A special state panel in Wisconsin has rejected a financially strapped district's request to dissolve.

State Assembly member Tony Thurmond ultimately prevailed over former charter school executive Marshall Tuck in a contest that drew more than $50 million in outside campaign spending.

Montana Superintendent Elsie Arntzen offers practical advice to schools that could open as early as May 7, even as she says "how they open schools and how learning takes place is up to them."

Education Week catches you up on the week gone by with a thoughtful look at recent news in K-12 education.

Social problems -- United States.

Technological forecasting.

As the state rolls out a new school accountability system and a separate federal accountability system, disputes have flared between the state department and school board over which underperforming schools should get extra federal money.

Jennifer McCormick, a Republican who will not run for re-election in 2020, says the state's government structure "causes confusion and stretches resources."

Edinburgh : MacLachlan and Stewart, 1870.

Cambridge : printed by C.J. Clay at the University Press, 1887.

Berlin : Karger, 1910.

Cassel : T. Fischer, 1878.

London : S. Highley, 1848.

Edinburgh : W.P. Nimmo, [1867]

Detroit, Mich. : G.S. Davis, 1891.

The state's incoming governor and education commissioner both are former teachers. They face battles over school accountability, funding and the achievement gap between white and minority students.

State Education Secretary Rebecca Holcombe has been officiating over the state's politically thorny district consolidation process, and many are asking for it to be placed on hold until the state board replaces her.

Alaskan schooling developed on many fronts. An illustrated timeline adds historical context for the growth of the state's education system, from the territory’s earliest Native inhabitants to today.

[London?] : [Illustrated London News?], [between 1850 and 1870?]

[19--?]

2005.

[Place of publication not identified] : [Publisher not identified], 1895.

[London] : Waterlow Bros. & Layton, Limited, [1893]

"The current situation may force our hand to adjust our measures of evaluation, and, personally, I think it is beyond time that we push our thinking to include new ideas," says Hanna Skandera.

Brian Whiston, who was hired in 2015, set ambitious goals for the state and helped create its accountability plan under the Every Student Succeeds Act.

Education Week catches you up on the week gone by with a thoughtful look at recent news in K-12 education.

A collection of short news stories from the last week.

Margie Vandeven, the state education chief, is appointed by an appointed board, which is still split on whether to fire Vandeven.

The state's Republican governor is in a pitched battle with the state's educators over the process he used to fire Missouri's commissioner of education.

The search for Missouri's next top education official has begun nearly 10 months after the last one was fired. The state board of education began accepting applications last week.

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.

Kushal K. Dey, Sourabh Bhattacharya.

Source: Brazilian Journal of Probability and Statistics, Volume 33, Number 2, 222--266.

Abstract:
Transformation based Markov Chain Monte Carlo (TMCMC) was proposed by Dutta and Bhattacharya ( Statistical Methodology 16 (2014) 100–116) as an efficient alternative to the Metropolis–Hastings algorithm, especially in high dimensions. The main advantage of this algorithm is that it simultaneously updates all components of a high dimensional parameter using appropriate move types defined by deterministic transformation of a single random variable. This results in reduction in time complexity at each step of the chain and enhances the acceptance rate. In this paper, we first provide a brief review of the optimal scaling theory for various existing MCMC approaches, comparing and contrasting them with the corresponding TMCMC approaches.The optimal scaling of the simplest form of TMCMC, namely additive TMCMC , has been studied extensively for the Gaussian proposal density in Dey and Bhattacharya (2017a). Here, we discuss diffusion-based optimal scaling behavior of additive TMCMC for non-Gaussian proposal densities—in particular, uniform, Student’s $t$ and Cauchy proposals. Although we could not formally prove our diffusion result for the Cauchy proposal, simulation based results lead us to conjecture that at least the recipe for obtaining general optimal scaling and optimal acceptance rate holds for the Cauchy case as well. We also consider diffusion based optimal scaling of TMCMC when the target density is discontinuous. Such non-regular situations have been studied in the case of Random Walk Metropolis Hastings (RWMH) algorithm by Neal and Roberts ( Methodology and Computing in Applied Probability 13 (2011) 583–601) using expected squared jumping distance (ESJD), but the diffusion theory based scaling has not been considered. We compare our diffusion based optimally scaled TMCMC approach with the ESJD based optimally scaled RWM with simulation studies involving several target distributions and proposal distributions including the challenging Cauchy proposal case, showing that additive TMCMC outperforms RWMH in almost all cases considered.

