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Daniel Dunaief

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By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

I would like to cancel some things from my past and my own life. Here are some things I’d put on my cancel list:

Self doubt: Movies (remember when we used to go out to movies, pay way too much money for popcorn, candy and enjoy previews for upcoming films that looked better than the one we were about to watch?) often encourage us to overcome self doubt. What if we never had those doubts in the first place? We might become arrogant and insufferable, but we also might truly become our own versions of “The Little Engine that Could.” Wait, that hasn’t been canceled, has it? Well, if it has, I’m going to ignore the latest cultural eraser.

Self stuffing: When self doubt crept into our minds, how often did we reach for the kind of comfort food that just didn’t do us any favors? Sure, those cupcakes, cookies and sugar cereal might have tasted good in the moment, but was the momentary satisfaction really worth it? Did the eight vitamins and four minerals do us any good? Let’s cancel that urge and impulse, making it impossible to continue unfortunate patterns.

Self loathing: I admit that the self loathing that has crept in at times in my life has helped me get off the couch and do some sit-ups and push-ups, has driven me to be more productive and has put me on more of the “right track,” to borrow from that Little Engine. Still, maybe all that energy would have been more effective if I used it earlier.

The 2004 Red Sox: Yeah, I know you can’t cancel a team or sports history, but that would be one of the first teams I’d erase from my memory. The Yankees were winning 3-0 in the series and no team had ever come back from such a deficit, plus we had the curse of the Bambino. None of that mattered, as the Sawx not only took the next four games, but then went on to win the World Series. Blech! Now I know how all those New Englanders felt about Bucky Dent, which probably stings a lot less. Bucky Dent is like trying to tease your younger brother with something that makes him smile even more broadly than you do.

Mirrors: We should cancel mirrors. After all, they keep showing how much older and more exhausted we’re getting. Sometimes, like when we conquer the self stuffing and the self doubt, we see the version of ourselves we’d like to be. Other times, though, the mirror tells us, albeit in a backwards way, that we aren’t who we’d like to be and that we need to climb back onto that train car to get to our desired destination.

Report cards: Students, parents and teachers can’t win. If a teacher gives everyone A’s, the teacher will be popular, but the students probably wouldn’t learn as much as they could or should. The teacher who has more of a bell-shaped distribution of grades may reflect the reality of the class as a whole, but he or she may put someone who belongs on the right side of the curve on the left and vice versa. Let’s cancel report cards and let the students prove what they know in some other way. The great thing about this version of cancel culture is that it doesn’t require me to replace it with something that works. 

Bad parenting: We’ve had moments when we have the right intention, but the wrong result. Let’s cancel those unfortunate parenting errors. If kids can get a do-over on the playground, we should get to cancel one or two of our mistakes.

By Daniel Dunaief

It started over four decades ago, with a “help wanted” advertisement.

Luci Betti-Nash needed money for art supplies. She answered an ad from the Stony Brook University Department of Anatomical Sciences that sought artists who could draw bones. She found the work interesting and realized that she could “do it fairly easily. I could not have imagined a more fulfilling career.”

Betti-Nash spent 41 years responding to requests to provide illustrations for a wide range of scientific papers, contributing images that became a part of charts and graphs and drawing everything from single-celled organisms to dinosaurs. She retired last April.

Her coworkers at Stony Brook, many of whom collaborated with her for decades, appreciated her contributions and her passion and precision for her job.

Maureen O’Leary, Professor in the Department of Anatomical Sciences, said Betti-Nash’s work enhanced her professional efforts. “I couldn’t have had the same career without her,” O’Leary wrote in an email. “Artists are true partners.”

O’Leary appreciated how Betti-Nash noticed parts of the work that scientists miss. 

“I think the most important thing is figuring out together what to put in and what to leave out of a figure,” O’Leary explained. “A photograph shows everything and it can be a blizzard of detail, really too much, and it will not focus the eye. The artist-scientist collaboration is about simplifying the detail to show what is important and how to show it clearly.”

One of O’Leary’s favorite illustrations from Betti-Nash was a pull-out, color figure that envisioned the ancient Trans-Saharan Seaway from about 75 million years ago. The shallow sea, which was described in the movie “Aquaman,” supported numerous species that are currently extinct. Betti-Nash created a figure that showed these creatures in the sea and how water drained from nearby mountains, all superimposed over the geology.

“It told the story of how ancient life turned into rocks and fossils,” O’Leary explained.

Betti-Nash, who continues to sketch from her home office and plans to be selective about taking on future assignments, has numerous stories to tell about her work.

For starters, the world of science is rife with jargon. When she was starting out, she didn’t always stop researchers who tossed around the terms that populate their life as if they were a part of everyone’s vocabulary.

“Some [scientists] would come in and assume you knew exactly what they were talking about,” Betti-Nash said. “It was something they were studying for years. They would assume you knew all the terminology.”

Each discipline, from cell biology to gross anatomy to dinosaur taxonomy had its own terminology, some of which “was way over my head,” she said. 

Early in her career, Betti-Nash felt she didn’t know details she thought she should.

