CLOSE
Authors Posts by Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

1465 POSTS 0 COMMENTS

by -
0 114
People from as far as Manhattan and as close as Centereach have been taking their vacations on Long Island, such as at the Fox & Owl Inn in Port Jefferson, instead of other states/countries where travel restrictions make it difficult. Photo from Rebecca Kassay

Residents of both Suffolk County and New York City have turned to local hotels and bed and breakfasts to enjoy time away from home amid limited travel options during the pandemic.

With out-of-state guests from numerous states limited in their travel to the area, corporate travel down considerably, and sports teams either shut down or playing without any fans, area hotels have still attracted guests from nearby towns and villages and from city residents disappointed with ongoing urban closures and eager to enjoy a natural setting.

People from as far as Manhattan and as close as Centereach have been taking their vacations on Long Island, such as at the Stony Brook Holiday Inn Express, instead of other states/countries where travel restrictions make it difficult. File photo

“It’s very different now,” said Jamie Ladone, sales executive at the Holiday Inn Express Stony Brook. “We’re not getting as many out-of-state guests,” but the hotel is finding people who are eager for a staycation.

Indeed, Emilie Zaniello and her family recently spent a weekend at the Holiday Inn, just 20 minutes from her home in Centereach

“We needed to get out of our element, to take a break from everyday life and the stresses right now,” said Zaniello, who stayed during a weekend with her husband John and their two children, 8-year-old Abigail, and 6-year-old John Robert.

The family felt “cooped up in the house” as their children didn’t have as much of an opportunity to do “normal, everyday things,” Zaniello said.

Abigail and John Robert enjoyed playing on the baseball field and the basketball court, while the family also booked time to go swimming.

“It just felt like a mini-vacation, where we didn’t have to go too far,” said Zaniello, who drove back and forth to her home to take care of the family’s two miniature dachshunds.

At the Holiday Inn, Suffolk residents have also enjoyed the indoor pool, outdoor patio, and volleyball and basketball courts, which families can use while maintaining social distancing, Ladone said. The hotel also has a putting green, horseshoes, and a baseball field and basketball court.

“We have people looking to spend quality time together like a family outdoors,” Ladone said.

The Holiday Inn has a meeting space upstairs with a seating capacity, under non-pandemic conditions, of 100. The hotel is hosting baby showers and corporate events outdoors on their patio.

The Holiday Inn has booked about 30 percent more outdoor parties than usual, Ladone said.

The Stony Brook hotel has also partnered with Spa Exotique, which offers massages or facials, and kayak packages with Stony Brook Harbor Kayak and Paddleboard.

Bed and Breakfast 

Bed and breakfasts in the area are also attracting attention from residents of Suffolk County and New York City.

At the Fox and Owl Inn in Port Jefferson, people are booking their rooms one to three weeks before they need them, reflecting the uncertainty about plans that might need to change amid fluid infection rates.

For the past two months, the Fox and Owl has been booking about 90 to 95 percent of their capacity, with a majority of the guests coming from New York City and Long Island rather than the usual far-flung locations across the country and world.

The bed and breakfast derived its name from “The Lord of the Rings” book series, which husband and wife owners Andrew Thomas and Rebecca Kassay enjoys. They each picked an animal that was native to the area and hoped to create a place that was akin to the respite the main characters felt when they visited an inn.

Kassay said the Inn has “kept up to date as far as the recommendations for cleaning and the response to the COVID-19.”

“It just felt like a mini-vacation, where we didn’t have to go too far.”

— Emilie Zaniello

The Fox and Owl is located in an 1850 Victorian home, which has large windows that Kassay keeps open as often as she can. Kassay and Thomas also use Lysol on surfaces regularly and ask their guests to wear masks in public.

While guests sit on sofas that are six feet apart, they have shared stories about their quarantine experiences and make predictions about what will happen next.

The Fox and Owl has three guest suites. Some family groups have booked the entire bed and breakfast, which is “really nice for families that are coming to visit other family members,” Kassay said. Groups of friends with similar quarantine habits who feel comfortable interacting with each other have also booked the entire Inn.

The Fox and Owl offers guests the use of a jacuzzi, which is complimentary with any booking. For an additional fee, the Inn provides S’Mores near the fire pit.

Kassay said she and Thomas appreciate that they can offer people an “escape and relief from the stress that everyone is handling.”

As the owner of a bed and breakfast, she said she has reflected on the challenge of remaining personable to guests even while wearing a mask. The daughter of a Sicilian mother, Kassay was raised to speak by using body language and by communicating with her hands as well as her words.

She noticed how guests have become “more expressive,” she said. “If you stop and look at people talking, there is more physicality to American’s interaction with one another.”

A resident of midtown, Mey, who preferred to use only her first name, said she and her boyfriend came to Port Jefferson to escape from the city and enjoy nature amid all the urban closures.

They planned to visit Port Jefferson for the day and wound up spending the night at the Fox and Owl Inn when they weren’t ready to drive back to Manhattan. Mey and her boyfriend enjoyed sitting on the porch, visiting a nearby park and eating ice cream.

“Port Jefferson has a lot of nature and the feeling of a vacation,” Mey said. The experience was “very chill.”

The Manhattanite enjoys attending Broadway shows when she is in the city, which are still closed.

