As digital technology rapidly advances in today’s world, AREVA has worked to bring their clients into the next generation, expanding the life expectancy of their nuclear plants while keeping safety at the forefront of their digital upgrades.

Many nuclear plants were designed back in the 1960s and 1970s, said George Beam, senior-vice president of AREVA’s TELEPERM XS. The plants were built with the analog technology that existed then, allowing them to operate for up to 40 years. But with recent advancement in digital technology, life expectancy of nuclear plants has increased up to 60 years.

“As young engineers started coming out of school and companies moved onto the next generation of technology, the ability to maintain, fix and operate the analog technology began to evaporate. So we’ve been blessed,” Beam said.

As today’s society advances with its prolific digital use of Kindles, iPads and smart phones, the nuclear plants have also moved along with advances of their own in digital technology. But never before has that digital technology been placed into the type of safety system AREVA’s TELEPERM XS provides.

“The issue was to put it in a safety system that would be responsible for shutting the reaction down in the event of an unplanned transient. That is where everyone was concerned and lots of analysis and engineering reviews came into play,” Beam said.

AREVA was the first to successfully license this type of new technology. AREVA’s TELEPERM XS now enables nuclear reactors to be shut down automatically at the first sign of trauma.

“It’s almost the equivalent of having your knee or hip replaced with newer technology, but this is the brains for how you shut down a reactor in the event there is a transient or something outside of the normal mode of operation,” Beam said.

The project began back in 2002 when one of AREVA’s clients approached the company with the idea of extending the life of their nuclear plant. As a part of this upgrade, an investment in a newer digital safety system was essential. The project got quickly underway before running into a few complications.

“One of the key challenges was getting people to be open to the new technology. For a lot of people, if it’s working now—why change?” Beam said. “It was a real evolutionary concept to get people to buy in … it was more than filling out forms, it was changing the culture.”

Now that the system is up and running well, Beam believes a majority of plants will take advantage of the lessons learned through this system and will begin making plans to enhance and upgrade their own technologies.

“We’ve broken this ice with the regulators and with the customers, so it’s good for the whole industry,” Beam said.

As the first system of its kind, AREVA’s TELEPERM XS recently won the “Engineering Project of the Year” award at the 13th annual Platts Global Energy Awards in New York. Established in 1999, the Platts Global Energy Awards showcases extraordinary accomplishments by businesses and individuals around the world.

“It’s truly been a global project. It was a nice recognition for AREVA, for me personally and for Lynchburg, but it really does represent the whole gamut of what this company can provide,” he said.

Beam now hopes to be able to take the experience with this system and begin to implement it into many of the other nuclear plants around America, showing those companies that this advancement is worth the investment.

“The key issue is going to be that some plants believe they can still operate their safety systems using the old analog technology because it’s a significant cost—multi-million dollars—to put in one of these systems,” he said.

As the cost is a key factor for many, some companies will be able find that balance by changing out and upgrading bits and pieces of their system rather than the entire system at once. But Beam said, in order to enhance safety, this type of digital upgrade will be necessary.

For more information about what AREVA is doing around the world, visit www.areva.com.

CBL and Associates Properties, Inc., which owns River Ridge Mall, and mallMerlin, LLC, announced the launch last month of the free mallMerlin Smartphone app which delivers special features and promotions, high-definition video and in-mall navigation to consumers as they shop the mall.

Stacey Keating, Regional Marketing Specialist for CBL and Associates Properties, says the app has been a work in progress for all 88 of their mall properties for some time now—one they are now excited to unveil.

“It’s something that we hope will make the shopping experience a little bit more streamlined for our customers,” Keating said.

Available for download at the iTunes App Store, the app provides a powerful search engine that helps shoppers find the brands and items they seek and rewards shoppers through special deals that are unlocked as they enter the mall. Retailers have ultimate flexibility to tailor their content in real-time and by geography.

“It will allow them to get the discounts that they are looking for at participating retailers. It will allow them to find the stores faster and get into where they are going and out of the mall a little bit quicker and more efficiently,” Keating said.

The number of participating retailers offering deals on mallMerlin is still growing, Keating adds, as stores are seeing that the app is being downloaded more and more. For shoppers, the key to unleashing the app’s “magic” comes down to using the app in the mall, as the only way to unlock each retailer’s specific deals is by being close to the actual location of the store.

“It’s not something that you can see from home, so it kind of drives being at the mall to find out what kind of deals are going on,” Keating said.

While mallMerlin offers deals year-round at River Ridge Mall, Keating says it is especially handy for shoppers during the busy holiday shopping season and particularly during intense sales, like those surrounding Black Friday, when the app acts as a quick guide to ideal deals.

