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Authors Posts by Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

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What would happen if it rained on our intransigent politicians in Washington?

Well, for starters, the Democrats would all vote “no.” They’re voting “no” on everything anyway, so the rain probably wouldn’t affect them.

While some Republicans like Sen. John McCain would immediately acknowledge the rain, others would call it a nonstory. When the GOP couldn’t discount the reality that people were getting wet, they would decide it was President Obama’s fault because he didn’t stop the rains when he had a chance. The Republicans would find some regulation, which they suggested Obama enacted, that allowed or encouraged the rain, and would immediately set about doing the important work of undoing that regulation.

Sure, Obama knew about rain in Washington when he was president, but he didn’t enact a single policy or procedure that could have prevented the wet stuff from ruining barbecues and costing people money. He ignored an important proposal many years ago to put a retractable dome over Washington that would have created jobs and saved people from getting wet.

The New York Times would blame President Trump, his administration, his family and the Russians, especially President Putin, because all are at fault for everything. They probably planned during their meetings last year to distract everyone from their collusion to cause it to rain just when everyone was getting ready for a picnic. The Times would find some damning email in which someone joked about the rain, or in which the word “rain” might have been a code word, and would remind everyone that rain is synonymous with “pain,” which the paper is feeling from this new administration.

Competing polls would begin as soon as the first drops fell. One poll, which the current administration and Republicans would ignore and discredit, would suggest that even Trump voters are frustrated by the rain and feel that Trump promised them it would never rain again, except at night when they were sleeping. They would be upset that the billionaire Man of the People didn’t protect them when they wanted to attend their daughter’s softball game or when they wanted to go on a company picnic to a site that had previously been off-limits during the Obama administration because it was a protected area where young birds and fish were breeding.

At the same time, another poll that the Democrats would ignore would indicate that Trump voters were thrilled that they didn’t have to spend money watering lawns that, thanks to the new and limited Environmental Protection Agency, they could spray with a wide range of cheaper, job-creating pesticides that may or may not harm some people and a few turtles. This poll would suggest that these voters would be thrilled if the rain continued strategically through 2020, when they would be even happier to vote again for Trump.

Trump might tweet about how sad the rain was for Democrats and might suggest that it would be raining even harder if Hillary Clinton was president. Trump might engage in a twitter war with Chelsea Clinton or Rosie O’Donnell.

CNN would cover the twitter war extensively and would then claim that the entire discussion was a distraction from the real issues, which they would cover in a small box in the corner of their webpage.

Stocks would continue to rise as investors bet that people would need to spend more money on umbrellas in the short term, and on new food for other picnics some time in the near future when the rain stopped.

When the skies cleared, everyone would take credit before heading to the beach, unless they lived in New Jersey and were thwarted by an
unpopular governor.

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Standing near one of the X-ray scattering instruments, Kevin Yager holds a collection of samples, including a self-assembling polymer film. Photo courtesy of BNL

By Daniel Dunaief

Throw a batch of LEGOs in a closed container and shake it up. When the lid is opened, the LEGOs will likely be spread out randomly across the container, with pieces facing different directions. Chances are few, if any, of the pieces will stick together. Attaching strong magnets to those pieces could change the result, with some of the LEGOs binding together. On a much smaller scale and with pieces made from other parts, this is what researchers who study the world of self-assembled materials do.

Scientists at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials and at the National Synchrotron Light Source II at Brookhaven National Laboratory experiment with small parts that will come together in particular ways based on their energy landscapes through a process called self-assembly.

Every so often, however, a combination of steps will alter the pathway through the energy landscape, causing molecules to end up in a different final configuration. For many scientists, these so-called nonequilibrium states are a nuisance.

Above, Kevin Yager listens to sonified data. When data is sonified, it is translated into sound. Photo by Margaret Schedel

For Kevin Yager, they are an opportunity. A group leader at the CFN who works closely with the NSLS-II, the McGill University-educated Yager wants to understand how the order of these steps can change the final self-assembled product. “In the energy landscape, you have these peaks and valleys and you can take advantage of that to move into a particular state you want,” Yager said. “The high level goal is that, if we understand the fundamentals well enough, we can have a set of design rules for any structure we can dream up.”

At the CFN, Yager manages a nanofabrication facility that uses electron-beam lithography and other techniques to make nanostructures. He would like to fabricate model batteries to show the power of nanomaterials. He is also determined to understand the rules of the road in the self-assembly process, creating the equivalent of an instruction manual for miniature parts.

In future years, this awareness of nonequilibrium self-assembly may lead to revolutionary innovations, enabling the manufacture of parts for electronics, drugs to treat disease and deliver medicine to specific locations in a cell and monitors for the detection of traces of radioactivity or toxins in the environment, among many other possibilities.

