British Caribbean Insurance Company Limited, BCIC, will refund a portion of April’s premium to holders of its public passenger vehicle, PPV, and Diamond Max private motor insurance next week. The move, which is expected to cost BCIC...

The fate of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program has ping ponged between all three branches of government. But with the Supreme Court poised to decide DACA's future in spring 2020, Congress may finally be forced to act to resolve the status of DREAMers after nearly two decades of considering various DREAM Act bills. Could this break the long stalemate Congress has had on passing substantive immigration legislation, and pave the way for other actions?

The Supreme Court on Friday granted a Justice Department request to temporarily block release of secret grand jury material from special counsel Robert Mueller's probe to Congress.

"I May Destroy You," a new series from "Chewing Gum" creator Michaela Coel, will premiere on HBO in June.

A pair of cases being heard by the high court will likely determine whether job-discrimination laws apply to tens of thousands of teachers at religious schools.

A pair of cases being heard by the high court will likely determine whether job-discrimination laws apply to tens of thousands of teachers at religious schools.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review a decision by Montana's highest court that struck down a tuition tax-credit program allowing tuition scholarships to benefit students at private religious schools.

In a case from Montana, conservative justices suggested they were inclined to rule for parents who seek to reinstate a state tax credit funding scholarships for use at religious schools.

The U.S. Supreme Court will arguments in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, a case that's been closely watched by both friends and opponent of private school vouchers and tax-credit scholarship programs.

Gov. Christie has pushed to flatten the state's funding formula so that the state's impoverished urban districts would get the same amount of money wealthy suburban districts get.

Six school systems, the Pennsylvania Association of Rural and Small Schools, and the NAACP Pennsylvania State Conference want to change the state's school-funding system, which allows for wide spending gaps between low- and high-income districts.

The state's highest court allowed some claims brought on behalf of relatives of victims of the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School to proceed against the firearms industry.

The supreme court put an end to five years of legal wrangling that landed the state's public school system with millions more dollars from the state and teachers with a pay raise.

Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919.

The state's courts said the additional $548 million the legislature provided its schools this year is still not enough to ensure a constitutionally adequate education.

While the court said the state is moving in the right direction, it also said it doesn't feel comfortable closing a funding lawsuit and wants to make sure the state keeps up with the costs of inflation.

Kansas' highest court has declared that the state finally is spending enough money on its public schools under a new education funding law but refused to end a lawsuit filed nearly a decade ago because it wants to monitor future funding by the legislature.

London : S. Highley, 1848.

Paris : G. Steinheil, 1892.

In a case implicating the use of schools as voting locations as well as free speech in education, the justices said Minnesota went too far.

The justices agreed to decide whether the Eighth Amendment requires a trial court to find that a juvenile is permanently incorrigible before imposing a sentence of life without parole.

Heiko Werner, Hajo Holzmann, Pierre Vandekerkhove.

Source: Electronic Journal of Statistics, Volume 14, Number 1, 1816--1871.

Abstract:
We investigate a flexible two-component semiparametric mixture of regressions model, in which one of the conditional component distributions of the response given the covariate is unknown but assumed symmetric about a location parameter, while the other is specified up to a scale parameter. The location and scale parameters together with the proportion are allowed to depend nonparametrically on covariates. After settling identifiability, we provide local M-estimators for these parameters which converge in the sup-norm at the optimal rates over Hölder-smoothness classes. We also introduce an adaptive version of the estimators based on the Lepski-method. Sup-norm bounds show that the local M-estimator properly estimates the functions globally, and are the first step in the construction of useful inferential tools such as confidence bands. In our analysis we develop general results about rates of convergence in the sup-norm as well as adaptive estimation of local M-estimators which might be of some independent interest, and which can also be applied in various other settings. We investigate the finite-sample behaviour of our method in a simulation study, and give an illustration to a real data set from bioinformatics.

Javier Cárcamo, Antonio Cuevas, Luis-Alberto Rodríguez.

Source: Bernoulli, Volume 26, Number 3, 2143--2175.

Abstract:
We show that various functionals related to the supremum of a real function defined on an arbitrary set or a measure space are Hadamard directionally differentiable. We specifically consider the supremum norm, the supremum, the infimum, and the amplitude of a function. The (usually non-linear) derivatives of these maps adopt simple expressions under suitable assumptions on the underlying space. As an application, we improve and extend to the multidimensional case the results in Raghavachari ( Ann. Statist. 1 (1973) 67–73) regarding the limiting distributions of Kolmogorov–Smirnov type statistics under the alternative hypothesis. Similar results are obtained for analogous statistics associated with copulas. We additionally solve an open problem about the Berk–Jones statistic proposed by Jager and Wellner (In A Festschrift for Herman Rubin (2004) 319–331 IMS). Finally, the asymptotic distribution of maximum mean discrepancies over Donsker classes of functions is derived.