“It will help them find the stores they are looking for faster,” Keating said. “It has a directory option that you can pull up and it will tell you what store you are looking for and where it’s located in the mall so that will make navigating through the crowds a little faster to help you find what you are looking for.”

Once River Ridge shoppers’ bags are full, and the kids and grandkids are eager to see Santa, another new app will help them feel more connected than ever, regardless of how much time they get on Kris Kringle’s lap. Exclusive to CBL and Associates Properties, Inc., the “Santa’s Fun App” is a free download on the Android market and iPhone app store that allows  children and families to write letters to Santa and even read his responses.

“Kids around Lynchburg can write letters to Santa—an email or a text message to Santa—and read what he replies to them, so it is kind of eliminating the pen and paper letter to Santa,” Keating said. “This is a more technologically advanced way to contact Santa at the North Pole.”

Parents can also use the app to get a little more organized by uploading gift lists specific to each person on their list. It also allows everyone to track Santa’s worldwide journey on Christmas Eve, which Keating credits as a fun activity for the whole family.

“We have had [the app] downloaded a ton and everyone is rating it four or five stars, so it’s really a positive thing for the mall,” she said.

Technology, as everyone has now experienced, can enhance our lives and allow us to communicate and work more rapidly than ever before. For CBL and Associates Properties and River Ridge Mall, that was exactly the thought process behind unveiling these two new apps during the holiday season.

“We just want to make the shopping experience faster, more efficient and more enjoyable for everybody,” Keating said.

Free visits with Santa are going on now at River Ridge Mall through Christmas Eve, Mondays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sundays from noon to 6 p.m. For photo package prices and more information, visit www.ShopRiverRidgeMall.com. To download the “Santa’s Fun App,” visit http://grtplc.net/SantasFun_Apple.qrcode and scan the QR code to download.   For additional information on mallMerlin, visit www.mallmerlin.com.

“We had an indoor tennis air structure over our clay courts, so what we decided to do was research some different surfaces that would be favorable to joints for our senior players,” Robinson said. “The philosophy was, ‘Can we find something that is reasonably friendly to your joints and senior players?’”

Founded in 1923, BCC’s tennis program has grown to 250 adult players and 125 junior players over the past two decades, and has produced a significant number of state, sectional and nationally-ranked juniors. Prior to the new construction, Robinson says the country club’s eight outdoor clay courts had been on the property since the late 50s, and several more inside an “indoor bubble” were built in the mid-90s. He says that spraying water on those older courts—which was previously necessary several times a day—had become problematic and was another basis for their search for a better technology.

“The idea is that we didn’t want to put clay inside a building because we had had some mildew. Basically, when you have clay courts you have to water them, so when you water them at night, the moisture goes up and you get clay and moisture all over the inside of the building,” he said.

When the time came to build the new center, a well-travelled friend of Robinson’s began researching companies that featured cushioned surfaces for tennis courts. He came across a company in Colorado that offers REFLEX 500, a state-of-the-art cushioned court designed to absorb a player’s body weight, much in the same way as clay courts. Unlike a clay court, however, REFLEX 500 last for decades, thanks to a combination of 100 percent acrylic resins and rubber basemat.

“They come in with a giant machine and put down about a half inch of rubber at the bottom, right above the asphalt level. Then they put paint on top of that—six or seven coats of it—so you have the effect of a hard court in the way it looks and you have the effect of a little better bounce than clay but with a lot more cushion,” Robinson said.

Construction by Coleman-Adams on the indoor tennis center began in September 2010 and a ribbon cutting was held on the finished building, which boasts four new REFLEX 500 courts, in August 2011. Built with mezzanine-style spectator viewing, championship level indirect lighting and ideal court layout in mind, Robinson says tennis players now have plenty of room to roam.

“One of the good things about this building is we made sure we put maximum square footage in there, so between courts you’re not running into the curtains and you’ve got a lot of room to move,” he said.

At the cost of $2 million to compete, the indoor tennis center is the realization of more than eight years of planning by the staff at BCC, which also includes Peter Pristach of the U.S. Professional Tennis Association.

As part of the renovations, two of the eight outdoor clay courts have also been retrofitted with a sub-irrigation system known as Hydro Grid, with plans to outfit the remaining six courts in the coming months. The system uses water from underneath the courts, eliminating the need for staff members to water them throughout the day.

“So that saves on water cost and makes your courts more playable all day long,” Robinson explained.

Initially, these cutting-edge courts do come at a high price. Each new indoor court cost roughly $200,000 and the sub-irrigation system is also expensive, Robinson concedes, but he says that these courts should now last “forever.”

