Silver Bullet Research Articles

Effectiveness of stress arousal reappraisal and stress-is-enhancing mindset interventions on task performance outcomes: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

Stress arousal reappraisal (SAR) and stress-is-enhancing (SIE) mindset interventions aim to promote a more adaptive stress response by educating individuals about the functionality of stress. As part of this framework, an adaptive stress response is coupled with improved performance on stressful tasks. The goal of this meta-analysis is to evaluate the effectiveness of these interventions on task performance. The literature search yielded 44 effect sizes, and a random-effects model with Knapp-Hartung adjustment was used to pool them. The results revealed an overall small significant improvement in task performance (d = 0.23, p < 0.001). The effect size was significantly larger for mixed interventions (i.e., SAR/SIE mindset instructions combined with additional content, k = 5, d = 0.45, p = 0.004) than SAR-only interventions (k = 33, d = 0.22, p < 0.001) and SIE mindset-only interventions (k = 6, d = 0.18, p = 0.22) and tended to be larger for public performance tasks than cognitive written tasks (k = 14, d = 0.34, p < 0.001 vs. k = 30, d = 0.20, p = 0.002). Although SAR and SIE mindset interventions are not “silver bullets”, they offer a promising cost-effective low-threshold approach to improve performance across various domains.

The Synergism of Silver and Fluoride: A New Arsenal in Caries Management

AbstractTopical anticaries agents are non‐invasive methods to control and prevent dental caries. SDF is a fluoride‐based agent added to the arsenal of caries prevention tools. It has got a lot of attention since its introduction in the 1970s because of its ability to prevent and arrest caries, as well as its excellent antibacterial and anti‐plaque action. SDF reduces acid production by microorganisms, decreases the Streptococcus mutans count, biofilm formation, increases enamel resistance, and promotes dentinal tubule obliteration when applied to the dental surface. SDF also assists in the remineralization of dentin. A biannual application of 38% SDF has been effective at preventing dentin demineralization. This “silver bullet” can be seen as an alternative for caries prevention in special health care needs children which is minimally invasive and safe. Along with the advantages, there are some disadvantages, and work has been carried out to explore the use of silver nanoparticles (SNP) as anticaries agents to shield the teeth from aesthetic damage caused by Silver diamine fluoride. SNPs are identified to have the potential to prevent and inhibit dental caries while not discoloring demineralized dental enamel. SNPs have a greater surface area for interaction with microorganisms than other particles, making them more effective antimicrobial agents. Fluoride combined with SNP solution has a synergistic effect that promotes enamel remineralization while also acting as a bactericidal agent against cariogenic microorganisms. This review aims to bring out the various advantages and disadvantages related to the use of SDF and SNPs to aid in future research.

Azithromycin for the prevention of chronic lung disease of prematurity: not a silver bullet

Azithromycin for the prevention of chronic lung disease of prematurity: not a silver bullet

Is cell-based meat a climate solution for Canada?

Interest and technological know-how in cell-based meat production has grown tremendously in recent years. The appeal is wide ranging, but two main drivers include: i) the possibility of producing edible meat without requiring the slaughter of sentient animals; and ii) the potential to significantly reduce the environmental impact of animal agriculture. Owing to these potential benefits, proponents have called for major government investments in cell-based meat to further develop the technology and help launch the industry. This article critically examines the environmental promise of cell-based meat, focussing specifically on its potential role in climate change mitigation, and specifically within the context of Canada’s agri-food sector. The analysis is founded upon a comparison of available life cycle greenhouse gas assessments of cell-based and conventional meat, supplemented with contextual data about the Canadian agri-food sector. Cell-based meat in Canada is found to have a likely carbon footprint similar in scale to poultry meat, pork, and beef from dairy cattle, though considerably lower than meat from beef cattle. Alongside these findings and additional contextual factors pertaining to Canada’s agri-food sector, the paper argues that cell-based meat is best understood as one tool among many which could potentially support greenhouse gas emissions reductions in domestic food production if supporting conditions are met, not a silver bullet climate solution obtained by fully replacing conventional meat.

Marine protected areas can be useful but are not a silver bullet for kelp conservation.