Functional recovery after cortical injury, such as stroke, is associated with neural circuit reorganization, but the underlying mechanisms and efficacy of therapeutic interventions promoting neural plasticity in primates are not well understood. Bone marrow mesenchymal stem cell-derived extracellular vesicles (MSC-EVs), which mediate cell-to-cell inflammatory and trophic signaling, are thought be viable therapeutic targets. We recently showed, in aged female rhesus monkeys, that systemic administration of MSC-EVs enhances recovery of function after injury of the primary motor cortex, likely through enhancing plasticity in perilesional motor and premotor cortices. Here, using in vitro whole-cell patch-clamp recording and intracellular filling in acute slices of ventral premotor cortex (vPMC) from rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) of either sex, we demonstrate that MSC-EVs reduce injury-related physiological and morphologic changes in perilesional layer 3 pyramidal neurons. At 14-16 weeks after injury, vPMC neurons from both vehicle- and EV-treated lesioned monkeys exhibited significant hyperexcitability and predominance of inhibitory synaptic currents, compared with neurons from nonlesioned control brains. However, compared with vehicle-treated monkeys, neurons from EV-treated monkeys showed lower firing rates, greater spike frequency adaptation, and excitatory:inhibitory ratio. Further, EV treatment was associated with greater apical dendritic branching complexity, spine density, and inhibition, indicative of enhanced dendritic plasticity and filtering of signals integrated at the soma. Importantly, the degree of EV-mediated reduction of injury-related pathology in vPMC was significantly correlated with measures of behavioral recovery. These data show that EV treatment dampens injury-related hyperexcitability and restores excitatory:inhibitory balance in vPMC, thereby normalizing activity within cortical networks for motor function.

SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Neuronal plasticity can facilitate recovery of function after cortical injury, but the underlying mechanisms and efficacy of therapeutic interventions promoting this plasticity in primates are not well understood. Our recent work has shown that intravenous infusions of mesenchymal-derived extracellular vesicles (EVs) that are involved in cell-to-cell inflammatory and trophic signaling can enhance recovery of motor function after injury in monkey primary motor cortex. This study shows that this EV-mediated enhancement of recovery is associated with amelioration of injury-related hyperexcitability and restoration of excitatory-inhibitory balance in perilesional ventral premotor cortex. These findings demonstrate the efficacy of mesenchymal EVs as a therapeutic to reduce injury-related pathologic changes in the physiology and structure of premotor pyramidal neurons and support recovery of function.

The creator behind the reptilian repertoire hopes many more pet museums are in the works

With opposition parties continuing to call for the legislature to be convened, P.E.I. Premier Dennis King says that opportunity for them to examine the government’s spending is coming.

Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister says big public events, including professional sports, will be on the back burner when the province announces plans to reopen sectors of its economy that were shut down by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Employees in Alberta continuing care homes and seniors’ residences are the most likely recipients of a federal wage top-up intended for essential workers.

Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers by Gonçalo Faria and Fabio Verona

While Apple has yet to make substantial inroads into India's mainstream smartphone market, the tech giant's latest flagship iPhones continue to dominate top-tier category sales.

A group of Texas high school cheerleaders filed a petition with the state Supreme Court over an ongoing dispute about the display of banners with religious messages at high school football games.

The battle stems from Varsity Brands' efforts to gain copyright protection for the design of stripes, chevrons, zigzags, and color blocks that are on its uniforms.

Delayed umbilical cord clamping in premature infants has been associated with decreased rates of intraventricular hemorrhage; however, the mechanisms that explain this finding have not been described.

Premature infants with delayed umbilical cord clamping have improved superior vena cava blood flow over the first days of life. This may provide one of the mechanism(s) by which this technique reduces the incidence in intraventricular hemorrhage in this at-risk population. (Read the full article)

Inhaled nitric oxide for premature infants has been evaluated in multiple studies; however, these trials differed in treatment initiation, duration of therapy, and inclusion criteria. Furthermore, these trials reached differing conclusions regarding the benefit of inhaled nitric oxide.

We used a large sample of infants from children’s hospitals and found that the use of inhaled nitric oxide in premature infants was variable even when controlling for demographic characteristics and disease. (Read the full article)

Preterm infants are at a high risk for retinopathy of prematurity (ROP). Several postnatal factors are well known to be associated with ROP. However, the relationships between antenatal or maternal risk factors and ROP are poorly understood.

This study used a large cohort database to study the influence of maternal gestational hypertension and preeclampsia on ROP in preterm infants. The results showed that preeclampsia, but not gestational hypertension, was associated with a reduced risk of ROP in preterm births. (Read the full article)

Data suggest that delivery at high-volume, high-technology hospitals reduces neonatal mortality. No study has examined other complications or compared the effects in multiple states by using a study design to control for unmeasured differences in case mix.

The survival benefit to delivering at a high-level NICU between 1995 and 2005 is larger than previously reported and varies between states. The survival benefits affect both extremely and moderately preterm infants. Complication rates were similar between hospital types. (Read the full article)

Extreme prematurity is a well-established cause of cognitive and motor impairment. There is some evidence that late prematurity and modifiable maternal attributes may negatively influence scholastic achievement, including standardized test performance.

We found that preterm birth significantly increases risk of first-grade failure rate even when the birth is just a few weeks before term gestation. Low maternal education status compounds the effect of prematurity. (Read the full article)

Recorded music, parent voices, and sung lullabies have been shown to increase oxygen saturation, nonnutritive sucking, and weight gain in premature infants.

Parent-preferred melodies and entrained live rhythm and breath sounds can enhance quiet alert and sleep states, suck response, and oxygen saturation in premature infants and significantly reduce fear and anxiety perception in parents. (Read the full article)

Bronchopulmonary dysplasia is associated with increased long-term neurodevelopmental and respiratory morbidity. Inhaled nitric oxide given to reduce morbidity in very preterm infants does not reduce the prevalence of bronchopulmonary dysplasia and has uncertain effects on long-term outcome.

Inhaled nitric oxide (5 ppm) given early in the course of respiratory illness in infants born before 29 weeks of gestation is not associated with changes in developmental or respiratory outcomes at 2 years of age corrected for prematurity. (Read the full article)

Prematurely born infants commonly have abnormal metabolic screens.

Both gestational and chronological age influence metabolic profiles used to screen for inborn errors of metabolism. (Read the full article)