“I think we are standing alone in technology with the clay courts and I think we are standing alone right now with the indoor courts in terms of this cushion surface,” he said. “We are the only ones with it in this immediate area—the Lynchburg area—so we feel like we’ve gone to a pretty high level with state-of-the-art kind of stuff.”

Technology aside, Robinson says he feels the initial mission of creating tennis courts that players feel comfortable on, both when they are in the middle of a set and after the game is over, has been accomplished.

“The tennis players have had a very positive reaction to the surface and the building,” he said. “They are saying it feels great on their body and you know, my main concern was that I was going to get a good response from the older players, and they all seem to like it a lot.”

“I realize that turning on the television is probably not the first and forefront thing on people’s minds at that time, but if you are turning to us, I want to say that is such an honor—especially at this point with a new newscast—that you are inviting us into your home,” Evans said.

The show, which launched September 12, is part of several large-scale changes that have taken place in the past several months. The ABC-affiliate, based in Lynchburg, also launched its new high definition (HD) programming at the same time as its new 5 p.m. newscast, culminating a year’s worth of behind-the-scenes planning and preparation.

News Director Bill Foy says that the planning for the 5 p.m. show began when the station learned that Oprah’s 18-year tenure in that time slot was coming to an end.

“When [General Manager] Randy Smith and I sat down to talk about it, he said, ‘Well are you ready to do a five o’clock news?’ and my response was ‘Absolutely,’” Foy said. “My thought was and always has been that no news operation is going to be considered truly number one if they did the least amount of news, so this was a great opportunity for us to get on at a time when the other stations were also on to be competitive.”

At the same time that planning began for the 5 p.m. show, Allbritton, WSET’s parent company, made the decision to take all seven of its stations to HD.

“There really were two side-by-side projects for us,” Foy said. “They weren’t necessarily connected, other than when we looked at the calendar we thought, the timeline is starting to make sense that HD and our new newscast will also take place at the same time.”

As the new equipment started arriving at WSET—everything from lights and field and studio cameras to editing suites—a sizeable decision was about to present itself to Evans, hundreds of miles away. Until this summer, she was the main anchor at a station in South Carolina. But, married to a Lynchburg native, and working to juggle motherhood and her job, Evans says that the door opened at the perfect time to return to her former employer, WSET.

“I totally discounted how much it would mean to have family and support and close friends around in raising our child and day-to-day life,” Evan explained. “Being a working mother as well, it’s so nice to have people you can rely on. So, that was a big part of our original thinking of ‘Okay, let’s go back,’ and then this job opened up.”

Coming from a station that had been in HD for several years, helping to launch a WSET’s newscast and systems seemed natural to Evans.

“As soon as that HD flipped, it was all of a sudden, crystal clear video. So, it was a fun metamorphosis to watch happen in a matter of hours really, because we switched that day, on the 12^th,” she said.

While Foy says that “everything is brand new” in terms of HD equipment, the one thing that didn’t change was perhaps the most intentional—the news set.

“I think the one thing that we didn’t want to do is change so much that our viewers would say, ‘Gosh, I don’t even recognize WSET anymore,’” he explained. “Not all change is good change, so we wanted to make certain that we didn’t lose what our viewers already appreciate about the way we look and the way we feel.”

It certainly seems that more and more local viewers are appreciating the way the station delivers its news these days. According to the July Nielsen ratings, WSET’s 6 p.m. newscast was named number one in the Roanoke-Lynchburg market. While this is a proud feat for the staff there, Foy and Evans are quick to admit that several challenges loom ahead.

“We certainly aren’t resting on what happened in July. We understand that there is a tremendous challenge ahead of us in the November ratings period and into next year. We like to think that what we are doing is something that connects with our viewers in ‘Coverage You Can Count On,’” Foy said.

“It’s hard to come in and replace a time slot like Oprah. It’s hard also to do something new for television, especially in news because people are really loyal viewers and I just hope we can make a little bit of a dent,” Evan added.

Despite the inherent hurdles, with newness all around them, optimism is apparent in both Foy and Evans’ voices as they talk about the future at WSET.

“I feel like we have really stepped into HD and what is happening now. It’s a really exciting time,” Evans said.

“People talk about the golden age of television, but I like to think, as far as WSET is concerned, that it’s right now,” Foy said. “We are definitely in our prime.”

In early August, the Lynchburg offices of leading nuclear energy company, AREVA, donated two 3-D laser-scanning units to one of Central Virginia’s regional crash teams, giving officers the equipment necessary to capture crime scenes and easily recreate them in a digital 3-D format. The donated scanners are valued at more than $70,000, a price Captain Jim Bennett of the Bedford Police Department and leader of the Central Virginia Regional Crash Team said his department would never have been able to afford on their own.

