UPDATE: “The Strangers’ Case” won the Jury Award for Best Feature at the Stony Brook Film Festival.
TBR News Media reporter Daniel Dunaief recently spoke with Brandt Andersen, writer and director of the film “The Strangers’ Case,” about five families in four countries who are confronting the refugee crisis. Andersen will attend a screening of his feature film directorial debut at the Stony Brook Film Festival on July 20th at the Staller Center.
Listen to the episode now.
By Daniel Dunaief
Friend or foe? The question isn’t as easy in the world of molecular biology as it might be after captains pick players for a team.
An important biomolecule in one context could trigger the growth or spread of cancer, while in another system or organ, that same signal might suppress or stop the development or growth of a disease that can threaten people’s health.
So it is for G-proteins, which, in some tumors, serve as tumorigenic signaling hubs that participate in invasion and metastasis and promote inflammation and immune evasion.
In tumors “there was this notion that it works in a certain way, driving tumor development and progression,” said Mario Shields, Associate Professor of Research Pathology at Stony Brook University. “We had that original hypothesis when we investigated it in pancreatic cancer. We found that it’s the opposite.”
Indeed, when the specific proteins he studies, called G alpha 13, are absent, mouse models develop well-differentiated tumors that reduce their survival.
“My research now is to understand why it’s playing the opposite role that we initially expected,” Shields, who joined Stony Brook in July after six years at Northwestern University.
Having worked at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in the lab of Mikala Egeblad from 2012 to 2018, Shields is returning to the Long Island area with a focus on defeating a problematic type of cancer that steals precious time from people and robs families of important members.
“I have come to appreciate the dire situation of people who are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer,” Shields said. “We need to figure out how to lower the curve.”
A recipient of the National Cancer Institute’s Moonshot Award, Shields is one of the first 11 Cancer Moonshot Scholars who received a total of $5.4 million.
The program, which was launched by the Biden administration in the summer of 2023, seeks to advance cancer science while diversifying the pool of early-stage researchers and approaches to research that NCI funds.
The goal of the program is to inspire and support scientists from diverse backgrounds, including those from underrepresented groups in the biomedical sciences.
The NCI award, which Shields brings with him to Stony Brook, will support his efforts.
Egeblad, who is now Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Tumor Microenvironment, has stayed in contact with Shields since he left her group. The work he’s doing is “very important” in understanding the “basic mechanism of pancreatic cancer progression” as he has been “very successful in making discoveries and raising funds for his research.”
Egeblad appreciates his contribution to her lab. Shields “was responsible for establishing our research program in pancreatic cancer,” she explained. “Before he joined my lab, I had only worked on breast cancer and [Shields] established the various models to also study pancreatic cancer — models that we are still using.”
Building on CSHL work
At CSHL, Shields worked in Egeblad’s lab and received advice and oversight from David Tuveson, Cancer Center Director at CSHL, who developed the mouse model Shields uses.
Shields has been using human and mouse cell lines to interrogate the mechanism of action of these G proteins in suppressing cancer.
At Stony Brook, he plans to use patient samples to develop patient-derived tumor specimens.
The major hub of what Shields is studying is the mTOR pathway, which stands for mammalian/ mechanistic target of rapamycin. First isolated in a bacteria on Easter Island in the middle of the 20th century, rapamycin is an immunosuppressant drug.
Any defects that activate the mTOR pathway can lead to the growth and development of cancer.
A developing field
Shields explained that the G protein he is studying, G alpha 13, is a “niche” area right now, with few other labs pursuing the same mechanistic pathway. The G proteins are of more interest to molecular pharmacology and drug design.
In his studies, Shields hopes to use the information on the response to changes in the protein to predict how patients respond to therapy that inhibits the mTOR pathway.
Specifically, he is exploring how alterations in the microenvironment can cause the tumor to progress in pancreatic cancer.
Shields has found some “interesting dependencies” in the mechanism he’s studying. In the first year of work at Stony Brook, he would like to figure out how Ga13 regulates mTOR signaling, as the current context dependency is vague.
The gene that codes for this protein is not heavily mutated. Shields anticipates that a threshold level of the protein may be responsible for conveying its benefit in suppressing cancer, rather than a specific mutational change.
He is eager to explore whether nutrient availability plays a role in cancer progression through the reduction in this G protein. He has exploring that in vitro and is curious how that will translate at the organismal level.
Returning to Long Island
Shields had recently been Research Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University.
Having worked at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Shields felt comfortable moving back to the Long Island area.
“Stony Brook is a good place to do research,” said Shields.
Additionally, Shields was impressed with the number of people who had presented their research from Pathology Chair Kenneth Shroyer’s lab at a conference.
“Further discussions [with Shroyer] indicated we have areas of common interest in terms of pancreatic cancer,” Shields added.
