The Long Island Museum in Stony Brook hosted its annual Halloween Family Fun Day last Sunday afternoon. The free event attracted many families who enjoyed the day painting and decorating pumpkins, trick-or-treating, games and a 1960s-themed musical performance by Squeaky Clean.
The Long Island Museum, 1200 Route 25A, Stony Brook will welcome Suzzy Roche and Lucy Wainwright Roche in concert on Sunday, Nov. 13 at 3 p.m. for an afternoon of songs, great harmonies and stories. The mother/daughter duo bearing the names of two famous musical families is presented as part of the museum’s Sunday Street Concert Series, which is a collaboration with WUSB-FM, The Greater Port Jefferson Arts Council and The Long Island Museum. All concerts take place in the Carriage Museum’s Gillespie Room.
Advance sale tickets are $22 through Nov. 11 at www.sundaystreet.org. Tickets may be purchased at the door for $27 (cash only). For the full Sunday Street schedule visit www.sundaystreet.org or call 631-632-1093.
Residents from all over the North Shore spent the weekend and Monday celebrating Halloween and dressing up in their spookiest costumes.
Joni Mitchell once said, “I see music as fluid architecture.” The All Souls Episcopal Church in Stony Brook Village gives people an opportunity to revel in both at once.
The Saturdays at Six program offers classical music in concert the third Saturday of each month at 6 p.m.
On a recent Saturday the musicians were members of the Three Village Chamber Players, a group of Stony Brook graduate students who have been performing there over the past year.
“Our mission is to enrich our community through artistic excellence, providing musical performances of the highest caliber free to the public,” reads the statement on the group’s Facebook page.
For its part, the church shares the Players’ mission of serving the community.
“The church’s doors are open every day so people can enter for prayer or reflection,” said Welcoming Chairman Daniel Kerr, while introducing the concert. Further, the church displays an active commitment to the arts with its Saturday programs that offer music, meditation and poetry on a regular basis, he said.
This program included Mozart’s String Quartet No. 19 in C major — nicknamed “Dissonance” — and, after an intermission, Ravel’s String Quartet in F major. Performers included the group’s director Natalie Kress, Anna Tsukervanik, Philip Carter (violins) and Alison Rowe (cello).
As an added treat, one of Kress’ violin students, five-year-old Leah Caravello, played a short piece.
The next Saturdays at Six concert will take place Nov. 19, when the members of the Anima Brass Quintet will perform.
Although the concert is free and open to all, a nonperishable food item donation is requested, and a “performer’s appreciation donation basket” is available, should people wish to contribute.
Stony Brook was on display as a destination on a global scale this past weekend.
A group of travel product developers — those who design tours for the luxury market in mainland China — visited the Village Oct. 22 as part of a “familiarization (or fam) tour” of Long Island.
“We don’t have time to showcase the entire island, so we choose some places that are special,” Joan LaRosa, director of sales for the Long Island Convention and Visitors Bureau said of the visit. Evidently Stony Brook is one of those.
The tours encourage designers to add Long Island stops to their itineraries. She said five “fam” tours are going on right now, hosted by United Airlines, which provided the plane tickets.
A second entity participating in this travel sales pitch is the New York State Division of Tourism via its I Love NY campaign.
Anna Klapper, a manager for global trade development for Washington, D.C.-based Brand USA, is one of the guides accompanying the group on their journey.
“They flew into New York Oct. 19 and have been visiting places on Long Island,” she said. “Tomorrow morning we’ll ferry to Connecticut and make stops in New Haven, Mystic [Seaport] and Mohegan Sun.”
Klapper pointed out that she and colleague Philip Joseph have noticed that their guests are constantly online posting everything on social media — adding value to their sales efforts.
Brand USA is an organization that markets the United States as a destination to travel product developers worldwide. Its goal is to increase international tourist visits, thereby fueling the nation’s economy and enhancing its image abroad, as stated on the organization’s website.
The website further states it is “the nation’s first public-private partnership to spearhead a globally coordinated marketing effort to promote the United States as a premier travel destination and communicate U.S. entry policies. Its operations are supported by a combination of contributions from destinations, travel brands, and private-sector organizations, plus matching funds collected by the U.S. government from international visitors who visit the United States under the Visa Waiver Program.”
