A recent collaboration among researchers from HUN-REN Wigner Research Centre for Physics in Hungary and the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), along with industry collaborators SandboxAQ and […]

The post Collaboration Speeds Complex Chemical Modeling appeared first on HPCwire.

A boom in AI has created a problem for the organizers of the NeurIPS conference, which is considered an essential machine-learning research conference. The sheer number of registrations has overwhelmed […]

The post Lottery to Determine Major AI Conference Attendees Amid Registration Boom appeared first on HPCwire.

Nov. 8, 2024 — This month, over 100 academics, researchers, industry experts, and national lab staff gathered at Berkeley Lab’s Artificial Intelligence Science Summit (BLASS) to explore AI’s potential to drive […]

The post Berkeley Lab AI Science Summit Fuels Collaboration appeared first on HPCwire.

SURREY, British Columbia, Nov. 12, 2024 — Today, the Quantum Algorithms Institute (QAI) announced a partnership with Canadian companies, AbaQus and InvestDEFY Technologies, to solve common challenges in training machine learning […]

The post Quantum Algorithms Institute Drives Predictive Model Accuracy with Quantum Collaboration appeared first on HPCwire.

North Korean soldiers deployed to the Kursk region of Russia have begun combat operations against Ukrainian troops, the U.S. State Department confirmed Tuesday.

The Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus signed the U.S.-led Artemis Accords on Wednesday, becoming the 46th signatory to the agreement that establishes principles for the safe exploration of space.

When monarch butterflies migrate, they produce one of the most iconic wildlife spectacles in the world — and provide us with an important indicator of ecological health, says photographer Jaime Rojo. Telling a story about our relationship to the natural world, he shares his experience photographing these mesmerizing insects deep in their remote mountain habitats in Mexico, diving into the latest research into the mysteries of their multi-thousand-mile journey and sharing how each of us can join the growing movement to protect them.

Jordan Johnson and Aidan Carberry, the choreographic duo known as JA Collective, give a performance of dance and visual arts, alternating between abrupt and fluid, tense and dreamlike.

The new U.S. Department of Education guidance creates a federal process for individuals and organizations to file complaints under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

A strategy that gives more learning time in small groups of students without taking time away from core instruction.

School districts must make amends for their racist history, writes Daarel Burnette II. What should that look like?

A Nebraska senator introduced a bill that would give teachers legal cover to physically restraint disruptive students, prompting a strong positive response from members of the state teachers' union.

A K-8 charter school has opened in Livingston, Ala., that is making history.

From time to time, but not very often, former special-teams coordinators become NFL head coaches.

Holly Oakley
Oct 4, 2006; 26:10129-10140
Neurobiology of Disease

Sharon G. Kujawa
Nov 11, 2009; 29:14077-14085
BehavioralSystemsCognitive

Kong-Fatt Wong
Jan 25, 2006; 26:1314-1328
BehavioralSystemsCognitive

Holly Oakley
Oct 4, 2006; 26:10129-10140
Neurobiology of Disease

As evidence mounts that the cardiac-sympathetic nervous system reacts to challenging cognitive settings, we ask if these responses are epiphenomenal companions or if there is evidence suggesting a more intertwined role of this system with cognitive function. Healthy male and female human participants performed an approach-avoidance paradigm, trading off monetary reward for painful electric shock, while we recorded simultaneous electroencephalographic and cardiac-sympathetic signals. Participants were reward sensitive but also experienced approach-avoidance "conflict" when the subjective appeal of the reward was near equivalent to the revulsion of the cost. Drift-diffusion model parameters suggested that participants managed conflict in part by integrating larger volumes of evidence into choices (wider decision boundaries). Late alpha-band (neural) dynamics were consistent with widening decision boundaries serving to combat reward sensitivity and spread attention more fairly to all dimensions of available information. Independently, wider boundaries were also associated with cardiac "contractility" (an index of sympathetically mediated positive inotropy). We also saw evidence of conflict-specific "collaboration" between the neural and cardiac-sympathetic signals. In states of high conflict, the alignment (i.e., product) of alpha dynamics and contractility were associated with a further widening of the boundary, independent of either signal's singular association. Cross-trial coherence analyses provided additional evidence that the autonomic systems controlling cardiac-sympathetics might influence the assessment of information streams during conflict by disrupting or overriding reward processing. We conclude that cardiac-sympathetic control might play a critical role, in collaboration with cognitive processes, during the approach-avoidance conflict in humans.

