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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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This paper explores the interplay of feature-based explainable AI (XAI) techniques, information processing, and human beliefs. Using a novel experimental protocol, we study the impact of providing users with explanations about how an AI system weighs inputted information to produce individual predictions (LIME) on users' weighting of information and beliefs about the task-relevance of information. On the one hand, we find that feature-based explanations cause users to alter their mental weighting of available information according to observed explanations. On the other hand, explanations lead to asymmetric belief adjustments that we interpret as a manifestation of the confirmation bias. Trust in the prediction accuracy plays an important moderating role for XAI-enabled belief adjustments. Our results show that feature-based XAI does not only superficially influence decisions but really change internal cognitive processes, bearing the potential to manipulate human beliefs and reinforce stereotypes. Hence, the current regulatory efforts that aim at enhancing algorithmic transparency may benefit from going hand in hand with measures ensuring the exclusion of sensitive personal information in XAI systems. Overall, our findings put assertions that XAI is the silver bullet solving all of AI systems' (black box) problems into perspective.

Ever since the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 in December 2019 at Wuhan, China, it has already become a global epidemic, leaving millions infected (5,652,091) in over 213 countries and killing over 350,398...

Smallholder farmers constitute the bulk of staple grain producers in developing countries but there is inadequate support in the postharvest management (PHM) phase of the food supply chain. Several effective PHM technologies have been developed to tackle food grain losses. However, minimum impact has been realised mainly because the technologies have not been widely adopted for various reasons. This chapter analyses PHM practices, available technologies and delivery models, and examines factors causing non- or poor adoption of the technologies in developing countries. Missing parts of the PHM jigsaw puzzle are identified and possible practical solutions offered. The chapter proposes strategies to support smallholders in building sustainable and robust PHM interventions to enhance technology uptake for effective reduction of postharvest loss in quantity and quality. There is no “silver bullet” in addressing the diverse and complex grain postharvest challenges faced by smallholder farmers, and associated service-providers in developing countries.

Epidemiological surveillance programs such as digital contact tracing have been touted as a silver bullet that will free the American public from the strictures of social distancing, enabling a return to school, work, and socializing. This Article assesses whether and under what circumstances the United States ought to embrace such programs. Part I analyzes the constitutionality of programs like digital contact tracing, arguing that the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures may well regulate the use of location data for epidemiological purposes, but that the legislative and executive branches have significant latitude to develop these programs within the broad constraints of the ``special needs'' doctrine elaborated by the courts in parallel circumstances. Part II cautions that the absence of a firm warrant requirement for digital contact tracing should not serve as a green light for unregulated and mass digital location tracking. In light of substantial risks to privacy, policy makers must ask hard questions about efficacy and the comparative advantages of location tracking versus more traditional means of controlling epidemic contagions, take seriously threats to privacy, tailor programs parsimoniously, establish clear metrics for determining success, and set clear plans for decommissioning surveillance programs.

A multitude of Linked Data Fragments (LDF) server interfaces have been proposed to expose Knowledge Graphs (KGs) on the Web. Each interface leads to different trade-offs when clients execute queries over them, such as how query execution effort is distributed between server and client. There is however no single silver bullet that works best everywhere. Each of these interfaces has diverse characteristics that vary the performance based on server load, client resources, and network bandwidth. Currently, publishers can only pick one of these interfaces to expose their KGs on the Web. However, in some cases, multiple interfaces may be suitable for the publisher, and these may even vary over time based on the aforementioned factors. As such, we propose a hybrid LDF interface that can expose multiple interfaces based on a server-side cost model. Additionally, we sketch a negotiation protocol through which clients can determine desirable interfaces during query planning using a client-side cost model. In this paper, we lay out the high-level ideas behind this hybrid framework, and we explain our future steps regarding implementation and evaluation. As such, our work provides a basis for exploiting the trade-offs that exist between different LDF interfaces for optimally exposing KGs on the Web.

