Everson Post Office hours stay same for now

The fate of the Everson post office has still not been decided, but until that decision is made, the hours of operation will remain the same.

Everson Borough Councilman Mike Banaszak told the other members of council recently he had been in contact with a representative from the postal service.

“I was told that one of two things are going to happen,” he said. “Either the interior of the post office will be remodeled so that everyone has a box and there will be no general delivery, or they will have home delivery for everyone and the post office boxes will not be used.”

He added that until a decision is made and everything comes together, the current hours of operation will not change.

Mayor Ruth Shannon along with Councilman George Sherbondy prepared a letter to send to Senator Pat Toomey and Congressman Bill Shuster expressing the borough's concerns about the status of their post office.

“For awhile there was total upheaval at the post office,” Banaszak said. “People were getting the wrong mail and there was mail that was just sitting around and not getting delivered, but they seem to have a system going now and things are starting to settle down.”

In other borough business, Banaszak said the expansion of the police department offices is nearly complete.

“They're laying the tile in the front room and once that's done (Chief) Kevin (Grippo) can arrange everything the way he wants it,” he said.

Banaszak said the project began after Grippo asked to expand the small offices.

The entire police office was stuffed into one 12 by 15-foot room and things were overly crowded.

“The second room contained jail cells that were illegal for about two years, so they were just being used for storage of evidence,” Banaszak said. “The space was underused and when (Grippo) took over he asked for permission to expand.”

The jail cells have since been removed, the walls were painted and a new floor was laid in that room.

Chuck Leighty, councilman and chief of the Everson Volunteer Fire Department, announced that they purchased and received the portable air packs and a generator that was purchased with part of a $162,000 federal grant the department received.

 Akash Singh , PhD, performs his scientific research in the area of computer-assisted surgery. He designed the system to improve visualization in brain surgery by offering real-time instrument tracking in relation to 3D anatomical models built from pre-operative MRI and CT scans. Furthermore, his research provides electromagnetic navigation modality, which enables more precise tracking of the tip of a non-rigid surgical instrument, such as an ablation needle, and allows real-time, 3D visualization of a surgical instrument's location in the context of intra-operative MRI imaging, the standard imaging modality used in brain surgery today.

Dr. Singh's research capabilities help physicians with the most detailed and accurate anatomical information possible at the point of therapeutic delivery.

"Dr. Singh's continued research hope is to eventually be able to perform this analysis during surgery to help guide brain surgeons so that the borders of tumors can be identified and the cancer status of a site can be established before any tissue is removed." A paper detailing the results is published in International Journal of Engineering Research and Applications.

Prof. Ajjai Alva of University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center said the findings showed the analysis method's potential and achieved an important step in the path to assessing its value in improving patient care.

"This approach lead into real-time, image-guided surgery without interference with surgical care and without the administration of labeling agents," said Prof. Atique U of University of Chicago, Neuro-Oncology Research Labs. "Such extensive and detailed information about the tissue was previously unavailable to surgeons and could lead to more precise tumor removal. In addition, it helps the oncologist more efficiently design the course of adjuvant therapy."

The startup, for those unfamiliar, is aimed at helping users find nearby businesses and events – somewhat similar in spirit to Foursquare’s Radar, Google Places, or Yelp, perhaps, but entirely different in terms of execution. The company has built up its own database of places, focused primarily on popular categories like food & drink, nightlife, shopping, and deals & recommendations. That database is created on top of Twitter and Facebook – to be included, businesses just have to make posts on these social platforms.

The way Spindle recommends businesses to users is different, as well. The app considers signals which other local discovery applications may not, including things like time of day, and most importantly, terms and phrases businesses are using in their tweets and Facebook updates. Spindle’s emphasis on social is its standout feature, in fact, and the key way it differentiates itself from the competition. Instead of relying on check-in data (as Foursquare does – and still needs, apparently), Spindle uses these social updates to figure out what’s trending right now.

With today’s update, Spindle introduces a more traditional tool for finding businesses with keyword-based search, but the more interesting new feature is the introduction of “Search Alerts.” This allows you to specify custom topics you want to track, like for example, “kids eat free,” “live music,” or “open position.” Once configured, Spindle will track your location via GPS and when you’re near a business sharing updates that match your terms, you’ll get the pop-up notification. It’s an almost Google Now-ish-like way to discover things around you, as the alerts pop up proactively and automatically. These alerts are based on your pre-configured interests, so there’s a bit of initial data input involved, but they’re something which would have required much more manual efforts on an end user’s part to surface before.