Far left, historian Georgette Grier-Key; second from left, teacher Monica Consalvo; second from right, alum Michael Tessler; and, far right, Mayor Margot Garant with seventh-grade students from the Port Jefferson Middle School. Photo from Monica Consalvo
MAKING HISTORY: On Dec. 22, seventh-grade students of the Port Jefferson Middle School attended an assembly that focused on how the village’s residents aided the efforts of the Patriots in winning the Revolutionary War. Port Jefferson Mayor Margot Garant, historian Georgette Grier-Key and alum Michael Tessler engaged the students in a fascinating display of how the Culper Spy Ring operated as well as having the opportunity to view Loyalist soldier Nehemiah Marks’ letter informing his comrades that Phillips and Nathaniel Roe, among others, helped supply Setauket-based spy Caleb Brewster with information to pass on to the Patriots.
BOOK SIGNING: Port Jefferson Station native Clinton Kelly will appear at the Book Revue, 313 New York Ave., Huntington on Monday, Jan. 9 at 7 p.m. The Emmy award-winning television co-host of “The Chew” will be signing copies of his new book, “I Hate Everyone, Except You,” a hilariously candid, deliciously snarky collection of essays about his journey from awkward kid to slightly-less-awkward adult. For further information, call 631-271-1442 or visit www.bookrevue.com.
Esther Takeuchi with photo in the background of her with President Obama, when she won the 2009 National Medal of Technology and Innovation. Photo courtesy of Brookhaven National Laboratory
By Daniel Dunaief
Pop them in the back of a cell phone and they work, most of the time. Sometimes, they only do their job a short time, discharge or generate so much heat that they become a hazard, much to the disappointment of the manufacturers and the consumers who bought electronic device.
Esther Takeuchi, a SUNY distinguished professor in the Departments of Chemistry and Materials Science and Engineering and the chief scientist in the Energy Sciences Directorate at Brookhaven National Laboratory leads a team of scientists who are exploring what makes one battery work while another falters or fails. She is investigating how to improve the efficiency of batteries so they can deliver more energy as electricity.
Esther Takeuchi with a device that allows her to test batteries under various conditions to see how they function. Photo courtesy of Brookhaven National Laboratory
The process of manufacturing batteries and storing energy is driven largely by commercial efforts in which companies put the ingredients together in ways that have, up until now, worked to produce energy. Scientists like Takeuchi, however, want to know what’s under the battery casing, as ions and electrons move beneath the surface to create a charge.
Recently, Takeuchi and a team that includes her husband Kenneth Takeuchi and Amy Marschilok, along with 18 postdoctoral and graduate students, made some progress in tackling energy storage activity in iron oxides.
These compounds have a mixed track record among energy scientists. That, Takeuchi said, is what attracted her and the team to them. Studying the literature on iron oxides, her graduate students discovered “everything from, ‘it looks terrible’ to, ‘it looks incredibly good,’” she said. “It is a challenging system to study, but is important to understand.”
This offered promise, not only in finding out what might make one set of iron oxides more effective in holding a charge without generating heat — the energy-robbing by-product of these reactions — but also in providing a greater awareness of the variables that can affect a battery’s performance.
In addition to determining how iron oxides function, Takeuchi would like to “determine whether these [iron oxides] can be useful and workable.” Scientists working with iron oxides didn’t know what factors to control in manufacturing their prospective batteries.
Takeuchi said her group is focusing on the linkage between small-scale and mesoscale particles and how that influences battery performance. “The benefit of iron oxides is that they are fairly inexpensive, are available, and are nontoxic,” she said, and they offer the potential of high energy content. They are related to rust in a broad sense. They could, theoretically, contain 2.5 times more energy than today’s batteries. “By understanding the fundamental mechanisms, we can move forward to understand their limitations,” she said, which, ultimately, could result in making these a viable energy storage material. T
akeuchi is also looking at a manganese oxide material in which the metal center and the oxygen connect, creating a tube-like structure, which allows ions to move along a track. When she started working with this material, she imagined that any ion that got stuck would cause reactions to stop, much as a stalled car in the Lincoln Tunnel leads to long traffic delays because the cars behind the blockage have nowhere to go.