Neuroinflammation can positively influence axon regeneration following injury in the central nervous system. Inflammation promotes the release of neurotrophic molecules and stimulates intrinsic proregenerative molecular machinery in neurons, but the detailed mechanisms driving this effect are not fully understood. We evaluated how microRNAs are regulated in retinal neurons in response to intraocular inflammation to identify their potential role in axon regeneration. We found that miR-383-5p is downregulated in retinal ganglion cells in response to zymosan-induced intraocular inflammation. MiR-383-5p downregulation in neurons is sufficient to promote axon growth in vitro, and the intravitreal injection of a miR-383-5p inhibitor into the eye promotes axon regeneration following optic nerve crush. MiR-383-5p directly targets ciliary neurotrophic factor (CNTF) receptor components, and miR-383-5p inhibition sensitizes adult retinal neurons to the outgrowth-promoting effects of CNTF. Interestingly, we also demonstrate that CNTF treatment is sufficient to reduce miR-383-5p levels in neurons, constituting a positive-feedback module, whereby initial CNTF treatment reduces miR-383-5p levels, which then disinhibits CNTF receptor components to sensitize neurons to the ligand. Additionally, miR-383-5p inhibition derepresses the mitochondrial antioxidant protein peroxiredoxin-3 (PRDX3) which was required for the proregenerative effects associated with miR-383-5p loss-of-function in vitro. We have thus identified a positive-feedback mechanism that facilitates neuronal CNTF sensitivity in neurons and a new molecular signaling module that promotes inflammation-induced axon regeneration.

Dopamine (DA) and norepinephrine (NE) have been repeatedly implicated in neuropsychiatric vulnerability, in part via their roles in mediating the decision-making processes. Although two neuromodulators share a synthesis pathway and are coactivated under states of arousal, they engage in distinct circuits and modulatory roles. However, the specific role of each neuromodulator in decision-making, in particular the exploration–exploitation tradeoff, remains unclear. Revealing how each neuromodulator contributes to exploration–exploitation tradeoff is important in guiding mechanistic hypotheses emerging from computational psychiatric approaches. To understand the differences and overlaps of the roles of these two catecholamine systems in regulating exploration, a direct comparison using the same dynamic decision-making task is needed. Here, we ran male and female mice in a restless two-armed bandit task, which encourages both exploration and exploitation. We systemically administered a nonselective DA antagonist (flupenthixol), a nonselective DA agonist (apomorphine), a NE beta-receptor antagonist (propranolol), and a NE beta-receptor agonist (isoproterenol) and examined changes in exploration within subjects across sessions. We found a bidirectional modulatory effect of dopamine on exploration. Increasing dopamine activity decreased exploration and decreasing dopamine activity increased exploration. The modulatory effect of beta-noradrenergic receptor activity on exploration was mediated by sex. Reinforcement learning model parameters suggested that dopamine modulation affected exploration via decision noise and norepinephrine modulation affected exploration via sensitivity to outcome. Together, these findings suggested that the mechanisms that govern the exploration–exploitation transition are sensitive to changes in both catecholamine functions and revealed differential roles for NE and DA in mediating exploration.

Building on previous efforts, the Kingdom of Morocco will offer technical assistance to the Republic of Guinea through a South-South Cooperation Tripartite Agreement signed today at FAO headquarters by FAO [...]

A recent side event during the Council last week promoted South-South Cooperation (SSC) as a cost-effective means to addressing food insecurity, showcased FAO’s role as a facilitator and voiced the [...]

Marrakesh, 15 December 2014 – African Ministers of Agriculture recognized the facilitating role of FAO “under the new strategic framework established with the leadership of the [...]

South-South Cooperation is the mutual sharing and exchange of development solutions - knowledge, experiences and good practices, policies, technology and resources - between and among countries in the global [...]

FAO, IFAD and WFP have launched a brand new Rome-based agencies (RBA) website. The RBAs share a common vision, guiding principles for enhanced collaboration and distinctive strengths that build [...]

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 [...]

Soils are essential to life [...]

Rome - The experience of farmers who manage agricultural heritage can help achieve the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration's main goals: support and scale-up efforts [...]