Yager’s colleagues saw considerable opportunities for advancement from his work. Nonequilibrium self-assembly has “significant potential for a broad range of nanodevices and materials due to its ability to create complex structures with ease,” Oleg Gang, a group leader in Soft and Bio Nanomaterials at the CFN, explained in an email. Yager is an “excellent scientist” who produces “outstanding results.”

One of the things Yager hopes his research can develop is a way to “trick self-assembly into making structures they don’t natively want to make” by using the order of steps to control the final result.

As an example, Yager said he developed a sequence of steps in which nanoscale cylinders pack hexagonal lattices into a plane. These lattices tend to point in random directions as the cylinders form. By following several steps, including sheer aligning a plane and then thermal processing, the cylinders flip from horizontal to vertical as they inherit the alignment of the sheered surface. Flipping these cylinders, in turn, causes the hexagons all to point in the same direction. When Yager conducted these steps in a different order, he produced a different structure.

Broadly speaking, Yager is working on stacking self-assembling layers. In his case, however, the layers aren’t like turkey and swiss cheese on a sandwich, in which the order is irrelevant to the desired final product. Each layer has a hand in directing the way the subsequent layers stack themselves. Choosing the sequence in which he stacks the materials controls their structure.

Yager is working with Esther Takeuchi and Amy Marschilok at Stony Brook University to develop an understanding of the nanostructure of batteries. Gang suggested that Yager’s expertise is “invaluable for many scientists who are coming to the CFN to characterize nanomaterials using synchtrotron methods. In many cases, it would probably be impossible to achieve such quantitative understanding without [Yager’s] input.”

Yager and his wife Margaret Schedel, an associate professor in the Department of Music at Stony Brook University who is a cellist and a composer, live in East Setauket. The couple combined their talents when they sought ways to turn the data produced by the CFN, the NSLS and the NSLS-II into sound.

Scientists typically convert their information into visual images, but there’s “no reason we can’t do that with sound,” Yager said. “When you listen to data, you sometimes pick up features you wouldn’t have seen.”

One of the benefits of turning the data into sound is that researchers can work on something else and listen to the collection of data in the background, he said. If anything unexpected happens, or there is a problem with a sample or piece of equipment, they might hear it and take measures more rapidly to correct the process. “This started as a fun collaboration,” Yager said, “but it is useful.”

Schedel is working on sonifying penguin data as well. She also sonified wave data on Long Island. “By listening to the tides quickly, larger patterns emerge,” she said, adding that Yager thought the idea was theoretically interesting until he listened to misaligned data and then he recognized its benefit.

Schedel’s goal is to see this sonification effort spread from one beamline to all of them and then to the Fermilab near Chicago and elsewhere. She wants sonification to become “an ear worm in the science community.”

While Schedel introduced Yager to the world of sound in his research, he introduced her to sailing, an activity he enjoyed while growing up in the suburbs of Montreal. When she sails with him, they are “half in and half out of the boat,” Schedel said. It’s like two people “flying a kite, but you are the kite. You have to learn how to counterbalance” the boat. They hike out so they can take turns faster without tipping over, she said.

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Tom and Tim grew up great friends. Soon after they learned how to spell, they figured out “i” and “o” were the only difference in their names.

They liked their parents, teachers and country. The United States, as they were told, was the greatest country in the world. Their grandparents, as they’d find out on a rainy Sunday when they watched a TV show about a country in Europe that didn’t exist anymore, came from the same place.

“We could be related,” Tim said.

Tom thought Tim would be a much better relative than his Uncle Oswald, who wreaked of cologne and was always trying to give him great advice about his life. Tom wanted to become a baseball player and he wanted to marry a woman some day who could make apple pies because he loved apple pies.

Tim also wanted to become a baseball player, but his mother wanted him to play the trumpet.

Tom also wanted to play an instrument, so he started playing the trumpet, too.

Competition got the better of Tim and Tom. They stopped hanging out because they wanted to practice separately, so they could win the solo in the concert and so Heather, the best trombone player in the band, would notice them.

When the music teacher, Mr. Holden, chose Tom to play the solo, Tim stopped talking to Tom, Heather and Mr. Holden.

Tim’s mother didn’t understand why he was quiet and angry. She read books on how to let go while lending a hand. One day, Tim told her about the solo, so she hired the best music teacher in the area.

Soon enough, Tim was better than Tom on the trumpet. Everyone, including Mr. Holden, could tell, so the teacher gave the solo to Tim.

Tom found out about the new trumpet teacher and he, too, became a student. Tim and Tom filled their block, night and day, with the sound of blaring trumpets.

