This sign is not normally linked to being smart.

Animal behavior expert Philip Johns introduces us to the vibrant urban environments of Singapore, where city dwellers and skyscrapers coexist with a rich array of other species, including otters, hornbills and lizards — prompting the question: Can we design cities to be wildlife refuges?

Ohio Gov. John Kasich is expected to sign a bill into law that would ban suspensions and expulsions for children in prekindergarten through 3rd grade for minor offenses.

The rocky shift to remote learning has exacerbated inequities for the nation's 5 million English-learners. An army of multilingual liaisons work round the clock to plug widening gaps.

The switch to remote learning in rural New Mexico has left some students profoundly isolated—cut off from others and the grid by sheer distance.

Ron DeSantis had a thin record on K-12 issues as a Florida congressman, but as a first-term Republican governor he’s pushed an aggressive agenda on issues such as vouchers, teacher salaries and bonus pay, and even the common core.

Former Republican Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens appointed enough board members to have Commissioner Margie Vandeven fired last year, but now that he's gone, the state board decided to hire her back.

The rocky shift to remote learning has exacerbated inequities for the nation's 5 million English-learners. An army of multilingual liaisons work round the clock to plug widening gaps.

Shea Weber gets inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame after an impressive career.

The New Jersey Devils will face former teammates Tomas Nosek, Jesper Boqvist, AJ Greer, and Dmitry Kulikov on Tuesday night in their game against the Florida Panthers.

Poile, Nashville's first-ever general manager who retired in 2023, was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame alongside former Predators captain Shea Weber.

Kansas State football actually benefitted from an open week in the latest College Football Playoff rankings.

The switch to remote learning in rural New Mexico has left some students profoundly isolated—cut off from others and the grid by sheer distance.

Christelle Anaclet
Dec 12, 2012; 32:17970-17976
BehavioralSystemsCognitive

Nora D. Volkow
Dec 1, 2001; 21:9414-9418
Behavioral

Randy L. Buckner
Aug 24, 2005; 25:7709-7717
Neurobiology of Disease

Shiaoching Gong
Sep 12, 2007; 27:9817-9823
Toolbox

α-Neurexins are essential and highly expressed presynaptic cell-adhesion molecules that are frequently linked to neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders. Despite their importance, how the elaborate extracellular sequences of α-neurexins contribute to synapse function is poorly understood. We recently characterized the presynaptic gain-of-function phenotype caused by a missense mutation in an evolutionarily conserved extracellular sequence of neurexin-3α (A687T) that we identified in a patient diagnosed with profound intellectual disability and epilepsy. The striking A687T gain-of-function mutation on neurexin-3α prompted us to systematically test using mutants whether the presynaptic gain-of-function phenotype is a consequence of the addition of side-chain bulk (i.e., A687V) or polar/hydrophilic properties (i.e., A687S). We used multidisciplinary approaches in mixed-sex primary hippocampal cultures to assess the impact of the neurexin-3α^A687 residue on synapse morphology, function and ligand binding. Unexpectedly, neither A687V nor A687S recapitulated the neurexin-3α A687T phenotype. Instead, distinct from A687T, molecular replacement with A687S significantly enhanced postsynaptic properties exclusively at excitatory synapses and selectively increased binding to neuroligin-1 and neuroligin-3 without changing binding to neuroligin-2 or LRRTM2. Importantly, we provide the first experimental evidence supporting the notion that the position A687 of neurexin-3α and the N-terminal sequences of neuroligins may contribute to the stability of α-neurexin–neuroligin-1 trans-synaptic interactions and that these interactions may specifically regulate the postsynaptic strength of excitatory synapses.

