Vice President Mike Pence's press secretary has the coronavirus, the White House says, making her the second person who works at the White House complex known to test positive for the virus this week.

A driver who smashed into a female cyclist, injuring her badly, then drove off should hand himself in, police say.

The British government has told airlines it will introduce a 14-day quarantine period for most people arriving from abroad to try to avoid a second peak of the coronavirus pandemic, an association representing the airlines said on Saturday.

One of my passions as a councillor and a key commitment to my community was to simplify local government processes and clarify what as unnecessarily complex. Break the obfuscation nexus, you may say.

Perhaps when COVID-19 is done and dusted the Victorian Government might apply some of the same tough, no nonsense attitude towards getting drug drivers off our roads.

‘Kudos’ is an interesting word.

Since these middle schoolers have been sent home during the coronavirus shutdowns, they decided to lift each other's spirits by having some virtual fun.

The post Middle Schoolers Bust a Move From Home By Joining Together for Music Video Against COVID-19 Fears appeared first on Good News Network.

Two high school students, Matthew Casertano and Dhruv Pai used their time off from classes to deliver groceries to their neighbors in self-isolation.

The post Maryland Teens Go On Grocery Store Runs for Seniors and Vulnerable Neighbors Amid COVID-19 Fears appeared first on Good News Network.

These two siblings from New Jersey have managed to raise more than $2,200 in order to benefit their local businesses and healthcare workers.

The post New Jersey Teens Take Matters into Their Own Hands to Help First Responders and Small Businesses Amidst COVID-19 Crisis appeared first on Good News Network.

Sydney, 10, and her mom animated a kid video to suggests how schools can donate surplus protection equipment (PPE) during COVID-19 pandemic.

The post 10-Year-Old Seeks to Empower Other Kids During COVID-19 Pandemic appeared first on Good News Network.

Tanner Howe, a singer-songwriter from Huntington Beach, hoped that his performances would brighten up isolating neighborhoods—and he was 100% correct.

The post Musician Uses Truck Bed to Play Drive-By Concerts for Friends in Quarantine – and the Video is Incredibly Heartwarming appeared first on Good News Network.

This hardy senior has been sewing hundreds of homemade face masks for all her friends, family, and community members—all while jamming to The Beatles.

The post 89-Year-Old Sews 600 Masks While Listening to The Beatles – WATCH appeared first on Good News Network.

Harry Potter star Miriam Margolyes left British viewers shocked as she unleashed a vile rant saying she “wanted Boris Johnson to die” from the coronavirus.

Cricket: Usman Khawaja joined the Fox Sports News desk and gave his opinion about the recent developments at Cricket Australia and what he would like to improve.

Rupert Guinness is cycling across America — from his living room in Edgecliff.

Coaches are against plans for the NRL to revert back to one referee, with Raiders mentor Ricky Stuart already fearing the game has become “a 100m by 70m UFC ring”.

This will go down as the worst negotiation blunder in Australian sporting history.

Travellers should consider taking legal action to get money back

It seems that banks and other lenders are doing their best to lock in our mortgages.

What a difference a pandemic makes. A few months ago, the only thing standing between you and your career goals was how hard you were willing to hustle. But as you adapt to indefinite lockdown life, the hustle may now be feeling all too real.

Somewhere between 9.5 per cent and 44 per cent of the entire workforce is now really jobless as a result of the government-mandated lockdowns of the economy.

Wood decay elements include snags, down wood, root wads, tree stumps, litter, duff, broomed or diseased branches, and partially dead trees, all of which contribute to ecological processes and biodiversity of the forest ecosystem. Down wood can serve as reservoirs for moisture and mycorrhizal fungi beneficial to the health and growth of commercial tree species. Decaying wood, leaf litter, small twigs, and roots contribute nutrients and structure to humus and soil organic matter, and host microbes that play beneficial roles in nitrogen cycles and other processes. Snags and down wood provide nurse functions for tree and shrub species, and can aid in restoration of degraded forest environments. Various elements of wood decay provide habitat for many species of wildlife including invertebrates, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. Fire can influence the amounts and distributions of wood decay elements and enhance or detract desired ecosystem processes, depending on severity, charring, soil temperature, and other factors. Managing wood decay elements for ecosystem processes entails better understanding decay dynamics, the role of coarse wood in soil, the role of wood decay in carbon cycling and sequestration, and other considerations.

