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Utah high school to replace Braves mascot amid backlash




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Alabama School Board Members Weigh In on Plan to Replace Them

State Board of Education members weighed in today about a proposal to eliminate their elected positions and replace the board with an appointed commission.




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N.J. Supreme Court Rejects Gov. Christie's Motion to Replace Funding Formula

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.




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Testing Encroaches on Arts Time, New Jersey Educators Report

Most New Jersey students get schooled in the arts, but time devoted to the subject has been dwindling.




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Dozens of Teacher Misconduct Cases Go Unreported, Utah Audit Finds

School authorities in Utah have failed to report educator misconduct, possibly allowing teachers to offend again by moving to other schools, according to a new audit.




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Utah high school to replace Braves mascot amid backlash




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How 4 Communities Are Struggling to Prepare Kids for an Uncertain Future

Schools are slowly figuring out how to balance thinking globally with acting locally, and recognizing that some key skills are valuable no matter where students end up living.




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Connecticut Ranks Third on Quality Counts Annual Report Card

The state, which earned a B, is one of the nation’s wealthiest and turned in strong performances in the school finance arena and in areas such as preschool and kindergarten enrollment.




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Two Black Democrats Beat Republican Incumbents to Transform a Suburban School Board

The school board in Gwinnett County, Ga., will shift from a 4-1 white Republican majority to a 3-2 Black Democratic majority, mirroring demographic changes in the county.




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A District-Level Effort to Replace the Common Core State Standards

The Manchester district in the Granite State has worked to develop its own content standards. How do they differ from the common core?




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Alaska Reporter Will Study Rural Education as 2nd Chronister Fellowship Recipient

Victoria Petersen, of the Peninsula Clarion on the Kenai Peninsula, will report on the challenges of rural education, especially in a state as vast as Alaska.




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Mississippi Ranks 47th on Quality Counts Annual Report Card

The state, which earned a D-plus, scored low on the Chance for Success Index, which tracks a host of socioeconomic factors that can affect the educational environment.




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After Four Years, Progress Reported by 'Reconnecting McDowell'

Academic and health offerings have increased in McDowell County, W.Va., due to a private-public partnership.




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Are Schools Prepared to Respond to Sex Abuse? Latest Probe Reveals Shortcomings

A federal investigation of Chicago's failures to respond to sexual violence in schools raises troubling questions for school districts nationwide.




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South Carolina a unanimous No. 1 in women's AP Top 25 after 2 wins to open repeat bid; Stanford, Oregon crack rankings

South Carolina a unanimous No. in women's AP Top 25 after 2 wins to open repeat bid; Stanford, Oregon crack rankings.




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Australia's Annual Overdose Report 2023

The Penington Institute's annual report on overdose death in Australia has been released.




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Deep Neural Networks Reveal a Gradient in the Complexity of Neural Representations across the Ventral Stream

Umut Güçlü
Jul 8, 2015; 35:10005-10014
BehavioralSystemsCognitive




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Pupil-Linked Arousal Modulates Precision of Stimulus Representation in Cortex

Neural responses are naturally variable from one moment to the next, even when the stimulus is held constant. What factors might underlie this variability in neural population activity? We hypothesized that spontaneous fluctuations in cortical stimulus representations are created by changes in arousal state. We tested the hypothesis using a combination of fMRI, probabilistic decoding methods, and pupillometry. Human participants (20 female, 12 male) were presented with gratings of random orientation. Shortly after viewing the grating, participants reported its orientation and gave their level of confidence in this judgment. Using a probabilistic fMRI decoding technique, we quantified the precision of the stimulus representation in the visual cortex on a trial-by-trial basis. Pupil size was recorded and analyzed to index the observer's arousal state. We found that the precision of the cortical stimulus representation, reported confidence, and variability in the behavioral orientation judgments varied from trial to trial. Interestingly, these trial-by-trial changes in cortical and behavioral precision and confidence were linked to pupil size and its temporal rate of change. Specifically, when the cortical stimulus representation was more precise, the pupil dilated more strongly prior to stimulus onset and remained larger during stimulus presentation. Similarly, stronger pupil dilation during stimulus presentation was associated with higher levels of subjective confidence, a secondary measure of sensory precision, as well as improved behavioral performance. Taken together, our findings support the hypothesis that spontaneous fluctuations in arousal state modulate the fidelity of the stimulus representation in the human visual cortex, with clear consequences for behavior.