Estimating the direction of functional connectivity (FC) can help further elucidate complex brain function. However, the estimation of directed FC at the voxel level in fMRI data, and evaluating its performance, has yet to be done. We therefore developed a novel directed seed-based connectivity analysis (SCA) method based on normalized pairwise Granger causality that provides greater detail and accuracy over ROI-based methods. We evaluated its performance against 145 cortical retrograde tracer injections in male and female marmosets that were used as ground truth cellular connectivity on a voxel-by-voxel basis. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was calculated for each injection, and we achieved area under the ROC curve of 0.95 for undirected and 0.942 for directed SCA in the case of high cell count threshold. This indicates that SCA can reliably estimate the strong cellular connections between voxels in fMRI data. We then used our directed SCA method to analyze the human default mode network (DMN) and found that dlPFC (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) and temporal lobe were separated from other DMN regions, forming part of the language-network that works together with the core DMN regions. We also found that the cerebellum (Crus I-II) was strongly targeted by the posterior parietal cortices and dlPFC, but reciprocal connections were not observed. Thus, the cerebellum may not be a part of, but instead a target of, the DMN and language-network. Summarily, our novel directed SCA method, visualized with a new functional flat mapping technique, opens a new paradigm for whole-brain functional analysis.

Fish biomass faces steep falls by end of century under high-emissions scenario

Researchers from South Korea have discovered a unconventional way to produce gasoline.

Explore the lesser-known details of the founder’s childhood, home life and career and gain a deeper understanding of his contributions to the United States. --- For more videos from Smithsonian Magazine: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/videos/ Digital Editorial Director: Brian Wolly Supervising Producer & Scriptwriter: Michelle Mehrtens Video Editor: Sierra Theobald

The answer…and why you should care

The discovery has implications for human health, since the microbes included some that were still viable, some that could be infectious to humans and others that carried drug-resistant genes

The new findings bring storm researchers one step closer to solving the mystery of how lightning forms

Pathogens are more common in polar bears living in the Chukchi Sea now than they were three decades ago, a new study suggests—but it's not yet clear what that means for the mammals' health

Introduced in 1934, the federal duck stamp contest has raised more than $1.2 billion and protected at least 6.5 million acres across the nation. Now, an art exhibition at Connecticut’s Bruce Museum honors the competition’s history

Steve Lazarides' personal collection of prints, original works, handwritten press releases and burner phones sold at auction for around $1.4 million

All PCR- and DNA-based blood meal analyses require host DNA from a mosquito blood meal to be effectively preserved between the time when the specimen is collected and the extraction of DNA. As soon as a mosquito ingests blood from a host animal, digestion of host cells and cellular components within the blood meal by enzymes in the mosquito midgut begins to degrade the host DNA templates that are the targets of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification. Without effective preservation, host DNA is typically undetectable by PCR 48 h after feeding, because of digestion. Preservation methods for mosquito blood meals vary in their efficacy, and the logistics of fieldwork can limit the options for preservation of blood meals and maintenance of the integrity of host DNA. This protocol describes a method of blood meal preservation that is effective, convenient, and amenable to fieldwork in remote locations where cryopreservation at –20°C or –80°C may not be feasible. It uses a Flinders Technology Associates (FTA) card, which is a chemically treated card that lyses cells and allows nucleic acids to be preserved. This method is also expected to preserve the DNA or RNA of pathogens present within the engorged mosquito abdomen, including RNA viruses.

Interim PC Leader Glen Savoie urged members to find a common purpose rather than blame former leader Blaine Higgs.

Trevor Lewis was a corporal in the Canadian Armed Forces who tried to bury the memories from his deployment in Afghanistan. They all came back in 2021 after the fall of Kabul. This story is how he made peace with his time in that country.

Kamloops RCMP say they are investigating the fire that destroyed the Red Bridge Thursday as an arson.

A handful of voting stations were temporarily closed due to power outages on Saturday morning during the final day of B.C.’s provincial election, while the only station in Dease Lake was fully closed because an election official had travel difficulties.

The re-elected chief of the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation says she's hoping to forge connections within her community as she looks ahead to her next term.

Curling Canada, with the assistance of Own the Podium and the Canadian Olympic Committee, announced Rachel Homan and John Morris as the mixed doubles team for Canada competing at the Beijing Olympics.