The urban couple traveled to Long Island because they were “looking for something peaceful” and they “found it. Seeing green is better than seeing buildings.”

by -
0 667
METRO photo
Daniel Dunaief

By Daniel Dunaief

A heaviness hovers in the air as we prepare to pack our daughter’s stuff into the car and drive her back to college, an environment fraught with new rules and anxiety. We realize this experiment in campus life, such as it is, might end in days or even a few weeks, as her school may pull the same rip chord it used in March.

While she is returning to campus, all but one of her classes is remote. The in-person class meets twice a week, so she is going back to a restricted college life for two hours a week of in-person learning.

Last year, with its jumble of emotions from taking her to college for the first time, seems so wonderfully innocent and low stress by comparison.

By taking her to college this week, she is already arriving on campus three weeks after classes began and is scheduled to return home before Thanksgiving. That means she’ll be on campus, at most, for two and a half months. That is two weeks longer than summer camp.

We want her to learn, have fun, meet new people and take advantage of college opportunities. Taking these goals one at a time, I’m not convinced that remote classes in which professors record lectures students can watch at their leisure provides the ideal academic experience.

How can they ask questions? How can they turn to the person sitting next to them, or, in the modern world, six seats away, and ask to repeat what they didn’t hear or to see if the professor might have misspoken?

College learning occurs on and off campus. In an ideal world, students not only learn from their professors and teaching assistants, but also from each other. They form study groups where they share notes and test each other.

They could share their screens and form virtual study groups. In these small groups, however, they can and do send private chats to other people and feel freer to respond to the beep or flash of light on another electronic device, distracting them from the group exercise.

The personal connection through the computer is also limited, as people can’t slap each other on the back or chase each other around a library during a much-needed break.

We also want her to have fun, which isn’t the top priority for schools desperate to stay alive financially while keeping the campus community healthy. Even with the most active measures to protect everyone, the virus finds ways to evade detection and to spread.

The virus has become the boogeyman of our childhood nightmares, but instead of lurking under the bed or in dark corners of the closet, it waits on door knobs, in airborne particles and on banisters.

To protect everyone, the school isn’t allowing students to visit other dorms. They are limited in social gatherings outside, where they have to be six feet apart and also need to wear masks.

In a recent email, my daughter’s school told her, “If you see something, say something.” Those words, which became the cultural norm after 9/11, suggest that careless students are the equivalent of viral terrorists. Perhaps a better approach would be to encourage students to model safe behavior and to protect themselves and others on campus.

To facilitate safer social interactions, schools might consider putting up tents, in which they place small circles on the floor that are six feet apart. Students could visit each other in these settings, where they can talk and laugh and see each other in person and wear that great blouse or cool shirt that doesn’t look as good on zoom.

Ultimately, the opportunities they have will depend on the ability of the school, working with students, to figure out what they can do and not what they can’t or shouldn’t. We hope the challenges and adversity of the current reality somehow bring our daughter figuratively closer to her new friends, at a safe social distance.

by -
0 106
Hurricane Laura is expected to cut across the breadth of the U.S. and come at Long Island as a series of storms. PSEG LI said its ready for any cleanup afterwards. Image from NOAA

Amid numerous investigations about its failed communication systems and inaccurate estimated time to restore power after Tropical Storm Isaias, PSEG LI is returning to an earlier version of outage software.

Tropical Storm Isaias uprooted a tree in St. James. Photo by Rita J. Egan

The utility, which is overseen by the Long Island Power Authority, is rolling back from version 6.7, which was installed earlier this year, to version 5.5, according to an email from LIPA in response to TBR News Media’s questions.

This is one of several steps PSEG, under LIPA’s supervision, is taking to address any future storms that might hit Long Island.

“LIPA is currently conducting an end-to-end review to understand the root causes of the communications and restoration systems issues, including the outage management system and the various feeder systems,” LIPA representatives explained in its email.

The power authority also indicated that it was closely overseeing PSEG’s immediate, corrective actions through daily calls and reports and an independent review of system modifications and testing.

LIPA and Electeds Conduct Reviews

LIPA is planning to issue 30, 90, and 180-day reports to the LIPA Board of Trustees and the public.

The reviews include an evaluation of pre-storm readiness of the telecommunication systems, a root causes analysis of unprocessed calls and text message, and review of the design and implementation of outage management and restoration systems and processes and actionable recommendations on storm preparedness, system and management controls and approaches to increasing system reliability and performance.

“It’s good that they’re doing an outside report … It’s not going to help us now.”

– Jim Gaughran

While State Sen. Jim Gaughran (D-Northport) welcomed the review, his primary concern, he said, was whether the utility was prepared for the next storm, particularly in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Laura, which devastated parts of Louisiana.

“It’s good that they’re doing an outside report,” Gaughran said in an interview. “It’s not going to help us now. This is a crisis situation and you would think that they would have an emergency task force… that would come up with changes and implement them” within days of the response to a storm that knocked out power for more than a week to parts of Long Island.

PSEG said in an emailed statement that the company is “working diligently to be prepared for the next major weather event and ensure that our response to Tropical Storm Isaias was an anomaly.”

The utility company indicated it had made configuration and capacity changes to the phone system, rolled back the outage management system to a more “stable” version and put “processes in place to continuously monitor our IT systems for capacity and bottleneck issues.”

