Taking credit is easy. It usually means you are patting yourself on the back for something you did or helped do that went well, or that went the way you desired.
In annual reviews, in résumés or on college applications, it’s a great idea to take credit for the ways you contributed, led or facilitated positive outcomes. It’s a way of sharing your potential for future successes with other colleagues, co-workers, bosses or schools.
It’s a fine line because taking credit for, say, the weather on the day of a picnic seems inappropriate and far fetched; or taking credit for something for which your primary role was to cheer for a particular outcome also seems inaccurate.
The other side of the credit coin is accepting responsibility for mistakes or results that fell short of your expectations or hopes.
I read that President-elect Donald Trump has congratulated himself on consumer confidence and the stock market surge since the election.
His election could be a contributing factor in the optimism of consumers or in the personified mind of the stock market.
I wonder, though, when life for Americans doesn’t go the way we would all like, will he also accept responsibility? Will the man who will be the leader of the free world be able to see his role in problems, learn from mistakes and show the kind of flexibility that other world leaders will consider inspiring or redemptive?
When things don’t go the way he or we the people might like, he has blamed others. His favorite target, and a favorite villain for many presidents over the years, has been the media. It’s an easy target because someone can always disagree with the facts or can come up with an alternative theory for them.
I would encourage the man who is so comfortable patting himself on the back — and who seems to be surrounding himself with people who are so supportive of him — to learn to look in the mirror and grow with this enormous job.
Learning isn’t easy or necessarily natural. That’s especially true when you’re confident you know more than anyone else, even intelligence officials, and when you rely on your business or street smarts to win every battle.
Maybe it’s especially challenging for him to accept that he needs educating as a president, in a job which requires him to be decisive and consistent.
At the same time, the president-elect has this opportunity to be a role model in the way he grows with the job.
I wonder, though, how he would deal with a leader with the same personality, self-confidence and strong will that he showed throughout the election cycle. Would he be able to adjust to the way someone else used his own playbook? Perhaps we have already seen glimpses of that, in the way he admires Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, with whom he seems to be sharing a daily global spotlight.
People on both sides of the political aisle probably agree that Trump is a character. It would be a wonderful moment if they all recognized at some point that he also had the kind of character that inspired others to learn, grow and compete against the best in the world.
Instead of recognizing and highlighting other people’s shortcomings, failures or deficiencies, Trump might also take a moment to see ways he himself can improve. If he shares his learning curve, he might provide a new route for others to do their best.
Brookhaven Town Councilman Kevin LaValle, at center, is honored by Centereach VFW Post 4927 at its annual Gold Chevron Ball last month. File photo from Town of Brookhaven
By Daniel Dunaief
Brookhaven Town Councilman Kevin LaValle (R-Selden) has worked on big projects in the 3rd Council District, although it is his ability to hone in on some of the smaller quality-of-life details that impressed Bram Weber, a partner with the Weber Law Group in Melville.
Weber worked with Kimco Realty, the owners of Independence Plaza mall in Selden, which recently brought in new tenants and renovated the property.
LaValle has “noticed things I may not have noticed the last time I was at the property,” Weber said. “He digs deep into the details of his job.”
Indeed, LaValle, whose last name has become synonymous with public service on Long Island, is earning his own admirers as he focuses on everything from rebuilding roads, to continuing construction on a new park in Selden, to improving the aesthetics and ease of shopping in his district, to searching for businesses to bring into the area and create jobs.
Brookhaven Town Councilman Kevin LaValle, on right, welcomes paralyzed U.S. Marine Corps Lance Cpl. William Ventura to his newly renovated and handicap-accessible home in Selden. File photo from Town of Brookhaven
For LaValle’s dedication to his work on behalf of his constituents, while maintaining a job as a mortgage loan originator at Lynx Mortgage Bank in Westbury, Times Beacon Record News Media names the councilman a 2016 Person of the Year.
“The fact that he can balance [his roles] is quite tremendous,” said Zahra Jafri, president of Lynx Mortgage Bank, who described LaValle as “honest, ethical and service-oriented.” LaValle “does what he says he’s going to do.”
Councilwoman Jane Bonner (C-Rocky Point), who has known LaValle for 12 years, said he dug in from the moment he was elected.
“It’s impressive what he’s been able to accomplish so quickly,” Bonner said.
Indeed, Bonner cited the work the third-year councilman did to help bring businesses to Selden’s Independence Plaza.
“We were able to work with the property owner and redevelop that site,” which now has a Rite Aid and a Guitar Center, LaValle said. Five Guys Burgers and Fries is expected to move in within the next six months. “I am always looking to work with property owners who have vacant stores to bring in new businesses, whether they be big-name companies or new businesses just getting started.”
LaValle, whose district includes Lake Grove, Centereach, Selden and parts of Lake Ronkonkoma, Farmingville and Coram, said it is a challenge to fill large sites, and is excited that Ocean State Job Lot moved into the former Pathmark site in Centereach and Best Market took over the former Waldbaums site in Selden.
He sees his role as creating a way to share the community’s perspective with business.
At town board meetings, LaValle honors a business of the month. He instituted that process when he first entered office. He chooses a business that is recommended by a community organization, such as the chamber of commerce, for supporting the community through charitable acts.
Bonner said the spotlight on these businesses also helps deliver the message to residents to shop locally, work with fellow business owners and the Chamber of Commerce.