Shields appreciates the greenness of Long Island. When he worked at CSHL, he enjoyed walking on trails and enjoyed the variety of fall colors.
Shields brought one person with him from Northwestern and plans to have a lab of about six people.
As for running his lab, Shields plans to “be patient” and to “see where people are coming from and what they are capable of” as he takes on the role of mentor for members of his lab at Stony Brook.
Shields hopes to inspire and encourage under represented groups to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math.
Egeblad suggested that Shields is warm and calm, which “helps those entering the field really take to his instruction.” She added she believes he is an inspiration to many young scientists.
By Daniel Dunaief
With the rematch between President Joe Biden, 81, and former President Donald Trump, 78, no longer a possibility, local and national Democrats are tapping into a renewed political energy.
After President Biden announced that he was ending his bid for a second term and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, democrats not only contributed a record amount of money to the likely presidential candidate, but also showed more interest in local races.
“People are excited to be a part of something bigger than themselves,” said John Avlon, who is running against Nick LaLota to join the House of Representatives for New York’s 1st Congressional District. “We’ve seen an increase even over typical levels in both volunteerism and donations in the last 24 hours.”
Avlon suggested that the feeling on the ground has changed fundamentally, with Democrats becoming more “fired up” about the prospects in the White House and in the House of Representatives, where toss-up seats like the first congressional district could determine which party has a majority.
A potential repeat of the contested 2020 election had made many democrats uneasy, particularly after a disastrous debate performance by Biden, who validated concerns about his age with awkward silences and uninspiring replies.
The likely ascendance of Vice President Harris, who received endorsements even from those considered potential candidates for president and who has secured enough delegates to be the Democratic nominee, has generated attention and interest among the voting public and has raised the prospect for greater voter turnout in an election that is just over 100 days away.
The change at the top of the ticket provides a “good opportunity to engage voters even beyond the Democratic party,” said Rebecca Kassay, the Democratic candidate for state Assembly District 4, who is running against Republican Ed Flood. She feels the focus on politics from the president to local elections has given her more of an opening to speak with independents and unaffiliated voters and get their thoughts on local issues.
The increased energy and interest around politics, where people in supermarkets, restaurants, gyms and coffee houses are suddenly eager to discuss the changing landscape at the national level, has provided a “great opportunity for local candidates to not have to worry about exciting democrats,” which gives them a chance to reach out to unaffiliated voters and republicans who might consider voting for a democrat, said Keith Davies, Suffolk County Democratic Committee campaign manager.
Davies added that candidates don’t have to spend as much time fielding questions about President Biden’s cognitive abilities.
To be sure, Avlon acknowledged that the political winds, at a local and national level, are bound to blow in different directions as the election approaches.
“There will be good and bad days ahead,” he said. “We shouldn’t over index any one moment.”
Kassay added that the national winds can blow one way or another, with little local control.
Nonetheless, local democratic leaders suggested that this unprecedented decision by an incumbent president, occurring so close to the election, and the immediate effort to rally around Harris and to come together before the Democratic National Convention creates positive momentum.
A new energy
Local democratic politicians appreciated Biden’s efforts to build infrastructure, to lead a coalition to repel Russia’s aggression in the Ukraine and to continue to build jobs in a post-Covid economy.
“There was so much hand wringing because people were saying, at the same time, that Joe Biden did a great job,” but they weren’t confident in his ability to lead for another four years, said Brookhaven Town Councilmember, Jonathan Kornreich. Biden “made this rather courageous decision” to end his campaign.
The effect has been to inspire the democratic political base.
“Everybody who I talked to is energized,” said Steve Englebright, Suffolk County Legislator for the 5th Legislative District. “The implication is that we’ll have enthusiasm and interest, and that will translate into strong turnout.”
Englebright suggested that the number of democratic voters has wider swings in turnout than the number of republican voters, with democrats varying by as much as 30 percent, or more.
Democrats around Suffolk County not only expect higher voter turnout, but also anticipate that more voters would listen to the candidate platforms and make informed decisions.
“There’s a new sense of optimism and that’s palpable,” said Englebright. “That’s going to translate into more people participating and getting involved.”
Higher voter turnout also means that residents can vote on two propositions that will be a part of the 2024 ballot in New York.
The first would add protection against various forms of discrimination, such as sexual orientation, gender identity and pregnancy, to the state constitution. The second would extend and revise the Suffolk County Drinking Water Protection Program. This proposal would establish a Water Quality Restoration Fund, that would be supported by a sales and use tax of 1/8 of a percent.
Female candidates
Democratic leaders were also excited to support the second woman to run for president, after Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful 2016 campaign against Trump.
“I see the ascension of a democratic candidate at the top of the ticket, who is a woman of color, a woman of substance, in terms of her accomplishments, as validating the idea that women are equally ready” to serve in any political office, said Englebright.
