me

‘Eating ramen’: US jobless rate soars

United States unemployment has risen to its highest level since the Great Depression, with tens of millions of jobs wiped out in just one month.




me

President Trump commemorates VE Day

President Donald Trump has joined World War Two veterans at a wreath laying ceremony commemorating the 75th anniversary of the end of World War Two in Europe. President Trump and First Lady Melania paid their respects at a memorial in Washington.




me

Lucky Rooster: Meet NRL’s wonder WAG

SAINTS




me

Russian Camelot wins SA derby

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.




me

Trek America as cycling adapts to COVID-19 world

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




me

‘It’s going to change the game’: Coaches cold on one ref approach

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”.




me

Dudded Flight Centre customers won’t return

Travellers should consider taking legal action to get money back




me

Warning over Aldi deli meat

Supermarket giant Aldi has issued a warning to shoppers after a labelling mistake led to the recall of a deli meat product.




me

7 ways to boost your career from home

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.




me

Why it’s time to ditch how we measure employment

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.




me

Financial consequences of commercial thinning regimes in young-growth Douglas-fir

Commercial thinning in fully-stocked normal Douglas-fir stands of merchantable size is evaluated and compared to the alternatives of leaving stands to grow unthinned or of liquidating them. Comparisons are made in terms of volume production and financial returns.




me

Wood and Coal Cofiring In Interior Alaska: Utilizing Woody Biomass From Wildland Defensible-Space Fire Treatments and Other Sources

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.




me

What is urban environmental stewardship? Constructing a practitioner-derived framework

Agencies and organizations deploy various strategies in response to environmental challenges, including the formulation of policy, programs, and regulations. Citizen-based environmental stewardship is increasingly seen as an innovative and important approach to improving and conserving landscape health. A new research focus on the stewardship of urban natural resources is being launched by the U.S. Forest Service in the Pacific Northwest region. Early scoping efforts are addressing various scales of human systems ranging from individuals to organizations to the entire positive "footprint" of stewardship on the land. This report addresses a fundamental need—to understand and describe civic environmental stewardship in urban settings. Stewardship has been described and defined in diverse ways within a variety of contexts, including the philosophical literature of environmentalism, agency program descriptions, and outreach by sponsoring organizations. Constructing a framework to convey the layered meanings of stewardship will help to focus and guide future research. A cognitive mapping technique was used to elicit responses to the question "What is environmental stewardship?" Semistructured interviews were conducted with representatives of nine Seattle environmental organizations, a group of practitioners who collectively represent over 100 years of experience in the field. Program planners and managers have particularly direct experiences of stewardship. Cognitive mapping enables participants to explore, then display, their particular knowledge and perceptions about an idea or activity. Analysis generated thematic, structural representations of shared concepts. Results show that the practitioners have multilayered perceptions of stewardship, from environmental improvement to community building, and from actions to outcomes. The resulting conceptual framework demonstrates the full extent of stewardship activity and meaning, which can aid stewardship sponsors to improve stewardship programs, leading to better experiences for participants and higher quality outcomes for projects and environments.




me

Environmental persistence of a pathogen used in microbial insect control

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.




me

7 things that really annoy me when I go out for my daily exercise

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




me

The cheat afternoon tea you can create at home that the kids will love too

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




me

Asda, Tesco and Sainsbury's customers share the worst substitutes they've had on their online shop

Have you had any that are worse?




me

Two maternity hubs open in Surrey so women have same midwife through antenatal and birth

There are two new sites, one in Cranleigh and the other in Farnham




me

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.




me

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.




me

River food webs: Incorporating nature’s invisible fabric into river management

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.




me

A fuller picture: The building blocks of a 3-dimensional natural resource inventory

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.




me

The Island Research Natural Area: guidebook supplement 35.

This guidebook describes The Island Research Natural Area, an 84-ha (208-ac) tract established to represent examples of the western juniper/big sagebrush/bluebunch wheatgrass (Juniperus occidentalis/Artemisia tridentata/Pseudoroegneria spicata), and the western juniper/big sagebrush-antelope bitterbrush/bluebunch wheatgrass (Juniperus occidentalis/Artemisia tridentata-Purshia tridentata/Pseudoroegneria spicata) plant associations.




me

Horse Ridge Research Natural Area: guidebook supplement 37.

This guidebook describes Horse Ridge Research Natural Area, a 243-ha (600-ac) tract established to represent an example of the western juniper/big sagebrush/ threadleaf sedge (Juniperus occidentalis/Artemisia tridentata/Carex filifolia) plant association.




me

Stereo photo series for quantifying natural fuels. Volume XII: Post-hurricane fuels in forests of the Southeast United States.

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.




me

Float left variable width dropdown menus - CENTERED!!

At last a stable cross browser method of centering a variable width float left dropdown menu.




me

Centering single level menus - revisited

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




me

Vertical concertina with scrolling sub menus

Tree Frog menu revised to have scrolling sub menu lists to save space.




me

Dropline menu with horizontal scrolling images

A dropline menu which uses sliding doors tabs for the top level and a horizontal scrolling dropline which has images and caption.




me

Professional Any Width flyout menu

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




me

Skeleton menu version 4

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.




me

IE6 select box bug - iframe shim fix

Applying the iframe shim fix to the variable width dropdown/flyout menu system. Using expressions to add the iframe and styling.




me

Professional Any Width flyout menu with over run

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




me

Professional drop table menu

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




me

Centering unknown width horizontal menus - revisited

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.




me

Professional dropdown flyout left/right menu

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




me

Photograph gallery using the 'object' element

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




me

Professional anywidth centered dropdown menu

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




me

Professional anywidth centered dropline menu

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




me

Professional anywidth centered dropdown/flyout menu

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.




me

A mixed gallery using the 'object' element

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.




me

A Dropline, Dropdown and two level Flyout menu

A version 2 of the dropline, dropdown and flyout hybrid menu.




me

An anywidth pullup, flyout menu

An anywidth menu with the top level centered and the sub menus as wide as required with pullup and flyout left/right.




me

A Professional droplist menu

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.




me

A basic anywidth flyout menu

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.




me

A droplist menu with a sublist feature

A previous professional droplist menu with the additional feature of a dropline heading with droplists giving extra lists within the same dropdown.




me

A droplist menu with top level images and text/links

A droplist menu using top level blocks containing images with text and links.




me

A CSS Fisheye Image Menu

A CSS only version of the popular javascript dynamic menu.




me

A CSS Fisheye Text Menu

A similar menu to the previous image version, but this time using expanding text on mouseover.




me

A CSS Fisheye Image Menu version 2

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