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Objective: The social work profession pays less than other occupations with similar educational and training requirements and still penalizes women with lower pay. However, licensure has the potential to improve the earnings of social workers and affect gender disparity in earnings among licensed social workers. This study aims to estimate (a) the license-related earnings premiums of college-educated social workers and (b) the gender effect on earnings among licensed social workers. Method: We used a nationally representative sample of 1,515 U.S. social workers from the 2015–2019 Current Population Survey and conducted marginal treatment effect analyses. Results: The average license-related weekly earnings premium was $110 for all social workers and $128 for licensed social workers. Gender disparity in earnings was concentrated among licensed social workers. Conclusions: The size of license-related earnings premiums for social workers is within the range of the premiums reported in the literature. More studies are needed to identify mechanisms that perpetuate gender disparity in earnings among licensed social workers.

•Disadvantages in demographic, socioeconomic, and transport factors are related to less overall trip-making.•Lower incomes are associated with a higher level of weekend work trips.•A lack of car ownership is negatively associated with social participation trips.•The perceived financial burden of trips is negatively related to recreational trips.•No internet use is associated with a lower level of any weekday trips.

Workplace research suggests that roughly equal communication between teammates is positively associated with team effectiveness. A distinction between teams in these studies and distributed action teams is the degree of role specialization and context-driven communication which may entail unequal degrees of communication. Yet, distributed action teams may have more equal footing to provide inputs in contexts such as mission planning or briefings. Twenty-two ad hoc teams participated in a simulated ground combat vehicle task in which teams conducted six-missions and briefed before each mission. We used team performance, team situation awareness, team workload, and team resilience as team effectiveness criteria. Balanced degrees of communication in mission briefs were correlated with performance and resilience measures, and largely uncorrelated with situation-awareness and workload measures. The overall amount of communication was also largely uncorrelated with all effectiveness measures. The results suggest that communication balance in mission briefs may help predict effectiveness in action teams.

Wage theft – the nonpayment of employees’ wages and benefits by employers – is a violation of national, state, and local labour standards, yet it is prevalent in the low-wage labour market of the United States. Building upon the recent increase in attention to the wage theft problem through advocacy, policy, and research efforts, we contextualise the problem within the country’s deregulated neoliberal labour market. We then propose a conceptual framework to demonstrate how the problem occurs when the price of labour standards violation is low due to lax enforcement, and there is a high price of compliance due to ambiguous and increasingly outdated labour standards. We further evaluate extant federal, state, and local policy initiatives designed to curb wage theft by modernising outdated labour standards and strengthening their enforcement. Finally, we propose future research agendas, such as examining the effects of fissured employment relationships and the enforcement efforts of state and local anti-wage theft laws, to guide the development of effective policy interventions.JEL Codes: J5, J8

Coordination complexes have emerged as prominent modulators of amyloid aggregation via their interaction with the N-terminal histidine residues of amyloid-β (Aβ). Herein, we report the synthesis and characterization of a novel cobalt(III) Schiff base complex with methylamine axial ligands, and we present both computational and experimental data demonstrating the reduction of β-sheet formation by this complex. The computations include molecular dynamics simulations of both monomeric and pentameric Aβ, which demonstrate decreased formation of β-sheet structures, destabilization of preformed β-sheets, and suppression of aggregation. These results are consistent with a dose dependence in experimental bulk aggregation data using thioflavin T fluorescence, and overall this study demonstrates useful drug activity of the cobalt complex.

Clinical data suggest that large radiation fractions are biologically superior to smaller fraction sizes in prostate cancer radiotherapy. The CyberKnife is an appealing delivery system for hypofractionated radiosurgery due to its ability to deliver highly conformal radiation and to track and adjust for prostate motion in real-time. We report our early experience using the CyberKnife to deliver a hypofractionated stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) boost to patients with intermediate- to high-risk prostate cancer. Twenty-four patients were treated with hypofractionated SBRT and supplemental external radiation therapy plus or minus androgen deprivation therapy (ADT). Patients were treated with SBRT to a dose of 19.5 Gy in 3 fractions followed by intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) to a dose of 50.4 Gy in 28 fractions. Quality of life data were collected with American Urological Association (AUA) symptom score and Expanded Prostate Cancer Index Composite (EPIC) questionnaires before and after treatment. PSA responses were monitored; acute urinary and rectal toxicities were assessed using Common Toxicity Criteria (CTC) v3. All 24 patients completed the planned treatment with an average follow-up of 9.3 months. For patients who did not receive ADT, the median pre-treatment PSA was 10.6 ng/ml and decreased in all patients to a median of 1.5 ng/ml by 6 months post-treatment. Acute effects associated with treatment included Grade 2 urinary and gastrointestinal toxicity but no patient experienced acute Grade 3 or greater toxicity. AUA and EPIC scores returned to baseline by six months post-treatment. Hypofractionated SBRT combined with IMRT offers radiobiological benefits of a large fraction boost for dose escalation and is a well tolerated treatment option for men with intermediate- to high-risk prostate cancer. Early results are encouraging with biochemical response and acceptable toxicity. These data provide a basis for the design of a phase II clinical trial.

Summary:A novel method for the study of the interaction of the platinum drug cis‐diamminedichloroplatinum(II) (cis‐DDP or cisplatin) with 50‐mer oligonucleotides that were printed in high throughput microarray format is introduced. Our aim has been to identify sequence level differences in the interaction of various drug candidates that may serve to enable rational targeting of drugs to specific genes. A microarray of 26 control genes commonly used in oligonucleotide, Affymetrix and c‐DNA microarray platforms were microcontact spotted as amine‐terminated 50‐mer oligonucleotides onto glycidoxypropyltimethoxy silane (GPMS)‐modified glass slides. The generalized study format involved hybridization of probes with 10 fluorescently labeled complements as target followed by confocal imaging to reveal original spot intensities. Microarrays were then incubated at 37 °C with hydrolysed cisplatin while in hybridization cassettes, washed in buffer and then scanned again to reveal secondary intensities. We have investigated the influence of cisplatin to stabilize the relative fluorescence intensity via intrastrand crosslinking by studying the impact of varying drug:probe‐DNA mole ratio (0:1 (blank), 1:1, 25:1 and 50:1) and annealing temperatures (36, 46, or 56 °C) on retained intensity. ANOVA revealed that 4 of the 10 genes demonstrated (p < 0.0001) the expected result of increased signal retention with decreased temperature and increased drug concentration.