Takeuchi said the ions don’t have the same problems as cars in a tunnel. She and her team believe the tunnel walls are porous, which would explain why something that looks like it should only produce a result that’s 5 percent different instead involves a process that’s 80 percent different. “These escape points are an interesting discovery, which means the materials have characteristics that weren’t anticipated,” Takeuchi said. The next step, she said, is to see if the researchers can control the technique to tune the material and make it into the constructs that take advantage of this more efficient flow of ions.
Through a career that included stops in Buffalo and North Carolina and West Virginia, Takeuchi, who has over 150 patents to her name, has collected numerous awards and received considerable recognition. She won the 2009 National Medal of Technology and Innovation, a presidential award given at a ceremony in the West Wing of the White House. Takeuchi developed compact lithium batteries for implantable cardiac defibrillators.
Takeuchi is currently a member of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation Nomination Evaluation Committee, which makes recommendations for the medal to the president. Scientists who have known Takeuchi for years applaud the work she and her team are doing on Long Island. “Dr. Takeuchi and her research group are making great advances in battery research that are very clearly promoted by the strong relationship between Stony Brook and BNL,” said Steven Suib, the director of the Institute for Materials Science at the University of Connecticut.
Indeed, at BNL, Takeuchi has used the National Synchrotron Light Source II, which became operational last year. The light source uses extremely powerful X-rays to create incredibly detailed images. She has worked with three beamlines on her research. At the same time, Takeuchi collaborates with researchers at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials at BNL.
Although she works with real-world experiments, Takeuchi partners with scientists at Stony Brook, BNL and Columbia University who focus on theoretical possibilities, offering her an insight into what might be happening or be possible. There are times when she and her team have observed some interaction with batteries, and she’s asked the theorists to help rationalize her finding. Other times, theorists have suggested what experimentalists should search for in the lab.
A resident of South Setauket, Takeuchi and her husband enjoy Long Island beaches. Even during the colder weather, they bundle up and enjoy the coastline. “There’s nothing more mentally soothing and energizing” than going for a long walk on the beach, she said.
In her research, Takeuchi and her team are focused on understanding the limitations of battery materials. Other battery experts believe her efforts are paying dividends. Suib said the recent work could be “very important in the development of new, inexpensive battery materials.”
Here we are, in a new year, and I am going to start off with a cautionary tale. I was just about to take a shower when I felt a small bump on my left thigh. I thought that was strange since I hadn’t before felt anything there but it was just beyond my view as I fingered the spot and craned my neck to try and see. Then, to my amazement, the bump came off in my hand, revealing itself to be a tick. Ugh!
The legs were moving so it was clearly alive and rather large, so I guessed it was a dog tick. With wonderful coincidence, I happened to have an appointment with the dermatologist that afternoon, so I put the tick into a little plastic baggie and brought him this present. Although I half expected him to just throw it away, he in fact filled out the paperwork and sent it to a lab.
Now I am sharing this with you because I suspect that, like me, you thought tick season had ended with the start of winter. I even stopped putting Frontline on my golden retriever, figuring any ticks would have gone into hibernation or been killed off by the colder weather. But I should have realized that the calendar and the weather aren’t always in sync. We have been enjoying fairly mild temperatures for this time of year and, as it turned out, so have the ticks.
Now I don’t know if the tick fancied me rather than my dog, or if he just found me as I was walking across the lawn or brushing against a bush while putting out the garbage. However it happened, I was, so to speak, stuck with him until that lucky moment when my fingers brushed against his body. Anyway, I got a call from the doctor four days later with the surprising news that despite its large size, the critter was an engorged deer tick.
Not good. We all know that deer ticks can carry Lyme disease and transmit it to humans when they suck up to you. We have had several deer sightings in the neighborhood, especially around a wooded piece of property nearby. To me they are beautiful, graceful animals, and I watch them with admiration as they run. But I certainly don’t appreciate the bugs they can bring and leave behind as a souvenir of their visits.
The doctor asked me if I preferred waiting for the blood test, six weeks away, to determine if in fact I had been infected or if I wanted to go on the antibiotic regime immediately. I chose the latter and began taking 100 mg of doxycycline, with lots of water but no food as seriously instructed, every 12 hours. But the story doesn’t end there.
