Filed under: North America, United States

Continue reading MapQuest Unveils 10 Top Destinations of 2013

MapQuest Unveils 10 Top Destinations of 2013 originally appeared on Gadling on Mon, 23 Dec 2013 10:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Filed under: History, Blogs

A recently-released program called Mosaic was revolutionizing what might be possible on the World Wide Web. "What we hope you'll do," the editor [at O'Reilly Media] said, "is write columns for us - from the road. We'll publish them live, on the GNN [Global Network Navigator, O'Reilly's website], where people can read them as you travel." The Travelers' Center, he told me, would include a feature that sounded miraculous: A map would be displayed on their website, with dots showing the locations from where I'd sent back posts. People would simply click on those dots - and see the story I'd written from that location!

Continue reading Travel Blogging Turns 20 Today

Travel Blogging Turns 20 Today originally appeared on Gadling on Mon, 06 Jan 2014 17:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Filed under: Arts and Culture, North America, United States

With their reputations on the line, travel agents Joanne and Gary will tackle any request, no matter how impossible, and any client, no matter how unreasonable. Full of overzealous travelers, overbooked flights, and hoteliers who are just over it, Craving for Travel reminds us why we travel-and everything that can happen when we do.

Continue reading Off-Broadway Comedy 'Craving for Travel' Showcases Travel Agents Trying to do the Impossible

Off-Broadway Comedy 'Craving for Travel' Showcases Travel Agents Trying to do the Impossible originally appeared on Gadling on Tue, 07 Jan 2014 10:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Filed under: Business, Europe, North America, Denmark, Iceland, Belize, United States

Continue reading Top 5 Family Travel Destinations for 2014 (and Possibly Beyond)

Top 5 Family Travel Destinations for 2014 (and Possibly Beyond) originally appeared on Gadling on Thu, 09 Jan 2014 13:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Filed under: Asia, Japan, Airlines, News

Continue reading Another Boeing 787 Dreamliner Has a Battery Problem

Another Boeing 787 Dreamliner Has a Battery Problem originally appeared on Gadling on Tue, 14 Jan 2014 14:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Filed under: Panama, Airports, News, Central America

Continue reading $7.2 Million Cash Found in Suitcases at Panama City Airport

$7.2 Million Cash Found in Suitcases at Panama City Airport originally appeared on Gadling on Fri, 17 Jan 2014 17:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Filed under: Business, Talking Travel

Skift Acquires Gadling Travel From AOL originally appeared on Gadling on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 09:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

A unique population of ventral tegmental area (VTA) neurons co-transmits glutamate and GABA. However, the circuit inputs to VTA VGluT2+VGaT+ neurons are unknown, limiting our understanding of their functional capabilities. By coupling monosynaptic rabies tracing with intersectional genetic targeting in male and female mice, we found that VTA VGluT2+VGaT+ neurons received diverse brainwide inputs. The largest numbers of monosynaptic inputs to VTA VGluT2+VGaT+ neurons were from superior colliculus (SC), lateral hypothalamus (LH), midbrain reticular nucleus, and periaqueductal gray, whereas the densest inputs relative to brain region volume were from the dorsal raphe nucleus, lateral habenula, and VTA. Based on these and prior data, we hypothesized that LH and SC inputs were from glutamatergic neurons. Optical activation of glutamatergic LH neurons activated VTA VGluT2+VGaT+ neurons regardless of stimulation frequency and resulted in flee-like ambulatory behavior. In contrast, optical activation of glutamatergic SC neurons activated VTA VGluT2+VGaT+ neurons for a brief period of time at high frequency and resulted in head rotation and arrested ambulatory behavior (freezing). Stimulation of glutamatergic LH neurons, but not glutamatergic SC neurons, was associated with VTA VGluT2+VGaT+ footshock-induced activity and inhibition of LH glutamatergic neurons disrupted VTA VGluT2+VGaT+ tailshock-induced activity. We interpret these results such that inputs to VTA VGluT2+VGaT+ neurons may integrate diverse signals related to the detection and processing of motivationally salient outcomes.

