Washington, D.C. (PRWEB) August 28, 2014

The Francis L. Cardozo Education Campus received LEED Gold Certification for Schools this week from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), the Department of General Services (DGS) announced today.

The Department of General Services is honored to receive this prestigious certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, and I would like to congratulate our entire design, construction and project team for achieving this distinction, said Brian J. Hanlon, DGS Director. This certification showcases the agencys dedication to build high quality, sustainable schools here in the District of Columbia that can serve as national models of excellence.

According to the USGBC, LEED provides building owners and operators with a framework for identifying and implementing practical and measurable green building design, construction, operations and maintenance solutions. The LEED program provides third-party verification of green buildings. Building projects satisfy prerequisites and earn points to achieve different levels of certification. Prerequisites and credits differ for each rating system, and teams choose the best fit for the project.

The new Cardozo Education Campus, which was first designed a century ago, houses the Academy of Construction and Design, and the TransSTEM Academy. Both academies have expanded and enhanced classroom and laboratory spaces, including a two-story aviation lab, a two-story masonry construction lab and several computer lab spaces. The newly modernized and expanded historic campus in Ward 1 also features two specialized learning academies and a fully restored historic auditorium.

The modernization project marries both high tech advancements such as interactive whiteboards, classroom sound enhancement systems, and computer labs with major renovations to many of the celebrated period features of the original Cardozo, including stone carvings and decorative tile work, an historic lecture classroom, auditorium, and indoor pool.

Some of the design features of the Cardozo Education Campus which lead to the LEED certification include: Design Features:

The modernization of Cardozo also incorporates a number of energy-efficient elements including new mechanical, plumbing, and electrical systems designed to reduce the energy consumption of the building, along with a green roof to aid with stormwater management. The school was designed to achieve a minimum of LEED Silver for Schools rating.

LEED is a point based system where building projects earn LEED points for satisfying specific green building criteria. Within each of the LEED credit categories, projects must satisfy particular prerequisites and earn points.

The categories include: Sustainable Sites (SS), Water Efficiency (WE), Energy and Atmosphere (EA), Materials and Resources (MR) and Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ). An additional category, Innovation in Design (ID), addresses sustainable building expertise as well as design measures not covered under the five environmental categories. The number of points the project earns determines the level of LEED Certification the project receives. LEED certification is available in four progressive levels: Certified; Silver; Gold and Platinum.

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Cardozo Education Campus Receives LEED Gold Certification

A Coventry woman is warning neighbours to be on guard after a number of fires believed to be arson in the Tile Hill area of Coventry.

Mandy Cook was at her home in Dormer Harris Avenue last week when her shed was set alight.

The resulting flames licked at the house, where her four-year-old granddaughter was sleeping upstairs.

Fortunately the fire was spotted by a neighbour before it got too bad, although the back of the house suffered some damage.

The incident happened at about 10.30pm on Wednesday August 20 and came just days after her grandchildrens other grandmother had had her car torched.

Mandy, aged 43, has also heard of other potential arson attacks in the area and hopes that families will remain eagle-eyed over the coming weeks.

She said: There have been quite a few fires recently, with my shed being being set on fire and four days before that my grandchildrens other nan had her car set alight.

My shed is joined to the house and the fire came through in to the house when I had my four-year-old granddaughter here.

We were lucky that my neighbour saw the fire as we were in the front of the house and didnt know it was happening.

The police are investigating and I just want to warn people as it seems that someone is going around doing this as I have heard of about four or five fires in the area.

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Warning over suspected Tile Hill arson attacks

SEEING a flotilla of 200 black swans returning to the Swan Bay wetland between Coraki and Woodburn is about as good as it gets for Richmond River County Council's Mike Wood.

"So much of what we do is about politics and paper shuffling, so it's good when you see something like that as a result of work on the ground," he said.

Mr Wood said the Swan Bay area was a paddock with a single swan struggling through the weeds a year ago, but the prime habitat has been restored thanks to some intensive restoration work.