Brookhaven Town Councilman Kevin LaValle, on left, celebrated the Selden Dog Park festival in October with the unveiling of a memorial bench in honor of deceased police dog, Ace. File photo from Town of Brookhaven
“You can tell he knows these businesses and has visited them,” town Supervisor Ed Romaine (R) said. “He has taken a personal interest in knocking on doors and asking what’s going on, how can we help, and what is bothering you?”
Romaine has worked with LaValle on a sport complex in Selden that currently has what Romaine describes as two “world class” turf baseball fields, with dugouts, fencing and lights behind Grace Presbyterian Church.
LaValle was the “chief motivator and instigator in getting things moving” with this park, which sits behind Hawkins Path Elementary School, Romaine said. “He made sure everything stayed on the timetable we set.”
The park will be breaking ground soon on redeveloping a baseball field to a multipurpose field, which LaValle hopes will be done by the summer. In 2017, engineers will design the remaining part of the park as well as roadway improvements along Boyle Road and Hawkins Road to handle the additional traffic.
LaValle worked to redesign a planned dog park. He said he met with residents to talk about the park, which is divided into areas for large and small dogs, and hosted a public meeting.
LaValle worked with the owners of a batting cage site in Selden that was the regular target of graffiti. He put the property owner in touch with a security company in California that uses wireless, motion-activated cameras to take a video whenever someone walks on the property. This should reduce the number of false alarms police responded to with the other types of security systems, LaValle said. It will also help law enforcement catch those who are defacing the property.
LaValle said working as a councilman and a mortgage loan originator puts pressure on his schedule, which can require him to work 17 days in a row without a break.
“My family is understanding about my commitment,” he said. “If I show up late for a party, they get it. They understand what’s going on.”
His family has been down this road before. His cousin, Ken LaValle, has been a state senator (R-Port Jefferson) since 1976. Kevin’s brother, John Jay LaValle, is a former town supervisor and is the Suffolk County Republican Committee chairman.
“Invariably, someone comes to meetings and calls him Ken or John,” Bonner said. “He handles it really well. He has a good sense of humor about it.”
Brookhaven Town Councilman Kevin LaValle honors Centereach High School Student of the Month, Troy Lee, in October.
The councilman said each of the politicians in his family has his own style. He’s taken to the notion that working hard will bring good results.
Those who have seen LaValle in action believe he practices what he preaches.
“He’s a hard worker,” said Donna Lent, Brookhaven town clerk. “I don’t think it has anything to do with his name. I judge people by what they do.”
A resident of Selden, LaValle graduated from Centereach High School. He earned a bachelor of arts from Salisbury University in Maryland. Before running for office, he worked for then-county Legislator Dan Losquadro (R) as his chief of staff.
Bonner, who also worked for Losquadro before becoming a councilwoman seven years ago, described how LaValle’s high energy benefits everyone in the office.
“I can hear him when he’s on the phone with residents and constituents, while he’s trying to solve their problems, he’s so high energy that he’s bouncing a ball against the wall,” Bonner said.
Having LaValle as a member of the council has put a “spring in the step” of other council members. “It’s impossible not to have that [energy] affect you.”
As the liaison with the highway department, LaValle collaborated with Losquadro, who is now highway superintendent, to complete a 23-road paving project near Centereach High School and Dawnwood Middle School.
As LaValle learned from watching his brother and cousin, he knows that he’ll hear from members of his constituency wherever he goes.
LaValle is “deeply engaged with the community,” Romaine said. “It’s been a joy to work with him. He has no reticence to take the initiative.”
Alan Alda received the Double Helix Award from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory this month. Photo by Constance Brukin, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
By Daniel Dunaief
In a world of tirades and terrifying tweets, the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University is encouraging its professors and students to do something the center’s namesake urges: Listen.
Tough as it is to hear what people mean behind an explosive expression that fuses reason and emotion, the scientists in training, established researchers and others who attend some of the lectures or workshops at the center go through an exercise called “rant” in which each person listens for two minutes to something that drives their partner crazy. Afterward, the scientist has to introduce their partner to the group in a positive way.
Alan Alda. Photo by Constance Brukin, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
The staff at the Alan Alda Center finds inspiration, a role model and a humble but willing listener in Alda, the highly decorated actor of “MASH” who has spent the last several decades drawing scientists out of dense shells constructed of impenetrable jargon and technical phrases.
For his dedication to forging connections for scientists, Times Beacon Record News Media is pleased to name Alan Alda a 2016 Person of the Year.
“He’s doing a wonderful job,” said Jim Simons, the former chairman of the Stony Brook Mathematics Department and hedge fund founder who shared the stage with Alda this summer as a part of a Mind Brain Lecture at Stony Brook. “I can’t think of anyone better to be an honoree.”
Simons described a moment with Alda, who is not a scientist nor does he play one on TV, when he was sharing some abstruse mathematics. Alda’s eyes “glazed over when I was first talking to him. He’s teaching scientists not to get a glaze over their audience’s eyes.”
Alda works tirelessly to share a method that blends scientific communication with the kind of improvisational acting he studied early in his career.
“Improv is not about being funny,” said Laura Lindenfeld, the director at the center. “It’s about being connected.”
Last June, Alda was a part of a team that traveled to California to share an approach that is in demand at universities and research institutions around the world. The day of the workshop, three people who were supposed to help lead the session were delayed.
Alda suggested that he run the event, which would normally involve several instructors and break-out groups. Learning about the art of connecting with an audience from someone who reached people over decades through TV, movies and Broadway performances, the attendees were enchanted by their discussion.