“The older I got, the bolder I got about asking” scientists to explain what they meant in terms she could understand, she said, adding that she felt fortunate to have scientists who were “more than willing and eager to answer my questions when I was bold enough to ask. That was one of the many life lessons I learned … don’t be afraid to ask questions.”

Betti-Nash sometimes had to work under intense time pressure. Collaborating with David Krause, who was at Stony Brook and is now Senior Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology in the Department of Earth Sciences at the Denver Museum of Science, Betti-Nash illustrated the largest frog ever discovered, which lived in Madagascar over 65 million years ago. Called the Beelzebufo, this frog weighed in at a hefty 10 pounds and was 16 inches. Ribbit!

A short time before going to press, the scientific team decided they needed a common object as a frame of reference to compare the size of this ancient amphibian and the largest living frog in Madagascar.

“We scrambled,” Betti-Nash recalled. “We decided on a pencil.” 

She didn’t have time to draw the pencil, so she put it on her scanner, did some quick painting in Photoshop, put a shadow in, added it to the scan of the painting, saved it in the format required for the journal and sent it off.

“Adding the pencil was one of those typical strokes of genius that [Betti-Nash] routinely added to artwork,” explained Krause in an email. “Everyone knows the size of a number 2 pencil.”

Even though she hadn’t sculpted in 32 years, she had to create a sculpture of the frog that students could touch. The sculpture had to be non-toxic, dry and ready within three days.

Betti-Nash turned to the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators, asking for help with ideas for the materials. She also asked Joseph Groenke from Krause’s lab to contribute his fossil preparing experience. She used an epoxy clay that she massaged into shape, and then colored it with acrylic, non-toxic paints.

That sculpture was featured as a part of a display at Stony Brook Hospital for years and has since traveled with Krause to Denver where “kids especially love it, in part because it is touchable,” Krause wrote.

Krause was grateful for a partnership with Betti-Nash that spanned almost 40 years.

“There is no doubt in my mind that [Betti-Nash] made me a better scientist and there is also no doubt that my science is better” because of her, he explained. Krause described her stipple drawings as “incredibly painstaking to execute.” His favorite is of a large fossil crocodile found in Madagascar from the Late Cretaceous called Mahajangasuchus. 

Betti-Nash urges artists considering entering the field of scientific illustrating to attend graduate school or even to take undergraduate courses, which would provide time to learn skills and terminology before working in the field.

She also suggests artists remain “interested in what you’re drawing at that moment, no matter what it is,” she said, adding that drawing skills provide a solid foundation for a career in science illustrating. Computer skills, which help with animation and videos, are good tools to learn as well.

Growing up in Eastchester, Betti-Nash often found herself doodling patterns in her notebooks. When she worked on graph paper, she colored in the squares. She also received artistic guidance from her father, the late John Betti.

A graphic designer, Betti worked for a company in Westchester, where he designed the town seal for Tuckahoe as well as the small airplane wings children used to get when they flew on planes.

During World War II, Betti, who grew up in Corona, Queens, used his artistic skills to create three-dimensional models from aerial photographs. Stationed close to the residence of his extended family in Italy during part of the war, Betti also created watercolor paintings of the Italian landscape.

When she was growing up, Betti-Nash had the “best model-making teacher in my dad,” who taught her to create paper maché.

Married to fellow illustrator Stephen Nash, Betti-Nash plans to remain active as an artist, doing her own illustrations involving nature and the relationship between birds and the environment. 

She currently leads Second Saturday Bird Walks at Avalon Nature Preserve in Stony Brook and Frank Melville Memorial Park in Setauket through the Four Harbors Audubon Society (4HAS.org)

Betti-Nash is pleased with a career that all started with a response to an ad in the paper. “I feel very privileged to have had the opportunity to work as a scientific illustrator,” she said. “I hope I was able to help communicate the science behind the discoveries that the amazing scientists at Stony Brook made during my time there.”

All photos courtesy of Luci Betti-Nash

Carole Ganzenmuller, right, with her brother Richard Spence at an event a few years ago. Photo from Ganzenmuller

In September, Richard Spence, 64, of Selden, died of a heart attack.

Stunned by the loss, the extended family confronted the difficulty of planning a funeral during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We felt we had to be strict. My mother is 91, so we were diligent in who was coming and who was not able to come.”

— Carole Ganzenmuller

Carole Ganzenmuller, Spence’s sister, knows firsthand the suffering and difficulty the pandemic has created for mourning families. Ganzenmuller works as a funeral director’s assistant at East Setauket-based Bryant Funeral Home, where she and the staffs at so many other funeral homes on Long Island and around the country grappled with restrictions on the kinds of personal support people could normally provide after the loss of a loved one.

“We couldn’t do the normal funeral,” Ganzenmuller said. “We felt we had to be strict. My mother is 91, so we were diligent in who was coming and who was not able to come.”

Indeed, she said many of the extended relatives from out of state couldn’t attend the funeral for Spence, who served in active duty for the Navy for four years and as a reserve for two years. He was buried at Calverton National Cemetery.

While the family did have visitation and used Zoom, Ganzenmuller said they didn’t “go through the normal process.”

She said her children, who are in California and were on lockdown, knew they couldn’t attend.

“We didn’t want that many people around my mom,” Ganzenmuller said.

