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Daniel Dunaief

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By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

Parenthood is filled with excrement, poop, and waste products. Call it what you will. It’s true.

We start out with this adorable lump of human flesh. And, for many of us, an anxiety that grows at a rate that far outstrips the pace at which the little person grows.

Wait? What! The baby was born at eight pounds. It’s now seven pounds? We must be screwing up. What are we doing wrong? Can I get someone on the phone immediately to explain what’s happening and how to fix it? No, I can’t wait.

Of course, we don’t know how good we have it until we enter the next stage. If, for example, our baby is drinking breast milk, its poop smells like roses and cherry blossoms on a beautiful, windy day compared with the cesspool stink that pours out of them once they start eating solid food or, heaven forbid, they get the Coxsackie virus.

But, of course, once you realize the magnificence of that early mild smell, it’s gone and you’re left trying to figure out how to get the particles of poop out from creases and crevices without causing discomfort to the small person whose sole mode of expression seems to be to cry and complain without end.

“Oh, that’s such a healthy cry,” they’ll say. “He’s a strong lad.”

“Oh, shut up! And stop calling her a lad.”

So, why am I writing about parenthood? Did I suddenly have to change 200 diapers last weekend?

No, you see, we’re about to welcome the first new member of our extended family in decades. Yeah, of course, we’re all excited and yes, I’m going to have the chance to be a great uncle when, up to now, I’ve been something between a regular uncle and perhaps an indulgent and slightly playful version of a run-of-the-mill uncle.

But, wow, our nephew’s wife is due any second, which kind of pushes us up the generational ladder.

We have heard about all the people of our nephew’s generation who are putting off or perhaps even ruling out parenthood.

But we also know that people are still having children and that those children are the ultimate form of optimism.

Sure, new parents, even if they’ve read 100 books, might not be completely prepared for every scenario. 

We went to all those Lamaze classes years ago around now as we prepared for the birth of our first child. And, you know what? They didn’t help one iota. Those classes were like giving us a toy steering wheel on a roller coaster. We could turn it however we wanted, but it wouldn’t affect the crazy ride that made us feel like our stomachs were going to drop out of our bodies on the next hair-raising turn.

If anyone actually thought about all the things they had to do as parents — staying up with a sick kid, worrying where those children are, thinking about all the germs that might hurt them (okay, I’m OCD, I admit it) — it’d be hard to prepare for, imagine and deal with the potential challenges. Most parenting playbooks are like New Year’s resolutions. Yeah, you’d like to be patient and even tempered, maybe lose some weight, sleep better, and all that good stuff, but things get in the way, including ourselves.

When you have a child, you not only have to worry about your sons and daughters, but you also have to manage the two or more families that always know better and whose ideas of everything from the right clothing to wear with variable temperatures to the right way to hold them to any of a host of other choices are likely different.

You can’t please everyone, including your relatives and the little crying, pooping child that doesn’t have work to do tomorrow and wants company late at night until he or she is ready to fall asleep.

Ultimately, parenting is a leap of faith. We all have to deal with craziness, discomfort, sleep deprivation and an uneasiness that comes from not knowing what to do next. And yet, during the best moments, when they’re truly happy, when that giggle bubbles out of them, massaging your ears and bringing a smile to your face, you realize what a spectacular privilege, excrement and all, parenting truly is. 

We get to see and share life with people whose thoughts, ideas, and resilience inspire us and, somewhere along the way, encourage us to share the best versions of ourselves.

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Pixabay photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

Six degrees of separation could help us all.

We are only six people away from anyone in the world.

We probably don’t have to go that far to find people who live throughout the United States.

That means we have friends, relatives, professional colleagues, former classmates and others who can make a difference.

New Yorkers likely have the support of Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand when it comes to critical funding for the National Institutes of Health and for the National Science Foundation, whose financial support is under severe threat from the current budget the senate is considering and that the house has already passed.

Cuts in these areas will have critical and irreversible consequences for us, our children, our families and our future.

The money that goes into science has paid enormous dividends over the decades. The United States is able to outcompete many other nations because it has attracted the world’s best researchers to cutting edge areas.

These people drive the future of innovation, provide medical expertise that saves lives, and start companies that provide numerous high paying jobs around the country.

Cutting back means retreating from the world stage, enabling other nations to develop treatments and cures for diseases that might cost us much more money or become less accessible to those who weren’t in on the ground floor.

It also will hurt our economy, as patents and processes lead to profits elsewhere.

Shutting off the valve of innovation will turn fertile fields of scientific exploration and innovation into barren deserts.

This is where those six degrees comes in. New Yorkers probably don’t need to urge our senators to commit to scientific budgets. But senators from other states, hoping to remain in favor with their party and to act in a unified way, might not be as comfortable supporting scientific research when they and their constituents might believe they don’t stand to gain as much from that investment in the short term. After all, not every state has leading research institutions such as Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University, a top-rated research institution and a downstate flagship for the SUNY system.

You remember those relatives whose politics are different from your own and who often create a scene at Thanksgiving or the holidays? Well, it’s time to talk with them, not at them. Let them know how much you, they and, an argument that’s hard to ignore, their parents and their children stand to lose if they stop investing in science.

How about that annoying guy at the company retreat who is thrilled to talk about how sad the elites are these days?

Talk to him, too. Let him know that his parent with Alzheimer’s or his uncle with a debilitating condition could one day benefit from discoveries in labs that desperately need funding.

Indeed, his own hearing or vision might depend on continued investment into research about diseases that become more prevalent as he ages.

We all benefit from these discoveries and we all lose out when we stop investing or contributing.