Goal-directed visual attention is a fundamental cognitive process that enables animals to selectively focus on specific regions of the visual field while filtering out irrelevant information. However, given the domain specificity of social behaviors, it remains unclear whether attention to faces versus nonfaces recruits different neurocognitive processes. In this study, we simultaneously recorded activity from temporal and frontal nodes of the attention network while macaques performed a goal-directed visual search task. V4 and inferotemporal (IT) visual category-selective units, selected during cue presentation, discriminated fixations on targets and distractors during the search but were differentially engaged by face and house targets. V4 and IT category-selective units also encoded fixation transitions and search dynamics. Compared with distractors, fixations on targets reduced spike–LFP coherence within the temporal cortex. Importantly, target-induced desynchronization between the temporal and prefrontal cortices was only evident for face targets, suggesting that attention to faces differentially engaged the prefrontal cortex. We further revealed bidirectional theta influence between the temporal and prefrontal cortices using Granger causality, which was again disproportionate for faces. Finally, we showed that the search became more efficient with increasing target-induced desynchronization. Together, our results suggest domain specificity for attending to faces and an intricate interplay between visual attention and social processing neural networks.

Somatosensory coding in rodents has been mostly studied in the whisker system and hairy skin, whereas the function of low-threshold mechanoreceptors (LTMRs) in the rodent glabrous skin has received scant attention, unlike in primates where the glabrous skin has been the focus. The relative activation of different LTMR subtypes carries information about vibrotactile stimuli, as does the rate and temporal patterning of LTMR spikes. Rate coding depends on the probability of a spike occurring on each stimulus cycle (reliability), whereas temporal coding depends on the timing of spikes relative to the stimulus cycle (precision). Using in vivo extracellular recordings in male rats and mice of either sex, we measured the reliability and precision of LTMR responses to tactile stimuli including sustained pressure and vibration. Similar to other species, rodent LTMRs were separated into rapid-adapting (RA) or slow-adapting based on their response to sustained pressure. However, unlike the dichotomous frequency preference characteristic of RA1 and RA2/Pacinian afferents in other species, rodent RAs fell along a continuum. Fitting generalized linear models to experimental data reproduced the reliability and precision of rodent RAs. The resulting model parameters highlight key mechanistic differences across the RA spectrum; specifically, the integration window of different RAs transitions from wide to narrow as tuning preferences across the population move from low to high frequencies. Our results show that rodent RAs can support both rate and temporal coding, but their heterogeneity suggests that coactivation patterns play a greater role in population coding than for dichotomously tuned primate RAs.

Endogenous reprogramming of glia into neurogenic progenitors holds great promise for neuron restoration therapies. Using lessons from regenerative species, we have developed strategies to stimulate mammalian Müller glia to regenerate neurons in vivo in the adult retina. We have demonstrated that the transcription factor Ascl1 can stimulate Müller glia neurogenesis. However, Ascl1 is only able to reprogram a subset of Müller glia into neurons. We have reported that neuroinflammation from microglia inhibits neurogenesis from Müller glia. Here we found that the peripheral immune response is a barrier to CNS regeneration. We show that monocytes from the peripheral immune system infiltrate the injured retina and negatively influence neurogenesis from Müller glia. Using CCR2 knock-out mice of both sexes, we found that preventing monocyte infiltration improves the neurogenic and proliferative capacity of Müller glia stimulated by Ascl1. Using scRNA-seq analysis, we identified a signaling axis wherein Osteopontin, a cytokine highly expressed by infiltrating immune cells is sufficient to suppress mammalian neurogenesis. This work implicates the response of the peripheral immune system as a barrier to regenerative strategies of the retina.

The activation of autonomic and hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) systems occurs interdependently with behavioral adjustments under varying environmental demands. Nevertheless, laboratory rodent studies examining the neural bases of stress responses have generally attributed increments in these systems to be monolithic, regardless of whether an active or passive coping strategy is employed. Using the shock probe defensive burying test (SPDB) to measure stress-coping features naturalistically in male and female rats, we identify a neural pathway whereby activity changes may promote distinctive response patterns of hemodynamic and HPA indices typifying active and passive coping phenotypes. Optogenetic excitation of the rostral medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) input to the ventrolateral periaqueductal gray (vlPAG) decreased passive behavior (immobility), attenuated the glucocorticoid hormone response, but did not prevent arterial pressure and heart rate increases associated with rats’ active behavioral (defensive burying) engagement during the SPDB. In contrast, inhibition of the same pathway increased behavioral immobility and attenuated hemodynamic output but did not affect glucocorticoid increases. Further analyses confirmed that hemodynamic increments occurred preferentially during active behaviors and decrements during immobility epochs, whereas pathway manipulations, regardless of the directionality of effect, weakened these correlational relationships. Finally, neuroanatomical evidence indicated that the influence of the rostral mPFC->vlPAG pathway on coping response patterns is mediated predominantly through GABAergic neurons within vlPAG. These data highlight the importance of this prefrontal->midbrain connection in organizing stress-coping responses and in coordinating bodily systems with behavioral output for adaptation to aversive experiences.

