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Daniel Dunaief

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Rebecca Smith at the Sólheimajökull glacier in Iceland, where the scientist did field work during the 2015 Astrobiology Summer School. Photo from Rebecca Smith

By Daniel Dunaief

Rocks may not speak, move or eat, but they can and do tell stories.

Recognizing the value and importance of the ancient narrative rocks on Earth and on other planets provide, NASA sent vehicles to Mars, including the rover Perseverance, which landed on February 18 of this year.

Perseverance brought seven instruments, most of them identified by the acronym-loving teams at NASA, that carry out various investigations, such as searching for clues about a water-rich environment that may have sustained life about 3.5 billion years ago.

Several instrument teams developed and monitor these pieces of equipment, including Joel Hurowitz, Associate Professor in the Department of Geosciences at Stony Brook University and Deputy Principal Investigator on the Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry, or PiXL.

In addition to the instrument leads, NASA chose participating scientists who can contribute to several teams, providing scientific support for a host of questions that might arise as the rover explores the terrain of the Red Planet 128 million miles from Earth.

Rebecca Smith, a post-doctoral researcher at Stony Brook in Geosciences Professor Scott McLennan’s lab, is one such participating scientist.

“I get to move around between all these different groups, which is fun,” said Smith, whose appointment will last for three years. While the Mars2020 program takes up about 20 percent of Smith’s time, the remainder is focused on the Mars Science Laboratory mission. Smith is likely to spend almost all of her time on Mars2020 starting this September.

Smith has helped make the science plans for the rover. The scientist and other researchers help select targets for the instruments that will help answer specific science questions. For this work, they collaborate with different science teams. Smith plans to get more involved with specific instrument teams soon, including SuperCam, PiXL and Sherloc.

For Smith’s own research, the scientist has a suite of rock samples that include lacustrine carbonates and hydrothermally altered volcanic rocks. The volcanic rocks formed under conditions that might be analogous to those once present in Jezero crater, where the rover landed and is currently maneuvering. The crater is just north of the Martian equator and has a delta that once long ago contained water and, potentially, life.

On Earth, Smith is using versions of the SuperCam, PiXL, and Sherloc to understand how these rocks would look to different instruments and determine what baseline measurements they need to tell the different types of rocks apart using the instruments aboard the rover.

Smith has studied rocks on Earth located in Hawaii, Iceland and the glaciers in the Three Sisters Volcanic Complex in Oregon.

Many planetary geologists use Earth as an analog to understand geologic processes on other planets. It is still uncertain if the climate of early Mars was warn and wet or cold and icy and wet, Smith explained in an email, adding, “It is possible the minerals we see with the rovers and from orbit can help us answer this question.” 

Most of the work the scientist been involved with is trying to understand how Mars-like volcanic rocks chemically weather under different climates.

Through previous research on Mars, scientists discovered that large regions had poorly crystalline materials. The poorly crystalline nature of the materials makes them difficult to identify using rover-based or orbiter-based instruments.

“The fact that they could have formed in the presence of water makes them important to understand,” Smith explained.

Part of the work Smith is doing is to understand if poorly crystalline material formed by water have specific properties that relate to the environment or climate in which they formed.

Smith said the bigger picture question of the work the teams are doing is, “was there life on Mars? If not, why not? We think that Mars, for the first billion years or so, was pretty similar to Earth around the same time and Earth developed life.”

Indeed, Earth had liquid water on its surface, which provided a habitat for microbial life about 3.5 billion years ago.

The ancient rock record on Mars provides a better-preserved history because the Red Planet doesn’t have plate tectonics.

“Based on what we know about Earth, if life ever developed on early Mars, it would likely have been microbial,” Smith wrote.

Other goals of Mars2020 include characterizing the climate and the geology. Both goals focus on looking for evidence of ancient habitable environments and characterizing those to understand a host of details, such as the pH of the water, the temperature and details about how long the water was on the surface.

Part of the reason NASA put out a call for participating scientists is to “bridge instrument data” from different pieces of equipment, Smith explained.

“I love the collaborative nature of working on a team like this,” Smith offered. “Everybody is interested in getting the most important information and doing the best job that we can.”

Smith enjoys the opportunity to study potentially conflicting signals in rocks to determine what they indicate about the past.“Geology is just so complex. It’s a big puzzle. Forces have been acting over a very long period of time and forces change over time. We are trying to tease apart what happened and when.”

While Smith works at Stony Brook, the post-doctoral scientist returned to California during the pandemic to live closer to her family. After finishing the current research program, Smith plans to remain open to various options, including teaching.

Smith appreciates the opportunity to work on the Mars 2020 mission, adding, “I’m really grateful for that during this past year in particular.”

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Stock photo

Starting on July 23, Tokyo will host the Summer Olympic Games with athletes from around the world without any spectators.