“It’s tremendous and gives us capabilities that other police departments in the area don’t have and that we can share with them,” Bennett said.

The 3-D scanners had been previously used by AREVA to assist engineers in visualizing and measuring the data needed to accurately design new facilities and document different sites. The equipment allowed engineers to virtually stage design studies within a computer-aided design (CAD) program. This not only minimized project costs for the company, but also minimized many of the risks involved with putting employees out into the field to gather more data. It also gave engineers a more accurate depiction of the area being analyzed.

“It’s one of the things you’ll find in industry,” Brian Powers, AREVA’s manager of metrology services, said. “They build to a design but when you’re in there, it doesn’t necessarily meet up and in some cases the difference between an inch can have a very negative impact on projects.”

When AREVA decided to upgrade their technology this year, it was the prior relationship they shared with the Bedford Police Department that brought them to the decision of donating the scanners.

“This was an excellent opportunity for us to try and give back to the community,” Powers said.

Back in 1998, AREVA was in talks with Randy Krantz, Commonwealth Attorney for the City of Bedford and Bedford County, about using various scanning equipment to analyze forensic data in criminal cases.

“We had contact with him and showed it to them. It didn’t go too far, but that stuck in the back of my mind and we knew that these scanners were being introduced into the law enforcement field for forensics,” Powers said.

With safety and security being two of AREVA’s top priorities, when the time came to donate the 3-D scanners, Powers once again contacted Krantz, which led to the scanners finding their place with Bennett and Bedford Country’s crash team.

Bennett says he is ecstatic about the possibilities this opens up for his department.

“We can now create a 3-D model of a crime scene where we can go back and analyze it. It will preserve the facts of the case and the scene forever,” he said.

The donated 3-D scanners collect a 360-degree view of millions of data points in any one location. This collection of point-data then allows users to go in, analyze and measure the space in a 3-D format.

Bennett says the scanners will be used for a variety of cases, including accidents. With this equipment, law enforcement can go back and realign the impact points of two vehicles as well as the impact point of a vehicle with an outside object. They can also create animations to reconstruct the scene of the crash and measure the speed from skid and crush. Often times, these factors come into play in the courtroom when trying to determine fault or causative factors.

“If you’re going through to testify to a judge, you can actually show him from your investigation what the car actually did up to the point of impact and after,” Bennett said.

The equipment will also be used for heavier charged criminal cases that involve fatalities.

“If we have a murder scene we can go back in, shoot the entire scene and then have a way to analyze it later if something new is found out without having to go back to the scene and trying to recreate it there,” Bennett said.

Another benefit to the 3-D scanners is that it allows a jury or judge to view the crime scene virtually as accurately as if they were physically present when the data was gathered. In addition to these benefits and uses, Bennett says the department is continually thinking of new ways to implement and embrace this new technology.

“There’s a lot of uses,” he said. “Our imagination is the only thing that’s going to limit us on this.”

With the success of this recent donation, AREVA is now looking into other equipment that might be available for additional donations. They have also volunteered to assist the Bedford County Police Department with the initial training of officers on how to properly use the equipment.

“Our employees are excited to be able to actually help the law enforcement agencies in this manner,” Powers said. “I think it’s a great relationship we’ve started and we’re looking at ways to actually expand it with additional equipment.”

Bennett says he welcomes the help and is excited about the relationship his department is building, not only with AREVA, but also with the agencies around them through the donation of this new equipment.

“Smaller jurisdictions have to rely on everyone around them because we don’t have the manpower to do everything, so we build those relationships and now we’re able to give back,” he said. “Everyone in the area is really stoked about this.”

Twelve years old this year, the original site of the church, on English Tavern Road in Lynchburg, is now accompanied by a second “satellite” version of Brentwood, hosted at Jefferson Forest High School (JF) in Forest. Jon Dupin, lead pastor at Brentwood, says the decision to expand to include a second site was born out of a desire to affordably reach more people.

“We were going to different service times, we were adjusting our space, running out of parking, running out of optimum seating times and so we knew that we had to do something,” Dupin said. “[Going multi-site] was a way that we could basically expand our reach and our vision for a fraction of the cost.”

The two sites, now referred to as “Brentwood Forest” and “Brentwood ETR” by the pastoral staff, are located 25 minutes apart, allowing them to reach two distinctly different sections of the local community. Each week at each site, a live band takes the stage, full children’s programming is offered, hundreds of volunteers keep things running like clockwork and Dupin hosts thousands of worshippers either in person or on a massive screen.