The sudden appearance of a visual distractor shortly before saccade initiation can capture spatial attention and modulate the saccade trajectory in spite of the ongoing execution of the initial plan to shift gaze straight to the saccade target. To elucidate the neural correlates underlying these curved saccades, we recorded from single neurons in the frontal eye field of two male rhesus monkeys shifting gaze to a target while a distractor with the same eccentricity appeared either left or right of the target at various delays after target presentation. We found that the population level of presaccadic activity of neurons representing the distractor location encoded the direction of the saccade trajectory. Stronger activity occurred when saccades curved toward the distractor, and weaker when saccades curved away. This relationship held whether the distractor was ipsilateral or contralateral to the recorded neurons. Meanwhile, visually responsive neurons showed asymmetrical patterns of excitatory responses that varied with the location of the distractor and the duration of distractor processing relating to attentional capture and distractor inhibition. During earlier distractor processing, neurons encoded curvature toward the distractor. During later distractor processing, neurons encoded curvature away from the distractor. This was observed when saccades curved away from distractors contralateral to the recording site and when saccades curved toward distractors ipsilateral to the recording site. These findings indicate that saccadic motor planning involves dynamic push–pull hemispheric interactions producing attraction or repulsion for potential but unselected saccade targets.

Peripheral taste neurons exhibit functional, genetic, and morphological diversity, yet understanding how or if these attributes combine into taste neuron types remains unclear. In this study, we used male and female mice to relate taste bud innervation patterns to the function of a subset of proenkephalin-expressing (Penk+) taste neurons. We found that taste arbors (the portion of the axon within the taste bud) stemming from Penk+ neurons displayed diverse branching patterns and lacked stereotypical endings. The range in complexity observed for individual taste arbors from Penk+ neurons mirrored the entire population, suggesting that taste arbor morphologies are not primarily regulated by the neuron type. Notably, the distinguishing feature of arbors from Penk+ neurons was their propensity to come within 110 nm (in apposition with) different types of taste-transducing cells within the taste bud. This finding is contrary to the expectation of genetically defined taste neuron types that functionally represent a single stimulus. Consistently, further investigation of Penk+ neuron function revealed that they are more likely to respond to innately aversive stimuli—sour, bitter, and high salt concentrations—as compared with the full taste population. Penk+ neurons are less likely to respond to nonaversive stimuli—sucrose, umami, and low salt—compared with the full population. Our data support the presence of a genetically defined neuron type in the geniculate ganglion that is responsive to innately aversive stimuli. This implies that genetic expression might categorize peripheral taste neurons into hedonic groups, rather than simply identifying neurons that respond to a single stimulus.

The prefrontal cortex is critical for decision-making across species, with its activity linked to choosing between options. Drift diffusion models (DDMs) are commonly employed to understand the neural computations underlying this behavior. Studies exploring the specific roles of regions of the rodent prefrontal cortex in controlling the decision process are limited. This study explored the role of the prelimbic cortex (PLC) in decision-making using a two-alternative forced-choice task. Rats first learned to report the location of a lateralized visual stimulus. The brightness of the stimulus indicated its reward value. Then, the rats learned to make choices between pairs of stimuli. Sex differences in learning were observed, with females responding faster and more selectively to high-value stimuli than males. DDM analysis found that males had decreased decision thresholds during initial learning, whereas females maintained a consistently higher drift rate. Pharmacological manipulations revealed that PLC inactivation reduced the decision threshold for all rats, indicating that less information was needed to make a choice in the absence of normal PLC processing. μ-Opioid receptor stimulation of the PLC had the opposite effect, raising the decision threshold and reducing bias in the decision process toward high-value stimuli. These effects were observed without any impact on the rats’ choice preferences. Our findings suggest that PLC has an inhibitory role in the decision process and regulates the amount of evidence that is required to make a choice. That is, PLC activity controls "when," but not "how," to act.

