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Syracuse Reboots STEM Camp for High School Girls

*Disclaimer: This story was originally published on July 26, 2017. Check for updates.*

By Stefan Oliva SYRACUSE (NCC News) – The AT&T CNY STEM Hub Summer Camp for Young Women is back for its second year in Syracuse. The camp for high school girls started today and is being hosted by Le Moyne College’s science center for the rest of the week.

The camp director, Meriel Stokoe, however, wants the girls to take in more than STEM related activities. “For me, it’s not also just about STEM, it’s about the whole camp experience. It’s about meeting new people,” she said.

The camp has activities that exposes the girls to all aspects of STEM. Throughout the week, they will be doing things like touring the Syracuse Air Traffic Control at the airport, learning about computer coding and building drones and flying them.

There are also several guest speakers, all female, slated to talk to the girls about their careers in their respective STEM fields. With that in mind, Stokoe wants the participants to pursue higher education. “Many of the girls will be hopefully going to college in the next few years, so this is kind of giving them a feel of what it’s like to be on a college campus,” Stokoe said.

Since the camp is funded by AT&T, it is free for all the girls. Last year, the camp made a concentrated effort to have at least half of their 30 participants come from at-risk backgrounds. Stokoe also emphasized diversity. “I think when people come from different cultures, different backgrounds, there’s always a lot to offer,” she said. “I don’t think that even matters whether it’s just STEM or in general.”

Listen to the re-recorded audio story here: (c) Stefan Oliva 2020

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National Grid Mulls Bill Increase

People who attended the information session and hearing about the National Grid’s intended rate increase. (c) Stefan Oliva 2017

*Disclaimer: This story was originally published on July 31, 2017. Check for updates.*

By Stefan Oliva SYRACUSE (NCC News) – National Grid might raise their customers’ electricity and gas bills by a total of roughly $18 a month. They requested that the New York State Public Service Commission approve a three year agreement, as opposed to the one year agreement currently in place.

An information session and hearing that was open to the public featured National Grid representatives at Syracuse’s Nottingham High School. The company held the event to inform the public about what they want to do with the estimated $261 million that they will make in revenue, if the NYSPSC agrees to a multi-year proposal.

Several people in attendance brought signs to protest the planned increase. A lot of them also grilled the National Grid representatives with tough questions, especially about the services that would be implemented with the added revenue. “I like to say that there’s something in it for everyone,” said Virginia Limmiatis, a media representative for National Grid. “What does that mean for our customers? It means storm resiliency, reliability…”

Cortland resident, David Gower, questioned the costs to the customers and how they would see that money. His questions were met with widespread applause, the only time the crowd applauded a question.

There will be another hearing and information session tomorrow before the vote. Gower added that the public is better informed and thinks attending informational meetings is a good first step.

He also wants to see clearer lines of communication between National Grid and its customers. “I think [they] should provide a significant amount of tangible information so that we can evaluate what their decision are based on,” Gower said.

Listen to the re-recorded audio story here: (c) Stefan Oliva 2020.
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Naloxone Accessible in New York

*Originally published August 8, 2017.*

An educational pamphlet and samples of naloxone, a drug used to counter the effects of opiate overdose, are displayed at a news conference at the fire station in Taunton, Mass., Monday, Feb. 24, 2014. A recent surge in heroin overdoses in Taunton has shed light on an epidemic that has plagued the state and nation. At the news conference, Massachusetts Senator Edward Markey outlined a three-pronged plan to address the opiate drug epidemic, calling for expansion of naloxone programs for first responders and bystanders, greater access to proven addiction treatments and modernizing America’s addiction treatment system. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

By Stefan Oliva SYRACUSE (NCC News) – Starting tomorrow, naloxone will be available in pharmacies statewide. Naloxone, also known as Narcan, is a drug used to reverse opioid overdoses.

