Horsing around: Welcome to the first Friday of August, dear readers, as we race into the backstretch of Summer 2023 (and vacation season).
For fans of the Sport of Kings, ’tis the season to visit beautiful Saratoga County – the New York Racing Association’s 40-day Summer Meet is underway at historic Saratoga Race Course. (Regular handicappers know the pounding hooves usually return to Elmont in the fall, but with Belmont Park’s tracks being resurfaced, NYRA’s Fall Meet runs at Aqueduct this year.)
Wine dining: The simple joy of National White Wine Day.
Let’s be honest: Back here at work, it’s Aug. 4 and the end of another busy week – and if you can’t mine some Friday joy out of International Beer Day, National White Wine Day and National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day, well, you’re just not trying.
Coast toast: Raise a mug, glass or cookie today to the U.S. Coast Guard, created by Congress on this date in 1790 (known first as the Revenue Marine, chiefly responsible for enforcing tariffs).
Post toast: The Saturday Evening Post – the Benjamin Frankin brainchild that still cranks out six general-interest issues a year, ranking it America’s oldest magazine – was first published 202 years ago today.
Quotes toast: The very first edition of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations – handwritten by Cambridge bookseller John Bartlett himself – was published on Aug. 4, 1855.
Unsolved mysteries: Borden handled it.
They’re toast: Sensationalizing “true crime” before “true crime” was cool, axe-wielding homicidal maniac Lizzie Borden rained roughly 81 whacks upon her parents on this date in 1892 – or did she?
Energetic toast: And raise your glasses one more time for President Jimmy Carter, who signed the Department of Energy Organization Act on this date in 1977.
The new law consolidated 30-plus national energy functions – including work previously performed by HUD, the Commerce Department and the U.S. Navy, among other federal agencies – under the new, Cabinet-level U.S. Department of Energy.
Posthumous poetry prince: English wordsmith Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) – a major quill of the Romantic Era whose radical political and social views gained acclaim after his premature death in a boating accident – would be 231 years old today.
Peaceful transfer: President Obama (left), making history in 2009.
Also born on Aug. 4 were French inventor Nicolas-Jacques Conté (1755-1805), who invented the modern pencil; French fashion designer and businessman Louis Vuitton (1821-1892), the leather-goods titan who once built travel trunks for Napoleon’s wife; English mathematician John Venn (1834-1923), who diagramed our fourth-grade science classes; American trumpeter and vocalist Louis Armstrong (1901-1971), forever “Satchmo”; and 44th U.S. President Barrack Hussein Obama II (born 1961), who did not murder his personal chef.
Barbie girl: And take a bow, Greta Celeste Gerwig! The American actress, screenwriter and director – the insightful creative force behind this summer’s “Barbie” blockbuster/cultural phenomenon – turns 40 today.
Give the mumblecore master your best at editor@innovateli.com, where your news tips get all dolled up and your calendar events are the foundation of our dreamhouse.
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BUT FIRST, THIS
Funds in the sun: A first-ever U.S. Department of Defense grant and two competitive National Institutes of Health grants equal one impressive summer for the New York Institute of Technology’s College of Osteopathic Medicine.
Researchers at NYITCOM have earned a combined $1.4 million in federal funding this season. Among the scores: $499,800 in Defense Department funding for Biomedical Sciences Associate Professor Haotian Zhao, who’s dissecting the biology of choroid plexus carcinoma, a rare cancerous tumor known to attack children, and $428,400 in NIH funding for Professor of Biomedical Sciences Qiangrong Liang, who’s studying long-term heart damage in cancer survivors treated with doxorubicin, an effective anti-cancer drug known to cause heart failure.
An identical $428,400 NIH grant was secured by Associate Professor Maria Alicia Carrillo Sepulveda, who’s investigating how obesity contributes to high blood pressure. Specifically, Sepulveda and her team will analyze how biomedical changes in proteins regulating fat biology contribute to hypertension in a genetically engineered mouse model – important stuff to the roughly 50 percent of American adults with high blood pressure.