The extent to which neural representations of fear experience depend on or generalize across the situational context has remained unclear. We systematically manipulated variation within and across three distinct fear-evocative situations including fear of heights, spiders, and social threats. Participants (n = 21; 10 females and 11 males) viewed ~20 s clips depicting spiders, heights, or social encounters and rated fear after each video. Searchlight multivoxel pattern analysis was used to identify whether and which brain regions carry information that predicts fear experience and the degree to which the fear-predictive neural codes in these areas depend on or generalize across the situations. The overwhelming majority of brain regions carrying information about fear did so in a situation-dependent manner. These findings suggest that local neural representations of fear experience are unlikely to involve a singular pattern but rather a collection of multiple heterogeneous brain states.

Basolateral amygdala (BLA) neurons are engaged by emotionally salient stimuli. An area of increasing interest is how BLA dynamics relate to evolving reward-seeking behavior, especially under situations of uncertainty or ambiguity. Here, we recorded the activity of individual BLA neurons in male rats across the acquisition and extinction of conditioned reward seeking. We assessed ongoing neural dynamics in a task where long reward cue presentations preceded an unpredictable, variably time reward delivery. We found that, with training, BLA neurons discriminated the CS+ and CS– cues with sustained cue-evoked activity that correlated with behavior and terminated only after reward receipt. BLA neurons were bidirectionally modulated, with a majority showing prolonged inhibition during cued reward seeking. Strikingly, population-level analyses revealed that neurons showing cue-evoked inhibitions and those showing excitations similarly represented the CS+ and behavioral state. This sustained population code rapidly extinguished in parallel with conditioned behavior. We next assessed the contribution of the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), a major reciprocal partner to the BLA. Inactivation of the OFC while simultaneously recording in the BLA revealed a blunting of sustained cue-evoked activity in the BLA that accompanied reduced reward seeking. Optogenetic disruption of BLA activity and OFC terminals in the BLA also reduced reward seeking. Our data indicate that the BLA represents reward-seeking states via sustained, bidirectional cue-driven neural encoding. This code is regulated by cortical input and is important for the maintenance of vigilant reward-seeking behavior.