Kelp forests are among the most valuable ecosystems on Earth, but they are increasingly being degraded and lost due to a range of human-related stressors, leading to recent calls for their improved management and conservation. One of the primary tools to conserve marine species and biodiversity is the establishment of marine protected areas (MPAs). International commitments to protect 30% of the world's ecosystems are gaining momentum, offering a promising avenue to secure kelp forests into the Anthropocene. However, a clear understanding of the efficacy of MPAs for conserving kelp forests in a changing ocean is lacking. In this perspective, we question whether strengthened global protection will create meaningful conservation outcomes for kelp forests. We explore the benefits of MPAs for kelp conservation under a suite of different stressors, focusing on empirical evidence from protected kelp forests. We show that MPAs can be effective against some drivers of kelp loss (e.g., overgrazing, kelp harvesting), particularly when they are maintained in the long-term and enforced as no-take areas. There is also some evidence that MPAs can reduce impacts of climate change through building resilience in multi-stressor situations. However, MPAs also often fail to provide protection against ocean warming, marine heatwaves, coastal darkening, and pollution, which have emerged as dominant drivers of kelp forest loss globally. Although well-enforced MPAs should remain an important tool to protect kelp forests, successful kelp conservation will require implementing an additional suite of management solutions that target these accelerating threats.

Challenges and opportunities for the built environment in a carbon-constrained world for the next 100 years and beyond

Today, the built environment, including infrastructure for tunnels, bridges, highways, subways, railroads, harbors, buildings and airports, is responsible for a significant portion of the energy consumption, natural resource utilization, waste generation as well as CO2 and other environmentally harmful emissions in the United States and around the world. There is no silver bullet solution to achieve the ambitious goal of zero carbon buildings and a city infrastructure with significantly reduced CO2 emissions. Thus, multifaceted solutions should be developed. Another challenge associated with the built environment is aging and a large economic burden to upgrade and maintain the outdated infrastructure. The current status of the U.S. built environment is far below sustainable condition. Rapidly deteriorating infrastructure that must be replaced provides us with the unique opportunity to rethink where and how we should live in the future. In addition, current challenges related to economic and societal inequality in the United States and other global communities also force us to re-evaluate how humanity is connected and how we share resources for a sustainable and healthy future while keeping the Earth safe. The engineering solutions for our future built environment include, but are not limited to, the design and synthesis of new infrastructure materials with low carbon intensity, the development of new manufacturing options and technologies, and the integration of innovative functionalities into building envelopes.

Representation Learning for Stack Overflow Posts: How Far Are We?

The tremendous success of Stack Overflow has accumulated an extensive corpus of software engineering knowledge, thus motivating researchers to propose various solutions for analyzing its content. The performance of such solutions hinges significantly on the selection of representation models for Stack Overflow posts. As the volume of literature on Stack Overflow continues to burgeon, it highlights the need for a powerful Stack Overflow post representation model and drives researchers’ interest in developing specialized representation models that can adeptly capture the intricacies of Stack Overflow posts. The state-of-the-art (SOTA) Stack Overflow post representation models are Post2Vec and BERTOverflow, which are built upon neural networks such as convolutional neural network and transformer architecture (e.g., BERT). Despite their promising results, these representation methods have not been evaluated in the same experimental setting. To fill the research gap, we first empirically compare the performance of the representation models designed specifically for Stack Overflow posts (Post2Vec and BERTOverflow) in a wide range of related tasks (i.e., tag recommendation, relatedness prediction, and API recommendation). The results show that Post2Vec cannot further improve the SOTA techniques of the considered downstream tasks, and BERTOverflow shows surprisingly poor performance. To find more suitable representation models for the posts, we further explore a diverse set of transformer-based models, including (1) general domain language models (RoBERTa, Longformer, and GPT2) and (2) language models built with software engineering related textual artifacts (CodeBERT, GraphCodeBERT, seBERT, CodeT5, PLBart, and CodeGen). This exploration shows that models like CodeBERT and RoBERTa are suitable for representing Stack Overflow posts. However, it also illustrates the “No Silver Bullet” concept, as none of the models consistently wins against all the others. Inspired by the findings, we propose SOBERT, which employs a simple yet effective strategy to improve the representation models of Stack Overflow posts by continuing the pre-training phase with the textual artifact from Stack Overflow. The overall experimental results demonstrate that SOBERT can consistently outperform the considered models and increase the SOTA performance significantly for all the downstream tasks.