The Silvies Valley Ranch is an example of using local innovation to combat the global problem of incised streams on rangelands. Incised channels reduce the flow between water in the channel and water in the surrounding soils, which reduces the vegetation available for wildlife habitat and cattle forage. One of the ranch owners, Scott Campbell, a doctor of veterinary medicine, believes that stream incision is related to the decline of beaver populations; thus, the ranch’s approach to restoration includes efforts to mimic beavers’ influence on the system. He is using an extensive network of low-rise dams made from locally available materials (dirt, gravel, rock, and logs), commonly referred to as “artificial beaver dams” (ABDs). Campbell said that the ABDs on the ranch successfully increased stream connectivity to their floodplains and increased the quantity and forage quality of wet meadows on the property, with no changes in where cattle were grazing. The experiences of this landowner exemplify a unique approach that provides a model for others facing similar challenges to doing restoration on private land. The transformation taking place on the Silvies Valley Ranch has garnered the attention of neighboring ranch owners, some of whom are beginning to experiment with similar restoration technologies. Campbell would like to continue installing structures, but has encountered numerous roadblocks in the permitting process. He has since taken an active role in building legislative support for the ABD technology being used on the ranch, and in facilitating its adoption in other places. This case study—based on interviews with stakeholders involved in the Silvies Valley Ranch project—highlights the social benefits and challenges experienced by one rancher using ABDs as a restoration tool, and provides insights for improving their use in the future. It is part of a larger interdisciplinary study that explores the potential of different beaver-related restoration approaches for achieving watershed restoration and livestock production goals on rangelands in the Western United States.

This easy and tasty recipe can be made in the microwave

How to make a scrumptious afternoon tea at home quickly, easily and on a shoestring

Laura Nightingale tested out seven of Aldi's icy desserts to see how they stacked up against the big brands

Have you had any that are worse?

Sustainable working landscapes are critical to the conservation of biodiversity in the American West and its cultures of rural ranching and forestry.

Since 1960, the Forest Service has been guided by the multiple-use concept, which recognizes five major uses for public lands-timber, water, range, recreation, and fish and wildlife habitat-and mandates that all five should be equally considered in management plans.

Land use and climate change are two key factors with the potential to affect stream conditions and fish habitat. Since the 1950s, Washington and Oregon have required forest practices designed to mitigate the effects of timber harvest on streams and fish.

As a signatory to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the United States annually compiles a report on the nation's carbon flux—the amount of carbon emitted into the atmosphere compared to the amount stored by terrestrial landscapes.

Landscape exposure to multiple stressors can pose risks to human health, biodiversity, and ecosystem services. Attempts to study, control, or mitigate these stressors can strain public and private budgets. An interdisciplinary team of Pacific Northwest Research Station and Oregon State University scientists created maps of the conterminous United States that indicate landscape exposure to concentrated wildfire potential, insects and disease risk, urban and exurban development, and climate change. The maps, which show where these stressors might occur and overlap, provide a valuable resource for regional and national land use, land management, and policymaking efforts by helping to guide resource prioritization.

In the Pacific Northwest, native salmon and trout are some of the toughest survivors on the block. Over time, these fish have evolved behavioral adaptations to natural disturbances, and they rely on these disturbances to deliver coarse sediment and wood that become complex stream habitat. Powerful disturbances such as wildfire, postfire landslides, and debris flows may be detrimental to fish populations in the short term, but over time, they enrich instream habitats, enhancing long-term fish survival and productivity.

