The Maryland State Department of Education "inappropriately stored" personal information of 1.4 million students and more than 230,000 teachers, leaving them vulnerable to potential bad actors, according to an audit published earlier this month.

New Jersey used an incorrect method to calculate Medicaid reimbursements for services provided to students with disabilities, according to a federal audit, but the state disputes that claim.

School authorities in Utah have failed to report educator misconduct, possibly allowing teachers to offend again by moving to other schools, according to a new audit.

An audit of the early-childhood education offerings in Minnesota finds complexity and fragmentation as well as a lack of data about program effectiveness.

A West Virginia official turns up the heat on financial disclosure for the state’s beleaguered schools, and ruffles feathers in the process.

Danilo De Gregorio
Feb 3, 2021; 41:891-900
Symposium and Mini-Symposium

Neural decoding is a tool for understanding how activities from a population of neurons inside the brain relate to the outside world and for engineering applications such as brain–machine interfaces. However, neural decoding studies mainly focused on different decoding algorithms rather than different neuron types which could use different coding strategies. In this study, we used two-photon calcium imaging to assess three auditory spatial decoders (space map, opponent channel, and population pattern) in excitatory and inhibitory neurons in the dorsal inferior colliculus of male and female mice. Our findings revealed a clustering of excitatory neurons that prefer similar interaural level difference (ILD), the primary spatial cues in mice, while inhibitory neurons showed random local ILD organization. We found that inhibitory neurons displayed lower decoding variability under the opponent channel decoder, while excitatory neurons achieved higher decoding accuracy under the space map and population pattern decoders. Further analysis revealed that the inhibitory neurons’ preference for ILD off the midline and the excitatory neurons’ heterogeneous ILD tuning account for their decoding differences. Additionally, we discovered a sharper ILD tuning in the inhibitory neurons. Our computational model, linking this to increased presynaptic inhibitory inputs, was corroborated using monaural and binaural stimuli. Overall, this study provides experimental and computational insight into how excitatory and inhibitory neurons uniquely contribute to the coding of sound locations.

Harmonics are an integral part of music, speech, and vocalizations of animals. Since the rest of the auditory environment is primarily made up of nonharmonic sounds, the auditory system needs to perceptually separate the above two kinds of sounds. In mice, harmonics, generally with two-tone components (two-tone harmonic complexes, TTHCs), form an important component of vocal communication. Communication by pups during isolation from the mother and by adult males during courtship elicits typical behaviors in female mice—dams and adult courting females, respectively. Our study shows that the processing of TTHC is specialized in mice providing neural basis for perceptual differences between tones and TTHCs and also nonharmonic sounds. Investigation of responses in the primary auditory cortex (Au1) from in vivo extracellular recordings and two-photon Ca²⁺ imaging of excitatory and inhibitory neurons to TTHCs exhibit enhancement, suppression, or no-effect with respect to tones. Irrespective of neuron type, harmonic enhancement is maximized, and suppression is minimized when the fundamental frequencies (F₀) match the neuron's best fundamental frequency (BF₀). Sex-specific processing of TTHC is evident from differences in the distributions of neurons’ best frequency (BF) and best fundamental frequency (BF₀) in single units, differences in harmonic suppressed cases re-BF₀, independent of neuron types, and from pairwise noise correlations among excitatory and parvalbumin inhibitory interneurons. Furthermore, TTHCs elicit a higher response compared with two-tone nonharmonics in females, but not in males. Thus, our study shows specialized neural processing of TTHCs over tones and nonharmonics, highlighting local network specialization among different neuronal types.

Bagdad/Rome - FAO is scaling-up critical food and agriculture assistance to highly vulnerable rural households in Iraq thanks to a generous $14.7 million grant from Saudi Arabia. The donation is [...]

Scala Mercalli hosted by Italian environmentalist Luca Mercalli begins filming in the Sheikh Zayed Centre in FAO this week! 

Episodes will be shot in front of a live audience every Thursday [...]

Addressing the plenary meeting in the closing session of the 159^th Session of the Council, the Director-General expressed his appreciation to delegates for their commitment and hard work to [...]

