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Daniel Dunaief

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Flu season is hitting New York and the country as a whole especially hard this year. Stock photo

By Daniel Dunaief

The flu season has hit with a vengeance in February, as a seasonal virus that can be deadly has  become the dominant cause of illness in the area.

Suffolk County hospitals reported 337 residents with influenza in the week ending Feb. 1, according to New York State Department of Health data.

Dr. Sharon Nachman

Just last year, for the 2023-2024 flu season, Suffolk County hospitalizations peaked on Dec. 30 at 52. Even in the year before, when people were starting to wear masks much less frequently than during the peak covid years, flu hospitalizations in the county peaked at 50 on Dec. 17.

“We are definitely seeing more people sick” with flu, said Dr. Sharon Nachman, chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Stony Brook Children’s Hospital. The emergency room is “wildly full, and even urgent care walk in is full.”

The number of positive cases of flu A at Stony Brook University Hospital in January was 800. That compares with 400 cases for the same strain last year, according to Nachman.

While the flu is cyclical and can cause different levels of infections from year to year, local doctors suggested that the overall flu vaccination rate was lower this year, which may have increased vulnerability to the virus and extended the time people exhibited symptoms.

The number of people vaccinated is “incredibly lower compared to past years,” said Nachman. On top of that, people may not have been exposed to the flu for several years amid measures to reduce the spread of Covid-19.

Residents’ immune systems may have “no good memory response” if the last exposure to the virus occurred some time before 2020, Dr. Nachman added.

The dominant strain of the flu this year is the A strain, which accounts for about 80 percent of the cases.

Nachman suggested that people who were vaccinated in early September may not have as much resistance to the flu this month, as their peak resistance, which typically lasts about three months, has wained.

Health care professionals added that people who haven’t been vaccinated could still receive the shot, as the flu season could continue to last for a month or more.

Dr. Adrian Popp

“It is not too late to get the flu shot,” Dr. Gregson Pigott, Commissioner of the Suffolk County Department of Health Services, explained in an email.

Dr. Adrian Popp, chair of Infection Control at Huntington Hospital, said the staff has been offering flu shots for residents who have were not already immunized.

“I don’t know how much longer this will last,” said Popp. “It’s still cold and it’ll be cold in March.”

Typically, it takes two weeks for the body to receive full protection from the shot. The shot does provide some incremental benefit immediately.

“You start building immunity from the moment you get” the shot, said Popp.

So far this year, there have been two deaths at Huntington Hospital, which is not unusual for the flu.

Mortality from the flu is “turning into what it used to be,” said Popp, with deaths at about pre pandemic levels.

High risk patients

High risk patients are typically older or have preexisting conditions.

People who have an inability to fight infections can get “much sicker from the flu,” said Dr. Alan Bulbin, St. Francis Hospital and Heart Center Director of Infectious Disease.

Dr. Gregson Pigott

Health care workers urged those who are in higher risk groups either to see their doctors if they start developing symptoms or to use some of the at home tests, including a recent one that can test for flu A and B, as well as Covid.

“If you are immunocompromised, you should have a low threshold,” said Bulbin. “You should speak with a doctor, go to urgent care, and do a swab. That may differentiate influenza” from other infections such as respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, and Covid.

The antiviral treatment Tamiflu can be effective if people start taking it within 48 hours of developing symptoms. Paxlovid, meanwhile, can also help within a few days of developing covid.

“We urge residents, especially those at risk for severe illness, to contact their medical providers at the onset of symptoms,” Pigott explained in an email.

Lower Covid and RSV levels

While the flu has infected a larger number of people than in previous years, the incidence of RSV and Covid has declined.

In Suffolk County, 90 residents are hospitalized with Covid, while the number of deaths from the virus is 29 since the start of the year, according to the New York State Department of Health.

That compares with 190 residents hospitalized last year and 96 deaths from Covid from Jan. 1 through Feb. 14.

“The virus that causes Covid-19 is still circulating and causing disease, although not as aggressively as in previous years,” Pigott explained.

RSV, meanwhile, rose in the fall, peaked in late December and has been falling since then.

RSV accounted for 0.2 percent of emergency department visits on Feb. 1, Pigott added.

Future ID doctors

Specialists in infectious disease were unsure how the pandemic affected the interest among doctors in training and residents in their field.

For some, the appeal of reacting to fluid circumstances and to gathering insights about a developing disease that could and did affect billions of lives could be appealing. For others, however, the demands, the hours, and increasing politicization of medicine as well as the divided response to vaccines could have pushed them in other directions.

“Am I concerned that not enough people are going into the specialty?” Nachman asked. “Yes.”

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Allison Wong with her project. Photo by Kelly Gwydir

By Daniel Dunaief

Over 150 students around Long Island recently caught the science bug.

Allison Wong with Marivia Fernández-Serra. Photo courtesy of Kelly Gwydir

Students from kindergarten through 12th grade made one-minute videos to celebrate historic women in science as a part of the Institute for Advanced Computational Science’s (IACS) second annual competition.

Contestants in the Stony Brook University challenge described their connection with women who sometimes operated in the scientific shadows, while they also described an experiment they did that highlighted an important concept or achievement from the work of historical role models.

“We want to recognize the importance of women in the history of science and engineering,” said Mónica Buggalo, a co-chair of the event and professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering  and at the IACS. Despite the young age of some of the participants, Buggalo was “blown away by how confident they are. It’s unbelievable.”

On Feb. 13, in honor of International Day of Women and Girls in Science, the finalists provided a two-minute summary of their work and then the IACS named the winners, who will receive cash prizes.

Baylee Stanton from Saxton Middle School and Allison Wong from Lynbrook South Middle School were tied for first place. Each of them will receive $875.

“I’m really proud of myself because this is a pretty advanced topic,” said Wong.

The students presented their one minute videos on any of 10 women.

Wong selected Katherine Johnson, whom she had studied in fourth grade during Black History Month.

“She inspired me to keep learning,” said Wong.