“He’s the master,” said Lindenfeld, who was at the campus when the team received news about the delay for the other instructors.
As soon as the session ended, Alda headed for Los Angeles to conduct a radio interview.
“I handed him a granola bar,” recalled Lindenfeld, who joined the center last year. “I was afraid he hadn’t eaten.”
Alda celebrated his 80th birthday earlier this year and shows no signs of slowing down, encouraging the spread of training techniques that will help scientists share their information and discoveries.
“He’s teaching scientists not to get a glaze over their audience’s eyes.”
— Jim Simons
The Alda Center is planning a trip to Scotland next year and has been invited to go to Norway, Germany and countries in South America, Lindenfeld said.
When the University of Dundee received a grant from the Leverhulme Trust to create the Leverhulme Research Centre for Forensic Science, officials in Scotland, one of whom knew Lindenfeld personally, researched the Alan Alda Center’s mission and decided to forge a connection. Lindenfeld helped coordinate a congratulatory video Alda sent that the Scottish centre played at its opening ceremony.
“Everyone present from the highest Law Lord in Scotland, through to the principal of the university and the Leverhulme trustees did not know it was going to happen, and so it was a huge surprise that stunned the room into complete silence,” recalled Sue Black, the director of the centre in an email. “Brilliant theatre of which Mr. Alda would have been proud.”
Established and internationally known scientists have expressed their appreciation and admiration for Alda’s dedication to their field.
The training sessions “drag out of people their inhibitions and get them to think about interacting with the public in ways that they might not have felt comfortable doing before,” said Bruce Stillman, the president and CEO of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. This month, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory gave Alda the Double Helix Medal at a ceremony at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
Stillman described the public understanding and perception of science as “poor.” To bridge that gap, Alda’s programs “induce scientists to feel comfortable about talking to the public about their ideas and progress.”
Nobel Prize winner Eric Kandel suggested that Alda’s accomplishments exceed his own.
“There ain’t many Alan Aldas, but there are a lot of Nobel Prizes out there,” Kandel said. While Kandel is “extremely indebted to having won the Nobel Prize,” he said the totality of Alda’s accomplishments are “enormous.”
The Alda Center is working with Columbia University, where Kandel is the director of the Kavli Institute for Brain Science and a professor, to develop an ongoing program to foster scientific communication.
Alan Alda, left, at a ceremony at the American Museum of Natural History. Photo by Constance Brukin, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Kandel, who considers Alda a friend, appreciates his support. Kandel said Jeff Lieberman, the chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia, asked Alda and Kandel to give a talk on issues related to neuroscience. Lieberman “was my boss,” Kandel said, “I had to be there, but [Alda] didn’t have to be there. He goes out of his way for people.”
In 2017, the center will not only share its communication techniques around the world, but it will also create conferences for timely scientific topics, including climate change and women in science.
The glass ceiling is a “real issue for women in science,” said Valerie Lantz Gefroh, the improvisation program leader at the center. “We’re hoping to give [women] better communication tools so they can move forward in their careers.”
The center is also adding new courses. Next fall, Christine O’Connell, who is a part of a new effort at Stony Brook called the Science Training & Research to Inform Decision and is the associate director at the center, will teach a course on communicating with policy and decision makers.
That will include encouraging scientists to invite state senators to see their field work, going to Congress, meeting with a senator or writing position papers. In political discussions, scientists often feel like “fish out of water,” O’Connell said. The course will give scientists the “tools to effectively engage” in political discussions.
Scientists don’t have to be “advocates for or against an issue,” O’Connell said, but they do have to “be advocates for science and what the science is telling us.”
Given an opportunity to express her appreciation directly to Alda, Black at the University of Dundee wrote, “Thanks for having the faith to collaborate with our centre so far away in Scotland, where we are trying to influence the global understanding of forensic science in our courtrooms — where science communication can make the difference between a guilty or an innocent verdict and in some places, the difference between life and a death sentence.”
To borrow from words Alda has shared, and that the staff at the center believe, “Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you.” Even if, as those who have gone through some of the sessions, the speaker is ranting.
Huloin Xin. Photo courtesy of Brookhaven National Laboratory
By Daniel Dunaief
The unexpected appearance of Swiss cheese may be preferable to the predicted presence of a balloon. When it comes to the creation of catalysts for fuel-cell-powered vehicles, the formation of a structure that has miniature holes in it may reduce costs and improve energy efficiency.
Using a state-of-the-art facility where he also supports the work of other scientists around the world, Huolin Xin, an associate materials scientist at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials at Brookhaven National Laboratory, recently made the discovery about the structure of a cheaper catalyst. Xin and his collaborators published their work in Nature Communications.
Huloin Xin. Photo courtesy of Brookhaven National Laboratory
The finding “goes against conventional wisdom,” Xin said. “If you have a precursor that’s nanometers in size that’s a metal and you heat it up in oxygen, normally, it would grow into a hollow structure, like a balloon.” Instead, Xin and his colleagues discovered that mixing nickel and cobalt produces a structure that has porosity but is more like spherical Swiss cheese than a balloon. The new architecture has more material crammed into a smaller region than the hollow balloon. It is also stronger, creating a broader range of potential applications.