Before January 2016, it was only possible to get Naloxone with a prescription or through a registered opioid overdose prevention program. Making the drug more affordable adds to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s initiative early last year to make Narcan available in pharmacies without a prescription.

According to the press release from Cuomo’s office that came out this morning, people who have prescription coverage, including Medicaid and Medicare, will get up to $40 in co-pay assistance, which will either make the drug free or relatively cheap. Uninsured people and those without prescription coverage, however, can get the medicine for free through one of the state’s registered opioid overdose prevention programs.

There are 15 such programs in Onondaga County and Central New York has 50. Some of the programs on the list are also police departments, in which either some or all of the officers carry Narcan. According to Executive Director of the Central New York Emergency Medical Services, Susie Surprenant, emergency responders also play a crucial role. “When we can provide that care in the community, no matter what part of the region, that’s an important component,” she said.

Paul Smyth, manager of the Emergency Medical Services at Syracuse University, agrees.

“You’re there to help somebody,” Smyth said, “so it’s a good feeling to take somebody who is barely breathing because they’ve taken too much of an opiet and within minutes take them to…kind of awake.”

Listen to the re-recorded version of the story here. (c) Stefan Oliva 2020.
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New Yorkers are Pantless in the Subway for the 18th Time

Improv Everywhere held its 18th annual No Pants Subway Ride (NPSR) in New York City. Its notoriety exploded in 2006, when eight of the 160 participants were “taken into custody and issued summonses for disorderly conduct. All were ultimately released, said Improv Everywhere, the group that organized the stunt,” according to NBCNews.com.

Jesse Good, Improv Everywhere senior agent, noted the year after the 2006 debacle, is when other cities across the globe started their own No Pants Subway Rides. This year, 24 cities in 10 countries participated in the event, and more might be announced on Improv Everywhere’s website later.

Though he’s been there since the beginning, Good said he might not be around for next year’s NPSR. He hasn’t ruled out coming back, but said he’ll stop for the time being.

Below is my audio story about New York City’s NPSR:

I re-recorded this story on May 12, 2020, after originally doing it on January 13, 2019. (c) Stefan Oliva 2020.

To complement the audio story, here are some of my pictures from the 18th No Pants Subway Ride:

Subway riders look on as people are pantless on the platform of the West 4th Street station. (c) 2019 Stefan Oliva
Vighnesh Rege reads on the F train. (c) 2019 Stefan Oliva
At least one person took the No Pants Subway Ride a step too far. (c) 2019 Stefan Oliva
A few people pose for pictures after the No Pants Subway Ride finished at the Union Square stop. (c) 2019 Stefan Oliva
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Looking for Asylum

Around 30 people gathered on Central Park South and 59th St. to protest the Trump administration’s actions against the thousands of asylum seekers at the border. Trump demanded $5 billion from Speaker designee Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer last week to build a wall around the border. Since they didn’t oblige, and among other reasons, the government partially shut down and will not have a deal until after Christmas.

The demonstrators noted that asylum is a legal right and immigrants are entitled to stay in the country while they go through the application process. President Trump does not, however, agree and made a deal with the Mexican president-elect, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to keep asylum seekers at the border in Mexico until their individual claims are approved. The deal goes against the long standing asylum rules.

An organization called Rise and Resist called for people to walk with them to the Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, where they rallied and held up signs and pictures (some of which were provided by Rise and Resist) protesting how the caravans of migrants are being treated. The event organizer and other demonstrators were then told to disperse by police. Watch a video of the exchange here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCWTcw17uKE

Police claimed the protesters were blocking the sidewalk. It’s important to keep that in mind because this happened only two days before Christmas in one of the busiest parts of New York City, regardless of the holiday. Walking in that area and a few blocks south this time of year is like trying to move a glacier.