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BRCA1 Promotes Repair of DNA Damage in Cochlear Hair Cells and Prevents Hearing Loss

Cochlear hair cells (HCs) sense sound waves and allow us to hear. Loss of HCs will cause irreversible sensorineural hearing loss. It is well known that DNA damage repair plays a critical role in protecting cells in many organs. However, how HCs respond to DNA damage and how defective DNA damage repair contributes to hearing loss remain elusive. In this study, we showed that cisplatin induced DNA damage in outer hair cells (OHCs) and promoted OHC loss, leading to hearing loss in mice of either sex. Cisplatin induced the expression of Brca1, a DNA damage repair factor, in OHCs. Deficiency of Brca1 induced OHC and hearing loss, and further promoted cisplatin-induced DNA damage in OHCs, accelerating OHC loss. This study provides the first in vivo evidence demonstrating that cisplatin mainly induces DNA damage in OHCs and that BRCA1 promotes repair of DNA damage in OHCs and prevents hearing loss. Our findings not only demonstrate that DNA damage–inducing agent generates DNA damage in postmitotic HCs but also suggest that DNA repair factors, like BRCA1, protect postmitotic HCs from DNA damage–induced cell death and hearing loss.




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Dopamine and Norepinephrine Differentially Mediate the Exploration-Exploitation Tradeoff

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.




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Erratum: McCosh et al., "Norepinephrine Neurons in the Nucleus of the Solitary Tract Suppress Luteinizing Hormone Secretion in Female Mice"




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Neural Representations of Concreteness and Concrete Concepts Are Specific to the Individual

Different people listening to the same story may converge upon a largely shared interpretation while still developing idiosyncratic experiences atop that shared foundation. What linguistic properties support this individualized experience of natural language? Here, we investigate how the "concrete–abstract" axis—the extent to which a word is grounded in sensory experience—relates to within- and across-subject variability in the neural representations of language. Leveraging a dataset of human participants of both sexes who each listened to four auditory stories while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging, we demonstrate that neural representations of "concreteness" are both reliable across stories and relatively unique to individuals, while neural representations of "abstractness" are variable both within individuals and across the population. Using natural language processing tools, we show that concrete words exhibit similar neural representations despite spanning larger distances within a high-dimensional semantic space, which potentially reflects an underlying representational signature of sensory experience—namely, imageability—shared by concrete words but absent from abstract words. Our findings situate the concrete–abstract axis as a core dimension that supports both shared and individualized representations of natural language.




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Crisis-hit farmers receive seeds and tools in Central African Republic

A major operation to distribute seeds and tools has been launched in the Central African Republic to support [...]




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MERCOSUR Government representatives praise FAO's support of family farming and hunger eradication efforts

Santiago, Chile- The declaration of the XXI Specialized Meeting on Family Farming of MERCOSUR (REAF, in Spanish) held last week in Argentina, acknowledged the advances promoted by FAO’s Director General, [...]




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FAO Permanent Representatives conclude field visit to Laos

Vientiane.- A delegation of seven Permanent Representatives to the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N (FAO) concluded a week-long visit to Lao PDR, during which they held meetings [...]




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LA REPÚBLICA, José Graziano da Silva: A new path to development

Bogotá- Latin America and the Caribbean is at a decisive juncture in its history. Thanks to its advancements in social, economic, and production-based terms, the region is on its way to [...]




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Statement of the FAO Secretariat under agenda item 12 “Proposal of the Republic of Korea for the establishment of an FAO World Fisheries University”

Mr Chairman,

I wish to convey, through you, to the Committee on Fisheries, the considered views of the FAO Secretariat on the item on the proposed Fisheries University.  

So far, the [...]




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Two new reports demonstrate the impact of FAO's partnerships with Belgium and Sweden

Today, FAO launched two new reports in time for the 160th session of the Council:

-          FAO + Belgium: Inclusive approaches to end hunger and promote [...]





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Explore FAO's 2020 digital flagship reports in six languages

In 2020, FAO’s flagship ‘The State of the World’ collection was released in a new easy-to-read digital format, providing audiences with a responsive reading experience to discover FAO’s work and [...]