As for his children, they might get jobs in companies that don’t yet exist but that will form as a result of the discovery of products or processes that arise out of research.

The United States is still the only nation to send people (and it’s only men so far) to the moon, allowing them to set foot on a place other than our incredible planet.

Those moments and achievements, even decades later, inspire people to want to become astronauts, to join NASA, to provide the kind of information and research that make future missions possible.

While we don’t need funding for everything, we benefit from ongoing efforts and discoveries in direct and indirect ways. Shutting down labs, reducing internships and graduate school offerings, and stopping the process of asking questions creates headwinds for innovation, the economy and medical discoveries.

Urge those outside of New York to write to their senators, to make the kind of choices that will support and enrich the country and to prevent a one-way road to a dead end. We don’t have to agree on everything, but it’s worth the effort to encourage people to let our elected officials know that their constituents understand what’s at stake.

A senator from Mississippi might not care what you, a New Yorker, thinks, but he’s more likely to pay attention to a resident in his district. We need science whisperers in every state. We can not and will not let the NIH budget decline without a fight. Take a jog, practice yoga, meditate. Then, go talk to those relatives and encourage them to support science and the future.

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Left to right: Athletic Director Adam Sherrard, ninth graders Sam Fabian and Leana Tisham and Coach Andrew Cosci. Photo courtesy Adam Sherrard

By Daniel Dunaief

Starting this fall, students at Port Jefferson’s Earl L. Vandermeulen High School will have a chance to take a gym class that focuses on weight lifting and nutrition, rather than on the traditional sports included in a physical education class.

Andrew Cosci weight training with a student. Photo courtesy Adam Sherrard

Designed to give students an opportunity to learn more about the foods they put in their bodies and about the kinds of weight training that they might otherwise do in an outside gym, the school is providing two such classes in the fall and two in the spring. At the same time, Vandermeulen High School is providing 16 more typical gym classes.

“We had a conversation about doing something different other than the options” in a typical gym class, Athletic Director Adam Sherrard, said in an interview.

Andrew Cosci, track and field coach and physical education teacher who will lead these courses, had “expressed the importance of having a program like this,” Sherrard added.

Students can take this new class instead of the typical gym class, or as an elective in addition to the required course.

Indeed, ninth grader Sam Fabian, who plays lacrosse and football and is a wrestler, plans to take both classes this fall.

Fabian believes the additional course will help him improve his diet and strength, which he hopes will make him a better athlete.

“I eat a lot of food I probably shouldn’t,” said Fabian. “I’m trying to crack down on that and become the best athlete I can be.”

The nutrition and weightlifting course immediately piqued his interest.

A fellow ninth grader at the high school, Leana Tisham also plans to take the new gym class.

Tisham also hopes to commit to eating the right foods, including more organic foods and would like to use the weight training for body sculpting.

Starts with food

Cosci suggested that most student athletes don’t realize the importance of food to their performance and overall health.

“The nutrition aspect is the most important” and often the most overlooked, Cosci added.

He’s planning to discuss food and a work out plan for students that meet their needs.

In lifting weights, it’s important to “have a plan. You can’t just go into a situation and wing it. It doesn’t work that way. You won’t achieve your goal.”

Cosci plans to evaluate the students the same way he would in a more typical physical education class, by assessing their behavior, participation and effort.

The students will need to bring a journal or notebook to class, the way they would for other courses.

“They’re going to get out of it what they put into it,” Cosci said.

Cosci also plans to review fitness apps and will help students find the ones that are the best for them.

“Some are good, others are junk,” Cosci said.

Breaking the gym resolution cycle

Cosci hopes that the participants in these classes learn how to dedicate themselves to a healthy lifestyle that combines an awareness and plan for the foods they eat with weight lifting training and goals.

He hopes the students are able to avoid the typical pattern that adults have when they start out a new year with high hopes at a health club.

“January is peak time at the gym every year,” Cosci said. By February, many residents have stopped going to the gym.

He would like to help students develop a plan and figure out ways to be successful. At some point, Cosci would like to bring in some guest lecturers and experts in their fields.

While they are in high school, students have time between the end of the school day and the start of extracurricular activities, to work out at the school gym.

Sherrard added that the course will give the high school students the chance the tools to set their own goals.

At this point, these new gym classes are specific to the high school, in part because middle school students don’t have the ability to choose electives.

Participants in the new gym class will have the opportunity to present their plans to the class as a whole.

“They’re going to teach each other” which will demonstrate their understanding of the new approach, Cosci said.

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Angelika Drees at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Drees is pointing to the pipe that runs clockwise, while, on the other side of that pipe, is another one (marked in yellow tape) that runs counterclockwise. Photo by Daniel Dunaief

By Daniel Dunaief

Finely tuned accelerators, constructed underground in rings that are over 1.5 miles long, can reveal secrets about the smallest parts of matter. At the same time, the work researchers do, which involves accelerating electrons, ions and other sub atomic particles, operates at a level considerably smaller than a human hair, using sensitive equipment under tightly controlled, high energy conditions.

Indeed, at this scale, researchers need to account for energies and changes that wouldn’t affect most human activities, but that can have significant impacts on the work they are doing and the conclusions they draw.

Over the years, accelerator physicists have encountered a wide range of challenges and, for a time, unexplained phenomena.

Accelerator physicist Angelika Drees has worked at Brookhaven National Laboratory since 1997 and has experience and expertise with several accelerators. She is currently working on the Electron Ion Collider (EIC), a unique instrument that will explore quarks and gluons — particles inside the atomic nucleus — that will have applications in medicine, materials science, and energy.