Allison Wong describing her project. Photo by Kelly Gwydir

After describing Johnson, who was one of the scientists featured in the movie “Hidden Figures” and for whom two NASA facilities are named, as an “African American mathematician who fundamentally transformed the field of aerospace engineering,” Wong went on to describe her project.

She set up an experiment using a catapult and four projectiles, in which she recorded the flight time and distance for a ping pong ball, cotton ball, bottle cap and marble. She recorded these measurements five times each at three different angles.

In an interview, Wong suggested that Johnson’s legacy is important as she calculated trajectories for the first US manned space flight and for Apollo 11.

Wong, who wants to be a doctor when she grows up, explained that the experience of competing made her feel “really inspired.”

She plans to put the money into a bank account and hopes to use it later in life.

Allison’s father David Wong was thrilled with the program and hopes it grows exponentially over the years, as the experience about researching women role models is inspirational.

David Wong said he himself knew about three of the scientists the contestants profiled, including Rosalind Franklin, who helped determine the double helical structure of the genetic material DNA and Marie Curie, who conducted ground breaking research on radiation and was the first woman to earn a degree from the University of Paris.

The opportunity to learn about the other scientists on the list was “eye opening,” David Wong said.

Designing a paper bag

Lucy Jane Sammarco. Photo courtesy of Samarco family

While many grocery shoppers might take the paper bag for granted, that is not the case for Hampton Street second grader Lucy Samarco.

Samarco learned about Margaret E. Knight, who had 27 patents and 100 inventions and was called “Lady Edison.” Knight developed the machine that created the flat bottomed paper bag, which is still in use today.

Samarco, who won an honorable mention for her entry and will collect $300 from the IACS, said the morning announcements in school included her result in the competition.

Her classmates clapped for her, which made her smile.

Samarco, who made a volcano that included baking soda, white crystals and water the weekend after the competition, wants to be a scientist when she grows up. Her favorite animal is the pink parrot.

Lucy’s mother Tricia Samarco was overwhelmed with emotion.

Lucy Jane Sammarco. Photo courtesy of Samarco family

All the competitors, who were mostly but not exclusively girls, were “absolutely amazing,” said Tricia Samarco. She said she was impressed with their confidence and their ability to speak in public.

Mike Samarco, Lucy’s father, was concerned that the project might be too challenging for Lucy and that he and his wife might not be able to offer much help.

“She kept coming back and saying, ‘This project looks exciting,” Mike Samarco said. Eventually, Lucy’s enthusiasm won the day.

Ultimately, Lucy has no shortage of ambition or ideas, suggesting she wanted to discover things, change the world and, perhaps, become president.

Strawberry DNA

Julia and Valerie D’Amico. Photo courtesy of D’Amico family

Mineola sisters Julia and Valerie D’Amico, who took home an honorable mention in last year’s competition, received a third place prize for their description and experiment on Franklin.

“She played a great part in discovering DNAs double helical structure,” said Julia, who is in 7th grade at Mineola Middle School. “We were inspired by her.”

The tandem, who received $500 for coming in third, conducted an experiment to extract DNA from a strawberry.

“It was cool seeing how you could do it,” said Valerie, who is in third grade at Jackson Avenue School. Valerie has longer term ambitions to study archeology.

Julia suggested that some of the women scientists from earlier times might have confronted biases against them if they were interested in science or math.

The combination plans to enter the contest again next year as well.

Enriching and enjoyable

Marivia Fernández-Serra, who also co-chaired the event and is a professor in Physics & Astronomy and at the IACS, appreciated how much fun the participants have.

She enjoys watching them take pictures with their scientists.

Fernández-Serra described the event as a “celebration of students.

The goal was of what she described as an “outreach activity” was to “get students excited about doing science and doing research and aspiring to come and start degrees at universities.”

Fernández-Serra suggested that the IACS may break the competition down into different age groups, with entries from elementary, middle school and high school.

Buggalo is thrilled that student competitors are demonstrating interest that extend beyond the challenge.

“There is a lot of excitement about science,” said Buggalo. “Some of them ask about opportunities that the university offers. We do have summer camps and academic activities in research.”

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Rob Martienssen with Nobel Prize winning scientist Barbara McClintock in 1990. Photo by Tim Mulligan, CSHL

By Daniel Dunaief

Cells, like the organisms they are a part of, are trying to balance between staying the same and making the kind of changes that might save a life or increase fitness.

At the cellular level, pieces of important genetic information, called small RNA, have the ability to introduce important so-called epigenetic changes. These alterations allow an individual to survive a potential threat, such as a disease or a toxin in the environment, without altering their DNA.

In a recent publication in the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and the University of Cambridge demonstrated that a slightly altered form of uridine, which is a combination of the base uracil and ribosome, can act as something of a master key throughout nature.

“When you see something like that conserved in plants and animals, it has to be basic in terms of inheritance or mechanisms,” said Rob Martienssen, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator who has been at CSHL since 1989.

Indeed, pseudouridine guides epigenetic inheritance, which, unlike a mutation, can represent a temporary change in gene function.

Pseudouridine helps transport small RNAs into reproductive cells in both plants and mammals.

Without pseudouridine, these small RNAs that lead to epigenetic changes can become the target of the body’s immune system, which reacts to anything that introduces changes into the genetic machinery as a potential threat, such as a virus.

The body’s Rig-1 pathway, which monitors the extracellular space for foreign genetic material, triggers a cascade of reactions that lead to the release of interferon by white blood cells.

“We think a conserved protein called RTL1 might provide this function in plants (and animals),” explained Martienssen.

Pseudouridine can signal to the body that these genetic codes that are heading towards the nucleus are “self,” keeping the immune system’s reaction at bay.

“It is known that pseudouridine (and other RNA modification) prevent recognition of long RNA as a virus by human cells and we think the same is true in plants,” Martienssen said.

Some viruses have effectively slipped behind the immune defenses by incorporating pseudouridine into their codes. The most famous example of this, Martienssen suggested, is the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, or HIV.