By Bob O’Donnell, president and chief analyst of TECHnalysis Research While much of the technology world is still searching to find easily measurable productivity improvements with generative AI, it turns out there’s another tech trend that’s already driving very impressive results today: digital twins. The idea behind digital twins is to create a complete replica of a physical system in software and then use that digital copy to run simulations and other tests before building a physical implementation of the device or system in the “real world.” Software-Based Systems As you can easily imagine, the ability to create, refine, and test complex configurations of various elements in software before committing to a hardware design offers incredible benefits to a system’s designers. In addition to ensuring that a given design works as intended, a digital twin offers the opportunity to refine the entire system or any combination of individual elements. Organizations can focus on optimizing a design for the best possible performance, most efficient energy usage, or any number of other targets that a company may have for a specific product. Digital twins can also be used for testing under conditions that aren’t practical in the real world, such as crashing a car or jet engine thousands of times in thousands of different situations. In addition, one of the more intriguing new applications of GenAI is to use it to help refine this system optimization process. Appropriately trained foundation models can run through billions of permutations and help ensure that a digital twin of a given system is as good as it can be by “solving” for the best potential outcome. They can also create design performance levels that existing methodologies don’t even begin to meet. The real trick in getting this all to work is finding the right software solution to build the digital twin. Not surprisingly, the type of device being “modeled” in digital form impacts this decision, but one of the most important overarching demands is the ability for a tool to faithfully replicate in software how individual elements behave in the real world, both on their own and in combination with other elements. It turns out that tools originally designed to digitally create some of the most complex and sophisticated devices that humankind has ever conceived—the semiconductor chips powering today’s digital devices—are extremely well suited to this digital system emulation task. Why Cadence? That’s why a company like Cadence, which was founded to create and is best known for its EDA (electronic design automation) chip design software, has become an important force in the world of digital twins. In solving the technical challenges associated with the chip design process, Cadence created software capabilities that can be applied to building an enormous range of sophisticated systems, including jet and automobile engines, manufacturing equipment, computing systems, and much more. Much of the work is focused on what the company refers to as computational software—that is, software that can solve the immensely complex physical and computational problems that underly and mathematically “describe” how the different elements in a system function on their own and in combination with other elements. It is these capabilities that allow Cadence software tools such as Allegro X Design Platform and Clarity 3D Solver to accurately emulate in software the real-world functionality and performance of systems that integrate various components. In the case of systems like jet engines that need to function well in volatile real-world environments, companies can use Cadence’s Fidelity CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) Platform . This allows designers to see how their designs operate in different types of weather, at different altitudes, in dangerous conditions that can’t be replicated in the real world, and much more—again, all before committing to an expensive hardware prototype. Of course, the EDA tools that Cadence is best known for—like Virtuoso Studio and Xcelium Logic Simulator —allow these capabilities to be brought to individual semiconductor chip designs. Before they go into production, all the world’s biggest chip companies use Cadence tools to create, refine, and digitally test their latest generation chips. With the move to chiplet architectures that bundle together multiple individual chips into larger, more sophisticated SoCs (system on chips) in 3D packages, Cadence has a tool called Integrity 3D-IC Platform for creating chiplet designs. Once it comes time to create customized chips for some of these applications, Cadence also offers hardware platforms such as Palladium Emulation and Protium Enterprise Prototyping that organizations can use to prototype and validate their designs before they commit to manufacturing. On top of that, many companies then use other Cadence tools like the aforementioned Allegro X Design Platform to link together multiple independent chips and other elements into a computing system design. Building even further, Cadence has recently released a set of tools called Cadence Reality Digital Twin Platform for modeling the performance, power consumption levels, and operation of data centers that integrate thousands of different computer systems. Given the enormous power demands that today’s GPU-rich cloud and enterprise data centers have, the ability to optimize the overall data center design for more power efficiency is an absolutely essential need. Biological Systems What’s fascinating is that these system-level design capabilities extend beyond the world of hardware into fields like biology and drug discovery as well. In fact, Cadence’s 2022 acquisition of OpenEye and the new product efforts associated with it are centered around modeling how complex biological systems will react to newly created drugs. In this case, Cadence tools such as Orion Molecular Design Platform essentially create digital twins of various types of human cells and then model how various molecules from a new type of drug will interact with those cells. Using these types of technologies, companies can rapidly expand the range of different molecules that they test in the digital domain without going through the very difficult and time-consuming task of creating and testing physical samples of these new molecules. While the work is still in its early phases, the potential of combining this technology with appropriately trained GenAI models could lead to significantly faster drug discovery efforts. Given the computational power now available to us—thanks in no small part to the impact that EDA tools like the ones from Cadence have had over the last several decades—the ability to emulate complex systems completely in software through the process of digital twinning has never been more compelling. From designing individual ICs (integrated circuits), through compute systems, and even into areas like computational fluid dynamics and drug discovery, the possibilities that digital twins—and the tools that create them—have enabled offer the potential to dramatically impact industries of all types and sizes. It’s going to be exciting to see how their impact continues to grow. Bob O’Donnell is the president and chief analyst of TECHnalysis Research, LLC , a market research firm that provides strategic consulting and market research services to the technology industry and professional financial community. You can follow him on Twitter @bobodtech .

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Stay up to date on the latest AI technology advancements and learn about the challenges and opportunities AI presents now and for the future.

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The rise of generative AI (gen AI) and ChatGPT has brought large language models (LLMs) to the forefront of technological innovation. Unlike traditional AI, these LLMs can process and generate language in a way that mimics human reasoning. Businesses are leveraging this technology in various ways, including content generation, customer service interactions, and document summarization. Gen AI offers businesses a chance to streamline operations and improve efficiency. However, LLMs are not universally…

Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming industries and is now accessible to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). According to Forbes, 91% of SMBs that have implemented AI report improved business success. The benefits of AI extend beyond enhanced customer experiences to include significant cost savings, revenue growth and a competitive edge. However, the journey to effective AI implementation can be challenging for many businesses. Avoiding AI roadblocks For SMBs with limited resources,…

As organizations increasingly adopt AI, ensuring that data quality is optimized is paramount for success. Good data is not just an asset; it serves as the foundation for effective AI models. High-quality data influences cost-efficiency, reliable decision-making and scalability. In this article, we will explore six data strategies that can prepare your organization for AI adoption. 1. Detect anomalies in your data Anomaly detection refers to identifying data points that deviate from expected patterns.…

The new addition to Blackstone's largest Florida-based portfolio company comes months after the tech company named a new CEO.

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Trainual, a fast-growing Tempe employee onboarding software firm, has signed a sponsorship deal with the Phoenix Suns and Mercury.

The government contractor's deal is part of a growing strategy focused on acquiring other firms.

Durham manufacturer Wolfspeed is suing a pair of former longtime employees.

The entrepreneur has been a mentor to Birmingham's tech community for many years.