Drees does luminosity calculations. She tries to ensure more collisions. At the same time, she seeks to protect the equipment while keeping the backgrounds as low as achievable.

Drees works with a loss monitor and is responsible for that system, which includes over 400 monitors. The majority of these are installed between two beam pipes.

Lost signal

Drees has worked since 1997 at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), which is in its last experimental runs before it provides some of the materials for the new EIC.

As an accelerator, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider has beam position monitors that are comprised of two opposing striplines inside the beam pipe that measure the position of the beam. These striplines, which are on either side of the beam, look at the difference in induced signal amplitude. Equal amplitude, with a difference of zero, implies that the beam is in the center.

While the engineers knew that the material for the cables, which transmit signals from the beam position monitor to the system that sees its location, would shrink when exposed to temperatures of 4 degrees Kelvin, they hadn’t adjusted the design to prepare for the change.

When the electronics shrunk after being exposed to temperatures close to absolute zero, which help make the magnets superconducting, they pulled themselves out of their power source.

“We could not see the position of the beam,” Drees explained. “This was during the so-called sextant test, and the beam was not (yet) circling.”

The magnets operated independent of the beam position monitors.

For about a year they could see the beamline 20 meters downstream. Before Drees arrived, the team updated the cables, putting kinks that allowed them to shrink without interfering with their operation of pulling themselves out of the power source.

“It was repaired and, ever since, there has been no further issue,” she said.

‘Weird variation’

Before she arrived at BNL, Drees conducted her PhD work at the Large Electron-Positron Collider, or LEP, which has now become the site of the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland.

The LEP was 27 kilometers long and was between 30 meters and 160 meters underground. It stretched below France and Switzerland. Some part of it was in soil that is affected by Lake Geneva. Half of the LEP was embedded below the Jura bedrock and the other half was embedded in softer sedimentary deposits close to the lake.

Scientists saw regular variation in their results, with a peak to peak beam energy of about 250 parts per million. By studying the timing of these peaks to a regular 28-day and daily cycle, they connected it to the moon.

“The moon not only affects Earth’s oceans, but the actual crust and thus the LEP ring inside it,” Drees explained.

The moon wasn’t the only outside influence on the LEP. Rainwater penetrated the tunnel.

The magnet yokes had concrete between metal laminations. The concrete absorbed the humidity and expanded, increasing pressure on the metal laminations.

That changed the magnetic permeability and the transfer function, which indicates how much bending magnetic field researchers get out of a magnet with a specific electric current.

Rain took about two weeks to show up in the data, as the water took that long to reach and alter the concrete.

During her PhD on the LEP beam energy measurement and calibration, Drees searched for environment effects as a part of her thesis.

While others discovered the moon tides before she arrived, she and other researchers couldn’t account for a ground current that was penetrating into the equipment.

Acting like an extra and inexplicable power source, this current changed the magnetic field.

The extra energy invalidated earlier results. The error bar was four times larger than they originally thought, causing the LEP working group to withdraw a paper and commit to redoing the analysis.

The energy disappeared from midnight to 4 am. Back then, researchers at the LEP were so eager for an explanation that they posted a message on a TV screen, offering an award, like a bottle of champagne, to anyone who could explain what was happening.

Suspecting planes might be contributing, Drees sent a student to the airport to monitor flights. The police, however, weren’t too pleased with this data gathering, initially questioning, then sending the student away.

Drees met with the power authority, who had measured ground currents in the area for years that stopped during those same post midnight hours.

That provided the necessary clue, as the trains — and, in particular the French ones — had contributed this unexplained energy.

Unlike the Swiss trains, which operate with alternating current, the French trains use direct current, which had affected their experiments.

Looking forward

Angelika Drees on her horse Pino.

Originally from Wuppertal, Germany, Drees balances the mentally demanding and inspirational challenges of working at these colliders with manual labor.

She earned money during her undergraduate and graduate school days by shoeing horses.

Drees currently owns a horse and works regularly on a horse farm, throwing hay bales and repairing fences.

“I like physical labor,” she said.

Several years ago, she traveled to Portugal, where she stopped at a farm with a Lusitano stallion. The horse had a loose shoe. While she couldn’t speak Portuguese with the person leading the stallion, who, as it turned out, was the national riding coach, she let him know that she could help.

After she repaired the shoe, he asked if she wanted to ride. She found riding this stallion in the back woods of Portugal “amazing.”

“Very brainy work and very physical work balances each other well,’ she said.

As for the colliders, Drees is looking forward to the construction of the EIC, even as she has bittersweet sentiments about RHIC closing down.

Ultimately, building the EIC presents challenges that she is eager to face.

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Scene from Huntington High School's 2022 graduation. Photo from Huntington school district

By Daniel Dunaief

Graduates preparing to emerge into what passes for the real world these days need to keep in mind something they studied in introductory economics: supply and demand.

You see, any imbalance creates opportunities and the world outside the academic cocoon has plenty of those.

Let’s start with supply. We have plenty of anger, frustration, irritation, and hostility. Yes, I know those are emotions, but, really, aren’t those in full display regularly and aren’t they at the heart of decisions and actions?

Anger and bitterness float around like a dense fog, settling in at the comment section for stories, expressing themselves out the open windows of cars stuck in traffic, and appearing in abundance in long, slow lines at the grocery store, the deli counter, or the dreaded Department of Motor Vehicles.

We also have plenty of absolute certainty, particularly among our fearless leaders at every level. This certainty manifests itself in many ways, as people are convinced they are right, no alternatives exist, and they can and will prevail over time.