Medical director of Healthcare Epidemiology at Stony Brook University Hospital

Already postponed a year amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the games will look much more like the National Basketball Association bubble games and Major League Baseball’s empty stadiums than the current version of professional American sports.

“There is tremendous vaccination disparity throughout the globe,” said Susan Donelan, medical director of Healthcare Epidemiology at Stony Brook University Hospital, in an email. “Despite what many Americans believe, the global pandemic is very much alive and problematic. Superimpose this on the fact that another state of emergency has just been declared in Tokyo due to rising COVID-19 cases, and it is not difficult to understand how this decision was arrived at.”

Indeed, the Olympics draw athletes from close to 200 countries and territories, with thousands of competitors representing themselves, their families and their countries.

In Japan, just over 15% of the population is fully vaccinated, which is still “low compared with 47.4% in the United States and almost 50% in Britain, according to Sunil Dhuper, chief medical officer at St. Charles Hospital. “That greatly increases the probability of an explosion in the number of Covid infection cases especially if the Olympic stadiums are packed or even at 50% capacity.”

While people in the United States are increasingly relaxing restrictions after the increasing availability of vaccines, health officials throughout the world have not only had to contend with the uneven availability of the vaccine in different countries, but also with the spread of the more infectious delta variant.

The original virus, or so-called wild type, came from Wuhan, China. Over time, viruses mutate, typically during replication, when they incorrectly copy one or more of the base pairs in their genes.

Sunil Dhuper, chief medical officer at St. Charles Hospital

While most mutations are harmless, some can make a virus more problematic. Termed variants, viruses that differ from the original can produce different symptoms or have different qualities.

The delta variant, which started in India in December of 2020, has become the dominant strain in the United States and, likely in Suffolk County, in part because an infected person can transmit it much more easily.

The delta variant “concentrates in the upper respiratory cells, which is one of the reasons why it transmits so much easier among people and why it’s a concern,” said Adrian Popp, chair of Infection Control at Huntington Hospital/Northwell Health and associate professor of medicine at Hofstra School of Medicine.

Indeed, the delta variant is 50% more transmissible than the alpha, or UK variant, which was about 50% more transmissible than the original, Donelan wrote.

Boosters

Amid the spread of the delta variant, companies like Pfizer have been meeting with federal health officials to discuss the potential need for a booster shot.

Pfizer’s rationale for a booster is that the vaccine’s ability to prevent infection and symptomatic disease seems to wane six months after vaccination, citing data from the Israel Ministry of Health, according to Dhuper.

The World Health Organization, however, indicates that “more data are needed before reaching the same conclusion,” Dhuper explained in an email. A recent study in the journal Nature found evidence that the immune response to vaccines is “strong and potentially long lasting,” which is based on the data that the germinal centers in the lymph nodes are producing immune cells directed at COVID-19.

At this point, officials from the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are unwilling to provide an emergency use authorization for a booster.

These government agencies believe people who have been vaccinated are protected from severe disease and death, including variants like delta, Dhuper wrote.

Adrian Popp, chair of Infection Control at Huntington Hospital/Northwell Health

Popp expressed confidence in the CDC to determine when a booster might be necessary, as the national health organization reviews data for the entire country.

Someone who is vaccinated in the United States should have “decent immunity” against this altered virus, according to Popp. The immunity will vary from person to person depending on the underlying health and immunity.

Indeed, Popp said several vaccinated people who have come to Huntington Hospital recently have tested positive for the virus.

The hospital discovered the cases, all but two of which were asymptomatic, because they tested for the virus for people who were coming to the hospital for other reasons, such as a broken hip. Two of the cases had mild symptoms, while the others were asymptomatic.

“The effectiveness of the current COVID vaccines is quite high,” Dhuper wrote. “In fact, it is much higher than some other vaccines we commonly receive.”

He contrasted this with the annual flu vaccine, which has an effectiveness of around 40 to 60% from year to year.

Dhuper also explained that antibodies are only part of the immune response that makes vaccines effective. T-cells and memory B cells are also involved. Some researchers have found that T cells in the blood of people who recovered from the original version of COVID-19 recognized the three mutant strains of the virus, which could reduce the severity of any subsequent infection.

Based on the available data and current information in Japan, Popp said he would likely participate in the Olympics in Tokyo if he were a member of an Olympic team.

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Pixabay photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a conversation I imagined having with an alien who I  envisioned landing in my backyard. Here’s how I figure a conversation between an alien who speaks the language of my dog and our beloved pet would go:

Alien: Tell me about those humans?

Dog: They talk to each other constantly.

Alien: Does the noise bother you?

Dog: It’s not particularly problematic, but it is hypocritical.

Alien: What do you mean?

Dog: When we’re in the backyard or out for a walk, they tell us to be quiet or something much meaner when we speak to other dogs. They don’t want us to bark with other dogs, and yet they talk nonstop like they have so much to say. 