Scientists at Brookhaven and at other institutions around the world are seeking ways to take advantage of the growing field of nanotechnology, in which physical, electrical or other types of interactions differ from the macromolecular world of hammers, nails and airplane wings. These nanomaterials take advantage of the high surface area to volume ratio, which offers promise for future technologies. What that means is that these materials contain numerous surfaces without taking up much space, like an intricate piece of origami, or, in Xin’s case, a sphere with higher packing density.
The potential new catalyst could be used as a part of an oxygen reduction reaction in an alkaline environment. In a car that uses hydrogen, the reaction would produce water with zero emissions, Xin said. To see the structure of this catalyst, Xin used environmental transmission electron microscopy and electron tomography. The TEM uses computed axial tomography. This is similar to the CAT scan in a hospital, except that the sample Xin studied was much smaller, about 100 nanometers in size, which is 100 times thinner than the width of a human hair.
In addition to determining and defining the structure of the final product, scientists are trying to understand the process that led to that configuration. They can use the environmental transmission electron microscope, which allows gas flowing to study the formation of the catalyst.
Charles Black, the director at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials, said Xin is “off the charts talented” and is a “world leader” in figuring out ways to get more information from the electron microscope. Xin, Black said, has helped create a three-dimensional picture by tilting a two-dimensional sample at different angles in the microscope. “He had already made great strides in improving the speed with which this could be done,” Black said. “He’s also improved the process to the point where you don’t have to be a super expert to do it anymore.”
By slowing the reaction in the nickel-cobalt catalyst down and studying how it forms, Xin uncovered that the shell is not solid: It has pinholes. Once those small holes form, the oxygen infiltrates the pores. The process repeats itself, as shells form, then break up, then oxygen forms another shell, which breaks up, until the process leads to a spherically stacked collection of Swiss cheese structures. The process is ready for industrial-scale applications, Xin said, because the whole synthesis involves putting the elements into a furnace and baking it. While this could have applications in fuel cells, the catalyst still awaits a breakthrough technology with alkaline fuel cells.
The technological breakthrough Xin awaits is an alkaline membrane that can conduct a hydroxyl group. “We are definitely doing research for the future,” he said. “We’re still awaiting the essential element, which is the ionic conductive membrane, to become a technologically mature product.” Xin isn’t focused on creating that membrane, which is a task for organic chemists. Instead, his main focus is on inorganic materials.
As a member of the BNL staff at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials, which is a facility that provides technical support to other scientists, Xin spends half of his time with other researchers on the TEM and half of his time on his own research. “We really have been fortunate to have found someone like [Xin] who wants to excel in both sides of his mission,” Black said “Someone as talented as [Xin], who is very smart with big ideas and increasingly ambitious in terms of what he wants to accomplish for himself … checks his ego at the door and he helps others accomplish their goals.” To improve his ability as a colleague, Xin reads about what the users of the TEM are doing and talks with them about their work.
Xin has been working at BNL for over three years. When he’s not in the lab, Xin enjoys traveling to snorkel in the U.S. Virgin Islands, including his favorite destination, St. John. A skier, Xin’s favorite winter recreational mountain is Lake Placid. Xin grew up in Beijing, where his father is a professor in a business school and his mother is an engineer. He appreciates the opportunity to engage in a broad universe of fields through the work he does at BNL and appreciates the scientific partnerships he’s formed. “My primary focus is on creating novel microscope techniques that can advance the electron microscopy field,” he explained. “I apply them to a variety of materials projects.” Xin estimates that half of his materials application projects come from collaborators.
Almost seven years ago, I wrote my first email to request an interview for a story. In between now and those seven years, the correspondent and I have dropped many of the formalities of our exchanges and have shared personal details.
She’s known about big events in my life, mostly related to my kids, while I was aware of when she was getting married.
Recently, she shared the exciting news that she is pregnant. I am thrilled for her and the husband I’ve never met because parenthood is such a spectacular experience, opportunity, and challenge.
Less than a week after hearing about her pregnancy, I spoke with someone for another story I’m researching. When this person heard my last name, he immediately asked me if I was related to someone. Most of the time, that someone is my mom, who works visibly and tirelessly in the communities these newspapers serve.
When I was younger and people asked me about my mother, I would look down or look away, because I couldn’t answer questions about the way my mom’s paper covered something or because I was far too busy reading the batting averages for the latest Yankees to share insights about someone who was and is such an inspiration.
As I’ve grown, I’ve become more appreciative of the questions and more prepared to look people in the eye — yes, mom, I’m teaching my kids to do that, too — to hear what they have to say and to provide a thoughtful answer.
But, this person wasn’t asking me about my mom. He wondered if I was related to Dr. Dunaief, his former ophthalmologist. Hearing the question surprised me. My father died almost 30 years ago. We talk about him regularly amongst ourselves, wondering what he would have thought of the people he’d never met, including my wife, my brother’s wife and his grandchildren. We tell our children stories about him so they know who he was and they appreciate their heritage.
The person said my father was a great doctor. I told my children about the interview and the mention of their grandfather. I asked them what they thought the conversation meant.
Both of them looked me in the eye for a long time as they considered their answers. “He must have been a good doctor,” my son said.
“Wow, that’s amazing. He made that connection all these years later,” my daughter offered.
Yes, I thought, they’re right. And, they had an idea of what it means to make meaningful and lasting connections. Whatever we do, whoever we see on a daily basis, we have an opportunity to create a legacy that extends long after we’re no longer involved in the same routine.