A tree lies across Old Post Road East in Mount Sinai after Tropical Storm Isais. Photo by Kyle Barr

While New York State Attorney General Letitia James is conducting her own investigation into the company’s response to the storm, LIPA indicated that the Department of Financial Services, in cooperation with the Department of Public Service, was also participating in a review.

The involvement in the DFS is “good,” said Gaughran, who has been a consistent critic of both LIPA and PSEG even before Tropical Storm Isaias. “The more the merrier.”

One of the questions Gaughran and other representatives asked about LIPA’s oversight of PSEG LI related to the timing and effectiveness of the most recent stress test. In response to a letter Gaughran and Assemblyman Fred Thiele, Jr. (D-Sag Harbor) sent to LIPA, CEO Thomas Falcone indicated that the outage management system was most recently stress tested in June of this year.

“Part of LIPA’s review includes the stress-testing procedures used in the past and improvements for the future,” Falcone said in his response.

Cost of the Cleanup

Senator Gaughran and Assemblyman Thiele said they are also focused on the source of any reimbursement the company receives in connection with costs related to the storm.

Long Island rate payers “shouldn’t be paying for the cost of out-of-town crews sitting around waiting to do work and not doing work because the management failed to communicate,” Gaughran said. The costs of bringing in those crews from out of state and feeding and housing them should be shared by shareholders of PSEG, Gaughran contended.

“I believe shareholders have to be responsible for at least any portion of the additional costs related to their incompetence and failure in dealing with the communication system,” he said. Had the communication system worked as it should, the time to restore power might have been cut down dramatically, Gaughran argued.

“LIPA retains a third-party auditor for storm recovery costs where federal funds are involved, as will likely be the case for Isaias,” Falcone said in the letter.

LIPA estimates that the cost of restoration, which involved over 6,000 personnel, was over $350 million, with $260 million eligible for FEMA reimbursement. The main driver of the costs, Falcone said in his letter, was the extensive damage to the electric grid, which occurred at over 20,000 locations.

Reiterating sentiments he shared during a virtual joint hearing of the New York State Senate and Assembly, Falcone said the system PSEG LI designed and implemented did “not meet the standards of our contract. LIPA retains all of its contractual rights and remedies and will pursue the appropriate course of action after the conclusion of the various investigations.”

“LIPA retains a third-party auditor for storm recovery costs where federal funds are involved, as will likely be the case for Isaias.”

Thomas Falcone

Gaughran said he would consider Falcone’s response to his letter and would likely respond with additional questions that address additional concerns.

“There are a lot of issues I hope” LIPA addresses, the state senator said, including why the company didn’t contract with workers from National Grid, who were already on Long Island.

“You had Long Islanders ready to work,” Gaughran said. “They could have been put into operation immediately.”

Gaughran doesn’t necessarily think LIPA needs to revoke its contract with PSEG LI. Rather, he wants to “get a system so the lights can go back on at a reasonable time.”

Ultimately, the state Senator believes the way LIPA oversees PSEG LI may not provide sufficient reassurance for residential and business customers.

Ultimately, Gaughran would like the legislature to revisit the structure of the agreement between LIPA and PSEG LI.

“This structure isn’t working,” Gaughran said.

In his letter to the politicians, Falcone agreed that “Long Islanders deserve better” than the response they got from PSEG LI after Isaias. “LIPA is working to ensure they get better.”

by -
0 1358
Ivar Strand Photo courtesy of BNL

By Daniel Dunaief

Ivar Strand had to put on a suit at home to interview virtually for a new job.

In the midst of the pandemic, Brookhaven National Laboratory was looking for a Manager of Research Partnerships in the Strategic Partnership Program and, despite the fact that the lab was limiting the people who were on site, was moving forward to fill a job opening.

“It was a strange situation,” Strand said, but the job piqued his interest, particularly because he’d be working with Martin Schoonen, the leader of BNL’s Strategic Partnership Programs office and an associate laboratory director for environment, biology, nonproliferation and national security. Schoonen and Strand, who worked together at Stony Brook in the late 1990’s, have known each other for over 25 years.

While Strand worked at Stony Brook as an Assistant Vice President of Sponsored Programs, he had a visiting appointment at BNL for five years, from 2005 to 2010. Several of the staff at BNL “remembered who I was, which made the transition a little bit easier,” he said.

Strand most recently worked at Long Island University, where he was the Executive Director in the Office of Sponsored Projects.

Schoonen was pleased to welcome Strand to the BNL fold. “[He is] taking on a pivotal role to develop contractual arrangements with potential partners and assist with growing and diversifying the labs funding sources,” Schoonen said in a statement.

In effect, Strand is facilitating collaborations among institutions. He will facilitate not only the connections and collaborations, but also encourage broadening and deepening professional connections to create either project specific or ongoing strategic partnerships

Strand will work to increase the awareness of the capabilities BNL can provide to researchers, entrepreneurs, and investors. The main drawback in a job he started on May 26 has been that he hasn’t been able to “build face-to-face relationships,” he said. Speaking with people for the first time through web-based platforms is not the same as running into someone who is walking across the site.

Building the relationship with the Department of Energy also represents a new challenge for Strand, who has previously worked with educational institutions as well as with Northwell Health.