As the concert approached, Mr. Holden became dismayed at how the two trumpet players were trying to drown each other out. He sent Tom out of a rehearsal, which caused the lower brass and flutes to stop playing because they supported Tom. When Tom returned, however, the bickering continued, so Mr. Holden sent Tim out of the room, at which point the clarinets and percussion stopped playing.

Mr. Holden removed the song with the trumpet solo from the concert. The boys blamed each other and, soon enough, an all-out war on social media broke out between Tim, Tom and the parts of the band that backed each of them.

Mr. Holden threatened to cancel the concert, but the town wouldn’t allow it, especially because the concert was the highlight of the July Fourth celebration.

One day, when Tom was too tired to play the trumpet and he wanted to get away from his annoying uncle, he collapsed on the couch and turned on the TV. He watched a black-and-white film about people coming from the country where his grandparents were born.

When the show ended, Tom got on his bike and rode to Mr. Holden’s house. He rang the bell.

“Mr. Holden, can you please put the original song back in the program? I’d like Tim to play the solo,” Tom said.

Mr. Holden smiled.

“He just asked me if you could play the solo,” Mr. Holden said, opening the door to reveal Tim standing in the kitchen.

When the concert ended, Tim and Tom were sure of one thing: They had to be related.

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HXN team members, from left, Evgeny Nazaretski, Ken Lauer, Sebastian Kalbfleisch, Xiaojing Huang, Yong Chu, Nathalie Bouet and Hanfei Yan. Photo courtesy of BNL

By Daniel Dunaief

There’s precision in measurements and then there’s the world of Yong Chu. The head of a beamline that’s housed off to the side in a separate, concrete structure from similar efforts at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Chu led the design, construction and commissioning of a sophisticated beamline with a resolution of as low as 3 nanometers, which he hopes will get down to 1 nanometer within a year.

Just as a measure of contrast, a human hair is about 80,000 nanometers wide. Why so fine a resolution? For starters, seeing objects or processes at that high level can offer insights into how they function, how to improve their manufacture or how to counteract the effects of harmful processes.

With a battery, for example, the Hard X-ray Nanoprobe, or HXN beamline, could help reveal structural weaknesses in the nanostructure that could cause safety issues. In biology, numerous functions involve sub-cellular organelles that respond to proteins. Proteins are typically smaller than the HXN beamline can image, although researchers can tag the proteins with metals, which allows Chu, his colleagues and visiting scientists to see an aggregate of these proteins.

The HXN beamline can also help explore environmental problems, such as how plants transport harmful nanoparticles to their fruits or how artificial compounds absorb nuclear waste. Imaging beamlines that use micro-focused beams typically offer spatial resolution of 10 microns, 1 micron or even 100 nanometers, according to Ryan Tappero, the head scientist at the X-ray Fluorescence Microprobe at BNL, who has used the HXN for his research. Using the NSLS II source properties and a new x-ray optics development routinely offers resolution of 10 nanometers, which pushes the spatial resolution down by another factor of 10, which makes the HXN, according to Tappero, a “game changer.”

Tappero described Chu as a “rock star” and suggested he was an “exceptional beamline scientist” who is “very knowledgeable about X-ray optics.”

BNL houses 19 beamlines at the National Synchrotron Light Source II, a state-of-the-art facility large enough that scientists ride adult tricycles inside it to travel from one beamline to another and to transport supplies around the facility. BNL is building another nine beamlines that it hopes to have operational within the next 18 months. Each of these beamlines offers a different way to explore the world of matter. Some beamlines do not use a focused beam, while others produce beams with high angular or high energy resolution. Imaging beamlines such as the HXN produce a small beam size.

The HXN beamline has the highest spatial resolution of any beamline at the NSLS-II. Scientists building the HXN grew a nanofocusing lens with a dedicated deposition system that was constructed at the NSLS-II Research and Development lab. The system grew a nanofocusing lens a layer at a time, alternating materials and controlling the thickness at better than 1 nanometer, Chu explained.

The beamline where Chu works has padded walls, a door separating it from the rest of the light source and a monitor that records the temperature to the thousandths of a degree. “We are constantly monitoring the temperature around the X-ray microscope and inside of the X-ray microscope chamber,” he said. Around the microscope, he can keep the temperature stable within 0.03 degree Celsius. In the chamber, the scientists maintain the temperature at better than 0.003 degree Celsius.

So, now that Chu and his colleagues built their beamline, have the scientists come? Indeed, the interest in using the HXN has been well above the available time slots. For the three cycles each year, BNL receives about four requests for each available time. This reflects the unique qualities of the instrument, Chu said, adding that he doesn’t expect the rate to drop considerably, even as the HXN continues to operate, because of the ongoing demand.