New Technologies and the Future Governance of Bank Run Risk

ABSTRACT The banking turmoil in March 2023 and the associated public interventions to prevent or reduce the risk of a systemic fallout underscore the fact that despite banking systems being in a much better shape in many countries relative to the position prior to the global financial crisis, some bank run risk remains. In fact, bank run risk may be increasing. As fintech and new technologies transform banking, uninsured deposits may become near-perfectly mobile, making bank runs all but inevitable if the governance of the financial system is not appropriately adapted. In this article we discuss how digitalization and new technologies can affect bank run risk and we look at approaches to adapting governance to containing related systemic vulnerabilities in the banking system. We also briefly consider how central bank digital currencies could fit into future frameworks. We conclude that there is no silver bullet, but that adjusting frameworks will become necessary if bank deposit mobility increases.

Nowcasting the Russian economy macroeconomic indicators under uncertainty: Does taking into account the news sentiment help?

In this paper the following models are compared: restricted and unrestricted MIDAS-models (mixed data sampling models), MFBVAR-model (mixed frequency Bayesian vector autoregression), Linear model with regularization (MIDAS_L1-, MIDAS_L2and MIDAS_PC-model) and dynamic factor model. The results are compared with classical autoregression as a benchmark. Production indices for different industries and indicators characterizing Russian GDP and its components, energy prices and PMI of Russia and its main trading partners, as well as indicators derived from the analysis of sentiment of news articles published by a number of major media and blogs are used as explanatory variables. The paper also proposes a method of rapid assessment of the current state of the economy based on data for the first or first two months of the quarter in question only. The use of this approach in combination with news sentiment analysis allows to draw conclusions about current economic situation extremely rapidly. Models’ accuracy is assessed by cross-validation for periods before and after the Q2 2022, the significance of the effect of adding news variables is assessed using the Diebold—Mariano test. When testing during the crisis period (starting from the Q1 2022), the addition of news variables leads to an increase in accuracy for 45% of the models considered, and the average improvement (reduction in the average absolute error) was 1.39 points (the reduction in MAE for the science-based GDP growth rates of Russia is 0.64 p.p.). At the same time, in a calmer (pre-sanction) period, the advantage of news is less noticeable: an increase in accuracy was recorded in 30% of cases with an average decrease in error of 1.54 points (the decrease in MAE for Russia’s GDP growth rate is 0.26 p.p.), and the change accuracy of science data when adding variables reflecting the news background turns out to be statistically insignificant. Thus, the use of news sentiment is not a “silver bullet” in the task of nowcasting Russian GDP, but in times of crisis it can serve as a good and, importantly, very operative indicator of the state of the economy and can be used in conjunction with more traditional explanatory variables.

Greenhouse gas emissions benefits of the lightweight vehicle fleet in China: A dynamic fleet perspective

Lightweighting is believed to be a silver bullet to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions related to the road transportation. However, the fleet-scale and long-term GHG emissions estimation on the light-duty passenger vehicle (LDPV) fleet in China is still underexplored. A dynamic fleet-based life cycle assessment (LCA) model is developed to predict the annual GHG emissions attributable to the lightweight LDPV fleet in China at provincial level. With the most aggressive implementation of lightweighting, the cumulative mitigation potential of lightweight LDPV fleet from 2021 to 2050 is 0.72 Gt CO2 eq and 0.55 Gt CO2 eq using high-strength steel (AHSS) and aluminium (Al), respectively. Sooner implementation brings a higher cumulative reduction in GHG emissions. Delaying the implementation by five years would sacrifice 0.16 Gt CO2 eq ∼0.2 Gt CO2 eq cumulative reduction, and the loss would increase to 0.31 Gt CO2 eq ∼0.41 Gt CO2 eq when postpone the lightweighting by ten years.

Is Alzheimer disease a disease?

