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Deforestation may have far greater consequences for climate change in some soils than in others, according to new research led by Yale University scientists -- a finding that could provide critical insights into which ecosystems must be managed with extra care because they are vulnerable to biodiversity loss and which ecosystems are more resilient to widespread tree removal.

In a comprehensive analysis of soil collected from 11 distinct U.S. regions, from Hawaii to northern Alaska, researchers found that the extent to which deforestation disturbs underground microbial communities that regulate the loss of carbon into the atmosphere depends almost exclusively on the texture of the soil. The results were published in the journal Global Change Biology.

"We were astonished that biodiversity changes were so strongly affected by soil texture and that it was such an overriding factor," said Thomas Crowther, a postdoctoral fellow at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and lead author of the study. "Texture overrode the effects of all the other variables that we thought might be important, including temperature, moisture, nutrient concentrations, and soil pH."

The study is a collaboration among Yale researchers and colleagues at the University of Boulder, Colorado and the University of Kentucky.

A serious consequence of deforestation is extensive loss of carbon from the soil, a process regulated by subterranean microbial diversity. Drastic changes to the microbial community are expected to allow more CO2 to escape into the atmosphere, with the potential to exaggerate global warming.

Specifically, the researchers found that deforestation dramatically alters microbial communities in sandy soils, but has minimal effects in muddy, clay-like soils, even after extensive tree removal.

According to the researchers, particles in fine, clay-like soil seem to have a larger surface area to bind nutrients and water. This capacity might buffer soil microbes against the disturbance of forest removal, they said. In contrast, sandy soils have larger particles with less surface area, retaining fewer nutrients and less organic matter.

"If you disrupt the community in a sandy soil, all of the nutrients the microbes rely on for food are leached away: they're lost into the atmosphere, lost into rivers, lost through rain," Crowther said. "But in clay-like soil, you can cut down the forest and the nutrients remain trapped tightly in the muddy clay."

The researchers also examined how the effects of deforestation on microbial biodiversity change over time. Contrary to their expectations, they found no correlation, even over the course of 200 years.

"The effects are consistent, no matter how long ago deforestation happened," Crowther said. "In a clay soil, you cut down the forest and the nutrients are retained for long periods of time and the community doesn't change. Whereas in a sandy soil, you cut down a forest and the community changes dramatically within only a couple of years."

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Deforestation of sandy soils a greater climate threat

By Laura Urseny

lurseny@chicoer.com @LauraUrseny on Twitter

Chico >> While it approved the removal of several trees from a north Chico neighborhood, the Bidwell Park and Playground Commission said no to another property owner in a different part of town who said her tree was causing problems.

The owner of a house on Bloomington Avenue in east Chico asked for the city's permission to remove a shingle oak in front of her house. She was willing to pay for the cost of removing and replacing the tree. In a letter to the commission, she said as a single mother of two, she found the responsibilities of taking care of the tree too much, along with her family duties. The Bloomington tree is planted in the city right-of-way, next to the street.

The Park Commission found none of the criteria to grant the removal on Monday.

While the homeowner cited leaves that held on past the end of the city's leaf collection program and irritating litter, the city bases removal decisions on reasons like roots breaking sidewalks or safety issues like dropping limbs.

Those issues were among the reasons that several residents on Cromwell Drive and Grafton Park got Park Commission approval to remove their city-owned trees, which were a different species yarwood sycamores.

Parks Manager Dan Efseaff said he is still working on a programmatic permit that would allow the easier removal of identified bothersome trees like the yarwood sycamore. The proposed permit would allow the Park Department to approve tree removal without going to the commission. The yarwood sycamore has been identified as a problem tree, but not the shingle oak.

Park commissioners and members of the public who inspected the tree said it was an attractive, healthy tree. The applicant did not speak at Monday's meeting.

In other news, the Park Commission gave its thanks to Omega Nu professional sorority which gave $1,000 to the Caper Acre playground renovation.

Excerpt from:
Shingle oak doesn't make the cut

Associated Press

This Monday, March 31, 2014 photo provided by Allegheny Health Network shows an X-ray of a chain saw blade embedded in the neck of a patient, at Allegheny General Hospital, in Pittsburgh. James Valentine, a tree trimmer, was in a tree on Monday afternoon when he was struck in the neck by the saw. Another worker helped him down, and his co-workers left the saw in place to try to limit the bleeding. Valentine had emergency surgery and is recovering. AP

PITTSBURGH A tree trimmer is recovering after he was rushed to a hospital with a chain saw blade embedded in his neck.