After only two pills, I developed a headache that just wouldn’t quit. This is apparently a not uncommon side effect with this medicine. So I was then transferred to 500 mg of amoxicillin three times a day for at least 20 days and advised also to take a daily probiotic, though not within two to three hours of each other, and to eat lots of yogurt. As we know, that only partially works to offset the distress to the gastrointestinal tract that accompanies regular doses of antibiotics. Plus I have broken out in splotches of itchy rashes, another unhappy side effect.
Bottom line: A tick bite can be a nasty thing, bringing along all sorts of minor and even major miseries. So from my experience, I hope you will check your skin regularly, even hard to see places, and not assume that a tick is just another summer pest.
Taking credit is easy. It usually means you are patting yourself on the back for something you did or helped do that went well, or that went the way you desired.
In annual reviews, in résumés or on college applications, it’s a great idea to take credit for the ways you contributed, led or facilitated positive outcomes. It’s a way of sharing your potential for future successes with other colleagues, co-workers, bosses or schools.
It’s a fine line because taking credit for, say, the weather on the day of a picnic seems inappropriate and far fetched; or taking credit for something for which your primary role was to cheer for a particular outcome also seems inaccurate.
The other side of the credit coin is accepting responsibility for mistakes or results that fell short of your expectations or hopes.
I read that President-elect Donald Trump has congratulated himself on consumer confidence and the stock market surge since the election.
His election could be a contributing factor in the optimism of consumers or in the personified mind of the stock market.
I wonder, though, when life for Americans doesn’t go the way we would all like, will he also accept responsibility? Will the man who will be the leader of the free world be able to see his role in problems, learn from mistakes and show the kind of flexibility that other world leaders will consider inspiring or redemptive?
When things don’t go the way he or we the people might like, he has blamed others. His favorite target, and a favorite villain for many presidents over the years, has been the media. It’s an easy target because someone can always disagree with the facts or can come up with an alternative theory for them.
I would encourage the man who is so comfortable patting himself on the back — and who seems to be surrounding himself with people who are so supportive of him — to learn to look in the mirror and grow with this enormous job.
Learning isn’t easy or necessarily natural. That’s especially true when you’re confident you know more than anyone else, even intelligence officials, and when you rely on your business or street smarts to win every battle.
Maybe it’s especially challenging for him to accept that he needs educating as a president, in a job which requires him to be decisive and consistent.
At the same time, the president-elect has this opportunity to be a role model in the way he grows with the job.
I wonder, though, how he would deal with a leader with the same personality, self-confidence and strong will that he showed throughout the election cycle. Would he be able to adjust to the way someone else used his own playbook? Perhaps we have already seen glimpses of that, in the way he admires Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, with whom he seems to be sharing a daily global spotlight.
People on both sides of the political aisle probably agree that Trump is a character. It would be a wonderful moment if they all recognized at some point that he also had the kind of character that inspired others to learn, grow and compete against the best in the world.
Instead of recognizing and highlighting other people’s shortcomings, failures or deficiencies, Trump might also take a moment to see ways he himself can improve. If he shares his learning curve, he might provide a new route for others to do their best.
Congressman Tom Suozzi takes a selfie with his family after being sworn into Congress. Photo from Suozzi’s office
Congressman Tom Suozzi (D-Glen Cove) has wasted no time getting to work, opening his district office at 478A Park Ave. in Huntington last week, and getting sworn into office Tuesday, Jan. 3, in Washington D.C.
The office, which opened on Dec. 27, is located at Sunny Pond Farm, inside two historic homes dating back to the American Revolution, which have been preserved and converted into an office space. The homes are located on the property of former Huntington Congressman Silas Wood who represented Long Island in the early 19th century.
Suozzi said he wanted to choose an area that would be easily available for all of his constituents.
“Getting things done for the people of Long Island is our number one priority,” Suozzi said. “This office will help us serve the district. I wanted to locate the office on the Suffolk-Nassau border, so it would be accessible, but I also wanted to locate the office on a property that paid tribute to our nation’s history.”
The congressman said he will also have another satellite office in Queens.
The former Nassau County executive officially became a member of the 115th Congress this week.
“It’s a great honor to be entrusted as your voice in the nation’s capital,” he said. “I look forward to working with all of you and my colleagues in Washington, from both sides of the aisle, to get things done for the families of Long Island and Queens.”
