News Briefs: July 3, 2025

Registration Open for Tourney

ONEONTA—The Otsego County Chamber of Commerce’s 39th annual Golf Outing will be held at the Oneonta Country Club on Friday, September 5, with a shotgun start at 9:30 a.m. Registration includes a light breakfast, golf cart, on-course refreshments, a networking lunch, and more than half a dozen contests with prizes. Sponsorships and partnerships are still available. Spaces will fill quickly; registration and more information may be found at https://members.otsegocc.com/events/details/annual-golf-outing-1130.

New Organelle Discovered

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA—Researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine and National Institutes of Health discovered a new organelle in human cells. Christened the “hemifusome,” the microscopic structure is believed to help cells package, sort, recycle and discard important materials. They facilitate the formation of vesicles, small sacs that store, mix, and transport cellular materials and debris. Scientist Seham Ebrahim, PhD noted that hemifusome malfunction may contribute to conditions like Hermansky-Pudlak syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that can cause albinism, vision problems, lung disease and blood clotting issues.

“We’re just beginning to understand how this new organelle fits into the bigger picture of cell health and disease,” Ebrahim said. “It’s exciting because finding something truly new inside cells is rare—and it gives us a whole new path to explore.”

Ebrahim and her team worked with NIH personnel using UVA’s expertise in cryo-electron tomography, a powerful imaging technique that freezes cells in time to study transient phenomenon like the new organelle. Findings have been published in the scientific journal “Nature Communications.”

Bassett Earns Accreditations

OTSEGO COUNTY—The American College of Emergency Physicians awarded Bronze Level Geriatric Emergency Department Accreditation to all five of Bassett Healthcare Network’s emergency rooms at A. O. Fox Hospital, Bassett Medical Center, Cobleskill Regional Hospital, Little Falls Hospital and O’Connor Hospital. The designation indicates Bassett’s successful use of best practices identified by the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine, Emergency Nurses Association and American Geriatrics Society. As with many rural areas, senior citizens make up a large proportion of the population; the New York State Department of Health estimates that the four counties where Bassett hospitals operate have 22.7 percent of their population over the age of 65, compared to the statewide average of 17.4 percent.