“I spent my whole career building partnerships at various research institutions,” he said. After facilitating those collaborations, Strand has entered into agreements and then moved one. At BNL, he has the added dynamic of “making sure it satisfies the requirements of the DOE.” The scope of his work comprises all the research funding coming into the lab outside of the direct money that comes from the DOE, which represents about 90 percent of the funds for research at the lab.

Some of these other initiatives are collaborative, which involve DOE funds that also have a requirement to find a company to contribute financially, such as the Technology Commercialization Fund.

Working with finance and departmental business managers, Strand oversees the non-direct DOE money that comes in. When educational institutions and companies participate, particularly to supply funding, Strand and the strategic partnership team become a part of the conversation.

BNL often competes against the other national labs for major projects. Once the government selects a winner, as it did for the construction of the Electron Ion Collider, the DOE often asks the lead on the project to tap into the expertise and talents of the other institutions. When BNL recently won the EIC contract over Jefferson Laboratory in Virginia, the DOE asked BNL to partner with Jefferson to build the facility. New York State originally agreed to contribute $100 million to the construction of the EIC. Strand said the lab is hopeful that the commitment would come through.

In addition to the scientific discoveries that the EIC will bring, it is also a construction project that will provide the state with jobs. “I’m involved in some of the discussions in order to provide information about the project,” Strand said.

The transition to a government lab will require Strand to maneuver through structured agreements from the DOE, which is a bit of a challenge. The DOE uses structured agreements, while educational institutions also do but often are willing to use the agreements the sponsors propose.

Strand is pleased that BNL recently received approval to participate in the Atom Consortium, which was started by Glaxo and the University of California at San Francisco. The negotiation had been going on for several years. “It allows us to enhance our big data computing capabilities and expertise,” he explained.

Strand is excited about rejoining BNL. “I’ve always wanted to work in the lab and understand how best to build collaborations under the government umbrella,” he said.

Strand hoped his unconventional approach to some of the partnership challenges will work in the context of the structured environment of a national laboratory.

Indeed, in 2007, when he was working at Stony Brook, the university received the funds to buy a supercomputer. The two institutions, however, had decided to house the supercomputer at BNL, which made it a “challenging transaction” for all parties. He and others had to help Stony Brook become an enlisted partner, which allowed BNL to house the supercomputer on site.

In the bigger picture, Strand said he and Schoonen are reviewing where the lab will be from a strategic perspective in five years. In addition to industry, they are looking to collaborate with other federal sponsors with whom they haven’t traditionally partnered. They have to make sure that these efforts conform with DOE’s growth agenda.

A first-generation American whose parents were born in Norway, Strand said his parents met in the United States. A resident of South Setauket, Strand lives with his wife Maritza, who is an implementation specialist for ADT payroll. A tennis player and golfer, Strand alternates visiting and hosting his brother, who lives in Norway and is a veterinarian.

Strand is looking forward to his ongoing collaborations with Schoonen. “Having worked with him in the past, I have a lot of respect” for Schoonen, Strand said. “I jumped at the chance to be reunited with him. He’s an unbelievably great guy to work for.”

by -
0 797
Stock photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

Next week, I invite you to the virtual and completely imaginary People’s National Convention, or PNC. It’s not a Democratic Convention or a Republican Convention. It’s just a fake gathering, virtually and invisibly, in which real people can stop worrying about partisan politics and enjoy the chance to live
each day.

Now, this PNC won’t nominate any one person, because, let’s face it, no singular person is capable of succeeding with the challenges that face our nation in this extraordinarily challenging year.

We’ll keep the speeches to a minimum because we don’t think people listen to most of what others say at these things anyway. Our first speaker will come up with a mask and will start by rolling her large and expressive eyes. She’ll try to convey, without using her mouth or her cheeks, which will be hidden behind her mask, a wide range of emotions. In fact, we might have a “guess-her-expression” game and the person who wins will receive absolutely nothing in the mail.

After that, we’ll launch into a rage presentation. Our speaker will bark, growl, throw himself around the room and urge you, with his arm motions, to get off your sofa and join him. He’ll work his way up to a fevered snarl and then he’ll bang his fists so hard against the TV set that he’ll shatter the screen. You’ll see the cracks on the TV, but don’t worry, the cracks and the blood — we won’t use real blood — are all on the PNC end. Your TV is fine. At the end of his speech, he’ll take a 2020 sign, or one of those 2020 New Year’s glasses with the holes for the eyes in the zeroes, put them on the floor and stomp on them.

After our rage speaker, we’ll have a fear speaker. He, too, won’t use words. He’ll move from left to right, then right to left and then, you guessed it, left to right again, on your screen, afraid of something over his shoulder. He might see a shadow. He’ll be frightened because, as the other conventions suggested, we must feel the need to fear something. He’ll run towards the letters PNC and will smile with relief, knowing that the PNC will protect him.

To offset this potentially overwhelming programming, we’ll offer a counterbalance of kids and pets accompanied by light-hearted music on a harpsichord. We call this portion of the programming the “Awwwww” segment. We’ll show images of toddlers laughing, baby bunnies hopping around a flower-strewn meadow and dolphins cutting in and out of the surface of the water.

