CLOSE
Columns

by -
0 217
Andy

MEET ANDY!

This week’s shelter pet is Andy, a 5-year-old male domestic shorthair who was brought to the Smithtown Animal Shelter by way of a happy accident. A resident was attempting to locate their beloved feline family member and accidentally trapped Andy. 

This mustached boy was brought into the shelter, where he received a health and well-being checkup and microchip search. He is now looking for a purrfect home with a loving family. This little guy loves to lounge around and get attention from everyone he meets. 

Andy is FIV+, and still has some scars from his time in the streets. However, this little ham has his nine lives to spend furrever with his special person. 

*Due to the health risk presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, there will be limited public access to the shelter. If you are interested in meeting Andy please fill out an adoption application online. 

The Smithtown Animal & Adoption Shelter is located at 410 Middle Country Road, Smithtown. For more information, call 631-360-7575.

by -
0 276
Photo courtesy of The Heckscher Museum of Art

The Heckscher Museum of Art’s board of trustees and staff join me in wishing you good health and hope you remain in good spirits during these challenging times.

Like many cultural organizations across Long Island, and around the world, the museum has found new ways to engage the community.

Although the museum is physically closed, the new Heckscher.org is a vibrant resource full of wonderful art experiences. Through the “Heckscher at Home” initiative, virtual exhibitions, fun Kids Edition video art projects, and additional ways to interact are at your fingertips. I invite you to browse Heckscher.org and let art be a respite.

Every year at this time we celebrate talented high school students in the exhibition Long Island’s Best: Young Artists at the Heckscher Museum. The 100 students chosen for the 2020 exhibition are featured online and on social media, including students representing the communities of Huntington, Northport, King’s Park, Smithtown and many others across Suffolk and Nassau Counties. Among the rewards of being a Long Island’s Best artist is the chance to see their own work of art in a professional museum setting. Although that opportunity is delayed, it is a promise we are committed to keeping.

When The Heckscher Museum opens — with proper guidance from public safety recommendations — enjoy two wonderful exhibitions, Long Island’s Best: Young Artists at the Heckscher Museum, and Amanda Valdez: Piecework.

Thank you to all who support The Heckscher Museum of Art at this time. Enjoy all of the online and social media content that the museum is providing.  We look forward to a bright future and to inviting everyone back to the museum.

Michael W. Schantz

Executive Director and CEO

The Heckscher Museum of Art

by -
0 1288

Of all the things that have come undone since the start of the pandemic, one of the worst has been the loss of confidence in the systems that have governed us for so long. 

Our local businesses are experiencing untold hardship. People are suffering at home, furloughed or dismissed from their jobs, and many are having a hard time paying the bills or buying food. 

Beyond all that, people are dying. The most vulnerable —the old and those with underlying medical issues — have been the ones most harmed by the pandemic.

We’ve had a long time to come to terms with the issues in our society, but what the coronavirus has made clear is the brittleness of so many of our institutions. There has been more than one report about how the federal government failed to follow the pandemic response playbook present in prior administrations, and how the U.S., in a bid to tighten the financial belt, eliminated people in government whose job was to identify and mitigate such large-scale viral disasters.

We do not know how the end of this virus will play out. Doctors have said the only way for us to truly break away from the restrictions placed on us by SARS Cov-2 is to either develop a vaccine or have widespread, unprecedented testing of practically every U.S. citizen. States like New York have called for such tests, but the federal government has not yet hinted at doing anything close to what would be needed.

What is needed, as Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) said so succinctly in his April 20 address, is less a reopening, but a reimagining of our systems.

“Let’s use this crisis, this situation, this time to actually learn the lessons … let’s reimagine what we want society to be,” Cuomo said.

The governor cited things like the public transportation system, which has for so long been a bane of so many commuters. The Long Island Rail Road has seen a near 95 percent loss in ridership and now faces real financial collapse. With that in mind, flip that picture, and imagine a service that is both fast and efficient in the vein of Tokyo’s or Seoul’s public transportation system. 

Imagine rent prices not being upwards of $1,500 for a studio apartment. Imagine housing prices that don’t restrict all but the middle to upper class affording a home on Long Island. Imagine young people not being pushed off the Island because of its general unaffordability.

This is what happens during a crisis. We see the things that have exacerbated the pandemic, namely a health care system that is simply not built to give the greatest amount of help to the greatest number of people. 