Alien: What else is different about humans?

Dog: They never smell each other’s butts. By the way, do you mind if I hump your tentacle?

Alien: That’s fine. So, why is smelling each other’s butts important?

Dog: We get all kinds of information, about where the dog has been, what grass it’s eaten. Speaking of which, are you planning to feed me sometime soon? I’ve been making those cute eyes at you during our entire ride and you haven’t felt the need to toss me food.

Alien: So, what do humans do all day?

Dog: They seem to be slaves to some small object they hold. Every time it buzzes or beeps, they immediately look at it, as if they will get in trouble if they don’t. Sometimes, they say something, like “Oh my gosh, I forgot,” or “Oh no, you don’t,” and then they run somewhere. I think that object gives them directions.

Alien: Are they pleasant?

Dog: Sometimes. They seem incredibly happy when they scratch our bodies and we move our legs. Once in a while, I do it if I think one of them is having a tough day.

Alien: Do they seem intelligent?

Dog: Hard to say. They don’t understand the value of sleep. They spend hours each day with the things in their hands or staring at a flickering screen. At night, they look at another screen on the wall in their bedroom.

Alien: What’s your favorite game to play with them?

Dog: There’s a big difference between my favorite and their favorite game. They love to play something they call “fetch.” They can be pretty simple and easy to please. When they like something, they keep doing it.

Alien: And your favorite game?

Dog: I call it the “mud game.” When everyone is wearing something fancy, nice or white, I go into the backyard and find the darkest mud. I come in and jump on them or spread mud on the floor.

Alien: Any other observations?

Dog: Just as they start to bring compelling smells into a room, they spray or roll on the scent of flowers over their bodies. I tried to copy them by rolling in the flowers outside, but they didn’t like that.

Alien: What do they say to you?

Dog: They seem especially fond of the word “sit.” Whenever someone comes into the house and they don’t know what to say to the other person, they tell me to “sit” and the other person laughs and nods. 

Alien: Do you like humans?

Dog: Humans, in general, are fine. I am not all that fond of those people who make unhappy faces and say they are not a “dog person” but a “cat person.” Who could possibly find those hissing creatures more appealing than dogs?

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Pixabay photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

I recently spoke with several scientists about work they were doing for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA. In chatting with them, it became clear that researchers love acronyms the way my dog loves anyone willing to toss him a few morsels of food.

I was just thinking about how much time I’d save in my life if I could start my own set of acronyms, all designed to create word efficiency and to develop the equivalent of an insider’s club.

For starters, how about OKWAM? As in, this place is definitely OK without a mask because they don’t mind if you walk around with your face uncovered.Then, perhaps, there’s MAPH as in masks are preferred here. You don’t necessarily have to wear a mask, as you might on, say, a commercial airliner, but you would make the owners of the establishment happy and feel safer if you did.

In the world of politics, President Joe Biden (D) merits his own set of acronyms. If you think he’s bringing back civility, you might appreciate the chance to tell someone that you believe BMAC, for Biden makes America civil.

Now, of course, Biden, as with his predecessor, has numerous detractors. The New York Post is as eager to capture his daily verbal stumbles as the left-leaning papers and news organizations were to seize on former President Donald Trump’s (R) “covfefe” and other scrambled words. In that case, you might see Biden as a PINOE, as in a president in need of an editor, or a PINOC, as in a president in need of a compass.

Trump deserves his own set of acronyms. Borrowing from the redundant wording of the movie “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story” (2004), supporters of the 45th president might say TIARA, as in Trump is always right, always.

Those who find the former president slightly off kilter, however, might believe he has a FANTS problem, as in facts are not Trump’s strength.

TOSID seems appropriate for both sides. That one stands for the other side is deceptive. That applies to Democrats and Republicans, each of whom sometimes reflexively suggest that the other side can’t possibly be honest because, if they were, the argument they’d like to make isn’t as powerful.

In the wonderful world of summer weather, how about HEFY, as in hot enough for you, or perhaps, CIRN, as in can’t it rain now?

Yankee fans are probably bracing for another mediocre, at best, half of the baseball year. Sure, we have talent, and we get periodic glimpses of adequacy, but we wind up looking like a fourth-place team. I have the feeling it’s NOY or not our year.

Parents have spent almost two years struggling with child care, education and their sanity amid a pandemic that has caused their children to become more like home-based barnacles than school-based students. To that end, and you can pronounce this one however you’d like, how about FCTKSIS, for fingers crossed to keep school in session?

Children, of course, couldn’t control whether their schools opened, which left them even more powerless to act out against the rules, tests or social pressures that follow them around like Pigpen’s dust storm from the Charlie Brown comics. They are now struggling with the need to EFTEW, or to emerge from the electronic world.