Some politics and paper shuffling has paid off with Richmond River County Council (RRCC) being named as one of four recipients in the Lismore electorate of an Environmental Trust Restoration and Rehabilitation grant.

RRCC will use their $94,765 to rehabilitate 3.5 kilometres of the Richmond River at sites in Lismore, Ballina and Richmond Valley Council areas over three years, as part of their Coastal Zone Management Plan.

Other recipients include; $99,260 for the Big Scrub Rainforest Landcare group to improve wildlife corridors; $99,800 for Wilsons Creek Huonbrook Landcare group to remove coral trees and $100,000 for EnviTE to restore habitat links in Yarringully Nature Reserve and Bungawalbin Creek catchment.

Thomas George said his electorate had received 10% of the $4 million on offer across the state, which was a credit to the professionalism of the organisation that had submitted project applications.

"People have a view that I don't do much for the environment but have a look at what the electorate got. That's partly the quality of the applications and I'd like to compliment each and every one of them," he said.

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Swans return to Swan Bay after habitat restoration work

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Mozilla is beginning a broader second phase of an experiment to show ads to Firefox users, a move that ultimately could help reduce the organization's reliance on revenue from Google.

The first phase of its program, called directory tiles, gave Mozilla the option to show ads or promoted content in a grid of thumbnail images that appear when a user opens a new browser tab, but it's offered only to new Firefox users. Enhanced tiles, though, are for existing Firefox users. The new feature gives publishers an opportunity to replace a thumbnail users already would see with one that's potentially more engaging, said Darren Herman, Mozilla's vice president of content services.

The program could give Mozilla more breathing room. Its share of desktop browser usage is slipping, and its presence in mobile browsing is miniscule, so Mozilla needs new levers to push its agenda. The sponsored tiles could mean more money for Mozilla and a new way to influence how advertisers use the personal data of those who see and click on ads.

The directory tiles are links Mozilla picks on its own, but the enhanced tiles modify links that the user already would see. Instead of seeing an automatically generated thumbnail image that might represent the site poorly -- a login screen, for example -- an enhanced tile would show imagery that looks and works better.

"We're looking at logos, images, or anything related to that site," Herman said.

Showing ads and promoting sites is a significant departure for Mozilla. Today, the nonprofit organization gets the vast majority of its money from Google when Firefox users send the search engine traffic that results in revenue from search ads. The ads would mean a new, potentially much broader source of revenue, though.

"We do see it as an opportunity for us to recognize the value we're bringing to all constituents in the market," Herman said -- in other words, to get paid for Firefox's influence over what people see. "Directory tiles and enhanced tiles are an opportunity to work with marketers and content owners to help them distribute their content."

More revenue doesn't hurt, but Mozilla has bigger ambitions: it hopes the tiles program will revive its influence in the advertising world. The company has had fraught relations with advertisers in the last two years due to its push for a Do Not Track standard that lets people inform Web publishers and advertisers when they don't want their online behavior tracked. Mozilla hopes its tiles program ultimately will "make the Internet healthier," Herman said.

"We're showing the world you can get into the advertising ecosystem, building trust, transparency, and user control into those experiences," he said. "Forty-three billion dollars are spent in online ads every year. The opportunity for us is to clean the Web up, to make it healthier...We have to participate. We can't just sit on the sidelines telling people what to do."

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Mozilla expands advertising experiment to many more Firefox users

Another Toynbee Tile has been uncovered at Greenwich Street and North Moore, this time in front of the Tribeca Film Festival headquarters, according toGothamist.

Toynbee Tiles were first recorded in the 80s as the crop circles of busy city streets and have since been covered by the Times, NPRand conspiracy theorists everywhere. Heck, thereseven adocumentary about it.

These license plate-sized secret messageshavegraced the pavements of cities all over the world and are apparently made usinglinoleum, asphalt glue and tarpaper which all work together to bake theminto the sidewalk. According to Phillyist, they generally appear at intersections and consist of the same eerie phrase with minor variation:Toynbee idea / Resurrect dead / Movie 2001 / Planet Jupiter.