The crowd of 30 was full throated in their support of asylum seekers. Among them were also two Trump supporters. They tried baiting protesters, but were mostly ignored. Here’s a sample of that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6jCtO8uozk

At least two people in the demonstration know immigrants. One man’s parents are Cuban and said one of his closest friends is an immigrant and knows several others. He was inspired to attend the rally after going to a Rise and Resist meeting last week.

Protesters and bystanders in front of the Trump Tower on 5th Avenue. (c) 2018 Stefan Oliva

Several people on the street stopped to take pictures and videos of the protesters, who were met with people thanking them for coming out. They also, however, got a few hecklers along the way. A couple people said “boo hoo” when referring to the migrants and their children at the border. One lady on the street said “Hooray Trump” and laughed as she walked away.

Rise and Resist rally crossing the street to go to the Trump Tower on 5th Avenue. (c) 2018 Stefan Oliva

One of the counter protesters asked demonstrators questions while recording them and made counter points about the immigration situation and its history. The man holding his cell phone said President Obama deported many immigrants, which is true. In fact, he’s deported more than any other president in U.S. history at around 2.5 million people between 2009-2015. Fact checking site Snopes.com claims that’s only the case because the definition of deportation changed under the Obama administration.

Protesters showing their signs before heading to Trump Tower. (c) 2018 Stefan Oliva
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Voters Voice Their Concerns in Brooklyn

Almost 100 people gathered in a Brooklyn Heights church last night to express their frustrations and share their stories about the voting process in New York City. Voters and elected officials alike responded to each other in a people’s hearing at the First Unitarian Church. There was an equal mix of groans, head shaking and even hysterical laughter as people talked about their experiences at the ballots just a few weeks ago.

It was well documented that people in NYC had to wait up to several hours to vote, albeit for different reasons . A common one being that at least one scanner was broken in multiple voting sites.

Man shares his frustrating experiences at the poll this year. (c) 2018 Stefan Oliva

Modernizing the election process and making it easier for people to vote were the main issues discussed. One man was accused of voter fraud because, according to the worker who had the book with everyone’s names, his signature did not match his previous one. He had to do it three times and show his driver’s license before they gave him his ballot. Another man was given two ballots, but he didn’t vote twice.

A poll worker in Carroll Gardens this past election explains the process behind training. (c) 2018 Stefan Oliva

Others at the people’s hearing also worked at polling sites on Nov. 6 and said the training, assistance and testing were abysmal. “The exam after the training is only 20 questions and is open notes,” said one woman who worked at a Brooklyn polling site.

A big part of these complications, according to Let NY Vote’s executive director, Susan Lerner, is an outdated system. “The last election laws were written in the 1930s,” she said. “It’s very behind and slow. Automatic registration and early voting are the way to go.”

People also complained about getting conflicting information from workers and indifferent responses when they asked for assistance. Better training for poll workers was one of the main points of emphasis at the event. Lerner said NY State’s Board of Elections is very underfunded.

According to its website, NY State’s B.O.E. has less than $12 million available for election operations, which includes training its polling site workers and volunteers. The recommended budget for reapproprations is almost $42 million, and that’s in addition to the roughly $11.5 million already in place.

In addition to scarce resources, an increasingly divided political landscape and tensions are spilling over to the ballots. “Under normal circumstances, we had deficient election systems,” said Minister Kirsten John Foy. “Under these circumstances, that can be fatal.”

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Let NY Vote is a grassroots organization working toward making elections in NYC accessible to all New Yorkers. They want to accomplish automatic registration, early voting, flexibility to change political parties closer to election day and pre-registration for 16 and 17 year-olds in time for the 2020 presidential election, among other things.

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Opioids: How Chemical Dependency Changed

The opioid crisis had a significant impact on how many admissions there were for chemical dependency treatment in Onondaga County. The numbers cannot be taken at face value because they do not consider the amount of people who were admitted to multiple programs or who were transferred out of state for treatment. The raw data include more than 65 thousand rows of statistics, starting from 2007 going to 2016, so I filtered it by only including inpatient rehabilitation for heroin and other opioids. The ages ranged from under 18 to 55 and older, with people between 18 and 34 being the most affected.