Kassay is excited to be on the same ballot with other women, including Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, state Senate District 1 candidate Sarah Anker and Harris.
“I’m energized and inspired to be running with our first potential female president,” said Kassay. “That, for me, is an honor and historic.”
By Daniel Dunaief
When we don’t know how to reprogram our remote control for our garage, search engines like Google can not only offer a written explanation, but can also provide videos with step by step guides that make even the least mechanical people — okay, me —barely competent.
Yes, I can change most light bulbs. Let me rephrase that: I can change most conventional light bulbs. For whatever reason, the fluorescent ones that require turning them at exactly the right angle befuddle me.
Google can also help us find ways to improve our daughter’s softball swing, can explain the Pythagorean Theorem, and can give us quizzes to help us prepare for important exams in school.
When we don’t know the history of an important event, when we want to find some information about someone before we go to a job interview, or when we are curious about what other movies someone who looks vaguely familiar in a streaming show has also been in, we can type their names and find instant answers.
And yet, shockingly, Google and other search engines have their limitations.
Search engines connect the words we’re looking for to the information, or misinformation, available online. These engines don’t have a fact filter, a scientifically proven filter, or an incontrovertible truth filter. It’s up to us to decide whether what we see or read is valid.
In fact, I would advocate for a high school class on information vs. misinformation, giving students a chance to think for themselves to spot online fakes. Most teenagers and 20-somethings, for example, can spot an altered photograph based on the unusual shape of an arm, different shading patterns, or, perhaps, a turn in a shoulder that defies our normal biological range of motion.
When people are in panic mode about a rash, the sudden onset of vague symptoms — a high fever, fatigue and muscle aches, perhaps — they sometimes race to plug those symptoms in to a search engine in the hopes of self diagnosing.
While that might save them the trouble of going to an emergency room in the middle of the night, where they could have to wait hours to see a medical professional, the use of a search engine can also create unnecessary anxiety and frustration or provide a false sense of security.
A search engine diagnosis that indicates you or your loved one might have some horrific disease likely raises your blood pressure and may cause you to drive erratically to a hospital.
A friend of ours once received a horrific call that his daughter was injured at school. During a long and excruciatingly painful drive through the night, he set his cruise control to the speed limit, despite his urge to drive 100 miles per hour. He recognized that he wouldn’t do himself, his family or his daughter any good by getting into a car accident or endangering the lives of others on the road during that painful trip. Fortunately, his daughter made a complete recovery.
Such rational thinking on the part of someone in intense distress, however, may not apply when people make a search engine diagnosis.
Recently, I spoke with Dr. Sharon Nachman, Chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Disease at Stony Brook Children’s Hospital, about several different viruses. I suggested to her that the symptoms for different conditions seemed remarkably similar, with the kinds of general physical discomfort, fever, and aches dominating the list, making it difficult to come up with an accurate diagnosis.
“That’s why Dr. Google is not the right answer,” Dr. Nachman said.
For illnesses or symptoms that rise to the level of genuine concern, people should consult physicians who can test for a range of potential problems, ruling out conditions until they come up with an informed diagnosis.
In some cases, time is of the essence, with drugs like Paxlovid providing effective relief for Covid-19 within a limited time window, or Ttaamiflu offering the most effective benefit for people with the flu within 48 hours of the beginning of symptoms.
And, while Google may help with your science homework, the search engine may prove especially useful in directing you to experts at hospitals or urgent care centers who can interpret your symptoms and offer an informed diagnosis.
By Daniel Dunaief
Paula S. Apsell wants to correct one of the more insidious myths about Jews during the Holocaust.
The award-winning filmmaker is showing the documentary Resistance – They Fought Back at the Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington on July 25, offering numerous examples of Jews who fought against the murderous Nazi regime.
The film from Apsell, who will be at the Cinema Arts Centre screening to speak with the audience, chronicles resistance in many forms, from getting married in secret, to having children, to holding concerts, to caring for the poor, to smuggling food and weapons into ghettos and, ultimately, to guerilla combat.
These stories of courage and a readiness to fight back when any form of resistance could mean severe punishment or death not just for the person rebelling but for many others paint a completely different picture than the one in which Jews surrendered meekly to their fate.
“There were seven rebellions in death camps, and six of them were led by Jews,” said Apsell, who won numerous awards as executive producer for PBS NOVA films. “They still mustered the courage to rebel knowing they would die in the rebellion” and almost all of them did.
The survival rate among Jews in general and those who the Germans found were rebelling, which includes many in their late teens and early 20’s who were fighting to protect and defend their families, was low.
While she was an executive producer at PBS for the Nova science series in 2016, Apsell traveled to Lithuania near Vilnius, where she produced a documentary for PBS about Jews who were brought to a site to burn the bodies of thousands of other Jews whom the Nazis had murdered.
