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Background Announced in March 2016 and implemented in April 2018, the UK Soft Drinks Industry Levy (SDIL) aims to incentivise the reformulation of soft drinks. The SDIL has successfully decreased the amount of sugar in UK soft drinks, and purchased in soft drinks. Consequently, the SDIL has been widely applauded as a policy success. SSB taxation in other countries, however, has not been as successful and in some cases the policy was retracted. We aimed to develop an understanding of why the SDIL was deemed successful by analysing parliamentary debate two years before its announcement until two years post-implementation (2014–2020). Methods Searches of Hansard were conducted for parliamentary debate transcripts discussing the SDIL across three key time periods: Pre-Announcement (01/01/14–15/03/16), Announcement – Implementation (16/03/16–5/04/18), and Post-Implementation (6/04/18–16/03/20). 218 transcripts containing eligible search terms were identified, and 179 included in the analysis after screening for relevance. Applied thematic analysis was conducted in 5 stages: familiarisation and creation of initial codebooks, independent second coding, codebook finalisation through team consensus, final coding of the dataset to the complete codebook and theme finalisation through team consensus. Results Common issues raised in discussions across the timeline were: the ring-fencing of SDIL funds for pro-social causes, the scale of the health problems associated with excess sugar consumption, and the role of celebrities in making the SDIL a high profile issue. MPs acknowledged that the SDIL is not a ‘silver bullet’ for obesity prevention: it was positioned as either a ‘good start’ with other interventions required or that other interventions were needed instead. Distinct themes were that, due to early reformulation, the SDIL was discussed as ‘having worked’ one year prior to implementation. This notion persisted until the end of the timeline. These themes will be further refined to identify temporal patterns and trends. Additional results will be submitted before the June 28th deadline. Population Health Relevance The SDIL is unique: it is a flagship policy for the UK Childhood Obesity Strategy and has cross-party support. Understanding why and how the SDIL made it onto the statutes, and why it was politically successful is vital for using policy instruments to improve population health in future. This work will aid understanding of the parliamentary process surrounding the SDIL, and could provide insight for those wishing to extend the SDIL to other products or implement SSB taxes elsewhere.

Climate change’s particular ‘perfect storm’ problem-nature requires educators and communicators to acknowledge that a single ‘silver bullet’ intervention that eliminates ignorance and denial regarding global warming may never emerge. However, diverse kinds of information-hunks and educational initiatives do incrementally increase acceptance (and alarm) regarding climate change, thus decreasing ignorance/denial. We herein describe advances in several climate education realms, including in-school and extra-school youth learning––along with post-school, general public, climate change communications. Our review includes lenses on socio-emotional learning, social justice, and techniques for addressing misinformation. Finally, we describe a particular set of ten hunks of experimentally vetted information, generally taking less than five minutes, that our laboratory has shown effective in boosting acceptance that global warming is occurring and concerning.

Most daunting threat for humankind is the corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2. Various vaccine production platforms are available, each with distinct advantages and obstacles. Pharmaceutical formulation science plays a critical role in the race for a safe, effective coronav virus disease vaccine (COVID)-19. The target population of vaccinees includes high-risk individuals over the age of 60, those with chronic co-morbid conditions, frontline healthcare workers, and those involved in critical industries. Once a safe and reliable vaccine policy becomes available, pre-pandemic normalcy will never return. As COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc on people's health and livelihoods around the world, the prospect of an effective vaccine may appear to be a silver bullet. Despite this, a number of challenges remain, each of which necessitates careful and ongoing debate to ensure that vaccination strategies are safe, appropriate, and realistic. So the best way forward is simply to register oneself on Aarogya Setu and get vaccinated as soon as possible, regardless of Covishield or Covaxin. Keywords: Vaccine, Pandemic, COVID, Corona virus 19

We are currently experiencing the realities of the most severe pandemic within living memory, with major impacts on the health and economic well-being of our planet. The scientific community has demonstrated an unprecedented mobilization capability, with the rapid development of vaccines and drugs targeting the protection of human life and palliative measures for infected individuals. However, are we adequately prepared for ongoing defense against COVID-19 and its variants in the post-pandemic world? Moreover, are we equipped to provide a satisfactory quality of life for individuals who are recovering from COVID-19 disease? What are the possibilities for the acceleration of the recovery process? Here, we give special consideration to the potential and already-demonstrated role of probiotics and traditional medical approaches to the management of current and potential future encounters with our major virus adversaries.