“Basically, what we do is, there is a recording that is done early Sunday morning to a select audience at 6 o’clock in the morning. And that recording is the message for that day. One site will view the recording as the message, with everything else being live, but the proclamation for that particular day will be on screen,” Dupin explained. “Simultaneously, the other campus will have live communication, but it will be the same message. So the technology allows us to have the same communicator on the same day, giving the exact same message.”

Brentwood has also appointed two “site pastors” to reside at each location. Because Dupin switches back and forth between both campuses to speak in person, he says having the same real, live pastor at each site every week is crucial to connecting with worshippers at each location.

“We want, from entry to exit, for people to feel absolutely welcomed by our church,” Dupin said. “You may walk in and not even believe what we believe but you know that we care and we went out of our way to let you know that we are glad that you are here. And we want you to be here.”

Brian Lambert, Site Pastor at Brentwood Forest, and Dupin recall the journey to get to the point of opening the Forest location on April 17, one that involved a push to the congregation to raise $300,000 in 60 days. Brentwood members stepped up to the challenge, raising $350,000. For a church comprised largely of 20- and 30-somethings, this was no small leap of faith.

“On the deadline day, I think we ended up with up with $301,000 on that day,” Dupin said with a laugh. “And then the other $49,000 came through in the weeks following.”

“This was the first time, at least in my history at Brentwood, that it felt like, ‘Oh my gosh, everybody wants to see this.’ It was just this really cool feeling. The only way I can describe it is that God got behind a group of people in their 20s and 30s and helped them decide that they were ready to step outside of their shell,” Lambert said.

The raised funds were spent almost entirely on buying new equipment and upgrading Brentwood ETR’s existing technology to prepare for the launch of the Forest site. The stages in the auditoriums at both sites were retrofitted with three high-definition screens. Two 65-inch panels sit on each side of a huge, 9×16-foot center screen that ensures a clear line of sight for every audience member on Sundays that “virtual Jon” is speaking. Four 24-foot trailers, weighing roughly 10,000 pounds each, house the equipment. Each Sunday morning, starting at 5:30, a team of volunteers spend two hours setting up inside JF’s 750-seat auditorium, transforming it into Brentwood Forest. Two services and hundreds of attendees later, they do it all over again, tearing down in about an hour.

“You ought to see these people work—they are crazy!” Lambert said. “It’s unbelievable because most of the time, when they are leaving on Sunday, they are drenched in sweat because they worked an hour and 45 minutes straight. They’ve been great. I don’t think they would stop if I asked them to!”

At Brentwood ETR, a new lighting system and digital sound board was also installed, and an HD camera bought to tape each week’s message. While Lambert admits that it was an adjustment for some church members to watch a video instead of a live speaker every other week, but others, it’s been an added bonus.

“We get stories where they say they actually prefer watching Jon on the screen. And the rationale is that when you go to a sporting event, you end up watching it on the big screen because you can see in greater detail what’s going on,” he said.

In the future, Dupin says they hope to add even more Brentwood sites, with each splitting its message time between a live and taped communicator. But for now, four months into their first experience with being one church with two sites, both Lambert and Dupin agree—the results have been inspiring.

“ At this point, I get probably two emails a week of people who are saying, ‘We haven’t been to church in 15 years and we decided to walk in Forest and when we did, it just felt like home immediately.’ … And, man, even if we never get another story like that, the money and effort and momentum that we spent to get here was worth just that story alone,” Lambert said.

“We took a risk for us,” Dupin said. “And, we are thrilled at what God is doing through this church as we’ve gone multi-site. “

THOMAS ROAD BAPTIST CHURCH CONTINUES TO PLANT CHURCHES

Thomas Road Baptist Church (TRBC), Lynchburg’s largest single church congregation, also continues to go multi-site under different names around the area. TRBC is now preparing to launch its second multi-site campus, just off Interstate 581 in Roanoke. This site is in addition to DanRiverChurch in Danville, which TRBC launched as a satellite campus in October 2009.

“More than 50 Thomas Road members traveled weekly to Danville to help the new church start,” Mike Tilley, Chief Marketing Officer for Thomas Road Ministries, said. “Today, the church has hundreds of members and is active in the Danville community.”

Like Brentwood, DanRiverChurch has a full-time campus pastor and offers small groups, children’s programming and live worship music. The weekly sermon, given by Jonathan Falwell, is projected on a large screen in the worship center during Sunday morning’s primary service.

Tilley says that the Danville and Roanoke sites are in addition to the thousands of stand-along churches that Thomas Road has planted over the past 55 years in the U.S. and around the world.

TRBC’s latest church plant in Roanoke is set to open in less than two months. Its name has not been released.

