Power and Position in the World City System

Globalization has renewed interest in the place and role of cities in the international system. Recent literature proposes that the fate of cities (and their residents) has become increasingly tied to their position in international flows of investment and trade. Data on the branch locations of the world’s 500 largest multinational enterprises in 2000 are subjected to two broad types of network analytic techniques in order to analyze the “world city system.” First, 3,692 cities are analyzed in terms of three measures of point centrality. Second, blockmodeling techniques are employed to generalize further about the positions and roles played by cities in the system. These techniques are used to trace out the structure of the world city system, locate cities in the context of a global urban hierarchy, and explore the degree to which this diverges from a simple one‐to‐one matching of cities onto nation‐states in the world system.Sociolog

Changing Patterns of Income Inequality in U.S. Counties, 1970–2000

The upswing in economic inequality that has affected a number of advanced industrial societies in the late 20th century has been particularly conspicuous in the United States. The authors explore its causes using data on the distribution of family income in 3,098 U.S. counties in 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000. The authors build a model of within-county income inequality that assumes that distribution processes involving labor market and sociodemographic variables operate primarily at the county level and those involving the political and institutional context operate primarily at the state level. Multilevel methods are used to distinguish county cross-sectional, state cross-sectional, and longitudinal effects on inequality. The authors find that, when features of the state-level institutional and political context are associated with inequality, these effects are larger longitudinally than cross-sectionally. A range of other factors, including economic development, labor force changes, shifts in the racial/ethnic and gender composition of the labor force, educational expansion, and urbanization are found to have comparatively large effects, both longitudinally and cross-sectionally

Globalization and the Great U-Turn: Income Inequality Trends in 16 OECD Countries

The debate on the resurgence of income inequality in some advanced industrial societies has often focused on the impact of an increasingly integrated world economy, typified by growing capital mobility, heightened international competition, and an increase in migration. This study represents one of the first systematic, cross-national examinations of the role of globalization in the inequality "U-turn." Results indicate, on the one hand, that total inequality variation is principally affected by the percentage of the labor force in agriculture, followed by the institutional factors union density and decom-modification, and only then by globalization. On the other hand, longitudinal variation in inequality, while still dominated by the percentage of the labor force in agriculture, is also principally affected by aspects of globalization, such as southern import penetration and direct investment outflow, and to a lesser extent by migration. In other words, globalization explains the longitudinal trend of increasing inequality that took place within many industrial countries better than it does cross-sectional inequality differences among countries

The Changing Landscape for Stroke\ua0Prevention in AF: Findings From the GLORIA-AF Registry Phase 2

Background GLORIA-AF (Global Registry on Long-Term Oral Antithrombotic Treatment in Patients with Atrial Fibrillation) is a prospective, global registry program describing antithrombotic treatment patterns in patients with newly diagnosed nonvalvular atrial fibrillation at risk of stroke. Phase 2 began when dabigatran, the first non\u2013vitamin K antagonist oral anticoagulant (NOAC), became available. Objectives This study sought to describe phase 2 baseline data and compare these with the pre-NOAC era collected during phase 1. Methods During phase 2, 15,641 consenting patients were enrolled (November 2011 to December 2014); 15,092 were eligible. This pre-specified cross-sectional analysis describes eligible patients\u2019 baseline characteristics. Atrial fibrillation disease characteristics, medical outcomes, and concomitant diseases and medications were collected. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results Of the total patients, 45.5% were female; median age was 71 (interquartile range: 64, 78) years. Patients were from Europe (47.1%), North America (22.5%), Asia (20.3%), Latin America (6.0%), and the Middle East/Africa (4.0%). Most had high stroke risk (CHA2DS2-VASc [Congestive heart failure, Hypertension, Age  6575 years, Diabetes mellitus, previous Stroke, Vascular disease, Age 65 to 74 years, Sex category] score  652; 86.1%); 13.9% had moderate risk (CHA2DS2-VASc = 1). Overall, 79.9% received oral anticoagulants, of whom 47.6% received NOAC and 32.3% vitamin K antagonists (VKA); 12.1% received antiplatelet agents; 7.8% received no antithrombotic treatment. For comparison, the proportion of phase 1 patients (of N = 1,063 all eligible) prescribed VKA was 32.8%, acetylsalicylic acid 41.7%, and no therapy 20.2%. In Europe in phase 2, treatment with NOAC was more common than VKA (52.3% and 37.8%, respectively); 6.0% of patients received antiplatelet treatment; and 3.8% received no antithrombotic treatment. In North America, 52.1%, 26.2%, and 14.0% of patients received NOAC, VKA, and antiplatelet drugs, respectively; 7.5% received no antithrombotic treatment. NOAC use was less common in Asia (27.7%), where 27.5% of patients received VKA, 25.0% antiplatelet drugs, and 19.8% no antithrombotic treatment. Conclusions The baseline data from GLORIA-AF phase 2 demonstrate that in newly diagnosed nonvalvular atrial fibrillation patients, NOAC have been highly adopted into practice, becoming more frequently prescribed than VKA in Europe and North America. Worldwide, however, a large proportion of patients remain undertreated, particularly in Asia and North America. (Global Registry on Long-Term Oral Antithrombotic Treatment in Patients With Atrial Fibrillation [GLORIA-AF]; NCT01468701