We’ll have the icon room, where you can stand up, or not, as you see fit when you see the images. We’ll start with the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, where the ancestors of so many modern Americans arrived. We’ll add the Grand Canyon, the California coastline, Yellowstone National Park and Niagara Falls.

Then, we’ll have people trip and fall and try to juggle cell phones ineffectively. When the phones land, their screens, which might or might not have images of familiar faces, will crack. Will the entire segment be funny? Not necessarily. No one is always funny, but they promise to try because laughter might be our best medicine.

We’ll have a few actual speakers who use words, who tell inspirational stories about triumph over impossible odds. We’ll talk about people who were told many times that they couldn’t do something, until they went out and did it.

At the conclusion of the PNC, we’ll celebrate our friends and neighbors and the people who enhance every day and we’ll promise each other we’ll be better to them, and to ourselves.

by -
0 148

University Says Students Who Violated Housing Health Policy Given Housing Suspension Pending Review

Maurie McInnis was named SBU's sixth president. Photo from SBU

Stony Brook University will not let the actions of some students derail the on-campus living and learning experience for the majority.

This past weekend, days before the start of an unusual fall semester Aug. 24 amid ongoing concerns about the pandemic, the university found a “small number of violations” of the university’s COVID-19 health policy. Several students have been put on interim housing suspension for violations pending the conclusion of a conduct case, Maurie McInnis, who became the sixth president of SBU in July, said in an interview. The students in question have not been suspended from their academic studies.

McInnis said the school would suspend other students “if that is necessary.” She added that it is “very important that we give the students who are acting responsibly the opportunity for the in-person residential experience that they are working hard to protect.”

The school’s disciplinary actions follow similar measures taken by other universities such as Syracuse University and the University of Connecticut, which are trying to provide students with an opportunity to benefit from an on-campus experience while protecting faculty, staff and students from the spread of COVID-19.

McInnis added she appreciated the chance to be a part of the excitement that comes from the first day of what is likely to be one of the most challenging in the school’s 63-year history.

“It feels so great to have students back on our campus,” she said. “While, yes, it is under circumstances that are different than we’re used to, the same energy and excitement is there.”

The new university president said she enjoyed meeting students and their families as they moved onto the campus prior to the first day of classes.

The new president, who is a cultural historian and author of “Slaves Waiting for Sale: Abolitionist Art and the American Slave Trade,” said she feels confident in the school’s ability to navigate through the challenges of on-campus living and learning.

Students “understand that the way we are all going to have a great semester” is to act “personally responsible, wearing our masks and being socially distant,” she said.

SBU has created a dashboard that will track the number of tests the school is conducting on campus and the number of positive cases, if there are any. So far, the school has only had negative tests.

The dashboard is available at: www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/irpe/covid-19.phpleadership. It shows that the hour in the week in which the number of students registered for in-person classes is the highest is Tuesday, between 11 a.m. and noon, when 2,721 students were registered for in-person classes. In that same hour in the fall of 2019, 13,836 students took in-person classes.

The university will monitor its dashboard closely and will alter its policies as necessary to protect the campus community.

McInnis said the school was preparing for a possible second wave of the pandemic in the fall, as well as the possibility of the coincident timing of an outbreak of the flu.

“We are watching and monitoring all that carefully,” she said, which includes having enough personal protective equipment and a plan in place for health care personnel, among other measures.

McInnis said it is “too soon to speculate on” what the university policy might be if and when researchers develop a vaccine for COVID-19.

“As a part of SUNY and a public institution, we would be working with state partners and the [New York] Department of Health in making any sort of decision” about a vaccination for students or faculty, she said.

McInnis, who shared a detailed and open letter with the community and the public about the university’s difficult financial condition, said the budget remains a “fluid situation.” She added that the university “needs to get to work straight away as a community” in an “open and collaborative fashion to bring the best ideas for collaborating and working together better for leveraging opportunities, for efficiencies on our campus” and to develop ways to generate new revenue.

Meanwhile, the university has spent the summer “significantly improving” the quality of the remote and distance learning for students engaged with the online platform, she said.

In addition to being the new university president, McInnis is also a parent of a college-age son. Her son’s school was going entirely nonresidential and remote, so he decided to take a gap year.

At Stony Brook, the total number of students registered is 26,130, which is about 200 fewer than last year, suggesting that deferrals haven’t affected the matriculation rate much this fall.

McInnis said she appreciated the ongoing support of the university and surrounding communities.

“What we have been hearing, again and again, is, ‘How can we help?’” she said. “It is so great as president to be part of the community that clearly has the devotion of so many people.”

This article has been updated Aug. 25 to give more info on the nature of students violations and their interim suspension. 

by -
0 1564
Joel Hurowitz before the PIXL launch at the end of July. Photo by Tanya Hurowitz

By Daniel Dunaief

For six years, Joel Hurowitz worked as Deputy Principal Investigator on a team to build an instrument they would send to another planet.

Joel Hurowitz

An Assistant Professor of Geosciences at Stony Brook University, Hurowitz and the team led by Abigail Allwood at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory created an instrument that would search for evidence of life that is likely long ago extinct on Mars.

The team designed a 10-pound machine (which will weigh less than four pounds in Mars’s lower gravity environment) that is about the size of a square lunchbox and houses x-ray equipment that can search along the surface of rocks for life that may have existed as long as three to four billion years ago.