The water torture cell escape was arguably Houdini’s most memorable stunt. So much so that many people wrongly assume it killed him–a myth invented by the 1953 movie about his life starring Tony Curtis.

Lizzy, the avatar based on the novel’s Elizabeth Bennet, will hold period-accurate conversations with visitors at Jane Austen’s cottage home

A new analysis suggests that the piece was created by several artists working in the Italian Renaissance painter's studio—and that Botticelli himself may have worked on important details

An increasing number of people in France espouse a clothing-free lifestyle

An investigation by David D. Kirkpatrick of the New York Times revealed the buyer's identity

Have a photo you'd like us to see? Email us! Our address is nlphotos@cbc.ca.

In insects, oocyte resorption (oosorption) or follicular atresia is one of the key physiological processes and evolutionary strategies used to optimize reproductive fitness. Mosquitoes are ideal model organisms for studying egg maturation in arthropods, as their follicle development is initiated only following the ingestion of a blood meal, followed by a carefully orchestrated series of hormonally regulated events leading to egg maturation. A cohort of approximately 100 follicles per mosquito ovary begin developing synchronously. However, a significant fraction of follicles ultimately undergo apoptosis and oosorption, especially when available resources from the blood meal are limited. Therefore, simple, rapid, and reliable techniques to accurately evaluate follicular atresia are necessary to understand mechanisms underlying follicle development in insects. This protocol describes how to detect apoptotic follicle cells within the Aedes aegypti mosquito ovaries using a commercially available fluorescent-labeled inhibitor of caspases (FLICA). Caspases are key players in animal apoptosis. In this assay, the FLICA reagent enters the intracellular compartment of follicles in dissected mosquito ovaries and covalently binds to active caspases. The bound reagent remains within the cell and its fluorescent signal can be observed by confocal microscopy. Although this method was specifically developed for visualizing apoptotic ovarian follicles during Ae. aegypti mosquito egg development, it should be applicable to other mosquito tissues that undergo caspase-mediated program cell death in a time-dependent manner.

Alheri Bingi moved to Canada from Lagos four years ago. Noticing a lack of representation of her Nigerian culture, Bingi started creating batik textile art using authentic African fabric.

A man from Queens County has been sentenced to five years and nine months in federal prison for charges including making and transmitting child pornography, voyeurism and intercepting private communications.

A federal audit of Canada’s strategy to promote the extraction of critical minerals says the government isn’t giving due consideration to the potential impact of mining on the environment, biodiversity and Indigenous people.

Ontario's Minister of Education has announced she will audit discretionary spending of all school boards in the province after reports of expensive trips by board officials in recent months.

Sharing Information Between Design and Production Eliminates Budget Overruns That Erode Customers’ Profits

ModernTech Provides Audio Electronics Manufacturer with Design and Communication Tools to Bring Industry-Leading Speakers to Market

Saudi Arabia has been burning through its currency reserves amid the fall in oil prices. Is the economy heading toward peril or will reforms save the day?

Undergraduate students in the Penn State Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders traveled to Belize during spring break 2024 to help provide speech and audiology support to children and teens in the middle-income nation.

One OM Malawi worker’s journey of faith has led to increasing AudioBible influence.

Veteran reporter Debra Viadero invites researchers to scrutinize her decades of reporting for racial bias.

Three-time Grammy Award-winning vocalist Samara Joy will perform her third annual “A Joyful Holiday” featuring the McLendon Family in concert at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 3, in Eisenhower Auditorium.

The Penn State School of Music's annual "Mosaic" concert will return to Eisenhower Auditorium on Sunday, Dec. 8 at 4 p.m. 

Although the escape room was created with a primary focus to mobilise Christians, OM Riverboats and OM France worked together to make adjustments in the simulation to suit non-believers better.

Veteran reporter Debra Viadero invites researchers to scrutinize her decades of reporting for racial bias.

Saudi Arabia announced that it was replacing the chief executive of its futuristic mega-city NEOM as scepticism mounts over the Gulf kingdom's most ambitious development projects.