Some parts of who we are, or who we were, remain, whether that’s through our children or grandchildren, or through the memory of an action or interaction. I remember sitting in my father’s office one day when he took me to work and watching as he pulled glass out of the eye of a patient who had been in an accident at a construction site. The patient, a man much more muscular and stronger than my father, fainted in the chair. My father calmly removed all the equipment and revived him. He demonstrated such incredible grace, control and professionalism.
So, as I think about the connection between the expectant mother and the memory of my father, I hope she creates positive, lasting memories for her unborn child, even as that child grows and develops a meaningful legacy.
In medieval times, armies needed to understand the structure of the castles they were about to attack. Enough information could enable a leader to find a weakness and exploit it, giving his troops a plan to take over the castle. Today, researchers use advanced tools to study the molecular structure of everything from tumors to the protein plaques involved in neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer’s disease.
Recently, William Van Nostrand and Steven Smith, scientists at Stony Brook University who have worked together for over 10 years, discovered subtle differences in amyloid fibril structures that surround blood vessels and neurons. Many forms of the structures likely have some contributory effect to cognitive declines, although researchers debate the extent of that contribution, Van Nostrand said.
Above, William Van Nostrand completes a triathlon this past September in Lake George. Photo courtesy of William Van Nostrand
Amyloid fibrils in plaques in the space between neurons have subunits lined up side by side in a head-to-head manner. Van Nostrand and Smith’s new work, which was published in Nature Communications, showed that vascular amyloid subunits, which are on the vessel’s surface, have a different configuration, lining up side by side in an alternating head-to-toe pattern.
This structural difference generates a new set of questions that might provide insight into ways to diagnose or treat diseases or cognitive declines. The structural difference in the vascular forms may provide a way to determine how they uniquely contribute to cognitive decline, which could have implications for diagnostic and therapeutic intervention.
“We want to know if these different structures cause different responses,” said Van Nostrand, who was the co-lead investigator in the study with Smith and is a professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at Stony Brook. The research came from a close structural analysis of the amyloid buildup in mouse models of the disease. Van Nostrand provided the animal models and did the vascular amyloid isolation, while Smith, a professor and the director of structural biology in the Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, conducted the structural study.
“The more we understand about how these peptides assemble (and which components and structural motifs actually are toxic to neurons), the easier it is to target” the problem, Smith explained in an email. While the mouse models the scientists studied may have some differences from the human forms of the disease, Van Nostrand said the group also conducted some preliminary studies that showed that vascular amyloid from human vessels has the same structure as the vascular amyloid in isolated vessels from the mice.
Van Nostrand and Smith have “investigated the structure of vascular amyloid in one case of a transgenic mouse and from vessels isolated from the brain of one human patient that had spontaneous cerebral amyloid angiopathy,” Smith said. “In both cases, the structure was anti-parallel, which provides some confidence when we start investigating additional mouse and human samples, we will also find the structure is anti-parallel.”
Van Nostrand’s lab studies pathogenic mechanisms in neurodegenerative diseases, including cerebral amyloid angiopathy. In Alzheimer’s disease, patients have these amyloid or protein plaques around neurons. In about 90 percent of these, people also have protein buildup around blood vessels, where the amount can vary.
Amyloid plaques on the surface of blood vessels are “a lot more common than previously thought,” Van Nostrand said. The consequences of these amyloid fibrils on blood vessels can affect other conditions and treatments for medical challenges including an ischemic stroke. Typically, doctors can prescribe a tissue plasminogen activator. While the drug works to break up the blood clot in the brain, it can cause amyloid blood vessels, if they are present, to bleed, which is a serious side effect.
It would be particularly helpful for doctors and their patients if they knew with certainty before doctors gave any drugs whether the patient had any of these plaques around their blood vessels. The current state of the art in searching for these plaques around blood vessels is to look for any signs of bleeding.
Van Nostrand and Smith are searching for biomarkers that could indicate the presence of specific types of amyloids. “If you had a probe that would recognize a structure, can you also use that for imaging?” Van Nostrand asked. Such a probe might be able to distinguish between the parallel and anti-parallel orientation of the proteins in the plaques.
Van Nostrand said there are rare mutations that create blood vessel amyloids, without the plaque between the neurons. People with only blood vessel amyloids have cognitive impairments, Van Nostrand said, but it’s not the same as Alzheimer’s pathology. In addition to partnering with Smith, Van Nostrand works with Lisa Miller, a biophysical chemist at Brookhaven National Laboratory and collaborators in the Netherlands.
A resident of Poquott, Van Nostrand competes in triathlons and iron man events. During the offseason, when the weather isn’t particularly warm, he still does some training. Van Nostrand’s oldest son, Joffrey, who earned his undergraduate degree at Stony Brook, graduated from law school and is now working at a law firm in Wisconsin. His younger son, Kellen, is applying to graduate school to study psychology. Van Nostrand has an 11-year old daughter, Waela, with his wife Judianne Davis. Waela has done two triathlons and “puts me to shame in 100 yards swimming,” Van Nostrand proudly confessed.
As for his work, Van Nostrand, Smith and their collaborators are focused on understanding how to exploit any differences in the plaques, so they can make progress in the battle against neurodegenerative diseases. “We are interested in understanding structure and pathological functions” of different states of the subunits of amyloid fibrils, Van Nostrand said.