A researcher may have many reasons for wanting to establish new laboratory colonies from field-collected mosquitoes. In particular, the ability to study the diversity found within and among natural populations in a controlled laboratory environment opens up a wide range of possibilities for understanding how and why burdens of vector-borne disease vary over space and time. However, field-collected mosquitoes are often more difficult to work with than established laboratory strains, and considerable logistical challenges are involved in safely transporting field-collected mosquitoes into the laboratory. Here, we provide advice for researchers working with Aedes aegypti, Anopheles gambiae, and Culex pipiens, as well as notes on other closely related species. We provide guidance on each stage of the life cycle and highlight the life stages for which it is easiest to initiate new laboratory colonies for each species. In accompanying protocols, we provide methods detailing Ae. aegypti egg collection and hatching as well as how to transport larvae and pupae from the field.

Hospitality stakeholders and organizations can serve a significant role in the integration of people who have criminal records or histories of incarceration back into the workforce, according to a new framework created by researchers in the Penn State School of Hospitality Management.

Multiple iPhone units stored for forensic analysis have rebooted themselves, causing concern among law enforcement officials that Apple has a new security feature.

The phones in question had a few things in common, they were all running iOS 18.0, and they had been disconnected from cellular networks for some time. They were sent into a forensics lab on October 3, 2024.

The affected devices even included one that was in Airplane Mode and another that was kept in a Faraday cage, which prevents electrical signals from accessing the device. While it's most likely that the devices began boot-looping or that they ran low on battery, officials believe the restarts were caused by something else entirely.


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North Korean hackers have disguised malware in seemingly harmless macOS apps using sophisticated code to bypass security checks and target unsuspecting users.

In a recent discovery, researchers at Jamf Threat Labs uncovered malware embedded in macOS apps that look harmless on the surface. Using the popular app-building tool Flutter, cybercriminals made apps that slipped through typical security measures.

Flutter, developed by Google, has become a favorite tool for creating apps that work seamlessly across macOS, iOS, and Android. Its codebase allows developers to build an app once and have it look consistent across all platforms.


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The pivot from Apple Car set the stage for bigger investments in the smart home, and the initial products from that shift could be launching as soon as March according to a new rumor.

Apple has offered smart home options since 2014 with the launch of HomeKit. Beyond Siri integrations, HomePod, and few product category additions over the years, the company's investment in the area hasn't been as strong as some of its competitors.

That could change as soon as March with the launch of a new smart display that isn't an iPad, doesn't have an App Store, and is voice-first. This device would be a precursor to the rumored display with a robotic arm that's been rumored since Apple Car was abandoned.


Rumor Score: ???? Possible


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The 2013 Hope of Israel team shows motivation and unity during a month of intense ministry.

God uses theatrical evangelism camps to impact children from vulnerable populations as well as the short-term volunteers who serve.

OM EAST rejoices at God’s provision sent by post.

The 2016 National Teacher of the Year will represent Connecticut’s 5th district, becoming the first African-American woman from the state to serve in Congress.

A newly discovered protein naturally houses an unusual binding site that can differentiate between rare earth elements, and researchers at Penn State have made it even better. Rare earth elements are key components used in everything from modern tech to gasoline production. The protein, called LanD, enriches neodymium and praseodymium over other similar rare earth elements and has the potential to revolutionize industrial mining, researchers said.

The Penn State Board of Trustees voted to elect David Kleppinger as chair and Rick Sokolov as vice-chair during its regular meeting on Nov. 8 on the University Park campus. 

Alumna Tanya Seyfert’s estate commitment will create scholarships for students who are affiliated with the military or who participate in work-study at the University Libraries, as well as funding urgent priorities set by Libraries leadership.

Penn State Altoona goalkeeper Sasha Mohoruk, of State College, and defender Owen Myers, of Spring Grove, were both voted to the All-Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference team in men’s soccer, the league office announced on Tuesday, Nov. 12.