The visitors from China are also accompanied by Tina Yao, Brand USA’s Shanghai office director.
Gloria Rocchio, president of the Ward Melville Heritage Organization, made the arrangements for the visitors and was on hand to greet them.
“The LI Convention and Visitors Bureau picked Stony Brook for this visit,” she said. When asked if she knew why, she speculated, “perhaps because we have a 21st century, world-class university and a picturesque, historic village on the water?”
Rocchio invited Yu-wan Wang, associate dean of international admissions at Stony Brook University, to meet the group, talk about the university and answer any questions they had about it. She also served as an interpreter, and when she asked William Wang of Shanghai to tell what he liked best about Stony Brook, she translated:
“I love the fresh air and to be so close to the ocean.”
Following a sampling of lavender and espresso cheese and craft beers, the party of 16 made their way across the street to The Jazz Loft for a musical evening.
The School of Social Welfare at Stony Brook University, the Undergraduate Social Welfare Alliance (USWA) and the Protestant Campus Ministry will welcome Alex Seel, one of six participants in a challenging documentary, “Borderland,” on Saturday, Nov. 5, in the in the Health Sciences Tower (hospital side of campus), Level 3 Galleria and adjacent Lecture Hall 5 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. The final episode of the series will be screened and Seel will share his experiences and answer questions.
In this four-part television series, six Americans from varying backgrounds are confronted with the realities of undocumented migrant labor. The participants split into three groups and go to Mexico and Central America in order to retrace the footsteps of three migrants who did not survive the journey north. They discover the circumstances which led the migrants to risk their lives; they make their way north by riding atop a cargo train know as “La Bestia” or “The Beast”; they learn about the impact of Mexico’s drug wars on immigrants; they traverse the desert in which some 2500 migrants died the previous year. The journey leaves them shaken and changed. Borderland does not provide answers to the problem of undocumented immigration, but it shows the humanity of everyone involved in the process.
Undocumented migrant labor is a compelling issue that all of us face, and the debate over immigration policies brings out deep passions, but it is divorced from our day to day experience. The show presents the full complexity of the issue, and the participants come away with something desperately needed in the debate—empathy. After viewing the documentary, you will not look at the issue of undocumented immigration the same way again. Free and open to all. For more information, email [email protected].
For Free parking:
From 25A to Nicolls Rd., Rt to West Campus on Shirley Kenny Drive,
Immediate left on Circle Rd. to the stop sign then there is an entrance to free parking. Walk through the underpass to Health Sciences tower. Go up the escalator 1 flight. Parking here on weekends is free.
(From 347, left on Shirley Kenny Drive)
For paid parking:
From 25 A, left on Health Sciences Drive and follow the signs to the main entrance of the hospital and hospital garage or use Valet parking if you wish. Enter hospital lobby and ask at the registration desk for the Health Science tower escalators.
From 347, right on Health Sciences Drive.
By Bruce Stasiuk
We were talking about our schooling …
Remember the names of Columbus’ ships, anybody? Yes. Of course you do. Everyone in this overflowing audience knows the three names. Furthermore, you all know them in the same order. Good for you! Doesn’t matter where you went to school — from the Redwood forest, to the Gulf Stream waters, to the New York island, those names were taught to you and me — and in order!
Quite an achievement. Or, is it? Of what educational value are those three names? Virtually none, except maybe to a contestant on Jeopardy. But students are in real jeopardy if we continue to consume their limited school time with pointless facts, trivia, backward thinking, and low-level knowledge.
I dub it the “Nina Pinta and Santa Marianization” of our schools. Let’s sail back in time to Columbus. The big date — you know, it rhymes with “ocean blue. What was going on in the world during that era? Was there a printing press? Was there a global power? Were there wars going on? (Good guess. Seems there’s always a war going on somewhere.) Was his trip around the time of the Great Potato Famine or the Black Death? How long would the journey take and how was it estimated? What provisions did Columbus need to stock in order to survive the journey? How did the food not spoil? How much water could be used each day by each person and animal? How many men and animals should be boarded, realizing that each man and animal consumed food and water and made the living quarters tighter? What if winds were becalmed in the Horse Latitudes and the ships barely moved? Did they need weapons, and if so, why?