There are six types of general treatment programs and several sub categories. The other rehabilitation programs include crisis, opioid treatment, residential, outpatient and specialized. The main sub categories I looked at were medically supervised withdrawal for inpatients, medically managed detoxification and medically monitored withdrawal, among others. The data show that except for medically managed detoxification, the number of admissions went up significantly starting in 2013, peaking in 2016, which is when the opioid crisis started taking off in the United States and New York.

The numbers also support this trend locally because according to New York’s Health Department (page 67 of the report), outpatient emergency department visits in Onondaga County increased from 307 in 2015 to 482 in 2016, which is roughly 103 people out of every 100,000. The crisis has seen disturbing effects because opioid related deaths tripled in Onondaga County from 2012 to 2016, but went down 28 percent between 2016 and the beginning of last year.

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Syracuse Roads Rated 5 or Less

Syracuse rates its roads on a scale from 1-10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best. Out of the roughly 4,850 roads in the city, more than 1,800 are either a five or worse. Only one road was ranked a one.

I filtered the numbers by street type (streets and avenues), local roads and when their last overlay –meaning when the city resurfaces its roads– was, which ranged from 2003 to 2011. Some of the roads I didn’t include had their last overlay in 1981 and the most recent was 2015.

There are also many streets that have several consecutive blocks that have roads rated from one to five. Fellows Avenue is among the streets that fits that description. In some cases, there are even roads on the same block of a street in these conditions. Some examples of that are Union, Fellows, Brighton and Ramsey avenues.

Syracuse has a deteriorating infrastructure, so this may not come as a surprise. More than a quarter of the city’s roads are either in mediocre condition or worse. Part of the reason is the lack of resources dedicated to infrastructure. Using salt to melt the snow away from Syracuse’s roads also contributes significantly to the problem. The roads being in this condition is part of why the city’s residents are not happy with its infrastructure.

 

Link for Data: http://data.syrgov.net/datasets/road-ratings-2015/data?orderBy=dateLastOverlay&orderByAsc=false

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Gender Pay Gap in Professional Basketball

Since the NBA and WNBA were founded, there has been a huge disparity in salaries between the two leagues. One of the reasons could be that women in America make 78 cents for every dollar men make. Another reason is that the NBA was officially formed in 1949 and its female counterpart started 21 years ago. Therefore, the revenue gap between the two leagues is significant.

The NBA made almost $6 billion in revenue in the 2015-16 season, compared to roughly $51.5 million last year for the WNBA. Precise data for the latter don’t exist, but that’s based on the TV deal they have with ESPN. The NBA splits its revenue 50/50 between players and owners. The WNBA has a more convoluted distribution and the players have seen less of it in the last few years. According to Forbes, WNBA players take home less than 25 percent of the league’s revenue. It used to be 33 percent. Revenue is accumulated through ticket sales, merchandise, sponsorships and TV deals. NBA games have more than double the amount of fans than WNBA games and sells much more merchandise.

Another thing to consider is salaries. According to Forbes, as of 2016, NBA players make an average of $6.2 million per year. According to Vice Sports, that number goes way down to $75,000 for WNBA players. The maximum salary in the latter league is about $110,000, per CNBC, which is almost five times less than the NBA’s minimum salary. With that in mind, according to Buzzfeed, there were 52 NBA players in 2014 who made more money than the entire WNBA combined. The chart below shows nine NBA all stars and their salaries in 2014 compared to what the WNBA paid all of its players.

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The Evolution of the Three Pointer in the NBA

NBA basketball changed immensely between the 1979-80 season –the year the three-point line was implemented– and the 2016-17 campaign. Players are attempting (and making) many more triples and scoring less points around the basket, A.K.A. the paint or post. Most players who attempted three pointers were point guards, shooting guards and a few small forwards. Those players are usually smaller and quicker than power forwards and centers and score more points from the perimeter than the latter two positions.