At night with shackles on, they used spoons to dig a tunnel over the course of 76 days. When they escaped, they filed off their shackles and raced towards a forest, with 11 of them surviving through the rest of the war.
Building on this story, Apsell, who worked with Lone Wolf Media and co-directed the documentary with Kirk Wolfinger, started gathering information for the Resistance film in 2019 and completed editing the movie in September of 2023.
Apsell, who herself is conservative about what she shares with her eight and 11-year old grandchildren, suggested the documentary is appropriate for juniors in high school or older, unless they have had some level of education about the Holocaust.
Compelling lives
Amid the many stories of courage and sacrifice, Apsell felt a particular connection with Bela Hazan.
A courier who brought information, money and weapons to the ghettos, Hazan posed as a Polish Christian woman and traveled along dangerous roads surrounded by Nazis who would imprison, torture or kill her if they knew of her work.
After Hazan survived the dangers of the war, her son Yoel Yaari, who hadn’t heard of his mother’s wartime activities, found two notebooks containing details about her work.
Yaari, who is the Henri and Erna Leif Professor for Research in Neurodegenerative Diseases at the Hebrew University Faculty of Medicine in Jerusalem, has told people through articles and his book “Portrait of a Woman” about his mother’s “astounding courage and what she had done for the Jewish people,” said Apsell. “We can all learn about courage in adversity.”
Apsell suggested that scholars knew about the way Jews had resisted, but that lay audiences often say they thought Jews went to their death as sheep to the slaughter.
Other ways to watch the film
Apsell is in the final stages of putting together a broadcast deal, which she hopes will be ready in January to coincide with Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is on January 27.
She also plans to work with organizations that have relationships with schools and libraries so students can access the information.
These stories “ought to be a much more visible part of the history of the Holocaust,” she said.
“I had a mission to tell these stories,” Apsell said. “I felt like it was a personal commitment and a responsibility” to share these stories.
While Apsell appreciates and acknowledges that people who weren’t Jewish helped their Jewish friends, neighbors and even strangers, she felt like the focus on resistance has often been on outside help.
“In this film, my emphasis was on Jews rescuing other Jews,” she said.
The film includes interviews with five Jewish survivors who were among the resistance fighters. Resistance also uses considerable archival footage from organizations that had recorded interviews. The film’s narrators include actors Corey Stoll, Dianna Agron and Maggie Siff.
Dr. Jud Newborn, lecturer, author and curator at the Cinema Arts Centre, had an immediate reaction when he viewed the film.
“I was stunned,” said Newborn, who is an expert on Jewish anti-Nazi resistance and served as the founding historian of New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage. “No documentary covers the panoply of Jewish resistance in its many forms and in such a moving as well as revelatory manner.”
Newborn, who will host a discussion with Apsell right after the screening, added that he thought this was a “groundbreaking film.”
While Newborn describes all manner of Jewish resistance in his multimedia lecture programs, he learned new stories because the movie pulls together “the most cutting edge information,” he said. “The subject of Jewish resistance breaks stereotypes and is deeply inspiring and energizing and it’s also deeply moving because they had to overcome obstacles unlike any people under Nazi occupation or indirect rule.”
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The Cinema Arts Centre, 423 Park Ave., Huntington will screen Resistance – They Fought Back on Thursday, July 25 at 7:15 p.m. with filmmaker Paula S. Apsell in person followed by discussion with moderator Dr. Jud Newborn. Tickets are $18 per person in advance at www.cinemaartscentre.org
TBR News Media reporter Daniel Dunief recently interviewed Fawzia Mirza, Director and writer of the film “The Queen of My Dreams.” Set across two continents and spanning three decades, the movie, which will be screened at the Stony Brook Film Festival on July 19 at 7 p.m., highlights the similarities and tensions between a Pakistani Muslim mother and daughter during their formative years.
Listen to the episode now.
By Daniel Dunaief
When he was young, Simon Birrer asked his parents for a telescope because he wanted to look at objects on mountains and hills.
While he was passionate about science and good at math, Birrer didn’t know at the time he’d set his sights much further away than nearby hills or mountains in his professional career.
An Assistant Professor in the department of Astronomy and Physics at Stony Brook University, Birrer uses telescopes that generate data from much further away than nearby hills as he studies the way light from distant galaxies bends through a process called gravitational lensing. He also works to refine a measure of the expansion of the universe.
“All matter (including stars in galaxies) are causing the bending of light,” Birrer explained in an email. “From our images, we can infer that a significant fraction of the lensing has to come from dark (or more accurately: transparent) matter.”
Dark matter describes how a substance of matter that does not interact with any known matter component through a collision or pressure or absorption of light is transparent.
While they can’t see this matter through various types of telescopes, cosmologists like Birrer know it’s there because when it gets massive enough, it creates what Albert Einstein predicted in his theory of relativity, altering spacetime. Dark matter is effectively interacting with visible matter only gravitationally.