Background: Despite the growing attention given to the political process of evidence-based policymaking (EBPM), we still know little about how evidence is processed at the early stages of the policymaking process, especially at the agenda-setting stage. Whether and when political elites pay attention to evidence-based information is crucial to the study of EBPM but also essential to the well-functioning of democracy. Aims and objectives: The aim of this paper is to cover this gap, by asking whether evidence increases policymaker attention to policy proposals. The working hypothesis is that everything else being constant, evidence should increase policy-maker attention. Methods: To test this hypothesis, this paper relies on a field experiment embedded in a real-life fundraising campaign of an advocacy organisation targeted at the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). The field experiment is embedded in a real-life fundraising campaign of an advocacy organisation targeted at the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). Findings: Results show that information type matters to policy-maker attention, but evidence is not effective in this respect. Findings also suggest that there are no important differences between political groups and, crucially, that previous policy support does not have an impact on policy-maker attention. This paper shows that that while evidence is essential to the policy process, ideas are key to attract policymakers’ attention at the individual level in the absence of prior demand. Discussion and conclusion: Overall, findings suggest that empirical information is not a quick pass for policy-maker attention. In this context, other types of information and framing are likely to make a difference. Future studies should analyse how framing may alter political elites’ predisposition to attend empirical evidence.

As conventional forms of wealth redistribution have diminished under the neoliberal consensus of both Democrats and Republicans in the United States, education reform has become a bipartisan issue....

Several continental and global development initiatives have been evolved to trigger development in Africa, the latest being Agenda 2063 and sustainable development goals (SDGs). This paper draws on relevant materials to examine the challenges of sustainable development, especially within the context of the serious structural adjustment challenges in Africa. Against the backdrop of the continent’s earlier dismal experiences with development initiatives, the paper assesses the promises of both Agenda 2063 and SDGs to motorize sustainable development in the continent. The paper contends that the feasibility of sustainable development in Africa is contingent upon the institutionalization of the active state. The imperative of the active state in development architecture is because of its indispensability in charting critical pathways for all-round sustainability.

RATIONALE: Heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) is a mortal clinical syndrome without effective therapies. We recently demonstrated in mice that a combination of metabolic and hypertensive stress recapitulates key features of human HFpEF. OBJECTIVE: Using this novel preclinical HFpEF model, we set out to define and manipulate metabolic dysregulations occurring in HFpEF myocardium. METHODS AND RESULTS: We observed impairment in mitochondrial fatty acid oxidation associated with hyperacetylation of key enzymes in the pathway. Down-regulation of sirtuin 3 and deficiency of NAD(+) secondary to an impaired NAD(+) salvage pathway contribute to this mitochondrial protein hyperacetylation. Impaired expression of genes involved in NAD(+) biosynthesis was confirmed in cardiac tissue from HFpEF patients. Supplementing HFpEF mice with nicotinamide riboside or a direct activator of NAD(+) biosynthesis led to improvement in mitochondrial function and amelioration of the HFpEF phenotype. CONCLUSIONS: Collectively, these studies demonstrate that HFpEF is associated with myocardial mitochondrial dysfunction and unveil NAD(+) repletion as a promising therapeutic approach in the syndrome.

The private sector has been assigned a leading role in the construction of a global knowledge economy (GKE), and public–private partnerships (PPPs) have been portrayed as the silver bullet that wil...

Populist and authoritarian leaders are increasingly coming to power in large countries. They often have a climate sceptic approach and do away with mitigation policies when coming to power. Increasing impacts of extreme meteorological events linked to climate change could lead to a situation where the supporters of the populist leader or elites crucial for the survival of an authoritarian regime are pushing to do something to address climate change. In order not to lose power, the leader may look for quick and cheap solutions. In such a context, solar radiation modification (SRM), for example, by stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), will become very attractive as it is likely to have low costs and rapid effects. Populist or authoritarian governments are unlikely to care for negative impacts of SRM abroad as they often act nationalistically with an explicit disdain for multilateral solutions. We discuss the incentive structure and political economy that populist and authoritarian leaders may face regarding unilateral use of SRM and elaborate how the international community could try to prevent or at least ‘contain’ such unilateral uses of SRM. Unfortunately, such ‘containment’ is contingent on the most powerful states not being populist or authoritarian regimes.