We witness the outsized unfairness that large businesses with thousands of employees nationwide somehow are allowed to apply for loans designated for small businesses. The Washington Post reported close to 70 large companies applied for and got loans through the payment protection program. While a company like Shake Shack actually returned the $10 million small business loan it received, the fact there were many thousands of businesses that could not get a dime despite applying as soon as they were able shows how high current processes are stacked against them.

We can do better, and if we can build upon the lessons made only more apparent during our time in isolation, we will be safer and prepared for a better world. 

by -
0 1149
Stock photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

If presented with a decision you do not wish to make, especially if told you have no choice, don’t do it. Don’t accept the unacceptable because you are told there is no other way to go. There is (almost) always another way. I will share with you a true story that recently happened to make my point. It may seem like the telling of a miracle.

A man I know, who lives many hundreds of miles away, was having abdominal pain and his abdomen was somewhat distended, so he made an appointment and went to see his primary care physician. The doctor palpated his distressed area, front and back, and sent him for imaging tests. Of particular concern was the fact that the patient had come into this world with only one kidney. When the results came back, the prognosis wasn’t good. He was sent by his doctor to an oncologist.

At this next appointment the grim news was confirmed. He had a cancerous tumor on the kidney, and the organ would have to be removed. That meant he was fated to be on dialysis the rest of his life. The oncologist then sent the patient along to an oncology team that specialized in cancerous kidney surgery in a big city hospital. The appointment was for four days later, and while he waited, the man did extensive research on the internet, learning everything he could about cancer of the kidney. At that next visit, the diagnosis was repeated and the team urged what they believed to be the inevitable: arrange to have the stricken kidney removed.

Three doctor appointments, and at all three, there was agreement as to the diagnosis and treatment. Realizing that he was about to have his life altered, and determined to make one more try at changing the outcome, he returned to the internet. One physician in particular, the renal department chairman of a research hospital, had been impressively profiled. The hospital was in a different part of the country, and COVID-19 was beginning to close down most airline flights. With little expectation of actually being seen by this specialist, and while he was worried about how he might get there and return, he nonetheless picked up the phone and called the department. He was given an appointment almost immediately. He almost didn’t accept it when he was told that he couldn’t bring his test results with him, that those tests would have to be done all over again. But in the end, he went.

It took three flights before he reached his destination, and together with his family, he checked into the hotel opposite the hospital, as he had been instructed to do.

For the next two days, there were extensive tests, and then the chairman told him the conclusion: the chances were 95 percent that they could save his kidney. He wheeled around and hugged the doctor.

Three days after the surgery, which involved a technique called modelling accompanied by 3500 pictures of the diseased kidney, he walked out of the hospital, holding his family tightly around him. The doctors told him the wondrous news. He was cancer free. The tumor had not yet begun to spread. 

He had found the right person to deal with his problem because he refused to accept the original path laid out before him, even though he had been told there was no choice. He was determined to find another way, creative in his casting about for an alternative and tenacious enough to transcend the obstacles on his way to a successful outcome.

I have known this story for more than a month, thrilled by its outcome yet not wanting to invade the privacy of the principals. So I have not identified any of the people or institutions involved. But I believe it is an experience that must be told to be of possible help for others. And the choices one is presented with don’t have to be life threatening. They can just be part of daily life. The moral is still the same.

by -
0 1117
Photo from METRO

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

I’m the dog that lives in a house with these four people who never leave. I think I may have entered the dog Twilight Zone.

First, there’s this guy who loves to pick me up. It’s crazy, because I’m about 90 pounds, but he says he’s getting exercise. I don’t mind too much, but it does feel weird being up as high as the cats get when they jump to get away from me.

Then, there’s this smaller girl who is his sister. She speaks to me once a day in a high squeaky voice and pats my head. I wag my tail to encourage her, but she has too many other things to do, much of which involve the phone in her hand. 

Then there’s “Mom,” who is a self-described cat person. She doesn’t like the way I smell and I’m always in her way. Still, she gives me food once in a while and she tells everyone else to leave me alone and let me go to sleep. The girl and boy stay up way after mom and dad and they sometimes want to play when I would prefer to dream about this old dog who lives next door.

Finally, there’s the one they call “Dad.” He takes me on most of my walks. Sometimes, he puts these white things in his ears and talks to people who aren’t there. He doesn’t always pay close attention to me when he’s got those things in his head, so I get more time to sniff the high traffic areas where other dogs leave their scents.