James Valentine was in a tree on Monday afternoon when he was struck in the neck by the chain saw. Another worker helped him down, and his co-workers left the saw in place to try to limit the bleeding.

Valentine had emergency surgery. Doctors say the saw missed major arteries and, instead, cut into muscle. A hospital released an X-ray Tuesday showing the saw still in the 21-year-olds neck.

Valentine works for a tree removal service. Its owner, Dominic Migliozzi, calls the rescue amazing.

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What would Princeton be without its trees? The blossoming pear trees on Witherspoon Street signal spring for many residents. Street trees provide shelter and shade that can save homeowners on air-conditioning and heating costs.

According to Princetons Shade Tree Commission (STC), the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that the net cooling effect of a young, healthy tree is equivalent to 10 room-size air conditioners operating 20 hours a day. And if that were not enough, trees bring birdsong, give off oxygen, absorb carbon dioxide and pollutants, reduce storm runoff and the possibility of flooding.

The job of protecting and managing the towns trees is overseen by the volunteers of the STC, working closely with municipal arborist Greg ONeil.

The seven-member commission (with two alternates), appointed by the mayor and assisted by one municipal employee, has just announced the completion of an inventory of Princetons street trees. The inventory database, which can be consulted on the STCs still-under-construction website (www.pbshadetree.org) will serve as a tool for Mr. ONeil and inform decisions about tree maintenance, removal, and new plantings. It is also open to residents curious about the trees on the streets where they live.

Anyone who has wondered what type of tree that magnificent specimen across the street is can go to the Shade Tree website and learn not only what species it is, but also its name, caliper, and estimated annual benefit, said STC member Janet Stern. Accompanying every tree is a Google map showing the site where the tree is located and an image of the tree.

In addition to the location of each tree within the public right-of-way, the database provides size, condition, hazard rating, and maintenance needs. As yet, the database is confined to the street trees and does not include municipal parks and open space, trees on private property, or on state or county roads.

According to STC Chair Sharon Ainsworth, Princeton has a total of 18,558 street trees and at least 179 different species. The top ten species are in order of percentage: Ash (white & green) 10.97, Red Maple 9.6, White Pine 5.11, Pin Oak 4.43, Norway Maple 4.4, London Plane 4.15, Sugar Maple 4.11, Tulip Poplar 3.32, Norway Spruce 3.24, and Eastern Hemlock 3.19.

Diversity of species is important, said Ms. Ainsworth, because too heavy a reliance on a single species could have significant consequences should some disease or insect problem arise. In neighboring states like Pennsylvania, the Emerald Ash Borer (EAB) is devastating the Ash tree population. To date the EAB hasnt been found in New Jersey but if it does cross the river, it would create significant management challenges, said the trained ornamental horticulturist who came to STC after serving with the New Jersey Department of Agriculture and as political liaison for Rutgers University for a combined period of 25 years.

As Ms. Ainsworth reports, most of Princetons street trees are deciduous and, as yet, it is too early to assess the full impact of this years winter storms. Although structural damage, like broken limbs, is already apparent, damage to a trees overall health, for example from salt application to roads and sidewalks or from the severe cold, will take longer to become evident.

Besides the new database, the STC website offers advice, including the best way to mulch a tree: mulch should be spread like a donut around the tree rather than packed up like a volcano; it should never be allowed to touch the trees bark, or piled higher than 3 to 4 inches; mulch that is too deep can promote fungal and bacterial diseases and wood chips or other coarse organic material are best.

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Princetons Shade Tree Commission Unveils New Database for Street Trees

In a world with so much stuff, from phones and chargers to cameras and even the dog, it's hard to keep tabs on all of your valuables.

There's hurried cab rides and so-called friends and family who like to "borrow" your stuff without asking, only to have said stuff go missing. Or maybe you're the forgetful type who's prone to "misplacing" your keys and wallet. Whatever the case, you have no idea where it might be, you need it now and you can't find it.

Thankfully there are a slew of devices that can help to locate your lost items. These small gadgets and apps work by affixing a GPS-like tracker to objects like laptops, handbags and bikes, which makes it easy to find them if you ever lose track of where they are.

We've rounded up seven great tracking gadgets with alternative options to help you monitor your essentials and prevent you from actually losing your mind.

Small but effective

You can't get back all of those lost keys, wallets and remote controllers that have mysteriously vanished over the years, but thanks to a new device called Tile, you may never lose anything else again. Tile can either be stuck to objects or affixed with a key ring and lets you track items you often misplace using a companion app for iOS.

The slim and waterproof tracking device will show you the last known location of the item on a map as well as a radar style view of how far away you are from it, as long as you're within the 50-150 foot range. A tiny speaker inside each Tile emits a little beep, helping you zero-in for the find once you're close by, with a "warmer, warmer"-style direction to the object.