Woodpeckers and other cavity-excavating birds worldwide are keystone species. These birds excavate their nests out of solid wood, and because their nests are often well protected against predators and the environment, other species use and compete for their old, vacant nests. The presence of cavity-excavating birds in forests has far-reaching effects on species richness and ecosystem health.

Interest in landscape-scale approaches to fire management and forest restoration is growing with the realization that these approaches are critical to maintaining healthy forests and protecting nearby communities. However, coordinated planning and action across multiple ownerships have been elusive because of differing goals and forest management styles among landowners. Scientists with the Pacific Northwest Research Station and their colleagues recognized that working at the landscape scale requires integrating the biophysical, social, and economic dimensions of the problem, and this necessitates collecting new types of information and inventing new tools.

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.

Air quality is a critical issue affecting the health of billions of people worldwide, yet often little is known about what is in the air we breathe. To reduce air pollution’s health impacts, pollution sources must first be reliably identified. Otherwise, it is impossible to design and effectively enforce environmental standards. However, urban networks of air quality monitors are often too widely spaced to identify the sources of air pollutants, especially for pollutants that do not disperse far from their sources. Developing high-resolution pollution maps with data from these widely spaced monitors is problematic.

Increasing the population of spring Chinook salmon and summer steelhead in Washington state’s Methow River is a goal of the Upper Columbia Spring Chinook Salmon and Steelhead Recovery Plan. Spring Chinook salmon and summer steelhead are listed as endangered and threatened, respectively, under the Endangered Species Act.

Accurate measurements of natural resources are a prerequisite for resource assessment. Demetrios Gatziolis, a scientist with the USDA Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station, and his colleagues with Washington State University developed and tested protocols for using structure-from-motion photogrammetry to obtain data that can be used to construct 3-dimensional (3-D) representations of trees, other vegetation, and down wood. This type of photogrammetry is a remote-sensing technique based on a sequence of digital images or video footage. Gatziolis and his colleagues focused on developing protocols for using it under the forest canopy. Their method can serve as a guide for others interested in obtaining inexpensive, precise 3-D data of trees in field plots. The researchers continue to perfect the technology so it can be reliably deployed by field crews with a minimal amount of training.

Diameter growth is seasonal in Douglas-fir, the evergreen tree found in much of western Washington, Oregon, and northern California. Initiation and cessation of diameter growth are both triggered by environmental cues. The tree responds to these cues to improve its chances of growing under favorable conditions. As environmental conditions change, however, land managers want to know how warmer summers and falls may affect diameter growth in Douglas-fir.

The Malheur model for fire-caused delayed mortality is presented as an easily interpreted graph (mortality-probability calculator) as part of a one-page field guide that allows the user to determine postfire probability of mortality for ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa Dougl. ex Laws.).

Black spruce (Picea mariana (Mill) B.S.P) is the dominant forest cover type in interior Alaska and is prone to frequent, stand-replacing wildfires.

Old-growth forests provide unique habitat features and landscape functions compared to younger stands. The goals of many forest management plans in the Pacific Northwest include increasing the area of late-successional and old-growth forests.

Excess nitrogen stemming from human activities is a common water pollutant. Fertilizer runoff, sewage, and fossil fuel emission all contain nitrogen that often ends in streams, rivers, and ultimately the ocean.

Two series of single and stereo photographs display a range of natural conditions and fuel loadings in post-hurricane forests in the southeastern United States. Each group of photos includes inventory information summarizing vegetation composition, structure and loading, woody material loading and density by size class, forest floor loading, and various site characteristics. The natural fuels photo series is designed to help land managers appraise fuel and vegetation conditions in natural settings.

An update to one of my early gallery demonstrations to bring it up to date using the latest CSS techniques.

A photograph gallery with hover to show large images with linking to full size images or another page.

A CSS only method of hovering over a horizontal menu link to change the whole menu background image.

A simplified method of producing a centered dropdown and flyout menu with variable widths depending on text content.

A restyled version that allows dropdowns and flyouts to the left and right. Centered top level list and different color sub levels. Even works in IE5.5.