My daily routine has changed considerably. For starters, walks are both better and worse. They are better because I can go further and I see more people. I am what you might call a “people dog.” But here’s where things get weird. As soon as people get almost close enough to pat my head, either Dad takes me across the street or the other people walk away from me. I’ve tried everything. I lay down and put my head between my paws. That’s a classic, nonthreatening pose. People sometimes slow down when they see that one and they make happy noises, but they rarely stop and they never pat my head.

I also stop and wag my tail with my ears up. Again, it’s Dog Tricks 101, but it doesn’t seem to be working. Sometimes they smile at me, although, more often than not, they seem to be holding their breath when Dad and I walk by. Maybe Dad has been eating too many onions again and he has bad people breath. 

Nobody walks in the door and announces they are home anymore. They’re here almost all the time. They used to be happy when I barked at people who walked past the house or who came to the door. Now, they scream about how I have “perfect timing” and how they’re on a “work call” and they need me to “keep quiet.”

I am just doing what generations of dogs have done since the beginning of that whole wolf-dog transformation. I’m protecting the house. How am I supposed to know that it’s “just a stroller” or that I’m going to “make that little kid fall off his bike?”

I’m definitely in the dog Twilight Zone these days, waiting for people to pet me again and waiting for the four people who never leave to start appreciating all the little things I do again, like protecting the house.

by -
0 1307
Stock photo

By Bob Lipinski

Vermouth is a wine that has been infused with various herbs and spices, sweetened with sugar and fortified with a slight amount of alcohol. For a red vermouth, caramel coloring is added to the wine.

The name “vermouth” is from the German word wermut for wormwood (a bitter herb), an integral ingredient in the drink that has been used over its history. When the Latin countries emerged as the chief producers of this type of wine in the eighteenth century, the word wermut was written as vermouth.

How Vermouth Is Made

There are many types of vermouths, so the exact production method varies from brand to brand. The wine is lightly fortified with brandy or other distilled spirits. Each winery adds a proprietary mixture of dry ingredients, consisting of aromatic herbs, roots, and barks.

 After the wine is fortified and aromatized, the vermouth is sweetened with either cane sugar or caramelized sugar, depending on the style. Wineries let the mixture rest for various amounts of time, before it is filtered and bottled. The above process has similarities to making tea. In vermouth-making, the herbs are “infused” or steeped in alcohol instead of boiling water.

Some ingredients used (there are over 100) are allspice, angelica, angostura, anise, bitter almond, bitter orange, celery, chamomile, cinnamon, clove, coriander, fennel, gentian, ginger, marjoram, myrtle, nutmeg, peach, quinine, rhubarb, rosemary, saffron, sage, sandalwood, savory, thyme, and vanilla.

Vermouth contains between 15 and 21 percent alcohol. It can be red, white, or rosé in color, and be dry, semidry, or sweet. The sweet vermouths, mostly red and a few whites, contain about 10 to 15 percent sugar. The dry vermouths contain less than 4 percent sugar.

Many countries make vermouth or a vermouth-type wine. The leading countries in production are Italy, France, U.S. Spain, Germany, Argentina, United Kingdom, and Australia.

Serving

When a bottle of vermouth (red or white, dry or sweet) is opened, it should be refrigerated and consumed within six weeks. After six weeks, the sweet and especially the dry vermouth takes on a darker color and has a somewhat musty, “off” odor.

Vermouth can be enjoyed chilled “straight up;” over ice with a twist of lemon or orange; or even with a splash of seltzer water. A drink called a “blonde and a redhead” is made with equal parts of dry white and sweet red vermouth. The wine is so versatile that it can be used in marinades, sauces, broths, and by most cooking methods, from steaming to grilling.

Bob Lipinski is the author of 10 books, including “101: Everything You Need To Know About Whiskey” and “Italian Wine & Cheese Made Simple” (available on Amazon.com). He conducts training seminars on Wine, Spirits, and Food and is available for speaking engagements. He can be reached at www.boblipinski.com OR [email protected].

by -
0 1205
Dutch Baby Pancake

By Barbara Beltrami

When was the last time before the coronavirus quarantine that you and your family had breakfast together, except maybe on Sunday morning? How long has it been since everyone didn’t bolt out the door, coffee cup or bagel in hand and dash off? Late for work, late for school, just plain late and barely time for a goodbye. Along with the many togetherness opportunities afforded us by our domestic isolation, weekday breakfast has got to be the most novel. It’s a chance to whip up a batch of special pancakes, French toast or a savory breakfast hero; a time to let the aroma of sizzling bacon and fresh coffee waft upstairs or down the hall to lure the rumpled late sleepers to the table for conversation, monosyllabic as it’s likely to be, and to get to know each other in a relaxed morning mode.

