Big Thing Research Articles

Jürg Frey, String Quartet no. 4. Quatuor Bozzini. MaerzMusik live-stream, 25 March 2021

Jürg Frey is at the point where the premiere of his String Quartet no. 4 at the online edition of MaerzMusik this March had the feel of the release of the newest film from a cult director. For my generation, this has largely meant someone like Quentin Tarantino or the Coen Brothers: every two to four years a new movie with sameness (recurring actors) and differences (genre) comes out, and with it a new opportunity to spend an interval of time with something carefully crafted by a unique mind with one foot in the real world and one foot out of it. We dutifully check them out, interested not just in the ‘next big thing’ but also in the moment surrounding this bit of culture.

Enhancing Perceived Credibility During a Pandemic

The way a person orders his food is the next big thing that technology aims to change. The purpose of the study is to empirically examine the factors determining the behavioral intention of customers towards online food delivery services with food delivery aggregators in India. The study has segmented the online food delivery (OFD) dimension into two domains, namely performance and experience factors. Performance factor includes technical attributes like website quality including features like ease of navigation, information quality, and interaction and control over order. Experience factor includes constructs like convenience, price value, and perceived credibility. Three hundred four questionnaires were collected to empirically test the research model using PLS path modeling and important performance matrix approach. The data was collected during pandemic period when people needed to be ensured by the service provider of the hygiene and safety protocols followed by them, ensuring credibility.

Lars Edvinsson: bench-to-bedside discovery

Lars Edvinsson: bench-to-bedside discovery

Climate change in international arbitration, the next big thing?

This article considers international arbitration as a potential forum to adjudicate climate change claims, in the form of commercial and investment arbitrations, the latter sustained by the rise of so-called ‘green’ investment treaties. In doing so, it tracks the rise of domestic legislation and litigation surrounding climate change (using France as an example), to demonstrate how the legal profession has already joined the collaborative effort to address this era-defining issue. This trend is likely to continue and become more globalised in the coming years, positioning international arbitration as an attractive mechanism for better addressing these challenges and resolving climate change disputes.

The European Payments Initiative: The next big thing in European payments?

Proposals for a European Card Payment Scheme (ECPS) to supplement the existing European Scheme for Credit Transfers and the SEPA Direct Debit Scheme have been under discussion since before the turn of the century. Since 2020, however, progress has entered a new phase, with banks from five European countries announcing the implementation of the European Payments Initiative (EPI). This paper describes what happened to the ECPS prior to the turn of the millennium and how things have developed since then. It then goes on to analyse the challenges the EPI must overcome to become an ECPS, the success of which would bring a degree of European sovereignty over payments.

Revolution

Revolution

“Biggest Thing Is Saying in English and Punjabi, Too”: Working with Immigrant and Refugee Families and Communities in a Bilingual Family Literacy Program

The purpose of this study, which employed mixed methods, was to document the implementation of a bilingual family literacy program with immigrant and refugee families from four different language groups in five different communities in a metropolitan area of Canada. Results indicated: 1) the program had a significant impact on children’s early learning, although there was some variation across sites; 2) families appreciated the bilingual format of sessions and the provision of bilingual materials; 3) parents tended to support first language (L1) maintenance, although some expressed anxiety about their children’s English acquisition; and 4) parents expressed concerns, including the need for more explicit instruction, provision of more sessions and a greater focus on school readiness. Although the study indicates the potential of contextually responsive family literacy programs, it also points to the need for nuance and reflexivity on the part of those who work with migrant children and their families.

Dan Stein: casting a wide net to understand mental health

A jack of many trades, and a master of several, Dan Stein, Professor and Chair of psychiatry at the University of Cape Town (UCT) is a psychiatric polymath. After training in psychiatry he completed a fellowship in psychopharmacology, as well as doctorates in both clinical neuroscience and philosophy. There is a parable attributed to the ancient Greek poet Archilochus, the subject of an essay, The Hedgehog and the Fox, by philosopher Isaiah Berlin. Borrowing from the precept: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing”, Stein reflects: “I think about and try to problem solve a range of different things; I seem not to have the patience or the ability to focus on a single topic”.

An executive chef’s insights into hospitality in New Zealand: Brent Martin

An executive chef’s insights into hospitality in New Zealand: Brent Martin

A Fix for Fixtures: Addressing Lead Contamination in West African Drinking Water.

A Fix for Fixtures: Addressing Lead Contamination in West African Drinking Water.

Why aren't big things quantum?

Particles in many places at once, spooky influences over vast distances, cats in boxes that are dead and alive at the same time – the quantum world is notoriously weird. Things get most baffling with the questions quantum theory raises about the nature of reality. These are frontiers of our understanding, beyond which lies a wilderness of interpretation where physics begins to blend into philosophy. Over the next 10 pages, we explore this – rather fuzzy – cutting edge and look at the new insights and experiments both deepening and challenging our understanding. We kick off with the question that lies at the heart of all the rest…

Review on Technologies Used in Developing a Tool for Automatic Software Upgrades at Data Centers

The fast evolution pace of various technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Cloud Computing and the world moving towards digitalization created an increased need for data centers than ever before. Data centers support a wide range of internet services, including web hosting, e-commerce, and social networking. In recent years huge data centers have been owned and run by tech giants like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc., and these firms are known as Hyper-scalers. Hyper-scalers are the next big thing, ready to fundamentally alter the internet world for data storage through a variety of services supplied by them across all technological domains. The tool for automatic software upgrade focuses on having a seamless upgrade for the devices in the datacenters mainly in huge data centers owned by the hyper-scalers. This paper mainly focuses on the technologies used in developing the tool for automatic software upgrade, an overview of how the tool is developed, and its features. By deploying this tool in the datacenters, it supports them in delivering more efficient services.