The three-point line was unpopular among players when it was introduced because many had to adjust their approach to the game and weren’t comfortable taking a triple unless it was absolutely necessary. But as time passed, players developed a rhythm and realized its importance to the sport, so the number of triples sky rocketed. There are several reasons this transformation happened.

The game is a lot less physical than it used to be, mostly because of rule changes like eliminating hand checking, which let defenders have both of their hands on opposing players at all times. This rule was done away with in the 1994-95 season, which is roughly the time when the concept of the stretch 4, a power forward who can stretch defenses with three-point range, was becoming a staple in the NBA.

The Houston Rockets won the championship that season because they put four shooters on the court at the same time as their legendary center Hakeem Olajuwon, which opened up driving lanes for guards and allowed for Olajuwon to pass out of the post when he got double teamed. At the time, only a handful of teams played like this, but now, almost every squad implements this strategy.

To show just how important the three-point shot is to modern basketball, 12 of the 16 teams that made the playoffs (out of 30 total) in the 2016-17 season had the best percentage of three-point field goals in the league. And nine of those 16 teams led in three point makes. By comparison, only five playoff teams in 1979-80 were in the top 12 –that was how many teams made the post season that year because there were 22 teams in the NBA– for three-point percentage. And only five playoff teams were in the top 12 for most made three pointers. This trend is also reflected in averages.

The league average for three point makes per team in the 1979-80 season was 64, which is 0.78 per game. To put that in perspective, that number in the 2016-17 campaign was 792, which translates to 9.65 triples a game. The chart below shows the league average for three pointers made per season and its percentage from that territory.

What’s interesting, though, is that the increase of three pointers has not affected overall scoring. In fact, in the 2016-17 season, teams averaged less points (8,658 for the year, roughly 105.6 points a game)  than in 1979-80 (8,965 for the season, 109.3 points a contest).

That’s because teams got more points closer to the basket and from the free throw line in the latter season.

The impact of the triple can also be seen on an individual level. When the three-point line made its debut, the league leader for made triples was Brian Taylor, who drained 90, which is 1.09 a contest. The leader in the 2016-17 season was Stephen Curry, who made 324 three pointers, which is 4.1 per game. Making 3s is crucial to having a successful team, but so is defending the three-point line.

The league average for three-point field goal percentage in the 2016-17 regular season was 35.8 percent. 12 of the teams that made the playoffs held squads below that mark, ranging from 32.4 percent to 35.7 percent in opponent’s three point field goal percentage.

To compare that, in 1979-80, the average three-point field goal percentage was 28 percent. And seven playoff teams were in the top 12 for defending the three-point line, ranging from 23.8 percent to 27.1 percent. The triple was not as much of a factor as it is now, so that’s also one reason the accuracy was much lower in the 1979-80 season.

Something to keep an eye out for is if teams eventually attempt more three pointers than two pointers. It might not be far off, as teams like the Houston Rockets and Cleveland Cavaliers took 46.1 percent and 40.1 percent of their shots from deep, respectively.

For season comparison statistics, I got my information from basketball reference here: https://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_2017.html#all_team_shooting and here: https://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_1980.html#all_team-stats-base

For the amount of three pointers players made per game and for rule changes in the NBA, I went here: https://stats.nba.com/leaders/?Season=2016-17&SeasonType=Regular%20Season&StatCategory=FG3M and here: http://www.nba.com/analysis/rules_history.html

For how the game changed in the 1994-95 season, I went here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/sports/wp/2015/05/08/stretch-4s-how-rudy-tomjanovic-and-robert-horry-radically-changed-nba-offenses/?utm_term=.d681c31bbc88

For the teams’ rates of three pointers, I went here: https://www.teamrankings.com/nba/stat/three-point-rate?date=2017-06-13