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Katie Couric on the Shifting Landscape of News

The renowned American journalist talks with HBR senior editor Dan McGinn.




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Escape Your Comfort Zone

Andy Molinsky, professor of organizational behavior at Brandeis International Business School, discusses practical techniques for getting outside of your comfort zone, and how that can develop new capabilities and experiences that can help your career. His new book is “Reach: A New Strategy to Help You Step Outside your Comfort Zone, Rise to the Challenge and Build Confidence.”




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Large Scale Landscapes

I’ve written about my love of seascapes, but I truly love landscapes too, especially ones that have a vintage vibe when they’re enlarged on a canvas or a big frame. Landscapes have that power to transport you outdoors and to another place, something we could all use a little more of right now. :) I’m




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Navigating the 2013 Regulatory Landscape for 401(k)s

7:30 to 10 a.m., Thursday, March 14, 2013
The Charles F. Knight Education and Conference Center
at Washington University
One Bookings Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130
REGISTER NOW!
What is the future of 401(k)s?  A nationally-recognized expert in employer-sponsored retirement,… Read More

The post Navigating the 2013 Regulatory Landscape for 401(k)s appeared first on Anders CPAs.



  • Employee Benefit Plan Audits

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AppLovin invests in Sweet Escapes developer Redemption Games

Mobile marketing platform AppLovin has made a undisclosed strategic investment in San Diego mobile studio Redemption Games.  ...




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Fiscal-year Corporations Subject to Blended Tax Rates Following Tax Reform

The new 21% corporate tax rate allows C corporations to pay federal taxes at a significantly lower tax rate than the 35% top rate in prior years. While the new tax rate took effect beginning in 2018, this new benefit… Read More

The post Fiscal-year Corporations Subject to Blended Tax Rates Following Tax Reform appeared first on Anders CPAs.




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Yellowbrick and ScaleMatrix partner to provide COVID-19 data for vaccination efforts

The new partnership will allow researchers and companies to take full advantage of powerful data solutions to speed the development of a vaccine, at no cost




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Auto Expo 2020: Chinese delegation to skip event due to coronavirus scare

Auto Expo 2020: Chinese delegation to skip event due to coronavirus scare





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The Great Escape: 9 exploited in Yemen steal boat, set sail for India

Nine Indian fishermen who were allegedly harassed and not paid by their employer in Yemen for nearly a year have escaped that country by stealing their employer's boat and sailing for Kochi, a peril-filled voyage of than 3,000 km of open sea, according to the families of two of the fishermen.




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India's fiscal deficit hits 52% of budgeted target in first 2 months of 2019/20

India's fiscal deficit hits 52% of budgeted target in first 2 months of 2019/20





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China continues to hide, obfuscate COVID-19 data from world: Mike Pompeo

"I have seen a significant amount of evidence that suggests that the lab was underperforming, that there were security risks at the lab and that the virus could well have emanated from there," US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Ben Shapiro in an interview on Friday.




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India seen escaping Argentina's fate as remittances curb deficit

India received $69 billion in overseas remittances last year, equivalent to almost 3 percent of GDP, Capital Economics said, citing World Bank data.




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IIT professor develops software to detect COVID-19 within 5 seconds using X-ray scan

Kamal Jain, a professor at the institute's civil engineering department, claims that the software will not only reduce testing costs but will also reduce the risk of exposure to healthcare professionals. ​So far, there is no verification of his claim by a medical institution.




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SEC Charges Company and CEO for COVID-19 Scam

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced charges against Praxsyn Corp. and its CEO for allegedly issuing false and misleading press releases claiming the company was able to acquire and supply large quantities of N95 or similar masks to…




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Department of Justice Announces Disruption of Hundreds of Online COVID-19 Related Scams

Federal authorities announced today that an ongoing cooperative effort between law enforcement and a number of private-sector companies, including multiple internet domain providers and registrars, has disrupted hundreds of internet domains used to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic to commit fraud and other crimes.




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Fiscal Year 2019 FOIA Data Available

OIP is pleased to announce that it has uploaded the Fiscal Year 2019 Annual FOIA Report data for all 118 agencies subject to the FOIA onto FOIA.gov.





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Josh Spiegel Commentary: The Final Word On The Pugh Scandal

In a week that saw the release of former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh's apology video and Pugh being sentenced to federal prison for conspiracy and tax evasion, Josh Spiegel offers his wrap up on the Healthy Holly saga.




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Comment on Vet Student Arrested, Accused Of Running Scam On Horse Owners by Denise Steffanus

In North Carolina, she claimed to be a vet student at NC State. I think the more authorities dig, the more they'll find.




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Laplace’s Demon: A Seminar Series about Bayesian Machine Learning at Scale

David Rohde points us to this new seminar series that has the following description: Machine learning is changing the world we live in at a break neck pace. From image recognition and generation, to the deployment of recommender systems, it seems to be breaking new ground constantly and influencing almost every aspect of our lives. […]




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“So the real scandal is: Why did anyone ever listen to this guy?”