Many of us made normal hygiene habits optional. These days, we should consider recommending a SMIYL to our friends, as in a shower might improve your life.

While disconnecting during a phone call, turning off our video momentarily or covering our computer camera were options from home, we sometimes find ourselves stuck in conversations or interactions that aren’t working for us. We might need to beg someone to SAM or stop annoying me.

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By Daniel Dunaief

Rain can put a damper on life, as the two children at the beginning of Dr. Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat shared and as the itsy bitsy spider that went up the water spout only to get washed out again discovered.

As it turns out, rain, clouds, wind and foul weather can reduce the trading decisions of people who buy and sell large sums of money in stocks, as they grapple with their own reactions to clouds that they’d like to go away and come again some other day.

Danling Jiang

Danling Jiang, associate dean of research and faculty development in Stony Brook University’s College of Business; Lin Sun, Assistant Professor at George Mason University; and Dylan Norris, Assistant Professor at Troy University recently published a study in which they explored the effect of cloudy or inclement weather in the two weeks before an earnings surprise on investor reactions.

Every three months, public companies provide a detailed disclosure of their profits and losses, giving investors a chance to look over the equivalent of a quarterly report card.

Like helicopter parents who monitor every line, sentence and word in a report card, institutional investors tend to have a stronger reaction, either positively or negatively, if those numbers are considerably different than they expected. An “A” in advanced calculus might be like profits that exceed estimates by 10 percent, while a “C” might be the equivalent of an unexpected loss in a business that had been doing well.

As it turns out, institutional investors are less likely to react as strongly, at least initially, to an earnings surprise if the skies in the two weeks before they review the earnings announcements are cloudy or unpleasant.

“We find strong supporting evidence in our empirical tests which reveal increases in the pre-announcement unpleasant weather of institutional investors results in muted immediate market responses to earnings news and amplified port-earnings-announcement drifts,” Jiang explained in an email.

Over the course of two to three months, the stock price reflects a more typical pattern that aligns with the direction of the earnings surprise.

The researchers published their work in the Journal of Corporate Finance.

These results, which came from an analysis of reactions to earnings surprises from 1990 to 2016, validate and extend previous efforts to understand how weather affects investor decisions.

Earlier studies revealed the effects of weather on individuals’ psychological and physiological states, according to Jiang.

“These effects have also been shown to influence financial decisions and security prices, even through the actions of sophisticated market participants such as market makers and security analysts,” she said.

The three academics started working together when Lin and Jiang were faculty and Norris was a PhD student at Florida State University.

“We were fascinated by the idea present in prior research that weather seems a perfect exogenous shock to investor psychology and physiology,” said Jiang. “This exogenous feature allows us to draw some causality of psychology on market pricing in a new setting with institutional investors and earnings announcements.”

The researchers chose the years 1990 to 2016 because they had the data in their possession.

“We tried to ensure that our sample period was long enough to confirm the weather effect was a persistent force throughout time and not merely a phenomenon of a small segment in time,” said Jiang who added that solving the weather-related muted effect by adding brighter lights to a trading floor could backfire, as excessive bright lights can have negative effects.

“Overillumination can cause fatigue, stress and anxiety,” she explained. “It is also likely that most traders are subject to the weather at some point during the day” through arriving at work, leaving for lunch or glancing out the window. That means the weather still likely influences them even when they may be in a brightly-lit indoor setting.

The researchers used two measures of weather conditions. One integrated wind, cloud and rain, and the other used cloud cover only. Both measures produced similar findings.

Using earlier studies and their own research, it appears accounting for the combined effect of simultaneous weather parameters or focusing on cloud cover better captures any physiological or psychological effects as opposed to using wind or rain alone, said Jiang.

Public companies are unlikely to trigger a more muted response to earnings surprises by recruiting investors from areas with greater cloud cover, as prior research demonstrated that seasonal climate norms don’t appear to affect the behavior of investors once they acclimate, so to speak, to the weather.

In addition to the 14-day window to create the weather measures, the researchers generated a seven-day measure that showed similar results.

Announcement day weather may also affect market reactions to earnings news and “we do not discredit its importance,” Jiang said. Indeed, other research has shown that the weather in New York City at the time of an earnings announcement impacts market reactions.

The explanation for the muted reaction to earnings is based on psychological and physiological reactions of institutional investors to weather, including anxiety and sadness as well as fatigue and decreased activity.

“In addition to causing delayed information processing, weather could cause a reduction in energy amongst some traders,” said Jiang

That means institutional investors may struggle with the same factors that made the boy and Sally from The Cat in the Hat struggle while it was “too wet to go out and too cold to play ball. So we sat in the house, we did nothing at all,” Dr. Seuss wrote.

While institutional investors don’t do nothing at all, they are less active, at least according to the recent research, than they are when the sun shines brightly, reliably and more consistently.