How many of us considered those questions in school? The teachers didn’t ask them, nor did they know the answers. Remember, teachers are a product of the schools themselves. They are primarily people who succeeded in school, liked it, and went on to do it — not change it. They are educational conservatives.
During the eight years I directed a class for teachers, I’d give them a test developed from fourth- and fifth-grade books. Not one teacher ever came close to passing. I’d tell them that they were either not very bright or that the material we’re teaching our kids is irrelevant to a functioning adult.
So, what if our educational system comes to its senses and realizes that constructive destruction of curriculum and teaching methods is necessary, and Common Core was not a common cure? What should we teach? Here’s a start:
Personal finances. Every school should create a bank where students have the option to invest by purchasing shares. The bank would issue loans to students and would require a student co-signer. Interest would be added to the loan reflecting the amount and length of loan. Credit rating would be developed. [Yes. I’ve done it and it works.]
What is fire, auto, and life insurance — and how do they work?
The art of being skeptical without being a skeptic. Time. What it is and how to manage it.
Relationships: What are they? How do they develop? And what is their value? Introductions: How to offer and receive.
Black boxes in airplanes and cars. What do they reveal? What are mortgages? Why do they exist?
Waste management. Where does garbage go? What are sewers and cesspools? [Water, water … not everywhere.]
Logic and reasoning with and without Venn diagrams. The art of questioning and the value of wrong answers.
The media. What it is, how it works, and the choices it makes. The illusions in movies and TV through editing, music, and more. PG-13: How and why things are rated. The goals and methods of advertising.
A school farm with irrigation. Students would have scheduled time working on the farm. A student and adult committee would handle the summer months. Kitchen duty with student assignments. Custodial duty with student chores.
The science of raising, preparing, and cooking food. The food we eat: Where does it come from? What is a hamburger bun?
Negotiating and compromising. Shipping and transportation. The evolution of things: the medicine bottle, the telephone, the sneaker, etc.
Dilemmas: how can Italy, the world’s biggest exporter of olive oil, also be the world’s biggest importer? Is there such a thing as too much?
Plumb lines, centers of gravity and sea level. Architecture, engineering, stacking blocks. Physics is everything. How technology affects our lives.
Language travels with us but never reaches a final destination.
Objects: magnifying glasses, prisms, levels, stethoscopes, magnets, ball bearings. The magic of perimeters. Zero-sum games.
The gift of failure, and the hardship of failure-deprived people. Thinking about what others are thinking by using game theory.
Your body: A user’s manual.
Bruce Stasiuk of Setauket continues to teach. He currently offers workshops as an instructor in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, located at Stony Brook University.
By Rebecca Anzel
Registered organ donors are hard to come by in New York state compared to the rest of the United States, and for one elected official in Brookhaven, that’s not going to cut it.
Brookhaven Councilwoman Jane Bonner (C-Rocky Point) did not hesitate when her friend Tom D’Antonio said he needed a kidney. She decided right then, at the Huntington Lighthouse Music Festival in Huntington Harbor in September 2015, that she would share her spare.
She underwent comprehensive medical testing at the end of the next month to determine if she would be a viable donor — a blood test, chest X-ray, electrocardiogram, CT scan, MRI, psychological evaluation and cancer screening, to name a few.
“It’s the ultimate physical you’re ever going to have, and by the blood test alone several people were disqualified,” Bonner said. “For once in my life, it turned out that I was No. 1. And it worked out really, really well.”
The surgery was April 26, a Tuesday, at New York Presbyterian Hospital. Bonnor was home that Friday and missed only eight days of work. She said she just had her six-month checkup and she is in good health.
“Jane didn’t just save my life, she saved my family’s life,” D’Antonio said. “Donating an organ doesn’t just affect the person getting the organ — although certainly it affects them the most — it affects everyone’s life.”
Bonner said she takes every opportunity to share her story to bring awareness about the importance of being an organ donor.
“I want to be a living example to show that it can be done because it’s life changing for the recipient and only a little inconvenient for the donor,” she said.
There is a large need for organs in New York. More than 9,700 people are on the organ waiting list, and someone dies every 18 hours waiting for one, according to LiveOnNY, a federally designated organ procurement organization.