Mars’s surface environment became less hospitable to life starting around three billion years ago, when the planet lost most of its atmosphere, causing the surface to dry out and become extremely cold. Surface life at this point likely became extinct.

Called the Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry, or PIXL, the instrument was one of seven that lifted off at the end of July as part of a Mars 2020 mission. The Perseverance rover will land at the Jezero Crater on the Red Planet on February 18th, 2021.

After all that work, Hurowitz had planned to watch the launch with his family in Florida, but the pandemic derailed that plan.

“I got to watch the launch with my family,” Hurowitz said. He was on two zoom conferences, one with the Mars 2020 team and the other with members of the Department of Geosciences at Stony Brook. “It was a really special experience” and was the “best teleconference of the last six months,” he said.

As the rocket makes its 35.8 million mile journey to Mars, the JPL team will turn on the PIXL to monitor it, run health checks and do routine heating of the components to make sure it is operating. After the rocket lands, the rover will go through a commissioning period. Numerous subsystems need to be checked out, explained Hurowitz.

The first test for the PIXL will be to analyze a calibration target the researchers sent to Mars, to make sure the measurements coincide with the same data they collected numerous times on Earth. This ensures that the instrument is “working the way we want it to. That’ll happen in the first 40 sols.”

A sol is a day on Mars, which is slightly longer by about 40 minutes than a day on Earth.

Once it passes its calibration test, the PIXL can start collecting data. Hurowitz described the instrument as “incredibly autonomous.” It sits at the end of the rover’s arm. When the scientists find a rock they want to explore, the PIXL moves an inch away from the surface of the rock and opens its dust cover. The scientists take pictures with a camera and a set of laser beams. These beams help determine whether the PIXL is an optimal distance from the rock. If it isn’t, the instrument manipulates itself, using struts that allow it to extend or retract away from the rock.

Once PIXL gets in the right position, it fires an X-ray beam into the rock. The beam is about the diameter of a human hair. The x-ray that hits the rock is like wind going through chimes. Rather than make a familiar sound, the elements in the rock emit a specific x-ray signal as the atoms return to their ground state. Putting together the signals from the rock enables Hurowitz and the PIXL crew to determine its chemistry.

Even though the rocks are likely a combination of numerous elements, they “separate themselves cleanly in our spectra,” Hurowitz said. The SBU Geosciences expert expects the elements in the rocks to have different proportions than on Earth. Mars, for example, has more iron than sodium. A granite rock on Earth would likely have considerable sodium and some potassium, with a little iron.

Hurowitz and the PIXL team will be looking for rocks that may have evidence of prokaryotic organisms that are Mars’s versions of similar species found in undisturbed areas of Western Australia, where researchers discovered ancient fossilized life.

The rocks in Australia contain the oldest accepted fossilized forms of life, which are about 3.5 billion years old and are considered the best analogues for what the PIXL team might find on Mars.

In Australia, which is where Allwood grew up, scientists discovered microbial mats, which are single-celled organisms that build up, one layer after another, into a colony. These mats worked together to build up towards the sunlight, which fuels their metabolism. They use raw chemicals in the environment like dissolved sulfur, iron and manganese.

The Martian mats, if they find them, likely had to adapt to considerably different conditions than on Earth. The Martian environment may not have had large oceans or river systems and craters filled with lakes.

The scientists won’t be able to look for an individual microbe, but rather for indirect signals, such as laminated structures that formed in ways that are unique to microbial communities.

Hurowitz, Allwood and the PIXL team are looking for clues from an unusual lamination in the rock that they would likely associate with a microbial mat. By looking closely at the lamination, they may be able to develop hypotheses about whether a mat was taking chemicals out and depositing it to make a mineralized home for itself.

If they find rocks of interest, the rover’s drill will collect a sample and hermetically seal it in a tube.

A future mission to Mars, planned for 2026, could retrieve some of these samples, which, when they return, could confirm the presence of life on Mars. PIXL will continue to operate as long as the filament in the x-ray tube lasts, which should be between 1,300 and 1,400 uses.

Allwood, who shared an office with Hurowitz when they worked together at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said she approached him when she started assembling a team.

Finding life on Mars would answer a question that has intrigued those on Earth for thousands of years, Allwood said. Such Martian life would indicate that “we’re not alone. There was life and it was next door,” she said.

by -
0 138
A large tree in front of Emma S. Clark Memorial Library was no match for Hurricane Isaias. Photo by Pam Botway

Politicians with long memories and short fuses demanded answers from PSEG and LIPA for the communications problems and the slow restoration of power after Tropical Storm Isaias, even as they lamented how this wasn’t supposed to happen again after the long recovery from Superstorm Sandy in 2012.

State Assemblyman Steve Englebright (D) said LIPA and PSEG were inconsiderate with their spoiled food policy. Photo by Kyle Barr

In a full-day hearing of the combined New York State Assembly and Senate, local politicians including Assemblymen Steve Englebright (D-Setauket) and Doug Smith (R-Holbrook) and Senators James Gaughran (D) and Todd Kaminsky (D-Rockville Center) questioned everyone from the chairman of the Public Service Commission, John Rhodes, to the President of PSEG Long Island, Daniel Eichhorn, and the CEO of LIPA, Thomas Falcone.