Dementia, a prevalent condition among older individuals, has profound societal implications. Extensive research has resulted in no cure for what is perceived as the most common dementing illness: Alzheimer disease (AD). AD is defined by specific brain abnormalities - amyloid-β plaques and tau protein neurofibrillary tangles - that are proposed to actively influence the neurodegenerative process. However, conclusive evidence of amyloid-β toxicity is lacking, the mechanisms leading to the accumulation of plaques and tangles are unknown, and removing amyloid-β has not halted neurodegeneration. So, the question remains, are we making progress towards a solution? The complexity of AD is underscored by numerous genetic and environmental risk factors, and diverse clinical presentations, suggesting that AD is more akin to a syndrome than to a traditional disease, with its pathological manifestation representing a convergence of pathogenic pathways. Therefore, a solution requires a multifaceted approach over a single 'silver bullet'. Improved recognition and classification of conditions that converge in plaques and tangle accumulation and their treatment requires the use of multiple strategies simultaneously.

Advances in Managing Chytridiomycosis for Australian Frogs: Gradarius Firmus Victoria.

Extensive knowledge gains from research worldwide over the 25 years since the discovery of chytridiomycosis can be used for improved management. Strategies that have saved populations in the short term and/or enabled recovery include captive breeding, translocation into disease refugia, translocation from resistant populations, disease-free exclosures, and preservation of disease refuges with connectivity to previous habitat, while antifungal treatments have reduced mortality rates in the wild. Increasing host resistance is the goal of many strategies under development, including vaccination and targeted genetic interventions. Pathogen-directed strategies may be more challenging but would have broad applicability. While the search for the silver bullet solution continues, we should value targeted local interventions that stop extinction and buy time for evolution of resistance or development of novel solutions. As for most invasive species and infectious diseases, we need to accept that ongoing management is necessary. For species continuing to decline, proactive deployment and assessment of promising interventions are more valid than a hands-off, do-no-harm approach that will likely allow further extinctions.

Physical activity, sports participation and school exclusion: An analysis of the millennium cohort study.

Physical activity and modes of sport are widely adopted to promote health, wellbeing, behavioural outcomes and educational attainment in young people excluded from education. However, little is known about the physical activity or sports involvement of excluded young people or the role of participation on predictors and outcomes associated with exclusion. The study aimed to understand (i) how active excluded young people are, (ii) whether predictors of school exclusion are influenced by participation in physical activity or sport and (iii) if physical activity or sports participation moderates the relationship between school exclusion and health, behavioural and educational outcomes. Millennium Cohort Study Wave 6 data were analysed using linear multiple regression models. Participants were 11,066 young people. Dependent variables were physical activity or sports participation. Independent variables included school exclusion, body composition and physical health, cognitive and educational outcomes, crime, anti-social and harmful behaviours, mental health and individual demographic predictors. Multiple regression analysis of Millennium Cohort Study Wave 6 data indicates young people excluded from education participate in more (+20.71 ± 9.72, p = .03) minutes of physical activity but less (-22.38 ± 32.52, p = .49) minutes of sport than non-excluded participants. Physical activity or sport did not influence predictors or outcomes associated with exclusion. Findings indicate young people excluded from education participate in 8% more MVPA, but 13% less sport than peers not excluded from education. These findings highlight concerns related to the provision of school sports and physical education opportunities for young people excluded from education. Moreover, these findings question the role of physical activity or sport as a silver bullet within UK educational policy.

R21/Matrix-M malaria vaccine: a vital tool in the arsenal against malaria, not a silver bullet

R21/Matrix-M malaria vaccine: a vital tool in the arsenal against malaria, not a silver bullet

Technology Focus: Well Testing (February 2024)