Telling people not to come was a “very hard thing to do” as it cuts the grieving process and the goodbyes become more complicated, she added.

The grandchildren couldn’t embrace their grandmother, which would have provided the customary comfort
and support.

Ganzenmuller’s family has had several members play active roles in serving the country through the armed forces. Her late brother William, who died at the age of 43, served in the Air Force, while her oldest brother Gary is a Marine veteran who served in Vietnam. Her late father Robert was in the Merchant Marine.

“We hang an American flag with great pride,” she said.

Sad as it was for Ganzenmuller and her family to lose Spence this fall, she recognized that they had more opportunities to grieve her brother than people who lost loved ones in the spring of 2020, during the earlier part of the pandemic.

In some cases, Ganzenmuller recalled how she went to a cemetery on her own, bringing a casket without a family along.

“I was going to Calverton where the families could not attend the funerals,” she said. She said the “Hail Mary” prayer on behalf of the families when she brought the deceased to the cemetery.

The increasing number of deceased people Ganzenmuller bought to the cemetery or the crematorium made her feel as if she were “in a war zone.”

“I felt a little blessed that my family was allowed to have what we had.”

— Carole Ganzenmuller

Ganzenmuller’s family had an honor guard for her brother, and the flag was presented to her mother.

“It’s very special,” she said. She has thought of all the people who couldn’t receive that honor. In fact, she said some religious officials didn’t feel comfortable entering the funeral home, so those services occurred outside.

“What was a normal ritual was no longer a normal ritual for people,” Ganzenmuller said.

The pandemic changed the way people could grieve and could say goodbye.

“I felt a little blessed that my family was allowed to have what we had,” she said. “I’m sure the healing process was tougher” for people during the early months of the pandemic, regardless of what caused a close friend or family member to die.

Through all the funerals, some of which continue for COVID-19, Ganzenmuller appreciated how the staff at Bryant Funeral Home and in the industry as a whole pulled together as a team.

“We’re saying to ourselves, ‘There’s hopefully light at the end of the tunnel when masks will come down and people can grieve in a normal way,’” she said. “They want to hug their family, they want to cry on them — and not give the elbows anymore.”

Adrian Popp, chair of Infection Control at Huntington Hospital/ Northwell Health and associate professor of Medicine at Hofstra School of Medicine, spoke with TBR News Media newspapers to discuss vaccinations and COVID-19. Please find below an abridged and edited version of the discussion.

TBR: Why do some people have a stronger reaction to a second shot?

POPP: These two vaccines are very well tolerated. Yes, there are some side effects after getting the shots. Indeed, even in the trials, it has been shown that the second shot is sometimes more prone to have side effects. There is pain, tenderness at the site of the shot. Sometimes people can get fatigue, fever and even a chill. It is rare to have something more severe than that … From my experience, most people tolerate them well, including the second shot.

TBR: Should people try to take at least a day off, if they can, after the second shot?

POPP: That is not necessarily unreasonable. A lot of my colleagues did take the shot later in the afternoon and then go home and rest for the evening. If you can afford to have a day off the next day, that’s probably not unreasonable.

TBR: Does having the vaccine free people up to interact with others?

POPP: What we know from the Moderna and Pfizer trials is that the effectiveness of the vaccination is 95 percent to prevent symptomatic disease … Can a vaccinated person develop a light form [of the disease]? In theory, yes. There are not completely safe in [not] transmitting the disease to someone else.

TBR: Have the Black and brown communities, which have been somewhat resistant to taking the vaccine, been included in the clinical studies?

POPP: Those studies with Pfizer and Moderna included these populations. They are well represented in these studies. There’s no significant difference in the side effects in African Americans, or less efficacy in the Black and brown communities …. [The Black and brown communities] should feel comfortable that it’s as safe or as efficacious as it is in a Caucasian person.

TBR: Have people from the Huntington Hospital or Northwell community asked you about the safety of taking the vaccine?

POPP: I do have conversations like this every day with different members of Huntington Hospital [as well as] the community at large … I bring up one very recent study that will probably help in kind of showing a few things. I’m going to bring in Israel, a smaller country with a centralized health care system that has been very good in vaccinating people …. More than 50 percent of their population has received the COVID vaccination. Specifically, the senior population, 65 and above, has received the vaccine in percentages even higher … In a study in the New England Journal of Medicine of more than 600,000 people who received the vaccine, [they] compared the incidence of COVID without the vaccine. They found the protection is more than 90 percent … That tells us the vaccine is very effective.

TBR: What do you hear about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine?

POPP: The best thing about the [J&J] vaccine is that it’s only one shot and the second thing is that it can be stored at normal temperature compared to the other vaccinations [which require deep freezing] … That allows it to be distributed more easily … It will probably be a good vaccine as well.

TBR: After the shots, what is the immunity?

POPP: After the first shot, approximately a week or two weeks after the first shot, you develop quite a significant level of antibodies. There is a certain amount of protection. With the second shot, the level of antibodies shoots up probably 10 times higher than after the initial shot … Full immunity is one week after you receive the second shot.

TBR: Some reports suggest that people who have COVID and develop antibodies may only need one shot. Is that true?

