Penn State moved up two spots to fourth Tuesday night in the second College Football Playoff rankings of the season. The Nittany Lions (8-1) were projected as the sixth seed in the 12-team playoff and would play 11th-seeded Mississippi in the first round Dec. 20 or 21 at Beaver Stadium in a rematch of last year’s Peach Bowl. In the initial rankings last week, Penn State was ranked sixth, ...

Voters in three southern states will head to the polls for governors races that have shined a spotlight on educator activism, school funding, and teacher pay.

Governors' races in Kentucky and Mississippi took center stage, testing the political muscle of teacher activists and yielding possible policy implications for everything from public employee pensions to teacher pay.

This year's November elections—a preview to next year's nationwide showdowns—cast their own spotlight on education, a dynamic that played out most prominently in the Kentucky governor's race, where teachers organized to unseat a combative incumbent who'd sparred with them.

Governors in several natural resource-dependent states said recently they will have to continue to cut public education funding because prices for oil and coal have not rebounded.

A handful of districts and other groups are reshaping the after-school space to provide a wide range of social and linguistic supports for newcomer students.

Freshman had a season-high 13 points off bench while contributing to Spartans' win over Eastern Michigan.

Tennessee soccer earned an NCAA Tournament berth for the fourth straight season and will face No. 7 seed Virginia Tech in the first round Friday

Tsuneya Ikezu
Oct 2, 2024; 44:e1170242024-e1170242024
Symposium

Fadel Zeidan
Nov 18, 2015; 35:15307-15325
BehavioralSystemsCognitive

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.

The brain's extracellular matrix (ECM) regulates neuronal plasticity and animal behavior. ECM staining shows a net-like structure around a subset of neurons, a ring-like structure at the nodes of Ranvier, and diffuse staining in the interstitial matrix. However, understanding the structural features of ECM deposition across various neuronal types and subcellular compartments remains limited. To visualize the organization pattern and assembly process of the hyaluronan-scaffolded ECM in the brain, we fused a HaloTag to hyaluronan proteoglycan link protein 1, which links hyaluronan and proteoglycans. Expression or application of the probe in primary rat neuronal cultures enables us to identify spatial and temporal regulation of ECM deposition and heterogeneity in ECM aggregation among neuronal populations. Dual-color birthdating shows the ECM assembly process in culture and in vivo. Sparse expression in mouse brains of either sex reveals detailed ECM architectures around excitatory neurons and developmentally regulated dendritic ECM. Our study uncovers extensive structural features of the brain's ECM, suggesting diverse roles in regulating neuronal plasticity.

Written by the former chief historian of NASA, the book examines the evolution of our cosmic understanding—from early civilizations to the present day

I am convinced that the only path to lasting peace in Colombia consists of dialogue, negotiation, cooperation, inclusion and fairness – which is also the high road to sustainable development [...]

The international community has committed to ending hunger and malnutrition by 2030. But can we overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of meeting this target?

The State [...]

Over the last twenty years, the FAO corporate website has expanded to meet diverse Organizational needs and promote the work of divisions and country offices across FAO. When Director [...]

Read the series on how FAO increased efficiency, effectiveness and transparency to better support its Members in the transformation of agrifood systems.

Sometimes, in fact, nature is stranger than fiction

Watch to get the answer that surprised the heck out of us

Experts are working on a unique experiment that will use an inflatable aeroshell/heat shield to protect a spacecraft when entering a planet's atmosphere or returning to Earth

The space suits used by the astronauts on Gemini 7, known as grasshopper suits, were designed for comfort. But after two weeks inside them, that was the last thing on the crew’s minds.

If you need something while up in space, soon all you'll have to do is print it.

Credit: David Marshall, University of Bristol

The first plane to fly nonstop from New York to Paris will reside on the ground level of the National Air and Space Museum for the next five months as it undergoes preservation (Courtesy of the National Air and Space Museum)

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

Gemini 8 was in trouble. After completing the first space docking with another craft, it begins to spin uncontrollably. Ditching protocol, commanding officer Neil Armstrong tries an unorthodox plan.

Read more about Haleakala: http://j.mp/ufv44s The Hawaiian volcano, with its unique vegetation and meditative winds, has a spiritual connection to the native population

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

As part of Project Mercury, NASA prepared to send a chimpanzee, Ham, into space to test the effects of space on a living creature.

Over 50 different actors have portrayed the famous detective on the big screen, from Basil Rathbone to Robert Downey, Jr. Photos Courtesy of The Internet Archive; Mary Evans/Ronald Grant/Everett Collection; TM and © 20th Century Fox Film Corp. All rights reserved, Courtesy: Everett Collection; © United Artists/courtesy Everett Collection; © Paramount/ Courtesy: Everett Collection; © Orion Pictures/courtesy Everett Collection; Everett Collection

Anna Coleman Ladd fits soldiers for masks in her studio

Using new technologies, Smithsonian entomologists are using detailed photo of ant faces to understand the differences among the 12,000 species

Obviously it's a bad idea to go out into space without a trusty spacesuit, but what exactly happens?

Autodesk vice president Brian Mathews talks with the NASA science communicator about the search for life on other planets and why it’s important

Sarah Parcak | Smithsonian Magazine’s 2016 American Ingenuity Award Winner for History This tech-savvy researcher of our past uses satellites and other remote-sensing tools to discover and explore stunning new evidence of lost cultures—including, just this year, another possible Viking site in North America. In addition, she has located an astonishing number of ancient Egyptian remains—thousands of settlements, lost tombs and hidden pyramids. A Yale- and Cambridge-trained Egyptologist and archaeologist, Parcak is a professor of anthropology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where she serves as founding director of the Laboratory for Global Observation. Read more about Parcak’s work: http://smithmag.co/ZuwTGP | #IngenuityAwards And more about the American Ingenuity Awards: http://smithmag.co/77xPqy

For more than a year now, the world has been treated to breathtaking images of the outer reaches of our universe from the NASA instrument. But how does it even work? --- 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

As the space shuttles complete their final missions, curator Valerie Neal at the National Air and Space Museum highlights the spacecraft's history and legacy in manned space flight.

One of the most evocative and breathtakingly beautiful coastal landscapes in Britain is the historic county of Cornwall. It’s also a place steeped in legend, including that of Britain’s legendary King Arthur.

Members of the Gullah community discuss the changes facing them today

New DNA analysis adds to growing research indicating the famous Pacific island did not collapse from overuse of resources before the arrival of Europeans

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

A ring could explain a mysterious arrangement of impact craters near the equator and might even have caused an ice age, according to a new study

Scientists sent bioengineered heart tissue samples to the ISS to study how to keep astronauts safe during future long-term space travel

A SpaceX mission arrived at the International Space Station with two astronauts instead of four to leave room for NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore on the return trip in early 2025

The Kyoto museum will feature interactive exhibits, gaming artifacts, workshop spaces and oversized controllers inspired by iconic video games

The grassroots organization, Nihon Hidankyo, was lauded for "demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again"

The two artifacts donated by Blue Origin achieved record-breaking feats and will extend the museum's story of trailblazing space travel into the present

The success is a giant leap toward the company's goal to take humans and cargo all the way to Mars on the world's biggest and most powerful launch vehicle

The final 3D atlas of the sky will help scientists study dark matter and dark energy, which make up 96 percent of the universe but remain mysterious