Every massive object causes a gravitational effect, Birrer suggested.
When a single concentration of matter occurs, the light of a distant galaxy can produce numerous images of the same object.
Scientists take several approaches to delens the data. They rely on computers to perform ray-tracing simulations to compare predictions with the astronomical images.
The degree of lensing is proportional to the mass of total matter.
Birrer uses statistics and helps draw conclusions about the fundamental nature of the dark matter that alters the trajectory of light as it travels towards Earth.
He conducts simulations and compares a range of data collected from NASA Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope.
Hubble constant
Beyond gravitational lensing, Birrer also studies and refines the Hubble constant, which describes the expansion rate of the universe. This constant that was first measured by Edwin Hubble in 1929.
“An accurate and precise measurement of the Hubble constant will provide us empirical guidance to questions and answers about the fundamental composition and nature of the universe,” Birrer explained.
During his postdoctoral research at UCLA, Birrer helped develop a new “formalism to measure the expansion history of the universe accounting for all the uncertainty,” Tomasso Treu, a Vice Chair for Astronomy at UCLA and Birrer’s postdoctoral advisor. “These methodological breakthroughs lay the foundation for the work that is being done today to find out what is dark matter and what is dark energy,” which is a force that causes the universe to expand at an accelerating rate.
Treu, who described Birrer as “truly outstanding” and one of the ‘best postdocs I have ever interacted with” in his 25-year career, suggested that his former student was relentless even after impressive work.
Soon after completing a measurement of the constant to two percent precision, Birrer started thinking of a “way to redo the experiment using much weaker theoretical assumptions,” Treu wrote in an email. “This was a very brave thing to do, as the dust had not settled yet on the first measurement and he questioned everything.”
The new approach required considerable effort, patience and dedication.
Birrer was “motivated uniquely by his intellectual honesty and rigor,” Treu added. “He wanted to know the answer and he wanted to know if it was robust to this new approach.”
Indeed, researchers are still executing this new measurement, which means that Treu and others don’t know how the next chapter in this search. This approach will, however, lead to greater confidence in whatever figure they find.
Larger collaborations
Birrer is a part of numerous collaborations that involve scientists from Europe, Asia, and Middle and South America.
He contributes to the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). A planned 10-year survey of the southern sky, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory is under construction in northern Chile.
The Simonyi Survey Telescope (SST) at the observatory will survey half the sky every three nights. It will provide a movie of that part of the sky for a decade.
The telescope and camera are expected to produce over 5.2 million exposures in a decade. In fewer than two months, a smaller commissioning camera will start collecting the first light. The main camera will start collecting images within a year, while researchers anticipate gathering scientific data in late next year or early in 2026.
The LSST is expected to find more strong gravitational lensing events, and in particular strongly lensed supernovae, than any prior survey.
Birrer is the co-chair of the LSST Strong Lensing Science Collaboration and serves on the Collaboration Council of the LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration.
Birrer is also a part of the Dark Energy Survey, which was a predecessor to LSST. Researchers completed data taking a few years ago and are analyzing that information.
From mountains to the island
Born and raised in Lucerne, Switzerland, Birrer, who speaks German and the Swiss dialect, French and English, found physics and sociology appealing when he was younger.
“I was interested in how the world works,” he said.
While attending college at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, he became eager to address the numerous unknown questions in cosmology and astrology.
“How little we know about” these fields “dragged me in that direction,” said Birrer.
An avid skier, mountaineer and soccer player, Birrer bikes the five miles back and forth to work from Port Jefferson.
In addition to adding a talented scientist, Stony Brook also brought on board an effective educator.
Birrer is “knowledgeable and caring, patient and at the same time, he knows how to challenge people to achieve their best,” Treu explained. “I am sure he will be a wonderful addition to the faculty and he will play a leading role in training the next generation of scientists.”
In terms of the advice he found particularly helpful in his career, Birrer suggested he needed a nudge to combine his passion for theory with the growing trove of available data. His PhD advisor told him to “touch the data,” he said. The data keeps him humble and provides a reality check.
The friction between thought and data “leads to progress,” Birrer added. “You never know whether the thoughts are ahead of the experiments (data) or whether the experiments are ahead of the thoughts.”
By Daniel Dunaief
When our children were young, our first, primary and most important mission was to make sure they were safe and healthy.
We didn’t sit down at the beach because each of them had a tendency, like me I suppose, to head directly into the water. Sometimes, they weren’t on board with our efforts to protect them.
We would put them in a car seat and, almost instantly, they would arch their backs so far that it was impossible to strap them in.
Or we would try to apply sunscreen and they would wiggle away and giggle, as we dropped a glob of white cream on the floor or sprayed it into the air.