John Fund writes: [Imperial College epidemiologist Neil] Ferguson was behind the disputed research that sparked the mass culling of eleven million sheep and cattle during the 2001 outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. He also predicted that up to 150,000 people could die. There were fewer than 200 deaths. . . . In 2002, Ferguson predicted that […]




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Construction Continues on Transcanyon Pipeline Replacement at Phantom Ranch

Replacement of the Transcanyon Pipeline at Phantom Ranch has progressed and the contractor has replaced over a quarter mile of pipeline. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/construction-continues-on-transcanyon-pipeline-replacement-at-phantom-ranch.htm




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rand Canyon News Release Release date: Immediate Contact(s): Emily Davis Phone number(s): 928-638-7609 Date: September 8, 2015 Crews Repairing a Break in the Transcanyon Pipeline Grand Canyon, Ariz. – A break in the Transcanyon Pipelin

Because of a break in the Transcanyon Pipeline, there is no drinking water available on the North Kaibab Trail. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/pipeline-break.htm




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Repairs to Begin Today on a Transcanyon Pipeline Break

Water utility staff at Grand Canyon National Park will begin repairs to a break in the Transcanyon Pipeline. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/september-pipeline-break.htm




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UPDATE: Crews Complete Repairs to Transcanyon Pipeline

Crews finished repairing a break in the Transcanyon Pipeline that occurred north of Phantom Ranch earlier this week. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/pipeline-break-fixed.htm




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Grand Canyon National Park Prepares for Multi-Day Shutdown of the Transcanyon Pipeline

Grand Canyon National Park is in the process of replacing a portion of the Transcanyon Pipeline (TCP) at Phantom Ranch. As part of the construction process, the TCP will be turned off to allow crews to connect the new portions of the pipeline to the existing pipeline. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/temporary-pipeline-shutdown.htm




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Grand Canyon South Rim to Scale Back to Level 1 Basic Water Conservation Measures

Crews repaired one of the pumps at Indian Garden and park managers feel confident that enough water is in storage to scale back to Level 1 basic water conservation measures. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/level-1-water-conservation.htm




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National Park Service Requests Public Review of the Transcanyon Water Distribution Pipeline EA

The National Park Service (NPS) is seeking public comment on the Transcanyon Water Distribution Pipeline (Pipeline) Environmental Assessment (EA). Public comments will be accepted for a 30-day period from today, Wednesday, October 10 through Saturday, November 10, 2018. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/national-park-service-requests-public-review-of-the-transcanyon-water-distribution-pipeline-ea.htm




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Finding of No Significant Impact signed for the Transcanyon Water Distribution Pipeline project in Grand Canyon National Park

Finding of No Significant Impact signed for the Transcanyon Water Distribution Pipeline project in Grand Canyon National Park. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/finding-of-no-significant-impact-for-transcanyon-waterline.htm




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Ikes Fire Moves Across Landscape As Containment Increases

The Ikes Fire is approximately 3,289 acres, 42% contained, and has 89 resources assigned. The natural caused lightning fire is being utilized to fulfill its natural role within a fire-dependent ecosystem. The lightning-caused wildfire is actively burning within a 7,785-acre planning area. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/ikes-fire-moves-across-landscape-as-containment-increases-20190816.htm




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N95 Scarf Filters the Air Around You – With Fashionable Sustainable Solution for Personal Protection

Thes plush scarves and face masks were designed to block out 95% of common contaminants that pose health risks—and 99% of germs that cause colds or flu.

The post N95 Scarf Filters the Air Around You – With Fashionable Sustainable Solution for Personal Protection appeared first on Good News Network.




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Roads In Landscape Modeling: A Case Study of A Road Data Layer and Use In The Interior Northwest Landscape Analysis System

Roads are important ecological features of forest landscapes, but their cause-andeffect relationships with other ecosystem components are only recently becoming included in integrated landscape analyses. Simulation models can help us to understand how forested landscapes respond over time to disturbance and socioeconomic factors, and potentially to address the important role roads play in these processes.




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Polishing the prism: improving wildfire mitigation planning by coupling landscape and social dimensions

Effectively addressing wildfire risk to communities on large multi-owner landscapes requires an understanding of the biophysical factors that influence risk, such as fuel loads, topography, and weather, and social factors such as the capacity and willingness for communities to engage in fire-mitigation activities.




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Mapping the future: U.S. exposure to multiple landscape stressors

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.




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Of moss and men: Using moss as a bioindicator of toxic heavy metals at the city scale

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.




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Characteristics of remnant old-growth forests in the northern Coast Range of Oregon and comparison to surrounding landscapes.

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.




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CSS play - Scan and Magnify an Image

Enlarging a section of a smaller image by vertically scanning the smaller image.




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CSSplay - CSS 'filter' grayscale

Two methods of implementing a change of image from grayscale to color.