Dutch Baby Pancake

Dutch Baby Pancake

YIELD: Makes 2 to 4 servings

INGREDIENTS: 

2 eggs

1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup milk

Pinch nutmeg

Pinch cinnamon

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

2 tablespoons confectioners’ sugar

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 475 F. Place heavy 10” skillet in oven to heat. In a medium bowl, whisk eggs until frothy; then whisk flour, milk, nutmeg and cinnamon into eggs. Lower oven to 425 F. Remove skillet and swirl butter to completely coat bottom and sides. Pour batter into hot skillet; place back in oven and bake 20 minutes or until golden and puffy. Remove from oven, slide pancake onto warm plate and sift confectioners’ sugar on top. Serve immediately with hot coffee and fresh fruit.

Oven-baked French Toast

YIELD: Makes 4 servings

INGREDIENTS: 

6 jumbo eggs

1 1/2 cups milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 tablespoon maple syrup

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 loaf challah, cut into 1” slices

3 tablespoons unsalted butter

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 250 F. In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, vanilla extract, maple syrup and salt. Transfer to large shallow dish. Soak bread slices, as many at a time as will fit, in egg mixture, turning once, until both sides are well coated and soaked. In large skillet, heat one tablespoon butter and one tablespoon oil over medium-high heat; add bread and cook, turning once, until golden brown on both sides, about 3 to 5 minutes; transfer to cookie sheet and place in oven to keep warm. Repeat procedure with remaining butter, oil and bread. When all slices are cooked, serve immediately with maple syrup, honey, jam or preserves or powdered sugar.

Breakfast Hero Ranchero

YIELD: Makes 4 to 6 servings

INGREDIENTS: 

1/4 cup olive oil

1 large onion, diced

2 fresh jalapeno peppers, cleaned and diced

1 loaf Italian bread or French baguette, sliced lengthwise and toasted

1/2 stick unsalted butter, softened

1/2 pound bacon, fried and drained

4 to 6 eggs, scrambled

3 breakfast sausages, cooked, drained, sliced

Half a 14-ounce can black beans, rinsed, drained

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

1 cup Manchego cheese, shredded

1 cup tomato salsa

1 cup sour cream

DIRECTIONS:

In a medium skillet over medium-high heat, warm oil. Add onion and jalapeno and sauté, stirring often, over medium-high heat until onion is opaque and pepper is tender, about 5 to 10 minutes. Meanwhile, toast bread halves and assemble precooked ingredients. When bread is toasted, spread top half with butter, top bottom half with bacon, then eggs, sausage slices, beans, pepper and salt, cheese, salsa and sour cream. Place buttered top over fillings, press gently with heel of hand, slice into desired portions and serve immediately with citrus fruit and hot chocolate.

by -
0 208
Kobe

MEET KOBE!

This week’s shelter pet is a loving happy guy named Kobe, a three-year-old male English Bulldog and Pit mix currently waiting at the Smithtown Animal Shelter for a new family. Kobe is an adorable pup who has a face that makes you instantly fall in love with him. He’s a total goofball, and will perform to get your attention. He has lots of energy inside him, and will let it all out with lots of playtime and love to anyone he meets. He gets along great with children, but would prefer to be the only pet in the household.

Kobe unfortunately suffers from a chronic heart condition, so he requires an owner to go the extra mile. He requires daily medication and a yearly checkup with a cardiologist. He also should not be permitted to go on long walks or be out in the hot weather. Despite his heart problems, and a tough start of his life, Kobe is sweet, affectionate and extremely outgoing. He has an amazing attitude through it all. 

*Due to the health risk presented by the Covid-19 pandemic, there will be limited public access to the shelter. If you are interested in meeting Kobe please fill out an adoption application online. The Smithtown Animal & Adoption Shelter is located at 410 Middle Country Road, Smithtown. For more information, call 631-360-7575.

by -
0 2593
From left, Kerstin Kleese van Dam, Brand Development Manager at BNL Diana Murphy, and John Hill at the Practical Quantum Computing Conference (Q2B) in San Jose, CA, Dec. 2019. Photo courtesy of Kerstin Kleese van Dam

By Daniel Dunaief

Brookhaven National Laboratory is putting its considerable human and technical resources behind the global effort to combat the coronavirus.

