According to research conducted around four coal-powered plants in Louisville, Kentucky, retiring coal has a noticeable effect on people's health.

The post As Coal Usage Declines, New Study Finds Dramatic Decrease in Asthma Symptoms and Hospitalizations appeared first on Good News Network.

The Newtons have created ‘Britain’s best garden’ and grown a spring spectacular bursting with color in Walsall after spending lockdown tending their oasis.

The post Britain’s Best Gardening Couple Outdo Themselves With Spring Spectacular After Spending Lockdown Tending Their Oasis appeared first on Good News Network.

Banksy droped off an art piece that is inspiring the world with its superhero nurse theme, in gratitude to NHS Southampton General Hospital in England.

The post Banksy Drops Off Superhero Nurse Artwork at Hospital in UK With a Thank You Note appeared first on Good News Network.

The masks had been left in the warehouse of the Swedish store to gather dust following the most recent bird flu outbreak.

The post After Rediscovering Warehouse Treasure Trove of 50,000 Face Masks, IKEA Donates Them All to Hospital appeared first on Good News Network.

Restaurants from Starbucks to Krispy Kreme are offering up free food and coffee to the North American workers fighting the coronavirus outbreaks.

The post These Restaurants Are Giving Away Free Food and Coffee to Hospital Staffers Fighting COVID-19 appeared first on Good News Network.

Higher global temperatures are changing ecosystems in the Arctic. They are becoming greener as the climate and land become more hospitable to taller vegetation.

Martens are small forest carnivores associated with dense, mature forests.

With the passage of the Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act of 1960, the U.S. Forest Service has managed its 193 million acres of forest and grassland for multiple uses, including timber, watersheds, and wildlife. Using today’s terminology, some of these purposes are considered ecosystem services, which encompass a breadth of benefits provided by forests, including their ability to absorb and store atmospheric carbon, a greenhouse gas linked to climate change.

We describe a food-based system for quantitatively evaluating habitat quality for deer called the Forage Resource Evaluation System for Habitat and provide its rationale and suggestions for use. The system was developed as a tool for wildlife biologists and other natural resource managers and planners interested in evaluating habitat quality and, especially, comparing two or more patches of habitat or the same patch at different seasons or under different conditions. It is based on the quantity (of biomass) and quality (digestible energy and digestible protein) of the habitat's food resources in relation to user-specified metabolic requirements of deer (which differ with species, age, sex, season, and reproductive status). It uses a linear programming algorithm to determine the suitable forage that can sustain deer at the specified requirements.

Using Webkit keyframes to produce an auto-run digital time to show how long you have been on a page.

A flyout list menu with top level links and a close menu icon for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.

A droplist menu with top level links and a close menu tab for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.

A pulldown panel containing a droplist menu using just CSS and suitable for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.

A simpler version of the Anywidth v5 menu, using the latest techniques and discoveries for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. NO need for a special 'close' button or tab.

Using just CSS to produce a multi-level menu with a click action instead of the normal hover suitable for the iPad.

A simpler version of the Anywidth #6 menu, using the latest techniques and discoveries for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. NO need for a special 'close' button or page wide transparent image.

Using just CSS to produce a multi-level menu with a click to open/close action instead of the normal hover suitable for the iPad.

A set of information panels that work on touch screen devices such as iPads, IE10 tablets and Android OS tablets.

A responsive droplist menu that works on touch screen devices including Android OS and IE10.

A method of getting IE7, IE8 and early version of other browsers to support 'background-size:cover'.

A responsive dropdown/flyout menu that works on touch screen devices including Android OS and IE10.

A responsive single level menu that works on touch screen devices including Android OS and IE10.

Introduction In the context of the humanities, the last twenty... more

The research is developed around the contemporary debate on LGBT... more

The latest figures have been announced by NHS England

It has not yet been confirmed when the fast-food branch will open

The latest NHS figures show a small increase in recorded deaths

In forest reserves of the U.S. Pacific Northwest, management objectives include protecting late-seral habitat structure by reducing the threat of large-scale disturbances like wildfire. We simulated how altering within and among-stand structure with silvicultural treatments of differing intensity affected late-seral forest (LSF) structure and fire threat (FT) reduction over 30 years in a 6070-ha reserve. We then evaluated how different financial requirements influenced the treatment mix selected for each decade, the associated effects on FT reduction and LSF structure in the reserve, and treatment costs. Requirements for treatments to earn money (NPV+), break even (NPVO), or to not meet any financial goal at the scale of the entire reserve (landscape) affected the predicted reduction of FT and the total area of LSF structure in different ways. With or without a requirement to break even, treatments accomplished about the same landscape level of FT reduction and LSF structure. Although treatment effects were similar, their associated net revenues ranged from negative $1 million to positive $3000 over 30 years. In contrast, a requirement for landscape treatments to earn money ($0.5 to $1.5 million NPV) over the same period had a negative effect on FT reduction and carried a cost in terms of both FT reduction and LSF structure. Results suggest that the spatial scale at which silvicultural treatments were evaluated was influential because the lowest cost to the reserve objectives was accomplished by a mix of treatments that earned or lost money at the stand level but that collectivel broke even at the landscape scale. Results also indicate that the timeframe over which treatments were evaluated was important because if breaking even was required within each decade instead of cumulatively over all three, the cost in terms of FT reduction and LSF structure was similar to requiring landscape treatments to earn $0.5 million NPV.