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Public acceptance of disturbance-based forest management: a study of the Blue River Landscape Strategy in the Central Cascades Adaptive Management Area.

This report examines public perspectives on disturbance-based management conducted in the central Cascade Range in Oregon as part of the Blue River Landscape Strategy.




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EPISODE 1—SCARRED FOR LIFE: WHAT TREE RINGS CAN REVEAL ABOUT FIRE HISTORY

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)




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Costs of Landscape Silviculture For Fire and Habitat Management

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.




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Highways and Habitat: Managing Habitat Connectivity and Landscape Permeability For Wildlife

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.




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Seeing The Bigger Picture: Landscape Silviculture May Offer Compatible Solutions To Conflicting Objectives

Some federal forest managers working in late-successional reserves find themselves in a potential no-win situation. The Northwest Forest Plan requires that the reserves be protected from large-scale natural and human disturbances while simultaneously maintaining older forest habitat.




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Does Wood Slow Down “Sludge Dragons?” The Interaction Between Riparian Zones and Debris Flows In Mountain Landscapes

Conservation measures for aquatic species throughout the Pacific Northwest rely heavily on maintaining forested riparian zones. A key rationale for this strategy is that the presence of standing and downed trees next to streams will provide a continuous source of wood, which is an important structural component of aquatic habitat.




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Large-scale silviculture experiments of western Oregon and Washington

We review 12 large-scale silviculture experiments (LSSEs) in western Washington and Oregon with which the Pacific Northwest Research Station of the USDA Forest Service is substantially involved. We compiled and arrayed information about the LSSEs as a series of matrices in a relational database, which is included on the compact disc published with this report and available online at http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/research/lsse. The LSSEs are both spatially and temporally large scale, with experimental treatment units between 5 and 100 acres and proposed study durations of 20 to 200 years. A defining characteristic of the LSSEs is that a broad range of response variables are measured to characterize the response of forest ecosystems to experimental treatments. We discuss the general value and limitations of the LSSEs and highlight some possible roles that can be played by the LSSEs in addressing management issues emerging at the beginning of the 21st century.




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Evaluation of landscape alternatives for managing oak at Tenalquot Prairie, Washington

In recent years, interest has increased in restoring Oregon white oak (Quercus garryana Dougl. ex Hook.) and prairie landscapes in the Pacific Northwest, especially where elements of historical plant communities are intact. We evaluated the effect of alternative management scenarios on the extent and condition of Oregon white oak, the extent of prairie, and the harvest and standing volumes of Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco) within a 2934-ha portion of Fort Lewis, Washington (named the Tenalquot Planning Area for the purpose of the project). A landscape-level analysis of the scenarios was completed using a geographic information system, a forest growth model (ORGANON), and landscape visualization software (EnVision). The scenarios ranged from no active management to restoration of the historical extent of oak and prairies within the planning area. The results indicate that the window of opportunity for restoring oak and prairie landscapes in the Puget Sound lowlands and other regions is small, and aggressive management is needed to maintain or enhance these landscapes. The project demonstrates the value of landscape level analyses and the use of new technologies for conveying the results of alternative management scenarios.




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Dry forests of the Northeastern Cascades Fire and Fire Surrogate Project site, Mission Creek, Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest

The Fire and Fire Surrogate (FFS) project is a large long-term metastudy established to assess the effectiveness and ecological impacts of burning and fire "surrogates" such as cuttings and mechanical fuel treatments that are used instead of fire, or in combination with fire, to restore dry forests. One of the 13 national FFS sites is the Northeastern Cascades site at Mission Creek on the Okanogan- Wenatchee National Forest. The study area includes 12 forested stands that encompass a representative range of dry forest conditions in the northeastern Cascade Range. We describe site histories and environmental settings, experimental design, field methods, and quantify the pretreatment composition and structure of vegetation, fuels, soils and soil biota, entomology and pathology, birds, and small mammals that occurred during the 2000 and 2001 field seasons. We also describe the implementation of thinning treatments completed during 2003 and spring burning treatments done during 2004 and 2006.




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Timber volume and aboveground live tree biomass estimations for landscape analyses in the Pacific Northwest.

Timber availability, aboveground tree biomass, and changes in aboveground carbon pools are important consequences of landscape management.




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Development of lichen response indexes using a regional gradient modeling approach for large-scale monitoring of forests.

Development of a regional lichen gradient model from community data is a powerful tool to derive lichen indexes of response to environmental factors for large-scale and long-term monitoring of forest ecosystems. The Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) Program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service includes lichens in its national inventory of forests of the United States, to help monitor the status of forested ecosystems.




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A landscape model for predicting potential natural vegetation of the Olympic Peninsula USA using boundary equations and newly developed environmental variables

A gradient-analysis-based model and grid-based map are presented that use the potential vegetation zone as the object of the model. Several new variables are presented that describe the environmental gradients of the landscape at different scales. Boundary algorithms are conceptualized, and then defined, that describe the environmental boundaries between vegetation zones on the Olympic Peninsula, Washington, USA.