Rather than opting for the costly and complex process of using stem cells to cure age-related macular degeneration, scientists used skin cells.

The post Irreversible No Longer: Blind Mice See Again Thanks To New Method of Synthesizing Lost Cells appeared first on Good News Network.

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.

A plant extract combination of fruits, leaves, and roots seems to help relieve hangover symptoms, reveals new research from BMJ.

The post Drink Made From Fruit and Plant Extracts May Be the Scientifically-Backed Hangover Cure We’ve Been Waiting For appeared first on Good News Network.

Iceland's two whaling companies have cancelled hunting for a second straight year as demand drops and the COVID-19 pandemic poses difficulties.

The post Harpoons Are Silenced: Iceland’s Whaling Boats Spend Second-Straight Season Tied Up in Port appeared first on Good News Network.

The actor who played ‘Gollum’ in The Lord of the Rings, Andy Serkis, will give a LIVE reading of The Hobbit, from cover to cover, for charity May 8.

The post ‘Gollum’ Actor Andy Serkis Plans a Live Reading of ‘The Hobbit’ –There And Back Again– Friday For Charity 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.

NextGen Cup, led by Starbucks and McDonald’s, launched a pilot program to create a green alternative to the 250 billion discard paper coffee cups.

The post Starbucks and McDonald’s Aim to Replace 250 Billion Paper Coffee Cups with Recyclable Alternatives appeared first on Good News Network.

Kroger, which is the largest supermarket chain in the US by revenue, has now given their employees two different bonuses for their work during the pandemic.

The post Hourly Workers at Largest Grocery Chain in US Are All Getting ‘Hero Bonuses’ for Their Service Amid COVID-19 appeared first on Good News Network.

Though it’s difficult for food banks to stock this item, nutrient-dense milk is one of the most-often requested items. Now, in these critical times, the Kroger grocery store chain has ramped-up its Dairy Rescue Program, one that takes donated excess raw milk normally sold to restaurants or hotels, which is now going to waste, and […]

The post Kroger Buys and Redirects Dairy Farmers’ Excess Milk, Sending 50,000 Gallons Per Month to Food Banks appeared first on Good News Network.

Cainer daily horoscopes

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.

Thousands of people have flocked to shopping malls and supermarkets across Adelaide, raising concerns of growing complacency over the coronavirus pandemic.

THE COVID-19 Omnibus (Emergency Measures) Bill 2020 passed.  The legislation “implements a range of temporary emergency measures to support Victorians and continue delivering the services we all rely on”.

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.

There’s been plenty of conspiracy theories to come out of the coronavirus pandemic.

When watching Formula One, it can be easy to forget these drivers are taking their lives in their own hands.

Royal Queensland’s return as Australian PGA host has been locked in for December 3-6 as part of a new wraparound summer season to shake up golf.

Here are some of the negatives I've faced while trying to make use of my daily permitted exercise

While it is not illegal to have a bonfire, some Surrey councils are urging residents not to light them

The popular burger chain has reopened its Guildford branch but is it worth ordering for delivery?

Have you had any that are worse?

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

Alaska’s Arctic tundra is one of the most rapidly warming regions in the world. For years, scientists have been working to interpret the effects of its changing climate and determine what these changes may mean for the rest of the planet. Coarse-scale satellite imagery of much of this region shows the tundra is becoming greener. This has been widely attributed to shrub expansion.

Wildfires consume existing forest fuels but also leave behind dead shrubs and trees that become fuel to future wildfires. Harvesting firekilled trees is sometimes proposed as an economical approach for reducing future fuels and wildfire severity. Postfire logging, however, is controversial. Some question its fuel reduction benefits and its ecological impacts.

This publication describes the bird communities of major mainland rivers of southeast Alaska and is based on a review of all known relevant studies as well as recent fieldwork. We synthesized information on the composition, structure, and habitat relationships of bird communities at 11 major mainland rivers. Information on current management concerns and research needs are also included.

A click gallery using a sliding set of thumbnail images to navigate. The large image is permanently on screen until another image is chosen EVEN when refreshing the page. With descriptive text and linking option.

The previous gallery but with the thumbnails arranged vertically instead of horizontal.

A simple anywidth CSS flyout menu with an easy method of having a breadcrumb trail.