We discuss an evidence-based approach to guiding real-time design decisions during the course of survey data collection. We call it responsive and adaptive design (RAD), a scientific framework driven by cost-quality tradeoff analysis and optimization that enables the most efficient production of high-quality data. The notion of RAD is not new; nor is it a silver bullet to resolve all the difficulties of complex survey design and challenges. RAD embraces precedents and variants of responsive design and adaptive design that survey designers and researchers have practiced over decades. In this paper, we present the four pillars of RAD: survey process data and auxiliary information, design features and interventions, explicit quality and cost metrics, and a quality-cost optimization tailored to survey strata. We discuss how these building blocks of RAD are addressed by articles published in the 2017 JOS special issue and this special section. It is a tale of the three perspectives filling in each other. We carry over each of these three perspectives to articulate the remaining challenges and opportunities for the advancement of RAD. We recommend several RAD ideas for future research, including survey-assisted population modeling, rigorous optimization strategies, and total survey cost modeling.

We combine literature on rhetoric and socially situated sensemaking to illuminate the challenges that emerge when chief executive officers (CEOs) try to influence infomediaries by using metaphorical communication—figurative linguistic expressions that convey thoughts and feelings by describing one domain, A, through another domain, B. Specifically, we theorize that because different infomediaries are situated in different thought worlds, CEOs’ use of metaphorical communication has contradictory effects on journalists’ and securities analysts’ evaluations: while it triggers more favorable statements from journalists, it prompts more unfavorable assessments from analysts. Moreover, we integrate findings from cognitive psychology to argue that these contradictory effects increase the more a firm’s performance falls behind market expectations. Our hypotheses find support in an extensive analysis of 937 quarterly earnings calls in the U.S. pharmaceutical, hardware, and software industries, and of journalists’ statements and analysts’ earnings forecasts and recommendations. Our novel theorizing and findings suggest that the use of discursive frames, especially in the form of metaphorical communication, in firms’ interactions with critical audiences creates thought-provoking and thus-far neglected dilemmas. In developing and testing these thoughts, we contribute to and link ongoing conversations in management science, especially discussions of organizational reputation, executive communication, and impression management.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to consider issues related to gamification through the non-game aquarium context and explore how the intention of aquarium visitors to play a game that imparts knowledge about marine animals and promotes the conservation of these animals is influenced by visitors’ attitudes toward marine animals, motivations to visit the aquarium and perceptions of the game’s benefits. Design/methodology/approach This study surveyed individuals who have visited Taiwan’s National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium at least once in the past three years and who use smartphones. They were shown a description of a hypothetical game scenario that they were asked to imagine to be available while at the aquarium. The partial least squares method was used to analyze the data from 225 returns. Findings The study shows that gamification can satisfy a visitor’s desire to learn and enjoy the aquarium simultaneously. Gamification is limited by the visit motivation and the attitudes toward marine animals that visitors bring with them. The usefulness of gamification is limited when visitors desire relaxation during the visit. Originality/value This study considers the application of gamification in the context of aquariums and the tourism field and the non-technology-related antecedents to the use of gamification. Gamification is not silver bullet for every situation, and a good understanding of potential users is important for its success and targeting of players. The importance of intrinsic benefits over extrinsic benefits is confirmed. Thus, this study addresses several gaps in the gamification literature.

The legal debate on self-defence against non-state actors is still inconclusive after two decades. At the same time, it has created a fertile ground for attempts to find a silver bullet: a new legal theory that could bridge the conceptual gap between the law of the un Charter and the expanded notion of self-defence. The article gives an overview of the legal rationales presented in relation to the fight against isil in Syria as well as scholarly comments, focusing on the emerging doctrine of ‘unwilling or unable’. It argues that the ‘unwilling or unable’ test has little to offer as a solution to the problem of responding to massive non-state violence. It does not amount to a coherent doctrine, and is in many respects at odds with established interpretations of law. The apparent simplicity of the ‘unwilling or unable test’ may be politically attractive but makes it open to abuse.

This paper studies the role and function of corporate branding in organizational identity change, contributing to the increased scholarly interest in the organizing effects of branding, particularly corporate branding. Based on an ethnographic case study of corporate brand planning and implementation at a European telecommunications corporation, MGP, this paper demonstrates how corporate branding logic functions as a management fantasy that settles the tensions of planned organizational identity change. The findings illuminate the important implications of corporate branding logic for the professionalized practices of organizational identity work, with branding fantasized as a “silver bullet” by the organizational branders while in practice emerging as a self-defeating prophesy. (Less)

This commentary briefly reviews the challenges associated with the concept of cyber deterrence. It considers the concept of deterrence more broadly before identifying the specific issues that make both deterrence by denial and by punishment particularly difficult in cyberspace. However, overall, it argues that the concept is valid and indeed essential in contributing to delivering strategic stability.