“We were told after Superstorm Sandy that things would change, but they did not,” Kaminsky said. “Why do we pay some of the highest electric and internet bills in the country when we couldn’t reach a provider, when the information we got was inaccurate? Why is it so hard to receive a reimbursement? Who is funding those reimbursements?”

Indeed, Rhodes, of the Public Service Commission, said he wanted answers from numerous utilities throughout the state and that the commission was not going to leave “any tool on the table.”

That proved small consolation for politicians and their constituents, some of whom were without power for over a week and many of whom had to throw out the entire contents of their powerless refrigerators and freezers. That is an especially problematic proposition in the aftermath of the pandemic, when budgets are tight and the recession caused by the lockdown has cut jobs in numerous industries.

Englebright questioned why PSEG is reimbursing customers for food spoilage only if their power was out for at least 72 hours. The reimbursed amount totaled $150 if the customers didn’t have receipts and could be as high as $250 if they had receipts, photographs, a canceled check or a credit card bill.

Englebright suggested the timeframe should allow for food spoiled after about 48 hours and wondered why the utilities had not settled on a longer time frame. The Setauket assemblyman wondered whether PSEG believed food “spoils more slowly on Long Island than any other place.”

Eichhorn said the 72 hour threshold defined numerous factors in a storm and “aligns with some of our processes.” The three day time frame “triggers certain things.”

Falcone added that the 72 hours defined a major storm.

“That’s not a health definition,” Englebright countered, but, rather was a “storm definition. That doesn’t necessarily reflect what somebody’s suffering from if their refrigerator is out for perhaps even half of that length of time.”

PSEG’s Eichhorn acknowledged that the company’s response to the storm was “not in line with our expectations.” He said the company is conducting its own reports to figure out what went wrong and to make changes and improvements.

“I’m not here to make excuses,” Eichhorn said. “We own the experience our customers had and we are committed to fixing it.”

Kaminsky asked whether PSEG had tested its system prior to the storm. Eichhorn responded that the company did a simulation in June and that PSEG passed that test.

That passing grade, despite the performance a few months later, will be a focus of PSEG’s own review, as well as a review conducted by LIPA.

“The most relevant stress test was the storm and [the PSEG system] was obviously inadequate,” Falcone said. The systems were “not robust enough” to allow customers to report power failures to PSEG.

On behalf of their constituents, politicians also lamented the shifting timeline for restoring power. In several cases, representatives at the virtual meeting recounted how residents spoke with people in utility trucks or representatives from PSEG who told them their power was on when their constituents were still struggling through the ongoing outage.

In an interview, Gaughran expressed his frustration with the utility arrangement on Long Island, where LIPA oversees PSEG, while the Public Service Commission has no direct authority or recourse.

“The Public Service Commission cannot fine them or sanction them,” Gaughran said. “They’re totally out of the loop.”

Sen. James Gaughran and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory officials at an Aug. 18 press conference. He has called for additional oversight of both LIPA and PSEG Photo from Sen. Gaughran’s office

Reflecting the concerns of his fellow senators and assemblymen and assemblywomen, Gaughran wondered what the utilities would do to protect Long Islanders in the event that another storm, with potentially stronger winds and heavier rain, impacted the region.

Gaughran said he would like to ensure that PSEG and LIPA don’t tap into a storm reserve fund, which is a collection of money set aside with rate payers money.

“The language in that fund is clear: they can’t access that for any part of the cost” from mismanagement or inadequate storm response, Gaughran said. “If you have an out-of-town crew sitting at the side of the road for hours waiting for instructions … those extra costs are costs of incompetence.”

Gaughran introduced a bill that would give the Public Service Commission the authority to investigate and sanction and fine the company and force them to take corrective action.

To prevent this kind of communication failure from happening again, Eichhorn said the company was conducting reviews of its computer system, which includes its outage management system and the telephone and digital experiences.

“We have made interim changes during and since the storm,” Eichhorn said. “We are continuing to do an after-action review to identify additional short and long term changes to ensure we’re ready for the next storm.”

Falcone added that LIPA would “go back and see why the system failed. We are hiring independent people to redo the stress test.”

Assemblyman Smith asked whether PSEG knew that National Grid employees weren’t a part of the storm response crews, even though people with experience were on Long Island.

“National Grid [employees] were not used during the storm,” Eichhorn said. “That will be included in the review.”

by -
0 121
Owners of Huner’s Fitness Advantage in Port Jefferson said they believe they should be considered essential for the work they do helping people remain active and healthy. Photo from Huner’s Fitness Advantage website

After doing heavy lifting to ensure customer and employee safety, gyms can begin to reopen soon.

Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone (D) announced a gradual gym reopening starting this Monday, Aug. 24. This comes after earlier this week Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) said gyms can start to reopen once they receive guidance from local government.

Commercial gyms, such as Planet Fitness, LA Fitness, Retro Fitness and those that require a membership fee, along with indoor classes can restart next week.

Each fitness center will have to pass a county health inspection to make sure the gyms have sufficient procedures to protect staff and customers while following state guidelines established by Cuomo.

Hotel, office, higher education and residential gyms can reopen starting the following week, on Aug. 31.