Efficacy of self-monitored blood pressure, with or without telemonitoring, for titration of antihypertensive medication (TASMINH4): an unmasked randomised controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Studies evaluating titration of antihypertensive medication using self-monitoring give contradictory findings and the precise place of telemonitoring over self-monitoring alone is unclear. The TASMINH4 trial aimed to assess the efficacy of self-monitored blood pressure, with or without telemonitoring, for antihypertensive titration in primary care, compared with usual care. METHODS: This study was a parallel randomised controlled trial done in 142 general practices in the UK, and included hypertensive patients older than 35 years, with blood pressure higher than 140/90 mm Hg, who were willing to self-monitor their blood pressure. Patients were randomly assigned (1:1:1) to self-monitoring blood pressure (self-montoring group), to self-monitoring blood pressure with telemonitoring (telemonitoring group), or to usual care (clinic blood pressure; usual care group). Randomisation was by a secure web-based system. Neither participants nor investigators were masked to group assignment. The primary outcome was clinic measured systolic blood pressure at 12 months from randomisation. Primary analysis was of available cases. The trial is registered with ISRCTN, number ISRCTN 83571366. FINDINGS: 1182 participants were randomly assigned to the self-monitoring group (n=395), the telemonitoring group (n=393), or the usual care group (n=394), of whom 1003 (85%) were included in the primary analysis. After 12 months, systolic blood pressure was lower in both intervention groups compared with usual care (self-monitoring, 137·0 [SD 16·7] mm Hg and telemonitoring, 136·0 [16·1] mm Hg vs usual care, 140·4 [16·5]; adjusted mean differences vs usual care: self-monitoring alone, -3·5 mm Hg [95% CI -5·8 to -1·2]; telemonitoring, -4·7 mm Hg [-7·0 to -2·4]). No difference between the self-monitoring and telemonitoring groups was recorded (adjusted mean difference -1·2 mm Hg [95% CI -3·5 to 1·2]). Results were similar in sensitivity analyses including multiple imputation. Adverse events were similar between all three groups. INTERPRETATION: Self-monitoring, with or without telemonitoring, when used by general practitioners to titrate antihypertensive medication in individuals with poorly controlled blood pressure, leads to significantly lower blood pressure than titration guided by clinic readings. With most general practitioners and many patients using self-monitoring, it could become the cornerstone of hypertension management in primary care. FUNDING: National Institute for Health Research via Programme Grant for Applied Health Research (RP-PG-1209-10051), Professorship to RJM (NIHR-RP-R2-12-015), Oxford Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care, and Omron Healthcare UK

The role and uses of antibodies in COVID-19 infections: a living review

Coronavirus disease 2019 has generated a rapidly evolving field of research, with the global scientific community striving for solutions to the current pandemic. Characterizing humoral responses towards SARS-CoV-2, as well as closely related strains, will help determine whether antibodies are central to infection control, and aid the design of therapeutics and vaccine candidates. This review outlines the major aspects of SARS-CoV-2-specific antibody research to date, with a focus on the various prophylactic and therapeutic uses of antibodies to alleviate disease in addition to the potential of cross-reactive therapies and the implications of long-term immunity

What is Really Happening with Global Inequality?

We use the latest available data from the World Income Inequality Database 3.4 and the Penn World Tables 9.0 to examine some of the core issues and concerns that have animated research on global inequality. We begin by reviewing the evidence on trends in within-country inequality, drawing out some of the implications of this for our thinking about inequality and economic development. We examine between-country inequality, computing updated estimates of trends in both unweighted and population-weighted between-country inequality. The data reveal that inequality between countries increased across the latter half of the twentieth century, then turned to decline measurably thereafter. We show that this decline is robust to a range of methodological and measurement decisions identified as important in previous research. We then examine estimates of true global inequality, situating these in relation to lower- and upper-bound estimates of global inequality. We conclude by noting the critical and contested role of globalization in inequality reduction

Reply: Whither the Parallel Paths? The Future of Scholarship on the World City System

Sociolog