“It was very embarrassing,” Neel, founder and president of Cognitive Radio Technologies, said. “I felt so bad!”

Shortly thereafter, Cognitive Radio Technologies (CRT) moved into the Business Development Center off of Mill Ridge Road in Lynchburg, where it currently resides. CRT works to apply artificial intelligence techniques to solve wireless related problems. According to their Web site, they can help their clients “automatically detect and exploit unused spectrum, detect and interoperate with varying network standards and improve performance.”

The company was founded February 15, 2007, by both Neel and Jeff Reed. They originally started with the goal of commercializing cognitive radio research out of Virginia Tech.

CRT is currently working on several projects for the Navy, one of which includes distributing subcarrier allocation techniques. Their work for Global Defense Electronics Corporation of Michigan included the integration of smart phones and basic networking techniques for rapid deployment of disaster response networks.

Neel’s interest in technology peeked while he was studying at Virginia Tech.

“I don’t think you become an engineer, much less go through the trouble of getting a Ph.D. in engineering, unless you’re an uber geek,” Neel said.

But, for Neel and staff, CRT is the perfect dream job.

“I have the opportunity to do a little bit of everything,” Neel said. “I write a little bit of code almost every week, I write proposals, I do system architecture and, unfortunately, I do accounting stuff every week.”

He also likes the fact that he does not have to be in a city like Washington, D.C., but can run a successful business out of “peaceful” Lynchburg. Other attractive aspects of his job include the ability to travel.

“I like to travel a lot more than my wife likes my traveling,” Neel said. “I get to see a bunch of different places.”

His job has taken him all over the U.S. and occasionally overseas, as far as Europe. Freedom is the biggest plus of Neel’s job.

“I have the freedom to work on projects that are specifically focused on what my dissertation research was,” Neel said. “I’m getting to play with my research 70 hours a week. I can’t ask for more than that.”

Urban Hakansson, principal engineer, also enjoys his job at CRT.

“I get to do everything from basic research to development,” Hakansson said. “There’s a lot of variety.”

Hakansson, who is originally from Sweden, has worked at CRT for a little over a year, calling it an engineer’s “dream job.”

Mark Hemmerlein, principal engineer, concurs with Hakansson. His two-and-a-half years with the company have brought a lot of enjoyment.

“It’s a fun environment,” he said. “We have very diverse work assignments.”

He enjoys working in challenging areas outside his expertise and learning from the experience.

In the next few years, Neel hopes to see the business continue to grow and expand.

“If things go right,” he said, “we should grow by another 50 percent next year.”

For more information on Cognitive Radio Technologies, visit their Web site at www.crtwireless.com.

More about Cognitive Radio

According to the Federal Communication Commission (FCC), Cognitive Radio began with the purpose to provide flexible channels primarily for military usage.

The FCC’s web site explains that, “Cognitive radio has become an emerging advanced radio technology that enables a radio device to monitor, sense, detect and autonomously adapt its communications channel access to the dynamic radio frequency environment in which it exists” (http://transition.fcc.gov).

Cognitive Radio technology can also assist public safety services:

• Avoiding spectrum congestion
• Precedence service to higher priority users temporarily during the peak communications period of an emergency
• Dynamic spectrum access to improve spectrum efficiency
• Achieving interoperability among legacy and new devices and systems

–Information from the Federal Communication Commission

“I don’t have the license that is required to go any further,” he said. “That’s why I’m back in school, so I can get more training and hopefully work up to my journeyman’s card.”

Altavista resident, Malachi Goodwein, says he always wanted to be a plumber. So, when a new trade school opened in his hometown this past January, the 31-year-old, who had lost his job as a hotel manager in 2008, jumped at the chance for a do-over.

“It’s the thing I wanted to do, so I might as well go for it,” he said.

Bond and Goodwein are two of 93 students enrolled at Virginia Technical Institute (VTI), a new vocational-technical school located in Altavista. In addition to HVAC and plumbing, VTI offers programs in welding, electrical, project management, masonry, industrial maintenance, pipefitting and carpentry. Students attend class one night per week and, after completing the four-year program, earn a journeyman’s card in their field.

VTI uses a curriculum from the National Center for Construction Education and Research, a program of study that is accepted in all 50 states.

“We think of it in terms of a carrying card for NCCER,” Lance McClure, VTI’s executive director, said. “That’s what makes it so huge.”

For Goodwein and Bond, getting their journeyman’s card will mean job security.

“I can do my own thing and don’t have to worry about [working for] anybody,” Goodwein said. “I can create my own job.”

Bond agreed, adding that he will “have more opportunities.”

