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This article examines Hartmut Stegemann’s preliminary proposal that the remains of the beginning handle sheet of 1QHa have survived and provide useful data for reconstructing the scroll. According to Stegemann, this handle sheet supplies critical material evidence that three columns existed before 1QHa 4, the first substantially extant column in the manuscript. The handle sheet was recovered from one of three scrolls, 1QM, 1QIsab, and 1QHa. Each of these possibilities is considered, and a new proposal that the handle sheet belongs to the end of 1QIsab is advanced. The article offers a tentative reconstruction of the handle sheet as part of 1QIsab to demonstrate its material continuity with col. 28 of 1QIsab.

The idea that the quantum world isn't as random as it seems is taboo for many physicists. But could it finally make sense of quantum theory, asks Michael Brooks

Our best mathematical model of consciousness might imply everything has got it. How seriously should we take that, asks Michael Brooks

A universe identical to our own could be hiding in plain sight. Michael Brooks steps through the looking glass.

Study design Cross sectional study. Purpose To assess the quality of anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (ACDF) videos available on YouTube and identify factors associated with video quality. Overview of literature Patients commonly use the internet as a source of information regarding their surgeries. However, there is currently limited information regarding the quality of online videos about ACDF. Methods A search was performed on YouTube using the phrase 'anterior cervical discectomy and fusion.' The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), DISCERN, and Health on the Net (HON) systems were used to rate the first 50 videos obtained. Information about each video was collected, including number of views, duration since the video was posted, percentage positivity (defined as number of likes the video received, divided by the total number of likes or dislikes of that video), number of comments, and the author of the video. Relationships between video quality and these factors were investigated. Results The average number of views for each video was 96,239. The most common videos were those published by surgeons and those containing patient testimonies. Overall, the video quality was poor, with mean scores of 1.78/5 using the DISCERN criteria, 1.63/4 using the JAMA criteria, and 1.96/8 using the HON criteria. Surgeon authors' videos scored higher than patient testimony videos when reviewed using the HON or JAMA systems. However, no other factors were found to be associated with video quality. Conclusions The quality of ACDF videos on YouTube is low, with the majority of videos produced by unreliable sources. Therefore, these YouTube videos should not be recommended as patient education tools for ACDF.

Although it has long been acknowledged that 1QS, 1QSa, and 1QSb are part of the same manuscript, most scholars follow J.T. Milik’s interpretation of the columns of 1QSa and 1QSb as appendices to 1QS. This article examines the circumstances out of which this “appendix hypothesis” emerged, highlights its weaknesses, and takes up Philip Alexander and Géza Vermes’s call to consider the sections of the scroll together by proposing that 1QS-1QSa-1QSb is a composite work that its editor has unified through superscriptions. This study also examines the formatting between 1QS, 1QSa, and 1QSb and the evidence of a recension concerned with introducing the activity of the sons of Zadok and reframing the material for the Maskil throughout the scroll to propose that the heterogeneous and sometimes inconsistent contents are presented by its redactor as a single work rather than three distinct works in a single scroll.

American Indians (AI) have disproportionately high rates of colorectal cancer (CRC), but there is relatively little research focused on developing AI CRC screening interventions. We held six focus groups with AIs in rural Eastern U.S. (n=74) and analyzed the qualitative data from them in order to identify individual and socio-cultural factors that influence AI CRC screening decisions. Screening fear and anxiety was a central theme of the focus groups. For example, participants told stories about how late-stage cancer diagnoses and deaths in the community contributed to their fears and cancer fatalism. Furthermore, CRC screening fears were reinforced by health communication norms that limited productive conversations about CRC screening. Our findings indicate that culturally adapted interventions, such as CRC screening decision aids, are needed to help AIs communicate and make informed decisions about CRC screening with support from family and health care providers. More research is needed on the influence of these interventions on CRC screening intentions, social norms, and shared decision-making.

We could improve people's perception of maths by playing down the Platonists, suggests Michael Brooks

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…

The claim to have tamed the sun's power in the lab was mocked 25 years ago. So why is cold fusion making a comeback, asks Michael Brooks

Why is quantum reality so different from our everyday experiences? The answer could be right under our feet, says Michael Brooks

Social media has become a fruitful platform on which to study human behavior and social phenomena. However, social media data are usually messy, disorganized, and noisy, which makes finding patterns in such data a challenging task. Visualization can help with the exploration of such massive data. Researchers studying social media often begin by reviewing related research. In this paper, we consider the idea that information from related research can be incorporated into social media visualization tools in order to spark creativity and guide exploration. To develop an effective overview of social media research with which to seed our tool, we conducted a content analysis of social media related papers and designed SparQs, a visual analytics tool to spark creativity in social media exploration. We conducted a pilot evaluation with three social media researchers as well as a participatory design workshop to explore further directions.