POPP: There are infectious disease experts looking into this. We do know that after getting COVID, you do develop a certain level of antibodies … That varies widely from person to person … The jury is still out on this one. Truly, we have to look at it in a more scientific way. We’ll find out if this will be an option down the road. At this point, as the recommendation stands, you do have to get both shots, even if you had COVID disease before.

TBR: Do we know more about why one person gets very sick and another has only mild symptoms?

POPP: Up to 50 percent of people who get COVID are either asymptomatic or have really minor symptoms. There are risk factors for developing a serious disease. We know that obesity, hypertension, diabetes and specifically certain immunocompromised conditions are risk factors for more serious disease. I have seen older people in their 90s who do have a mild form of the disease, then I’ve seen somebody in his 40s who has very severe disease … There is no real good way of saying who will develop a more severe disease versus somebody else who will have a milder form.

TBR: What about the aftereffects of COVID?

POPP: I have seen quite a few cases of people who … develop quite severe symptoms. On the milder end, people have a loss of taste and smell. This can last for some time … From my experience, most people will recover from this. On the other hand, people with more severe illness, people who get hospitalized, I have to say that the virus can take a significant toll on that person. I have seen patients who have lost 20 to 40 pounds over a period of a month or a month and a half … Recovering from such a hit of being sick for such a prolonged period of time takes a toll on people. Some patients also develop some degree of cognitive impairment.

TBR: What keeps you up at night?

POPP: Even though [the infection rate] is coming down in New York, it is still not insignificant. It’s still an issue. Until we get … a significant number of our population vaccinated, we’re still going to be in trouble … The only way we can stop the whole thing is by vaccinating as many people as we can.

Image depicting the ability of Nitrogen Removing Biofilters to reduce wastewater effluent levels to less than 10 mg N per liter. Photo from NYS Center for Clean Water Technology

Water, water everywhere and several scientists want to make sure there are plenty of drops to drink.

Christopher Gobler, director of the New York State Center for Clean Water Technology, and Arjun Venkatesan, the CCWT’s associate director for Drinking Water Initiatives, recently published two studies in which they highlighted how their efforts to reduce nitrogen also cut back on 1,4 dioxane, a likely carcinogen.

Gobler, who is also endowed chair of Coastal Ecology and Conservation at Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, is leading a center whose mission is to solve the nitrogen overloading crisis in Long Island’s groundwater and surface water by developing alternative onsite septic systems.

Nitrogen, which comes from a host of sources including fertilizer, creates the kind of conditions that lead to algal blooms, which can and have closed beaches around Long Island. Nitrogen also harms seagrass meadows and can cause the collapse of shellfisheries like clams and scallops.

In the meantime, 1,4 dioxane, which is a potential health threat in Suffolk and Nassau counties, comes from household products ranging from shampoos to cleaning products and detergents. Manufacturing on Long Island in prior decades contributed to the increase in its prevalence in water sources.

Indeed, recent studies from the center showed “very high levels of 1,4 dioxane have been detected in our groundwater,” Venkatesan said in a recent press conference.

The chemical doesn’t easily degrade, conventional wastewater treatment doesn’t remote it, and household and personal care products contribute to its prevalence in the area.

A one-year study “confirmed this suspicion,” Venkatesan said. “The level of 1,4 dioxane in a septic effluent is, on average, 10 times higher than tap water levels.”

This finding is “important” and suggests that the use of these products can ultimately end up polluting groundwater, Venkatesan continued.

At the same time, the increasing population on Long Island has contributed to a rise in the concentration of nitrogen in groundwater, Gobler added during the press conference.

The center hoped to create a septic-enhancing system that met a 10, 20, 30 criteria.

They wanted to reduce the concentration of nitrogen to below 10 milligrams per liter, the cost to below $20,000 to install and the lifespan of the system to 30 years.

The center developed nitrogen removing biofilters, or NRBs.

In a second paper, the researchers showed that the NRBs removed 80 to 90 percent of nitrogen.

At the same time, the NRBs are removing nearly 60 percent of 1,4 dioxane, driving the concentration down to levels that are at, or below, the concentration in tap water, which is 1 part per billion.

This is the “first published study to demonstrate a significant removal of 1,4 dioxane,” Gobler said at the press conference. NRBs have advanced “to the piloting stage.”

The center anticipates that the NRBs could be available for widespread installation throughout Suffolk County by June 2022.

The center currently has 20 NRBs in the ground and will have over 25 by the end of the year. In 2022, anyone should be able to install them, Gobler said.

Residents interested in NRBs can contact the center, which is “working toward being prepared for widespread installation,” Gobler explained in an email.

Residents interested in learning what financial assistance they might receive for a septic improvement program can find information at the website www.reclaimourwater.info.

Gobler said the microbes in the NRBs do the work of removing nitrogen and 1,4 dioxane, which continually reside within the filters. He explained that they should continue to be functional for decades.

Adrienne Esposito, executive director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, which has offices in five locations and is committed to an environmental agenda, was pleased with the research Gobler and Venkatesan presented.

She was “beyond thrilled with the science released today,” she said during the press conference. This research on the effectiveness of the NRBs “validates all of the work going on for the last four years.”