We made them hold our hands even when they didn’t want to touch us. Anyone who read last week’s column can understand why my children, in particular, might not want to hold my intolerably sweaty hand during the heat of the summer.
We also urged them to wear bike helmets, even though they weren’t cool, to wear mittens or gloves in the winter and to get enough sleep so they could function the next day at school or at their numerous basketball/baseball/softball/volleyball/music practices over the weekend or in the evening after a long day of listening to adults talk at them.
One day, after a particularly exciting and challenging basketball game for our son, one of his friends asked if he could bring him to a movie with his family.
“Uh, I guess so,” I shrugged, as I counted the basketballs I shoved into a mesh bag to make sure I had exactly the number the league had given me. “What movie?”
“Hunger Games,” my son’s friend said.
I looked at my wife. I’d heard that the movie was particularly violent and knew that our son, who was under nine, might struggle to make it through a PG-13 movie, particularly one that involved violence among children.
“Are you sure you want to go?” I whispered to our son, hoping that I could encourage him to do something else that evening that might not cost him and, perhaps, us some sleep.
“Daaaaddd,” he said, giving me the can’t-you-be-a-fun-dad-just-this-once look.
My wife and I locked eyes, trying to figure out if either of us should step in and suggest that we’d rather he didn’t go.
We rolled the dice, holding our breath as he jogged away from us across the gym.
We considered taking a nap before he came home, just to prepare ourselves for a restless night.
When he finally returned, he had a broad grin on his face.
“You gotta see the movie, it’s amazing,” he said.
We weren’t sure whether he was just being tough in front of his friend or if he really liked it. Each of the next eight times we asked, he never changed his answer or wavered.
That night, all of us slept well.
Fast forward to today. Our kids are watching and streaming whatever appeals to them. Somehow, one of them asked if we had seen the series “Black Mirror,” suggesting it was a modern version of “The Twilight Zone.”
The first episode, with Salma Hayek, was clever and amusing at the same time. Playing herself, Hayek was particularly funny. Psychologically, it was what we thought and expected.
Then, we watched a few more episodes that became darker and more unnerving. Both of us lost some sleep after watching scenes that exceeded our gore threshold.
We started a text chain with our children, letting them know that we liked the first one and then felt as if the program did a bait-and-switch on us, taking us in a different direction from the psychological into the painful and gory.
They instantly offered their thoughts on different episodes and what they advised was appropriate for mom and dad to watch.
Our kids sent messages like “this one is not scary” and “I think it’s safe to watch.”
At least as far as some TV programs, we’ve come full circle. We are no longer trying to offer them parental guidance, at least where movies are concerned. Maybe they can help establish a new film rating system for sensitive parents.
By Daniel Dunaief
The State University of New York Board of Trustees has named former Rutgers President Richard McCormick, 76, interim president of Stony Brook University as the school continues its search for a seventh president.
McCormick, who will take over the reigns at the downstate flagship SUNY school on August 1st, replaces Maurie McInnis, who left Stony Brook after four years to become the president of Yale University on July 1.
Dr. Bill Wertheim, Executive Vice President for Stony Brook Medicine, has been serving as Officer-in-Charge and Stony Brook University Hospital’s Governing Body since July 1.
McCormick, who was president of Rutgers from 2002 to 2012 and has taught and studied United States political history in the 19th and 20th centuries, has over four decades of experience in higher education, including leading several highly ranked public universities.
McCormick will oversee Stony Brook University and Stony Brook Medicine and will serve as part of the management team of Brookhaven National Laboratory.
“Each step we take in this leadership transition is important, and we welcome Dr. McCormick,” John King, Jr, SUNY Chancellor said in a statement. “His vast higher education experience will continue to move this esteemed university forward as the campus conducts a national search for its new president.”
McCormick welcomed the chance to lead Stony Brook during this transition period.
Stony Brook “has achieved national stature yet remains fully engaged with its Long Island community, for which it is an economic engine,” McCormick said in a statement. “My thanks to the SUNY Board of Trustees, Chancellor King and the Stony Brook Council for this opportunity.”
As an interim president, McCormick will not be a candidate to become the next permanent president.
In addition to his tenure at Rutgers, which started in 1976 when he joined the history department, McCormick also was vice chancellor and provost at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1992 to 1995 and was president of the University of Washington from 1995 to 2002.
The incoming interim Stony Brook president earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Amherst College in American Studies and his PhD in history from Yale in 1976, 20 years before McInnis also earned her PhD in the History of Art from the New Haven-based Ivy league school she now leads.
McCormick started his academic career at Rutgers, where he was a member of the history faculty from 1976 to 1992. He was also Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
McCormick is the son of Richard Patrick McCormick, a former Rutgers professor and Katheryne Levis, a former Rutgers administrator.
McCormick and his father co-taught an American history course.
