When Patrick Meade was a child, he asked why? The answer often brought the same question: Why? The process continued through his schooling.

“When you do that for your entire life,” Meade explained, the ideal intellectual home for him became theoretical physics. Indeed, Meade, who joined Stony Brook University about six years ago, is now an associate professor at the C.N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics at Stony Brook.

Meade’s interests are in physics beyond the Standard Model, which describes how all known matter interacts with three out of the four known forces in the universe and what transmits these forces. He would like to help increase the microscopic understanding of all phenomena including dark matter and dark energy.

As he did when he was growing up, Meade continues to ask “why” questions that the Standard Model can’t yet answer. He would like to know, for example, why particles have the specific masses they do. When searching for the underlying description of the universe, he’d like to think some things were more than random and explore the possibilities for deeper underlying explanations.

As a theoretical physicist, Meade analyzes data that comes from experiments at places like the Atlas Experiment at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. He then checks to see if pieces of the data fit within the context of existing frameworks, or if the data suggest a new theoretical direction or, perhaps, an extension of an existing theory.

“Part of a theorist’s job is to interpret data of unexplained things and postulate other ways to look for the consequences of a theory that would explain the data,” he said.

This December, experiments at Atlas, working at a new, unexplored energy level, found a possible particle six times heavier than the Higgs boson that theorists hadn’t predicted. The higher the energy of the collider, which was running at the highest energy ever created for a collision in a lab, the more often a particle with heavier mass can be produced. They discovered a pair of photons of light that seemed to provide a possible signal of a new particle decaying, Meade said.

“The reason this is interesting is that, in the last several decades, we haven’t seen any evidence of a new particle that wasn’t predicted by theorists,” said Meade.

In the short two months since the announcement of this new and unexpected result, over 200 papers written all over the world have come out.

“This is a very interesting possible development and part of our work is to try to explain what this could be,” Meade said.

Indeed, Meade, postdoctoral fellow Sam McDermott and graduate student Harikrishnan Ramani published a potential explanation of what they described as a “diphoton excess” in arXiv, which is an electronic e-print of a scientific paper. The paper has also been accepted for publication in the journal Physics Letters B.

The paper Meade, who was recently promoted to associate professor from assistant professor, and his collaborators wrote has been frequently cited, said George Sterman, a distinguished professor and director at the Yang Institute. “He lays down a plausible set of scenarios and he also shows that it’s not so simple to explain this data.”

Sterman said Meade has written “a number of influential papers since he [arrived], which are completely consistent with a high level of research he was doing before” joining Stony Brook.

In describing this potential particle, Meade and his colleagues relied on a principal called Occam’s razor, which suggests that the simplest explanation is the most likely.

Meade suggested this was like tasting a dish at a restaurant and trying to recreate it at home using familiar ingredients. It may turn out that the home-cooked meal is exactly like the restaurant entree, although it may lack some unfamiliar items. When trying to cook the meal at home, people will start with familiar ingredients, but that may not be enough.

“In the case of this data that came out of Atlas and CMS [compact muon solenoid], the simplest explanation was something that looked like a relative of the Higgs,” he said. This particle, however, even if it was a relative of the Higgs, was wider than expected. To explain the data would require the particle interacting with particles other than those in the Standard Model.

“This could be a harbinger of an entirely new sector of particles in the universe, some of which could be dark matter, and this particle could also decay into this sector. If this particle turns out to be real, it would be the first particle ever discovered beyond the Standard Model.”

To be sure, it’s way too early for any conclusions, in part because it might not even be real. Even if it’s a new particle, “we definitely won’t know what the particle is without more data,” which should come this spring when the Large Hadron Collider starts running again.

When he’s not responding to new particles that may reveal something undiscovered, Meade dedicates his time to working on matter/antimatter asymmetry. In theory, after the Big Bang, matter and antimatter should have canceled each other out, leaving the universe devoid of things like planets, stars, cell phones and reality TV show hosts turned presidential candidates.

Meade lives in Port Jefferson Station, where, he says, he enjoys the balance of seaside living and small town culture a stone’s throw away from the “best city in the world.”

As for his work, he said what drives him is “trying to understand what are the basic laws of the universe.” Even without the ultimate answers, “partial discoveries along the way can shape our understanding of how we fit in with the rest of the universe.”

