State lawmakers must create a plan to improve rural schools in response to a 2014 state Supreme Court ruling.

The state's supreme court ruled that it is not its role to tell the legislature how to spend its money, ending a 24-year school-funding battle.

In a case involving a transgender track athlete, the Trump administration says female transgender athletes are seeking "special treatment" to compete in girls' or women's sports.

The judge said the law likely discriminates on the basis of transgender status in violation of the equal-protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Controversy over an intiative aimed a reducing inequities in Lee's Summit, Mo., schools led the police department to provide security protection for the district's first African-American superintendent. Now the school board has reversed course.

Many are whipsawed by shutdown recommendations aimed at stemming the coronavirus, and the logistical and financial consequences of those actions.

The Montreal Canadiens are struggling on many fronts this season and goaltending is not an exception.

Zack Ostapchuk returns to Belleville after posting one assist in six games with the big club.

Washington sent a 2025 fifth-round pick and a 2027 third-round pick to Pittsburgh on Tuesday for Eller.

A group of high school students from Anchorage spent spring break at a remote Native Village as part of an unusual cultural exchange program in Alaska. See what they learned.

The supreme court put an end to five years of legal wrangling that landed the state's public school system with millions more dollars from the state and teachers with a pay raise.

Caroline Fenton & Jason Fitz react to the second edition of the 2024 College Football Playoff Rankings, discuss Heisman pretenders vs. contenders and preview the biggest matchups of Week 12.

A West Virginia official turns up the heat on financial disclosure for the state’s beleaguered schools, and ruffles feathers in the process.

Michael Martirano led the state's schools through dramatic budget cuts, academic challenges, and a state-versus-local battle over school construction.

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.

Teachers will receive a 5 percent raise, pending a vote by the state legislature. School will resume Thursday.

The statewide teacher strike could end today if both chambers of the legislature pass the bill to deliver a 5 percent raise to all school employees.

Pandemic-inflicted budget cuts have cost thousands of educators their jobs. Here’s how that’s playing out in five districts around the country.

David Schuler, the superintendent of Township High School District 214 in Arlington Heights, Ill., has been named 2018 National Superintendent of the Year.

Donna M. Wilcock
May 1, 2003; 23:3745-3751
Development Plasticity Repair

Guo-qiang Bi
Dec 15, 1998; 18:10464-10472
Articles

Tessa E.S. Charlesworth
Sep 11, 2019; 39:7228-7243
Viewpoints

Evdokia Menelaou
Aug 8, 2012; 32:10925-10939
BehavioralSystemsCognitive

We recently demonstrated that transient attenuation of Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) in dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons, can both prevent and reverse pain associated with chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN), a severe side effect of cancer chemotherapy, for which treatment options are limited. Given the reduced efficacy of opioid analgesics to treat neuropathic, compared with inflammatory pain, the cross talk between nociceptor TLR4 and mu-opioid receptors (MORs), and that MOR and TLR4 agonists induce hyperalgesic priming (priming), which also occurs in CIPN, we determined, using male rats, whether (1) antisense knockdown of nociceptor MOR attenuates CIPN, (2) and attenuates the priming associated with CIPN, and (3) CIPN also produces opioid-induced hyperalgesia (OIH). We found that intrathecal MOR antisense prevents and reverses hyperalgesia induced by oxaliplatin and paclitaxel, two common clinical chemotherapy agents. Oxaliplatin-induced priming was also markedly attenuated by MOR antisense. Additionally, intradermal morphine, at a dose that does not affect nociceptive threshold in controls, exacerbates mechanical hyperalgesia (OIH) in rats with CIPN, suggesting the presence of OIH. This OIH associated with CIPN is inhibited by interventions that reverse Type II priming [the combination of an inhibitor of Src and mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK)], an MOR antagonist, as well as a TLR4 antagonist. Our findings support a role of nociceptor MOR in oxaliplatin-induced pain and priming. We propose that priming and OIH are central to the symptom burden in CIPN, contributing to its chronicity and the limited efficacy of opioid analgesics to treat neuropathic pain.

Reelin, a secreted glycoprotein, plays a crucial role in guiding neocortical neuronal migration, dendritic outgrowth and arborization, and synaptic plasticity in the adult brain. Reelin primarily operates through the canonical lipoprotein receptors apolipoprotein E receptor 2 (Apoer2) and very low-density lipoprotein receptor (Vldlr). Reelin also engages with noncanonical receptors and unidentified coreceptors; however, the effects of which are less understood. Using high-throughput tandem mass tag (TMT) liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS)-based proteomics and gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA), we identified both shared and unique intracellular pathways activated by Reelin through its canonical and noncanonical signaling in primary murine neurons of either sex during dendritic growth and arborization. We observed pathway cross talk related to regulation of cytoskeleton, neuron projection development, protein transport, and actin filament-based process. We also found enriched gene sets exclusively by the noncanonical Reelin pathway including protein translation, mRNA metabolic process, and ribonucleoprotein complex biogenesis suggesting Reelin fine-tunes neuronal structure through distinct signaling pathways. A key discovery is the identification of aldolase A, a glycolytic enzyme and actin-binding protein, as a novel effector of Reelin signaling. Reelin induced de novo translation and mobilization of aldolase A from the actin cytoskeleton. We demonstrated that aldolase A is necessary for Reelin-mediated dendrite growth and arborization in primary murine neurons and mouse brain cortical neurons. Interestingly, the function of aldolase A in dendrite development is independent of its known role in glycolysis. Altogether, our findings provide new insights into the Reelin-dependent signaling pathways and effector proteins that are crucial for dendritic development.