Parasitic nematodes and plants also transfer small RNA into the plants they are parasitizing.

Martienssen speculates that those RNA depend on pseudouridine. In his current experiments, he is testing that hypothesis.

Vaccinations

The immune system initially treated the developing mRNA vaccines that were so instrumental in providing an immune defense against COVID-19 as a viral threat, rather than a potential life-saving shot.

A strong immune response prevented the vaccine from providing any benefit.

By adding pseudouridine, among other chemical modifications, to the mix, the pharmaceutical companies created vaccines that functioned effectively without triggering an immune reaction that would otherwise block their effectiveness.

By contributing to a filter that evades immune detection, pseudouridine can also enable the kinds of epigenetic changes — apart and aside from human intervention — that contribute to survival during challenging conditions.

Small RNA that contains pseudouridine can induce epigenetic changes that might be caused by the environment or some disease, enabling an important alteration in the genetic code that could protect an individual against harm.

Martienssen and his team believe pseudourilyation is required to get into the germ line, the cells that are a part of contributing to the next generation. He believes pseudourilyation might also make the germ line more stable.

Martienssen’s collaborator from Cambridge, Tony Kouzarides, independently found pseudouridine in mouse small RNA.

Shorter term changes

As for the long term impact of these changes, epigenetic inheritance typically only lasts a half a dozen generations in animals like worms.

Well known enzymes, such as demethylases, can remove epigenetic marks over time, as several mechanisms are trying to “clean up” the genome before these changes become permanent.

Lower organisms, such as fungi, can become epigenetically resistant to drugs. Epigenetics gives them a lot more variation than they would otherwise have had under natural selection.

An example includes cryptococcus, an infection that can be deadly for immunocompromised people, Martienssen explained.

About five percent of the bases in ribosomal RNA are pseudouridine and 100 percent of ribosomal RNA molecules have these bases rather than uridine at these locations.

Martienssen interfered with the process in his experiments by knocking out an exportin, which is a protein required to export small RNAs. He was able to knock it out without killing the plant.

English origins

Martienssen grew up in Essex, England by the Blackwater estuary near Maldon, which is famous for its sea salt.

Martienssen lived his childhood close to London. Long Island and New York City remind him of home.

When he was eight years old, his father Anthony Kenneth Martienssen gave him the book “The Double Helix’ by former CSHL chair and Nobel Prize winner James Watson.

Martienssen’s father was an author and an aviation consultant who pioneered computer guided air traffic control, his son said. The family recently reprinted some of his father’s books from 50 to 75 years ago.

When he arrived at CSHL, Martienssen worked with Nobel Prize winner Barbara McClintock, who studied transposable genetic elements.

“She showed me how to isolate male germline cells (pollen precursors) from maize plants,” Martienssen recalled. “She told me not to make models, but to stick to the observations.”

McClintock’s earlier models had been more accurate than she realized at the time, he said.

As for his study of epigenetics, Martienssen explained that such alterations are “amazingly useful” in theory, as they can “be induced in many individuals at the same time (random mutations would only occur in one individual at a time), inherited, but then reversed when conditions change.”

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METRO photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

Uh oh. I started to feel sick more than a week ago.

What could it be?

Let’s see: I had a headache, my nose was running, I had a low grade-ish fever, although my thermometer was much more like a magic eight ball than an effective way to determine my temperature, and I was much more exhausted than usual.

Of course, I had…. well, what?

I mean, these days, one person’s virus is another’s bacteria is another’s combination of things.

I went to the pharmacy and picked up a collection of over the counter flu treatments to reduce the symptoms for everything.

You see, the problem is that I know that I had only three or four days to get to a doctor to get a definitive diagnosis.

I felt too sick to go to the doctor and hoped my vague, general symptoms would leave me alone.

Nope, they barnacled their way into my system, leaving me, day after day, wondering what I had, how contagious I was and whether I should see a doctor.

After muddling through four days, I went to a local drug store, where I picked up a test for Covid and the flu.

After receiving negative tests for both, I scheduled a doctor’s visit. I wasn’t sure what she’d be able to tell me, but I was hopeful that she could give me a magic pill or a definitive diagnosis.

After explaining all my symptoms to the nurse, I went through the same routine with the doctor.

“Well, you should be getting better in a few days,” she shrugged. “There’s really no point in testing you at this point.”

“What can I take?” I asked.

“Advil? Tylenol?” she recommended.

Hmm. I felt as if I were hearing the old “take two aspirin and call me in the morning” advice.

I racked my brains trying to think about what might have made me sick. Was it the money I touched? I rarely handle cash, but I didn’t want to pay the extra 3 percent credit card fee for a food purchase in the days before I got sick.

Was it traveling on an airplane? Probably not, because I still wear a mask to keep my hands away from my face.

METRO photo

Was it the guy at the gym who was exhaling hard in my direction while he race walked on the nearby treadmill? Sometimes, when I can smell someone’s breath at the gym, as I did earlier last week, I figure that’s a sign to move to another apparatus, but those dang endorphins were kicking in, making it hard for me to give up my treadmill before working through my routine.

Much as we might wish that we could return to normal now that Covid is gone, normal, as we might recall, still includes the passing along of all kinds of disagreeable illnesses with their persistent symptoms.

Perhaps it’s the extended winter. After all, usually by now, we’ve had some respite from the lower temperatures and strong winds. We might be spending more indoor time with other people.

Yeah, people can be great, because they can make us laugh, commiserate with us when things don’t go well with our kids or at work, and can share entertaining and enjoyable outings to concerts and sporting events.

And yet, those same people are like walking petri dishes, with their own sets of flora and fauna that can threaten to keep us from feeling completely healthy.

Despite being a bit obsessive compulsive about germs, I am not antisocial and I don’t generally try to avoid people.

I do, at times when I’m feeling sick, wish that I had an app on my phone that’s akin to finding all my friends. Instead of searching for people in my network, this app might warn me about entering a room with a preponderance of viral or bacterial particles.