Researchers have to go through a peer review process, where their ideas are graded for the likelihood of success and for the opportunity to learn from the experiments. All beam time proposals are reviewed by external expert panels, which examine the scientific merit, appropriateness of use of the facility, capability of proposers and quality of prior performance and the research plan and technical feasibility.

Chu fields about 10 calls per month from scientists who want to speak with him about the feasibility of their ideas. He may suggest another station at the NSLS-II or at the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago, where he was a beamline scientist starting in 1999.

“I know many of the beamlines” at the Advanced Photon Source, he said. “I recommend some of the potential users to perform experiments at the APS first before coming to the HXN.” By the time scientists arrive at his beamline, Chu said he’s gotten to know them through numerous discussions. He considers them “as a guest” at the HXN hotel. “We try to make sure the experimental needs for the users are met as much as possible,” he said.

The HXN beamline has three staff scientists and two postdoctoral fellows who remain in contact with scientists who use the facility. “For most of the users, at least one of us is working throughout the weekends and late evenings,” said Chu.

Not just a staff scientist, Chu is also a user of the HXN, with currently one active general user proposal through a peer review process in which he is collaborating with Stony Brook University and BNL scientist Esther Takeuchi to explore the nanostructure of metal atoms during phase separation in batteries.

Chu and his wife Youngkyu Park, who works at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory as a research investigator in basic and preclinical cancer research, live in Northport. The couple’s 22-year-old son Luke is attending Nassau Community College and is planning to transfer to Stony Brook this fall to study engineering. Their daughter Joyce is 18 and is enrolled in the Parsons School of Design in New York.

Chu grew up in Seoul, South Korea, and came to the United States when he was 18. He attended Caltech. While Chu’s parents wanted him to become a doctor, he was more inspired by a cartoon called Astro Boy, in which a scientist, Dr. Tenma, is a hero solving problems. As for the work of the scientists who visit his beamline, Chu said the “success of individual users is the success of the beamline.”

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By Daniel Dunaief

Hurry, hurry, hurry! You’ve got five minutes to get to the high school before your daughter’s graduation. It usually takes six. You might have to go faster than the speed limit, but you’ve done it before.

Your daughter looks great and she’s so calm. You push on the accelerator on the straight road ahead. Your daughter takes a deep breath.

OK, just a little faster and you’ll make it. Oh, no, no, no, a small car pulls in front of you. It’s being driven at 25 mph in a 35 mph zone. Why do cars pull in front of you and then go slowly? “Come on!” you implore, flicking your fingers forward as if you were trying to scratch a chalkboard from the bottom up.

“Dad, it’s OK,” your daughter insists. “I don’t want you to be late,” you say.

You drive carefully around a curve and head for another straight part of the road. You reach a stop sign, where a BMW misses an opening to go. It was a small one, but you’ve got to make your own openings in this town. That’s what you’d tell everyone today if you were giving the speech your daughter won the right to deliver.

Your daughter did better in school than you did. That makes you proud, but you don’t have time to be proud. All these people are slowing you down. You just have a few more turns.

A Girl Scout troop crosses the road in front of you. Your daughter was in Girl Scouts years ago, but you don’t like them now. They’re making you late for such an important day for the family.

Then the Girl Scouts, whose uniforms make you think of those mint cookies, cross the street. You’re a block from the school and a sedan takes forever to park.

You grind your teeth and lift your hand to touch the horn. Your daughter puts her hand firmly on yours and shakes her head slowly.

The woman with streaks of gray in her hair and a green suit looks vaguely familiar as she gets out of a car.

Finally, you park, get in the school and, shockingly, your daughter’s friends have reserved you great seats.

You pick up your phone to start recording your daughter’s speech. The camera’s out of memory. You grind your teeth as you try to delete enough old pictures to record this magic moment.

“Good morning,” your daughter’s voice offers the room. Your wife tells you to stop fiddling with your phone and look up. After your daughter shares memories of high school, she wants to offer advice to her class.

“I want you to remember to leave some margin for error,” she urges. Right, you smile. Your daughter, who made so many fewer errors than you did, is talking to the other people about their mistakes. You nod to the other people.

“If we need to do something, to be somewhere or to accomplish anything, we need to accept that the route might include detours or unexpected obstacles,” she offers, sharing that crooked smile she developed in middle school. “It’s not anyone else’s fault. If it’s important, don’t blame the obstacles. Be prepared for them. Planning means understanding them and giving yourself some extra time to reach your goals.”

You take a deep breath, the way she did so many times while she waited for you at the entrance to the house. You look around the room to see if anyone else knows she’s talking to you. You now recognize the woman on stage with streaks of gray in her hair and a green suit; she’s the superintendent of schools.

You realize how much smarter your daughter is than you.