New York ranks last among the 50 states in percent of residents registered as organ donors, despite surveys showing 92 percent of New Yorkers support organ donation. Only 27 percent of New Yorkers are enrolled in the state registry, versus the average of 50 percent registered across the rest of the country.
Stony Brook Medicine and Stony Brook University hosted the Organ Donor Enrollment Day event Oct. 6, including Bonner, in a statewide effort to boost the number of registered organ donors.
“Our residents need to be reminded about the importance of organ donation,” Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone (D) said in a statement. “Along with stressing how one organ and tissue donor can save multiple lives, understanding and debunking the social and religious myths about organ donation are also critical to turning the tides in New York as we currently rank last in registered organ donors in the nation.”
Dawn Francisquini, transplant senior specialist for the hospital, said volunteers enrolled 571 people.
“New York has a very large population, so it’s going to take a lot to get us up to where the other states are,” she said. “But we’re making progress.”
There are two ways to become an organ donor. One is to be a living donor, like Bonner. A potential donor does not have to know someone in need of an organ to donate a kidney, lobe of liver, lung or part of a lung, part of the pancreas or part of an intestine.
“I’ve been able to accomplish really amazing things, but this is a step above that. Satisfying is not even the word to describe it.”
— Jane Bonner
“Living donation is so important because not only are you giving an organ to someone, so you’ve saved that life, but you’ve also made room on the list,” Francisquini said. “So you’ve saved two lives by donating one organ.”
The most common way is by registering when filling out a driver’s license registration or renewal form to be considered as a candidate upon death. According to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, though, only about three in 1,000 deceased people are suitable for organ donations.
Doctors determine whether organs like kidneys, livers, bones, skin and intestines are medically viable for a waiting recipient and they typically go to patients in the same state as the donor.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) signed legislation Aug. 18 allowing 16 and 17-year-olds to register as organ donors. If they die before turning 18, parents or guardians are able to reverse the decision.
“By authorizing 16 and 17-year-olds to make the selfless decision to become an organ donor, we take another significant step to grow the state’s Donate Life registry and create opportunities to save lives,” Cuomo said in a statement.
Francisquini said she thinks this new law will make a big difference. Previously, because those under-18 were not allowed to express their wishes when filling out a driver’s license form, many would not register as donors until years later when renewing their license.
Since her surgery, Bonner has shared her story in speeches, panel discussions and on social media using the hashtag #ShareTheSpare.
“I really feel like this is much better than anything I could accomplish in my professional career,” she said. “Through the support of the people that keep electing me, I’ve been able to accomplish really amazing things, but this is a step above that. Satisfying is not even the word to describe it.”
By Heidi Sutton
In conjunction with its popular exhibition, Long Island in the Sixties, The Long Island Museum in Stony Brook hosted a symposium last Saturday that focused on how the 1960s affected Long Island in terms of suburban and economic trends such as the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair, the local civil rights movement, regional architecture and music.
Guest speakers included Stephen Patnode, Ph.D., of Farmingdale State College’s Department of Science, Technology and Sociology; Christopher Verga, professor of history at Suffolk County Community College and author of “Civil Rights on Long Island”; Caroline Rob Zaleski, preservationist and architectural historian and author of “Long Island Modernism, 1930-1980”; Lawrence R. Samuel, Ph.D., independent scholar and American cultural historian and author of “The End of the Innocence: The 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair”; and John Broven, music historian and custodian of the family-owned Golden Crest Records and author of the award-winning “Rhythm and Blues in New Orleans” and “Record Makers and Breakers.”
According to Joshua Ruff, director of Collections and Interpretation at the museum, the day-long event attracted over 60 attendees and “the audience was very enthusiastic and really enjoyed the day” adding that there was “great audience participation; a few people who attended were actually former band members of prominent 1960s bands on Long Island, and they became involved in John Broven’s talk. All in all, it was a super day and we are just so very thankful for the important support from the New York Council on the Humanities which made it all possible.”