For many of them, the world has returned to a state of black and white, where good and right are on one side and evil and darkness reside on the other. The reality, as many movies, books, and forms of entertainment suggests, is somewhere in between, with a wide spectrum of grey and, if you look for it, magnificent colors.

These same leaders are neither particularly good winners or particularly good losers, not that some of them would admit to losing anything anyway.

We also have innumerable entertainers, who collect followers like Pied Pipers with their flutes, sharing videos, ideas, and whatever else brings in viewers. They need followers and, with people eager to stay plugged in to the latest compelling popular culture, the people seem to need these attractions.

With such a high supply of followers, you don’t need to be just another one in a long list.

We have no shortage of people willing to offer advice and second guess anyone and everyone else. From their couch, sports commentators always somehow know better.

We also have plenty of electronic, artificial and technological systems that aren’t working as well as we, and the companies that use them, would like. That’s a supply of inefficiencies with a demand for improvements.

I can’t tell you how many times a voice activated system asks me for information, I provide it, the system repeats it and then the whole process starts over again, without getting closer to a real person or a resolution. These systems have bad days far too often.

Okay, now, on the demand side, we need more people who listen carefully and closely and who can learn in and on their jobs.

These days, people who find solutions, take responsibility and represent any business well are in shorter supply. Plenty of people seem indifferent to disgruntled customers, waiting for a better job to come along while they allow themselves to do work they don’t find particularly rewarding or compelling.

We also have a demand for listeners. With all the frustrations and disappointments out there, sometimes people don’t need anything more than someone who can listen to and acknowledge them.

On the demand side, the need for questions is extraordinarily high. When recent graduates don’t know or understand something, they can and should ask.

An answer along the lines of, “well, we do that because that’s the way it’s always been done,” offers an opportunity to improve on a process, an idea, an approach or an interaction.

The demand for people who can disagree effectively, can show respect, and can bring people together is extraordinarily high.

We don’t all need to agree on everything and to nod our heads like artificial intelligence automatons. We need people who can bring us together and keep us focused on shorter and longer term goals.

The need for positivity, solutions and great ideas is high. We live in an incredible country with a fascinating mix of opportunities, people, narratives, and potential.

Be prepared to use some of the ways of thinking you learned in college. When the majority of people are going right, consider what going left might mean and vice versa.

Other people might have their habits, patterns and routines, but you don’t have to adapt them as your own immediately. Be prepared to offer something new.

Your fresh perspective through eyes that haven’t seen a process occur repeatedly can and should be an advantage.

Yes, you might be a rookie in a new job or a new program, but that can mean that the demand for your insights can make you a valuable and welcome addition to any team.

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METRO photo

By Daniel Dunaief

If an amusement park suddenly changed the criteria that would allow visitors to ride on a roller coaster or log flume, the number of potential customers would suddenly climb.

The same holds true for the number of people whom doctors are diagnosing with autism.

Over time, health care professionals have changed the definition of autism, recognizing the heterogeneous nature of a diagnosis that is often different from one individual to the next.

Debra Reicher. Photo courtesy Stony Brook University

Recently, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the head of Health and Human Services, suggested that he planned to share a detailed analysis of autism by this September to explain the increase in the number of people who receive such a diagnosis.

Based on numerous reports, Kennedy indicated he would present research findings at the end of the summer that explains why and how the number of cases of autism and other childhood chronic diseases has risen.

“The biggest, most widely agreed reason for the increase in numbers is the broadening of the diagnostic criteria,” said Debra Reicher, Clinical Psychologist and Assistant Professor at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University.

Over her 35 years in the field of autism, Reicher said the definition of autism has changed.

“We are getting better at diagnosing people at the higher end of the spectrum,” she said.

When Reicher started in the field, about 80 percent of those diagnosed with autism also had an intellectual developmental disorder or cognitive delay. That is currently closer to 40 percent.

“We are getting better at identifying people who have good cognitive skills,” and who have autism, Reicher added.

Over time, the male-female gap has also narrowed. Historically, boys and men were more likely to receive an autism diagnosis.

Clinicians are getting better at understanding the presentation of autism in females, who have different symptoms that can fly under the radar.

Girls are more likely to “mask or camouflage” autism, which physicians might miss, Reicher added.

Matthew Lerner

People are also more aware of autism as a diagnosis.

“Young parents are tracking their child’s development and are asking their pediatricians questions,” Reicher said. That leads to earlier detection.

On a smaller but not insignificant level, some studies suggest that older ages of fathers can also contribute to autism. 

“Advanced paternal age is a statistically significant predicator of increased rates of autism,” said Matthew Lerner, Research Associate Professor and Research Director of the Autism Initiative at Stony Brook University. 

Premature babies, who are much more likely to survive today than they were even a few decades ago, can also receive an autism diagnosis as they develop.

More support

At the same time, health systems are not only more actively screening for autism, but they are also providing more support and benefits.

By offering people and their families services, these health care systems are providing people with autism care, making a diagnosis a potential starting point for more care.

“If somebody was diagnosed with autism in the 1980s, there weren’t a lot of things that folks could do,” said Lerner, who is also Associate Professor and Leader of the Life Course Outcomes Program Area at the AJ Drexel Autism Institute at Drexel University.

Some research also suggests a correlation between environmental exposure or pollutants and the incidence of the condition.

Researchers, however,  caution that a correlation doesn’t necessarily indicate a causation, which is a significant challenge in the world of science and medicine.

A correlation may or may not be relevant in the context of a disease or the treatment for it. Researchers who can conclude based on larger and statistically significant samples a cause between something like environmental exposure and a disease can reduce the likelihood of a condition.

