A spring snowstorm overnight on May 8 into May 9 blanketed northern New Jersey with cold and snow, weather reports said. Parts of New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware were also affected by the storm. The National Weather Service’s Mount Holly office recorded temperatures in the low 30s, some going below freezing into the mid-to-high 20s across the northeast. A local resident in Newton, New Jersey, filmed video of the storm blowing snow across their backyard. In the morning, the yard and garden were covered. “Snow on the ground with a pool open seems odd,” J&B Landscape wrote on one video. On another they wrote, “Nice winter morning in May.” Credit: J&B Landscape via Storyful

New York's Gov. Andrew Cuomo plans to pursue the treatment following its relative success in treating influenza and Ebola.

The post FDA Okays Historic Blood Treatment for COVID; Clinical Trials to Use Antibodies From Recovered Patients appeared first on Good News Network.

Kenyan scientists discovered a microbe–Microsporidia MB–inside some mosquitoes that completely protects them from malaria infection which spreads to humans.

The post Breakthrough For Kenyan Scientists Who Discover Natural Microbe That Completely Stops Malaria in Mosquitoes appeared first on Good News Network.

180 years ago today, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, the iconic Russian composer was born. Famous for his ballets like The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliet, and The Sleeping Beauty—he also wrote popular classical works including the famous 1812 Overture (the one with the cannon fire often played on Independence Day). He became the most popular […]

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75 years ago today, a jubilant world celebrated V-E Day (Victory in Europe Day). It was proclaimed by England’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill when the Allies in World War II finally defeated Nazi Germany. The end of six years of war was cheered from New York City to Moscow—and in Germany it became known as […]

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On this day 70 years ago, Robert Schuman, the reformist French Prime Minister presented his proposal to create an organized Europe, which according to him was indispensable to the maintenance of peaceful relations. This proposal, known as the ‘Schuman Declaration’, is considered by some people to be the beginning of the creation of what is […]

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In addition to EV batteries being reused in 7-11 stores, their minerals can also provide many raw materials needed to run our world.

The post Old Electric Vehicle Batteries Can Be Recycled into New Sources of Energy—Even Used to Power 7-11 Stores appeared first on Good News Network.

The Swedish furniture chain published the ingredients and instructions for the saucy meatball dish to their social media pages this week.

The post IKEA Publishes Meatball Recipe for Devoted Fans in Quarantine Pining After the Store’s Beloved Cafés appeared first on Good News Network.

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

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.

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

Travellers should consider taking legal action to get money back

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.

Have you had any that are worse?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Back to the very basic styling to produce this no hacks dropdown/flyout menu.

A :target gallery with no browser window jump and no cycling through the images when using the browser 'back' button.

3D Stormtrooper animation using a flat graphic folded into shape.

Customizing a single responsive 'Swiper' slideshow to have thumbnails, animated captions, dynamic prev/next arrows and pause autorun.

Customizing a single responsive 'Swiper' slideshow to have background thumbnails and large images, animated captions, pause autorun.

Changes in forest management have detrimentally affected the economic health of small communities in the Blue Mountain region of Oregon over the past few decades. A build-up of small trees threatens the ecological health of these forests and increases wildland fire hazard. Hoping to boost their economies and also restore these forests, local leaders are interested in the economic value of timber that might be available from thinning treatments on these lands.

In this study, glulam beam manufacturers in the United States and Canada were surveyed regarding their lamstock usage and glulam beam distribution channels.

Forest managers are seeking practical guidance on how to adapt their current practices and, if necessary, their management goals, in response to climate change. Science-management collaboration was initiated on national forests in eastern Washington where resource managers showed a keen interest in science-based options for adapting to climate change at a 2-day workshop. Scientists and managers reviewed current climate change science and identified resources vulnerable to expected climate change. Vulnerabilities related to vegetation and habitat management included potential reductions in forest biodiversity and low forest resilience to changing disturbance regimes. The vulnerabilities related to aquatic and infrastructure resources included changing water quality and quantity, the risk to roads and other facilities from changes to hydrologic regimes, and the potential loss of at-risk aquatic species and habitats. Managers then worked in facilitated groups to identify adaptations that could be implemented through management and planning to reduce the vulnerability of key resources to climate change. The identified adaptations were grouped under two major headings: Increasing Ecological Resiliency to Climate Change, and Increasing Social and Economic Resiliency to Climate Change. The information generated from the science-management collaborative represents an initial and important step in identifying and prioritizing tangible steps to address climate change in forest management. Next would be the development of detailed implementation strategies that address the identified management adaptations..

April 2012—To anticipate how a changing climate might impact future forest fires, scientists need to understand the past. But how can you tell the frequency and severity of wildfires that occurred hundreds—or, even, thousands—of years ago? Part of the answer lies in tree rings (6:09)

A century of effective fire suppression has radically transformed many forested landscapes on the east side of the Cascades. Managers of dry forests critically need information to help plan for and implement forest restoration. Management priorities include the stabilization of fire regimes and the maintenance of habitat for the northern spotted owl and other old-forest associates.