Classes are $575 per semester, plus book fees. Some online courses are also offered, but they do not replace the required hands-on training.

“We’re teaching trades, not academic knowledge, per se,” McClure said, adding that the NCCER calls it “competency training.”

Although Goodwein and Bond cited location and as one of the main reasons they chose VTI, some students drive more than an hour to get to class. According to Kate Blair, VTI’s marketing and enrollment director, most of their students come from Campbell and Amherst Counties, but some commute from as far away as Roanoke and the New River Valley.

McClure described VTI as a “regional” school, saying, “Our radius goes from Bedford to Appomattox and Amherst to Danville. We’re more of a regional-focused thing. Typically, trade guys drive about an hour [to a job] anyway. Driving is not a big thing for them.”

VTI not only markets its programs to unemployed or underemployed workers, like Goodwein and Bond, it has also partnered with high schools in Amherst, Campbell and Pittsylvania Counties. McClure compared it to the “old VO-Tech-type thing,” and said Pittsylvania County offers training in five trades while Amherst and Campbell counties offer two each.

Blair summed it up by saying VTI’s programs are aimed at “anyone that may be in the trades or would like to be in a trade field position. A technically gifted person is what we shoot for. We also spend quite a bit of marketing time with companies that maybe need some skills shored up or some advanced education in certain areas.”

It was a local company’s need for quality employee training that actually got the ball rolling at VTI back in the winter of 2009. According to Blair, Dale Moore, president of the Altavista-based Moore’s Electrical and Mechanical, was having trouble finding suitable training for his employees and “felt like a vocational college, a post-secondary school, was something that [the area] needed.”

Moore and his wife bought the former A.O. Smith Manufacturing plant on Ogden Road and donated it to the school. His company also provided in-kind labor toward renovating the 115,000-square-foot facility, which both Goodwein and Bond described as “state-of-the-art.”

“I don’t think it could get much better,” Bond said. “It’s been fixed up very nice. All of the equipment is new, state-of-the-art. A-1, in my opinion.”

VTI, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, has also received support from a number of other sources, private and public, including more than $1.6 million from the Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission, and nearly $350,000 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

More than $99,000 from the USDA was earmarked for supplies and instructor salaries. VTI currently employs six part-time instructors, all of which are skilled professionals.

The NCCER requires that all instructors be at “journeyman level or above in their trade,” McClure said. For example, he explained, an electrical engineer with a bachelor’s degree can’t teach the Electricity Level 1 course. It must be taught by an electrician.

Bond appreciates having a teacher with real-world knowledge.

“My HVAC instructor has a lot of on-the-job experience, so when we’re going over the material he has job-related stories that really help in getting you interested in the material,” he said.

While obviously pleased with his experience thus far, Bond does have one wish: that VTI had been around decades ago.

“What I tell people is I wish there was something like this when I was fresh out of high school,” he said. “It’s a good opportunity for young people to go right into a field that they enjoy.”

For more information, visit www.virginiatechnicalinstitute.org or call (434) 369-8200.

Jack Gary, Director of Archaeology and Landscapes at Poplar Forest says the virtual landscape, which is available both onsite and online, was created to give visitors an interactive view of what his team is working to recreate through a multi-phase project.

“The reason we decided to do [virtual landscapes] is because landscape restoration and particularly Poplar Forest restoration is very time-consuming and meticulous, but it will be a very accurate restoration. However, that will take a long time, and we wanted to speed that process up and let people see it long before it’s restored,” Gary said.

The educational animations, made possible through support by Verizon, are also available at a new touch-screen computer kiosk in the Poplar Forest Museum Shop. These short videos introduce visitors to the home’s landscape as if they are walking through it or flying over it.

“People are surprised at how realistic it is and in awe of what Jefferson was doing. There is sort of a ‘wow factor,’” Gary said.

Currently on a three-year timeline, Poplar Forest is in the first stage of the landscape restoration. With no firm end date in sight, Gary says this virtual landscape is critical in allowing guests to see what they are working towards.

“It can be hard if you’re not a visual person, or even if you are, to imagine that this [landscape] is what Jefferson was going for. With virtual landscape, it kinds of clicks,” he explained.

The technology also benefits Gary and his team by allowing them to do a “test run” of sorts on elements they are currently excavating, while also opening a visual world to guests that they would not otherwise experience.

“We can see it before we plant it and see it as it may actually look before we put the trees in the ground,” Gary said. “As we built onto the platform that was created, we can show visitors things that we will never be able to recreate, like the plantation landscape, slave quarters and barns. This will allow us to recreate a landscape we can never restore.”