One thing that sets this device apart from the many others on this list is that the Tile iPhone app works via crowd-sourcing. Tiles communicate with one another, effectively having other users helping you find what you've lost. For example, when someone else who uses the app walks past your lost Tile-touting object, the location of your Tile is updated for you, which makes it far more invaluable than a device on its own, especially if it's been stolen.

Price: You can pre-order from the Tile website for shipment in June for $19.95/Tile.

StrickR to me

Read more here:
Round Up: 7 gadgets to keep track of the things that matter most to you

Wednesday, April 2, 2014 Sunday ferry service will be impacted by ongoing renovations to the Alderney Ferry Terminal in Dartmouth in the coming weeks.

The ferry will not be running on Sundays in order to complete tile work and overhead work on the ferry ramp. The work will start on Sunday, April 6 and is anticipated to run on consecutive Sundays for approximately 4 weeks.

During this time, Metro Transit will provide bus shuttles between Alderney and Water Street running on the same schedule as the ferry, as an alternate to the ferry. Regular fare will be charged for this shuttle service.

These ongoing renovations to the Alderney Ferry Terminal are intended to improve traffic flow, increase the attractiveness of the terminal space, and improve overall customer experience and satisfaction. The work includes:

HRM and Metro Transit apologize in advance for any inconvenience this construction may cause.

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Alderney Ferry Terminal Renovations, Impact to Sunday Service

Michael Freeman Rafael Guastavinos tile vaulting for the now-closed City Hall subway station, inaugurated in 1904

If all politics is local, then much architectural history is also a neighborhood matter. Thus I harbor an abiding personal fondness for the ingenious structural creations of the Spanish migr master builder Rafael Guastavino (18421908). Time and again in old New York buildings, its a delight to lift up your eyes and unexpectedly find Guastavinos distinctive herringbone terracotta tile patterns overhead.

Many of those locales are straightforwardly utilitarian, such as Bridgemarket, a supermarket inside the Manhattan base of the Queensboro Bridge. Ive enjoyed countless lunches at the Guastavino-vaulted Oyster Bar, in Warren & Wetmore and Reed & Stems Grand Central Terminal of 19101913. (Not least among that restaurants pleasures is overhearing crystal-clear snatches of conversation projected across the noisy space through an uncanny whispering-gallery effect.)

And one of my favorite Gotham architectural pleasures is to stand at the front window of the downtown number 6 subway between the Canal Street and Brooklyn BridgeCity Hall stops to catch a fugitive glimpse of a phantom Guastavino masterpiece. His gorgeously tiled IRT City Hall station, inaugurated in 1904 as the southern terminus of Manhattans first underground mass transit line, has been closed to the public since 1945, but remains eerily well-preserved, testimony to the materials exceptional durability.

Most memorably to me, though, is having been married beneath the majestic ninety-one-foot-high Guastavino dome of I.N. Phelps Stokess St. Pauls Chapel of 19041907 at Columbia University. A crucial Guastavino connection occurred in that same space in 1961, when the art historian George R, Collins (my wife Rosemarie Haag Bletters dissertation adviser), had an epiphany that changed how architecture scholars understand a crucial chapter in the history of modern design.

During a memorial service in the campus church, Collins was suddenly struck by how closely its exposed terracotta tile vaulting resembled the work of Antoni Gaud, the maverick Catalan architectural genius on whom he was the leading authority. In fact, Gaud, who was a decade younger, had gone to the same Barcelona technical college as Guastavino, and it appears that Guastavino perfected the industrialized crafting of strong, thin, curving surfaces that Gaud would take to such memorable extremes in his unconventional biomorphic architecture.

Not only did Collins thereby establish a link between Guastavino and Gaud, but when the Guastavino family business folded in 1962 and its records were about to be discarded, he secured them for his schools Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, an invaluable act of cultural salvage. The Guastavino offices meticulous working drawings allow a full understanding of a structural methodology that would otherwise be lost to us today. In fact, many large architectural firms for whom the Guastavinos worked would confidently leave portions of their own blueprints blank but labeled Guastavino here to indicate that vaults would be skillfully filled in by their trusted collaborator.

This long overlooked inventor and his New York-and-Boston-based firm are now the subject of Palaces for the People: Guastavino and the Art of Structural Tile, a fascinating exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York curated by G. Martin Moeller Jr. of the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. and the MIT engineering professor John Ochsendorf, author of the lucidly written and beautifully illustrated Guastavino Vaulting: The Art of Structural Tile. The MCNYs compact display, which occupies a single large gallery, includes drawings, photographs, plans, tile fragments, and an illuminating video that explains the Guastavinos proprietary masonry techniques.