Artificial intelligence has been portrayed as a silver bullet for a number of challenges encountered in gastrointestinal (GI) endoscopy and beyond. Intense research, commercial and media focus have led to the publication of studies with modest patient numbers and comparatively simple technology. There is no doubt that machine learning (ML) will be a determining medical development for the years to come. However, now that the dust has begun to settle, we are at a critical juncture where the focus is shifting from preclinical work toward the role of ML in clinical practice. Current issues relate to the evaluation and testing of AI and ML systems, especially regarding patient outcomes, and to regulatory issues surrounding implementation. Many of these aspects pertain to one overarching question: how can we ensure that preclinical results translate into trustworthy clinical reality? For the endoscopist, whether as a reader, a reviewer or a potential user of AI, it becomes increasingly important to understand the technical aspects of the systems and their performance measurements in order to realistically assess their practical value. Therefore, with GI endoscopy ML at the jump-off point from proof-of-principle studies1–7 to clinical trials8–12, van der Sommen et al provided us with an accessible guide to understand, assess and critically review the current ML endoscopy literature.13 Our commentary highlights selected aspects of this review and AI as a whole and elaborates on the role of the GI endoscopy community and how it may both experience and frame the way ahead. In particular, we advocate a close collaboration of technology scientists and clinicians from early development phases onward to allow for the development of well-tailored AI algorithms and realistic preclinical testing. More transparency is needed with respect to the training data and the algorithm development process. In addition, in the legislative …

Purpose During this forced down-time of COVID-19 pandemic, shift to virtual anatomy education is the solitary solution to support the learning of students. The purpose of this study was to understand the visible and invisible potential challenges being faced by the 1st year medical and dental students while attending digital anatomy classes. Methods The present study was conducted on 81st year medical and dental students who were admitted to their respective college in August 2019 and were willing to participate in the study. A multiple choice close-ended questionnaire regarding their opinion on virtual classes was designed and feedback was taken from the students. Results Majority (65%) of the students agreed that they missed their traditional anatomy learning i.e., dissection courses, face to face lectures and interaction with mentors. The students strongly felt the lack of confidence and difficulty in the topics completed without dissections, models, microscopic slides and other modalities. 83% felt lack of proper gadgets, high-band width and strong internet connections, a potential barrier in their digital learning. Lack of self-motivation was felt by 69% students. Conclusions The current situation of anatomy education is not intentional, and is not the long term silver bullet solution for a visual subject like anatomy. Though learners face a lot of challenges, however, a shift to online must be supported at this time of health crisis. As the digital learning may go for indefinite period, the feedback of students may be helpful for relevant and timely modifications in digital anatomy education.

Modern-day online services are plagued by various kinds of harmful content, from hate speech to terrorist propaganda to depictions of the sexual abuse of children, to name just a few. In pressuring online service providers to better police harmful content on their services, regulators tend to focus on trust and safety techniques, such as automated systems for scanning or filtering content on a service, that depend on the provider’s capability to access the contents of users’ files and communications at will. We call these techniques content-dependent. The focus on content analysis overlooks the prevalence and utility of what this article calls content-oblivious techniques: ones that do not rely on guaranteed at-will access to content, such as metadata-based tools and users’ reports flagging abuse which the provider did not (or could not) detect on its own. This article presents the results of a survey about the trust and safety techniques employed by a group of online service providers, most of them communications services or services driven primarily by user-generated content. Our data include information from Facebook, Wikimedia, a global software company, and more, that collectively serve billions of users. The survey finds that abuse-reporting features are used by more providers than other techniques such as metadata-based abuse detection or automated systems for scanning content, but that the providers’ abuse-reporting tools do not consistently cover the various types of abuse that users may encounter on their services, a gap we recommend they rectify. Finally, despite strong consensus among participating providers that automated content scanning is the most useful means of detecting child sex abuse imagery, they do not consider it to be nearly so useful for other kinds of abuse. These results indicate that content-dependent techniques are not a silver bullet against abuse. They also indicate that the marginal impact on providers’ anti-abuse efforts of end-to-end encryption, which, controversially, stymies providers’ ability to access user content at will, can be expected to vary by abuse type. These findings have implications for policy debates over the regulation of online service providers’ anti-abuse obligations and their use of end-to-end encryption.

PurposeThis study investigates the possible effect of mobile money services, which forms part of FinTech, in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).Design/methodology/approachThis study uses field data from the Chongwe district of Zambia. The data were collected in 2019.FindingsThe findings strongly suggest that (1) the factors that hinder access to credit and savings by the poor do not simply recede following the adoption of mobile money services and (2) that mobile money is not a silver bullet of ending financial exclusion but merely a tool which contributes to other financial inclusion strategies.Practical implicationsThis study argues that mobile money is winning the battle but losing the war – implying that the service is mainly used to transfer funds (OTC transactions) among users.Originality/valueThis is the first study to have been conducted in Zambia to assess the possible contributing effect of FinTech (mobile money) on SDGs.