Maybe this app could be like a GPS with a safety feature.

“No, that bathroom in Grand Central Station is a bad idea. The knob is covered in virus A and the paper towel dispenser has virus B.”

Being sick saps some of the fun from each day. If misery loves company, I suppose I have plenty of friends with stuffy noses, dull headaches, and mild to moderate congestion.

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Andrea Goldsmith will be Stony Brook University's 7th President. Photo courtesy of SBU

By Daniel Dunaief

Stony Brook University has named Andrea Goldsmith as the downstate flagship public university’s seventh president.

Goldsmith, who will start her tenure at Stony Brook on August 1st, has been the dean of engineering and applied sciences at Princeton University since 2020. She has been a dean, researcher in engineering, technology company founder and faculty member at Princeton and at Stanford University and Caltech.

Goldsmith will take over for Richard McCormick, who had been interim dean of the university after former president Maurie McInnis resigned last year to become president of Yale University.

”I would like to congratulate Goldsmith on her appointment as the next president of this prestigious university as I believe she will undoubtedly serve Stony Brook admirably,” Kathy Hochul (D), governor of New York, said in a statement.

Goldsmith’s research interests are in communications. control and signal processing and their application to wireless communications, interconnected systems and biomedical devices. She founded and served as Chief Technology Officer of Plume WiFi and of Quantenna Inc. and is on the board of Directors for Intel, Medtronic, Crown Castle and the Marconi Society. She has also served on the Presidential Council of Advisors on Science and Technology from 2021 to 2025.

At Princeton, Goldsmith helped establish the Omenn-Darling Bioengineering Institute. She also developed interdisciplinary research in robotics, blockchain, wireless technologies and artificial intelligence.

Andrew Singer, the Dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Stony Brook, has known Goldsmith for over 25 years.

“She’s a fantastic choice,” Singer said in an interview. “She’s a community builder” and an innovator and has been a “highly visible and strong proponent for the intellectual communities she’s been a part of.”

The newly named SBU president was the founding chair of the IEEE Board of Directors Committee on Diversity and Inclusion and served as President of the IEEE Information Theory Society, as founding Chair of the Student Committee and as founding Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Information Theory.

Goldsmith will be joining Stony Brook at a time when the school has developed significant momentum in a number of areas. The university has risen in the rankings of US News and World Reports, climbing to 58th among national universities and 26th among public universities.

The university also secured a $500 million commitment from Marilyn and the late Jim Simons through the Simons Foundation, which was the largest unrestricted gift ever made to a U.S. education institution.

The university is also in the process of leading the development  of a $700 million climate center on Governors Island.

During McCormick’s tenure at Stony Brook, which started last August, he outlined ways to improve and build on the university’s success, while also recognizing the need for investment.

McCormick highlighted how Stony Brook had an estimated $2 billion in deferred maintenance.

In an oral history interview with Mary Ann Hellrigel of the IEEE History Cente conducted on February 2, 2022, Goldsmith shared that she grew up in California, where she lived with her mother Adrienne Goldsmith after her parents got divorced. Her mother was an animator for cartoon shows, including “The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.”

She is married to Arturo Salz and the couple has two children.

Goldsmith spent part of what would have been her senior year in high school as a singer in Greek night clubs before starting college.

Goldsmith has a Bachelor’s in Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley and an MS and PhD in electricity engineering from UC Berkeley.

 

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METRO photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Smartphones are an attractive nuisance not just during family time, when parents might otherwise struggle to see anything other than the top of the heads of their children, but also during school.

Lauren Hale. Photo courtesy of Stony Brook Medicine

In a recent research letter published in JAMA Pediatrics, scientists led by Lauren Hale, Professor in the Department of Family, Population and Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University, found in a study of 117 students from the ages of 13 to 18 that smartphone use during school hours typically consumed an average of about 1.5 hours. That’s about 23 percent of a typical school day.

“School time should be a time for being present,” said Hale. It should involve interacting with peers and learning from teachers. “When a quarter of your day is spent with your finger on the phone” students are missing opportunities for academic and social growth.

The study, which was funded by the Della Pietra Family Foundation, comes as Governor Kathy Hochul (D) has unveiled a plan to restrict cell phone use during the day for students from kindergarten through 12th grade. 

The governor’s plan allocates $13.5 million for pouches, cubbies and other storage devices and comes as other states and countries seek to limit the kinds of distractions that diminish learning and that prevent face-to-face social interactions.

The JAMA study “really does underscore the need to help children reduce their screen time, both at school and at home,” said Kris Perry, Executive Director of Children and Screens: Institute of Digital Media and Child Development.

At this moment, “we are seeing a crisis in childhood that is highly correlated with the introduction of the smartphone and social media platforms,” Perry added.

In the JAMA Pediatrics study, the researchers found that a quarter of the participants spent more than two hours on their phone during school.

The top five most used apps or categories, other than internet browsing, were messaging, Instagram, video streaming, audio and email.

The study may underestimate the amount of time typical students spend on their phones, in part because the participants in the research knew that their phone use was being tracked.

Study design

The students in the study, who were divided almost equally between boys and girls and who came from a representative sampling of different backgrounds, completed a 15-minute smartphone-based survey and installed RealityMeter to measure their smartphone use.

The researchers examined data from these students, whose phones sent signals throughout the day about the time they are using the phone.

The average number of hours these students were on their phones during the day was 5.59, which excludes other electronic devices such as video games, desktop computers or laptops.

To be sure, the survey didn’t analyze the times during the day that these students were on their phones. Some of these participants, for example, could have used their smartphones during their lunch or free periods rather than during calculus classes or lectures about American History, French or any other subject.

“We didn’t have the granularity of each student’s schedule to know” when the phone usage was the highest, Hale said.

Still, using the phone instead of interacting directly with students in the room, at a lunch table, or in a hallway is a “missed opportunity for eye-to-eye contact in real life,” said Hale.