In New York City alone, there are no fewer than two hundred fifty examples of Guastavinos quintessential contributionthe lightweight, low-tech, long-span vaulting technique that systematized and modernized a late-medieval masonry tradition based on terracotta tiles. Guastavino introduced his refinement of that age-old building method (which originated in Islamic practices brought to Spain by Moorish invaders) just when iron and masonry were giving way to steel and concrete as the favored structural materials of the industrialized world.

Born in Valencia, where the technology he expanded upon was devised in the late fourteenth century, Guastavino scored a youthful triumph with his Batll textile factory of 1871 in Barcelona. (The large and prosperous Batll family commissioned a number of other noteworthy buildings in that booming manufacturing city, including Gauds most celebrated residence, his dragon-like Casa Batll of 19041906.)

Continue reading here:
The Master of Fireproof Modernism

Kyle Russell/Business Insider

Windows leader Terry Myerson

At today's Build conference, Microsoft announced a number of changes that it hopes will improve the user experience for those using the Windows 8operating system on laptops and desktops.

The biggest change is that computers with keyboards will launch in a traditional desktop-computing environment, instead of the tile-based look Microsoft had been pushing with Windows 8.

This is an acknowledgment that Microsoft's attempt to reimagine Windows in a more tablet-like interface did not work.

The tile-based look of Windows 8 was baffling to people who grew up using Windows-based PCs. It was a big turn-off and contributed to a decline in PC sales.

After users install the updates rolling out today, Windows 8.1 will give current laptop and desktop users options to enable the above features. The company says it won't force anything new on people that they might not want.

On new products from Microsoft's licensees, however, laptops and desktops (anything with a keyboard and mouse or trackpad) will automatically default to having these new settings turned on.

Back in February, Microsoft executive Joe Belfiore said that most users who have a touch-screen laptop prefer the tile interface in Windows 8.He also said that users without touchscreens tended to prefer the Windows 7-style desktop environment.

With sales of traditional PCs falling bydouble-digit percentages,Microsoft is doing anything it can to bolster its position.

The rest is here:
Microsoft Just Killed The Tile-Based Look Of Windows 8 For Laptops (MSFT)

Published: Wednesday, April 2, 2014, 12:01a.m. Updated 20 hours ago

Gene Massaro began working for his father and uncle as a stonemason, helping on such iconic projects as the fountain at Point State Park. But he made his mark moving the family business from stone work to tile.

He thought there was more business to interior flooring as opposed to exterior stonemasonry, said Jon O'Brien, spokesman for the Master Builders' Association in Green Tree. He loved his trade. His attention to detail was second to none.

Eugene Gene J. Massaro died on Monday, March 31, 2014, at his home in Monroeville. He was 82.

He was born to Mary and Joseph Massaro and grew up in Lincoln-Larimer. He played football for Westinghouse High School and the University of Louisville and served in the Army during the Korean War.

He started working in the family business, Massaro Brothers, in 1955 and was a member of Bricklayers Local 9 ever since. He helped build St. Raphael Church in Morningside and worked on projects for the University of Pittsburgh and Duquesne University. In 1974, he became president of Massaro Brothers, which eventually became Massaro Industries. He helped it grow into one of the largest tile contractors in Western Pennsylvania.

Recent projects include the flooring tile at UPMC East in Monroeville, Bethel Park High School and HYATT house Pittsburgh-South Side.

He's highly respected among the construction community, someone you can rely on if you hire the company, O'Brien said. When you look at the floor, it looks amazing. Like many industries, schedules are always important. If he said it was going to be built by that date, it was going to happen.

Mr. Massaro is survived by his wife, Kenita Massaro of Monroeville; his ex-wife, Lucy Massaro; daughters, Patricia Argentieri of Florida, and Nancy Hammill, Mary Jo Massaro and Karen Zavacky, all of Plum; sons, Jim Massaro of Penn Hills and Michael Massaro of California; stepson, Scott Hutsenpiller of Portland, Ore.; brother, Joseph Massaro; 18 grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.

Mr. Massaro was preceded in death by his brother, Gerard Massaro.

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Tile contractors eye for detail earned respect

Rain Bird 32ETI Easy To Install Automatic Sprinkler System
If you are tired of hassling with hose and sprinklers, and getting poor results from manual watering, this new automatic system is a perfect solution. The fi...

By: RainBirdCorp

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Rain Bird 32ETI Easy To Install Automatic Sprinkler System - Video