Flecks of gray hair appear near the temples, laugh or frown lines deepen and elbows become dry and scaly. These are some of the signs of aging that people see, particularly when they’ve known family and friends for decades.

Adam de Graff, a research assistant at Stony Brook University’s Laufer Center for Physical and Quantitative Biology, however, is studying changes that occur well beneath the skin.

Specifically, de Graff, Ken Dill, a distinguished professor of chemistry and physics and director of the Laufer Center for Physical and Quantitative Biology and graduate student Michael Hazoglou looked at the proteins that are damaged by free radicals, which are released during oxidation. These free radicals are molecules that have an unpaired electron and a high chemical reactivity that can damage proteins, DNA and lipids.

When people reach 80, about half their proteins are damaged by oxidation. de Graff, Dill and Hazoglou used physics and computer analysis to look closely at protein changes. These Stony Brook scientists recently published their results in the journal Structure.

The researchers studied “how naturally occurring damage to proteins affects their ability,” de Graff said. “Such an understanding is critical, as stability is essential to their function.”

The proteins these scientists identified could become a site for targeted treatment against age-related diseases, de Graff said. Proteins operate with a simple principle: Their shape, structure and flexibility determine their function. Their stability ensures their success in their roles. Proteins have many different functions, from transporting oxygen to providing structure and  hormonal signals.

Each of these protein functions requires a certain type of architecture. Protein structure is needed for a “complete understanding of function,” de Graff said. While other researchers have explored which amino acids are the most susceptible to oxidation, de Graff and his collaborators focused primarily on the charged amino acids.

The creation of free radicals is a universal side effect of respiration. Finding a drug, however, that might make the mitochondria, or the energy producer of the cell, work without causing damage, might increase the longevity of the cell machinery and the organism.

When comparing the life expectancy of birds to rodents, birds win out, living much longer, on average, than mice or rats. Some scientists believe this might be the case because birds have “much cleaner” mitochondria, de Graff said.

Indeed, a drug that makes human mitochondria work without producing as many protein-damaging free radicals might generate human cells that suffer less age-related damage.

Their method of analyzing and studying proteins could indicate which proteins are the most vulnerable to oxidative damage, while also indicating which are the most durable.

De Graff said he and Dill studied these proteins by using a computer code they wrote, which sorts through entire proteomes. They sorted through the proteins to find the proteins most destabilized by damage. They are predicting the degree of stability loss resulting from that damage.

De Graff said he has paid particular attention to studies that demonstrate a link between lifestyle choices and longevity.

Seventh Day Adventists, who have a restricted diet that doesn’t include as much animal protein, live, on average, six to seven years longer than the rest of the population. He suggested that some of what will help people live longer will have less to do with “genetic manipulation” than it will with making better and more informed choices about diet and health. It will be helpful at a protein level to understand “why dietary intervention has an impact on how we age.”

He is also confident that, over time, researchers will develop an enhanced understanding of the interventions that will protect proteins from damage. Equally important, he believes “we will enhance our understanding of interventions that enhance our ability to get rid of this damage as it is occurring or once it has occurred.”

De Graff likened the process of keeping a biological system running over time to managing a city. In the urban setting, the mayor might take the tax dollars and use it to build roads or fix bridges. As time goes on, the available tax dollars might diminish, which increases the importance of understanding the cost of each activity with age.

De Graff, who grew up in Canada and now lives in Stony Brook, said he was interested in math from the age of 5. When he was 6, he was already doing fourth-grade math. De Graff said he practices what he preaches — he has significantly reduced his consumption of animal protein and lives a clean lifestyle.

When he was in high school, he thought he’d become a physicist or engineer. He coupled that natural talent and appreciation with a desire to understand biological systems.

Banu Ozkan, an assistant professor in the Department of Physics at Arizona State University, praised de Graff’s efforts and his results. De Graff “always finds intriguing questions and is very inquisitive,” said Ozkan. “He’s a very hard worker. Whenever I came [to the lab], during weekends and sometimes at night, I found him working.” Ozkan predicted de Graff had a bright future.

As for his work, de Graff remains excited about the possibility of collaborating on future aging-related research.

“Without an understanding of what it takes to maintain individual proteins in their healthy state,” he said, it’s hard to “understand the interactions and aging processes inside the cell.”

It’s enough to make Dr. Seuss’ Horton the Elephant and the Whos — those brave little folks we would not want to lose — proud.