It is well established that holding information in working memory (WM) elicits sustained stimulus-specific patterns of neural activity. Nevertheless, here we provide evidence for a distinct class of neural activity that tracks the number of individuated items in working memory, independent of the type of visual features stored. We present two EEG studies of young adults of both sexes that provide robust evidence for a signal tracking the number of individuated representations in working memory, regardless of the specific feature values stored. In Study 1, subjects maintained either colors or orientations across separate blocks in a single session. We found near-perfect generalization of the load signal between these two conditions, despite being able to simultaneously decode which feature had been voluntarily stored. In Study 2, participants attended to two features with very distinct cortical representations: color and motion coherence. We again found evidence for a neural load signal that robustly generalized across these distinct visual features, even though cortically disparate regions process color and motion coherence. Moreover, representational similarity analysis provided converging evidence for a content-independent load signal, while simultaneously showing that unique variance in EEG activity tracked the specific features that were stored. We posit that this load signal reflects a content-independent "pointer" operation that binds objects to the current context while parallel but distinct neural signals represent the features that are stored for each item in memory.

Experience- and activity-dependent transcription is a candidate mechanism to mediate development and refinement of specific cortical circuits. Here, we demonstrate that the activity-dependent transcription factor myocyte enhancer factor 2C (MEF2C) is required in both presynaptic layer (L) 4 and postsynaptic L2/3 mouse (male and female) somatosensory (S1) cortical neurons for development of this specific synaptic connection. While postsynaptic deletion of Mef2c weakens L4 synaptic inputs, it has no effect on inputs from local L2/3, contralateral S1, or the ipsilateral frontal/motor cortex. Similarly, homozygous or heterozygous deletion of Mef2c in presynaptic L4 neurons weakens L4 to L2/3 excitatory synaptic inputs by decreasing presynaptic release probability. Postsynaptic MEF2C is specifically required during an early postnatal, experience-dependent, period for L4 to L2/3 synapse function, and expression of transcriptionally active MEF2C (MEF2C-VP16) rescues weak L4 to L2/3 synaptic strength in sensory-deprived mice. Together, these results suggest that experience- and/or activity-dependent transcriptional activation of MEF2C promotes development of L4 to L2/3 synapses. Additionally, MEF2C regulates the expression of many pre- and postsynaptic genes in postnatal cortical neurons. Interestingly, MEF2C was necessary for activity-dependent expression of many presynaptic genes, including those that function in transsynaptic adhesion and neurotransmitter release. This work provides mechanistic insight into the experience-dependent development of specific cortical circuits.

Pope Francis will add his voice to the fight against hunger and malnutrition by addressing the Second International [...]

FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva will be away from Rome during the next few weeks. During this period he will be involved in a range of [...]

The [...]

Rome/New York – Queen Letizia of Spain will join international efforts against hunger and [...]

Just announced by the Group of Latin America and the Caribbean Countries (GRULAC)

The Group of Latin American and Caribbean Countries (GRULAC) of FAO in Rome is pleased to endorse the [...]

Rome, The Africa Regional Group of Ambassadors and Permanent Representatives accredited  to the Rome based UN Agencies have announced the endorsement of the candidature of Dr. José Graziano da Silva [...]

Rome, 02 March 2015 - In a letter addressed to the Director-General, the Chairperson of the Near East Regional Group has announced their endorsement of the candidature [...]

In a letter addressed to the Director-General, the Ambassador of Malaysia to FAO, on behalf of the Chair of the Asia Group, has announced the endorsement of the [...]

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 [...]

The FAO Conference meets every two years to determine the policies of the Organization, approve the budget, and make recommendations to its Members. 

If you would like to dig deeper into [...]

Sometimes, in fact, nature is stranger than fiction

The appendix may not be as useless as commonly thought.

A small pebble with ornate markings is Britain’s earliest piece of Mesolithic art—but what do the markings denote, and was it worn for cosmetic purposes or spiritual ones?

In the Virunga National Forest, the mountain gorilla population sits in the middle of a war zone in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as forest rangers track and keep a watchful eye on the threatened primates Music: Kevin MacLeod

Smithsonian magazine commissioned Drew Gardner for a project that connects Black Americans today to their lost ancestry. Read about Gardner’s project and process, as well as more details about the subjects of this incredible series here: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/descendants-black-civil-war-heroes-wear-heritage-pride-180983397/ Video produced by Sierra Theobald. Special thanks to Drew Gardner Additional credits: Emma MacBeath, WikiTree US Black Heritage project; Ottawa Goodman, research and coordinator; Sam Dole, Penumbra Foundation; Elizabeth Zuck, set design; Calvin Osbourne, props and costume; Angela Huff, hair and make up; Diego Huerta, Lexia Krebs, behind-the-scenes filming; background prints by Fujifilm USA

Smithsonian magazine commissioned Drew Gardner for a project that connects Black Americans today to their lost ancestry. Read about Gardner’s project and process, as well as more details about the subjects of this incredible series here: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/descendants-black-civil-war-heroes-wear-heritage-pride-180983397/ Video produced by Sierra Theobald. Special thanks to Drew Gardner Additional credits: Emma MacBeath, WikiTree US Black Heritage project; Ottawa Goodman, research and coordinator; Sam Dole, Penumbra Foundation; Elizabeth Zuck, set design; Calvin Osbourne, props and costume; Angela Huff, hair and make up; Diego Huerta, Lexia Krebs, behind-the-scenes filming; background prints by Fujifilm USA

The North American Orchid Conservation Center is working to ensure the survival of some of the most unique plants in the world