The Kindergarten Hotspot: Literacy Skill Convergence Between Boston Prekindergarten Enrollees and Nonenrollees.

Preschool improves children's kindergarten readiness, but the cognitive outcomes of preschool enrollees and nonenrollees tend to converge partially or fully in elementary school. In older programs, most of this convergence occurs in kindergarten (Li et al., 2016), but evidence from today's programs is sparse.

The Effects of Enrolling in Oversubscribed Prekindergarten Programs Through Third Grade.

This study leverages naturally occurring lotteries for oversubscribed Boston Public Schools prekindergarten program sites between 2007 and 2011, for 3,182 children (M = 4.5 years old) to estimate the impacts of winning a first choice lottery and enrolling in Boston prekindergarten versus losing a first choice lottery and not enrolling on children's enrollment and persistence in district schools, grade retention, special education placement, and third-grade test scores. There are large effects on enrollment and persistence, but no effects on other examined outcomes for this subsample.

Screening for postpartum depression. An antepartum questionnaire.

Objective: To develop and evaluate a questionnaire used antepartum to screen for postpartum depression.

Study Design: Demographic and clinical data, based on previously identified variables, were obtained from 106 second-trimester gravidas (sample I) by interview, self-administered questionnaire and medical record review. The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) was administered at 1, 6 and 12 weeks postpartum (PP).

Designing microorganisms for the treatment of toxic wastes.

The genetic design of novel metabolic routes offers exciting possibilities for biological research and biotechnology, both in the exploration of the metabolic/evolutionary potential of cells and in the development of innovative applications. In this chapter, we review recent advances in the development of genetic tools and strategies for the design of new microorganisms for elimination of environmental pollutants. These include the design of regulated gene expression circuits that provide high levels of catalytic activity, even under environmental conditions that ordinarily repress expression of catabolic genes; the rational alteration of relevant properties of proteins that qualitatively or quantitatively restrict catabolic activities; the judicious assembly of gene blocks encoding selected metabolic modules to create novel metabolic routes and combinations of routes; and the design of microorganisms exhibiting properties that contribute to better process development.