Gordon Taylor, a professor of Oceanography at Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, is taking a spectacularly close look at the micro community of organisms that live, eat, process elements like nitrogen, carbon, oxygen and sulfur, in droplets of ocean water.

In a milliliter of water, there are about a million bacteria, ten million viruses and about 10,000 protozoa, Taylor said. “Their cosmos is pretty much in a droplet of water.” Small though they may be, however, they are “ubiquitous,” with the ocean harboring millions of species or microorganisms.

Taylor is studying something he calls the “marine microbial community” whose composition, activity and ecosystem services vary in space and time. Understanding these communities can help oceanographers get a better grasp on the way these network of creatures affect ocean health, climate, pollution and disease in marine life.

Taylor is exploring the microbial food web in which prey items are creatures like bacteria and single-celled algae and predators are single-celled organisms that are the cousins of paramecium, amoeba and euglena.

These creatures also live with the “proverbial monkey wrench of viruses, which are also a part of this microbial food web. Every known form of life has at least one type of virus that has co-evolved to attack it,” Taylor suggested. Many organisms have multiple viral pathogens that challenge their health. On average, viruses outnumber bacteria by a factor of 10.

Colleagues at Stony Brook suggested that an appreciation for these microbial communities has broader implications.

“Understanding how microorganisms catalyze the cycling of nutrients and their responses to environmental change provides information for predictive models which are useful for informing future policy and management decisions,” explained Josephine Aller, a professor in the SoMAS. “Sometimes this information can help to alter conditions which have caused change and reverse ecological damage.”

The development of technology that can account for and interpret life at these smaller scales has enabled scientists of all kinds to ask a range of new questions about increasingly small parts of life. Physicists, for example, long ago went well past exploring protons, electrons and neutrons, and are studying quarks, gluons and other subatomic particles.

To study the marine microenvironment, Taylor will use confocal Raman microspectrometry and atomic force microscopy at the NAno-RAMAN Molecular Imaging Laboratory. A National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation program grant and matching support from Stony Brook helped establish the lab.

In Raman spectroscopy, researchers shine a laser light through a lens onto the specimen. This technology is used to grade commercial diamonds. When the laser light, which is a single wavelength, hits the specimen, most of the photons are absorbed or scattered at the same wavelength. In about one in a million cases, however, the light loses energy to a molecular bond, with potentially covalently bound elements of all sorts causing Raman scattered photons. The spectra produced are a fingerprint of molecular bonds.

Taylor has coupled this spectroscopic instrument with an atomic force microscope, which can look at the surface topography and structure of small creatures. “I believe that we are the only marine/atmospheric/environmental science program in the U.S. with such a system,” he said.

Even with the technology, the two and three dimensional imaging of what’s happening remains a significant challenge, Taylor said. To explore this, he will flash-freeze seawater containing microbial communities, organic particles, gels and minerals to examine spatial relationships of organisms and processes from as close to their perspective as possible, he said.

He will also conduct tracer experiments where he adds heavy isotopes of elements like carbon and monitors how organisms react. Taylor will start by proving that he can see the organisms and the way the miniature ecosystem works.

The late Carl Sagan, narrator and co-writer of the TV series “Cosmos: A Personal Voyage,” “wondered at the cosmos,” Taylor said. “We are enthralled by the microcosmos.”

Once Taylor can define the ecosystem, he can explore how changes in temperature, pH and other environmental conditions affect life in the water droplets.

He said the structure within this small community is like a spider web. Protein strands and gels give structure to the water. Biologists are becoming increasingly interested in the ecology of small creatures that interact in these spaces, creating micro-communities that, when multiplied exponentially across the ocean, affect the global climate and its ability to react to changes in carbon dioxide or increases in temperature.

Taylor lives in East Setauket with his wife Janice, their Rhodesian ridgeback dog Luca who is five and weighs 111 pounds, and an eight-pound Boston Terrier named Iggy Pup. The Taylors’ daughter Olivia lives in lower Manhattan and will start a master of fine arts program in the fall.

As for his work, Taylor said understanding small scales in biology is critically important. “We can’t fully understand epidemiology within populations, human diseases, immune responses or therapies without comprehending processes at the molecular level,” he said.

Or, as Dr. Seuss might say, a microorganism is an organism, no matter how small.