WestProPlus is an add-in program developed to work with Microsoft Excel to simulate the growth and management of all-aged Douglas-fir-western hemlock (Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco-Tsuga heterophylla (Raf.) Sarg.) stands in Oregon and Washington. Its built-in growth model was calibrated from 2,706 permanent plots in the Douglas-fir-western hemlock forest type in Oregon and Washington. Stands are described by the number of trees per acre in each of nineteen 2-in diameter classes in four species groups: Douglas-fir, other shadeintolerant species, western hemlock, and other shade-tolerant species. WestProPlus allows managers to predict stand development by year and for many decades from a specific initial state. The simulations can be stochastic or deterministic. The stochastic simulations are based on bootstrapping of the observed errors in models of stand growth, timber prices, and interest rate. When used in stochastic simulations, this bootstrap technique simulates random variables by sampling randomly (with replacement) from actual observations of the variable, rather than from an assumed distribution. Users can choose cutting regimes by specifying the interval between harvests (cutting cycle) and a target distribution of trees remaining after harvest. A target distribution can be a reverse-J-shaped distribution or any other desired distribution. Diameterlimit cuts can also be simulated. Tabulated and graphic results show diameter distributions, basal area, volumes by log grade, income, net present value, and indices of stand diversity by species and size. This manual documents the program installation and activation, provides suggestions for working with Excel, and gives background information on West-ProPlus's models. It offers a comprehensive tutorial in the form of two practical examples that explain how to start the program, enter simulation data, execute a simulation, compare simulations, and plot summary statistics.

The Fall River research site in coastal Washington is an affiliate installation of the North American Long-Term Soil Productivity (LTSP) network, which constitutes one of the world's largest coordinated research programs addressing forest management impacts on sustained productivity. Overall goals of the Fall River study are to assess effects of biomass removals, soil compaction, tillage, and vegetation control on site properties and growth of planted Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco). Biomass-removal treatments included removal of commercial bole (BO), bole to 5-cm top diameter (BO5), total tree (TT), and total tree plus all legacy woody debris (TT+). Vegetation control (VC) effects were tested in BO, while soil compaction and compaction plus tillage were imposed in BO+VC treatment. All treatments were imposed in 1999. The preharvest stand contained similar amounts of carbon (C) above the mineral soil (292 Mg/ha) as within the mineral soil to 80- cm depth including roots (298 Mg/ha). Carbon stores above the mineral soil ordered by size were live trees (193 Mg/ha), old-growth logs (37 Mg/ha), forest floor (27 Mg/ha), old-growth stumps and snags (17 Mg/ha), coarse woody debris (11 Mg/ha), dead trees/snags (7 Mg/ha), and understory vegetation (0.1 Mg/ha). The mineral soil to 80-cm depth contained 248 Mg C/ha, and roots added 41 Mg/ha. Total nitrogen (N) in mineral soil and roots (13 349 kg/ha) was more than 10 times the N store above the mineral soil (1323 kg/ha). Postharvest C above mineral soil decreased to 129, 120, 63, and 50 Mg/ha in BO, BO5, TT, and TT+, respectively. Total N above the mineral soil decreased to 722, 747, 414, and 353 Mg/ha in BO, BO5, TT, and TT+, respectively. The ratio of total C above the mineral soil to total C within the mineral soil was markedly altered by biomass removal, but proportions of total N stores were reduced only 3 to 6 percent owing to the large soil N reservoir on site.

A primary mission of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service is multiple resource management, and one of the emerging themes is forest restoration. The National Silviculture Workshop, a biennial event co-sponsored by the Forest Service, was held May 7-10, 2007, in Ketchikan, Alaska, with the theme of "Integrated Restoration of Forested Ecosystems to Achieve Multiresource Benefits." This proceedings presents a compilation of state-of-the-art silvicultural research and forestry management papers that demonstrates integrated restoration to yield multiple resource benefits. These papers highlight national perspectives on ecosystem services, forest restoration and climate change, and regional perspectives on forest restoration and silvicultural practices to achieve multiple resource benefits from researchers and forest practitioners working in a broad array of forest types in the United States.

Whitebark pine is a critical component of subalpine ecosystems in western North America, where it contributes to biodiversity and ecosystem function and in some communities is considered a keystone species. Whitebark pine is undergoing rangewide population declines attributed to the combined effects of mountain pine beetle, white pine blister rust, and fire suppression. The restoration and maintenance of whitebark pine populations require an understanding of all aspects of seed fate. In this paper, we review the literature on seed dispersal in whitebark pine. Clark's nutcracker, pine squirrels, and scatter-hoarding rodents are all known to influence whitebark pine seed fate and ultimately affect the ability of whitebark pine populations to regenerate. We also provide a general overview of the natural histories of the most influential species involved with whitebark pine seed fate: Clark's nutcracker and the pine squirrel.