To be sure, despite considerable chatter through online forums, the Internet and people who have limited or no medical expertise, people in the autism field have not seen any evidence that vaccines for diseases like measles have any connection with autism.

The studies that were done in the 90s and early 2000s that suggested a potential link between autism and vaccines were biased and were eventually retracted in a journal, Reicher said.

“Research shows no difference in the rates of autism between vaccinated and unvaccinated children,” she added.

Some new or expectant mothers are hesitating to give their children a measles, mumps and rubella shot.

Reicher urges parents to study the issue carefully and to provide the kind of protection that will prevent the spread of infectious diseases and the lifelong consequences of contracting measles.

Reicher suggested that some of the fear comes from the fact that MMR is given around the time physicians recognize the symptoms of autism.

“With vaccines, there’s no evidence to support” a connection with autism, Reicher added.

New research

Researchers and clinicians welcomed the possibility of new studies that might help the heterogeneous community of people with autism.

New work done with “rigorous science that have reputable approaches and ask meaningful questions” could be “fantastic” for people with autism and their support networks, Lerner said.

To be sure, Lerner doesn’t anticipate any major findings in the development of autism, particularly in the context of vaccines or any other speculation that researchers have tested for decades.

The notion that significant studies from around the world that thousands of researchers conducted over the course of decades would suddenly be overturned in the next four months “seems highly implausible,” he said.

Lerner hopes that any focus on autism research that the current administration conducts respects and adheres to the level of rigor necessary to make any changes in diagnosis, treatment or potential causes.

At this point, Reicher, who has spent decades working with a wide range of people with autism, has seen many people with autism live “wonderful, successful, fulfilling lives.” People with autism are “making huge contributions to the arts, to science and to everything in between.”

Understanding and enhancing an awareness of autism through well-documented and rigorous research could help some people with the diagnosis, although a one-size-fits-all approach won’t work for a larger population that has different symptoms and needs.

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Jillian Scully, state record-holder in discus. Photo courtesy Debbie Scully

By  Daniel Dunaief

Goal set. Goal accomplished.

Miller Place High School senior and track star Jillian Scully wanted to set a new record in the discus in her final season.

She accomplished her goal this past weekend at the Glenn D. Loucks Memorial Games in White Plains, breaking the 33-year old state record by over two feet when she threw the discus 174 feet, 2 inches away.

At the same time, Scully, 18, now owns the furthest throw by a high school girl in the country.

“I read 174, turned around, looked at my friends, said, ‘I broke the state record,’ jumped around a little bit, had our fun, took a couple of pictures, went home and made myself some cupcakes,” said the typically understated Scully. 

Scully also won the MVP award for the tournament, which reflects both on her remarkable throw and on her willingness to help tournament officials and other competitors.

Scully helped the referees retrieve the discuses and the shot put, a competition she also won on Friday, for other competitors.

An official told her that “you’re not only a good athlete, you’re a good person. This trophy is for special people like you,” Scully said.

After her record setting throw, Scully learned that NASF Nike wanted to provide her with merchandise and funding to support her when she goes to the sneaker and apparel sponsored event in Oregon.

“I’m very excited” about the support, as it is “my first offer of anything,” she said.

Jillian Scully, state record-holder in discus. Photo courtesy Debbie Scully

Scully’s father James shed a few tears when his daughter broke the record.

“It was pretty amazing, to be a parent watching it,” he said. “She’s pretty determined to do what she wants to do. She had it in her head.”

Indeed, Scully said his daughter has been itching to break the record for a while.

“We knew it was coming,” said Jillian’s mother Despina “Debbie” Scully. “She was throwing 170 in practice. We were waiting with bated breath.”

Jillian’s mother was so excited for her daughter that the family “couldn’t form sentences. It didn’t really settle in until we got home.”

That night, Scully returned home and baked the confetti cupcakes she had been saving for the day she claimed the state record.

The weekend wasn’t complete without Scully heading to a field and working with another athlete.

The day after the games, a discus thrower from Mount Sinai reached out to Scully to ask if she’d train with him.

She got up at 8 am, throwing with him for over two hours.

“She loves helping people,” her mother said.

A sunny day, some early fouls

Like many other Saturdays when she has competitions, Scully and her family woke up in a hotel on the day of the record-breaking throw and had an early breakfast.

She arrived at the meet early to watch her teammate compete in the pole vault. She then stood by the track and watched the boys’ discus throw.

One of the competitors threw a personal best, which gave Scully the sense that the conditions might be ripe for her and others.

“A bunch of people” had a personal record, said Scully. “People were up and happy.”

It didn’t hurt that the sun, which was hidden behind rain clouds during the previous day’s soggy shot put competition, was out.

She had a feeling Saturday would be the day for her to reach her goal.

In the preliminary rounds, Scully fouled on her first two throws. She walked over to her parents and told them she wasn’t even going to spin in the circle, minimizing the chance that she’d foul. She knew she’d throw far enough to make it to the next round.

Even without a spin, her deliberate throw was 145 feet, which was further than the second place finisher for the day.

In the finals, her clean throw not only put her in the record books for the state, but also has her ranked 81 in the country, including college students and Olympic athletes. This is the first time Scully has cracked the top 100.

After her record, she reached out to several coaches and to her brother Jimmy, who is a police officer in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Bill Hiney, Sully’s personal coach, sent her an image of an Olympic medal.

Hiney, the Assistant Track and Field Coach during the winter and spring seasons for Southold High School, attributed the record to the work she’s put in, to her passion and dedication to the sport, and to her athletic frame.

“I’ve been doing this for 36 years,” said Hiney. “Jillian is just on another planet.”

Ready for more

While Scully is pleased that she met one of her goals, she sees room for improvement in her form.