An author of several books, McCormick is writing a book on the history of American political corruption from the 17th century to the present.
Rutgers achievements
McCormick, who earned his high school diploma from Piscataway Township High School in Piscataway, New Jersey, orchestrated constructive changes in his hometown university during his presidency.
McCormick helped raise $650 million while he was president.
Four years after becoming president, the university reorganized the undergraduate colleges on the New Brunswick campus into a School of Arts and Sciences and School of Environmental and Biological Sciences.
The reorganization included a comprehensive new curriculum at the School of Arts and Sciences, first year seminars, signature courses, expansion opportunities for undergraduate research and honors programs and support for top undergraduates competing for highly competitive scholarships and awards.
In the final years of his tenure, he merged Rutgers with the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and divisions of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. The New Jersey Legislature passed a bill to integrate almost all units of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey into Rutgers.
“Dr. McCormick’s notable accomplishments as president of Rutgers from 2002 until 2012 included reinvigorating undergraduate education, elevating its standing in the top tier of public research universities, realizing a longstanding goal of returning medical education to the university’s portfolio, and improving and strengthening connections with important partners, including alumni and local communities,” Wertheim said in a statement. “He is the ideal leader to help Stony Brook sustain its momentum as New York’s flagship university.”
The former Rutgers president led the school when it installed 40,000 high-efficiency solar panels over two large surface parking lots on the Livingston campus, producing over eight megawatts of power, which, at the time, was the largest renewable energy system built on a college campus in the country. Rutgers has continued to add solar panels.
Stony Brook momentum
McCormick’s experience with solar energy dovetails with some of Stony Brook’s recent environmental initiatives and successes.
With the support of the Simons Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies, Stony Brook University won the competitive process as the lead institution to create a climate solutions center on Governors Island. The New York Climate Exchange will develop and deploy dynamic solutions to the global climate crisis, will provide educational and research opportunities and will serve as a place for New Yorkers to benefit from the green economy.
The Climate Solutions Center will include 400,000 square feet of green-designed building space, including research labs, classroom space, exhibits, greenhouses, mitigation technologies and housing facilities.
McCormick takes over as interim president at a time when Stony Brook has achieved some important financial and academic victories.
A year ago, the Simons Foundation made a $500 million endowment gift to Stony Brook. The gift, which will be spread out over seven years, was the largest unrestricted donation to an institution of higher education in United States history.
The Foundation gift, which the state will match on a 1:2 program, and other philanthropic contributions are expected to increase the endowment by as much as $1 billion.
Stony Brook recently climbed 19 spots in the rankings of colleges from US News and World Report, ranking 58th in the rankings. That’s the highest ever rank for a State University of New York institution. The school also placed 12th among national universities for social mobility rank.
“Stony Brook is a world-class institution, moving on an upward trajectory, educating the next generation of leaders and thinkers and bettering our society through research and economic development,” Stony Brook Council Kevin Law said in a statement. “I am pleased to welcome Dr. McCormick, whose accomplishments and vision in higher-education leadership are nothing short of extraordinary, as our interim president, and to begin the search for our next permanent president.”
Challenges ahead
McCormick will likely face the same some of the same challenges other university presidents, interim or not, have dealt with as protestors have expressed their frustrations over the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
At numerous universities, protests disrupted exams, classes and graduation ceremonies.
College presidents have tried to balance between the rights of students to assemble and express themselves and the university’s need to protect various groups of students from intimidation, bullying, or threats.
Local politicians welcomed McCormick. “I look forward to getting to know Dr. McCormick and collaborating with him to ensure that Stony Brook remains a premier institution of higher learning, providing a safe environment for students of all religions,” said Rep. Nick LaLota (R-NY1).
By Daniel Dunaief
In a world filled with disagreements over everything from presidential politics to parking places, numbers — and particularly constants — can offer immutable comfort, as people across borders and political parties can find the kind of common ground that make discoveries and innovations possible.
Many of these numbers aren’t simple, as anyone who has taken a geometry class would know. Pi, for example, which describes the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, isn’t just 3 or 3.14.
In classes around the world, people challenge their memory of numbers and sequences by reciting as many digits of this irrational number as possible. An irrational number can’t be expressed as a fraction.
These irrational numbers can and do inform the world well outside of textbooks and math tests, making it possible for, say, electromagnetic radiation to share information across a parallel world or, in earlier parlance, the ether.
“All electronic communication is made up of waves, sines and cosines, that are defined and evaluated using pi,” said Alan Tucker, Toll Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics at Stony Brook University. The circuits that send and receive information are “based on calculations using pi.”
Scientists can receive signals from the Voyager spacecraft, launched in 1977 and now over seven billion miles away, thanks to the ability to tune a circuit using math that relies on pi and numerous mathematical formulas where the sensitivity to the signal is infinite.
