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Far-right groups and individuals in the United States are exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic to promote disinformation, hate, extremism and authoritarianism. "COVID-19 has been seized by far-right groups as an opportunity to call for extreme violence," states a report from ISD, based on a combination of natural language processing, network analysis and ethnographic online research.

Customer service doesn't have to suffer while your company goes through a difficult transition. In fact, 78 percent of consumers said they stopped doing business with a company because of poor customer service. Now is the time to show your most valuable buyers how you'll keep them informed, updated and respected throughout this crisis by adapting your practices to the moment.

02020-02-03: Pink Lakes in Tunisia

02020-02-06: Flooding in Louisiana and Mississippi

Speech by Mr Agustín Carstens, General Manager of the BIS, to the Basler Bankenforum, Basel, 5 September 2019.

Welcoming remarks by Mr Fernando Restoy, Chairman, Financial Stability Institute, Bank for International Settlements, at the FSI-IADI conference on crisis management, resolution and deposit insurance: what's next and how to prepare, Basel, 4 September 2019.

Awareness for surprising sensory events is shaped by prior belief inferred from past experience. Here, we combined hierarchical Bayesian modeling with fMRI on an associative learning task in 28 male human participants to characterize the effect of the prior belief of tactile events on connections mediating the outcome of perceptual decisions. Activity in anterior insular cortex (AIC), premotor cortex (PMd), and inferior parietal lobule (IPL) were modulated by prior belief on unexpected targets compared with expected targets. On expected targets, prior belief decreased the connection strength from AIC to IPL, whereas it increased the connection strength from AIC to PMd when targets were unexpected. Individual differences in the modulatory strength of prior belief on insular projections correlated with the precision that increases the influence of prediction errors on belief updating. These results suggest complementary effects of prior belief on insular-frontoparietal projections mediating the precision of prediction during probabilistic tactile learning.

SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT In a probabilistic environment, the prior belief of sensory events can be inferred from past experiences. How this prior belief modulates effective brain connectivity for updating expectations for future decision-making remains unexplored. Combining hierarchical Bayesian modeling with fMRI, we show that during tactile associative learning, prior expectations modulate connections originating in the anterior insula cortex and targeting salience-related and attention-related frontoparietal areas (i.e., parietal and premotor cortex). These connections seem to be involved in updating evidence based on the precision of ascending inputs to guide future decision-making.

The superior colliculus (SC) is arguably the most important visual structure in the mouse brain and is well known for its involvement in innate responses to visual threats and prey items. In other species, the SC plays a central role in voluntary as well as innate visual functions, including crucial contributions to selective attention and perceptual decision-making. In the mouse, the possible role of the SC in voluntary visual choice behaviors has not been established. Here, we demonstrate that the mouse SC of both sexes plays a causal role in visual perceptual decision-making by transiently inhibiting SC activity during an orientation change detection task. First, unilateral SC inhibition-induced spatially specific deficits in detection. Hit rates were reduced, and reaction times increased for orientation changes in the contralateral but not ipsilateral visual field. Second, the deficits caused by SC inhibition were specific to a temporal epoch coincident with early visual burst responses in the SC. Inhibiting SC during this 100-ms period caused a contralateral detection deficit, whereas inhibition immediately before or after did not. Third, SC inhibition reduced visual detection sensitivity. Psychometric analysis revealed that inhibiting SC visual activity significantly increased detection thresholds for contralateral orientation changes. In addition, effects on detection thresholds and lapse rates caused by SC inhibition were larger in the presence of a competing visual stimulus, indicating a role for the mouse SC in visual target selection. Together, our results demonstrate that the mouse SC is necessary for the normal performance of voluntary visual choice behaviors.

SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The mouse superior colliculus (SC) has become a popular model for studying the circuit organization and development of the visual system. Although the SC is a fundamental component of the visual pathways in mice, its role in visual perceptual decision-making is not clear. By investigating how temporally precise SC inhibition influenced behavioral performance during a visually guided orientation change detection task, we identified a 100-ms temporal epoch of SC visual activity that is crucial for the ability of mice to detect behaviorally relevant visual changes. In addition, we found that SC inhibition also caused deficits in visual target selection. Thus, our findings highlight the importance of the SC for visual perceptual choice behavior in the mouse.

Behavior can be guided by neuronal activity in visual, auditory, or somatosensory cerebral cortex, depending on task requirements. In contrast to this flexible access of cortical signals, several observations suggest that behaviors depend more on neurons in later areas of visual cortex than those in earlier areas, although neurons in earlier areas would provide more reliable signals for many tasks. We recorded from neurons in different levels of visual cortex of 2 male rhesus monkeys while the animals did a visual discrimination task and examined trial-to-trial correlations between neuronal and behavioral responses. These correlations became stronger in primary visual cortex as neuronal signals in that area became more reliable relative to the other areas. The results suggest that the mechanisms that read signals from cortex might access any cortical area depending on the relative value of those signals for the task at hand.

SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Information is encoded by the action potentials of neurons in various cortical areas in a hierarchical manner such that increasingly complex stimulus features are encoded in successive stages. The brain must extract information from the response of appropriate neurons to drive optimal behavior. A widely held view of this decoding process is that the brain relies on the output of later cortical areas to make decisions, although neurons in earlier areas can provide more reliable signals. We examined correlations between perceptual decisions and the responses of neurons in different levels of monkey visual cortex. The results suggest that the brain may access signals in any cortical area depending on the relative value of those signals for the task at hand.

