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Soil-transmitted helminths (STH) infect nearly 1.5 billion individuals globally, and contribute to poor physical and cognitive development in children. STH control programs typically consist of regular delivery of anthelminthic drugs, targeting school-aged children. Expanding STH control programs community-wide may improve STH control among school-aged children, and combining deworming with improvements to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) may further reduce transmission. The (S)WASH-D for Worms pilot study aims to compare the differential impact of integrated WASH and deworming programs when implemented at primary schools only versus when additionally implemented community-wide.A two-arm, non-randomized cluster intervention study was conducted. Six communities were identified by partner WASH agencies and enrolled in the study. All communities received a school-based WASH and deworming program, while three additionally received a community-based WASH and deworming program. STH infections were measured in school-aged children at baseline and six months after deworming. Over 90% of eligible children were recruited for the study, of whom 92.3% provided stool samples at baseline and 88.9% at follow-up. The school WASH intervention improved school sanitation, while the community WASH intervention reduced open defecation from 50.4% (95% CI 41.8-59.0) to 23.5% (95% CI 16.7-32.0). There was a trend towards reduced odds of N. americanus infection among children who received the community-wide intervention (OR 0.42, 95% CI 0.07-2.36, p = 0.32).This pilot study provides proof of principle for testing the hypothesis that community-wide STH control programs have a greater impact on STH infections among children than school-based programs, and supports the rationale for conducting a full-scale cluster randomized controlled trial. High recruitment and participation rates and successful implementation of school WASH programs demonstrate study feasibility and acceptability. However, eliminating open defecation remains a challenge; ongoing work is required to develop community sanitation programs that achieve high and sustainable latrine coverage.Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ANZCTR) ACTRN12615001012561.

This paper examines the short and longer-term economic effects of the 1966 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) which increased the national minimum wage to its highest level of the 20th Century and extended coverage to an additional 9.1 million workers. Exploiting differences in the "bite" of the minimum wage due to regional variation in the standard of living and industry composition, this paper finds that the 1966 FLSA increased wages dramatically but reduced aggregate employment only modestly. However, the disemployment effects were significantly larger among African-American men, forty percent of whom earned below the new minimum wage in 1966.

In the 1960s, two landmark statutes—the Equal Pay and Civil Rights Acts—targeted the long-standing practice of employment discrimination against U.S. women. For the next 15 years, the gender gap in median earnings among full-time, full-year workers changed little, leading many scholars to conclude that the legislation was ineffectual. This article revisits this conclusion using two research designs, which leverage (i) cross-state variation in preexisting state equal pay laws and (ii) variation in the 1960 gender gap across occupation-industry-state-group cells to capture differences in the legislation's incidence. Both designs suggest that federal antidiscrimination legislation led to striking gains in women's relative wages, which were concentrated among below-median wage earners. These wage gains offset preexisting labor market forces, which worked to depress women's relative pay growth, resulting in the apparent stability of the gender gap at the median and mean in the 1960s and 1970s. The data show little evidence of short-term changes in women's employment but suggest that firms reduced their hiring and promotion of women in the medium to long term. The historical record points to the key role of the Equal Pay Act in driving these changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Asian common toad (Duttaphrynus melanostictus) is a human commensal species that occupies a wide variety of habitats across tropical Southeast Asia. We test the hypothesis that genetic variation in D. melanostictus is weakly associated with geography owing to natural and human-mediated dispersal facilitated by its commensal nature. Phylogenetic and population genetic analyses of mitochondrial and nuclear DNA sequence variation, and predictive species distribution modelling, unexpectedly recovered three distinct evolutionary lineages that differ genetically and ecologically, corresponding to the Asian mainland, coastal Myanmar and the Sundaic islands. The persistence of these three divergent lineages, despite ample opportunities for recent human-mediated and geological dispersal, suggests that D. melanostictus actually consists of multiple species, each having narrower geographical ranges and ecological niches, and higher conservation value, than is currently recognized. These findings also have implications for the invasion potential of this human commensal elsewhere, such as in its recently introduced ranges on the islands of Borneo, Sulawesi, Seram and Madagascar.