From left, David Tuveson with Kerri Kaplan, the executive director and chief operating officer of the Lustgarten Foundation, and Sung Poblete, the CEO of Stand Up to Cancer. Photo courtesy of the Lustgarten Foundation
By Daniel Dunaief
Even as David Tuveson was recently fishing for tautog for dinner, he conducted conference calls on a cellphone while watching the clock before an afternoon meeting. A professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and a world-renowned expert in pancreatic cancer, Tuveson describes the research of some of the students in his laboratory as having considerable bait in the water.
The director of research for the Lustgarten Foundation, Tuveson recently assumed greater responsibility for a larger boat, when he was named director of the Cancer Center at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, taking over a role the lab’s president Bruce Stillman held for 25 years. The Cancer Center, which is one part of CSHL, will be in “great hands since Dave Tuveson has wide respect int he cancer community because of his research accomplishments and his talents in leading others,” Stillman explained in an email.
Stillman, who will continue to run his own lab and serve as the President and CEO of CSHL, described Tuveson as a “thought leader” and a “great scientist.” Tuveson and his team of 20 in his laboratory are approaching pancreatic cancer in several directions. They are searching for biomarkers for early detection, developing and testing drugs that preferentially target cancer cells and seeking to uncover the molecular pathways that turn a mutated gene, inflammation, or an illness into a tumor.
Tuveson, who has MD and PhD degrees, focuses on finding ways to use science to help patients. He will continue the Cancer Center’s mission to understand the fundamental causes of the disease, while adding some new strategies. He plans to develop nutrition and metabolism as new areas for the Cancer Center and will recruit “ a few outstanding faculty,” he explained in an email.
CSHL will also expand its skills in immunology and chemistry. Tuveson has dedicated himself and his laboratory to taking innovative approaches to a disease that had received only one-half of 1 percent of the National Cancer Institute’s annual research budget in 1999. That is up to 2 percent today, according to the Lustgarten Foundation, which is the largest private funder of pancreatic cancer research.
Tuveson and his team have become leaders in the developing field of organoids. By taking cells from a tumor or cyst, scientists can produce a smaller copy of the tumor from inside a partial, reproduced patient pancreas. The painstaking work enables researchers to look for the specific type of tumor in a patient, while it also provides a model for testing drugs that might treat the cancer. The technique of growing organoids has become so refined that researchers can create a structure that’s a mix of normal, healthy cells blended with the tumor.
Scientists can then take the resulting structure, called a chimera, and test the effectiveness of therapies in destroying cancers, while monitoring the side effects on healthy cells. Stillman believes Tuveson’s work with pancreas cancer organoids “is at the cutting edge of research in this area.” Tuveson’s lab is using organoids to study what Tuveson, for whom metaphors roll off the tongue as often as characters break into song in Disney movies, describes as kelp-like projections. Each cell has parts that project out from the membrane. His staff is looking for changes in the kelp.
Tuveson is encouraged by work that might help find a subtle protein shift, or changes in the structure of the kelp, as a telltale sign about the type of tumor a patient who is otherwise asymptomatic might have. Doctors might one day screen for these during annual physical exams. Other scientists are so interested in the potential benefits of these organoids that they are attending a training session in Tuveson’s lab that started early this month.
A post doctoral candidate in Tuveson’s lab, Christine Chio, is studying how reactive oxygen affects the growth and stability of cancer. In general, medical professionals have recommended antioxidants to protect health and prevent disease. In pancreatic cancer, however, antioxidants are necessary to keep cancer cells alive. An abundance of reactive oxygen can cause cancer cells to shut down.
“The irony is that cancer cells make their own anti-oxidants and are very sensitive to reactive oxygen — thus we use reactive oxygen to kill cancer cells,” Tuveson explained. Chio, Darryl Pappin, a research professor at CSHL, and several other scientists published their work this summer, in which they identified protein translation as the pathway protected from reactive oxygen species in cancer cells.
At the same time that Tuveson is overseeing the work searching for biomarkers and treatments in his lab, he is also encouraging other research efforts through his work with the Lustgarten Foundation. Started in 1998 when former Cablevision executive Marc Lustgarten developed pancreatic cancer, the Foundation invested $19.4 million in 2015 to pancreatic cancer research and is projected to invest $21 million in 2016.
The mission of the Foundation is to advance research related to the diagnosis, treatment and cure of pancreatic cancer. It also offers patient advice, information and a sense of community through events. Indeed, recently, as a part of a phase 2 clinical trial at Johns Hopkins Kimmel Center, the Foundation offered to provide a free genetic test for microsatellite instability, or MSI, to anyone who might benefit from it as a part of a diagnosis and treatment. MSI occurs in about 2 percent of pancreatic cancer patients. Those with this genetic characteristic responded to a particular type of treatment, called pembrolizumab. The study is still seeking to increase enrollment.
The Foundation is encouraged by the progress scientists like Tuveson have made. “We are hopeful about the future because we know that we have the most talented cancer researchers working on this devastating disease,” Kerri Kaplan, the President and Chief Operating Officer at the Lustgarten Foundation, explained in an email. “We are particularly optimistic about the organoid project and the implications it has for more effective treatments and the work being done on our ‘earlier’ detection program.”
Still, Tuveson and the Foundation, which received donations from 62,000 people in 2015, realize there’s a long way to go. “Pancreatic cancer is an incredibly complex and difficult disease which is why we need to stay focused on funding the most promising research,” Kaplan said.
The first time we hold them, they fit into the corner of our arms with room to spare. Their impossibly small pink toes fit neatly in our eyelids as we kiss their wiggling feet.