Our top-notch street tile analysts at theObserverare baffled, but youve got to admit that every segmentof that phrase would make an excellent band name.

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Toynbee Tile Mystery Continues With New Discovery in Tribeca

Cotswolds Conservation Board trains record numbers in rural skills

4:30pm Wednesday 20th August 2014 in News By William Crossley

THE Cotswolds Conservation Board secured more than 2.4m of investment in the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and trained a record 340 people in rural skills over the past year, according to the boards annual review.

The review is the first to be produced after the board launched a five-year management plan for the AONB last year and summarises its work over the 12 months until the end of March.

The Cotswolds AONB, which was set up in 1966, covers 2,038 square kilometres, including much of West Oxfordshire north of Burford, Witney and Woodstock.

Forty rural skills courses, including dry stone walling, hedgelaying, blacksmithing, making lime mortar and Cotswold tile roofing, were attended by 343 people, a 49 per cent increase over 2012-13.

The board also became an approved LANTRA (rural sector skills council) training provider and created the Cotswolds Dry Stone Walling Academy at its headquarters in Northleach.

Other achievements highlighted include projects to achieve a reduction of 500 tonnes in carbon emissions across the region and supporting nearly 300,000 worth of community projects with just under 50,000 in grants.

The Cotswold Voluntary Wardens put in more than 45,000 hours of work on projects including improving flower-rich grassland sites, coppicing woodland, clearing streams and building walls.

The boards director, Martin Lane, said: Through the hard work of all our staff, voluntary wardens, members and many partner organisations, including 15 local authorities, we were able to once again secure significant investment and bring a wide range of benefits to the Cotswolds AONB and its communities.

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Cotswolds Conservation Board trains record numbers in rural skills

PennDOT officials said Tuesday the outbound Squirrel Hill Tunnel will be closed around the clock this weekend for construction.

The tunnel will close at 10 p.m. Friday and will not reopen until 6 a.m. Monday. Work will include paving inside the tunnel, tile placement, water line installation, sandstone and brick cleaning, lighting work and other construction. The work is part of a $50 million project to rehabilitate the tunnel. The project is expected to be completed by the end of the summer.

The inbound tunnel will remain open during the outbound closure, PennDOT officials said.

To minimize the impact on Squirrel Hill businesses, PennDOT will post different detours for day and night. The daylight detour will route traffic from Forward Avenue to Beechwood Boulevard to Forbes Avenue to South Braddock Avenue and back onto the Parkway.

The night detour will route traffic from Forward Avenue to Murray Avenue to Forbes Avenue to South Braddock Avenue and back onto the parkway.

We anticipate this being the last full weekend tunnel closure of the project, PennDOT spokesman Steve Cowan said. The contractor still has a closure in each direction per the contract, but it is doubtful they would use it. If all goes well this weekend, that should be the last full closure.

Bobby Kerlik is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at 412-320-7886 or bkerlik@tribweb.com.

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Rehab work to close Squirrel Hill Tunnel outbound this weekend

The Waterloo Pool in Denison will remain closed for the next two weeks as workers perform annual maintenance at the facility.

In past years, the pool has closed during the late part of August for annual work, Parks and Recreation Department Manager Sunny Mackey said. As summer temperatures historically hit their peak during the month, attendance tends to drop, she said.

August is one of the least busy months of the year for us, said Mackey.

Mackey said workers will be finishing final touches to repairs to the womens bathroom that began earlier in the summer. At the beginning of the summer, a leak was discovered in the wall of the restroom. While the leak was repaired, paint and tile work were delayed until the August break due to the humidity and use of the facility, said Mackey.

Additionally, workers will be painting the main office area.

The pool will open again on Sept. 2 in time for the swim team season, Mackey said.

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Waterloo Pool closes for seasonal maintenance and repairs