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Report on the implementation of the United Nations Decade of Family Farming (2019–2028)

In December 2017, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed the UN Decade of Family Farming 2019-2028 (UNDFF) to serve as a framework for developing public policies and investments to [...]




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Programme Implementation Report 2020-21

In an exceptionally challenging biennium, see how FAO rose to the challenge, implementing a global, holistic and multipronged strategy to support Members.




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Annual Report on Private Sector Engagement, 2021

This newly-released report highlights the progress made since FAO’s Strategy for Private Sector Engagement 2021-2025 was approved during the 165th session of the Council in December 2020. It discusses important [...]




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Annual Report on Private Sector Engagement 2022 out now

This newly-released annual report charts progress in FAO's work with the private sector in 2022. It highlights developments across FAO's portfolio of private sector engagements, documents major achievements and lessons learned [...]




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Annual Report on Private Sector Engagement 2022

This annual report charts progress in FAO's work with the private sector in 2022. It highlights developments across FAO's portfolio of private sector engagements, documents major achievements and lessons [...]




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Second Report on the implementation of the United Nations Decade of Family Farming 2019–2028 (UNDFF)

In December 2017, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed the UN Decade of Family Farming 2019-2028 (UNDFF) to serve as a framework for developing public policies and investments to [...]




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Climate risks projected to affect fish biomass around the world's ocean, FAO report says

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




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This London Blacksmith Forges Replicas of Medieval Swords

A London blacksmith has perfected a technique known as pattern welding to create elaborately-designed replica Saxon swords and knives. He demonstrates his technique on camera.




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Julia Child Makes Crepe Suzette

Watch the famous chef make the classic French dish, but stay for her inventive use of a blowtorch




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The Next Pandemic: Are We Prepared?

An exclusive group of thought leaders gathered at the museum to discuss how the world prepares for the next global pandemic, raises public awareness, and explores potential responses and solutions




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Reporting from the Serengeti

Smithsonian staff writer Abigail Tucker came across imperiled zebras, dusty savannahs and perilous roads while researching the Tanzanian lions. Read more at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/The-Truth-About-Lions.html




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A Thief Replaced This Iconic Churchill Portrait With a Fake. Two Years Later, the Original Has Been Recovered

Investigators discovered that the original print of "The Roaring Lion" had been sold to a buyer in Italy




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You Can Climb Aboard a Massive Reproduction of a 17th-Century Spanish Galleon That's Sailing Around the World

The Galeón Andalucía, which is now making its way to London, was designed to resemble the armed merchant vessels manufactured by Spain and Portugal between the 16th and 18th centuries




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Hours After the Protesters Who Threw Soup at a van Gogh Were Sentenced, Three More Activists Repeated the Stunt

Two members of Just Stop Oil staged the original demonstration in late 2022. Group members say the harsh penalties will not deter their efforts




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The Roman Republic Quashed a Rebellion So Completely That This City Became a Landfill

Researchers studying the ancient site of Fregellae reveal the consequences of challenging the Roman army




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Breast Cancer Cases Are Rising Among Younger Women, Report Finds

Though breast cancer mortality is declining overall, Asian American women and women under 50 have experienced an uptick in diagnoses of the disease




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Seeing Vermeer’s 'Girl With a Pearl Earring' in Person Stimulates the Brain More Than Looking at Reprints, Study Suggests

Scientists used EEG headsets, MRI machines and eye trackers to study volunteers' responses to five paintings housed at the Mauritshuis museum in the Netherlands




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Walk Through a Full-Scale Replica of the Secret Annex Where Anne Frank's Family Took Shelter During the Holocaust

Featuring more than 100 original artifacts, a new immersive exhibition in New York City will explore the young Jewish diarist's life and legacy




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More Than One in Three Tree Species Around the Globe Are at Risk of Disappearing, New Report Finds

An assessment from the International Union for Conservation of Nature paints a grim picture of the extinction risk of the world's trees




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Tour Guide at Medieval Manor House Discovers Mysterious Etchings Meant to Repel Evil, Trap Demons and Curse Enemies

A "staggering array" of markings have been hiding in plain sight carved into the walls of Gainsborough Old Hall, a 500-year-old home in Lincolnshire, England