A study published in iScience found that chimpanzees performed better on challenging tasks when observed by humans. The research, conducted by Kyoto University, revealed that the presence of a larger human audience improved performance on difficult tasks, while simpler tasks saw a decline in accuracy. This suggests that the audience effect, often linked to human reputation management, may also exist in non-human primates. The study provides insights into social behaviours that might have evolved before the emergence of human reputation-based societies.

Earlier, actor Ajith had similarly asked fans to call him AK or Ajith Kumar instead of the title "Thala"

DOVER, DELAWARE – Delaware State Auditor Kathy McGuiness and Insurance Commissioner Trinidad Navarro together will host a virtual Fraud Town Hall via Facebook live on Wednesday, October 21, 2020 beginning at 3:00 pm. The Auditor’s Office and the Department of Insurance want to jointly raise awareness of the types of fraud schemes both agencies regularly […]

Saudi Arabia announced that it was replacing the chief executive of its futuristic mega-city NEOM as scepticism mounts over the Gulf kingdom's most ambitious development projects.

Governor Carney’s latest modification includes several consumer protections for Delawareans and Delaware families. Effective at 8:00 a.m. on July 1, filings for foreclosures and evictions can resume, but will continue to be stayed to permit the Justice of the Peace Courts to determine whether the parties would benefit from a court-supervised mediation or alternative dispute resolution.

Lengthy DCRPT investigation yields five charges, including felonies Charges include orchestrating State contract with political consultant Indictment alleges McGuiness hired teenage daughter, paid her while enrolled in college   Following an investigation involving dozens of witness interviews, thousands of document reviews, and more than a year of work, Attorney General Kathy Jennings and the DOJ’s […]

Prosecutors have secured multiple felony convictions, including Delaware’s first-ever conviction for Deprivation of Civil Rights, against a Delaware State Trooper for the assault of two juvenile victims, Attorney General Kathy Jennings announced Friday. Dempsey Walters, 30, was indicted in September 2023 for assaulting two victims — a 17-year-old and a 15-year-old, whose orbital socket was […]

Delaware fruit and vegetable growers who receive a passing score on their third-party food safety audits and agricultural water tests are eligible to receive cost-share to help cover the expense through the Delaware Department of Agriculture.

DOVER, Del. – State Auditor Kathy McGuiness today released a new special report that reviews federal and state legislation concerning pharmacists’ provider status and shows that Delaware is one of only 13 states yet to pass reimbursement and provider status legislation. “Pharmacists have been long on the frontlines of healthcare, which has become more obvious […]

DOVER, Del. – State Auditor Kathy McGuiness announced today the upcoming release of fifteen examinations of Delaware’s Long-Term Care Facilities. “Today my office is releasing the ‘Examination of The Moorings at Lewes Nursing Home Long-Term Healthcare Facility’, but there will be many more in the coming weeks as part of this office’s regular review of […]

DOVER, Delaware – Today, Delaware State Auditor Kathleen McGuiness released the following statement in response to the Memorandum Opinion and Order from the court confirming the Auditor’s Office’s power to conduct performance audits: Judge Karsnitz released his decision in our court case with the Delaware Department of Health and Social Services (DHSS) regarding our requests […]

DOVER, DE (Oct. 11, 2022) – The Delaware Division of Public Health (DPH) is announcing two new laboratory-confirmed cases of influenza, one each in New Castle and Sussex counties for the 2022-2023 flu season. The cases involve an unvaccinated 43-year-old Sussex County woman, and an unvaccinated child under 5 years – old in New Castle County, both with influenza strain A. The new […]

The Delaware Judiciary welcomed its first “facility” or comfort dog to the Leonard L. Williams Justice Center in partnership with the Delaware Capitol Police.

WILMINGTON, Del. – Governor John Carney on Monday announced that he will nominate Thomas Pedersen to serve as Court of Common Pleas Judge in Sussex County, and Candace Holmes to serve as Family Court Commissioner in Kent County. Governor Carney also will renominate Family Court Judge Mardi Pyott to serve an additional term in Kent County […]