Customer attrition and churn are not new problems. Anyone who has spent time in the sales world has heard statistics around the cost of acquiring a new customer. It can be five to 25 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one. Improving customer retention by just 5 percent can increase profits by 25-95 percent, depending on your industry and company size.

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.

02020-02-04: Burn Scars in Australia

Priming refers to the influence that a previously encountered object exerts on future responses to similar objects. For many years, visual priming has been known as a facilitation and sometimes an inhibition effect that lasts for an extended period of time. It contrasts with the recent finding of an oscillated priming effect where facilitation and inhibition alternate over time periodically. Here we developed a computational model of visual priming that combines rhythmic sampling of the environment (attentional oscillation) with active preparation for future events (temporal expectation). Counterintuitively, it shows that both the sustained and oscillated priming effects can emerge from an interaction between attentional oscillation and temporal expectation. The interaction also leads to novel predictions, such as the change of visual priming effects with temporal expectation and attentional oscillation. Reanalysis of two published datasets and the results of two new experiments of visual priming tasks with male and female human participants provide support for the model's relevance to human behavior. More generally, our model offers a new perspective that may unify the increasing findings of behavioral and neural oscillations with the classic findings in visual perception and attention.

SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT There is increasing behavioral and neural evidence that visual attention is a periodic process that sequentially samples different alternatives in the theta frequency range. It contrasts with the classic findings of sustained facilitatory or inhibitory attention effects. How can an oscillatory perceptual process give rise to sustained attention effects? Here we make this connection by proposing a computational model for a "fruit fly" visual priming task and showing both the sustained and oscillated priming effects can have the same origin: an interaction between rhythmic sampling of the environment and active preparation for future events. One unique contribution of our model is to predict how temporal contexts affects priming. It also opens up the possibility of reinterpreting other attention-related classic phenomena.

Sensory systems integrate multiple stimulus features to generate coherent percepts. Spectral surround suppression, the phenomenon by which sound-evoked responses of auditory neurons are suppressed by stimuli outside their receptive field, is an example of this integration taking place in the auditory system. While this form of global integration is commonly observed in auditory cortical neurons, and potentially used by the nervous system to separate signals from noise, the mechanisms that underlie this suppression of activity are not well understood. We evaluated the contributions to spectral surround suppression of the two most common inhibitory cell types in the cortex, parvalbumin-expressing (PV+) and somatostatin-expressing (SOM⁺) interneurons, in mice of both sexes. We found that inactivating SOM⁺ cells, but not PV+ cells, significantly reduces sustained spectral surround suppression in excitatory cells, indicating a dominant causal role for SOM⁺ cells in the integration of information across multiple frequencies. The similarity of these results to those from other sensory cortices provides evidence of common mechanisms across the cerebral cortex for generating global percepts from separate features.

SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT To generate coherent percepts, sensory systems integrate simultaneously occurring features of a stimulus, yet the mechanisms by which this integration occurs are not fully understood. Our results show that neurochemically distinct neuronal subtypes in the primary auditory cortex have different contributions to the integration of different frequency components of an acoustic stimulus. Together with findings from other sensory cortices, our results provide evidence of a common mechanism for cortical computations used for global integration of stimulus features.

We will only achieve zero hunger if we speak on behalf of those unable to represent themselves. That was a key message during an event titled “Zero Hunger: are we ready?” at FAO headquarters in Rome, Italy, on Friday, 11 October. “Hungry people have no voice, they are different from all others,” said FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva (pictured, left). “We [...]

As the clock ticks on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the world community is deep in discussion over the successor global framework. Many current practices are damaging the planet’s ecosystems and the biodiversity essential for healthy food production. By 2050 an estimated additional 2 billion people will be living on Earth.  This means food production must rise by 60%. From 8 MDGs [...]

Pulses are being celebrated in 2016 all over the world since they are nutritious, suited for use in a variety of dishes, easy on the budget  and good for the health of the soil. From food security and nutrition to ensuring biodiversity and mitigating the effects of climate change, pulses contribute to sustainable development. Here is how.  1.     Nutritional benefits of pulses   Pulses [...]