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A western view of Cold Spring Harbor, above. The seawall is visible along the shoreline beneath the buildings. Photo from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

Over a decade before the Civil War, brothers John, Walter and Townsend Jones recognized that they needed to protect the land at Cold Spring Harbor from the effects of storms that flooded and eroded the shoreline.

The view circa 1910. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives

In 1850, they built a seawall using stones transported in three schooners from a Connecticut quarry to block water from coming ashore in what is now the picturesque coast of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, according to the booklet “Cold Spring Harbor Rediscovering history in street and shores by Terry Walton.

Time and powerful storms, including Hurricane Sandy in 2012, have taken their toll on the protective seawall, causing weaknesses that might allow future storms or water surges to damage the internationally renowned lab and the surrounding area.

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory will soon start an effort to rebuild and refurbish the seawall, preserving some of its historical value by reusing original stones. The refurbishing effort, which will cost $14 million and includes $500,000 from New York State, will take 10 to 11 months to complete.

The state funds have been appropriated and are in the process of being released from the New York State Department of Budget, according to State Senator James Gaughran (D-Northport). Gaughran said he helped secure the funds and is pleased with their design.

“I applaud Cold Spring Harbor [Laboratory] for incorporating the original stones in the seawall’s restoration, which will preserve the beauty of the historic seawall,” Gaughran explained in an email.

“It’s really a feat that it lasted as long as it has,” said Stephen Monez, facilities manager at CSHL. The designers originally built the wall by stacking stones on top of each other.

“We’re starting to lose elevation of our ground,” Monez said. Utility lines for a lab where four Nobel prize winners have conducted some of their research over the years and where numerous faculty continue to conduct basic and translational research run behind the seawall, increasing the importance of the effort.

The seawall, which the Jones brothers and their Cold Spring Harbor Whaling Company built, has failed in two places, according to Errol Kitt, vice president, principal and Long Island branch manager for GEI Consultants Inc, PC. Kitt, who runs the Huntington Station office of GEI, leads the team that developed design plans for the new seawall.

A national company, GEI has worked in other areas of historical significance, including Boston Harbor.

The Cold Spring Harbor seawall is an “interesting one, with reusing the stones,” Kitt said. “That’s the new twist to this.”

The original seawall. Photo from Cold Spring Harbor Whaling Museum

Kitt helped ensure that the plans would be consistent with the concerns of regulatory agencies.

“We came up with a preliminary design that we sought buy-in from the regulatory agencies early on,” Kitt said. “That helped move the project along.”

Skanska, a Swedish-based construction and engineering group, will oversee the work, while Triumph Construction will do the construction. Kitt said the team has permits in place to start construction and is awaiting the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to finalize their permit.

The seawall had been protecting the area for four decades in the 19th century when the Biological Laboratory of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, a predecessor to CSHL, was established in 1890.

State and local authorities, including the New York State Historic Preservation Office, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Village of Laurel Hollow, have approved the plans to rebuild the wall.

Skanska, a Swedish-based construction and engineering group, will oversee the project, while Triumph Construction, of the Bronx, will do the building work. The Huntington Station office of GEI Consultants provided the design and engineering plans.

Triumph will use concrete and rebar to rebuild a seawall that will be 2 feet higher than the original. That is the maximum additional height the lab could add. The company will clean the original and historic stones, which they will then use to reface the seawall to retain its original look.

The New York State Historic Preservation wanted to ensure that the wall “would look as original as it was before we did this project,” Monez said.

In 2014, the lab started putting money aside to rebuild the seawall. In the last 18 months, the weather has caused erosion.

“Once a wall starts to go, it doesn’t take [long] for the rest of it” to weaken, Monez said.

The facilities team at CSHL recently closed the road along the shoreline.

The seawall will be longer than the original, with the team adding more to the structure on the landward side.

CSHL has put up a 10-foot high safety fence, has added warning signs to the area and mandated a hardhat area.

Members of the facilities staff are also receiving 10 hours of training from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a regulatory agency of the U.S. Department of Labor, in case they need to enter the area.

The construction team is putting in sheet piling prior to rebuilding the seawall to protect the land while they do the work. This will prevent any damage from tidal or storm surge over the next year until the project is complete.

The first two months of the work is likely to be the loudest part of the construction process.

“We met with scientists in adjacent buildings,” Monez said.

He said the effort will provide protection for the area amid storms and any rise in the sea level.

“We are installing our insurance policy for the future,” Monez said.

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Pixabay photo
Daniel Dunaief

This past week, I spent more time personally and professionally speaking with other people than I had in over a year.

I give myself mixed reviews. Two anecdotes capture the range of my experiences. During one meeting, my brain had its own mini dialog, even as I tried to stay focused on details about a story I was researching. Here’s a sample of that internal dialog:

Wait, why is he looking away? Should I not have had that salad earlier? Do I have something green in my teeth?