Estimates of forest carbon stores and flux for California circa 1990 were modeled from forest inventory data in support of California's legislatively mandated greenhouse gas inventory. Reliable estimates of live-tree carbon stores and flux on timberlands outside of national forest could be calculated from periodic inventory data collected in the 1980s and 1990s; however, estimation of circa 1990 flux on national forests and forests other than timberland was problematic owing to a combination of changing inventory protocols and definitions and the lack of remeasurement data on those land categories. We estimate annual carbon flux on the 7.97 million acres of timberlands outside of national forests (which account for 24 percent of California's forest area and 28 percent of its live tree aboveground biomass) at 2.9 terragrams per year.

Carbon storage and flux estimates for the two national forests in Alaska are provided using inventory data from permanent plots established in 1995–2003 and remeasured in 2004–2010. Estimates of change are reported separately for growth, sapling recruitment, harvest, mortality, snag recruitment, salvage, snag falldown, and decay. Although overall aboveground carbon mass in live trees did not change in the Tongass National Forest, the Chugach National Forest showed a 4.5 percent increase. For the Tongass National Forest, results differed substantially for managed and unmanaged forest: managed lands had higher per-acre rates of sequestration through growth and recruitment, and carbon stores per acre that were higher for decomposing downed wood, and lower for live trees and snags. The species composition of carbon stores is changing on managed lands, with a carbon mass loss for yellow-cedar but increases for red alder and Sitka spruce. On unmanaged lands, the Chugach National forest had carbon mass increases in Sitka spruce and white spruce, and the Tongass National Forest had increases in western redcedar and red alder.

We reviewed the literature to synthesize what is known about the use of fire to maintain and restore oak forests, woodlands, and savannas of the upper Midwestern United States, with emphasis on Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

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.

Understanding the capacity to reduce wildfire risk and restore dry forests on Western national forests is a key part of prioritizing new accelerated restoration programs initiated by the Forest Service.

Cities have become more committed to ecological restoration and management activities in urban natural areas.

In frequent-fire forests of the interior Western United States, historical (prefire suppression) conditions are often used as a reference to set management objectives, guide prescriptions, and monitor treatment effectiveness. We quantified the historical size, density, composition, and spatial patterns of dry mixed-conifer forests in the Blue Mountains of Oregon to establish reference conditions that could be used for ongoing forest-restoration efforts.

Rangeland exclosures installed primarily in the 1960s, but with some from the 1940s, were resampled for changes in plant community structure and composition periodically from 1977 to 2004 on the Malheur, Umatilla, and Wallowa-Whitman National Forests in northeastern Oregon. They allow one to compare vegetation with all-ungulate exclusion (known historically as game exclosures), all-livestock exclusion (known historically as stock exclosures), and with no exclusion (known as open areas). Thirteen upland rangeland exclosures in northeastern Oregon were selected and are presented with plant community trend data and possible causes of changes over time. Key findings are that moderate grazing by native ungulates afforded by the livestock exclosures generally stimulated bunchgrasses to retain dominance and vitality; native bunchgrasses can replace invasive rhizomatous plants given a reduction in disturbance over time; shrubs increased without ungulate use in shrubland communities; and invasive annuals that established following severe disturbances to the grassland community diminished with aggressive competition from perennial bunchgrasses.

Once gathered only for subsistence and cultural purposes, wild huckleberries are now also harvested commercially. Drawing on archival research as well as harvester and producer interview and survey data, an inventory of North American wild huckleberry plant genera is presented, and the wild huckleberry harvesting patterns of early Native Americans and nonindigenous settlers are described. The social, technological, and environmental changes that gave rise to the commercial industry in the Pacific Northwest by the 1920s and the industry's demise after World War II are explained. The resurgence of the commercial wild huckleberry industry in the mid-1980s and national forest management issues related to the industry are presented as are possible strategies that land managers could develop to ensure wild huckleberry, wildlife, and cultural sustainability.

Lidl was given permission at Wednesday's meeting of the planning committee to open a new supermarket in the Co-op Store on Parsons Drive in Ryton

To help people who are finding it difficult to get their groceries at home, a new investigation was carried out to see when supermarket delivery slots are released each day

Newcastle United were left without a centre-forward in 2011 but looked at signing World Cup ace to replace him with

Comedian/actress WENDY HAMMERS is bringing her long-running stage storytelling show "TASTY WORDS" to podcasting. The show has run 18 years as a live event in LOS ANGELES and has … more

BOSTON UNIVERSITY News-Talk WBUR/BOSTON is adding the syndicated radio version of THE NEW YORK TIMES' "THE DAILY" for 9p (ET) weeknights, followed by MARKETPLACE at 9:30, … more

DUALTONE MUSIC GROUP has partnered with THINKINDIE, MAGNOLIA RECORD CLUB and WEA/ADA DISTRIBUTION to raise money in support of independent retail record stores through sales of a new, … more

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