In the study, about 22 percent of the participants indicated that their parents restricted their phone use when they are at home.

The data for this group during school tracks, however, closely with the students who said they didn’t have any such similar phone restrictions at home. The study also compared phone usage for students whose parents attended college with those who didn’t attend or finish college.

The children of college graduates used the phone about 30 minutes less per school day.

Combination of factors

Several factors may have contributed to any potential increase in the use of smartphones in school.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the lockdown and remote learning, students relied on technology to log in to their classrooms. Adolescents who couldn’t interact with each other in person also spent considerable time texting and interacting with each other on social media.

Additionally, various apps have enhanced their platforms to encourage users to stay on them for longer periods of time.

“The algorithms know that I like Shih Tzus, so I keep getting reels for tiny white dogs doing tricks,” said Hale. “If they put up cats, I wouldn’t watch.”

The same is true for adolescents, who see sports clips or other content regularly that compels them to stay online and that may interfere with their ability to learn in class or to socialize with people around them. 

These apps and the devices adolescents use could provide information about usage patterns.

“I would love to see social media platforms share more information,” said Hale.

Perry added that parents act as important role models for their children when it comes to screen time. “What you’re modeling is going to be replicated,” she said. “Things that adults do without thinking, their children are copying.”

Next steps

Hale indicated that the research team has just finished collecting a second wave of data on the same participants. The scientists will be following up to see screen use patterns as well as any observed changes in mental health and physical well being.

The recent work published in JAMA Pediatrics is a “descriptive baseline” of smartphone usage in school, said Hale. She suggested that researchers need to conduct further research to understand the impact of phone usage patterns on education. “We need replication in science” to uncover more details over a larger population for smartphone use.

Like Gov. Hochul and others who have focused on this issue, Hale believes these personal electronics may hinder the learning process.

“I’m concerned about kids losing precious school hours to distracting devices,” Hale said. When students go to school, they should “be ready for learning and social time. That’s what’s going to make a difference in their education.”

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Florence Aghomo in Madagascar. Photo courtesy Florence Aghomo

By Daniel Dunaief

Don’t say “no” to Florence Aghomo.

A graduate student at Stony Brook University who was born and raised in Cameroon, Aghomo’s ability to get past no, don’t, and shouldn’t led to a continent-hoping life complete with a recent compelling discovery in the rainforest of Madagascar.

Working on her PhD research in the laboratory of Distinguished Professor Patricia Wright, Aghomo went north in Ranomafana National Park when almost every other researcher has gone south in the national park. She was searching for a type of lemur called the Milne-Edwards’s Sifaka when she came upon a large hole on a steep surface.

The fossilized hippo bones, including a tusk and a mandible. Photo courtesy Patricia Wright

She suggested to her guide that it was a cave. Her guide insisted she was wrong. When she spoke with Wright, her advisor also was unconvinced.

Aghomo, however, was sure that what she saw was similar to the caves she studied in the class of Adjunct Lecturer Dominic Stratford, who has a dual position at Wits University in South Africa.

In November, several months after Aghomo’s initial discovery, a team of scientists trekked into the remote part of the rainforest in the north.

“It’s very, very difficult terrain,” Wright said.

The group found 13 caves, one of which, to their amazement, contained fossilized bones.

“This is impossible,” Wright recalled thinking. “Bones don’t fossilize in the rainforest. Everyone knows that.”

But, as the evidence suggested, they can and they do.

The researchers initially thought the unexpected bones were a pig.

“I’m saying, ‘No, it’s not a wild pig,’” said Wright. “That is a hippopotamus. They couldn’t believe it.”

Indeed, while three species of pygmy hippopotami have been discovered in parts of the island nation off the southeast coast of the African continent, none have been discovered in the rainforest.

Once the group at Centre ValBio, the research station in Ranomofana National Park run by Wright, confirmed the discovery, Wright immediately took two actions.

First, she wrote to Stratford.

“This is what we found and it is your fault for teaching Florence how to look for a cave,” Wright said. “It’s your responsibility to come over and help us. I’m not a paleontologist and you are.”

Stratford described the first few weeks after the discovery as frantic, as he had to grade papers, apply for a visa and make complicated travel plans – all before any possible rain washed away this remarkable discovery.

Stratford was thrilled with the finding.

“It was great to know that something you teach at Stony Brook University in the middle of the Northeast has helped somebody make a discovery on the other side of the planet in a rainforest,” said Stratford. The discovery “couldn’t be further away from where we are right now, sitting here in the snow.”

She Wright also wrote to the Leakey Foundation to secure emergency funds to bring experts to the area quickly before the rainy season threatened to wash away this remarkable find.

“This was a really great opportunity to use these emergency funds and is exactly the kinds of things we want to do,” said Carol Ward, co-chair of the Scientific Executive Committee for Paleoanthropology at the Leakey Foundation. “To find a cave system in this rainforest that’s preserving these fossils is really special.”

Acidic rainforest soils make the discovery of fossils in these areas rare.

Seeing the bones

Once Aghomo was able to see the fossilized bones, Wright appreciated the variety of information they these fossils might contain.

The bones had a mandible with molars that “look like flowers,” Wright said. “They had a really nice wear pattern.”

Based on the amount of wear on the teeth, Wright estimates that the individual hippo might have been a young adult when it died.

The collection of bones also included a tusk and several leg bones.

Stratford, who helped carefully excavate the bones with researchers from the University of Antananrivo (Tana), believes this pygmy hippo likely died in the cave. He is hopeful that they might find other parts of the same hippo’s skeleton that got washed into different parts of the cave.

Relatively speaking, this hippo has a smaller cranium and longer legs than similar species on the island nation. Wright suspects that the hippo is a different species from the three that have been categorized in Madagascar.

The bones are sitting in a refrigerator at CVB and Wright hopes to bring them to Stony Brook by some time around May, when Stratford and others might be able to examine them.

Researchers are hoping to answer several questions about the animal, including the age of the fossil as well as the food in its diet based on whatever they can extract from the teeth.