If she has her way, her current record may not stand for 33 days, as she hopes to use her 6 foot, 1 and 3/4 inch height, to reach or exceed 180 feet.

“I could fix some of the things I messed up,” she said about her throwing technique.

Hiney, who watched a video of her performance, said she didn’t drive all the way through the throw.

“Her right hip was prematurely stopped, when she could have continued putting more energy into the throw,” Hiney said. He believes it won’t be long before she sets another record.

Scully, who is committed to attending LSU in the fall, plans to compete in six more meets before she graduates, including counties, states, state qualifiers and nationals.

Still, even as she looks to build on this throw, Scully has learned to savor and enjoy the moment.

“I try to acknowledge the fact that I accomplished a goal before I start setting the next one,” she said. “I have a tendency to jump from one goal to the next, with nothing in the middle.”

Scully’s current and future achievements are a product of consistent hard work and sacrifice.

Practicing on a field she makes sure is clear in the landing zone of onlookers drawn to the sports of discus and shot put, Scully works on her form over and over again, videotaping as many as 80 throws in a day and critiquing her form.

All the work means that she “misses out on a lot of things,” said Debbie Scully, which includes the athletic awards dinner at school, the last day of school, and the senior class trip, to name a few.

“This is her passion and this is what she wants,” her mother said.

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Nursing students use mannequins and hospital equipment to train for various health care challenges for future patients. Photo by Jeanne Neville/Stony Brook Medicine
Using immersive virtual reality that simulate real-world healthcare settings in a simulated hospital room, emergency room, intensive care unit or patient homes, nursing students use technology to train in a low-stress setting. Photo from Stony Brook Medicine
Nursing students use mannequins and hospital equipment to train for various health care challenges for future patients. Photo by Jeanne Neville/Stony Brook Medicine

By Daniel Dunaief

 

Dr. Patricia Bruckenthal
Photo from Stony Brook School of Nursing

 

People put their lives in the hands of unseen airline pilots who have enhanced and sharpened their skills using simulators. These simulators can prepare them for a wide range of conditions and unexpected challenges that enhance their confidence on the fly.

The same approach holds true for nurses, who seek to help patients whose symptoms may change even as the nurse is working with several people at the same time.

In an initiative designed to provide in depth training to nurses throughout the state, while filling a shortage of these vital professionals, New York State recently announced a $62 million contribution to three nursing simulation centers: SUNY Buffalo, SUNY Canton and Stony Brook University. With $10 million of state funds that the university will match with $10.5 million of its own money, SBU will increase the number of nurses it trains.

“We are very fortunate here at Stony Brook that we get many, many qualified applicants for our nursing program [for whom] we have not, to date, been able to offer seats,” said Dr. Patricia Bruckenthal, Dean of the School of Nursing at Stony Brook. This will enable the school, as well as the other programs, to train more students.

Effective training

While Stony Brook offers nursing simulation training, the additional funds will greatly expand the size and scope of that effort.

The NEXUS-Innovation Center, which stands for Nursing EXcellence Using Simulation, will take about two years to build and will have a phased in enrollment approach. In the third year, the school will add 56 baccalaureate nursing students. In the fifth year, Stony Brook will have space for 80 more students.

The current simulation center is about 1,850 square feet, which includes a nursing skills lab, exam room and debrief/ flex room. 

The new center will add 15,000 square feet. 

The simulation center will have 16 hospital style beds, with all the equipment nurses would normally see in a hospital room, including suction, air, oxygen, otoscope, ophthalmoscope, monitoring, and a call bell system. The center will also have eight examination rooms.

The proposal also includes the design of an apartment with a laundry, kitchen, bathroom and shower, helping train nurses who will help people in residential settings.

Among other features, the center will have a control room where instructors and operators manipulate the AV equipment and patient simulations, observe and document performance, collect data and prepare for debriefing.

Bruckenthal is planning to hire a faculty member in the next few months to become simulation coordinator who will work with the Director of the Learning Resource Center.

Within the next two years, Stony Brook anticipates hiring one more nursing faculty Clinical Simulation Educator and one Simulation Operations Specialist, who will ensure that all technical aspects of the center are functioning correctly. This new hire will also troubleshoot equipment, while performing emergency repairs on equipment and arranging for vendor repairs.

All of this equipment and expertise provides opportunities to create scenarios that build expertise. The conditions can change, as a patient goes from an expected outcome to one in which the conditions rapidly deteriorate.

In addition to expanding capacity and giving nurses an opportunity to understand and react to patients who have a wide range of conditions they might not see during routine clinical training, the center will also enable these students to build their competence and confidence in a low-stakes environment.

“It provides for a safe learning environment,” said Bruckenthal. “Students can make mistakes without risking patient safety. It’s much less stressful.”

Future nurses can also continue to work in the simulation lab on a particular skill until they feel confident in their abilities.

Several studies have validated the effectiveness of educating and preparing nurses in a simulated setting.

A landmark study in 2014 conducted by the National Council of State Boards of Nursing compared the clinical competence of nurses in training across three groups: one that had no simulation training, a group with 25 percent of their clinical training replaced by simulation, and a third group with 50 percent clinical training through simulation.

The nursing certification pass rate scores were the same for all three groups. Simulation trained nurses performed as well or better in areas like critical thinking and clinical judgment.

Additionally, follow up studies showed that employers found that nurses trained using high fidelity simulation were just as effective as those who were trained in the clinic in areas including patient safety, communication and evidence-based practices..

The center can also pivot to provide nurses with training for expanding local health threats, such as a simulated version of a measles outbreak, Lyme disease or a spike in other conditions that might cause a surge in hospital visits.