By Daniel Dunaief
It’s lighter, cheaper and just as strong. In the age of manufacturing the latest and greatest high-technology parts, that is a compelling combination. Indeed, the Department of Energy recently awarded the Brookhaven Technology Group, a business incubator tenant of the Advanced Energy Research and Technology Center at Stony Brook University, $1.15 million to develop a high-temperature superconductor cable with a new architecture. The grant supports the research of Vyacheslav Solovyov, an adjunct professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at SBU and the principal investigator at Brookhaven Technology Group.
“Very few projects are funded, so we’re very excited that ours was chosen,” said Paul Farrell, the president at BTG. The potential applications for Solovyov’s Exocable, as the new architecture is called, span a wide range of uses, including in high field magnets for a new breed of accelerator. The work entails creating a high-temperature superconducting cable that is an integral ingredient in creating the superconducting machinery. The BTG process produces a high-temperature superconducting cable after removing the substrate, which is a single-crystal-like material. Solovyov transfers the superconducting layer to a supporting tape that can be engineered for strength and not for crystallinity.
This work reduces the weight of the tape by as much as 70 percent per unit length for the same current capacity. The potential for this new cable is that it can contribute to the growing field of research at Stony Brook and Brookhaven National Laboratory on superconductivity, said Jim Smith, assistant vice president of economic development at Stony Brook. “Maybe this is the next industry that replaces the Grummans and the aerospaces that have left,” he said. Semiconductors are of particular interest to manufacturers because they transmit energy with no resistance. Right now, about 6.5 percent of energy transmitted around the United States is lost in distribution wires, Smith said. Maintaining the energy that’s lost in the wires would have “tremendous benefits.”
To be sure, while the research at BTG could contribute to lower cost and improved efficiency in high-temperature superconductivity, there are hurdles to making this process and the applications of it work. For starters, the company needs to produce kilometers of ExoCable. “The challenge is to demonstrate that the properties will be as uniform as they were before the substrate removal,” explained Solovyov, who has been working in superconductivity since 1986.
Recently, Smith said he, Farrell and Solovyov met to discuss the wiring for their facility. “A lot of power and wiring will be installed in the next four to five weeks,” Smith said. Scientists who worked with Solovyov expressed admiration for his work and optimism about his results. Solovyov’s “new activity will definitely advance the long-promised practical application of superconductivity electrical power transmission, as well as in the development of high-field magnets for both industrial and scientific application,” David Welch, a former collaborator and retired senior materials scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory, wrote in an email. Welch explained that Solovyov focused on methods for making composites of superconducting material with normally conducting metals in the form of wires, tapes and cables necessary for their practical application. “Such a combination of talents is unusual,” Welch continued. Early on, it was clear “that [Solovyov] was going to become an important member of the scientific staff at BNL.”
Solovyov started working on this process with BTG about a year and a half ago. When he first started collaborating with BTG, the company was working on a superconducting project funded by the army. When that work ended, Solovyov and BTG worked together to submit new proposals to the DOE. According to Solovyov, Stony Brook has been “very helpful in terms of providing facilities and lab space.” Stony Brook’s goal, Smith said, is to help companies like BTG succeed and measures that success in the number of new jobs created in the energy field.
Solovyov, who grew up in the Ukraine, said he has had several breakthroughs in his career. He helped develop a patented technology that can speed up the processing of superconducting materials by a factor of 10. “That has been used in production and I’m very proud of it,” Solovyov said. The professor lives in Rocky Point with his wife Olena Rybak and their two children, Natasha, 19, who attends Suffolk County Community College, and Dennis, 14, who is in high school. Solovyov said he enjoys Long Island, where he can fish for striped bass and bluefish. He pan fries what he catches.
As for his work, Solovyov has four patents and applications for three more. He and Farrell said the company is looking for opportunities for expansion. He is exploring ways to work with large-scale generators and wind turbines. Farrell explained that BTG has ambitions to become a larger company. BTG would “like to become a major contributor in this field,” Farrell said. That could include adding staff and developing more products that can be sold and used worldwide. “If our product is successful, in the sense that it improves the capability of superconductors to be used commercially, we’ll be adding people.” This work will need more funding, which the company plans to get either from the Department of Energy, from private investors or both.
“If you can improve the usefulness of superconductors and reduce the cost of the wire, there’ll be wider use than there is right now,” Farrell said.
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