On Thursday, Aug. 20, the county will host a virtual meeting with facility owners to review guidance, answer questions and provide any clarifications.

“With our infection rate holding steady at or below 1 percent and a robust testing system in place, we are confident we can reopen gyms in a way that is both safe and responsible,” Bellone said in a statement. “I want to remind our residents and gym owners that we are still in the midst of a pandemic.”

Bellone encouraged those attending gyms to wear a mask and follow all safety procedures.

Communal showers, whirlpools, saunas and steam rooms and water fountains and self-serve bars and samples must remain closed. According to the governor’s web site, individual showers and stalls can remain open as long as they are cleaned between use.

Classes are restricted to the most restrictive guidelines, which could either be six feet of distance in all directions from a participant, a limit of 33 percent capacity and no more than 50 people.

Gym owners also must provide sanitizing stations, acceptable face coverings, which exclude bandanas, buffs and gaiters and the limitation of physical contact activities including boxing and martial arts.

During each inspection, businesses will receive a gallon of NYS Clean hand sanitizer.

According to Cuomo, local health departments are required to inspect gyms prior to reopening or within two weeks of reopening, to ensure strict adherence to the state Department of Health guidance.

Indeed, the Suffolk County Department of Health Services will begin inspections on Monday, Aug. 24 for commercial and traditional gyms.

“New Yorkers must closely adhere to the guidelines and local health departments are required to strictly enforce them to help ensure gyms and fitness center reopen safely and protect the public health,” Cuomo said in a statement.

The Suffolk County Department of Economic Development and Planning will work with the Suffolk County Department of Labor, Licensing and Consumer Affairs and the Suffolk County Department of Health Services to create an online database of gyms and fitness centers within the county.

Before an inspection, gym owners will need to complete the affirmation for each location, which owners can find at the New York Forward website forward.ny.gov, that they reviewed and understood the state guidelines and will implement these protocols.

After owners attest to their safety plans, the county will schedule inspections. Suffolk will send out an email with the date and approximate time for an inspection.

Gym owners need to post a written safety plan describing the ways they are protecting employees and gym members from COVID-19.

Cuomo also requires that gyms use a MERV-13 or greater air-handling system. If the gym can’t operate at that level, the owners need to have a heating, ventilation and air conditioning professional document their inability to use such a system and adopt additional ventilation and mitigation protocols from the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

by -
0 1172
METRO photo
Daniel Dunaief

By Daniel Dunaief

My mother often describes family rituals in her columns, whether they are the way we play baseball, the way we argue (remember the pancakes on my then teenage brother’s cantankerous head?) or the way we celebrate victories and help each other rise off the mat after defeats.

Ever the driven optimist, my mother can turn the most lemony lemons into something much more palatable, often, as Julie Andrews did in “My Favorite Things” with a spoonful, or two, of sugar.

It would be easy this week to lament the fact that, for the first time in decades, my family can’t see my mother on her birthday because of the danger from bringing the virus to her home. We recognize that so many people are enduring so much more challenging disruptions to their routines and that we are fortunate to have each other and can share the events of the week with her
through Zoom.

So, instead of being disappointed by the distance, I will share ways in which my mother, who will celebrate this birthday with my brothers and not me, my wife and our children, has cast a long shadow, all the way to our doorstep.

Well, for starters, my children and I can be, and often are, serious when the moment demands. And yet, a part of us can’t help imagining uproariously funny images or interruptions to a somber and important speech at just the wrong moment. I’m sure part of what was so familiar about my wife’s similarly mischievous nature comes from recognizing the moment when one of us feels compelled to answer a rhetorical question or to laugh during a silence.

My mother also has a keen ear for the words people choose to use or that immortalize them, much the way my children and I do. Of the many Winston Churchill quotes, she has, on occasion, shared this one: “I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.”

I suppose that one isn’t too surprising, given her appreciation for animals which likely comes from her father, who grew up lactose intolerant on a dairy farm. Hmm, maybe that’s where she gets her sense
of humor?

Moving along, my family revels in our senses. We smell something wonderful, like baking cookies or the scent of new flowers in the spring, and we take a moment to appreciate the gift of the scent and our senses, which enable us to perceive and process it.

My mother also has a spectacular appreciation for nature. A sudden dark sky isn’t cause for concern or disappointment, but is a chance to appreciate the variety of weather that makes the coldest day warmer and the warmest day cooler.

Now, given the times in which we live, I see my mother in both of our children as they handle the ever-changing rules and realities of a world that hasn’t yet conquered the virus. Our daughter could rue the inequities that are robbing her of a “normal” college education. Instead, she and her resilient friends are staying in touch, supporting each other, and looking forward, as my mother would, to the day when they can return to a campus they might have otherwise taken for granted.

As for our son, despite his dedication and passion for baseball, which is a rite of passage each spring, he kept his head up and took time to train on his own, waiting for the moment when he could return, stronger and faster, to his field of dreams.

We can’t wait to sing to you this year, mom, and to let you know that, even though we haven’t traveled to see each other, we are enjoying the echoes of your joie de vivre in the halls of our home.

Prev1...585960...147Next Page 59 of 147
TBR News Media is your local news and entertainment website.
We provide you with the latest breaking news and information for your community.
Contact us: [email protected]

Most Viewed

©