parent coaching as levers for improvement. The study design allows us to compare the individual effects of each intervention as well as their combined effect on student outcomes. We find that teachers receiving instructional coaching improve their use of evidence‐based instructional practices, while families receiving parent coaching show increases in numerous responsive parenting behaviors associated with positive child outcomes. Both interventions demonstrate positive impacts on students, but only parent coaching shows statistically significant effects across a range of student outcomes. Instructional coaching alone is substantially less costly and may therefore be the most cost‐effective of the three treatment conditions; however, small sample sizes limit our ability to reach definitive conclusions. Policy simulations suggest that implementing these interventions could raise the overall cost‐effectiveness of Head Start by at least 16 percent.     

Physical Exercise and Self-Esteem in Women Facing Lockdown-Related Domestic Violence

Journal of Family Violence - The purpose of the present brief report was to examine the effects of a 6-week long physical exercise program on global self-esteem and physical self-perceptions among...     

Unpredictable Behavior Under the Influence of “Magic Mushrooms”: A Case Report and Review of the Literature

Fatalities implicating psychedelic mushrooms are not a common clinical situation in everyday forensic medicine. Despite classification as an illegal drug in many countries, psilocybin mushrooms have the reputation of being safe. We report the case of a young man who jumped from a second story balcony under the influence of psilocybin mushrooms. The psilocin assay was performed by gas chromatography coupled to an electron‐impact ionization time‐of‐flight detector (GC‐EI‐TOF) after solid‐phase extraction. Total psilocin was quantified in peripheral and cardiac blood as 60 and 67 ng/mL, respectively, and in urine (2230 ng/mL), bile (3102 ng/mL), and vitreous humor (57 ng/mL). This case report and review of literature highlights the danger of psilocybin mushrooms. Isolated use of psilocybin mushrooms by a regular consumer without psychiatric history, even under “safe” circumstances, can lead to a fatal outcome.     

Postmortem Measurement of Human Chorionic Gonadotropin in Vitreous Humor and Bile

Abstract: Postmortem human chorionic gonadotrophin (HCG) blood assay can confirm postmortem diagnosis of pregnancy or document situations in which HCG levels are elevated. In some cases, however, blood sampling is not possible at autopsy. In this study, HCG was quantified by enzyme‐linked fluorescent assay (ELFA) in the bile (n = 5), vitreous humor (n = 4), and postmortem blood (n = 4) of five pregnant women. There were no false negatives in the pregnant subjects (n = 5) or false positives in controls (n = 34), enabling this test to be recommended for routine use in forensic contexts in which the detection of elevated HCG levels could be of interest.     

Laryngeal teflonoma identified by Fourier-transform infrared microspectroscopy after forensic autopsy: an interesting tool for foreign material identification in forensic cases

Forensic pathologists are sometimes confronted with microscopic foreign bodies mixed in with soft tissues surrounding wounds and which are thus difficult to identify. This identification, however, could be primordial in investigating a crime and in determining the weapon used. A case of a fatal respiratory distress syndrome due to conjoining suicidal drug intoxication and laryngeal obstruction by a voluminous foreign body giant cell granuloma is presented. The classical histological examination showed exogenous particles in the vocal cord tumor with birefringent qualities. Their analysis with Fourier-Transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometry coupled with infrared microscope allows the determination of their chemical nature as polytetrafluoroethylene and to the diagnosis of teflonoma. This case report put the emphasis on the forensic interest of the FTIR imaging.     

Soft Law in the European Union—The Changing Nature of EU Law

This article is based on the assumption that there is a continuum running from non‐legal positions to legally binding and judicially controlled commitments with, in between these two opposite types of norms, commitments that can be described as soft law. It aims at defining soft law in international relations in order to provide a mapping of EU law on the basis of the soft law/hard law divide. It helps categorise EU competences and public policies, and sees how they fit with the distinction between two kinds of processes: legalisation (transformation of non‐legal norms into soft or hard law) and delegalisation (transformation of hard law norms into soft law and evolution from hard to soft law).     

Innovation for a steady state: a case for responsible stagnation

The proponents of responsible innovation (RI) have often opened their discussions with the reassurance that while they are against irresponsible innovation, they are not advocating irresponsible stagnation. In the two-by-two matrix generally used to illustrate this model of innovation, the quadrant for responsible stagnation has so far gone largely unmentioned, let alone explored. This paper draws on existing real-world cases to examine what arguments drawn from ecological economics might contribute to the discussion of RI. It questions the present growth-driven paradigm and asks whether opening the black box of ‘responsible stagnation' might also open the door for a reasoned discussion about resource consumption and pace of development in over-productive or too-risky sectors and technologies, as an intrinsic part of responsible innovation, rather than its opposite.