Esposito urged the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation to test wastewater from laundromats, car washes and other sources to determine the amount of 1,4 dioxane that enters into groundwater and surface water systems.

Esposito is “thankful for science-based work that allows us to attain clean water.”

Photo courtesy of Pexels

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

In my daily conversations with a range of people over the last week, I have heard stories I thought I’d share, as a reflection of the reality of our lives.

The first involved a discussion with Joe about his vaccination. Joe had been trying to sign up for a COVID vaccination for weeks. He thought he’d landed a coveted vaccination appointment at Jones Beach. Driving out there for a 6 p.m. appointment, he drove in circles.

The site had the wrong address, he said. In addition, even the correct address, which had a phone on-site that wasn’t working, naturally, was closed that day because the winds were too high.

“Who would put tents up on Jones Beach?” Joe asked, his voice barely rising but his frustration evident from the time wasted trying to get a vaccination that would allow him to do a job that required interacting with the public. “If you want to build a tent, put it somewhere that’s not as windy. It wasn’t even snowing.”

Fortunately, Joe, who spent more time the next day sharing his experience with a vaccination operator, was able to schedule a make-up appointment much closer to home.

The next day, I spoke with Matthew, who is worrying about his son Jim, who is a sophomore in college. Jim, you see, has already received a COVID warning. A second warning or infraction could send his son home, which would, as Matthew put it, “not be good for anybody.”

As it turns out, Jim has a girlfriend, Sarah. Normally, that wouldn’t be such a cause for concern for his parents or for the university. Still, with his girlfriend living in a different penitentiary, I mean, dormitory, Jim is not allowed to visit with Sarah.

The problem is that Sarah, who is an excellent and committed student, not only works hard at school, but also inspires Jim to expend considerable additional academic effort.

If Jim stops seeing Sarah, which he may do to comply with school rules designed to protect the campus from spreading the dangerous virus, he will miss time with his close friend, while he will also likely not study as hard.

My friend Matthew advised Jim to be careful and comply with the rules, although I could tell that he felt his own return on the investment he spends for college will likely be higher if Jim spends more time with his studious friend.

Finally, I spoke with Paul, a friend who regularly attended conferences before COVID shut all those events down. Paul traveled at least four times a year to meetings all over the world, visiting interesting places but, more importantly, speaking with people in his field.

One day in 2019, Paul was sitting in one such conference and was taking notes. As the conference ended, he and the man sitting next to him, whom he’d never met, struck up a conversation. The man suggested a follow-up effort to the work that might help the industry. Realizing he had the ability to do exactly what the stranger suggested, Paul asked if the man would mind if he used the idea. The stranger was delighted and a friendship, and an idea, was born.

I asked Paul how much he missed conferences and if he planned to attend them when the world reopened.

He said he would not only jump at the chance, but might even attend conferences he wouldn’t have previously considered, just to benefit from such random and potentially beneficial interactions. His only hesitation is that he hasn’t gotten his vaccination yet. He wondered what I thought about driving out to Jones Beach.

Suffolk County Police Commissioner Geraldine Hart, right, and Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone. File photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Suffolk County Police Department suspended two officers for kicking Christopher Cruz, a 30-year-old homeless man who stole a car and injured two other officers, after he had been handcuffed.

Cruz had stolen a 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee in Port Jefferson Station late on the evening of Feb. 23. During a 35-minute chase, Cruz rammed two police cars, injuring two officers who were eventually treated and released from the hospital.

Cruz, who has been charged with several crimes, including third-degree grand larceny, second-degree assault, third-degree criminal mischief and resisting arrest, was kicked by officers who now face their own criminal investigation. At the same time, four other officers, including a supervisor, who didn’t stop the assault on a handcuffed suspect, are also on modified duty pending the investigation.

“The matter is now in the hands of [District Attorney Timothy Sini’s] office, and I can confirm that there is a criminal investigation,” Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone (D) said during a press conference on Tuesday night.

The two officers have been suspended without pay.

“If we are to continue to build trust with all of our communities, we have to be transparent and we have to hold our officers to the highest standards,” SCPD Commissioner Geraldine Hart, said during the press conference.

Hart called the incident “disturbing” and said the department would continue its internal investigation.

The investigation of the officers’ behavior came to light after officials reviewed a recording from another responding officer’s body camera.

“While Cruz was standing up and handcuffed, a 6th Precinct police officer pushed the arrestee forward from behind and kicked the back of his leg,” Hart described. “The officer who initially pushed Cruz and one other officer kicked Cruz multiple times while he was on the ground.”

Hart called the inaction of other officers “unacceptable” and said the “number of officers who did not intervene is a direct violation of our rules and procedures.”

She called the actions against the officers “swift” and said the investigation would continue and could involve other police officers.

The police made a formal referral to Sini (D), who was a former police commissioner, and had pledged to clean up the county’s law enforcement agency amid a scandal engulfing the former DA.

Hart recognized that the public would express outrage at the video.

“People will be rightfully angry and disappointed and I can tell you that I am, too,” Hart said. “This type of behavior cannot and will not be tolerated.”

Hart added that the incident should serve as a message to the rank and file that “we must be better. I expect our officers to act with respect and restraint. If you witness misconduct by a fellow officer, you are obligated to stop it.”