Mobile health (mHealth) is perceived as a “silver bullet” solution to many of the existing healthcare delivery issues in developing regions. However, the design, development, piloting, implementation, and maintenance activities associated with mHealth are significant. Fundamental to the success of mHealth is stakeholder support within the healthcare system. A qualitative exploratory approach using interviews, presentations, and focus groups was pursued to investigate primary healthcare (PHC) workers' initial perceptions of the proposed IMPACT app to support the assessment of sick young children in the community in Nsukka, Enugu State, Nigeria. PHC workers welcomed the prospect of using the IMPACT app. However, they were keen to highlight local infrastructural challenges and lack of access to training as barriers to the wider rollout of the IMPACT app. Through investigating PHC workers' initial perceptions, mHealth projects may be better designed to positively influence end users' commitment and motivation to use mHealth as part of their roles in the future.

Can a school or district improve student achievement simply by switching to a higher‐quality textbook or curriculum? We conducted the first multi‐textbook, multi‐state effort to estimate textbook efficacy following widespread adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and associated changes in the textbook market. Pooling textbook adoption and student test score data across six geographically and demographically diverse U.S. states, we found little evidence of differences in average achievement gains for schools using different math textbooks. We found some evidence of greater variation in achievement gains among schools using pre‐CCSS editions, which may have been more varied in their content than post‐CCSS editions because they were written for a broader set of standards. We also found greater variation among schools that had more exposure to a given text. However, these differences were small. Despite considerable interest and attention to textbooks as a low‐cost, “silver bullet” intervention for improving student outcomes, we conclude that the adoption of a new textbook or set of curriculum materials, on its own, is unlikely to achieve this goal.

This paper critically evaluates the concept of innovation, in the context of the funding of youth work within Erasmus+ Key Acton 2, but the findings are applicable to other settings which emphasise...

Silver is an antimicrobial agent well known since antiquity. With the emergence of multiresistant bacteria, it has come back into the focus of research, and ionic as well as nano-sized silver have been studied in vitro and in vivo. The results are controversial, silver being discussed as the "silver bullet" or a "wolf in sheep's clothing". A thorough search of literature from chemistry, materials and environmental science, biology and medicine led to this Review which summarizes the potential use of silver and its compounds in medicine, ongoing processes of dissolution and the different methods by which this usefulness can be evaluated. It also highlights the therapeutic window of silver, mechanistic interactions of silver and biological media as well as best practices for handling silver in a biomedical environment. This Review reflects the current knowhow and observations, and may thus give hints and guidelines to understand and interpret the observed effects.

All kinds of organizations have tapped into crowds to find individuals who can help them solve problems and develop innovations. Crowdsourcing makes it possible to attract a highly diverse audience that approaches innovation challenges from new angles. To develop groundbreaking innovations, companies are after exceptional ideas – and those are more likely to be found in large crowds rather than small internal groups. Furthermore, participants in crowd projects select the challenges they are really interested in themselves, due to which their motivation and engagement levels tend to be high. In collaborative crowdsourcing projects, new and better ideas can emerge when crowds share information freely, build on other ideas and are able to accumulate and recombine different concepts. Despite these advantages there are risks: costs and effort might be underestimated, or organizations might fail to control their crowds. And the crowd can sometimes also be wrong. Managers need to carefully analyze which solutions they seek and whether their problems can be solved through crowdsourcing. Not all innovation needs are suitable for open innovation, but crowdsourcing can have remarkable success if applied wisely to the right challenges.

Grand strategy is hailed by some as a silver bullet for resolving policy drift, while others reject it as a hubristic term. William James argues that expectations of this concept need to be revised...

The United Nations 2030 agenda for sustainable development calls on nation states to invest in national development trajectories that promote both human and environmental well-being. Given the complexity of this plan, and the increasing severity of the climate crisis, understanding the relationship between nations’ social and environmental outcomes is a critical task for social scientists. Raising national rates of educational attainment is a cornerstone national and international governance goal. This paper integrates Amartya Sen’s conceptualization of education as the expansion of human capabilities, with the ecological modernization position that more educated societies may be less ecologically intensive, and tests the resultant hypothesis that gains in education may support global sustainability. Specifically, this study uses two-way fixed effects longitudinal modeling techniques to assess the relationship between national educational attainment and the carbon intensity of well-being (CIWB) for 76 nations between 1960 and 2010. The CIWB ratio is a well-established metric for sustainability within sociology. The findings indicate that gains in educational attainment played an important historical role in reducing the carbon intensity with which nation states produce well-being for its citizens. Less encouraging, from a global sustainability perspective, is the uneven distribution of these desirable effects across regions, and the diminishment of the education effect over time in all regions outside of advanced economies.