A responsive 'curtains' layout using a litle javascript. Working in all browsers and OS including IE7+ and Android

A second responsive 'curtains' layout using a litle javascript, this time working in the opposite direction. Suitable all browsers and OS including IE7+, Android and windows 8 smartphones

A CSS only method of containing a responsive foreground image in a fullscreen browser window without @media queries.

A CSS only responsive foreground image fullscreen slideshow with 'cover' and 'contain' images and no @media queries.

How to have thumbnail images on a single responsive 'Swiper' slideshow.

A driver of a car collided with a bridge barrier and two lorries

Wall's said internal quality checks have shown they may contain "very small fragments of metal"

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.

Increasing concern over the management and harvest of special forest products (SFP) from national forest lands has led to the development of new Forest Service policy directives.

In the mid-1990s, forest managers on the Malheur National Forest were concerned about their prescribed fire program. Although they have only a few weeks of acceptable conditions available in the spring and fall, they were worried that spring-season prescribed burning might be exacerbating black stain root disease and having negative effects on understory plants.

Decayed wood plays many critical roles in forest ecosystems. Standing dead trees, called snags, provide habitat for a suite of wildlife, including several species of birds, insects, bats, and other mammals. Down wood provides wildlife habitat and performs ecosystem services such as releasing humus, nitrogen, and phosphorus into the forest soil, storing pockets of moisture, and stabilizing soil on slopes. Root wads, tree stumps, hollow trees, and partially dead trees also perform important ecological roles as wildlife habitats and sources of soil organic matter. DecAID Advisor is an on-line decision-aiding system to help managers plan for wood decay elements for biodiversity in forests of Washington and Oregon. DecAID Advisor is a statistical "meta-analysis" and synthesis of a vast amount of wildlife and inventory data. It does not make decisions for managers, but instead, DecAID Advisor advises on size and amount of snags, down wood, and other wood decay elements to meet management objectives and to help set those objectives by forest type and structural condition class. It is the first decision-aiding tool of its kind, given its scope of species, inventory data, and topics provided.

The Pacific Northwest is one of the world's major timber-producing regions, and its capacity to produce wood on a sustained-yield basis is widely recognized. Nonetheless, there has been increasing public interest in assuring that forests are being sustainably managed, as well as a desire by landowners to demonstrate their commitment to responsible stewardship.

The Community Socioeconomic Information System (CSIS) is a tool that allows users to retrieve 1990 and 2000 U.S. census data to examine conditions and trends for communities in western Washington, western Oregon, and northern California. The tool includes socioeconomic data for 1,314 communities in the entire region, including incorporated and unincorporated places. The tool delivers socioeconomic data using mapping and database features. In addition to providing data for one community, the tool produces community-level data at a variety of scales, including communities in areas surrounding Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands, all communities in the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) region, and communities within planning provinces within the NWFP region. One feature allows users to customize community data by creating boundaries and socioeconomic data for group of selected communities. The CSIS tool was designated to increase the usefulness of socioeconomic information at the small scale. Typically community socioeconomic assessments use U.S. census designations called census places. However, census places only represent a portion of the rural population. The CSIS uses a smaller unit of analysis (block groups) that we have aggregated to represent contiguous communities across the landscape, thereby representing the entire population. Community data can be printed as reports with graphs and tables, queried within an Access database, mapped and queried as geographic information system (GIS) data within ArcExplorer (a free GIS software included), exported as a table for use in Excel, or exported as GIS data for use in ArcGIS. The tool has features that allow users to locate communities by county or state and become familiar with local geography. The CSIS includes GIS data, such as major land ownerships, political boundaries, and physical landscape features. Applications produce maps that can be printed for specific communities showing community boundaries, water features, roads, metropolitan areas, community population centers, public land ownership, census places, planning provinces, counties, and state boundaries. Or, using the spatial data provided on the CD and ArcExplorer, users can produce custom maps.

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.

The importance to society of environmental services, provided by forest ecosystems, has significantly increased during the last few decades. A growing global concern with the deterioration of forests, beginning perhaps most noticeably in the 1980s, has led to an increasing public awareness of the environmental, cultural, economic, and social values that forests provide. Around the world, ideas of sustainable, close-to-nature, and multi-functional forestry have progressively replaced the older perception of forests as only a source for timber. The international impetus to protect and sustainably manage forests has come from global initiatives at management, conservation, and sustainable development related to all types of forests and forestry. A few of the more notable initiatives include: the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, UNCED); regional follow-ups to the Earth Summit such as the Montreal Process and Helsinki Accords; the forest elements of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD); and the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC).