Hart assured the public that the matter is “being taken very seriously.”

Bellone, meanwhile, who also called the video “disturbing,” underscored the review the county was conducting of police policy.

These types of reviews are occurring throughout the country, particularly after several high-profile incidents of police actions caught on video. The death of Minnesota resident George Floyd at the hands of police officers now charged with his murder, triggered numerous protests throughout the country.

Bellone said the video of the Cruz arrest is a “stark example of why those [body cameras] are so vital and important. I can tell you that I will not move forward and present a police reform plan that does not include body cameras for the police department.”

 

 

Stem cell growth, required for kernel development, is controlled in corn by a set of genes called CLEs. But how these genes change the corn is complicated. Using CRISPR genome editing, CSHL researchers found they could change kernel yield and ear size by fine-tuning the activity of one of the CLE genes, ZmCLE7. In the image: an unmodified corn cob with normal ZmCLE7 gene activity (1) is packed with regular rows of kernels. Shutting off ZmCLE7 (2) shortened the cob, disrupted row patterns, and lowered kernel yield. However, decreasing the same gene’s activity (3) led to an increase in kernel yield, while increasing the gene’s activity (4) decreased the kernel yield. Jackson Lab/CSHL 2021

By Daniel Dunaief

The current signal works, but not as well as it might. No signal makes everything worse. Something in the middle, with a weak signal, is just right.

By using the gene-editing tool CRISPR, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Professor Dave Jackson has fine-tuned a developmental signal for maize, or corn, producing ears that have 15 to 26 percent more kernels. 

Dave Jackson. Photo from CSHL

Working with postdoctoral fellow Lei Liu in his lab, and Madelaine Bartlett, who is an Associate Professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Jackson and his collaborators published their work earlier this week in the prestigious journal Nature Plants.

Jackson calls the ideal weakening of the CLE7 gene in the maize genome the “Goldilocks spot.” He also created a null allele (a nonfunctional variant of a gene caused by a genetic mutation) of a newly identified, partially redundant compensating CLE gene.

Indeed, the CLE7 gene is involved in a process that slows the growth of stem cells, which, in development, are cells that can become any type of cell. Jackson also mutated another CLE gene, CLE1E5.

Several members of the plant community praised the work, suggesting that it could lead to important advances with corn and other crops and might provide the kind of agricultural and technological tools that, down the road, reduce food shortages, particularly in developing nations.

“This paper provides the first example of using CRISPR to alter promoters in cereal crops,” Cristobal Uauy, Professor and Group Leader at the John Innes Centre in the United Kingdom, explained in an email. “The research is really fascinating and will be very impactful.”

While using CRISPR (whose co-creators won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in October) has worked with tomatoes, the fact that it is possible and successful in cereal “means that it opens a new approach for the crops that provide over 60% of the world’s calories,” Uauy continued.

Uauy said he is following a similar approach in wheat, although for different target genes.

Recognizing the need to provide a subtle tweaking of the genes involved in the growth of corn that enabled this result, Uauy explained that the variation in these crops does not come from an on/off switch or a black and white trait, but rather from a gradient.

In Jackson’s research, turning off the CLE7 gene reduced the size of the cob and the overall amount of corn. Similarly, increasing the activity of that gene also reduced the yield. By lowering the gene’s activity, Jackson and his colleagues generated more kernels that were less rounded, narrower and deeper.

Uauy said that the plant genetics community will likely be intrigued by the methods, the biology uncovered and the possibility to use this approach to improve yield in cereals.

“I expect many researchers and breeders will be excited to read this paper,” he wrote.

In potentially extending this approach to other desirable characteristics, Uauy cautioned that multiple genes control traits such as drought, flood or disease resistance, which would mean that changes in the promoter of a few genes would likely improve these other traits.

“This approach will definitely have a huge role to play going forward, but it is important to state that some traits will still remain difficult to improve,” Uauy explained.

Jackson believes gene editing has considerable agricultural potential.

“The prospect of using CRISPR to improve agriculture will be a revolution,” Jackson said.

Other scientists recognized the benefits of fine-tuning gene expression.

“The most used type/ thought of mutation is deletion and therefore applied for gene knockout,” Kate Creasey Krainer, president and founder of Grow More Foundation, explained in an email. “Gene modulation is not what you expect.”

While Jackson said he was pleased with the results this time, he plans to continue to refine this technique, looking for smaller regions in the promoters of this gene as well as in other genes.

“The approach we used so far is a little like a hammer,” Jackson said. “We hope to go in with more of a scalpel to mutate specific regions of the promoters.”

Creasey Krainer, whose foundation hopes to develop capacity-building scientific resources in developing countries, believes this approach could save decades in creating viable crops to enhance food yield.

She wrote that this is “amazing and could be the green revolution for orphan staple crops.”

In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration is currently debating whether to classify food as a genetically modified organism, or GMO, if a food producer used CRISPR to alter one or more of its ingredients, rather than using genes from other species to enhance a particular trait.

To be sure, the corn Jackson used as a part of his research isn’t the same line as the elite breeding stock that the major agricultural businesses use to produce food and feedstock. In fact, the varieties they used were a part of breeding programs 20 or more years ago. It’s unclear what effect, if any, such gene editing changes might have on those crops, which companies have maximized for yield.