We lower their grocery-sack-sized bodies gently into their cribs. During the day we bring food to their toothless mouths, and their bodies process the food as they take what they need and leave the rest for us to clean and remove.
Suddenly they are coasting, looking into the side of a couch, a chair or our legs, standing for the first time. Amid the cheers and squeals, they fall and we rush to the floor near them and congratulate them. Before long we’re bending down, gently holding tiny hands engulfed in our oven-mitt-sized palms.
From their first walking steps, they progress to trotting. It’s a wonderful yet terrible transition, as their developing minds can’t process dangers at the same rate that their feet propel them. We keep up or race ahead, making sure they don’t step off a curb until all movement on the street has stopped.
They no longer want to sit in the car seat. They arch backs that are shorter than our arms, making it impossible to buckle them in. We distract them enough to close the clasps, run to the front seat and bring the car to a high enough speed that they sleep.
We take them roller skating, skiing or ice skating. We start them early so they’ll become naturals. Brilliant idea, except that they need us to put our hands under their armpits to keep them upright. After a time far too short for our kids’ liking, our backs scream to stop. We can’t bend down or our spines will go on strike. At that point, these small people want hot chocolate or the chance to try skiing, snowboarding or rollerblading on their own.
We stand on a field, tossing a ball lightly near their gloves. They throw the ball back in our general direction, discouraged that they haven’t discovered the magic of a catch. We get down on one knee, look them in the eye, pull up their small chins and smile, hoping we can teach the mechanics of throwing before they become too upset to keep trying.
We protect their heads from colliding with the tops of tables, reach for glasses from the cabinet, and help them into the seats at restaurants where their feet dangle far from the floor.
Pretty soon, they want to ride a bike. We promise to hold on but our backs, yet again, have other ideas. They shout at us for letting go or, maybe, they decide they want to do it on their own because they saw Timmy down the street on his bike.
Their faces, arms and legs get longer, they pick up speed everywhere they go and, before long, their heads are above the level of the kitchen table. They reach down to pet the neighbors’ big dog, and they sit in restaurant chairs with enormous feet that rest on the floor and which we wouldn’t dare put anywhere near our eyelids.
We no longer have to bend our necks to kiss the tops of their heads. In fact, with their braces gleaming in the sun, they stare or glare from under the long hair of adolescence directly into our eyes. Pretty soon we hope, as we go to sleep each night, they will be taller than we are.
Wonderful as that moment is, maybe — just for an instant — we remember that the head perched atop this growing body is the same one that fit so snugly into our arms all those years ago.
Above, Shyamalika Gopalan. The image on the screen shows methylation levels with age. Photo by Casey Youngflesh
By Daniel Dunaief
The Museum of Natural History in New York City features a slice of a 1,400-year-old sequoia tree that was cut down in California in 1891. The cross section of the tree offers a testament to history on its inside. That’s where the tree rings that grow every year mark the passing of another year. As it turns out, humans have something in common with trees. While people may not have rings in bones that an observer can see, they do have age-related changes in their genetic material, or DNA.
Human genes go through a process called methylation in which a methyl group comprised of a carbon and three hydrogens attaches to DNA. Methylation upstream of a gene generally reduces transcription, or the copying of that gene into messenger RNA that can then begin the process of building proteins.
Shyamalika Gopalan demonstrates how she prepares to extract DNA. Photo by Casey Youngflesh
Using broad time-based methylation changes, Shyamalika Gopalan, who is earning her doctorate at Stony Brook University in the Department of Ecology and Evolution, recently received a three-year grant from the Department of Justice to refine an understanding of methylation and aging. The DOJ would like to use this kind of analysis to gather more information from a scene at which the remaining clues include DNA that isn’t in one of its databases.
Gopalan isn’t the first scientist to study genetic methylation and aging. Other scientists have used blood, saliva and other tissues. She is starting with one type of tissue in the bone. “I’m trying to make” the analysis “more specific to bones,” she said. She doesn’t know how much variation she will find in the age-related methylation patterns depending on ethnicity and lifestyle. “It does appear that some sites are remarkably ‘clock-like,’” she said. “It is these types of sites I’m hoping to find and use in my research.”
Gopalan explained that millions of sites can be methylated. She’s hoping to hone in on those that act more like a clock and that change in a linear manner with time. She’s not sure how many sites she’ll use and said some changes in methylation involve removing methyl groups. “Some methylation increases and some decreases,” she said. “If you know the pattern with age at any site, you can start to build an estimate from those.”
Methylation occurs with age for several possible reasons. “A major theory for these changes in methylation level with age is that the epigenetic patterns are drifting from the optimum,” she said. “This may explain some, or even most, of the changes we observe, but I don’t think it is universally true for all sites in the genome.” Still, there probably is a biologically relevant reason why some of these sites are changing, she suggested.
Gopalan said we know that these methylation patterns are crucial in early development, from conception to birth and she suggested it probably doesn’t completely stop changing there. Some sites are probably regulated throughout life.
Gopalan is hoping to have the bone data prepared by this summer and then believes she’ll be able to get methylation types and start working on a computer algorithm to build a predictor for the next year. After her initial work, she will also shift to saliva and blood.
Like a scene from “Law & Order” or other crime shows, the DNA methylation test may be another clue for police officers or prosecutors to use to rule in or out potential suspects from a crime scene where DNA, but not a driver’s license, is left behind. If the genetic material is not in a database, “you could build a profile and it could be useful for narrowing down suspects,” Gopalan said. At this point, she is taking data for people of age classes but with different ethnicities and lifestyles and comparing them to people of a different age with a similar range of backgrounds and lifestyles.
