A new study uses digital tools to analyze nearly 1,000 Syriac manuscripts from the British Library, focusing on how scribes and editors selected and rearranged parts of texts—a practice known as excerpting. The researcher introduces a new measurement called Excerpts Per Manuscript (EPM) to track how often this happened. This approach reveals that the people who copied and compiled these manuscripts were not just preserving texts—they were actively shaping what future generations would read and remember. By highlighting these editorial choices, the study shifts attention away from authors alone and shows that scribes played a key role in organizing knowledge, adapting texts for new purposes, and influencing how Syriac literary culture developed over time.

Professor Tatia M.C. Lee, Chair Professor of Psychological Science and Clinical Psychology and May Professor in Neuropsychology at the Faculty of Social Sciences, The University of Hong Kong (HKU), has attained the 9th Higher Education Outstanding Scientific Research Output Award (Humanities and Social Sciences) (2nd Prize) from the Ministry of Education (MoE).  This Award recognises Professor Lee's publication "Qigong exercise enhances cognitive functions in the elderly via an interleukin-6-hippocampus pathway: A randomised active-controlled trial" published in Brain, Behavior, and Immunity (Vol. 95, 2021).

Since the 2018 Farm Bill effectively legalized hemp-derived cannabidiol — better known as CBD — there’s been an exponential growth in products hitting the market, but a newly published study suggests consumer understanding of the products has not kept pace.