The international development effort over the last fifty years has been characterised by overlapping phases of what may be termed paternalism, conditionality, intervention, targetry and governance....

Materials discovery is rapidly revolutionizing all aspects of our lives. However, the design and fabrication of materials are often unsustainable and resource-intensive. Hence, we need a paradigm shift towards designing sustainable materials in silico. Machine learning, a subfield of artificial intelligence (AI), is emerging within the sustainability agenda because it promises to benefit science and engineering through improved quality, performance, and predictive power. Here we present a new methodology to extend the application of AI to develop materials in an environmentally friendly way. We demonstrate successful materials development by combining design of experiments with a new machine learning module that comprises a support vector machine, an evolutionary algorithm, and a desirability function. We use our AI-based method to realize the sustainable electrochemical synthesis of a ZIF-8 metal–organic framework and explore the hyperdimensional relationship between the synthesis parameters, product qualities, and process sustainability. The presented AI-based methodology paves the way for solving the challenge of the materials fabrication-sustainability nexus, and facilitates the paradigm shift from the wet lab to the wired lab.

Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) is a successful transformer-based Machine Learning technique for Natural Language Processing (NLP) based tasks developed by Google. It has taken various domains by storm, and Software Engineering is one among them. But does this mean that BERT is the new Silver Bullet? It is certainly not. We demonstrate it through an empirical investigation of the Requirements Dependency Classification (RDC). In general, based on various criteria used for evaluation, decisions on classification method preference may vary. For RDC, we go beyond traditional metrics such as the F1 score and consider Return-on-Investment (ROI) to evaluate two techniques for such decision making. We study RDC-BERT (fine-tuned BERT using data specific to requirements dependency classification) and compare with Random Forest, our baseline. For RDC and data from FOSS system Redmine, we demonstrate how decisions on method preference vary based on (i) accuracy, (ii) ROI, and (iii) sensitivity analysis. Results show that for all the three scenarios, method preference decisions depend on learning and evaluation parameters. Although these results are with respected to the chosen data sets, we argue that the proposed methodology is a prospective approach to study similar questions for data analytics, in general.

The SameSite cookie attribute was introduced to prevent Cross-site Request Forgery (CSRF) attacks. Major browsers support SameSite functionality since 2016. Since 2020, browsers enforce it by default. These developments sometimes have been celebrated as the end of CSRF. In this paper, we have a closer look into the potential of SameSite mechanism to effectively fight CSRF in practice. Our measurements and evaluations over most popular websites indicate that, if properly deployed, the SameSite mechanism can be effective against the major CSRF attack scenario. Still, like any other countermeasure, it is not likely to be a silver bullet to end CSRF, due to various scenarios that require additional protection. We refactor our findings in a set of guidelines for the web community on how to make best use of SameSite and what it is left to do to fight CSRF.

Conservation is predominantly an exercise in trying to change human behaviour – whether that of consumers whose choices drive unsustainable resource use, of land managers clearing natural habitats, or of policymakers failing to deliver on environmental commitments. Yet conservation research and practice have made only limited use of recent advances in behavioural science, including more novel behaviour change interventions. Instead conservationists mostly still rely on traditional behaviour change interventions – education, regulation and material incentivisation – largely without applying recent insights from behavioural science about how to improve such approaches. This paper explores how behavioural science could be more widely and powerfully applied in biodiversity conservation. We consider the diverse cast of actors involved in conservation problems and the resulting breadth of behaviour change that conservationists might want to achieve. Drawing on health research, we present a catalogue of types of interventions for changing behaviour, considering both novel, standalone interventions and the enhancement of more traditional conservation interventions. We outline a framework for setting priorities among interventions based on their likely impact, using ideas developed for climate change mitigation. We caution that, despite its promise, behavioural science is not a silver bullet for conservation. The effects of interventions aimed at changing behaviour can be modest, temporary, and context-dependent in ways that are as-yet poorly understood. We therefore close with a call for interventions to be tested and the findings widely disseminated to enable researchers and practitioners to build a much-needed evidence base on the effectiveness and limitations of these tools.

The ‘success’ of a polygraph examination is predicated on the establishment of differential or emotional salience (a ‘psychological set’) with an examinee. This, according to polygraph proponents, guarantees that an examinee will respond appropriately during the administration of the in-test (questioning) phase of the polygraph examination. However, polygraph procedure, as prescribed by its governing body, the American Polygraph Association (APA), is a static clinical Westernised process that does not make any provision for human multiplicity (culture/ethnicity, idiosyncrasies, level of education, language proficiency, ideologies, and so forth). Identical (one size fits all) test procedures are applied across the board – a highly controversial methodology. The objectives of this study were to explore the degree to which certain intentional and unintentional human behaviour modification strategies have the potential to counterbalance claimed polygraph probity from an ontological and discursive standpoint and expose disquiet (potential flaws) regarding polygraph theory in the context of the ‘psychological set’. This article, furthermore, seeks to create an awareness of polygraph’s epistemic ambivalence and provide food-for-thought regarding its unadulterated application.