The work described in this report was initiated during the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project (ICBEMP). The ICBEMP produced a broad-scale scientific assessment of ecological, biophysical, social, and economic conditions for the interior Columbia River basin and portions of the Klamath and Great Basins. The broad-scale assessment made extensive use of potential vegetation (PV) information. This report (1) discusses certain concepts and terms as related to PV, (2) describes how a PV framework developed for the broad-scale ICBEMP assessment area was stepped down to the level of a single section in the national hierarchy of terrestrial ecological units, (3) describes how fine-scale potential vegetation types (PVTs) identified for the Blue Mountains section were aggregated into the midscale portion of the PV hierarchy, and (4) describes the PVT composition for each of the midscale hierarchical units (physiognomic class, potential vegetation group, plant association group).

Operational-scale experiments that evaluate the consequences of fire and mechanical "surrogates" for natural disturbance events are essential to better understand strategies for reducing the incidence and severity of wildfire. The national Fire and Fire Surrogate (FFS) study was initiated in 1999 to establish an integrated network of long-term studies designed to evaluate the consequences of using fire and fire surrogate treatments for fuel reduction and forest restoration. Beginning in September2005, four regional workshops were conducted with selected clients to identify effective and efficient means of communicating FFS study findings to users. We used participatory evaluation to design the workshops, collect responses to focused questions and impressions, and summarize the results. We asked four overarching questions: (1) Who needs fuel reduction information? (2) What information do they need? (3) Why do they need it? (4) How can it best be delivered to them? Participants identified key users of FFS science and technology, specific pieces of information that users most desired, and how this information might be applied to resolve fuel reduction and restoration issues. They offered recommendations for improving overall science delivery and specific ideas for improving delivery of FFS study results and information. User groups identified by workshop participants and recommendations for science delivery are then combined in a matrix to form the foundation of a strategic plan for conducting science delivery of FFS study results and information. These potential users, their information needs, and preferred science delivery processes likely have wide applicability to other fire science research.

This guidebook describes the Saddle Bag Mountain Research Natural Area, a 121-ha (300-ac) tract established to represent an old-growth remnant of Pacific silver fir (Abies amabilis) and western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla) forest in the Oregon Coast Range. Pacific silver fir and noble fir (Abies procera) occur as isolated remnants, and both species are approaching the southern limits of their natural range in the Oregon Coast Range.

This guidebook describes the Grass Mountain Research Natural Area, a 377-ha (931-ac) tract in the Oregon Coast Range. The area supports a grass bald complex surrounded by stands dominated by noble fir (Abies procera) and/or Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) in the overstory, and western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla) in the understory. The area also contains a small rock garden plant community along high-elevation ridges, and young Douglas-fir forest that originated from a wildfire. Headwaters of high-elevation, Oregon Coast Range streams are surrounded by noble fir forest and add to the site diversity.

Soil disturbance is a visually apparent result of using heavy equipment to harvest trees. Subsequent consequences for growth of remaining trees, however, are variable and seldom quantified. We measured tree growth 7 and 11 years after thinning of trees in four stands of coast Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var. menziesii (Mirb. Franco)) where soil disturbance was limited by using planned skid trails, usually on dry soils. The three younger stands had responded to nitrogen fertilizer in the 4 years before thinning, but only one stand showed continued response in the subsequent 7- or 11-year period after thinning. The most consistent pattern observed was greater growth of residual trees located next to skid trails. The older stand also showed greater growth in trees located next to skid trails, whereas tillage of skid trails failed to benefit growth of nearby residual trees for the first 7 years after tillage. We conclude that traffic that compacted soil only on one side of residual trees did not reduce growth of nearby trees.

Lichens are highly valued ecological indicators known for their sensitivity to a wide variety of environmental stressors like air quality and climate change. This report summarizes baseline results from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) Lichen Community Indicator covering the first full cycle of data collection (1998-2001, 2003) for Washington, Oregon, and California. During this period, FIA conducted 972 surveys of epiphytic macrolichen communities for monitoring both spatial and long-term temporal trends in forest health. Major research findings are presented with emphasis on lichen biodiversity as well as bioindication of air quality and climate. Considerable effort is devoted to mapping geographic patterns and defining lichen indicator species suitable for estimating air quality and climate.

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.