“We can build and design cases that meet those needs,” said Bruckenthal.

The center can build in disaster training, giving nurses a chance to interact with colleagues in other health professions during any of a host of other scenarios. When interacting with other healthcare professionals, nurses can practices the SBAR technique, in which they describe the Situation, provide Background, give an Assessment, and offer a Recommendation.

The expanded simulation center will incorporate design elements such as soundproofing, lighting and ventilation and will align with the university’s goals towards sustainability and green-oriented design.

Long term commitment

Bruckenthal has been contributing to Stony Brook for 44 years, ever since she graduated from the nursing school in 1981.

Her first job as a nurse was at the newly opened hospital. She and Carolyn Santora, Stony Brook Medicine Chief Nursing Officer, have worked together since 1981 and went through the Stony Brook master’s program together. They have established the Stony Brook Nursing Alliance.

Bruckenthal is energized by the opportunities ahead.

“Nursing is one of those careers where you can always keep yourself new and find new and exciting opportunities,” she said.

In the early days of her nursing career, she recalled that nurses weren’t exposed to all the types of conditions they might face in various settings.

“Having the opportunity to have nurses practice in this low risk environment and build that confidence and skills is a better way to prepare nurses to be ready for the work force,” she said

With nurses involved in so many aspects of patient care, Bruckenthal dreams of creating a nursing innovation incubator.

Nurses can offer insights into developing innovative ways to improve health care, whether working with biomedical engineers or biomedical informatics and can help design human-centered technology. Such a center could allow nurses to learn more about technology and business while enabling them to become leaders and entrepreneurs.

“Nurses have a problem-solving mindset,” Bruckenthal explained. “Sustainable and scalable solutions are really going to take a joint effort between educators, clinicians and industry partners.”

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Esther Takeuchi. Photo by Roger Stoutenburgh/Brookhaven National Laboratory

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

Esther Takeuchi has won numerous awards and received plenty of honors for her work. 

In 2009, President Barack Obama presented her with a National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the highest honor possible for technological achievement in the country.

She has also been elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,  received the 2013 E.V. Murphree Award in Industrial and Engineering Chemistry from the American Chemical Society and was selected as a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, among others.

Takeuchi, who has over 150 patents to her name and is Distinguished Professor in Materials Science and Chemical Engineering at Stony Brook University and Chair of the Interdisciplinary Science Department at Brookhaven National Laboratory, spoke with Times Beacon Record News Media about a range of topics.

“In the long run, I think energy storage can significantly improve energy availability and affordability,” said Takeuchi. “We end up throwing a lot of [energy] away.”

Indeed, in a widely cited statistic based on a 2021 study, 65 percent of energy produced is thrown away. Energy from any source, whether it’s fossil fuels, sunlight, wind or nuclear, is inefficient, with losses from heat, limitations on technology, friction with machinery and incomplete combustion, among a host of factors.

“Let’s use it more effectively, where we can follow the load,” urged Takeuchi.

At the same time, Takeuchi recognizes the importance of ensuring the safety of energy storage, including for the proposed storage facilities in Setauket.

“The Fire Department and police need to be brought into the discussion,” she said. “A lot of these folks are extremely knowledgeable.”

Community education, involvement and awareness is necessary for any such project, ensuring that the appropriate people are informed and know how to respond to any crisis.

Energy needs

Future energy needs are considerably higher than they are today, thanks to the demands of artificial intelligence.

Large data centers that house the kinds of information necessary for AI are “incredibly power hungry,” Takeuchi said. If AI continues to expand at the current pace, it alone will use more energy than the world makes today.

“We need to have broader sources of energy” so it is available, she added. “Where is going to come from?”

Indeed, Takeuchi and her collaborators are working on energy storage that doesn’t use the kind of lithium-ion batteries that power much of consumer electronics. Lithium ion batteries are compact and are highly reactive, packing energy into a small volume. If something goes wrong, these batteries are flammable.

“We are working on a project at Stony Brook and Brookhaven National Laboratory where we’ve demonstrated electrolytes that don’t burn at all,” she said. “You can put a butane lighter on them and they won’t burn.”

To be sure, these batteries, which would be larger than the current systems, are a “long way” from commercialization, but it’s possible.

Still, Takeuchi is excited about rechargeable water-based batteries. She’s focused on making sure the materials are elements that are used broadly, instead of exotic materials mined in only one place on Earth. She’s also looking to create a cycle life that’s as high as possible.

Aqueous materials have a lower cycle life. She and her team are trying to understand why and overcome those challenges, which would enable these batteries to be recharged more times before degrading.

Funding environment

The current funding environment for science and technology has reached an uncertain time, Takeuchi said.

“One of the ways the United States has been so effective at competing economically on a global level is through science and technology,” she said. During many decades, the country has been an innovation leader as measured by the number of patents issued.

Driven by the Manhattan Project that built the atomic bomb, by frenzied competition with the Soviet Union after the launch of Sputnik in October of 1957 amid the Cold War, and by the drive to send people to the moon in the 1960’s, the country has attracted top talent from around the world while making important discoveries and creating new technology. Realizing that science and technology is a driver of future commercial and economic growth, other countries have been actively recruiting scientists concerned about the future funding landscape to their countries. This creates the potential for a brain drain.

If the United States gives up its leadership position when other nations are charging ahead, it could take a long time to recover the current standing, not to mention to mirror the successes and personal and professional opportunities from previous generations, said Takeuchi.

“Science is critical to lead us to the future we all want to live in,” she added. 