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Waves of nostalgia can hit at any time. They tend to wash ashore more frequently in between graduations with their “look back, look forward” speeches and weddings. During these transition phases, we recall the days gone by, whether we’re suddenly comparing a memory from a few years to a decade or more earlier.

We watch our children stretch out surprisingly long arms to take a diploma and shake the hand of a school official, recalling how those hands used to reach up high to grab ours as we crossed the street.

We listen to their confident voices as they share detailed, measured and elaborate opinions about politics, sports, social issues or music. At the same time, we replay the high voices in our heads when they shared thoughts that weren’t so complex, as in “Jimmy Neutron is the best.”

When my wife and I walk around town, we frequently stop outside T-ball baseball games, where we soak in the figurative nostalgia bathtub. Johnny swings at seven pitches before he finally dribbles a ball foul. The exhausted coach encourages Johnny to “run, run, run!” Once the boy reaches first base, a small smile fills a round face that will get longer and leaner in the days ahead, until he reaches the stage where he rolls his eyes when people around him speak of sports because he and his razor stubble have tuned into the world of guitars and rock bands.

For some high school graduates, home has become a launchpad, where the NASA countdown to lift off for college will thrust them to a new location.

And then there are the brides and grooms, whose parents may recall their own weddings even as they smile at the way their children are planning to have people on stilts passing out hors d’oeuvres. The reason no one else thought of it, we think, is because it seems impractical, even though we don’t say that because we don’t want to rain on our children’s parade.

The parents of the bride and groom may remember the people who surrounded them at their wedding, from family members to important friends. Parents may have spent extra time searching through alumni directories or online listings to find the addresses of some of those important friends they haven’t seen in decades to invite them to another can’t-miss wedding.

Parents may stare at their children and recall the long journey from the cooties and a fear fascination with love and romance, to this moment when their child plans to travel the rest of his or her life with this marital partner.

What good does nostalgia do? It offers an opportunity to reflect on the past, while overlaying memories with current experiences. While we’re dancing to music we heard years ago, maybe at our own weddings or on an early date with a future spouse, we may close our eyes and reconnect with the younger version of ourselves. We remember who we were and who we wanted to be. We may laugh, realizing how far we have to go, or boost our resolve as we observe the changes in ourselves and others around us that encourage us to believe that anything, improbable or difficult though it may seem, is still possible.

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SBU graduate student and grand niece of world renowned anthropologist Richard Leakey, Acacia Leakey, draws a sketch of huts in the village of Ambodiaviavy, Madagascar as the children look on. Photo from Mickie Nagel

By Daniel Dunaief

 

Mickie Nagel recently returned from the island nation of Madagascar, and she’s filled with ideas, inspiration, observations and opportunities. One of the three founders of a new nongovernmental organization called BeLocal, the Laurel Hollow resident spent several weeks with Stony Brook University graduate students Leila Esmailzada and Acacia Leakey taking videos and gathering information about life in Madagascar.

The goal of the new organization is to share this footage and insight with undergraduate engineers at SBU, who might come up with innovations that could enhance the quality of life for the Malagasy people.

In one village, a man showed her a three-inch lump on his shoulder, which he got by dragging a long stick with bunches of bananas that weigh over 100 pounds along a clay footpath out of the forest. People also carry rice that weighs over 150 pounds on their heads, while many others haul buckets of water from rivers and streams to their homes while walking barefoot.

In addition to transportation, Nagel also found that villagers around Centre ValBio, a Stony Brook research station, had basic food and water needs. Over 17 years ago, another group had installed four water pumps in a village to provide access to water. Only one pump now works.

SBU graduate student Leila Esmailzada helps villagers in Ambodiaviavy, Madagascar, clean rice. The job is usually delegated to the children who pound the rice for 30 minutes. Photo by Mickie Nagel

As for food, some villagers in Madagascar spend hours preparing rice, including beating off the husks and drying the rice. They store this hard-earned food in huts that are often infiltrated with rats, who consume their rice and leave their feces, which spreads disease.

Traveling with Esmailzada and Leakey, Nagel not only helped document life in these villages but also searched for information about available resources to drive engineering innovations, while Leakey gathered information about an invasive species of guava.

“Ideally, if any projects require wood, then they should incorporate guava sticks into their design, as opposed to planks from forest trees,” explained Leakey in an email sent from Madagascar. The graduate student, who recently earned her bachelor’s degree at Stony Brook, will be recording the average thickness of the stems, the average length of a straight piece and the load capacity of the branches. Leakey plans to return from the African continent in the beginning of August.

Leakey also visited metalworkers to explore the local capacity. The raw materials come from scrap metal dealers, who often get them from old car parts.

