Clinical research is necessary for an effective response to an emerging infectious disease outbreak. However, research efforts are often hastily organised and done using various research tools, with the result that pooling data across studies is challenging. In response to the needs of the rapidly evolving COVID-19 outbreak, the Clinical Characterisation and Management Working Group of the WHO Research and Development Blueprint programme, the International Forum for Acute Care Trialists, and the International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infections Consortium have developed a minimum set of common outcome measures for studies of COVID-19. This set includes three elements: a measure of viral burden (quantitative PCR or cycle threshold), a measure of patient survival (mortality at hospital discharge or at 60 days), and a measure of patient progression through the health-care system by use of the WHO Clinical Progression Scale, which reflects patient trajectory and resource use over the course of clinical illness. We urge investigators to include these key data elements in ongoing and future studies to expedite the pooling of data during this immediate threat, and to hone a tool for future needs.

If ‘knowledge is power’, it is unsurprising that the production, legitimation, and application of social scientific knowledge, not least that which was designed to harness social organization to economic growth, is a potentially contentious process. Coping with, adapting to, or attempting to shape globalization has emerged as a central concern of policy-makers who are, therefore, interested in knowledge to assist their managerial activities. Thus, an organization that can create, synthesize, legitimate, and disseminate useful knowledge can play a significant role in the emerging global governance system. The OECD operates as one important site for the construction, standardization, and dissemination of transnational policy ideas. OECD staff conducts research and produces a range of background studies and reports, drawing on disciplinary knowledge (typically economics) supplemented by their ‘organizational discourses’. This paper probes the contested nature of knowledge production and attempts to evaluate the impact of the OECD’s efforts to produce globally applicable policy advice. Particular attention is paid to important initiatives in the labour market and social policy fields – the Jobs Study and Babies and Bosses.

This article investigates the relationship between globalization and labour market reform by examining the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD's) ‘Jobs Strategy’. It has been argued that globalization requires, and the competitive forces unleashed by that process require, the national adoption of more flexible, market-based, or ‘neoliberal’ labour market policies or states will face declining labour market performance. Thus, the globalization thesis posits convergence in labour market policies around an emerging neoliberal norm. Through an examination of the Jobs Strategy and the empirical data collected by the OECD, this article reaches several interrelated conclusions. The evidence suggests little sign of sustained convergence in labour market policies. According to the OECD's analysis, many states have been reticent to adopt neoliberal labour market strategies. Secondly, there is good reason for non-convergence: states that have adopted a liberal strategy, as a group, have not performed particularly well. Despite globalization, there is a range of labour market policy choices available to states. Several welfare state labour market strategies continue to exist.

α-Ketoglutarate is a key biomolecule involved in a number of metabolic pathwaysmost notably the TCA cycle. Abnormal α-ketoglutarate metabolism has also been linked with cancer. Here, isotopic labeling was employed to synthesize [1-13C,5-12C,D4]­α-ketoglutarate with the future goal of utilizing its [1-13C]-hyperpolarized state for real-time metabolic imaging of α-ketoglutarate analytes and its downstream metabolites in vivo. The signal amplification by reversible exchange in shield enables alignment transfer to heteronuclei (SABRE-SHEATH) hyperpolarization technique was used to create 9.7% [1-13C] polarization in 1 minute in this isotopologue. The efficient 13C hyperpolarization, which utilizes parahydrogen as the source of nuclear spin order, is also supported by favorable relaxation dynamics at 0.4 μT field (the optimal polarization transfer field): the exponential 13C polarization buildup constant T b is 11.0 ± 0.4 s whereas the 13C polarization decay constant T 1 is 18.5 ± 0.7 s. An even higher 13C polarization value of 17.3% was achieved using natural-abundance α-ketoglutarate disodium salt, with overall similar relaxation dynamics at 0.4 μT field, indicating that substrate deuteration leads only to a slight increase (∼1.2-fold) in the relaxation rates for 13C nuclei separated by three chemical bonds. Instead, the gain in polarization (natural abundance versus [1-13C]-labeled) is rationalized through the smaller heat capacity of the “spin bath” comprising available 13C spins that must be hyperpolarized by the same number of parahydrogen present in each sample, in line with previous 15N SABRE-SHEATH studies. Remarkably, the C-2 carbon was not hyperpolarized in both α-ketoglutarate isotopologues studied; this observation is in sharp contrast with previously reported SABRE-SHEATH pyruvate studies, indicating that the catalyst-binding dynamics of C-2 in α-ketoglutarate differ from that in pyruvate. We also demonstrate that 13C spectroscopic characterization of α-ketoglutarate and pyruvate analytes can be performed at natural 13C abundance with an estimated detection limit of 80 micromolar concentration × *%P 13C. All in all, the fundamental studies reported here enable a wide range of research communities with a new hyperpolarized contrast agent potentially useful for metabolic imaging of brain function, cancer, and other metabolically challenging diseases.

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