What, exactly, do test results mean? It is a question professionals in teaching, human resource and medicine grapple with routinely. A lower SAT score, for example, could reflect anything from a poor night’s sleep the night before, to a cold test room, to a lack of familiarity with the type and style of questions asked.

Similarly, doctors and researchers routinely use tests. Sometimes, the tests can show something specific, like a bone fracture or a break. Other times, however, the tests can leave room for interpretation, particularly if those tests involve processes that go on in a complex area, such as the mind.

Brian K. Lebowitz, director of neuropsychology training and clinical assistant professor of neurology at Stony Brook University, recently showed that a cognitive test might incorrectly suggest signs of the type of problems associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

“It’s possible that people are mislabeled because if [they] have a lifelong cognitive weakness, they [might] perform poorly” on the test, Lebowitz said.

Generally, people who have memory problems, or so-called mild cognitive impairment, visit Lebowitz or other neuropsychologists to understand if they are developing age-related problems or a chronic challenge, like Alzheimer’s disease.

Previous conditions or difficulty learning, however, may complicate a diagnosis in interpreting scores on any cognitive evaluations.

“If you had difficulty with cognitive processes that led to reading disorders in childhood, in forming complex language at age eight,” you might have it at age 80, Lebowitz suggested. “Our study, as well as clinical experiences, suggests that this is the case.” This, he continued, “is exactly what we would like to know.”

Lebowitz recently published his analysis in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.

“Some of the results on all different kinds of tests” can arise from different challenges because “different cognitive skill sets overlap,” said Thomas Preston, the director of Neuropsychology Service at Stony Brook. Lebowitz’s article on mild cognitive impairment can help those who work with patients gain a better understanding of a patient’s history “prior to any perceived decline.”

Lebowitz looked more closely at the possible connection between test scores and reading challenges after speaking extensively with adults who had performed poorly on reading tests.

“Often during the interview, a patient will indicate that they have always struggled with reading or that they were diagnosed with dyslexia,” Lebowitz said. “Based on the reported histories, it was clear that at least for some patients, cognitive test scores reflected longstanding difficulties.”

In more recent times, child psychologists and education professionals have focused on dyslexia and other reading difficulties. Around 50 years ago, assessing learning disorders was not part of the American educational system, said Lebowitz. “People may have been called slow learners or readers. If you were to ask an older adult if he had dyslexia, he’d have no idea,” he added.

Stony Brook’s neuropsychological assessment team sees a wide range of patients with difficulties that include dementia, stroke, people with vehicular brain injuries, cancer, tumors and numerous other challenges. They also see people with epilepsy and learning disabilities. Their patients range in age from pediatric to geriatric.

Lebowitz often provides information about why some people feel as though they are unable to succeed professionally or socially. With an older adult, he takes into account their life story, as well as their likely lifelong pattern of cognitive strengths and weaknesses, when interpreting test results, he said.

In addition to his research results and a good rapport with his patients, Lebowitz has helped reduce the evaluation time needed for adults, Preston said.

“He has a thorough but efficient method of evaluating” patients, Preston said. “Dr. Lebowitz has brought a new type of efficiency.” At one point, the typical neuropsychological evaluation could take as long as eight hours. That can now take two and a half hours, Preston said.

Lebowitz has been at Stony Brook for eight years and lives in Poquott with his 13-year-old Labrador retriever Japhy, whom he adopted as a rescue dog during his fellowship. For recreation, he enjoys taking a scuba diving trip each year. After returning from a trip to the Galapagos Islands in December he said, “every dive in the Galapagos was the best dive I’ve ever done.”

As for his recent research article, Lebowitz recognizes that there’s still considerable work to do to understand how to connect tests with diagnoses and treatment, particularly for mild cognitive impairment that might suggest Alzheimer’s.

“The challenge for all health care professionals who work with older adults is to identify cognitive decline at the earliest possible point,” he said. “As treatment options become available, identifying and treating patients before symptoms progress will be even more important.”

At this point, Lebowitz said he doesn’t know if he’s identified people who are being mislabeled as mild cognitive impairment because he has yet to follow them over time. People with a lifelong weakness “may be vulnerable to brain changes later in life.”

Still, these results highlight why it’s important for medical professionals to take into account a complete history in developing a diagnosis, instead of relying on a score on a particular test, he said.