Nagel started BeLocal with her husband Jeff Nagel and a classmate of his from their days as undergraduates at Carnegie Mellon University, Eric Bergerson. Indeed, BeLocal fulfills a long-standing goal of Jeff Nagel’s. Before freshman year in college, Nagel told Bergerson that he wanted to do something that had a positive impact on the world.

While the founders have contributed through their work, their jobs and their families, they found that partnering with Stony Brook University and Distinguished Professor Patricia Wright in Madagascar presented a chance to have a meaningful impact on life on the island nation.

Nagel, whose background is in marketing, visited Madagascar over two years ago, where she traveled for over a hundred hours on a bus through the country. “You just see people living below the poverty line and you see how that plays out in normal day-to-day activities,” she said. “You see a young mom carrying a child on her back and one on her front, with heavy produce on her head and you just think, ‘Wow, there has to be an easier way for some of this.’”

Mickie Nagel, far right, on an earlier trip to Central ValBio with her daughters Gabrielle, far left, and Lauren, center. when they first visited Centre ValBio. Photo by Heidi Hutner

When Nagel returned from her initial trip to Madagascar with her daughters Gabrielle, 18, and Lauren, 17, she and her husband thought people around the world would likely want to help but that not everyone could afford to travel that far.

Nagel recalls Bergerson, who is the director of research at the social data intelligence company Tickertags, telling her that they “don’t have to travel there. You can videotape the daily challenges and crowd source” innovations.

That’s exactly what Leakey and Esmailzada did for the last few weeks. Leakey said she is looking forward to working with senior design students as they go through their projects at Stony Brook and is eager to see how they understand the situation “through the footage and pictures we collect.”

The BeLocal approach isn’t limited to Madagascar, the BeLocal founders suggested. Indeed, given the distance to an island famous for its lemurs, animated movies and an Imax film that features primates with personality, BeLocal could have started in a Central American country like Belize.

Mickie Nagel, however, urged them to start at a location where they would immediately have the trust of local residents. That, she suggested, came from the over quarter of a century of work from Wright, an award-winning scientist who has not only helped preserve Ranomafana [National Park in Madagascar] but has also helped bring health care and education to the villages around the CVB research station. Wright and the Malagasy people have a “mutual respect for each other,” Nagel said.

“People have been exceptionally warm and welcoming,” Leakey said. Getting people accustomed to the presence of cameras hasn’t been straightforward, as people sometimes stop what they are doing, but the guides have helped make the villagers more comfortable.

Jeff Nagel, who works at a private equity firm in New York City, explained that Madagascar is the first step for BeLocal. This effort “can be expanded to other countries or other areas,” Nagel said. “It doesn’t have to be engineers and universities,” but can be instituted by creative people everywhere.

At this point, BeLocal is not looking for any additional funding but might consider expanding the effort at this time next year. Nagel said this fall, they will look for professional engineers to advise on projects. “We would like people who are interested in participating or just keeping up with developments to come and register on our website, www.BeLocalgrp.com,” she suggested.

The site, which the group is upgrading, is up and running. Bergerson explained that they have a “lot of infrastructure to build on” to create the crowd sourcing platform.

Jeff Nagel suggested that this effort is designed to use technology constructively. “Technology’s job, first and foremost, is to help humanity,” he said. “This is a chance to use it in a way that matters to people.”

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Gal Gadot tackles the role of Wonder Woman in Warner Brothers new superhero flick. Image courtesy of Warner Bros.

By Daniel Dunaief

Remember those Mad Libs games? You’d insert an adjective, a noun, a verb, adverb, a command, perhaps, into a premade sentence and then you’d read it back, laughing or pondering the combination of words thrown into the structure of a familiar narrative?

Superhero movies, particularly those about the origin of a character we all know, are like a game of Mad Libs. Few superheroes start out life with a cape, a star or a penchant for helping society and standing up against supervillains. Superheroes start out not knowing their fate, or some secret about themselves, and then have to learn the truth along the way.

“Wonder Woman,” the film version from Warner Brothers Studios based on the DC Comics, provides an enjoyable Mad Libs experience, sticking, for the most part, to a familiar structure. The movie, which has been flying high at the box office despite the lack of an invisible plane, executes on its premise well, while offering a few moments of levity scattered through its mix of high-action battle scenes.

Played by the easy-on-the-eyes Gal Gadot, to whom the movie’s other characters react with the kind of awe and attraction the audience might have if they met her, Wonder Woman tells the tale of Diana, the Amazonian princess of Themyscira. We meet her as a young girl, on a picturesque island full of woman who are forever training to fight a battle against man, who may discover their island some day despite remaining hidden from view.