Predictive analytics has shaken up a number of fields, including child welfare. Predictive analytics refers to the process of applying statistical algorithms to data to make informed guesses about future events. Although predictive analytics can help professionals make decisions more accurately, objectively, and quickly, there is a concern that some methods may result in discriminatory practices or consequences for vulnerable children and families. This paper examines a number of programmatic and ethical considerations for determining the appropriate role of predictive analytics in child welfare.

To maintain Moore’s law, the semiconductor industry decided a decade ago that a new transistor was imperative. That silver bullet has yet to materialize, but computer design innovations are now maintaining or even exceeding expected scaling progress. This theme issue gives a cross-sectional view of these new scaling drivers.

Using Hungarian case law, this essay first explores the singular potential in the anti-discrimination legal concept of ‘harassment’, as it is perceived under EU law, to tackle institutional discrimination. Following this, the author turns to the risks and limitations of the practical operationalization of institutional discrimination in human rights litigation, as well as the uniqueness and subsequent challenges the subjectified standards of evidence for harassment may pose for due process/fair trial, as demonstrated by harassment cases in American universities.

Biomass briquettes have emerged as a development silver bullet, supposedly converting waste to wealth and tackling crises of unemployment, urban waste management, and rural deforestation. Briquettes have captured the imagination of international environmental NGOs operating in many African cities who promote briquette production, partnering with local Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) to improve urban livelihoods and sanitation. Based on ethnographic research conducted in Kampala, Uganda, this article examines the entanglement of material and immaterial labor in the production of briquettes. The outcome of these production processes is to capitalize Community, transforming everyday socio-spatial relations into an agential entrepreneurial subject fit to receive aid and carry out development. This has the additional effect of exacerbating differences of gender and education within the CBO, alienating the CBO from the rest of Bwaise, and reproducing the racial hierarchies of the development economy.

Conversations about climate change at the science-policy interface and in our lives have been stuck for some time. This handbook integrates lessons from the social sciences and humanities to more effectively make connections through issues, people, and things that everyday citizens care about. Readers will come away with an enhanced understanding that there is no 'silver bullet' to communications about climate change; instead, a 'silver buckshot' approach is needed, where strategies effectively reach different audiences in different contexts. This tactic can then significantly improve efforts that seek meaningful, substantive, and sustained responses to contemporary climate challenges. It can also help to effectively recapture a common or middle ground on climate change in the public arena. Readers will come away with ideas on how to harness creativity to better understand what kinds of communications work where, when, why, and under what conditions in the twenty-first century.

Supporting creativity is a grand challenge in HCI. A critical component of creativity is the ability for divergent thinking, and divergent thinking can be fostered through looking at the problem through the lens of a different person, by assuming a role. Prior work found that assuming a role and affective stimulation with images may lead individuals to be more creative. In this work, we investigate the use of roles in stimulating the creativity of individuals in two complementary studies. In the first study, we implemented an online instrument for augmenting creativity with roles and images, and recruited crowd workers (n = 60) to complete a divergent thinking task while assuming a role. Interestingly, and in contrast to earlier findings, our analysis could not confirm the computational priming having an effect on the outcome of a small batch of creative tasks. In the second study, we observed the effect of roles on the ideation process of individuals when they reach an impasse in the flow of ideas. Our complementary studies highlight that adopting roles can help when one runs out of ideas, but this is not a silver bullet for improving divergent thinking, especially in online crowd-sourcing environments that are increasingly being used for experiments and data collection in behavioural science. Our work informs the design of future crowd-powered creativity support tools and contributes a timely case study to the body of literature in the growing field of creativity support online.