Will PHA finally deliver?

In April, Daniel Carraway, founder of the polyhydroxyalkanoate start-up RWDC Industries, found himself in an unusual forum for someone trying to sell plastic. Carraway was being interviewed by the Iron Man actor Robert Downey Jr. on the FootPrint Coalition’s YouTube channel . The FootPrint Coalition is Downey’s venture capital firm and also an RWDC investor. The FootPrint Coalition’s other investments include a bamboo toilet paper company and an outfit developing mealworm protein. Encouraged by Downey, Carraway pitched his biodegradable biopolymer as the solution to the plastic waste crisis. “We have to clean up the mess we made,” Carraway said. “But we also have to stop making the mess.” The plastic industry has been trying to establish a recycling infrastructure since the 1970s, he noted, but it “just doesn’t work.” Carraway and other proponents are hyping polyhydroxyalkanoates, known collectively as PHA, as the next big thing, but they are hardly new

Di necessità virtù

This article started as a simple logbook held by the members of the coordination group of the two library systems active in Marche Region when they had to face a strict training necessity of personnel, squeezed between Covid pandemic and an upcoming transition to a brand new library management software. Making a virtue of necessity, the regional coordination group was forced by the serious health situation to rethink the operating methods to professionally update over 400 librarians active in the Marche Region and dispersed throughout the territory. That’s why the adoption of Internet cooperation tools among members of the staff and advanced video making tools for tutorial production, surged as the new normal and were crucial to the project. The training information was packed in a series of video tutorials, self explanatory and preliminar to more traditional online courses but also useful to lay the foundations for the subsequent training of other colleagues. The total result was the production of 28 video tutorials. Technology has sped up the peculiar librarians’ collaborative attitude, and this project looks like the dry run for the next big thing: the merger of the two library systems in a single large one for all Marche Region.

Opinion Piece: Patient-Specific Implants May Be the Next Big Thing in Spinal Surgery.

The emergence of 3D-Printing technologies and subsequent medical applications have allowed for the development of Patient-specific implants (PSIs). There have been increasing reports of PSI application to spinal surgery over the last 5 years, including throughout the spine and to a range of pathologies, though largely for complex cases. Through a number of potential benefits, including improvements to the implant–bone interface and surgical workflow, PSIs aim to improve patient and surgical outcomes, as well as potentially provide new avenues for combating challenges routinely faced by spinal surgeons. However, obstacles to widespread acceptance and routine application include the lack of quality long-term data, research challenges and the practicalities of production and navigating the regulatory environment. While recognition of the significant potential of Spinal PSIs is evident in the literature, it is clear a number of key questions must be answered to inform future clinical and research practices. The spinal surgical community must selectively and ethically continue to offer PSIs to patients, simultaneously allowing for the necessary larger, comparative studies to be conducted, as well as continuing to provide optimal patient care, thereby ultimately determining the exact role of this technology and potentially improving outcomes.

Artificial intelligence in cardiology: the next big thing?

Artificial intelligence in cardiology: the next big thing?

Health-related domains of quality of life in pyoderma gangrenosum: A qualitative analysis

Health-related domains of quality of life in pyoderma gangrenosum: A qualitative analysis

Progress and perspective in Dion-Jacobson phase 2D layered perovskite optoelectronic applications

2D organic-inorganic halide perovskites have recently become the “next big thing” as promising candidates in optoelectronics. They possess higher moisture stability and lower ion migration compared to 3D perovskites due to the incorporation of bulky organic spacers. Compared to 2D Ruddlesden-Popper (RP) phase with two monoammoniums, 2D Dion-Jacobson (DJ) phase containing one diammonium has achieved a tighter connection between inorganic sheets due to formation of hydrogen bonds, resulting in higher crystal stability and more favorable charge transfer. RP phase solar cell has increased from 4.73% to 18.24% within six years, whereas DJ phase device shows a steep efficiency rise from 7.32% to 17.9% within only one year. Herein, this review provides in-depth understandings on optical property, orientation and charge transport, and energy band alignment of DJ phase perovskites, and raise perspectives that how they are affected by n value and diammoniums characteristics. The recent advances in solar cells, light-emitting diodes, and photodetectors have also been summarized. Finally, we discuss the remaining challenges of boosting device efficiency and try to answer the key scientific question that how to narrow phase distribution and engineer vertical orientation achieving the favorable energy alignment.

Building connections

‘The little things are the big things’ when it comes to ensuring all children belong and participate in the setting, says Kathryn Solly. Getting it right from the start means pronouncing and spelling names correctly, providing warm welcomes and working in genuine partnership with parents.

Are Brain Organoids The Next Big Thing?

Are Brain Organoids The Next Big Thing?