One person has curly hair; one person has straight hair. One person tans, another burns. One person can curl her lip, another can’t. This is all because of our genes and the differences in them. Diversity. It is the spice of life.  

FAO email newsletters have sparked great interest across the Organization in the last few years, with over 2 million emails sent out in 2018 and over 3 million last year.

Corporate newsletters cover approximately 100 [...]

Supai is so remote, mail is delivered by mule train

These parks are less popular, but no less spectacular

Museums are closing their doors amid the coronavirus crisis, but many offer digital exhibitions visitors can browse from the comfort of home

This is the story behind the breads you might be baking in lockdown

Perhaps the cigar-shaped object is a shard from a shredded planetary body, a computer simulation suggests

Expressing yourself and trying to read others’ faces in a grid of video feeds is a taxing task

Speech by Mr Stefan Ingves, Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank, at the Sveriges Riksbank, Stockholm, 3 April 2020.

With school closures underway, teachers, students and parents around the globe venture into remote learning. Here are some resources to help.

In the hours after disaster struck Anchorage, an unexpected figure named Genie Chance came to the rescue

While COVID-19 has us homebound, it’s a good time to reflect on the peculiar histories of housewares we take for granted

In a nation under quarantine, chronicling a crisis demands careful strategy

A 17-year-old boy from Riverview, N.B., has died after the small motorbike he was riding collided with a minivan in Lower Coverdale, a settlement southeast of Moncton. 

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Long-term care homes in Eastern Health's jurisdiction are allowing for people to again visit their relatives by windows, just in time for Mother's Day. 

Despite being aware of the need for discretion when talking about Jesus, Argentinian Cecilia felt no fear while she was in Central Asia.

Este año en el mes en que se llevó a cabo el mantenimiento anual de Logos Hope en Uruguay, la tripulante Cecilia* de Argentina se unió a un pequeño equipo que sirve en Asia Central. Mientras estuvo allí, pudo asistir a dos iglesias subterráneas que desbordaban de esperanza y fe.

Tensions are rising on Manitoulin Island because a First Nation is stopping travellers on provincial highways that go through the community. But opinions on M'Chigeeng's attempt to protect its people from COVID-19 are not divided along racial lines. 

A doctor on Manitoulin Island is encouraging seasonal residents to stay home and not to come visit during the COVID-19 pandemic.

FSI Briefs No 3, April 2020. In response to the 2007-09 Great Financial Crisis (GFC), accounting standard setters introduced a new methodology to value loans based on expected credit losses (ECL). The previous approach, based on incurred losses, was viewed as procyclical and inconsistent with prudential objectives. In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, several prudential authorities and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS), introduced a series of measures to clarify how banks should consider various public and private debt relief programmes in their ECL estimates and in their calculation of regulatory capital. These measures are intended to incentivise banks to continue supporting the real economy, while reducing pressure on banks' ECL provisions, earnings and regulatory capital. Supervisory initiatives that provide capital relief should be augmented by severe constraints on the payment of dividends, bonuses and share buybacks. These joint actions will simultaneously expand banks' lending capacity and enhance their ability to absorb losses. Prudential authorities face difficult trade-offs as they confront the most severe economic crisis in modern times. Encouraging the use of flexibility in applicable accounting standards, while preserving market trust and transparency in the reported financial statements of banks, will be key in fostering both economic and financial stability.

This paper reviews post-crisis financial regulatory reforms, examines how they fit together and identifies open issues. Specifically, it takes stock of the salient new features of bank and CCP international standards within a unified analytical framework.

Press release about the Basel Committee publishing consultation paper on revisions to the credit valuation adjustment risk framework, 28 November 2019.

Press release "Governors and Heads of Supervision announce deferral of Basel III implementation to increase operational capacity of banks and supervisors to respond to Covid-19", 27 March 2020

Holland America and Princess cruise lines issued notices this week cancelling the remainder of the season in Atlantic Canada, citing global health concerns, and that's taking a huge bite out of the Port of Sydney's budget.

Smithsonian folklorist James Deutsch says the fast spread of stories and memes are cultural expressions that build cohesion and support

A Winnipeg School Division trustee who was suspended from the school board earlier this week does not plan on fighting the decision, she told CBC News.

In this uncertain and increasingly homebound era, customers are turning online for everything from groceries to cat food. It's more important than ever to make sure that websites are optimized for the highest-possible customer engagement and conversion. E-commerce optimization is one game that companies struggling for market share in the midst of a pandemic must play.

All remaining criminal charges of city and state officials stemming from the Flint Water Crisis have been dismissed.

The Flint Registry is holding in-person enrollment across the city of Flint all week. Officials are trying to track the health of residents made ill by the Flint Water Crisis.

Nearly 5 ½ years ago, the water source for the city of Flint was switched in an effort to save money. A disaster followed resulting in deaths, illness and mistrust of government. Tuesday at 10:00 p.m. on WKAR-TV, the documentary series Frontlin e examines the crisis by bringing to light conversations and documents never seen on television before. We spoke with Abby Ellis, the Michigan native who is the film’s director.

The Flint Water Crisis captured national attention about the dangers of lead contamination in public water supplies. Now, nearly six years after the problem was first detected, health officials are reporting on the well-being of children in Flint.

Hearing of Mr François Villeroy de Galhau, Governor of the Bank of France, before the Section for the Economy and Finance of the French Economic, Social and Environmental Council, Paris, 8 April 2020.