Millions of miles of highway crisscross the United States. Highways fragment the landscape, affecting the distribution of animal populations and limiting the ability of individuals to disperse between those populations. Moreover, animal-vehicle collisions are a serious hazard to wildlife, not to mention people.

The Northwest Forest Plan (the Plan) is a large-scale ecosystem management plan for federal land in the Pacific Northwest. Marbled murrelet (Brachyramphus marmoratus) populations and habitat were monitored to evaluate effectiveness of the Plan. The chapters in this volume summarize information on marbled murrelet ecology and present the monitoring results for marbled murrelets over the first 10 years of the Plan, 1994 to 2003.

Currently, all treated lumber used in Alaska is imported from the 48 contiguous states and Canada because there are no wood-treating facilities in Alaska. This report explores conventional and alternative wood-treating methods and reviews previous studies and laboratory tests on treated wood. In investigating wood treatment as a possible processing option for Alaska forest products manufacturers, the double-diffusion method of using sodium fluoride followed by a copper sulfate appeared to be the most advantageous approach. This method of treating wood was identified because it can be used to treat freshly cut or green wood. This was an important factor to consider, owing to the limited drying capacity in Alaska. Little information was available as to the chemical retention after treating and its resistance to leaching.

On October 18, 2006, a workshop was held in Vancouver, WA, with the title "Managing for wildlife habitat in Westside production forests." The purpose of the workshop was to provide prescriptions and guidelines for people who manage Westside forests (those west of the Cascade Mountains' crest) primarily for wood production, but because of mandate or personal preference, want to integrate wildlife values. The audience included over 150 professionals from forest industry, consulting firms, and public and tribal forest and wildlife management agencies. This proceedings includes ten papers based on oral presentations at the workshop plus a synthesis paper summarizing workshop themes, discussions, and related information. Topics include a history of wildlife management research in the Pacific Northwest, elements of habitat and how to manage for them, the challenges of appropriately implementing ecosystem management, and economic implications to private forestland owners.

This publication provides information about prescribed fire effects on habitats and populations of birds of the interior West and a synthesis of existing information on bird responses to fire across North America. Our literature synthesis indicated that aerial, ground, and bark insectivores favored recently burned habitats, whereas foliage gleaners preferred unburned habitats.

The demand for water is rapidly increasing, but the uses to which that water is put and the values society places on water are changing dramatically. Water is the source of life, the sustenance for living, the resource needed for manufacturing, mining, agriculture; the element required to grow our lawns, to water our landscaping, to shower us with refreshment; it is the place where we play; it provides the snow for our winter recreation, and it provides the habitat for much of our wildlife. Water in contemporary American society is more than a simple physical entity, its symbolic values, and noninstrumental uses are growing in significance. As with many Native American cultures, water is as much a symbol as it is something to extract and use in the production of commercial products. This book is about the issues associated with these symbolic values and uses of water: the challenges they present--in our language, in our allocation mechanisms, in our communication--the conflicts raised; and the potential for resolving the difficult, contentious and complex issues concerning the use of water for various purposes. It is as much about framing the questions about symbolic values of water as it is anything else.

We describe a protocol to monitor the effectiveness of the Tongass Land Management Plan (TLMP) management standards for maintaining fish habitat. The protocol uses juvenile coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) in small tributary streams in forested watersheds. We used a 3-year pilot study to develop detailed methods to estimate juvenile salmonid populations, measure habitat, and quantitatively determine trends in juvenile coho salmon abundance over 10 years. Coho salmon have been shown to be sensitive to habitat alterations, and we use coho salmon parr as the primary indicator in the protocol. A priori criteria for type I and type II error rates, effect size, and sample sizes for the protocol were derived with estimates of variance computed from the 3-year pilot study. The protocol is designed to detect trends in abundance of coho salmon parr, as well as coho salmon fry and Dolly Varden (Salvelinus malma), in small streams managed according to TLMP standards and guidelines and to compare these to trends in unmanaged (old-growth) watersheds. Trends are adjusted to account for statistically significant habitat covariates. This information provides an important element in monitoring land management practices in the Tongass National Forest. The methods we describe may have application to monitoring protocols elsewhere for fish populations and land management practices.