Humans have learned to harness the power of radiation for therapeutic ends, with 50% of all patients diagnosed with cancer undergoing radiotherapy as part of their treatment [...]

Self-sovereign identity (SS) has become a trend within the digital identity circles. This new paradigm places a user in the centre and allows them to have more control over their identity information. Such a concept has swiftly found its enthusiasts, who also actively experiment on SSI implementation in the public sector. Although SSI does not imply having any technology at the backbone, it is usually discussed in the blockchain context. This article explores what opportunities this new identity concept can bring to the public sector and the associated challenges in this process. Also, we seek to examine the dependency of SSI on blockchain technology. For this, we study the existing knowledge on SSI from the literature and interview industry experts to elucidate this phenomenon. Using the thematic analysis technique, we propose a framework for assessing the opportunities and challenges, using the case of Belgium as an example, showcasing the potential of SSI and what barriers it still needs to overcome. We conclude that although blockchain does contribute to achieving SSI, it is not the silver bullet for it.

Properly planned mixed-use developments are recognized as an excellent way to achieve smart growth objectives such as intensification, along with creating attractive and vibrant communities by providing various uses within one development. It is important to understand that although their underlying concepts entail high levels of urban livability, many barriers exist that make it difficult to develop mixed-use development. This paper uses the case study of the Sheppard subway corridor in Toronto, Ontario to understand why large scale mixed-use developments have not yet emerged in an area that seems appropriate for this development type. The paper uses a multi-method approach including a literature review and interviews to understand the barriers that exist within the designated study area. What emerges is that there is no one silver bullet to achieving large scale mixed-use developments. The paper concludes with a series of recommendations that may assist in producing a healthier environment for mixed-use developments to succeed.

While the benefits of the latest mobile devices, smart capabilities or automated processes can't be disputed, the need to be constantly vigilant goes hand-in-hand with them. This is especially true for businesses and banks, pressured by tech-savvy vendors and customers to adopt the latest payment methods. Fraud continues to be a top concern, and dealing with it is a constant battle. However, with the right mix of fraud controls and resources, there is a way to gain the advantage, says James Richardson of Bottomline Technologies. As we embark on the new decade, the growth of technological advancements and innovations continues to accelerate. Not surprisingly, the impact and influence that technology has on our personal and professional lives deepens and expands accordingly. But while the quantitative and qualitative benefits of the latest mobile device, smart capability or automated process can't be disputed, the need to be constantly vigilant goes hand-in-hand.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of meaningful work against dimensions of job burnout, with psychological capital (PsyCap) as the mediator. Design/methodology/approach Data from 223 social workers were analyzed using the partial least squares–structural equation modeling. Findings As expected, meaningful work displayed a positive, direct and significant relationship with PsyCap. Contrary to expectations, meaningful work did not establish a negative direct relationship with all, but one dimension of job burnout. However, the results showed that it had indirect relationships with all job burnout dimensions through PsyCap where it displayed a mediating influence over the relationship. Practical implications Given the malleable attributes of PsyCap and the results showing meaningful work being a strong predictor of PsyCap, this study suggests that organizations should focus on imbuing greater meaningfulness in work to improve social workers’ PsyCap, which is essential in reducing their propensity for experiencing job burnout. Originality/value This is one of the first studies to explore in detail the effects of meaningful work on the dimensions of job burnout, with PsyCap being the mediator. This study has advanced the body of knowledge on meaningful work by contesting the claim that meaningful work was an effective predictor in reducing job burnout. In addition, this study has extended the understanding of the upward-spiral concept and the resource caravan concept.