No, hold on, maybe it’s that you’re tired and your eyes are closing. Open your eyes wider to indicate that you’re paying attention. No. NO. NO! Too wide! Now, he’s wondering why you’re staring so intently at him.

Okay, he’s looking at you again. Oh, no, I have to scratch my face. What do I do? Ignore it. Yes, that’s working. No, it’s not. Now, my face itches even more. Come on face, suck it up. No, I have to scratch. Maybe I can coordinate the scratch with the moment when he looks away. Come on, look away!

Great, now he’s looking at me without blinking, like Jack Nicholson in “A Few Good Men.” Wait, I’m listening. Really, I am, but I’m a tad distracted. It’s not my fault. It’s my face’s fault. 

I’m focused. I have a good question ready, but I still need to scratch my face. Look away. LOOK a-WAY! It’s not working. Instead of scratching, I’m twitching. Now he’s staring at the part of my face that itches and twitches.

I’m going to lean on my hand and scratch subtly, while listening intently and making solid, but not scary eye contact.

Okay, so, maybe that was a slight exaggeration, but it was an imperfect and slightly distracted moment in the real world.

Later in the week, I had another opportunity to multitask. Just as I started walking across a courtyard to a meeting, it started pouring.

I walked quickly. Running didn’t seem like a great choice because panting, dripping and sweating is never a good look for me.

When I arrived, an incredibly supportive executive assistant asked me if I wanted a hot tea, coffee, towel or water. I said I’d be fine.

Once I got in the office, I immediately realized, dripping onto, into and around the chair of one of my favorite sources, that his air conditioning was among the strongest in the area. In addition to the cool air in the room, I felt a slight breeze, which made me feel as if each droplet of water clinging to me might soon turn to ice.

As I spoke to him, rocking slightly back and forth, putting my hands under my legs to keep them warm, I was well aware of how ridiculous I must have looked. At the same time, I appreciated the in-person nature of the experience, which wasn’t an option six months earlier.

I enjoyed how the multitasking necessary to stay on track was so much different than the challenges of Zoom, where my primary concerns were whether the background in the screen included messy clothing, whether I was looking at the right place on the screen, and whether my dog would decide to bark at the five-year-old learning to ride a bike in front of our house.

Venturing further out than I have in over a year from the turtle-shell life felt like stepping back into a familiar but altered role. Despite the momentary and awkward setbacks, it was a welcome return to a three-dimensional world.

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Photo courtesy of CSHL

By Daniel Dunaief

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s DNA Learning Center and the Red Cloud Indian School recently launched a program called Students Talk Science in which high school students could ask questions from several senior scientists about the vaccine for COVID-19 and healthcare disparities in minority communities.

Dr. Eliseo Pérez-Stable

 

The talks are a component of a program called STARS, for Science, Technology & Research Scholars, an effort the group started in 2019 to build interest and experience in STEM for minority students. The Students Talk Science program engaged the STARS participants and students from the Red Cloud Indian School on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

Jason Williams, Assistant Director of Inclusion and Research Readiness at the DNA Learning at CSHL; Brittany Johnson, an educator at the DNA Learning Center; Katie Montez, a teacher at the Red Cloud Indian School ;and Carol Carter, Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, wanted to connect minority students with practicing physicians and scientists in leadership positions at the National Institutes of Health to allow them to ask questions of concern regarding the vaccines.

Dr. Monica Webb-Hooper

“We did this to empower them to function as trusted resources for their families, friends and network,” Carter, who participated as an individual rather than as a formal representative of Stony Brook University, explained in an email.

The conversations included interactions with Dr. Eliseo Pérez-Stable, Director of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, or NIMHD at the National Institutes of Health; Dr. Monica Webb Hooper, Deputy Director of the NIMHD; Dr. Gary Gibbons, Director of the National Heat, Lung and Blood Institute; and Dr. Eugenia South, Assistant Professor in Emergency Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and the Presbyterian Medical Center of Philadelphia.

The high school students prepared informed questions.

Dr. Gary Gibbons

“The students were encouraged to do their own research” on the interview subjects, Williams explained. “We asked students not to look just at [each] interviewee’s science work, but also any personal background/ biography they could find. Students had multiple opportunities for follow up and were largely independent on their choices of questions.”

Samantha Gonzalez, a student at Walter G. O’Connell Copiague High School, asked South about her initial skepticism for the vaccine.

South acknowledged that she had no interest in taking the vaccine when she first learned she was eligible. “I almost surprised myself with the fierceness with which I said, ‘No,’” South said. “I had to step back and say, ‘Why did I have this reaction?’”

Some of the reasons had to do with mistrust, which includes her own experiences and the experiences of her patients, whom she said have had to confront racism in health care. In addition, she was unsure of the speed at which the vaccine was developed. She had never heard of the mRNA technology that made the vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer/ BioNTech possible.

