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The Greater Cincinnati Energy Alliance (Energy Alliance) is a nonprofit economic development agency dedicated to helping Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky communities reduce energy consumption. The Energy Alliance has launched programs to educate homeowners, commercial property owners, and nonprofit organizations about energy efficiency opportunities they can use to drive energy use reductions and financial savings, while extending significant focus to creating/retaining jobs through these programs. The mission of the Energy Alliance is based on the premise that investment in energy efficiency can lead to transformative economic development in a region. With support from seven municipalities, the Energy Alliance began operation in early 2010 and has been among the fastest growing nonprofit organizations in the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky area. The Energy Alliance offers two programs endorsed by the Department of Energy: the Home Performance with ENERGY STAR® Program for homeowners and the Better Buildings Performance Program for commercial entities. Both programs couple expert guidance, project management, and education in energy efficiency best practices with incentives and innovative energy efficiency financing to help building owners effectively invest in the energy efficiency, comfort, health, longevity, and environmental impact of their residential or commercial buildings. The Energy Alliance has raised over $23 million ofmore » public and private capital to build a robust market for energy efficiency investment. Of the $23 million, $17 million was a direct grant from the Department of Energy Better Buildings Neighborhood Program (BBNP). The organization’s investments in energy efficiency projects in the residential and commercial sector have led to well over $50 million in direct economic activity and created over 375,000 hours of labor created or retained. In addition, over 250 workers have been trained through the Building Performance Training Center, a program that was developed and funded by the Energy Alliance and housed at Cincinnati State Technical and Community College. Nearly 100 residential and commercial contractors currently participate in the Energy Alliance’s two major programs, which have together served over 2,800 residential and 100 commercial customers. Additionally, the Energy Alliance established loan programs for homeowners, nonprofits and commercial businesses. The GC-HELP program was established to provide up to ten year low interest, unsecured loans to homeowners to cover the energy efficiency products they purchased through the Energy Alliance approved contractor base. To date the Energy Alliance has financed over $1 million in energy efficiency loans for homeowners, without any loans written off. The nonprofit business community is offered five year, fixed-interest rate loans through the Building Communities Loan Fund of $250,000. Additionally, the Energy Alliance has developed GC-PACE, a commercial financing tool that enables buildings owners to finance their energy upgrades through voluntary property assessments deploying low-interest extended-term capital from the bond market. The Energy Alliance and its partners are actively evaluating additional market-based financing solutions.« less

CVN 78 was launched on November 17, 2013. CVN 78 weighed 77,000 tons at launch and was 70% complete the highest levels attained in aircraft carrier new construction. In addition, all tanks and voids were final coated, all Dual Band Radar (DBR) arrays were installed and 6.1 million of 9.5 million feet of electrical cable were pulled by launch. This unprecedented level of completeness has best prepared the ship for the post-launch test program. Material variance factors such as a shrinking supplier base, cost increases for developmental components, and CVN 78 unique items have been contained. As of December 2013, material availability on the waterfront improved and 95% of all material was procured. Further changes to material variance are not anticipated. Previously reported labor factors associated with use of thinner steels, blast and coat, and unit erection are no longer having a negative effect on labor variance Shipbuilder ability to maintain work package completion rates and to attain aggressive yet achievable goals for compartment outfitting, system turn-over and compartment turn-over will be a significant contributor to remaining cost and schedule performance. However, the principal risk remaining on the CVN 78 is the Shipboard test program and risks associated with first time shipboard operation of new systems and components. To mitigate this risk, the program is executing multiple land based test programs to reduce technical risk prior to shipboard testing. Government Furnished Equipment (GFE) systems such as EMALS, Advanced Arresting Gear (AAG), and DBR are all executing robust, multi-year land based tests. New contractor developed systems such as Machinery Control and Monitoring System (MCMS), JP-5, and Aqueous Film-Forming Foam (AFFF) are also subjects of early land based testing.

A brief summary of the hadronic calorimeter calibration systems and performance results, in the ATLAS detector at the LHC is given., Comment: 3 pages, 8 figures. Proceeding to LHCP 2013: First Large Hadron Collider Physics Conference, Barcelona, Spain, 13-18 May 2013

After Effects CS3 Professional comes with literally hundreds of effects plug-ins - and just for good measure, it also installs third party plug-ins from Cycore (Cycore “CC” FX), The Foundry (Keylight), and Synthetic Aperture (Color Finesse). So - where do you learn how to use them?

One of the major new features in After Effects CS3 is the introduction of the Puppet Tools. These provide a new way to warp layers, including shape and text layers created inside After Effects. Applications include creating character animation or just imparting fun movement to otherwise inanimate objects.

Our goal in this chapter is to show you how to create a composition, add source footage as layers, and navigate in both space and time. Mastering these basic concepts, techniques, and shortcuts will prepare you for animating layers in the next few chapters. We'll also cover safe area, grid, guide, and ruler overlays in the Composition panel, as well as the all-important matter of previewing your work. Even if you're a more experienced user, you should skim this chapter to see if there are any shortcuts or tips you've been missing.

We've been reinforcing the idea throughout this book that managing transparencies is the cornerstone of creating motion graphic composite images. But not all images come with their own transparencies - or ones we necessarily want to use. Sometimes, we'd prefer to borrow another image to create those transparencies. This second image is called a matte .

When images are captured on film or video, objects that are moving appear blurred, while static objects appear sharp. This is due to the fact that the camera is capturing samples of time, and the camera shutter is kept open for some of that time. The faster the object moves, the more distance it will cover while the shutter is open, and the less distinct the image. This motion blur makes for smoother motion and is a quality often lacking in computer-generated animation.

By now, you should know how to build a comp and how to animate layers, so let's step up to working with multiple layers efficiently. This chapter covers shortcuts and tips for managing and replacing layers, creating markers and snapshots, and editing images in their original application.

In the present manuscript, we develop and extend theory with respect to social intrapreneurship by examining the “how” of intrapreneurial championing. More specifically, we integrate the natural-re...

SWOT analysis is still ubiquitous in business courses, and yet it has been harshly criticized by scholars and is not used by top management consulting firms. It is atheoretical and overly simplisti...