Gary says that he is thrilled with how the technology turned out and looks forward to the next phase of it, which will be even more interactive, allowing users to take part in landscaping Poplar Forest’s grounds.

“In Phase Two, we want to develop a module of the digital landscape so visitors can see the information we use and act like us by deciding where the trees will go and move them around to see if they can get it right,” Gary said.

Another interactive tool recently introduced at Poplar Forest are GPS-guided handheld audio/video units. Through video and audio clips, these units allow guests to tour the octagonal house and grounds while learning more about the ornamental grounds, the farm and the plantation community that lived and worked at Poplar Forest.

“One reason we developed this GPS system is that there are so many stories about Poplar Forest that just cannot be delivered in a 40-minute tour,” Gary said. “[The GPS units] allow us to deliver stories of the plantation that we couldn’t necessarily tell on the tour of the home of Thomas Jefferson. The people who lived there—their stories and their lives are just as important and this technology allows us to get that out to visitors.”

Gary says that Poplar Forest is also very conscious about putting added elements, like signage, on the grounds, because they can be seen as an intrusion on the historic landscape. The GPS units eliminate the need for extra signs and markers while allowing the stories of each location to be told through the electronic devices.

“It’s kind of a neat way to get stories out there,” he explained. “It’s kind of a twist or an improvement to classic audio tours you might see in museums, but this a more modern version of that.”

As for the use of modern technology to convey history to Poplar Forest’s guests, Gary laughs at how fitting it is, considering the home’s former owner.

“I think it’s appropriate actually, especially for a Jefferson property,” he said. “He was a man that would really have just dug this sort of stuff. He was a person who was always working to improve upon things, so I think it’s entirely appropriate.”

To experience Poplar Forest’s virtual landscape online, visit www.poplarforest.org/retreat/landrest/virtual.

“I don’t recall how I got to the site, but when I found it, I felt like I had walked into church. It was a revelation!” Peters said. “It has all the business information you could need as a small business owner in Virginia.” 

Offering direct access to the registration information from six state agencies that commonly serve businesses in Virginia, among other things, the new Web site, www.bos.virginia.gov, is designed to support those considering starting a small business or ready to start one, as well as those already running a small business and those looking to expand. BOS also exists as a “first look” for companies outside of the state that want to learn more about the advantages of doing business in Virginia.  

Peter Su, Director of the Virginia Department of Business Assistance, says BOS is the direct result of a campaign promise by Governor Bob McDonnell to help support small business growth within the state. 

“Governor McDonnell has been a strong proponent of a multifunctional one stop [Web site] and this campaign promise was fulfilled,” Su said. 

Phase two of the Virginia Business One Stop (BOS) launched on December 27, 2010, and since that time, Su says 1,342 new BOS accounts have been created. 

“[This is] indicating that Virginians have used Business One Stop to start a new legal entity in the Commonwealth,” Su said. “The number of Web site visits has increased significantly as businesses are looking to receive more information.” 

BOS is designed to support economic development and job creation by giving quick and easy access to both state and federal resources. This includes commonly needed information and forms from the Department of Taxation, Department of General Services, Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation, the Virginia Employment Commission, the Department of Business Assistance and the Department of Minority Business Enterprise.  

Peters says the site’s name lives up to the expectation it creates, saying he directly experienced the benefits of finding everything he needed in one place.  

“I am a big fan! I needed info about forming a corporation, about ‘Doing Business As’ and needed to know where I could find assistance, conference spaces, employees if I needed them and temporary spaces at workforce development centers. What a great idea!” he said. 

Su says that new features were also added prior to the site’s official launch. 

“Prior to the launch in December, the site was very limited in both content and integration. Added features include integration of the instant FEIN (federal tax identification number) assignment module and the state’s business tax registration system (iReg),” he said. “Additionally, more useful information has been added to address the full life cycle of businesses.” 

With this in mind, BOS now includes local, state and federal information and resources, and Su says they are working to “integrate the business licensing requirements for localities.” With the site’s registered users growing quickly, feedback from real business owners is also reaching McDonnell’s office—and the vast majority of it has been positive so far, according to Su. 

One example, from Wendy Smith from Louisa, said, “I just wanted to relate how much I appreciated the Business One Stop. I am starting my own business and this on-line tool made it so easy to do so. Please relay my thanks to those responsible for this program and many thanks that Virginia makes life a bit easier for the people, especially those of us who tend to be a bit technology challenged.”  

As for his experience, Peters says BOS has nothing but rave reviews. 

“To save a lot of time and energy with potentially confusing info, it’s better that the Better Business Bureau and the Small Business Administration,” he said. “It has all the information you need and all the information you didn’t know you needed!”