“I had to do my own research to understand that this wasn’t a new technology,” she said.

Dr. Eugenia South

South went through a learning process, in which she read information and talked to experts. After she received answers to her questions and with the urging of her mother, she decided to get the vaccine.

“I’m so thankful that I was able to do that,” South said.

The team behind Students Talk Science not only wanted to empower students to make informed decisions, but also wanted to give them the opportunity to interact with scientists who might serve as personal and professional role models, providing a pathway of information and access that developed amid an extraordinary period.

“We wanted to engage high school students in something unique going on in their lifetime,” Carter said.

To be sure, Carter and Williams said the scientific interactions weren’t designed to convince students to take the vaccine or to urge their parents or families to get a shot. Rather, they wanted to provide an opportunity for students to ask questions and gather information.

“We purposely did not participate in the discussions because our goal was not to convince or ‘preach,’ but to enable students and their networks to make informed decisions,” Carter said.

Parents had to read and sign off on the process for students to participate. The organizers didn’t want a situation where they were doing something that conflicts with a parents’ decisions or views.

Williams added that the purpose of the conversations was never to say, “you must get the vaccine. Our purpose is to talk about information.”

The objective of these interactions is to help minority students find a track for a productive career in ten years.

In addition to questions about hesitancy, Williams said some of the high school students expressed concerns about access to vaccines. He is pleased with the result of this effort to connect students with scientists and doctors.

The group was “able to get some of the most important scientists in the country to sit with high school students,” he said. “It was very powerful to give students access to these role models.”

The goal is to stay with these students, mentor them and stay in touch with them until they graduate from college and, perhaps, return as research scientists.

Even for students who do not return, this type of interaction could provide an “impactful experience that prepares them for other opportunities,” Williams explained, adding that the STARS program would incorporate the Students Talk Science Series into the program more formally in the future, with new students and topics most likely during the school year.

The interviews are available at the following website: https://dnalc.cshl.edu/resources/students-talk-science/.

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Above, microscopic image showing brown, antibody-based staining of keratin 17 (K17) in bladder cancer. Image from Shroyer Lab, Stony Brook University

By Daniel Dunaief

Detectives often look for the smallest clue that links a culprit to a crime. A fingerprint on the frame of a stolen Picasso painting, a shoe print from a outside a window of a house that was robbed or a blood sample can provide the kind of forensic evidence that helps police and, eventually, district attorneys track and convict criminals.

Kenneth Shroyer MD, PhD                  Photo from SBU

The same process holds true in the world of disease detection. Researchers hope to use small and, ideally, noninvasive clues that will provide a diagnosis, enabling scientists and doctors to link symptoms to the molecular markers of a disease and, ultimately, to an effective remedy for these culprits that rob families of precious time with their relatives.

For years, Ken Shroyer, the Marvin Kuschner Professor and Chair of Pathology at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, has been working with a protein called keratin 17.

A part of embryological development, keratin 17 was, at first, like a witness who appeared at the scene of one crime after another. The presence of this specific protein, which is unusual in adults, appeared to be something of a fluke.

Until it wasn’t.

Shroyer and a former member of his lab, Luisa Escobar-Hoyos, who is now an Assistant Professor at Yale, recently published two papers that build on their previous work with this protein. One paper, which was published in Cancer Cytopathology, links the protein to pancreatic cancer. The other, published in the American Journal of Clinical Pathology, provides a potentially easier way to diagnose bladder cancer, or urothelial carcinoma.

Each paper suggests that, like an abundance of suspicious fingerprints at the crime scene, the presence of keratin 17 can, and likely does, have diagnostic relevance.

Pancreatic cancer

A particularly nettlesome disease, pancreatic cancer, which researchers at Stony Brook and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, including CSHL Cancer Center Director David Tuveson, have been studying for years, has a poor prognosis upon diagnosis.

During a process called surgical resection, doctors have been able to determine the virulence of pancreatic cancer by looking at a larger number of cells.

Shroyer and Escobar Hoyos, however, used a needle biopsy, in which they took considerably fewer cells, to see whether they could develop a k17 score that would correlate with the most aggressive subtype of the cancer.

“We took cases that had been evaluated by needle biopsy and then had a subsequent surgical resection to compare the two results,” Shroyer said. They were able to show that the “needle biopsy specimens gave results that were as useful as working with the whole tumor in predicting the survival of the patient.”

A needle biopsy, with a k17 score that reflects the virulence of cancer, could be especially helpful with those cancers for which a patient is not a candidate for a surgical resection.“That makes this type of analysis available to any patient with a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, rather than limiting it to the small subset of cases that are able to undergo surgery,” Shroyer said. 

Ultimately, however, a k17 score is not the goal for the chairman of the pathology department.