One of the challenges of working in professional sport is the constant pressure to be innovative, to adopt new strategies, techniques and technologies to gain that all important competitive advantage. Players, managers and chief executive officers feel the pressure to perform and win matches—often this manifests as a perception of needing to accumulate all those marginal gains possible and fear of missing out, that is, another team has a cryotherapy chamber, so we should too, even if it may not be effective. The medical and performance team feel pressure to provide these so-called ‘one-percenters’ that players and managers and even the Board can obsessively chase. In this process, practitioners often come up against charismatic forces hawking the next silver bullet, magic potion or black box that will claim to win games, improve performance, enhance recovery and predict injury or talent. There is also the fact that …

In contemporary business environment, the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are facing complex and multifaceted challenges to sustain and achieve competitive edge in the ever-increasing knowledge-based economy. In the beginning of the 21st century, the paradigm of the national and international business has entered into the age of distrust, discontinuity and uncertainty because of globalisation, technological advancement, innovation and internet. In this economy, the most vital component of the success for SMEs is intellectual entrepreneurship. Intellectual entrepreneurship is considered as the silver bullet to address the long-standing challenges, survival and success of SMEs. The objective of this study is to address the conceptual theme and define the term intellectual entrepreneurship in business perspective. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that addresses the importance of intellectual entrepreneurship and purposes its definition. Moreover, this paper wishes to highlight the practical challenges of Pakistani high-tech SMEs.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to highlight why organisations need to shift from homogenous talent management to inclusive talent management. The authors argue that having a diverse workforce and inclusive culture is a business imperative and not just “a nice thing to do”. Design/methodology/approach The authors share their experiences of both interviewing directly and the results of their research into organisations that have taken steps to be more inclusive. Findings The paper explains that there is no “silver bullet” that will result in any organisation becoming more diverse and inclusive. However, there are a number of steps and “nudges” that can be taken to move towards inclusive talent management. Research limitations/implications The authors have made every effort to select organisations from different sectors and regions but recognise that there will be many other examples of good practice elsewhere. Practical implications The authors believe that the examples described in the article can be applied in all organisations but will depend on the active support of its leaders and the extent to which they live the values of the company. Originality/value The relevance of the themes of diversity and inclusion has become a strategic business priority as organisations recognise the value that having a diverse workforce contributes to achieving their objectives.

The question of whether genetically modified (GM) crops can help the poor is of urgent importance yet difficult to answer. This essay identifies two problem areas: methodology and implementation. Given the extraordinary diversity of both GM crops and poor populations, it is perhaps better to ask “Which poor could a specific GM crop benefit, and how?” Most GM crop analyses use narrow indicators over short time scales and neglect key variables such as institutions. Moreover, they suffer from a “silver bullet” paradox: both proponents and opponents of GM crops agree that they do not solve all the problems of smallholder farmers, yet they are continually adopted as though there were no alternative. The essay concludes with a call for cross-disciplinary approaches and a more differentiated definition of “poor”.

This article explores the uptake of so-called fast policy solutions to problems in different education policy contexts and highlights the potential impacts that can arise from such policymaking approaches. We draw upon recent literature and theorising around notions of fast policy and evidence-informed policymaking, which suggests that, in an increasingly connected, globalised and temporally compressed social world, policymaking has become ‘speeded up’. This means that policymaking is now largely predicated upon looking around to foreign reference societies to borrow ‘ideas that work’, thereby encouraging particular forms of evidence, expertise and influence to dominate. We focus on three different examples of fast policy schooling documents – namely the OECD’s PISA for Schools report, the edu-business Pearson’s The Learning Curve and an Australian state (New South Wales) education department report entitled What Works Best – to show how all three documents promote an overly simplified, decontextualised and ‘one-size-fits-all’ understanding of schooling policy. This reflects what we describe as a ‘convergence of policy method’ across vastly different policy contexts (an IGO, global edu-business and government department), in which similarly fast policies, and methods of promoting such policies, appear to dominate over potentially more considered and contextually aware policymaking approaches.

The technological vision of smart urbanism has been promoted as a silver bullet for urban problems and a major market opportunity. The search is on for firms and governments to find effective and transferable demonstrations of advanced urban technology. This paper examines initiatives by the UK national government to facilitate urban technological innovation through a range of strategies, particularly the TSB Future Cities Demonstrator Competition. This case study is used to explore opportunities and tensions in the practical realisation of the smart city imaginary. Tensions are shown to be partly about the conjectural nature of the smart city debate. Attention is also drawn to weakened capacity of urban governments to control their infrastructural destiny and also constraints on the ability of the public and private sectors to innovate. The paper contributes to smart city debates by providing further evidence of the difficulties in substantiating the smart city imaginary.