The signal from the spacecraft, which is over 16 years older than the average-aged person on the planet, takes about 10 hours to travel back and forth.
“Think of 1/x, where x goes to 0,” explained Tucker. “Scientists have taken that infinity to be an infinite multiplier of weak signals that can be understood.”
Closer to Earth, the internet, radio waves and TV, among myriad other electronic devices, all use generated and decoded calculations using pi.
“All space has an unseen mathematical existence that nobody can see,” said Tucker. “These are heavily based on calculations involving pi.”
Properties of nature
Constants reflect the realities of the world. They have “a property that is fundamental and absolute and that no one could change,” said Steve Skiena, Distinguished Teaching Professor of Computer Science at Stony Brook University. “The reason people discovered these constants as being important is because they are relating things that arise in the world.”
While pi may be among the best known and most oft-discussed constant, it’s not alone in measuring and understanding the world and in helping scientists anticipate, calculate and understand their experiments.
Chemists, for example, design reactions using a standard unit of measure called the mole, which is also called Avogadro’s number for the Italian physicist Amedeo Avogadro.
The mole provides a way to balance equations, enabling chemists to determine exactly how much of each reactant to combine to get a specific amount of product.
This huge number, which is often expressed as 6.022 times 10 to the 23rd power, represents the number of atoms in 12 grams of carbon 12. The units can be electrons, ions, atoms or molecules.
“Without Avogadro’s number, it would be impossible to determine the ratio of particular reactants,” said Elliot Smith, a postdoctoral researcher at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory who works in John Moses’s lab. “You could take an educated guess, but you wouldn’t get good results.”
Smith often uses millimoles, or 1/1000th of a mole, in the chemical reactions he does.
“If we know the millimoles of each reactant, we can calculate the expected yield,” said Smith. “Without that, you’re fumbling in the dark.”
Indeed, efficient chemical reactions make it possible to synthesize greater amounts of some of the pharmaceutical products that protect human health.
Moles, or millimoles, in a reaction also make it possible to question why a result deviated from expectations.
Almost the speed of light
Physicists use numerous constants.
“In physics, it is inescapable that you will have to deal with some of the fundamental constants,” said Alan Calder, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Stony Brook University.
When he models stellar explosions, he uses the speed of light and Newton’s gravitational constant, which relates the gravitational force between two objects to the product of their masses divided by the square of the distance between them.
The stars Calder studies are gas ball reactions that also involve constants.
Stars have thermonuclear reactions going on in them as they evolve. Calder uses reaction rates that depend on local conditions like temperature, but there are constants in these.
Calder’s favorite number is e, or Euler’s constant. This number, which is about 2.71828, is useful in calculating interest in a bank account as well as in understanding the width of successive layers in a snail shell among many other phenomena in nature.
Electron Ion Collider
The speed of light figures prominently in the development and calculations at Brookhaven National Laboratory as the lab prepares to build the unique Electron Ion Collider, which is expected to cost between $1.7 billion and $2.8 billion.
The EIC, which will take about 10 years to construct, will collide a beam of electrons with a beam of ions to answer basic questions about the atomic nucleus.
“It’s one of the most exciting projects in the world,” said Daniel Marx, an accelerator physicist in the Electron Ion Collider accelerator design group at BNL.
At the EIC, physicists expect to propel the electrons, which are 2,000 times lighter than protons, extremely close to the speed of light. In fact, they will travel at 99.999999 (yes, that’s six nines after the decimal point) of the speed of light, which, by the way, is 186,282 miles per second. That means that light can circle the globe 7.48 times per second.
The EIC will increase the energy of ions to 99.999% of the speed of light. With only three nines after the decimal, the protons will be traveling at a slower enough speed that the designers of the collider will make the proton ring about 4 inches shorter over 2.4 miles to ensure that the protons and electrons arrive at exactly the same time.
The EIC will attempt to answer questions about the mass and spin of the nucleus. They hope to understand what happens with dense systems of gluons. By accelerating nuclei or protons to higher energies, they will get more gluons and will look for evidence of gluon saturation.
“The speed of light is absolutely fundamental to everything we do,” said Marx because it is fundamental to relativity and the particles in the accelerator are relativistic.
As for constants, Marx suggested that its value might look like a row of random numbers, but if those numbers are a bit different, that could “revolutionize” an understanding of physics.
In addition to a detailed understanding of atomic nuclei, the EIC could also lead to new technologies.
When JJ Thomson discovered the electron, he toasted it by saying, “may it never be of use to anyone.” That, however, is far from the case, as the electron is at the heart of electronics.
As for pi, Marx, like many of his STEM colleagues, appreciates this constant.
“Once you look at the mathematical statement of pi, and how it relates in various ways to other quantities in math and physics, it deepens your appreciation of how beautiful the whole universe is,” Marx said.
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