Indeed, Shroyer would like to use that score as a biomarker that could differentiate patient subtypes, enabling doctors to determine a therapy that would prove most reliable for different groups of people battling pancreatic cancer.

The recently published report establishes the foundation of whether it’s possible to detect and get meaningful conclusions from a needle biopsy in terms of treatment options.

At this point, Shroyer isn’t sure whether these results increase the potential clinical benefit of a needle biopsy.

“Although this paper supports that hypothesis, we are not prepared yet to use k17 to guide clinical decision making,” Shroyer said.

Bladder cancer

Each year, doctors and hospitals diagnose about 81,000 cases of bladder cancer in the United States. The detection of this cancer can be difficult and expensive and often includes an invasive procedure.

Shroyer, however, developed a k17 protein test that is designed to provide a reliable diagnostic marker that labs can get from a urine sample, which is often part of an annual physical exam.

The problem with bladder cancer cytopathology is that the sensitivity and specificity aren’t high enough. Cells sometimes appear suggestive or indeterminate when the patient doesn’t have cancer.

“There has been interest in finding biomarkers to improve diagnostic accuracy,” Shroyer said. 

Shroyer applied for patent protection for a k17 assay he developed through the Stony Brook Technology Transfer office and is working with KDx Diagnostics. The work builds on “previous observations that k17 detects bladder cancer in biopsies,” Shroyer said. He reported a “high level of sensitivity and specificity” that went beyond that with other biomarkers.

Indeed, in urine tests of 36 cases confirmed by biopsy, 35 showed elevated levels of the protein.

KDx, a start up biotechnology company that has a license with The Research Foundation for The State University of New York, is developing the test commercially.

The Food and Drug Administration gave KDx a breakthrough device designation for its assay test for k17.

Additionally, such a test could reveal whether bladder cancer that appears to be in remission may have recurred.

This type of test could help doctors with the initial diagnosis and with follow up efforts, Shroyer said.“Do patients have bladder cancer, yes or no?” he asked. “The tools are not entirely accurate. We want to be able to give a more accurate answer to that pretty simple question.”

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A scene from Broadway's 'Dear Evan Hanson'

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

With my fingers crossed, I am excited about the return of shows on Broadway, which is scheduled to reopen in September.

Something magical happens when a curtain rises, taking an excited audience on a musical journey to other places and other times.

Decades ago, I attended a production of “The King and I.” While the famous Yule Brenner played the title role, I found the experience utterly meaningless.

I remember asking my mother what those small people were doing so far away from me, as we watched that production in the third balcony.

“Next time,” my mother said through gritted teeth to my father, “I’m getting the tickets.”

Sure enough, my parents took my brothers and me to “A Chorus Line.” The experience was as different as standing across the street, looking through the fog at a candy store and sitting at the counter, reading through a menu and enjoying the smell of warm waffles and ice cream and the sight of tantalizing delicacies akin to what I imagined Turkish delights from the Narnia series would taste like.

The live performance so completely captivated me that I left the auditorium humming some of the songs and hoping everything would work out for characters who came from broken homes and broken dreams. Each of the actors was taking his or her shot, hoping for approval, and a job, doing what he or she loved.

I have found numerous shows that have been as moving and as thrilling, including more modern performances, like “Dear Evan Hansen.”

The combination of sights and sounds, the emotional range from humor to tragedy and the riveting live voices that cause seats to vibrate and artwork to come alive provide a completely immersive artistic experience.

I don’t always love every moment in a show, and I don’t always understand what a director or actor is conveying, but that doesn’t stop me from trying or from appreciating the effort.

When I was in high school, I joined the pit orchestra of the musicals “The Wizard of Oz” and “West Side Story.” I far preferred the latter, with its more complicated and intricate music, although participating in each performance provided artistic highlights for my high school career.

On one of my first dates with my wife, we attended “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” starring Nathan Lane. The show, which I had seen once or twice before, was a familiar pleasure, while Lane’s periodic breaking of character and hamming up the role tickled the audience, sharing the equivalent of a modern-day wink with an appreciative crowd.

After the show, I was thrilled to find that my wife shared my love and appreciation for the Great White Way. We repeated lines that amused us, commented on the sets, and appreciated the spectacular stage presence of an acting legend who, somehow, show after show, seemed to be completely in the moment.

As we continue to emerge from a pandemic in which we discussed books we’d read and Netflix shows we’d seen, I am eagerly looking forward to returning to the cushioned seats, the brightly-colored programs, the friendly ushers, and the hard-working cast members who inspire and elevate my life with their dedication, talent and hard work.

Who knows? This year, I might even go back to dressing up for the occasion, tying a tie, finding matching dark socks, and wearing dress shoes as the lights return to live performances, the orchestra holds up its instruments, and the actors take deep breaths, preparing to serenade those lucky enough to score tickets to a transformative ride.

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