Purpose Recently, Managed Alcohol Programs (MAPs have emerged as an alcohol harm reduction model for those living with severe alcohol use disorder (AUD) and experiencing homelessness. There is still a lack of clarity about the role of these programs in relation to Housing First (HF) discourse. The authors examine the role of MAPs within a policy environment that has become dominated by a focus on HF approaches to addressing homelessness. This examination includes a focus on Canadian policy contexts where MAPs originated and are still predominately located. The purpose of this paper is to trace the development of MAPs as a novel response to homelessness among people experiencing severe AUD and to describe the place of MAPs within a HF context. Design/methodology/approach This conceptual paper outlines the development of discourses related to persons experiencing severe AUD and homelessness, with a focus on HF and MAPs as responses to these challenges. The authors compare the key characteristics of MAPs with “core principles” and values as outlined in various definitions of HF. Findings MAPs incorporate many of the core values or principles of HF as outlined in some definitions, although not all. MAPs (and other housing/treatment models) provide critical housing and support services for populations who might not fit well with or who might not prefer HF models. Originality/value The “silver bullet” discourse surrounding HF (and harm reduction) can obscure the importance of programs (such as MAPs) that do not fully align with all HF principles and program models. This is despite the fact that MAPs (and other models) provide critical housing and support services for populations who might fall between the cracks of HF models. There is the potential for MAPs to help fill a gap in the application of harm reduction in HF programs. The authors also suggest a need to move beyond HF discourse, to embrace complexity and move toward examining what mixture of different housing and harm reduction supports are needed to provide a complete or comprehensive array of services and supports for people who use substances and are experiencing homelessness.

Eclampsia-related conditions are the second leading direct cause of obstetric deaths in Bangladesh. Efforts to prevent such deaths in low- and middle-income countries are increasingly focused on task shifting at the primary care level to enable frontline providers to screen and initiate treatment for women with preeclampsia, severe preeclampsia, and eclampsia (PE/SPE/E). The MaMoni Health Systems Strengthening project (funded by the United States Agency for International Development) implemented a magnesium sulfate intervention at primary care facilities in 4 Bangladesh districts in 2016 and 2017.The project trained frontline providers through a cascade approach from the national to the union level. A PE/SPE/E patient algorithm, digital blood pressure machines, and eclampsia kits with magnesium sulfate were supplied to service providers at each facility. We conducted a retrospective record review of facility-level data to assess the degree to which newly trained frontline providers adhered to a protocol that incorporated the use of magnesium sulfate for SPE/E in primary care settings.In total, 283 women were found to have PE/SPE/E. Fifty-four percent were managed according to the protocol. The required supplies were present at each facility, but some issues existed with regard to availability and functionality of blood pressure apparatuses.Challenges related to recordkeeping and service quality limited the analysis. Frontline providers need refresher trainings, ongoing supervision, properly calibrated blood pressure devices, and performance monitoring support in order to improve screening and management of PE/SPE/E in primary care facilities.

Healthcare reform brought about many changes in the healthcare industry including the hearing aid delivery model. Third-party payers (TPPs) became a growing trend with health insurance companies. The traditional hearing aid delivery model changed from provider and patient to provider, TPP, and patient. Due to the insertion of this middle man, profit can be diminished from the hearing aid sale, along with processes. Based on this decrease in revenue, decisions need to be made if using a TPP is profitable or even affordable for a clinic. Recent polls indicate more than half of those clinics polled currently do not participate with TPPs.

Technical question and answer (Q&A) websites provide a platform for developers to communicate with each other by asking and answering questions. Stack Overflow is the most prominent of such websites. With the rapidly increasing number of questions on Stack Overflow, it is becoming difficult to get an answer to all questions and as a result, millions of questions on Stack Overflow remain unsolved. In an attempt to improve the visibility of unsolved questions, Stack Overflow introduced a bounty system to motivate users to solve such questions. In this bounty system, users can offer reputation points in an effort to encourage users to answer their question. In this paper, we study 129,202 bounty questions that were proposed by 61,824 bounty backers. We observe that bounty questions have a higher solving-likelihood than non-bounty questions. This is particularly true for long-standing unsolved questions. For example, questions that were unsolved for 100 days for which a bounty is proposed are more likely to be solved (55%) than those without bounties (1.7%). In addition, we studied the factors that are important for the solving-likelihood and solving-time of a bounty question. We found that: (1) Questions are likely to attract more traffic after receiving a bounty than non-bounty questions. (2) Bounties work particularly well in very large communities with a relatively low question solving-likelihood. (3) High-valued bounties are associated with a higher solving-likelihood, but we did not observe a likelihood for expedited solutions. Our study shows that while bounties are not a silver bullet for getting a question solved, they are associated with a higher solving-likelihood of a question in most cases. As questions that are still unsolved after two days hardly receive any traffic, we recommend that Stack Overflow users propose a bounty as soon as possible after those two days for the bounty to have the highest impact.

