SACRAMENTO - The Regional Recycling Group says more residential waste is created during the holiday season than at any other time of the year, so residents in the Sacramento County area are urged to to recycle as much as possible.

Most residents can shed a few pounds by recycling all of their holiday waste paper such as greeting cards, gift boxes and wrapping paper, in their curbside mixed recycling program. Phone books and calendars are also accepted in the mixed recycling container.

"The amount of garbage sent to the landfill increases dramatically during the holiday season," said Doug Ebanks of Sacramento County's Department of Waste Management and Recycling. "We can change the traditional holiday habit of tearing open presents and throwing away wrapping paper and cardboard.

 It's a rare event -- a total eclipse of the moon. And even rarer is an eclipse that take place during the winter solstice on December 20. It meant that the moon was glowing high in the sky during the eclipse overnight. 

SLIDESHOW: Your lunar eclipse photos

SACRAMENTO -- California ReLeaf announced today the release of a statewide Arbor Week poster contest for students in third to fifth grades. Students are asked to create original artwork based on the theme “Trees Are Worth It”. Submissions are due to California ReLeaf by February 1, 2011.

In addition to the poster contest rules, educators can download a packet that includes three lesson plans that focus on the value of trees, community benefits of trees, and  jobs in the urban and community forestry field. The full packet including lesson plans and poster contest rules can be downloaded at www.californiareleaf.org/programs/arborweek.

If you’re a Twitter user who is discouraged by the lack of retweet and reply action happening… you’re not alone.

According to Sysomos, a maker of social media analysis tools who looked at 1.2 billion tweets over a two-month period, 71% of all tweets produce no reaction in the form of replies or retweets. In fact, most replies and retweets happen in the first hour after a tweet has been published — 96.9% of replies and 92.4% of retweets happen within those first 60 minutes. There’s only a 5.97% chance for getting a retweet in or after the third hour, and just a 2.22% likelihood you’ll garner a reply in that time.

Sysomos’ findings also show that retweets are an especially rare commodity: only 6% of all tweets produce a retweet. And, even if you’re lucky enough to get a response, 85% of tweets only get one.