Move over space agencies, we're launching our very own craft to explore Europa. Michael Brooks invites you along for the ride

Can we realise Alan Turing's dream of a computer that always has an answer? Michael Brooks investigates

When dumb animals swarm they produce a mind meld that could hold the key to building robots, healing wounds and understanding consciousness, finds Michael Brooks

Reality, relativity, causality or free will? Take quantum theory at face value and at least one of them is an illusion – but which, asks Michael Brooks

There's mounting evidence that the weird rules of quantum physics determine how living organisms work too

Privacy and confidentiality policies and practices, including Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) policies, may vary from institution to institution because they are developed to be institution-specific. HIPAA privacy and security regulations represent the minimum standards, and the expectation is that institutions will develop policies and practices that are reasonable and appropriate for their institution. These privacy and information security safeguards impact the use of sensitive and protected data often used by cancer educators. Therefore, it is important for cancer educators to be familiar with the policies, rules, and guidelines their institution has developed to comply with HIPAA. However, despite institutional differences, certain principles related to the confidentiality, protection, and uses of a patient's health information remain consistent. HIPAA provides two sets of regulations that directly impact the work of many cancer educators: privacy and information security. The HIPAA Privacy Rule includes some security requirements, and HIPAA Security Regulations were designed to ensure privacy of the patient's protected health information (PHI). This paper focuses primarily on the privacy factors.

The JCE publication history exceeds 600 peer reviewed cancer education articles. Two methodological approaches were used for a retrospective perspective of JCE quality: Journal Impact Factor (JIF) and Citation Analysis (CA). The Journal Impact Factor comparison included only medical or health journals with an educational focus. Citation Analysis was conducted to identify attributes of most cited JCE articles and their cancer education focus. Despite concerns in the literature about the merits of both methods, results provided useful insights about JCE quality. Results will guide quality improvement plans and assist authors interested in publishing their cancer education research results in the JCE.

Flying wind turbines in the form of kites will be far more efficient than land-based wind power, says Michael Brooks

An ultimate theory that unifies all of physics seems as far away as ever – but that doesn't mean we should stop chasing the dream, says Michael Brooks

The most creative moment of the 1980s has nothing to do with eyeliner or electronic music. Chuck Hull recalls the moment he invented 3D printing

Dwight Lee (1999) shows that thecollectivity may be better, not worse off,when a technically ``inefficient'' pollutionabatement technology is adopted. Thepurpose of this note is twofold. First, toshow that once rent-seeking is incorporatedinto the analysis, Lee's qualified supportfor a technically inefficient pollutionabatement technology is at bestproblematic, and at worst flawed. Second,to demonstrate that it is possible to makea less problematic normative case in favourof the adoption of the technicallyinefficient abatement policy.

Widespread adoption of biometric authentication technology has been slow because of technical, usability, and acceptability issues. Incorporating feedback from stakeholders throughout the design process is one way to ensure that biometric technologies have the best chance of achieving success. Emerging technology that performs biometric identification through unique eye movement characteristics may offer advantages, but the potential usability and acceptability of interfaces for eye movement biometric authentication is unknown. We explore a series of user interface designs for a simulated eye movement biometric authentication system, presenting an account of our design process, descriptions of the interface designs, and our evaluation. Our findings highlight the importance of feedback design, potential usability issues, users' perceived security benefits, and reasons why users may prefer eye movement biometrics over other systems.

Our object is to explicate Buchanan’s conception of individual liberty and to trace its connection to the “working themes” in his corpus-anarchy, contract, constitution, Pareto optimality, “public choice,” and so on. In doing so, we investigate a number of tensions in Buchanan’s conception—between a libertarian affinity with anarchy and constitutional contractarianism and that between procedural liberalism and classical liberalism.

Distributed collaborative teams increasingly rely on online tools for interaction and communication in both social and task-oriented goals. Measuring and modeling these interactions along different dimensions can help understand, and better design for, distributed collaboration. Affect is one such dimension that can play a crucial role in the dynamics, creativity, and productivity of distributed groups. We contribute an adaptation of the grounded theory methodology as a flexible and extensible means for constructing a taxonomy of affect in text-based online communication. Such a taxonomy can serve as an analytic lens for the continued investigation of the role of affect in creative collaborative endeavors as mediated by communication technology. We describe our modified grounded theory approach and then validate our method by constructing a taxonomy with data from chat logs collected during a longitudinal study of a multi-cultural distributed scientific collaboration.