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Emma Samghabadi at the New York Marine Rescue Center. Photo courtesy Jennifer Samghabadi

By Daniel Dunaief

The odds haven’t always been in favor of Emma Samghabadi.

The Comsewogue High School senior and Port Jefferson station resident was born under two pounds and spent over a month in the neonatal intensive care unit at Stony Brook Hospital.

After maneuvering through a period her parents Jennifer and Pedram Samghabadi described as “touch and go” for a while, she flourished and is poised to graduate from high school in June and enter college this fall.

Emma Samghabadi after singing with the Metropolitan Youth Orchestra in 2022. Photo courtesy Brian Kacharaba

A gifted singer and performer, Samghabadi, who recently played Velma Kelly in a teen edition of “Chicago,” applied for the Live Más scholarship through Taco Bell, where she has been working since last summer.

Samghabadi spent close to three months putting together a two minute video describing her passions, which include performing, singing, and serving as a conservationist.

On April 25th, Samghabadi, 18, was working at the drive through window at Taco Bell and learned that she had won a $10,000 scholarship, which she will use at the University of Rhode Island.

“It was a complete surprise to me,” said Samghabadi, who was thrilled when her managers and coworkers celebrated her scholarship with balloons and congratulatory posters in the dining room of the restaurant. “All my managers were there and my regional managers were there as well.”

Indeed, Samghabadi called her mother, who works as a registered nurse and her father, who is a social worker, to celebrate.

Jennifer Samghabadi was “overjoyed, proud, grateful and also humbled” with the scholarship.

“The odds [of winning] are very, very low,” her father said. “This was her exhibiting her unique mix” of passions.

Out of 500 scholarship applications from New York, Taco Bell awarded 13 at this level, which is just over two a half percent of the state’s entries.

The Taco Bell Foundation has been awarding these scholarships for 10 years, with some notable past winners including Mato Standing Soldier, a film and TV composer who was named to Forbes 30 under 30 List for 2023 and Brooke Taylor, who is dancing on Broadway in Moulin Rouge.

Samghabadi gave her scholarship entry considerable thought. The scholarship is based on a student’s passions, social impact, personal presentation and educational goals and does not include any reference to a grade point average or standardized test scores.

“As soon as I started finding pictures, I was already thinking about what I wanted to talk about,” Samghabadi said.

Editing the presentation to under two minutes was a “struggle,” she added.

The work paid off, as a Taco Bell Foundation spokeswoman suggested that Samghabadi’s video embodied the key traits they seek in an applicant: strong passion, a focus on social impact, clear educational goals and compelling storytelling.

Samghabadi, who has a weighted grade point average above 100, has impressed her high school teachers.

Rosa Antelo, who teaches Samghabadi’s Advanced Placement Class and was also her instructor for Advanced Spanish in 10th grade, described her student’s potential as “unmeasurable.”

Antelo suggested that Samghabadi is “not just a great student, but she’s truly an amazing person.”

Antelo, who wrote a college recommendation for Samghabadi, recalled a time when her student helped her manage through the strain of a stressful situation.

“She’s so positive and is looking for the best of everything,” said Antelo, who has been teaching for 26 years and believes Samghabadi stands out among her many students.

An early curiosity

When she was five, Samghabadi found a large green caterpillar in a hibiscus bush, which she brought home.

She and her parents looked up how to care for it. The caterpillar formed a cocoon and emerged as a moth.

After that, Samghabadi was hooked, establishing a monarch butterfly way station where she has released over a hundred of the orange and black insects that, while not endangered are threatened by a loss of habitat, pesticide use and climate change.

Dedicated to conservation and marine biology, Samghabadi has worked as a volunteer at the New York Marine Rescue Center in Riverhead.

She tells visitors about the only effort in the state to rescue and rehabilitate sea turtles and seals. She has also helped with beach clean ups and, in 2023, became scuba certified.

Samghabadi’s favorite animal is the manta ray, which she hopes to study in college.

From ‘The Lion King’ to community theater

Around the same time that she found the green caterpillar, Samghabi, saw her first broadway show.

Watching “The Lion King” sparked an interest in performance and theater.

Samghabadi has been an extra in short films and commercials as well as in the movie “Uncut Gems.”

As a 10-year old, she spent a day on set as an extra, sitting behind Adam Sandler in a movie theater.

She has performed in several shows and goes through cycles of singing different Broadway songs in the house.

These days, she’s using her soprano voice to belt out “Sweeney Todd” in the house. 

Samghabadi is open to combining her interests in conservation and music. At some point, she would like to conduct research on bioacoustics. She could also envision using music as a part of public outreach for conservation.

Despite all her commitments, including working with second graders to help teach them Spanish, Samghabadi is able to enjoy leisure activities with her friends by organizing herself.

“I have a set plan for what I need to do each day,” she said.

Multiple scholarships

Samghabadi’s talents and dedication have earned her other competitive scholarships.

She will receive $84,000 over four years as a part of the inaugural Schilling Scholars Program at the University of Rhode Island. She will also receive $68,000 from the presidential scholarship at the university.

The New York Elks Association recently awarded her a $1,000 scholarship.

Samghabadi is the second generation in her family to work at Taco Bell, where her favorite meal is the Cantina Chicken Bowl.

When he was earning money for college, Samghabadi’s father Pedram worked at the restaurant chain.

Samghabadi’s parents are grateful for the life their daughter has lived and the energy and passion she brings to her interests.

“You can’t be thankful enough,” said Pedram Samghabadi. “We still cannot believe what we went through” in the first year of her remarkable life.

Their daughter. whose singing they will miss when she attends college, gave them a preview of what was to come early in life.

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