Diana’s mother Hippolyta, played by Connie Nielsen, doesn’t want her daughter to be a warrior, which, of course, means that Diana’s primary focus is on developing her battle skills.

Enter Steve Trevor, an American spy played by Chris Pine, whose plane penetrates the fog that renders the island invisible. Now grown up, Diana races to save Trevor, who crash lands off shore. Trevor, unfortunately, brings an armada of Germans to the beach, where the first of many battles occurs. Diana is determined to end the War to End All Wars by returning to the outside world and fighting an enemy Trevor doesn’t see. While Pine’s Trevor doesn’t understand much about Diana and the island, Diana, in turn, finds the American warrior confounding and slightly amusing.

The interactions between Diana and Trevor throughout the film are amusing, filled with a blend of Trevor’s humorous awe and Diana’s unrelenting sincerity in her quest to end the war.

Complete with the Mad Libs collection of damaged heart-of-gold band of merry men, which fits conveniently into the superhero plot, Diana, Trevor and company seek out the evil General Ludendorff, played by Danny Huston, who seems bent on using a toxin Dr. Maru, Elena Analya, is creating.

The best parts of the film are when Diana, who is unaware of the broader conflict around her, drives the action. She races out of the trenches to try to save a town held by the Germans, followed by the reluctant heroes-despite-themselves band, including Trevor. Movie aficionados have focused on the glass ceiling shattered by director Patty Jenkins, who set a box office record for a movie directed by a woman. Jenkins has blended character development, high energy and an enjoyable script to create a worthwhile comic book movie. Her direction, with battle scenes alternating with the ongoing quest to end the war, kept the pace of the movie. The interaction among the main characters — friend and villain alike — made this Mad Libs origin story a success.

Now playing at local theaters, “Wonder Woman” is rated PG-13 for sequences of violence and action.

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Priya Sridevi with her golden doodle Henry. Photo by Ullas Pedmale

By Daniel Dunaief

Priya Sridevi started out working with plants but has since branched out to study human cancer. Indeed, the research investigator in Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Cancer Center Director David Tuveson’s lab recently became the project manager for an ambitious effort coordinating cancer research among labs in three countries.

The National Cancer Institute is funding the creation of a Cancer Model Development Center, which supports the establishment of cancer models for pancreatic, breast, colorectal, lung, liver and other upper-gastrointestinal cancers. The models will be available to other interested researchers. Tuveson is leading the collaboration and CSHL Research Director David Spector is a co-principal investigator.

The team plans to create a biobank of organoids, which are three-dimensional models derived from human cancers and which mirror the genetic and cellular characteristics of tumors. Over the next 18 months, labs in Italy, the Netherlands and the United States, at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, expect to produce up to 150 organoid models.

The project officially started in January and the labs have been setting up the process through June. Sridevi is working with Hans Clevers of the Hubrecht Institute, who pioneered the development of organoids, and with Vincenzo Corbo and Aldo Scarpa at the University and Hospital Trust of Verona.

Sridevi’s former doctoral advisor Stephen Alexander, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Missouri, said Sridevi has had responsibilities beyond her own research. She was in charge of day-to-day operations in his lab, like ordering and regulatory reporting on radioactive material storage and usage, while he and his wife Hannah Alexander, who was Sridevi’s co-advisor, were on sabbatical. “She is hard working and determined,” said Alexander. “She knows how to get things done.”

In total, the project will likely include 25 people in the three centers. CSHL will hire an additional two or three scientists, including a postdoctoral researcher and a technician, while the Italian and Netherlands groups will also likely add another few scientists to each of their groups.

Each lab will be responsible for specific organoids. Tuveson’s lab, which has done considerable work in creating pancreatic cancer organoids, will create colorectal tumors and a few pancreatic cancer models, while Spector’s lab will create breast cancer organoids.

Clevers’ lab, meanwhile, will be responsible for creating breast and colorectal organoids, and the Italian team will create pancreatic cancer organoids. In addition, each of the teams will try to create organoids for other model systems, in areas like lung, cholangiocarcinomas, stomach cancer, neuroendocrine tumors and other cancers of the gastrointestinal tract.

For those additional cancers, there are no standard operating procedures, so technicians will need to develop new procedures to generate these models, Sridevi said. “We’ll be learning so much more” through those processes, Sridevi added. They might also learn about the dependencies of these cancers during the process of culturing them.

Sridevi was particularly grateful to the patients who donated their cells to these efforts. These patients are making significant contributions to medical research even though they, themselves, likely won’t benefit from these efforts, she said. In the United States, the patient samples will come from Northwell Health and the Tissue Donation Program of Northwell’s Feinstein Institute of Medical Research. “It’s remarkable that so many people are willing to do this,” Sridevi said. “Without them, there is no cancer model.”