In this paper a small two sector model is developed and used to analyze the private versus common property debate in the presence of resource-using rent-seeking. We are able to demonstrate that, in contrast to the existing literature, there may be a gain associated with privatization even when rent-seekers spend all the scarcity rent on the lobbying activity. We also challenge the traditional result which states that privatization will necessarily lead to a reduction in the rate of renumeration to the mobile factor.

Some theories hold that reality and consciousness are one and the same. Is the universe really all inside your head?

Did a 13th century English bishop have a working theory of colour? If he did, that colours our conceptions of the Dark Ages, says Michael Brooks

Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, winners of this year's physics Nobel, on the fun and frustration on the way to their discovery of graphene

My campaign will highlight the fact that UK politics is dominated by scientific illiterates, says Michael Brooks

If you think poker is a game for hard-drinking, risk-taking mavericks, take a look at Chris “Jesus” Ferguson . Nicknamed for his beard and long hair, Ferguson has picked up where mathematical genius John von Neumann left off, analysing the finer points of poker using game theory — the branch of mathematics that predicts the optimal outcome of competitive situations. That analysis has helped him to win more than $4 million and a World Series of Poker champion title. On the eve of this year's World Series competition in Las Vegas, Michael Brooks called his bluff and asked whether he really does owe his poker prowess to mathematics

Should scientists learn a lesson or two from Hollywood when it comes to talking to the public?

A study of a “multiverse” in which fundamental constants related to stars are varied shows that a quarter of the universes may be able to support life

Scores on the Allied Health Aptitude Test and previous GPAs for 102 students were correlated with a dichotomous measure of their persistence and their GPAs in the Respiratory Therapy program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The multiple correlation for predicting grades was .62, and for predicting persistence was .47. These results are comparable to those obtained in other academic prediction studies and support the validity of this test.

The aim of this paper is 10 survey critically the recent literature on rent seeking and Directly Unproductive Profit‐Seeking Activities (DUP). The links with the related literatures on transactions costs and property rights are also explored. It is argued that a clearer understanding of wasteful competition emerges if the framework of constitutional economics is adopted. It is furthermore argued that a dynamic framework is most suitable to analyze wasteful competition Copyright © 1989, Wiley Blackwell. All rights reserved

In a recent issue of this journal Richard Cebula and Milton Kafoglis (1983) (hereafter called C&K), present a model which is designed to determine the optimal voting rule. Their analysis builds on the work of Fishkin (1979) and Rae (1975) who had offered criticisms of Buchanan and Tullock's (B&T) determination of the optimal voting rule. The purpose of this note is to indicate that C&K have left some misleading trails in their search and to rectify these false leads. The central concern of C&K's paper is to analyse the distinct possibility that some collective outcomes may be sacrificed '... because "negative minorities" may be able to block efficient decisions' (C&K, 1983: 196). To this end they '...formulate a simple framework for the selection of a decision rule which recognizes these costs of surrendered outcomes' (C&K, 1983: 196). Figure 1, which is reproduced here from C&K's discussion, represents in part the most reasonable depiction 1 of the costs and benefits to the collectivity of all the voting rules from simple majority to unanimity. The benefit curve is assumed to rise as the voting rule becomes more inclusive. It is alleged that the 'free rider' problem and the related inefficiency diminishes as the voting rule approaches unanimity. 2 In substance this curve does not differ markedly from that found in B&T's model. 3 The discussion by C&K of this concept is, however, confusing. Cebula and Kafoglis consistently refer to the GB curve as representing the group's gross benefits but fail to clearly indicate what gross refers to. They note, for example, in their final paragraph that B&T's framework uses net benefits whereas their analysis refers to gross benefits. And to be sure, B&T did at one stage 4 propose to use net benefits, measured as the difference between the benefits and costs of provision (B&T, 1962: 44). Presumably C&K therefore take gross benefits to reflect the value of collective provision without any regard whatsoever to what has to be given up. But if this is so, then it is not at all clear why the benefit curve is of much analytical interest. Ninety years ago Wicksell admonished economists for their failure to take

In a recent issue of this Journal, Dwight Lee analyzes pollution taxation in a rent-seeking environment. The purpose of this paper is to extend Lee's basic framework to a second-best environment. In doing so it will be shown that a Pigovian tax may be the preferred rate even if rent-seeking costs are included. The paper is organized as follows. In section II we present a slightly modified version of Lee's analysis of the optimal pollution tax in a rent-seeking environment. Having done so, it is shown that Lee's specification of the optimal pollution tax must be modified in a second-best environment. Some general results that emerge from our analysis are summarized in a proposition. In section III we offer some concluding remarks. -from Authors