In this paper I briefly introduce work on ancientDNA (aDNA) and give some examples of the impact this work has had on responses to questions in archaeology. Next, I spell out David Reich’s reasons for his optimism about the contribution aDNA research makes to archaeology. I then use Robert Chapman and Alison Wylie’s framework to offer an alternative to Reich’s view of relations between aDNA research and archaeology. Finally, I develop Steven Mithen’s point about the different questions archaeologists and geneticists ask, arguing that different disciplinary perspectives color researchers’ perceptions of “the most important questions” or the “central topics” in a field. I conclude that evidence from aDNA research cannot solve archaeological disputes without closer, mutually respectful collaboration between aDNA researchers and archaeologists. Ancient DNA data,like radiocarbon data, is not a silver bullet for problems in archaeology.

Fred brooks, in his well-known classic The Mythical Man-Month , already told the software engineering industry in 1975 that there are no silver bullets in gaining an order-of-magnitude improvement in software productivity.1 He also observed that "most of the big past gains in software productivity have come from removing artificial barriers that have made the accidental tasks inordinately hard, such as severe hardware constraints, awkward programming languages, lack of machine time." The hope and goal of software development processes in orchestrating the essential and accidental software engineering and development tasks is precisely to remove artificial barriers to delivering better, faster, cheaper software to the users. Our next silver bullet seems to have emerged as automating repeatable, manual process tasks. While, on one hand, we debate how to scale agile, on the other, we run to DevOps, continuous integration, and continuous delivery tools to achieve the so-called orders of magnitude of productivity improvement.

This article examines how the impact of Information technology (IT) governance by the board of directors on firms' financial performance can be mediated through IT operating capabilities, and how such board IT governance (B-ITG) can modulate the influence of IT operating capability on financial performance. Findings based on a survey of 89 corporate directors indicate that both B-ITG and IT operating capability increase financial performance. They further point to complex B-ITG effects on financial performance, including complementarity with and shaping IT operating capability. They show that high B-ITG suppresses the effect of IT operating capability on financial performance and that B-ITG effects on financial performance are partially mediated through IT operating capability.

DLT holds enormous promise for re imagining and streamlining much of the enterprise process automation we have built over the past three decades. It is not, however, a silver bullet. We must apply the same skepticism, solution focus, architectural rigor, and creative problem-solving we have honed over those decades to ensure that the next generation of solutions are both fit for-purpose and worthy of our trust. For clarity's sake, my focus will be on private, permissioned DLT deployments where the parties are known to one another within an enterprise ecosystem.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to look back on 150 years of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and reflect on the recent challenges to organised labour.Design/methodology/approachPlaces unions in their current context and discusses how they have responded to the challenge of declining membership.FindingsWith declining membership levels and the lack of a “silver bullet” solution, unions continue to face many challenges, although there is some light at the end of the organising tunnel.Originality/valueThis paper introduces the special issue which reflects on 150 years of the TUC.

Advancement of consensus protocols in recent years has enabled distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) to find its application and value in sectors beyond cryptocurrencies. Here we reviewed 66 known consensus protocols and classified them into philosophical and architectural categories, also providing a visual representation. As a case study, we focus on the public sector and highlighted potential protocols. We have also listed these protocols against basic features and sector preference in a tabular format to facilitate selection. We argue that no protocol is a silver bullet, therefore should be selected carefully, considering the sector requirements and environment.

Kathleen Fisher is a professor in and chair of the Tufts Department of Computer Science. Previously, Dr. Fisher was a program manager at DARPA, where she started and managed High-Assurance Cyber Military Systems (HACMS) and Probabilistic Programming for Advancing Machine Learning (PPAML). She also has been a faculty member at Stanford University and a principal member of the technical staff at ATaT Labs Research. Kathleen's research focuses on advancing the theory and practice of programming languages. Recently, she's been exploring synergies between machine learning and programming languages with an emphasis on building more secure systems.

COVID-19 has caused heart-break and disruption. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) was one of the first severely-impacted countries, but also one of the first to attempt to return to normalcy. Education, including Higher Education—the context of this paper—was disrupted, and the impact of these disruptions continues to be felt. A small consolation, or silver lining, has been the incredible efforts and innovations made by teachers to overcome the COVID-19 challenges. One such innovation is described in this paper: Drawing on the traditions of Metamorphic Exploration and Testing, the authors applied two different approaches to resolving a technical administration problem related to the management of assessments and marks for undergraduate software engineering team projects. This took place at University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC), a Sino-foreign Higher Education Institution (HEI) with a history of staff-student collaboration, and education innovation. This paper outlines the experience and the insights learned from it. In addition to being of general interest to education administrators, especially those involved with project and marking administration, the innovative use of Metamorphic Testing ideas to develop the solution will be particularly interesting to computer scientists and software engineers.