As part of forensic toxicological investigation of cases involving unexpected death of an individual, targeted or untargeted xenobiotic screening of post-mortem samples is normally conducted. To this end, liquid chromatography (LC) coupled to high-resolution mass spectrometry (MS) is typically employed. For data analysis, almost all commonly applied algorithms are threshold-based (frequentist). These algorithms examine the value of a certain measurement (e.g., peak height) to decide whether a certain xenobiotic of interest (XOI) is present/absent, yielding a binary output. Frequentist methods pose a problem when several sources of information [e.g., shape of the chromatographic peak, isotopic distribution, estimated mass-to-charge ratio (m/z), adduct, etc.] need to be combined, requiring the approach to make arbitrary decisions at substep levels of data analysis. We hereby introduce a novel Bayesian probabilistic algorithm for toxicological screening. The method tackles the problem with a different strategy. It is not aimed at reaching a final conclusion regarding the presence of the XOI, but it estimates its probability. The algorithm effectively and efficiently combines all possible pieces of evidence from the chromatogram and calculates the posterior probability of the presence/absence of XOI features. This way, the model can accommodate more information by updating the probability if extra evidence is acquired. The final probabilistic result assists the end user to make a final decision with respect to the presence/absence of the xenobiotic. The Bayesian method was validated and found to perform better (in terms of false positives and false negatives) than the vendor-supplied software package.

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The preparation of culturally effective counselors is a familiar topic in the counseling literature. Counselor educators and practitioners have regularly discussed cultural barriers in the counseling process and have proposed models for working more effectively with multicultural populations. Still, there is no counselor education program in the United States that trains students in the special problems and advantages of counseling culturally different clients. Now more than ever, there are many compelling reasons to prepare culturally effective counselors. They include (a) the multicultural overtones of the American population; (b) the growing number of new immigrants and refugees; (c) the expressed and perceived needs of counselors working with multicultural groups; and (d) the naming of counselors as “necessary” recipients of federal training funds to develop better bilingual programs. The authors propose a counselor training program with a specialization in bilingual‐multicultural education. This requires specific attitudes, skills, and competencies based on the interdisciplinary philosophies of counseling, bilingual education, and multicultural education.

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