On the frontline of climate change, effects are real and measurable. As climate change evolves, food and agriculture need to follow suit. Rising temperatures, changes in rainfall, erratic weather patterns and the prevalence of pests and diseases resulting from climate change threaten agricultural productivity and therefore undermine global food security. Simultaneously, the world’s population is growing steadily and expected to reach [...]

Four years into the 2030 Agenda, there is still a large gap in data to understand where the world stands in achieving its shared goals, the SDGs. To support [...]

Four years into the 2030 Agenda and there is a pressing need to understand where the world stands in eradicating hunger and food insecurity, as well as ensuring sustainable [...]

Since the adoption of the 2030 Agenda, FAO has produced a wealth of materials aimed at promoting knowledge and understanding related to the SDG Indicators under FAO custodianship.

As the custodian [...]

FAO will attend the fourth Annual Strategic Consultation with the Government of Japan on Tuesday 21 January 2020, in Tokyo, Japan. The objective is to review the progress of [...]

Bisti Badlands’ bizarre eggs bring a bit of Easter to the New Mexico desert

After four months of unexpected dimming, the red supergiant star has perked back up, and astronomers may have a new explanation for the fluke

Greenery is sprouting from scorched tree trunks as the forests regrow their canopies

Over his five-decade-plus career, the "Strega Nona" author contributed to more than 270 books

Mary Pearson, who was briefly engaged to the writer's brother, may be the real-life counterpart of Lydia Bennet from "Pride and Prejudice"

Select Andrew Lloyd Webber productions will stream on YouTube for 48 hours at a time

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

The Catholic Church's actions during World War II have long been a matter of historical debate

The hair-care magnate at the center of the new Netflix series 'Self Made' left her imprint on the city where she launched her career

Alcohol industry groups were successful in getting the Yukon government to pull labels warning of the connection between alcohol and cancer from liquor store shelves, but the strategy may have ultimately backfired, researchers suggest.

If New Brunswickers were planning on doing any yard work this weekend they will likely be using their snow shovels instead of their lawn rakes. 

Two men are charged in connection with an illegal drug distribution operation after Winnipeg police seized more than $2.2 million worth of methamphetamine, cocaine and ecstasy.

The tourism and hospitality industries, which play a large role in the economy of almost every community in northwestern Ontario, are taking a beating during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, the manager of Tourism Thunder Bay is figuring out how “dire” the situation is, and what could be done to help.

Provincial Police have a suspect in custody after a firearms incident Thursday morning at the hospital in the small northwestern Ontario community of Rainy River.

An industrial building in Thunder Bay was slightly damaged in a fire late Thursday afternoon.

Job of The Week: CEO – Nordoff Robbins Music Therapy http://bit.ly/aFIMNM

<span class="topsy_trackback_comment"><span class="topsy_twitter_username"><span class="topsy_trackback_content">Justin Bieber ignores online bullying | RSS Feeds – IMC OnAir ...: Teen sensation Justin Bieber is used to get bul... http://bit.ly/c455Kn</span></span>

A man is in police custody following an incident that briefly put the Burin Peninsula community of Lawn on high alert on Friday morning. 

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. 

In the Main Hall on Day 2 of TeenStreet, the key speakers introduced participants to the virtue of Trust. And more than that, that trust is founded on love.

A former miner who was forced to breathe in a fine aluminum dust before each shift says he’s not surprised a new report links that dust and a higher risk of Parkinson’s disease.

The head of a Sudbury-based book publishing company says she’s shifting launches online due to COVID-19.

British product designer Lucy Hughes has invented a biodegradable plastic made from fish offcuts

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

Businesses in Cape Breton are helping customers get creative with DIY take-home kits to make everything from mermaid-themed terrariums to bubble tea.

Some school travel groups in Cape Breton that had trips cancelled in March due to COVID-19 are still waiting to get their money back.

The provincially appointed trustee of the English Montreal School Board says the Quebec government made the “right decision” when it postponed the reopening of Montreal-area elementary schools to May 25.

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.

Eight COVID-19 cases are now connected to that workplace, including six employees.

RCMP in Souris, P.E.I., say an incident that shut down the community from 6 p.m. Friday until close to midnight ended with one man in custody and no injuries.