Nonetheless, as a proof of concept, the research Jackson’s team conducted will open the door to additional scientific efforts and, down the road, to agricultural opportunities.

“There will undoubtedly be equivalent regions which can be engineered in a whole set of crops,” Uauy wrote. “We are pursuing other genes using this methodology and are very excited by the prospect it holds to improve crop yields across diverse environments.”

Funeral service personnel at one of the Moloney Funeral Home locations wait for family to arrive for a drive-thru viewing, one of the ways to give mourners a chance to say last goodbyes during COVID-19. Photo from Moloney Family Funeral Homes

They worked considerably longer hours, sometimes alongside people who came to help from other parts of the state during a time of need. They buried their own family members, sometimes urging out-of-state relatives to stay where they were. They counted the number of people who entered their funeral homes, making sure they complied with changing rules about the number of people allowed at the time.

Below, a family gathers under an outdoor committal tent at one of the Moloney Funeral Home locations awaiting the completion of the cremation for their relative. Photo from Moloney Family Funeral Homes

And, as with many other businesses, funeral directors maneuvered through the challenges of procuring personal protective equipment and supplies during the difficult and tragic early months of the pandemic.

Funeral homes, which have sometimes been described as the “last responders,” have had to react to changing state regulations, protecting the families of those who come to pay their final respects — and their own staffs.

During prepandemic times, “we might have had three or four wakes at one time,” said Fred Bryant, president of East Setauket-based Bryant Funeral Home. “That doesn’t happen now.”

Bryant converted three rooms into one large room, which made it possible to have 50 percent of their capacity.

Sergio Benites, managing partner at Bryant Funeral Home, said the business has allowed between 80 and 90 people at a time in the facility.

Like other public gathering places, funeral homes initially could have up to 10 people. Over time, as the number of infections, hospitalizations and deaths declined, the state, through Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s (D) office, relaxed regulations, first increasing the limit to 33 percent of capacity and then raising that to the current 50 percent.

Even with the higher capacities, funeral home directors have sometimes asked people to wait for someone to leave the facility before allowing new people to enter.

“It happened more than several times,” said Michael Connell, who runs the M.A. Connell Funeral Home in Huntington Station which was started by his grandfather in 1923, five years after the Spanish flu pandemic. As with many other funeral homes during COVID-19, M.A. Connell has had mourners wait in line in the parking lot.

“When we reach our number, we make an announcement inside,” Connell said.

Indeed, funeral directors have received guidance from several organizations during the pandemic.

“It is encouraged that folks paying respects keep the time in the chapel to a minimum,” wrote Michael Gorton Jr., president of the Nassau-Suffolk Funeral Directors Association, in an email. “Pay your respects, offer condolences, have a comfortable conversation and be considerate of those who may be waiting to come in and pay respects. Because of capacity limits, there could be people waiting outside the building.”

During the worst of the pandemic, Gorton, who is a licensed funeral director at McManus-Lorey Funeral Home in Medford, said funeral directors from outside Long Island came to the area to help.

“The governor’s office allowed us to ‘deputize agents’ and allow nonlicensed people to help us with transfers as long as they were under the direct supervision of a licensed funeral director,” Gorton added.

“People are tending to come and go at a faster rate. People are aware of the fact that other people may want to come in.”

Peter Moloney

Funeral directors appreciate how mourners have understood the circumstances of the pandemic and have shortened the time they spend on site.

“People are tending to come and go at a faster rate,” said Peter Moloney, co-owner of Moloney Family Funeral Homes, which has eight locations, including in Port Jefferson Station and Hauppauge. “People are aware of the fact that other people may want to come in.”

Some families have chosen to reduce the number of people who attend funerals, asking relatives who might be coming in from out of state to join the service through live streaming.

When Connell’s mother Betty Ann died in May, he said his family went through the same difficult decision that hundreds of other families have had to make.

“We decided we weren’t even going to have a public wake,” Connell said. “We had 10 people attend [who were all] immediate family.”

The Connells spent an hour visiting at the funeral home, had a short prayer service and then went to the graveside. Some people met the family in the parking lot and followed in the procession, without getting out of their cars at the cemetery.

Connell’s father, John, who had been married to his wife for close to 60 years, visited with his grandchildren, in a socially distanced setting, at his house.

Like many others, Connell has not set a date for a celebration and memorial for his mother’s life.

“Until we know we’re home free [with the virus], we’re not going to start the planning process,” he said.

Benites said Bryant Funeral Home still has about a dozen families that have postponed a larger event for their loved ones.

“They still aren’t ready” for any larger or more elaborate gathering as a part of a memorializing event,” Benites said. “When they’re ready, we’ll go back and try to give them a celebration of life.”

At times, grieving families have also had to wait to hold a service until close members of the family either have recovered from quarantine or have tested negative for COVID-19.

Benites said around three to five families are waiting for their next of kin to finish quarantine before they hold a service.

While these funeral homes are accustomed to thorough cleaning efforts, directors and owners said they have also complied with rules regarding disinfecting their sites between visits.