In November 2014, pop music icon and New York City’s recently anointed ‘Global Welcome Ambassador’ Taylor Swift, perhaps the year’s most ubiquitous American public figure, made headlines by absenting herself from a hip and increasingly popular venue: the Spotify streaming music service. Swift, whose popularity and income were unquestionably propelled by avid listening on terrestrial radio, YouTube and services like Spotify, had fired a warning salvo with a July Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal, in which she stated unequivocally that ‘music should not be free,’ because, in her words, ‘Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for.'This one-two punch set off a firestorm among musicians, music industry executives and music fans, who promptly divided themselves into two opposing camps: Swift’s supporters, who view Spotify and its ilk as exploiters of artistry and debasers of culture, and Spotify’s supporters, who view the service as an exemplar of media economics in the age of digital ubiquity and a bulwark against the deleterious effects of online piracy.Although both camps seem genuinely motivated by a principled love of music and a fundamental belief in some notion of ‘fairness,’ neither side got the story right, though each version contains elements of the truth. In order to understand fully the role of streaming in the evolving recorded music economy and to evaluate whether it’s ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for musicians and fans, it’s necessary to take a broader and more historical perspective, and to understand streaming in contrast to other modes of distribution and market exploitation. Since its inception, the recorded music industry – composed of recording artists, composers, record labels, publishers and a myriad of other stakeholders – has been a tumultuous, ever-changing economic battle royale. Each new law, technology or market shift has presented strategic threats and opportunities enabling some to gain a ‘larger piece of the pie’ while others divvy up the dwindling remains. Yet the market disruptions introduced by digital media at the turn of the twenty-first century have introduced a degree of volatility and uncertainty that makes the previous century’s ups and downs look stable and placid by comparison. One effect of these disruptions has been to intensify the ongoing battle – legacy stakeholders seek to protect their margins and market dominance, rival upstarts wish to carve out their own slices and creative professionals see a long-awaited opportunity to exert some financial autonomy and creative control over the product.To the extent that these disruptions are covered in the press or understood by the general public, the situation is often depicted monochromatically, from the perspective of a given stakeholder. In addition to Swift’s campaign against Spotify, other examples include calls for broadcast royalties for recording artists by musicians like Blake Morgan, campaigns for parity between online and off-line radio royalties by organizations like Pandora and, of course, campaigns for and against peer-to-peer distribution platforms by record labels and technologists.In this chapter, I present a nonpartisan analysis of past, current and proposed methods of ‘slicing the recorded music pie’ in the US marketplace,1 with the aim to clarify exactly what’s at stake, and for whom, and to correct and counteract some of the more vitriolic and less accurate rhetoric that has governed the public debate of these issues thus far. I shall also provide a side-by-side comparison, in the form of a table, depicting the economic rewards for creators, as well as the cultural rewards and economic costs for consumers, of music distributed via various channels. It should be abundantly evident even without such analysis that there is no ‘silver bullet’ utopian scenario in which every party concerned, from artists to labels to consumers, benefits without a corresponding expense on the part of some third party – in other words, there can’t be an infinitely large pie with an infinite number of slices. Nor can there be a single organization or sector that wins out at the expense of all the rest; compromise is inevitable, and the challenge is in shaping its contours, rather than avoiding it.Yet, while no single stakeholder in the recorded music economy can expect to see new laws, policies, economies and technologies conform exclusively to its worldview and agenda, there are still more and less equitable ways to divide the industry’s wealth, and to develop methods to insure its continuing growth and innovation. Consequently, this chapter will conclude with a brief analysis of pending policy proposals, outlining what’s really at stake and for whom.

The main advantage of experimental research lies in the possibility of systematically investigating the causal relation between the variables of interest. The well-known advantages result from (a) the possibility to manipulate the independent variable, (b) random assignment of participants to the experimental conditions, and (c) the experimenter’s control over the operationalization of the variables and the general experimental setting. We argue that it is exactly these elements that constitute core advantages of experimental research but that are—at the same time—associated with side effects, which are often out of focus when researchers derive theoretical conclusions from their experimental findings. We discuss potential restrictions linked to these core elements of experimental research. Implications for both theory development and research design are discussed.