John Hill, the director of the National Synchrotron Lightsource II, is leading a working group to coordinate the lab’s COVID-19 science and technology initiatives. He is also working on a team to coordinate COVID-19 research across all the Department of Energy labs.

“We are proud that the tools we built at BNL, which include the NSLS II, which took 10 years to build and cost about a billion dollars,” will contribute to the public health effort, Hill said. “We feel that science will solve this problem, and hopefully soon. It’s great that BNL is a part of that fight.”

In addition to using high-technology equipment like the NSLS II to study the atomic structure of the virus and any possible treatments or vaccines, BNL is also engaging a team led by Kerstin Kleese van Dam, who is the director of BNL’s Computational Science Initiative.

According to Hill, the combination of the physical experiments and the computing expertise will provide a feedback loop that informs the efforts with each team. Kleese van Dam’s team is using supercomputers to run simulated experiments, matching up the atomic structure of the viral proteins with any potential drugs or small molecules that might interfere with its self-copying and life-destroying efforts.

The computer simulations will enable researchers to narrow down the list of potential drug candidates to a more manageable number. Experimental scientists can then test the most likely  treatments the computer helped select.

Across the world, the scale of the science to which BNL is contributing is even larger than the Manhattan Project that led to the creation of the atomic bomb during World War II, said Hill.

In just three months since scientists in China produced the genetic sequence of the coronavirus, researchers around the world have produced over 15,000 research articles, some of which have been published in scientific journals, while researchers have self-published others to share their findings in real time.

Working with computer scientists from different fields at BNL, Kleese van Dam is helping researchers screen through the abundant current research on COVID-19. The number of papers is “accelerating at a rate no one can read,” Hill explained. 

Kleese van Dam and four of her scientists are setting up a natural language processing interface so scientists can type in what they want to find, such as a protein binding with a specific complex, and put it into a search engine. She is working on an initial service that she hopes to expand. Additionally, the computer science team is planning to start a project to look at epidemiological data to determine how various people might react to different treatment.

Kleese van Dam and her team are also working to build an archive in the United States that they hope will host at least the results of the Department of Energy funded projects in medical therapeutics. “[We are] convinced that this would provide a much better starting point for future outbreaks, as well as providing a near term clearing house of results,” she explained in an email.

As for the work at the synchrotron, Hill said that the high-energy x-rays can determine the specific atomic configuration of proteins in the virus.

The NSLS II, which was designed to study the structure of batteries, geology and plant cells, among other objects, can look at “small protein crystals better than anywhere else in the world.”

The virus relies on a docking mechanism that allows it to enter a cell and then insert its malevolent RNA to disrupt the cell’s normal function. Understanding how the pieces come together physically can allow researchers to look for small molecules or approved drugs that could interfere with the virus.

One of the many advantages of the synchrotron over protein crystallography is that the NSLS II doesn’t need as many copies of proteins to determine their atomic structure. Hill said protein crystallography needs samples that are about 100 to 200 microns in size, which is about the width of a human hair, which can take weeks to months to years to grow. This is a “bottleneck in the whole process” of solving protein structure, he said.

On the other hand, the NSLS II only requires samples of about a micron in size. This “greatly speeds up the process,” he added. Two different groups of researchers, from the pharmaceutical industry and from academia and national labs, are conducting experiments on the NSLS II.

Hill said he was receiving viral proteins scientists believe will bind with the virus from collaborators in the United Kingdom. The scientific process is as quick and collaborative as it’s ever been among researchers, he said. The proteins arrived recently.

That collaborative process would have “taken months to set up under normal circumstances,” Hill said. Instead, it only took a few days.

At the same time, BNL is constructing a cryo-electron microscope, which doesn’t have the same resolution as the NSLS II, but does not need crystals and can study individual proteins. Researchers need about 10,000 of them and can average the images together. The resolution is five to 10 times worse than x-rays.

BNL is accelerating the construction of the cryo EM and hope to have the first beam in mid-May. Commissioning will take some extra time, Hill said. The first structure of the coronavirus spike protein was determined by using an electron microscope.

For Hill and Kleese van Dam, who each have dedicated much of their time to these efforts, the opportunity to contribute to a project that could have implications for a public that is battling this disease is rewarding and offers reasons for optimism. 

“To be able to help at such a scale is indeed humbling and gratifying,” said Kleese van Dam. “Science is going to solve this problem,” added Hill. “That gives me comfort.”

Prev1...258259260...421Next Page 259 of 421
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

©