Searching other caves

Researchers, meanwhile, have discovered a tusk from another hippo in another nearby cave.

Wright is excited about the possibility of finding other fossilized bones in caves created by granite boulders that tumbled down a steep slope. Some of the caves have water running at the bottom of them, which can be meters down from their entrance. Scientists used ropes to descend into the caves.

Wright, who has won a range of awards from her research on these quirky lemurs and was the subject of the Morgan Freeman-narrated film “Island of Lemurs: Madagascar,”  believes some of these caves may reveal a whole new set of fossil lemurs.

Wright hopes to return to Madagascar next summer to do the rest of the excavation with paleontologists.

As for Aghomo, the eagerness to blaze her own trail that led her to find these caves in an isolated area is part of a lifelong pattern in which persistence and a willingness to follow difficult paths has paid off.

When she was younger, Aghomo wanted to work in the forest. Her father, Jean-Marie Fodjou, however, suggested such difficult physical work might not be especially challenging for a woman.

Her father didn’t think she would be comfortable walking distances in difficult terrain, crossing rivers, and carrying heavy loads.

Aghomo, however, recognized that it’s “something I want to do.”

The path to Stony Brook wasn’t immediate either. The first year she applied to the graduate program, she sent her application to the wrong department.

In her second year, she was accepted in the Interdepartmental Doctoral Program in Anthropological Sciences but found it difficult to get a visa. Finally, in her third year, she was accepted and received her visa.

This past December, Aghomo won the Young Women in Conservation Biology Award from the Society for Conservation Biology, which recognizes the work of young women in Africa who advance conservation biology.

Recently, Aghomo was back home with her father, who is “so proud of me.”

While she didn’t listen to his advice about staying out of the rainforest, he is pleased that he urged her to pursue her interests to the best of her ability.

“He told me, ‘Do it as well as you can,’” said Aghomo.

Despite the challenge of trekking to parts of a Madagascar rainforest that others don’t generally visit, of following her own path into the forest and of persisting in her efforts to start a PhD program at Stony Brook, Aghomo remains committed to following her own path.

She is hopeful that the discovery of fossils in a few caves in Madagascar leads to additional searches in other rainforests.

After this finding, perhaps paleoanthropologists will “think of searching in Central African countries for fossils.”

As for Ward, she believes the fossilized bones from an extinct species might provide information about human interactions with the world and climate and environmental change that “we might learn from today. There might be lessons about what’s happening now that [we can get] buy looking at what happened in the past.”

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METRO photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

We recognize and register the temperature as soon as we leave our climate controlled house, car or office and step foot outside.

Cold, windy air might cause us to raise our shoulders, protecting our necks the way frightened turtles might pull back towards the shell when they sense a threat.

We have developed a real feel temperature or a “it feels like” temperature. Yes, it’s 28 degrees, but it feels like 12, which, to some, is more like negative 20.

How people experience temperature varies widely. An 85 degree day, with bright sunshine, could make one person feel as if he’s ready to conquer the world and is absorbing the sun’s energy.

Another person, say me, for example, might step out into that same temperature and instinctively search for shade, an air conditioner or a place near the water.

Many of us have friends, coworkers, spouses, children or roommates who prefer temperatures that are diametrically opposed to our own heat or cold sensitivity.

If my house were, say, 66 degrees, I would likely feel comfortable, while my wife would probably come into my home office wearing a sweater, gloves and a frown.

Taking out the financial part of the equation, people can and often do battle for control of the thermostat.

Differences between the sexes can explain some of this temperature disconnect.

Beyond describing the different cultures, expectations, communications and score keeping between men and women, the metaphor from the book “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” also might aptly capture the temperature differences, as Venus, with its gaseous carbon dioxide atmosphere, is the hottest planet and Mars is the fourth hottest. Neptune, incidentally, is the coldest.

While the gender generalization may apply in some cases, that’s never been my family’s reality. My daughter and I tend to run hotter, while my wife and son are cooler and prefer some heat as a counterbalance.

During the extremes of either season, half of the family is comfortable while the other half is either looking to dive into a pool of ice water or is eager to sit with a book near a roaring fire.

Many years ago, my wife and I attended a spectacularly hot college reunion. Well, it was incredibly hot for me. My wife left my side for a moment and returned with some ice cubes. She dumped them down my back and was shocked when I didn’t arch my back or pull my shirt out of my waist to dump the ice on the floor. The ice provided welcome relief.

The moderate middle tends to keep the family happy, as no one is complaining about uncomfortable extremes.

Given temperature sensitivities in our house, we all tend to be closest to our temperature best in the fall and spring.

Of course, as with everything else in life, different stages bring different temperature sensitivities.

When my wife was pregnant with each of our children, her body ran much hotter. We took winter walks that would have been almost inconceivable, so to speak, before we conceived.

The passage of decades, however, has changed how I experience temperature. I have become much more comfortable sitting in a warm baseball stadium and am not so tough when confronted with single digit temperatures.

To be sure, I’m still not able to wallow in a jacuzzi or an unusually hot pool for any length of time without feeling as if my skin is starting to boil.

Recognizing that what constitutes comfortable temperatures varies, I wonder why people so often imagine hell as a place with fire and brimstone.

The poet Robert Service wrote a wonderful and lengthy poem about Sam McGee, which a bus driver recited from memory when my wife and I took a trip to Alaska. With beluga whales we could see surfacing in the distance as we drove along the coast, she shared “The Cremation of Sam McGee” about someone who left Tennessee to search for gold in the Arctic only to discover that the cold was much easier to find than gold.

Sam is so spectacularly cold that he delights in the idea of being cremated when he inevitably dies.

For Sam, and perhaps many others, heat might be far preferable to a frigid afterlife.

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SBU's David Wrobel with Wolfie. Photo by Anna Maria Gounaris

By Daniel Dunaief

David Wrobel, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Stony Brook University since August, can relate to the school’s students.