The fight for women’s equality in law has achieved a lot. Women have made up nearly half of law students and law firm associates for the last two decades. Despite this progress, the partnership ranks of law firms are profoundly and intolerably sex segregated and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Our profession, which has fought for and helped to achieve legal equality on behalf of so many, is itself dogged by intractable inequality. A standard set of solutions, which address structural barriers within law firms and the effects of cognitive biases, have been urged for decades and yet have failed to deliver any significant improvement. A persistent feedback loop lies at the heart of this intractable gender inequality in law firm leadership and impedes women’s progress to partnership. Gender stereotypical expectations and senses of obligation lead to differences between men and women with respect to their work experience and income, which, in turn, lead to couples making rational, income maximizing (and gender stereotyped) decisions about parenting and managing the home, which reinforce gender stereotypes. Both men and women are caught in this feedback loop. Continuing to focus on fixing law firms so that they are more equal for women cannot disrupt this feedback loop because it ignores the other half of the population—men—who are stuck in the loop. The breadwinner stereotype is the culprit behind men’s part of the feedback loop. Women’s equality requires it to be dismantled. Persuading men to take paternity leaves of a month or two by themselves with their new babies has eroded the breadwinner stereotype in countries as hard working as, and even more socially conservative than, ours. Many law firms already offer fully paid paternity leaves of over a month, but few men take enough of it to make a real difference. Paternity leaves need to be carefully designed to exploit rather than buck the breadwinner stereotype. The tweaks to existing paternity leave policies are relatively small but will require the commitment of leaders in law firms to make such policies successful. The proposal offered here is not a silver bullet that will bring down gender inequality. It is, however, likely to help a lot, improve the lives of men, their children, and their spouses, and hurt no one.

Despite widespread adoption of electronic health records and increasing exchange of health care data, the benefits of interoperability and health information technology have been hampered by the inability to reliably match patients and their records. The Pew Charitable Trusts contracted with the RAND Corporation to investigate "patient-empowered" approaches to record matching-solutions that have some additional, voluntary role for patients beyond simply supplying demographics to their health care providers-and to select a promising solution for further development and pilot testing. After extensive consultation with a variety of experts, researchers did not identify a "silver bullet" or achieve consensus on a single solution. Instead, this study recommends adopting a three-stage approach that aims to improve the quality of identity information, establish new smartphone app functionality to facilitate bidirectional exchange of identity information and health care data between patients and providers, and create advanced functionality to further improve value. The study also suggests that because the solution contains multiple components involving diverse stakeholders, a governance mechanism likely will be needed to provide leadership, track pilot tests, and evaluation, as well as to convene key stakeholders to build consensus where consensus is needed.

With almost thirty years since the start of our quest to find Fred Brooks' magical “Silver Bullet” to slay our productivity horrors, and twenty years since the first Standish report on IT project success and failures, are we getting closer? This paper discusses and challenges current thinking on process improvement initiates to provide answers of how we can significantly improve IT project productivity and consider that to achieve a step change in improvement requires a different approach. Recent Standish research has highlighted the Agile Methodology as being particularly successful for the smaller IT project. However, what specifically is creating this improvement? Is it the process itself or is there something that the process enables? The hypothesis presented is that in order to create the step change improvement in IT project management delivery, we need to significantly improve the inter-personal skills of the whole IT project management team. The revolution for improved productivity will stem from challenging the typical career paths of technology learning to provide a much greater focus on the softer skills.

The abundance and intensity of forest and land conflicts in Southeast Asia highlights the importance of sound and robust strategies in transforming the conflicts. This study aims to increase the understanding of the role of mediation in transforming these conflicts, examine the effectiveness of mediation, gain insights into the challenges as well as opportunities to improve mediation practices. This was achieved by analyzing six mediation cases in Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand. Various data acquisition methods were used including literature review, expert workshop, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions. A conflict mediation analysis framework was also developed and applied. Our findings suggest that mediation has played an important role in facilitating the process of conflict transformation. It has facilitated the creation of a conducive environment for multi-stakeholder dialog, built trust among the conflict parties, as well as assisted problem solving processes, resulting in mutually agreed solutions, improved relationships, and commitment to long-term cooperation. The parties also felt that successful mediation has also contributed to the improved social, economic, and environmental conditions in the study sites. However, the study found that mediation is not a silver bullet and that mediation alone is not enough in dealing with the underlying causes of conflict, specifically the structural inequalities. Other challenges in the application of mediation have also been identified such as the capacity requirements, as well as the costs involved. In moving forward, the paper makes recommendations to promote mediation for conflict transformation at policy and institutional levels, and suggests how to promote mediation and raise awareness about the availability and effectiveness of mediation to conflicting parties and the general public.