Suozzi defeated Republican challenger Jack Martins (R-Mineola) in November, and inherits former Congressman Steve Israel’s (D-Huntington) seat, who announced late last year he would not be seeking re-election.
“This race has really been about the values my dad taught,” Suozzi said during his post-results speech at The Milleridge Inn in Jericho Nov 8. “I’m going to need everyone in this room to help me because if I stick my head up and say something that’s not the normal thing to be said, they’re going to try and smack us down.”
He added regardless of the results of the presidential election, “we really need to do some soul searching,” referencing health care coverage, the shrinking middle class, immigration reform, climate chance, gun violence and the tax code. He said there’s more important work to be done.
“We have to figure out what’s going on in the country,” he said. “We need to figure out how to bring people back together again to work together.”
Members of the Smithtown Youth Bureau hard at work. Photo from Stacey Sanders.
Smithtown is well aware that a community can’t prosper without happy and healthy kids, which is why it continues to give its young people a voice in how things operate.
Supervisor Pat Vecchio (R) announced the appointment of four residents to the Youth Advisory Board, a group of 19 high school students and nine adults from across the town who work alongside the Smithtown Youth Bureau and advise the town board on ways to address and accommodate the needs of young people in the community, at a public meeting Jan. 3.
The newly appointed members, Esther Jung, Julie Delaney, Denise Massimo and Kathleen Knoll Ehrhard, were accepted through an application on the town board website. As part of the process, each candidate had to write a brief letter to Vecchio detailing what they would like to accomplish in terms of youth matters and why they believed they would be valuable assets to the town.
For Jung, a 16-year-old junior at Commack High School, an issue she’s passionate about is her generation’s overattachment to technology, which she said she hopes to find a solution to in her time on the Advisory Board.
“Everyday at school I see students on their phones in class and I think the community would benefit if we brainstormed on how to limit teens and adolescents from consuming their time with technology,” Jung said. “We could have a more face-to-face conversation with people and go back to where we were once before.”
Each of the new members’ terms commenced Jan. 1, 2017, and will run through Dec. 31, 2019.
According to town code, Smithtown recognizes its youth deserves special attention and assistance in dealing with their needs, and the Youth Board acts as the voice of Youth Bureau policy.
With a third of its members under the age of 21, the board is certainly a fitting representation of its target demographic.
“These are young people that know how to interact with other young people,” Councilwoman Lynne Nowick (R) said. “They go to schools to help out, are involved with various local activities, and serve as liaisons between the town board and young people. I see it as a great interaction and we’re very proud to have them.”
Members meet once a month to develop and coordinate activities that help make the lives of their families and other children better and encourage community participation.
Just in the past year, the Advisory Board worked together with the Youth Bureau to bring Global Youth Service Day to multiple school districts, celebrating and mobilizing those in Smithtown under 21 who have improved their communities through service, as well as a Safe Summer Nights Pool Night at the Smithtown Landing Country Club for grades 6 and up. The board has developed community education seminars and empowerment programs for students focusing on a range of important topics, like the dangers of underage drinking.
A fundraising campaign was held to provide school supplies to kids in need as well as a food drive for Smithtown Emergency Food Pantry. Working predominantly with schools, volunteers help the bureau provide enrichment programs, intervention programs for kids experiencing difficulties or exhibiting behavioral issues, substance abuse prevention programs and anger management programs.
Stacey Sanders, executive director of the Youth Bureau and secretary of the Advisory Board, said the board has a needs assessment committee, a youth empowerment committee, a social media committee and a board training committee.
“The board helps keep the supervisor and [town officials] aware of the needs and beliefs of what’s needed, what residents are actually feeling — adults and youth — and the problems faced in the community,” she said.
Alexis Davitashivili, a junior at Commack High School who joined the Advisory B`oard in September, said her favorite initiative so far was when she and other student volunteers went to a local grocery store and placed approximately 1,100 stickers on alcohol cases to try and put a stop to underage drinking. The stickers read “Your Actions Matter! Preventing underage drinking is everyone’s responsibility.”
“It’s important for young people to get involved in their community because they’re kind of the faces of the community,” she said. “Although older people are involved, not all younger children listen to adults. Hearing things from a teen or someone close to your age is going to have more of an affect on them and the community as a whole. It might even help the adults open their eyes, like ‘oh if a child can do it, so can I.’”