Funeral homes, some of which have held services for more than one member of the same family over the past year during the pandemic, have provided their customers and visitors with help managing their grief.

“We have more grief literature available to families during this time,” Moloney said. “The COVID pandemic has been very disruptive to the grief process. We’re all aware of the fact that people are grieving differently today.”

After all the challenges of the pandemic, funeral directors anticipate that more residents on Long Island and throughout the country will likely consider preplanning funerals.

“After we go through COVID, there will be a more obvious increase in the numbers of preplanned funerals,” Benites said.

Photo from Deposit Photos

Looking back on the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, expressed his frustration with the reaction to recommended safety measures.

“Public health issues got entangled in the profound divisiveness in our society,” Fauci said in a public discussion with the College of William & Mary president, Katherine Rowe, last week. “When you’re dealing with a common enemy, which is the virus, it is very counterproductive to be divisive over virtually everything you do.”

Fauci was frustrated that wearing a mask became a political statement, calling that “ridiculous” and suggesting that it “accounted for a less-than-optimal response that this country had.”

“I believe we’re going to get there within this calendar year.”

— Dr. Anthony Fauci

The disagreements were based “not on facts and science, but on political differences,” he said. In the next year, however, Fauci expressed hope that the country would have the virus under control and that it would eventually no longer threaten public health.

“I believe we’re going to get there within this calendar year,” Fauci said on the William & Mary call. “The problem is that a global pandemic requires a global response and if we don’t participate as [have] the other developed nations in the EU and in the U.K. and Canada and Australia, if we don’t participate in a program, in COVAX, that helps provide vaccines for the developing world … our problem will never go away.”

Indeed, last week, President Joe Biden (D) pledged $4 billion to the COVAX program at the G7 meeting.

Fauci pushed an initial estimate back for the time when vaccines for the virus would be available broadly to the United States population.

“One of the disappointments, which made me change [the] estimate, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which we anticipated would be coming in significant quantities in March and April, we learned that they will not have significant quantities until likely May and June,” Fauci said.

Reacting to a question from William & Mary Student Assembly president, Anthony Joseph, Fauci said, “Somebody like yourself, a young person, will likely have to wait until May.”

In response to a question about whether a vaccinated individual could be a carrier for COVID-19, Fauci said it is a “theoretical possibility — how likely that is, we do not know.”

The vaccination might prevent someone from showing clinical signs of the disease, but it might not keep someone from being a carrier.

He recommends people who have received the vaccine continue to wear a mask when they’re in the presence of people who have not been vaccinated, to prevent the possibility of infecting someone else.

New York State vaccinations

Snowstorms throughout the country this winter have disrupted the process of distributing vaccines.

New York State Department of Health said facilities where people scheduled appointments will connect with them before and during storms.

“As has been the case for past postponements, if any vaccine appointments at state-run sites are impacted by winter weather, they will be rescheduled over the following seven days,” a DOH spokesman said in a statement. “New Yorkers with appointments scheduled will receive an email or text message to reschedule their vaccination.”

Each resident who received a first dose at a state-run site will get a reminder email 24 hours before their second dose appointment.

When residents of the Empire State receive their first shot, they are required to schedule a second dose during that appointment.

Anyone who missed their appointment for a second shot should contact the call center to reschedule, if possible.

The state is required to keep a second dose on hand up to 42 days after a first shot, even though people who receive the Pfizer vaccine should get their second dose three weeks after the first shot and those who get the Moderna vaccine should return four weeks later. After 42 days, the state site can give the vaccine to someone else.

New York State requires all providers to keep a daily list of standby eligible people, in the event that an appointment opens up.

“As soon as providers are aware that there are more doses than people to be vaccinated, standby eligible individuals should be called, or other steps must be taken to bring additional eligible recipients to the facility or clinic before the acceptable use period expires,” the Health Department said in a statement.

Recognizing that the vaccination process can go awry during storms, providers can administer the vaccine to other public facing employees if extra doses remain at the end of a clinic and no one from a priority population can arrive before the doses expire.

As an example, the DOH suggested that commercial pharmacists who had already vaccinated eligible residents can offer the vaccine to members of the pharmacy department, store clerks, cashiers, stock workers and delivery staff.

“This exception is only for the purpose of ensuring vaccine is not wasted,” the spokesman said.

In remarks on Feb. 9, Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) indicated that the supply of vaccines continues to lag well behind the demand.

“We now have about 10 million New Yorkers waiting on 300,000 doses,” Cuomo said. “The supply will only increase when and if Johnson & Johnson is approved. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are ramping up but the ramp-up is relatively slow, so we won’t see a major supply increase from Pfizer and Moderna, nowhere near what we would need to make rapid progress against the 10 million.”

Stony Brook vaccinations

Stony Brook University, meanwhile, announced that it reached a milestone last week when it distributed its 25,000th vaccine, exactly a month after the site started administering the vaccine. That means the university has vaccinated more than one person per minute for each of the 11 hours it’s been providing shots.

In a statement, President Maurie McInnis said she was “proud of the milestone” and called the effort by the university and Stony Brook Medicine “excellent work.”

SBU Hospital is also assisting in developing point-of-distribution sites in underserved communities on Long Island.