As the first documented laboratory test in history, urinalysis, (or 'uroscopy' as it was historically referred to), was revered as the ultimate skill for physicians. The matula, in which the physician would pensively inspect his urine, would become an emblem of physician status and omniscience, a glass bladder that held the power to foretell a patient's future. It would also reveal much about how early physicians refined the scientific method, evolving their practice from that of speculation and magic and adopting more rigour in their analysis. However, the practice of uroscopy fell from grace as rogue physicians and charlatans began exploiting its reputation for dishonest gain and deception of patients. For this reason, the practice of uroscopy is intriguing - its rise and fall reflect the haphazard chase for a 'silver bullet' diagnostic tool which we would do well to remember today.

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to reveal and dissuade the facilitation, fostering and support of silver bullet employee situations in libraries. Design/methodology/approach – The concept of a “silver bullet” employee is first explained, and then brought into the context of library management in a variety of settings. Steps are given to counteract this phenomenon through strategic cross-training and knowledge management initiatives. Findings – Silver bullet employees can be common, but they are not unavoidable aspects of institutional development. Realizing when and how a staff member is becoming too specialized can serve to save time and money down the road when this type of employee moves on. Originality/value – Silver bullet employees are not discussed enough in library literature or at professional conferences. Not planning for employee departure, especially for the departure of highly skilled, talented and specialized employees incurs unnecessary stress and cost to an organization’s leadership personnel.

Purpose – Organizations were originally designed for men. Women are different and organizations will need to adapt to maximize progress and performance of women as well as men. Line managers need to be aware of gender differences in their approach of a mixed-gender team. Design/methodology/approach – In a review of literature, key gender differences that could play a role at work were identified. Five top sports coaches were interviewed to find how they had to adapt to improve performance of female teams. Practical application of their strategies in organizations was tested in four workshops and 15 interviews with women and managers. Findings – Six key gender differences were identified. Top sports coaches confirmed that they had to adapt their style to a female team, and could relate those to some of the differences from literature. The workshops and interviews showed that teaching managers to adapt their style is a promising approach. Research limitations/implications – The research was set up to find if there is merit in being aware of gender differences in organizations. There is, but as it is exploratory research, it is now important to find further evidence. Originality/value – Gender diversity efforts tend to be focused on equality, flexible working, and upgrading women’s skills. This paper highlights that those initiatives are not enough, and organizations need to adapt to women’s needs to maximize performance and progress of women as well as men.

Organised crime continues to plague society. Although we know much more about it, how it functions, who is involved and why it persists, we are still no closer towards eradicating it. Policymakers are beginning to understand that any response needs to be multifaceted, dynamic and persistent; however, they continue to search for an elusive silver bullet. Despite the growing diversity of our organised crime–response toolbox, military solutions continue to be widely prioritised. Perhaps it is the quick wins, the direct pursuit of criminals or the outright show of force that creates the impression that action is being taken. Nevertheless, these responses are not always the most suitable.

Non-farm enterprises have generally been perceived as a silver bullet solution for rural unemployment. This article therefore provides some insights on their potential to resolve the youth unemployment challenge in rural Ghana. Non-farm enterprises in Ghana are heterogeneous in nature based on type of enterprise, range of activities and productivity. Evidence suggests that motivations for operating these enterprises are mixed. Some households operate them as a coping mechanism to deal with household or agricultural shocks, while others may also be operated as business entities with the potential to grow sustainably and offer employment to young people. In order to harness the full potential of non-farm enterprises to address the rural youth employment challenge, it is imperative for policymakers in Ghana to identify specific sub-sectors that lend themselves to growth and have the capacity to offer sustainable employment avenues, and to critically interrogate and examine the primary reason of their establishment.