Harvested produce crops feed Florida Department of Corrections’ (FDC) more than 87,000 inmates; action saves food costs while reducing COVID-19 related supply chain impacts.

(PRWeb April 20, 2020)

Read the full story at https://www.prweb.com/releases/new_partnerships_emerge_for_covid_19_relief_dade_county_farm_bureau_teams_with_state_leaders_to_launch_farm_to_inmate_program/prweb17052045.htm

U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts on Friday put a temporary hold on the disclosure to a Democratic-led House of Representatives committee of grand jury material redacted from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in March that the materials had to be disclosed to the House Judiciary Committee and refused to put that decision on hold. The appeals court said the materials had to be handed over by May 11 if the Supreme Court did not intervene.

On-the-record remarks of the September 2019 Quarterly Review media briefing by Mr Claudio Borio, Head of the Monetary and Economic Department, and Mr Hyun Song Shin, Economic Adviser and Head of Research, 20 September 2019.

On-the-record remarks of the December 2019 Quarterly Review media briefing by Mr Claudio Borio, Head of the Monetary and Economic Department, and Mr Hyun Song Shin, Economic Adviser and Head of Research, 6 December 2019.

The action potential (AP) waveform controls the opening of voltage-gated calcium channels and contributes to the driving force for calcium ion flux that triggers neurotransmission at presynaptic nerve terminals. Although the frog neuromuscular junction (NMJ) has long been a model synapse for the study of neurotransmission, its presynaptic AP waveform has never been directly studied, and thus the AP waveform shape and propagation through this long presynaptic nerve terminal are unknown. Using a fast voltage-sensitive dye, we have imaged the AP waveform from the presynaptic terminal of male and female frog NMJs and shown that the AP is very brief in duration and actively propagated along the entire length of the terminal. Furthermore, based on measured AP waveforms at different regions along the length of the nerve terminal, we show that the terminal is divided into three distinct electrical regions: A beginning region immediately after the last node of Ranvier where the AP is broadest, a middle region with a relatively consistent AP duration, and an end region near the tip of nerve terminal branches where the AP is briefer. We hypothesize that these measured changes in the AP waveform along the length of the motor nerve terminal may explain the proximal-distal gradient in transmitter release previously reported at the frog NMJ.

SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The AP waveform plays an essential role in determining the behavior of neurotransmission at the presynaptic terminal. Although the frog NMJ is a model synapse for the study of synaptic transmission, there are many unknowns centered around the shape and propagation of its presynaptic AP waveform. Here, we demonstrate that the presynaptic terminal of the frog NMJ has a very brief AP waveform and that the motor nerve terminal contains three distinct electrical regions. We propose that the changes in the AP waveform as it propagates along the terminal can explain the proximal-distal gradient in transmitter release seen in electrophysiological studies.

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.

How the beloved figure has become a lightning rod in a heated environmental debate

The Beaker man was buried alongside four cowhide "rugs," an eight-inch copper dagger and a wrist guard made of rare green stone

Darin Isaac was elected on Wednesday as the new chief of the Selkirk First Nation in Yukon. Isaac also held the position for two terms from 2005 to 2011. He has also served as a councillor for three terms.

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

The COVID-19 briefings started out as an urgent response to a public health crisis. As John Gushue writes, Premier Dwight Ball has grown comfortable in the role of hosting a program focused on government programs.

Manitoba health officials says visits can be done via the internet, through window panes, or outside at a distance if everyone is healthy. People whose moms are in a hospital or a care home can still drop off gifts of food or clothing.

The craft brewing industry in P.E.I. is suffering, with sales down from about 40 to 80 per cent.

Long-term interest rates have remained low despite a surge in the issuance of sovereign debt to mitigate the economic impact of the pandemic.