Standing alone as the shortest month of the year, February also features JPT’s Well Testing Technology Focus, reviewing the latest industry publications on the subject. Well testing has enjoyed a recent uptick in activity and interest as operators continually realize the value in understanding and monitoring the dynamic performance of their reservoirs. Whether it pertains to the deliverability of conventional oil and gas or the storage potential for carbon capture and storage, large-scale dynamic data remains one of the more coveted pieces to the subsurface puzzle. There is no silver bullet for reservoir characterization. Instead, proper characterization will always be the result of integrating static and dynamic data, collected at varying scales, with a macro geological understanding. Technology facilitates the collection of the aforementioned data. With the latest technologies pushing limits of what can be achieved, subsurface engineers must rigorously evaluate what reservoir characterization techniques and tools are suited for project objectives. Formation testing (FT) platforms provide many options for operators to get a first look at dynamic reservoir performance and nearly always precede a well test. After digesting the alphabet soup of acronyms, so many FT options exist that one may encounter what psychologists refer to as “choice overload.” FT objectives also may begin to overlap with objectives traditionally reserved for drillstem tests (DSTs), narrowing a long-standing technology gap. The current advances in FT tools are exciting, and using FT tools to perform a “mini-DST” makes for brilliant marketing. However, “mini” could mean up to 10,000 times less produced volume, which undoubtedly affects objectives thought to overlap. Subsurface complexity is mitigated by defining clear objectives and executing data-collection programs to reduce uncertainty. Caution should be taken in selecting how to dynamically test your reservoirs. Regardless of how advanced hardware becomes, achievable objectives always will be dependent on key factors such as rock and fluid properties, reservoir geometry, and local regulatory and environmental considerations. This month’s papers highlight ongoing developments from different segments of the well-testing discipline. Dive into valuable lessons learned from a frontier carbon capture, use, and storage project, backed by an impressively sized data set and an in‑depth review of multiphase effects. This case study covers differing saturations around the wellbore region and fluid types in operations and should have global applications. Learn about the limitations and potential pitfalls of nonisothermal effects in pressure transient analysis, which pose challenges in the reservoir characterization of geothermal wells. Sensitivities to thermal effects on reservoir rock properties provide intriguing insights. Completion efficiency also may be affected by thermal effects, resulting in additional pressure drop at sandface. Finally, catch up on one of the weapons most recently added to the well-testing arsenal with powerful new FT tools that feature industry improvements for greater flexibility and improved data reliability. Recommended additional reading at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org. OTC 32610 Multiphase Flowmeter Comparison in a Complex Field by Mohammed Alqahtani, Saudi Aramco, et al. IPTC 23050 Frequently Asked Questions in the Interval Pressure Transient Test and What Is Next With Deep Transient Test by Saifon Daungkaew, SLB, et al.

A silver bullet for ageing medicine?: clinical relevance of T-cell checkpoint receptors in normal human ageing.

Immunosenescence describes dysregulation of the immune system with ageing manifested in both the innate and adaptive immunity, including changes in T-cell checkpoint signaling. Through complex and nuanced process, T-cells lose excitatory signaling pathways and upregulate their inhibitory signaling, leading to ineffective immune responses that contribute to the formation of the ageing phenotype. Here we expand on the expression, function, and clinical potential of targeting the T-cell checkpoint signaling in age and highlight interventions offering the most benefits to older adults' health. Notably, modifications in vaccination such as with mTOR inhibitors show immediate clinical relevance and good tolerability. Other proposed treatments, including therapies with monoclonal antibodies fail to show clinical efficacy or tolerability needed for implementation at present. Although T-cell co-signaling fits a valuable niche for translational scientists to manage immunosenescence, future study would benefit from the inclusion of older adults with multiple long-term conditions and polypharmacy, ensuring better applicability to actual patients seen in clinical settings.

Agriculture against the wall: barriers and opportunities for agroecological transitions in California’s industrial agricultural landscapes

ABSTRACT Agroecology emphasizes a shift from low diversity, high chemical input farming to more biodiverse agroecosystems cultivated in conjunction with natural ecosystem processes and embedded in socially just relationships. Yet achieving such agroecological transitions presents enormous challenges in industrial agricultural landscapes dominated by consolidation and overproduction. We examine both the challenges and the opportunities for agroecological transition in one particular industrial agricultural context: the fumigant-dependent strawberry production of California’s Central Coast. We do so by exploring adoption of Anaerobic Soil Disinfestation (ASD), an agroecological alternative to fumigation which has shown considerable promise but has been historically underutilized. Building on previously identified “domains of agroecological transformation,” we characterize the enabling and disabling conditions for agroecological transitions in California’s agricultural landscape. Through semi-structured interviews with farmers, extensionists, and industry stakeholders we uncover significant regime lock-ins: most prominently insecure land tenure and unequal access to land, unequal systems of exchange, and a culture that favors silver bullet narratives and top-down knowledge transfer; as well as drivers of change. The case of ASD, we conclude, reveals that technology-led agroecological transitions will have difficulty succeeding unless they are embedded in broader efforts to transform the social and political relationships of industrial agriculture.