This report documents the results from the first “5-year” round of understory responses to the Tongass-Wide Young-Growth Studies (TWYGS) treatments, especially in relation to their effects on food resources for black-tailed deer (Odocoileus hemionus sitkensis). Responses of understory vegetation to precommercial silviculture experiments after their first 4 to 8 years posttreatment were analyzed with the Forage Resource Evaluation System for Habitat (FRESH)-Deer model. The studies were conducted in western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla)-Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis) young-growth forests in southeast Alaska. All four TWYGS experiments were studied: (I) planting of red alder (Alnus rubra) within 1- to 5-year-old stands; (II) precommercial thinning at narrow and wide spacings (549 and 331 trees per hectare, respectively) in 15- to 25-year-old stands; (III) precommercial thinning at medium spacing (420 trees per hectare) with and without pruning in 25- to 35-yearold stands; and (IV) precommercial thinning at wide spacing (203 trees per hectare) with and without slash treatment versus thinning by girdling in >35-year-old stands. All experiments also included untreated control stands of identical age. FRESHDeer was used to evaluate the implications for deer habitat in terms of forage resources (species-specific biomass, digestible protein, and digestible dry matter) relative to deer metabolic requirements in summer (at two levels of requirements—maintenance only vs. lactation) and in winter (at six levels of snow depth).

Stem decays of living trees, known also as heart rots, are essential elements of wildlife habitat, especially for cavity-nesting birds and mammals. Stem decays are common features of old-growth forests of coastal Alaska, but are generally absent in young, managed forests. We offer several strategies for maintaining or restoring fungal stem decay in these managed forests that can be used to enhance specific types of wildlife habitat.

This report addresses the need for developing consistent regional guidelines for stand-level management that integrates goals and objectives for dry forest restoration and habitat management for the northern spotted owl.

Northwest Forest Plan—the first 20 years (1994-2013): status and trends of northern spotted owl habitats.

This book is intended to help people better understand how wood energy is helping to revitalize rural Alaskan communities by reducing energy costs, creating jobs, and helping to educate the next generation.

This is the second in a series of periodic monitoring reports on northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) population and habitat trends on federally administered lands since implementation of the Northwest Forest Plan in 1994. Here we summarize results from a population analysis that included data from longterm demographic studies during 1985–2008. This data was analyzed separately by study area, and also in a meta-analysis across all study areas to assess temporal and spatial patterns in fecundity, apparent survival, recruitment, and annual rates of population change.

The primary objectives of the effectiveness monitoring plan for the marbled murrelet (Brachyramphus marmoratus) include mapping baseline nesting habitat (at the start of the Northwest Forest Plan [the Plan]) and estimating changes in that habitat over time. Using vegetation data derived from satellite imagery, we modeled habitat suitability by using a maximum entropy model. We used Maxent software to compute habitat suitability scores from vegetation and physiographic attributes based on comparisons of conditions at 342 sites that were occupied by marbled murrelets (equal numbers of confirmed nest sites and likely nest sites) and average conditions over all forested lands in which the murrelets occurred. We estimated 3.8 million acres of higher suitability nesting habitat over all lands in the murrelet's range in Washington, Oregon, and California at the start of the Plan (1994/96). Most (89 percent) baseline habitat on federally administered lands occurred within reserved-land allocations. A substantial amount (36 percent) of baseline habitat occurred on nonfederal lands. Over all lands, we observed a net loss of about 7 percent of higher suitability potential nesting habitat from the baseline period to 2006/07. If we focus on losses and ignore gains, we estimate a loss of about 13 percent of the higher suitability habitat present at baseline, over this same period. Fire has been the major cause of loss of nesting habitat on federal lands since the Plan was implemented; timber harvest is the primary cause of loss on nonfederal lands. We also found that murrelet population size is strongly and positively correlated with amount of nesting habitat, suggesting that conservation of remaining nesting habitat and restoration of currently unsuitable habitat is key to murrelet recovery.

NHS England announced that 207 more people died after testing positive for Covid-19 taking the total death toll in hospitals in England to 22,972

Simon Cowell was moved to tears by rescue dog Miracle on Britain's Got Talent who has a very traumatic past

SPANISH BROADCASTING SYSTEM joined with the SOUTH FLORIDA HISPANIC CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, HOLIDAY BAKERY, and ART DECO SUPERMARKET AND CAFETERIA to deliver 100 hot meals and treats for … more

Another AM station is proposing to run testing of all-digital broadcasting, with BRIAN R. WALSH filing an STA request to operate Oldies WIOE-A/FORT WAYNE in full-time HD RADIO MA3 mode with … more

Charity ambassador and musician Cormac Neeson said: "The line up is as strong as you could ever hope for in the real world and every artist is born and bred right here in NI."