Like about a third of the students at the downstate flagship SUNY university, Wrobel is the first member of his family to attend college.

David Wrobel. Photo by John Griffin

“I’ve had the advantage of that social mobility that higher education can provide,” said Wrobel, who grew up in England. To have the opportunity to facilitate that for thousands of other students is “hugely important and meaningful.”

Provost Carl Lejuez appreciates Wrobel’s passion for education and for providing opportunities to students from a wide array of backgrounds and experiences.

“For first generation students, there are some challenges that even the most empathetic, well-meaning person may want to help with, but because they don’t have that experience, they don’t know,” said Provost Carl Lejuez. “He brings both the experience of some of the things these students are going through as well as the humanity and personality that is very empathetic.”

Indeed, for Wrobel, who was dean at the University of Oklahoma for six years before joining Stony Brook, his new job appealed to him because of the opportunity to use education to help students expand their horizons and seek new opportunities.

Stony Brook has been successful in the area of social mobility, enabling students “from more disadvantaged backgrounds coming to the university” to complete their degrees at a high rate, said Wrobel. Higher education can perform the role it should as an “engine of democracy.”

Wrobel, who is a tenured professor in the Departent of History, oversees the breadth and depth of offerings at Stony Brook.

Lejuez suggested that Wrobel relates well to students from every background.

“You never see him at an event talking to other administrators,” said Lejuez. “He’s trying to really get in there and talk to people and make them feel welcome.”

Indeed, within his first few weeks of arriving, Wrobel met with several students who shared their concerns about visual arts, particularly as the music and art departments are about to move during an HVAC renovation project.

Wrobel worked with the students and partners around the university, including staff, the fire marshal and others, to see where they can display artwork and perform music.

The Arts Everywhere effort, which is “big in spirit” but “small in funding” provides an opportunities for the “work of students to be better understood by other students on campus,” Wrobel said.

Research opportunities

As a member of the Association of American Universities, an exclusive club that recognizes universities committed to research and education, Stony Brook provides students with opportunities to contribute to the forefront of new information.

“We have undergraduates doing research on genes that are led by some of the most important scientists in the world,” said Wrobel. These students are “not doing research that is tangentially associated with important science. They are contributing to the research teams” that lead to societal and life improvements.

These research contributions across a wide range of fields can and should address the question some people have asked about the return on investment of a college education.

Students are working in fields such as quantum science, artificial intelligence, climate and health.

“We should take great pride in the fact that, as a university, we are answering that question: why does a degree matter,” said Wrobel.

‘Not a spectator sport’

From left to right: Bonita London, associate dean of research development and communications; Danielle Papaspyrou, senior administrator for staff and faculty affairs; AnnaMaria Gounaris, assistant to the dean; Michael d’Ambrosio, senior director of development; Lois Carter, assistant dean for faculty affairs and personnel; Rachel Rodriguez, director of communications; Carol Davies, assistant director for budget and finance, and David Wrobel, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Photo courtesy Stony Brook University

The university is incorporating into the degree programs the kind of learning experiences that prepare students for success in areas ranging from private and industry positions to government jobs.

Wrobel is eager to demonstrate how “education is not a spectator sport” with every prospective student and their parents. Students become a “full participant not just in learning existing knowledge, but in the process of creating new knowledge.”

At the same time, the university is committed to enhancing the abilities of its educators.

“You work to reward teaching excellence at every level,” said Wrobel. “You make it clear that teaching does matter.”

Teachers need to refine their approaches and methods based on the way students learn, which includes working with technology and its possibilities more effectively than in the past

Wrobel meets with the Dean’s Student Advisory Committee, which includes students from numerous majors, to learn about student needs. These can include expanding quieter study spaces or finding places for more collaborative work.

Additionally, the committee helps select outstanding teaching faculty.

“Faculty go to conferences to improve their research skills,” said Lejuez. “We want to think about teaching in the same way.”

Lejuez appreciates how Wrobel engages with students to understand what would improve the university’s learning environment.

The Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching provides opportunities not only for those educators who might be struggling to connect with their students, but also for those who want to improve their craft, Lejuez said.

As a part of student evaluations of their educators, Stony Brook has improved the quality of questions in its educator evaluations for the spring semester, which Lejuez hopes encourages more students to offer valuable feedback.

A dedicated educator

In addition to serving as an administrator, Wrobel hopes to put his experience to work as an educator himself by next spring.

Wrobel could imagine leading or contributing to several possible classes.

He would enjoy teaching a graduate seminar that addresses the history of American thought and culture from the end of Reconstruction after the Civil War in the 1870’s to the end of the New Deal in the 1940s.

At the University of Oklahoma, he also taught an introductory survey class that first year students typically took. The course covered the period from the end of the Civil War to the present.

“I love the idea that I have the opportunity to engage with brand new students when they come to the university,” he said.

Wrobel would like to share a view of America from the Great Depression through the Vietnam War, focusing on John Steinbecks view of the core political and social debates of the time.

Steinbeck was “better than just about any other author at finding what is extraordinary in the lives of ordinary Americans,” said Wrobel.

As for his roles at Stony Brook, Wrobel is “thrilled to have the opportunity to help first generation students and other financially disadvantaged students find their way.”

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These composite brain images from the study of WTC responders reveal evidence of amyloidosis. Areas shaded in red and yellow indicate regions of the brain with amyloid. Image courtesy of Sean Clouston, Stony Brook Medicine

By Daniel Dunaief

Even over 23 years after first responders raced to the smoldering site of the World Trade Center terrorist attacks, many emergency crews continue to battle the effects of their exposure.

With a combination of toxic aerosolized particles infusing the air, first responders who didn’t wear personal protective equipment and who had the highest degree of exposure have suffered from a range of symptoms and conditions.

Sean Clouston

In a recent study of 35 World Trade Center first responders in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, lead author Sean Clouston, who is a Professor in the Department of Family, Population and Preventive Medicine in the Renaissance School of Medicine, found evidence of amyloid plaques, which are often linked to Alzheimer’s Disease.