Gopalan is using samples from medical schools around the New York area, borrowing from anatomy departments where people have donated their bodies to research or teaching. More broadly, she is interested in studying diverse populations, especially in Africa. She has worked with her thesis advisor Brenna Henn, exploring methylation from two different populations. These are the ‡Khomani San of South Africa and the Baka of Cameroon.
Gopalan was interested in working with methylation as a biomarker for aging when she came across this funding opportunity from the DOJ. “It was a good fit for what I had already been studying,” she said, adding that she hopes this method will be used in the future in forensics to assist in criminal investigations.
Krishna Veeramah, an assistant professor of primate genomics at Stony Brook and the chair of her thesis committee, described Gopalan as an “intellectually engaged student who is always eager to absorb information.” Veeramah explained in an email that he thinks “there is scope for this work to transition from basic research” to an application “in criminal forensics and related areas. It will certainly require more work and testing.”
Gopalan has been at SBU for over three years. She lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and commutes about 90 minutes each way most days. She enjoys the beaches, farms, apple picking and the natural beauty of the area. Gopalan would like to continue to perform research after she earns her doctorate, whether that’s with a company, a research institution or with a university. She is excited about extracting and working with DNA, particularly from archeological sites. These samples “come from a field and, once you dust them off, it makes it personal. This is a part of a story.”
Setauket residents continue a Renaissance Technologies tradition
Stony Brook Cancer Center. File photo
Generosity, particularly towards Stony Brook University, runs in the family at Renaissance Technologies.
Lalit Bahl, a veteran of the hedge fund, and his wife Kavita, who are Setauket residents, recently agreed to donate $10 million to a new translational research program that will complement Stony Brook’s effort to understand and conquer cancer. The financial gift, which will support a metabolomics and imaging center that will provide individualized cancer care, comes two years after the Bahls donated $3.5 million to a similar effort.
Bahl said he was following a long-established tradition.
“Many of my colleagues at Renaissance have donated significant amounts to Stony Brook and in particular the medical side over the years,” Bahl said. “I’ve heard from some of them about some of the projects that they have been involved in. I’m sure that played some part in my decision to make this donation.”
Another compelling factor in that decision, Bahl said, was the prevalence of cancer in his family.
Jim Simons, former chairman of the Mathematics Department at Stony Brook, founded Renaissance Technologies, bringing in a range of expertise to understand and predict movements in the stock market. Simons and his wife Marilyn have made significant contributions to Stony Brook that have helped bring in talented staff.
Indeed, in 2012 the school recruited distinguished scientists Yusuf Hannun, the director of the Cancer Center and Lina Obeid, the dean for research and professor of medicine. Hannun and Obeid, with the support of other senior faculty in the Cancer Center, will help oversee the creation of an advanced metabolomics and imaging center in the new Medical and Research Translation building when it opens in 2018.
Lalit and Kavita Bahl pledge $10 million to new cancer research program. Photo from Stony Brook University
“We have high-powered, brilliant investigations in cancer medicine,” Hannun said. “This creates the capability that will allow them to take their work to the next level, in developing new therapeutics as well as in imaging studies.”
The new facilities include a cyclotron, which is used to create novel tracer molecules for PET scanning, hot labs that produce radioactive tracers for the cyclotron, two PET scanners and research labs.
Imaging will enable doctors to monitor patients, in some cases without excising a tissue sample or performing surgery.
The imaging will “distinguish between a tumor [that] is necrotic and dying [and one] that’s metabolically active,” said Obeid. That will help track and monitor the patient’s response to various medicines and chemotherapy in a noninvasive way.
Metabolomics is the study of the small molecules or metabolites that help cells function. Some of those metabolites provide energy while others could act as signaling molecules, and still others could be involved in other structural or functional effects.
In addition to new equipment, Stony Brook will add new scientists to its fight against cancer. During the first phase, the school will recruit an oncological imaging researcher, a matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization researcher and a magnetic resonance spectroscopy researcher. In the second phase, Stony Brook will hire a new scientist in experimental therapeutics.
Ken Kaushansky, the dean of the School of Medicine, appreciates the progress the school is making in cancer research and is energized by the combination of philanthropic gifts and investments from the university.
“There’s something remarkably catalytic about a brand new building,” Kaushansky said. He said he’s had regular discussions with people who want an opportunity to work in the new facility.
While the broader goal is, and continues to be, to make important discoveries that will help in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer, Kaushansky reiterated the school’s desire to earn a National Cancer Institute designation. This designation, which has been given to 69 institutions throughout the United States, raises its visibility and increases the opportunities to become part of research initiatives, while it also improves the chances that an individual scientist will obtain research funding from the National Cancer Institute, according to that organization’s web site.
“We have far surpassed the threshold of cancer research needed to acquire an NCI designation,” Kaushanksy said, which he attributes to Hannun’s efforts. Stony Brook is “now focusing on building up our clinical research prowess. That’s the second major component. I like our chances.”
The next area Stony Brook hopes to build is cardiovascular imaging, Kaushansky said.
“We have some remarkable cardiovascular surgeons and some terrific cardiovascular biologists,” Kaushansky said. “We need some outstanding cardiovascular imagers to work with [them]. We can use the incredible tools that we are building to do to cardiovascular medicine what we are doing to cancer.”
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