You suck: But innovative Stony Brook Medicine is fighting back.
Tick, tick…: Stony Brook Medicine is raising the curtain on “the first and only dedicated tick clinic in the Northeast.”
Stony Brook Southampton Hospital’s Regional Tick-Borne Disease Center is slated to open Aug. 14 in the hospital’s Hampton Bays Atrium. Staffed by physicians from Stony Brook Children’s Hospital and Stony Brook Medicine’s Meeting House Lane Medical Practice, the by-appointment clinic is designed to treat children and adults for tick bites and to diagnose tick-borne illnesses, utilizing nearby Stony Brook Southampton Hospital’s blood-drawing and laboratory services.
The clinic expands the Southampton hospital’s unique approach to Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses, including a no-cost “tick help line” that’s answered thousands of calls since launching in 2015. “This year is one of the worst for tick bites and tick-borne illnesses,” noted Sharon Nachman, chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Stony Brook Children’s Hospital. “A dedicated tick clinic is important to the health of our community and reinforces Stony Brook Medicine’s commitment to bring world-class healthcare… to the East End.”
TOP OF THE SITE
Push in the right direction: The Zucker School of Medicine’s summer pipeline programs are giving disadvantaged students potential pathways to medical school.
Time well spent: The next 40 minutes are going to pass either way – want to be smarter on the other side? Spark: The Innovate Long Island Podcast can help. Pick an inspirational leader and fill that brain.
ICYMI
Glimpsing an exciting technological future – and some thrilling international-education collaborations – at Canon USA.
BEST OF THE WEST (AND SOMETIMES NORTH/SOUTH)
Innovate LI’s inbox overrunneth with inspirational innovations from all North American corners. This week’s brightest out-of-towners:
From New York City: Digital health driver DarioHealth Corp. tailors support programs for patients using anti-obesity drugs.
From Arizona: Phoenix-based education-technology titan Bluum brings next-generation classroom demonstrations to Long Island and beyond.
From Florida: West Palm Beach-based pain-relief pioneer Spinal Armor loosens up the chronically back-ached with breakthrough biomechanical tech.
ON THE MOVE
Christopher La Barbera
+ Christopher La Barbera has been appointed assistant provost at Farmingdale State College. He was assistant provost at Massachusetts Bay Community College.
+ Long Island Advancement of Small Business has added two new Board of Directors members:
- Kenneth Nevor, chairman of the LIASB Veterans Committee, is president of the National Defense Industrial Association’s New York/Connecticut Chapter
- Robert Stojanowski, chairman of the LIASB Membership Committee, is Northeast client director for Texas-based Mejeticks
+ Jonathan Galo has been hired as director of campus ministry for St. Joseph’s University in Patchogue. He was director of faith formation and director of technology at St. Joseph’s Guardian of the Holy Family Parish in Massachusetts.
+ J. Christopher Muran has been named dean of the Gordon F. Derner School of Psychology at Garden City-based Adelphi University. He most recently served as interim dean.
+ Becky Wuest Creavin and Patti Janco-Tupper have joined Georgia-based Bison Wealth as Long Island-based managing directors and partners. They were senior vice presidents and private wealth advisors for The Capital Group in New York City.
+ Suzanne Zec has joined Ronkonkoma-based Campolo, Middleton & McCormick as a paralegal. She held the same position at Woodbury-based Milber Makris Plousadis & Seiden.
Like this newsletter? Innovate Long Island newsletter, website and podcast sponsorships are a prime opportunity to reach the inventors, investors, entrepreneurs and executives you need to know (just ask Farmingdale State). Marlene McDonnell can tell you more.
BELOW THE FOLD (Rated PG Edition)
But who’s counting: Couples should do this for six seconds per day — at least.
Snuggle up: How many hugs we really need each day.
Pucker up: The 6-second kissing ritual that’s saving marriages
Pony up: Calculating the bare minimums of a proper first date.
Up and up: Please continue supporting the amazing institutions that support Innovate Long Island, including Farmingdale State College, where student achievement and socioeconomic influence are always on the rise. Check them out.