The paper links exposure to a neurodegenerative protein.

Research with World Trade Center first responders not only benefits those who worked tirelessly to try to find survivors and to restore the area after the attack, but also could help other people who inhale aerosolized toxins.

Indeed, such research could help those who are spending hours battling the ongoing wildfires in Los Angeles, which have been consuming forests and trees, homes and commercial buildings, at a furious and uncontrolled pace.

People have a feeling that fresh air is safe, but what scientists have learned from their studies of the World Trade Center first responders is that “just being six feet away from a pile of rubble that’s smoldering, even if you can’t see that it’s dangerous, doesn’t mean it isn’t,” said Clouston. “There is at least some risk” to human health from fires that spew smoke from burned computers and refrigerators, among others.

Given the variety of materials burned in the fires, Minos Kritikos, Senior Research Scientist and a member of the group in the collaborative labs of Clouston and Professor Benjamin Luft, suspects that a heterogeneity of particles were in the air.

People in Los Angeles who are inhaling these particles can have them “linger in their circulation for years,” said Kritikos. “It’s not just a neurological issue” as the body tries to deal with carrying around this “noxious” particulate matter. Since most neurons don’t regenerate, any toxicity induced neuronal death is irreversible, making damage to the brain permanent.

Even in non-emergency situations, people in polluted cities face increased health risks.

“There is a recognition that air pollution is a major preventable cause of Alzheimer’s Disease and related dementias, as noted by the latest Lancet Commission,” Clouston explained.

Two likely entry points

People who breathe in air containing toxic chemicals have two likely pathways through which the particulates enter the body. They can come in through the nose and, potentially, travel directly into the brain, or they can enter the lungs, circulate through the body and enter the head through the blood-brain barrier. The olfactory route is more direct, said Kritikos. 

Minos Kritikos in front of Stony Brook Hospital.

The amyloid plaques in these first responders was found primarily in the area near the nose, which supports the idea that maybe inhaling the dust was the problem, Clouston said.

Once these chemicals enter the brain, Clouston and his team believe the body engages defenses that are designed much more for viruses than for toxic compounds. The immune system can encapsulate these chemicals in amyloid plaques.

Amyloid plaques, in moderation and under conditions that protect the brain against pathogens, are a part of a protective and helpful immune response. Too much of a good thing, however, can overwhelm the brain.

“When there’s too much plaque, it can physically disturb neuronal functions and connections,” said Kritikos. “By being a big presence, they can also molecularly and chemically react with its environment.”

A large presence of amyloid can be toxically necrotic to surrounding neural tissue, Kritikos added.

What the scientists believe they are tracking is the footprint of an adaptive response that may not help the brain, Clouston added.

Clouston cautioned that the plaques and cognitive decline could both be caused by something else that scientists haven’t yet seen.

The findings

The research, which used positron emission tomography and magnetic resonance imaging scans to search for evidence of amyloid plaques, found evidence that doesn’t look like old age Alzheimer’s, explained Clouston. Usually these levels of plaques are not located in one spot, but occur throughout the brain during Alzheimer’s. 

The immune response may be causing some of these plaques.

The amount of amyloid plaque doesn’t look like Alzheimer’s Disease and does not appear abnormal in the traditional way of testing, but with careful analysis of the olfactory system, the researchers can find elevated levels.

“I was surprised by how little amyloid was necessary to show this association,” said Clouston.

Researchers at Mt. Sinai have examined the effect of exposure to these same particulates in mice.

“The answer is very much similar to what we see in humans,” said Clouston. “That supports this work.”

To be sure, Clouston and Kritikos are hoping to build on this research. They are particularly interested in following up with participants to measure the rate of change in these plaques from the observed amyloid signals they measured at baseline.

“Doing so would enable us to calculate the rate of amyloid buildup allowing us to assess our responders more precisely, opening doors to possible therapeutic interventions such as the recently approved anti-amyloid therapies,” Kritikos explained. 

Additionally, they hope to expand on the study beyond the 35 people who participated.

It is unclear whether tamping down the immune system could make patients better or worse. By reducing amyloid plaques, scientists might enable the harmful dust to cause damage in other areas of the brain. Alternatively, however, a lower level immune response with fewer plaques might, in the longer term, be better for the brain.

This study “does open the door for some of those questions,” Clouston said. Kritikos and Clouston plan to study the presence of tau proteins and any signs of neurodegeneration in the brains of these first responders.

“More research needs to be done,” Clouston said, which specifically targets different ways of measuring exposure, such as through a biomarker. He’s hoping such a biomarker might be found that tracks levels of exposure.

Future research could also address whether post traumatic stress disorder affects the immune response.

“It’s certainly possible that PTSD is playing a role, but we’re not sure what that might be,” said Clouston.

The researchers are continuing this research as they study the effects of exposure on tau proteins and neurodegeneration.

“We are hopeful that this will be an important turning point for us,” Clouston explained

From the Medditerranean to the Atlantic

Born and raised in Cyprus, Kritikos comes from a large family who are passionate about spending time with each other while eating good food.

He earned his doctorate from the University of Bristol in England.

Kritikos met his wife Jennifer LoPresti Kritikos, who is originally from Shirley, New York, at a coffee shop in Aberdeen, Scotland, where he was doing postdoctoral research.

LoPresti, who works at Stony Brook as the Department Head Administrator for Biomedical Engineering, and Kritikos live in Manorville and have an eight year-old daughter Gia and one-year old son Theseus.

As for his work, Kritikos is grateful for the opportunity to contribute to research with Clouston and Luft, who is the Director of the Stony Brook WTC Health and Wellness Program.

“I’m happy to be in a position whereby our large WTC team (the size of a small village) is constantly pushing forward with our understanding for how these exposures have affected” the brain health of WTC first responders, Kritikos explained. He would like to continue to uncover mechanisms that underly these phenomena, not just for WTC responders but also for similarly exposed populations.

 

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