Horse Racing: In a day full of more great racing, Russian Camelot claimed the honours in the South Australian derby, with a few other shock results along the way.

Aussies are finally looking forward to a return to normality after Prime Minister Scott Morrison unveiled a three-step plan to a COVIDSafe Australia yesterday afternoon.

Hoping your boss quits to play golf and you get their job? Not going to happen. Promotions at work will be few and far between for millennials as older workers refuse to vacate their positions, gumming up the job market.

Cofiring wood and coal at Fairbanks, Alaska, area electrical generation facilities represents an opportunity to use woody biomass from clearings within the borough's wildland-urban interface and from other sources, such as sawmill residues and woody material intended for landfills. Potential benefits of cofiring include air quality improvements, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, market and employment development opportunities, and reduction of municipal wood residues at area landfills. Important issues that must be addressed to enable cofiring include wood chip uniformity and quality, fuel mixing procedures, transportation and wood chip processing costs, infrastructure requirements, and long-term biomass supply. Additional steps in implementing successful cofiring programs could include test burns, an assessment of area biomass supply and treatment needs, and a detailed economic and technical feasibility study. Although Fairbanks North Star Borough is well positioned to use biomass for cofiring at coal burning facilities, long-term cofiring operations would require expansion of biomass sources beyond defensible-space-related clearings alone. Long-term sources could potentially include a range of woody materials including forest harvesting residues, sawmill residues, and municipal wastes.

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.

Production of high-quality water is a vitally important ecosystem service in the largely semiarid interior Columbia River basin (ICRB).

We conducted an experimental study of infection, transmission, and persistence of a nucleopolyhedrovirus (NPV) of Douglas-fir tussock moth (Orgyia pseudotsugata) to better understand mechanisms determining the efficacy of the virus when it is used as a microbial control agent. In a field experiment, we quantified infection rates of larvae exposed to either Tussock Moth Biocontrol-1, the strain currently used for control by the U.S. Forest Service, or a wild-type strain isolated from a natural population. We first allowed each pathogen to decay on experimental branches for 0, 1, or 3 days before allowing uninfected larvae to feed on the branches, and then we fit both a generalized linear model and an epidemiological model of virus transmission to the infection data. Longer decay of the NPV resulted in lower infection rates, but evidence that overall virus transmission differed between wild and pesticide isolates of NPV was weak. The short persistence time of the virus suggests that it does not last long on foliage, in turn suggesting that application of TM Biocontrol-1 must be carefully timed to ensure maximum mortality.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Resource managers have long mapped biophysical forest data. Often lacking, however, is relevant social science data for understanding the variety of human needs a given landscape fulfills.

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.

The marbled murrelet (Brachyramphus marmoratus) is a threatened coastal bird that feeds on fish and nests in old-growth forests. In northwest Washington, murrelet populations are declining despite protections provided by the Northwest Forest Plan.

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.

Applying a simple method of centering single level variable width, float left menus.

A centered dropdown menu, using the latest centering technique, with flyout images

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

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

A second version of the tabbed pages with a default page open on entry.

A click version of the Light Box for all browsers except Safari and Chrome

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

A flyout version of the 'any width' dropdown menu.

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.

The fourth in the skeleton menu series restyled to use recent developments to make it work in all versions if IE from IE5.5 to IE8.

A second 'any width' flyout menu, this time with an over run area and gapping between menu items.

A dropdown menu that uses a table to hold the dropdown information.

After much searching of the web and with the arrival of IE8, I now have a method of positioning horizontal menus of unknown width left / center / right in the containing element.

A dropdown menu with any width sub menus and the option of left or right dropdown/flyouts.

A single level dropdown menu with multi-columns, headings and curved corners using sliding doors techniques for the dropdowns.

A photograph gallery using just html/css to switch the contents of an 'object' for browsers that understand and an iframe alternative for IE.

A single level dropdown anywidth menu with dropdown that are centered beneath the top level links.

A dropline anywidth menu with droplines that are centered beneath the top level links which are also centered.

A multi level dropdown flyout anywidth menu with dropdown and flyouts that are centered beneath the top level links, with the ability to have a left or right flyout.

A mixed gallery using just html/css to switch the contents of an 'object'. The content can be text, images, shockwave/flash and quicktime movie.

A droplist menu with method of setting the number of columns in each list and the option of a full width bottom bar for extra linking.

A version of my mini tabbed pages with the ability to have a tab open on page entry.

As promised, the previous filmstrip gallery rotated into a vertical format with a few enhancements.

Back to basics to show how to use the latest techniques to produce a flyout menu with the widths of the sub levels automatically sized to fit the longest text.

Another version of the CSS only fisheye menu, this time with expanding images and associated text.

Zooming a single image on hover.

A simple method of replacing all text with images in a single level dropdown menu with rollover.

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

Using the no hacks dropdown system and a little extra styling to produce a dropdown button menu with highlight on hover.

A practical use of CSS play's 'Clickbox'. A CSS only version of Lightbox that now works in Safari(PC) and Google Chrome.

Using CSS3 'general sibling' selector problems when using :hover in Safari and Chrome

Using Microsoft filter to produce a drop shadow for all versions of IE to match the css3 shadows of Firefox etc.

Mapping of irregular shapes using just css. With hover effect and popup information panel.