If you’re a high school student or adult interested in joining the Youth Advisory Board, call the Youth Bureau at 631-360-7595 for more information.
Back row from left, Karen Levitov, gallery director and curator; Thomas Meehan, principal of Edna Louise Spear Elementary School; Richard Anderson, art teacher and Art Club instructor; far right: Caitlin Terrell, art teacher; front row from left, Samantha Clink, gallery assistant; Andrea Baatz, student gallery assistant; and, front center, artist Lorna Bieber with art students from Edna Louise Spear Elementary School. Photo from Karen Levitov
Art2Go program inspires
As part of Stony Brook University’s Staller Center for the Arts Art2Go program, the fifth-grade Art Club of Port Jefferson’s Edna Louise Spear Elementary School visited the Paul W. Zuccaire Gallery on Dec. 14 to work on activities inspired by last month’s exhibition, Lorna Bieber: Traces. The artist made a special appearance, making it a really exciting day for the kids. Previous to the visit, Director and Curator Karen Levitov and her gallery assistant Samantha Clink met with the school’s Art Club to do a collage activity. The students brought their collages to the gallery to show to the artist and then made a large montage of all of the collages in the gallery.
Winter is here on the North Shore, and Brookhaven Town is upgrading their system to handle snow removal. FIle photo by Alex Petroski
The Town of Brookhaven is embracing the modern age to help prepare for severe weather.
With snowstorm season fast approaching, Highway Superintendent Dan Losquadro (R) is making it a whole lot easier to clear roadways with the roll out of a new app designed to help foremen streamline the process of contacting hired drivers and achieve efficiency through technology.
The “call-out app,” created by Losquadro and staff in the Division of Information Technology, will do away with the old system in which foremen had to go to their offices and make calls to each individual driver to confirm who was working, what town to respond to and what time their services would be needed. With 1,194 active snow removal vendors throughout the district, that process could take up to four hours — precious time that could be better spent plowing the streets.
A test done on Brookhaven Town Incident Management shows which vendors have and have not responded to call-outs. Image from Brookhaven Town
With the new app, drivers provide their cell phone numbers and email addresses, and from the comfort of their iPads or iPhones, foremen can simply send a text or email about the specifics of the job — what yard to report to, what equipment or vehicle to use, what time to start — and get instant yes or no responses as to who’s available to work.Foremen are able to see, in real time, who is coming in, who isn’t, and can dictate how many total vendors will be in specific areas.
Address hyperlinks are also included, so with the click of a button, the driver is brought directly to a map with directions to the given job site.
By automating the process and having such an immediate call-out, snow removal vendors can get to roads faster by several hours, saving the Town and its residents time and money.
“There’s no reason government needs to be archaic and not operate with the same technology that we’re using everyday of our lives outside of government,” Losquadro said. “I’ve been striving to bring us into the modern age, and this is just another step toward that. This is technology that everyone is very comfortable and well-acquainted with. The app is going to make us more efficient; we can actually spend our time doing the work that needs to be done.”
Losquadro introduced and trained supervisors and field workers on a custom-built, electronic work order system last year, developed a system to track work orders during severe weather the year before that, and is currently in the process of making an electronic time sheet program that will keep track of work hours operational before the end of this snow season.
A test email of what a call-out would look like. Image from Brookhaven Town
He said he and the IT staff have been able to build these programs in-house, rather than go out to consultants and spend thousands of taxpayer dollars. From concept to reality, the call-out app took roughly four months to get off the ground and functions on an Apple-operating system, making it as user-friendly as possible. The app can run on desktop computers, tablets and iPhones.
Matt Sabatello, an IT staff member, said a test of the app was conducted in early December and feedback from foremen has been incredible.
“The app allows for better decision-making for foremen,” he said. “It gives them a good idea of which vendors are responding to work in what areas and, if need be, allows them to react immediately to reassign a vendor to an area that nobody may have been calling in about.”
With Brookhaven being such a large township, Losquadro said “there’s no reason we shouldn’t be leading the way.”
“I’m very proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of ideas about what I’ve wanted to do, and being able to [see them through] has been very satisfying. The app is a fully live and operational system and, God willing, I won’t have to use it that much this year.”