Sridevi also appreciates the support of the philanthropists and foundations that provide funds to back these projects. Sridevi came to Tuveson’s lab last year, when she was seeking opportunities to contribute to translational efforts to help patients. She was involved in making drought and salinity resistant rice and transgenic tomato plants in her native India before earning her doctorate at the University of Missouri in Columbia.

Alexander recalled how Sridevi, who was recruited to join another department at the University of Missouri, showed up in his office unannounced and said she wanted to work in his lab. He said his lab was full and that she would have to be a teaching assistant to earn a stipend. He also suggested this wasn’t the optimal way to conduct research for a doctorate in molecular biology, which is a labor-intensive effort. “She was intelligent and determined,” Alexander marveled, adding that she was a teaching assistant seven times and obtained a wealth of knowledge about cell biology.

Sridevi, who lives on campus at CSHL with her husband Ullas Pedmale, an assistant professor at CSHL who studies the mechanisms involved in the response of plants to the environment, said the transition to Long Island was initially difficult after living for six years in San Diego.

“The weather spoiled us,” she said, although they and their goldendoodle Henry have become accustomed to life on Long Island. She appreciates the “wonderful colleagues” she works with who have made the couple feel welcome.

Sridevi believes the efforts she is involved with will play a role in understanding the biology of cancer and therapeutic opportunities researchers can pursue, which is one of the reasons she shifted her attention from plants. In Tuveson’s lab, she said she “feels more closely connected to patients” and is more “directly impacting their therapy.” She said the lab members don’t get to know the patients, but they hope to be involved in designing personalized therapy for them. In the Cancer Model Development Center, the scientists won a subcontract from Leidos Biomedical Research. If the study progresses as the scientists believe it should, it can be extended for another 18 months.

As for her work, Sridevi doesn’t look back on her decision to shift from plants to people. While she enjoyed her initial studies, she said she is “glad she made this transition” to modeling and understanding cancer.

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If you’re reading this on a cellphone somewhere, please stop. No, seriously. You can read it on your computer or in an actual copy of the paper but, please, stop reading this and look around you.

OK, are you back in your office or at your home?

It’s disturbing how often our cellphones become an escape from the here and now. I get it: We’re waiting in line to order a hamburger and we want to do something, so we plan our vacations or send text messages to our friends.

In the process, we’ve lost sight of what’s around us. It’s as if we’ve covered our eyes with electronic blinders and we can’t be bothered to pay attention to our surroundings.

I was recently driving through town and noticed a woman walking a large, chocolate Labrador along the sidewalk. His rear legs were pointed out as he walked. As I drove by, I noticed that the woman held the leash on her wrist as she was completely absorbed in her cellphone. Seconds later, the dog relieved himself on the sidewalk while trying to keep up with his oblivious owner. The dog looked uncomfortable as he tried to multitask.

I realize dogs are an enormous responsibility and that every time someone walks a dog, that person may not feel the urge to dedicate his or her complete attention to a conversation with the family pet.

“Hey, Tigger, look at that squirrel over there. Oh, wow, there’s a bunny. Do you see the bunny? Oh, wait, there are two bunnies.”

“What do you smell, Fifi? Was there another dog here a few hours ago and did he leave you a little scent present?”

We don’t have to connect with our pets every moment of every day. But wouldn’t it be nice if we were able to pay them some attention while we were out walking them? After all, how often do they come over to us when we’ve had a tough day, or give us their paw—or offer us companionship?

Everywhere we go, we have the opportunity to tune out the world around us and surf our way to somewhere else.

It’s thrilling to travel halfway around the world and send pictures instantly of a magnificent sunset, or the Eiffel Tower or a three-toed sloth. We can be connected to almost anyone almost anytime.

That shouldn’t give us license to disconnect from the people and the pets around us. It’s the economic concept of opportunity cost applied to our attention. The opportunity cost of paying attention to what’s on our phone is that we ignore our surroundings.

Remember those public service announcements which said, “It’s 10 o’clock, do you know where your children are?” Maybe we should have messages that pop up on our phone suggesting that “It’s 6 o’clock, do you know where you are,” or maybe, “It’s 6 o’clock, pick up your head and check out the here and now (or H&N).”

Maybe we should also develop an H&N logo we can put on clothing or notebooks. It can even become a verbal reminder to our companions.

“Class,” a teacher might say as she noticed her students taking furtive glances at their phones, “H&N, right? Let’s learn the material now, while you’re here.”

H&N may be a way of encouraging us to be where our bodies are at the moment, and not where the internet has taken us.

Dogs, meanwhile, shouldn’t have to multitask while they’re relieving themselves. If Fluffy could talk, she might say, “For goodness’ sake, H&N, I need a moment here.”

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