It’s a significant milestone – but what does the GFCM actually do? What has it achieved so far?

Since its creation, the GFCM has evolved into an efficient [...]

Information Note.

World Wetlands Day raises global awareness of the importance of wetlands for human prosperity and a healthy planet. The 2024 theme "Wetlands and Human Wellbeing" focuses on the interconnectedness between [...]

The PSS Technical Cooperation Programme (TCP) team is excited to announce the launch of its newly designed webpages. The webpage has a fresh look [...]

Read more at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Inauguration-2009.html Two curators from the American History Museum show the highlights of the archives of inauguration relics.

Jeff Bezos | Smithsonian Magazine’s 2016 American Ingenuity Award Winner for Technology The Princeton-educated Amazon founder, Washington Post owner and new-economy pioneer also helms an innovative spaceflight company, Blue Origin, which he founded in 2000. This year it became the first aerospace manufacturer to launch, land and relaunch a rocket into space—an essential leap toward our extraterrestrial future. Bezos aims to revolutionize travel and work in space by making spaceflight so inexpensive that entrepreneurs will rush to create new businesses that have not even been imagined yet. Blue Origin’s achievement has been described as comparable to the shift from the sail to the steam engine. Read more about Bezos’ work: http://smithmag.co/GICDO2 | #IngenuityAwards And more about the American Ingenuity Awards: http://smithmag.co/77xPqy

No one had ever launched, landed and relaunched a rocket into space until the company's historic achievement.

As the dams begin to come down, the National Park Service looks back at the region’s history and prepares for the welcome changes to the ecosystem

After five people perished on a controversial submersible dive to the wreckage of the Titanic in June, we got to thinking about what genuine undersea exploration looks like. In this episode, we speak with Tony Perrottet, who profiled the late OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush for Smithsonian magazine in 2019, about our ancient fascination with exploring hostile environments. Then we’re joined by Susan Casey, who has written four best-selling books about the ocean and its creatures, the newest of which is The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean. Susan tells us why understanding the ocean is key to humanity’s survival, and how, while serious research and shipwreck tourism may have some overlap, they remain two very different things. Read Tony Perrottet’s June 2019 (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/worlds-first-deep-diving-submarine-plans-tourists-see-titanic-180972179/) Smithsonian (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/worlds-first-deep-diving-submarine-plans-tourists-see-titanic-180972179/) profile (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/worlds-first-deep-diving-submarine-plans-tourists-see-titanic-180972179/) of Stockton Rush. Learn more about Tony and his work at his site (http://tonyperrottet.com/) . Read an excerpt from Susan Casey’s new book, The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/inside-the-nerve-racking-dive-to-an-active-submarine-volcano-180982687/) . Learn more about Susan and her work at her site (https://susancasey.com/) . There’s More to That is a production of Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions. From the magazine, our team is Chris Klimek, Debra Rosenberg and Brian Wolly. From PRX, our team is Jessica Miller, Adriana Rosas Rivera, Genevieve Sponsler, Terence Bernardo, and Edwin Ochoa. The Executive Producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales. Episode artwork by Emily Lankiewicz (contains elements by Madelgarius (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Titan_(mod%C3%A9lisation_sketchup_-_twilight_render_-_Gimp).jpg) , via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 4.0) Music by APM Music.

Watch this commercial for Stopette spray deodorant from 1952

One morning on St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands, photographer Steve Simonsen captures thousands of hermit crabs migrating

Credit: Nathan Cooper

A new exhibition in Paris demonstrates the influence that the Spanish artist had on the young American painter who would help usher in the Abstract Expressionist movement

Babies who were conceived and born during the period of rationing in the United Kingdom were less likely to develop certain diseases as adults, a new study finds

From Setsubun in Japan to Fèt Gede in Haiti, these festivals relish in the macabre

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.

The Northwest Territories Power Corporation expects that by the end of March it will have generated 72 per cent of power for the North Slave region using hydro, and 28 per cent from diesel. Last year, about half the region's power was from diesel because of low water levels.

When the U.S. Army massacred a Lakota village at Blue Water, dozens of plundered artifacts ended up in the Smithsonian. The unraveling of this long-buried atrocity is forging a path toward reconciliation

Ginoogaming First Nation has declared a state of emergency after an engineering inspection showed the bridge leading to the community should be closed to traffic.