Although it’s only the first week of January, 2017 is turning out to be a very good year for Port Jefferson artist Robert Jones. The 29-year-old is excited to share his art with the community in his debut show, “Complicating Abstracts,” at the Port Jefferson Free Library now through the month of February. In this unique exhibition, which will feature approximately 40 paintings, the viewer will have the opportunity to witness the past few years that Jones has spent developing a unique style and his journey to apply this style to a form.
Sal Filosa, marketing and research librarian, said the library was pleased to be the host of Jones’ first exhibition, adding, “Robert’s creativity through reflection is truly unique among the themes of artwork displayed at the library, and we hope that community members and passersby will stop in to view this stimulating artwork.”
Above, the artist working on his latest painting titled ‘Turtles All the Way Down’
Raised in Stony Brook, Jones graduated from Ward Melville High School in 2006 and moved down to Georgia in 2011 before returning to the area two years ago. In addition to being a musician and songwriter, Jones started painting in earnest in his early 20s. Entering Stony Brook University’s Studio Art program this semester, Jones will concentrate on painting, drawing, printmaking and graphic design. He feels that now is the perfect time to have an exhibit and to branch out and connect with the community. “I want to further myself; I want to progress.”
The artist is drawn to the works of abstract painters like Franz Kline (“I really like the simplicity; the black and white”) László Moholy-Nagy and Piet Mondrian and finds inspiration in local landscapes like West Meadow Beach. He enjoys visiting the Nassau County Museum of Art, the Guggenheim and the Heckscher Museum in Huntington.
According to Jones, his paintings are created by a reaction toward an initial gesture, the starting point, whether it be a flick of the wrist or a full arm motion. Says Jones, “I never try to paint something [in particular], I just go through the action of painting,” adding that his artwork is a reflection of what is happening in the world, including its happiness, the gray area and its futility.
Alternating between oils and acrylics, the artist uses forms, shapes, lines and colors taken from everyday life to create something so abstract that it seems to jump off the page. Study each painting closely though and eventually your eyes will light up in recognition as hidden objects reveal themselves among the brush strokes.
‘Cab Color’
In “The Whale,” based on a song that Jones composed titled “A Whale in the Sky,” the image of a white sperm whale, inspired by Herman Melville’s novel “Moby-Dick,” is inconspicuously incorporated into the painting, while Jones’ first and favorite piece, “The Inferno,” depicts city buildings that appear to be toppling down into the abyss among the orange and red fiery background. Another piece in the exhibit, “Cab Color,” utilizes the stain of cabernet among vibrant shapes and colors, some of which seem to resemble liquor bottles. One of his newer pieces, “The Tree,” is a bit more straightforward, depicting a tree reaching for the sun. “I’m trying to work toward more representational works,” explains Jones.
Like many artists, Jones finds painting as a way to decompress and to relieve stress. “While I’m organizing my painting, I’ll be thinking about everything that’s going on in my life and try to organize that more also,” he said. While he loves music, Jones says he finds more clarity in painting. “I’m more comfortable with this type of expression,” he explains.
Jones encourages everyone to check out his exhibit, adding that some people may not necessarily like this type of art while others may end up liking it a lot. “Art is something I’m really passionate about and I’ve always had a passion for,” he said, adding, “For the last two years I have disciplined myself enough where I feel like my art is going to grow even more, so I’m excited for people to see this exhibit. It is one of my first milestones and I hope to find success in life through art.”
“Complicating Abstracts” will be on view in the Display Case and Meeting Room at the Port Jefferson Free Library, 100 Thompson St., Port Jefferson through Feb. 28. Come meet the artist at an opening reception on Wednesday, Jan. 11 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Refreshments will be served. For more information on the exhibit, call the library at 631-473-0022. For more information on Robert Jones and his paintings, visit www.artbyrobertjones.com.
BOOK SIGNING: Port Jefferson Station native Clinton Kelly will appear at the Book Revue, 313 New York Ave., Huntington on Monday, Jan. 9 at 7 p.m. The Emmy award-winning television co-host of “The Chew” will be signing copies of his new book, “I Hate Everyone, Except You,” a hilariously candid, deliciously snarky collection of essays about his journey from awkward kid to slightly-less-awkward adult. For further information, call 631-271-1442 or visit www.bookrevue.com.
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