Creating New Antifoulants Using the Tools and Tactics of Medicinal Chemistry.

ConspectusThe unwanted accumulation of marine micro- and macroorganisms such as algae and barnacles on submerged man-made structures and vessel hulls is a major challenge for any marine operation. Known as biofouling, this problem leads to reduced hydrodynamic efficiency, significantly increased fuel usage, microbially induced corrosion, and, if not managed appropriately, eventual loss of both performance and structural integrity. Ship hull biofouling in the international maritime transport network conservatively accounts for 0.6% of global carbon emissions, highlighting the global scale and the importance of this problem. Improved antifouling strategies to limit surface colonization are paramount for essential activities such as shipping, aquaculture, desalination, and the marine renewable energy sector, representing both a multibillion dollar cost and a substantial practical challenge. From an ecological perspective, biofouling is a primary contributor to the global spread of invasive marine species, which has extensive implications for the marine environment.Historically, heavy metal-based toxic biocides have been used to control biofouling. However, their unwanted collateral ecological damage on nontarget species and bioaccumulation has led to recent global bans. With expanding human activities within aquaculture and offshore energy, it is both urgent and apparent that environmentally friendly surface protection remains key for maintaining the function of both moving and stationary marine structures. Biofouling communities are typically a highly complex network of both micro- and macroorganisms, representing a broad section of life from bacteria to macrophytes and animals. Given this diversity, it is unrealistic to expect that a single antifouling "silver bullet" will prevent colonization with the exception of generally toxic biocides. For that reason, modern and future antifouling solutions are anticipated to rely on novel coating technologies and "combination therapies" where mixtures of narrow-spectrum bioactive components are used to provide coverage across fouling species. In contrast to the existing cohort of outdated, toxic antifouling strategies, such as copper- and tributyltin-releasing paints, modern drug discovery techniques are increasingly being employed for the rational design of effective yet safe alternatives. The challenge for a medicinal chemistry approach is to effectively account for the large taxonomic diversity among fouling organisms combined with a lack of well-defined conserved molecular targets within most taxa.The current Account summarizes our work employing the tools of modern medicinal chemistry to discover, modify, and develop optimized and scalable antifouling solutions based on naturally occurring antifouling and repelling compounds from both marine and terrestrial sources. Inspiration for rational design comes from targeted studies on allelopathic natural products, natural repelling peptides, and secondary metabolites from sessile marine organisms with clean exteriors, which has yielded several efficient and promising antifouling leads.

A Long-Awaited Triumph: Africa Embarks on the Rollout of the World's First Malaria Vaccine

After decades of relentless pursuit, a beacon of hope shines brightly across Africa as the continent commences the widespread rollout of RTS,S, the first-ever licensed vaccine against the deadly malaria parasite. This historic immunization campaign marks a new era in the fight against a disease that claims hundreds of thousands of lives in Africa each year, disproportionately impacting young children under five.&#x0D; The approval of RTS,S caps over 30 years of tireless research and development, much of it spearheaded by African scientists. While not a silver bullet, experts agree the vaccine will provide meaningful protection when incorporated alongside existing measures like insecticide-treated nets. Its launch represents a major milestone for African nations at the forefront of deploying this innovative tool to combat an ancient foe.

Are E-Scooters a Threat to Active Travel?

Electric scooters have emerged with the promise to shift citizens away from cars and thus are promoted by some as sustainable modes of transport that are sometimes equated to active travel modes. Yet, calling them "active modes" might be misleading, as riders often assume a sedentary position, contributing to less active lifestyles. In densely populated cities, e-scooters may not be the silver bullet for enhancing active commuting, as their sheer convenience sometimes nudges people away from walking. Furthermore, the aggressive riding associated with them can generate fears of injury among active travelers and consequently deter walking. Despite this, e-scooters' swiftness and convenience continue to attract users, contributing to riders’ travel satisfaction and wellbeing. All in all, e-scooters present a fascinating paradox – a mode of transport that's both sedentary and thrilling. Understanding this dichotomy is essential as we navigate the intricate intersection of mobility, well-being, and community health.