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When a property is owned by joint tenants with survivorship, the interest of a deceased owner automatically gets transferred to the remaining surviving owners. Stock photo
Linda Toga, Esq.

By Linda M. Toga, Esq.

THE FACTS: After my husband died, I remarried a wonderful man named Joe. Joe had been married before and had 3 children with his first wife. Since Joe moved into my house and was helping to pay the carrying costs, I decided to add Joe as an owner on the deed to my house. Shortly after Joe’s name was added to the deed, he died suddenly without a will.

His grown children are now claiming that they have an ownership interest in the house based upon the intestacy statute. They told me that the statute provides that when a married person dies without a will and is survived by a spouse and children, that his assets are divided between the spouse and children.

THE QUESTION: Are they correct?

THE ANSWER: Although the children are correct with respect to the intestacy statute, the statute may not apply to the house. Whether it does, and whether Joe’s children own a share of your house will depend on the language used when you added Joe to the deed.

HOW IT WORKS: Turning first to the intestacy statute, the statute applies to assets that are owned by the decedent alone. In other words, bank accounts and real property on which the decedent is the sole owner will pass pursuant the intestacy statute. On the other hand, assets that the decedent owned jointly with another person, assets that are in trust and assets for which a beneficiary designation form has been signed do not pass pursuant to the intestacy statute. Instead, they pass by operation of law to the joint owner or named beneficiary.

With respect to your house, how Joe was identified in the deed by which you gave him an ownership interest in your house will determine whether his children now own a share of your house. If Joe was named as a joint tenant with rights of survivorship, as a tenant by the entirety or simply identified as your spouse, you are the sole owner of the property. Under these circumstances, the house is not part of Joe’s intestate estate and, therefore, is not subject to the intestacy statute. While you will likely have to share with his children other assets that Joe may have owned individually at the time of his death, his children are not co-owners of your house.

If, however, you added Joe to your deed as a co-tenant, creating a tenancy in common, you may find that you only own 50 percent of your house.

That is because co-tenants can each dispose of their share of property as they please. When a co-tenant dies without a will, his share in the property in which he had an ownership interest will pass under the intestacy statute. Pursuant to the statute, the surviving spouse is entitled to the first $50,000 of the estate and must then split the balance of the estate 50/50 with the decedent’s children.

If Joe had sufficient assets in his name, you may be able to satisfy the children’s share by distributing to them funds equal to their 50 percent share. However, if Joe’s interest in the house is the only asset he owned at the time of his death, and his interest is worth more than $50,000, you are going to have to buy out his children with your own funds if you want sole ownership of the house.

Although your motive for adding Joe to your deed was admirable, I am sure you had no idea that doing so could result in having his children as co-owners of your house. In other words, you did not know what you did not know. While I hope that the language in the deed is favorable to you and that Joe’s children are mistaken as to their ownership interest in the house, in the future, the best way to avoid costly, unintended consequences when signing documents is to consult an experienced attorney before you sign.

Linda M. Toga, Esq. provides legal services in the areas of estate planning, real estate, small business services and litigation from her East Setauket office.

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Ben Model at the historic Wonder Morton Theatre Pipe Organ at The Landmark Loew’s Jersey Theatre in 2014. Photo by Steve Friedman

By Kevin Redding

As a film production major at New York University in 1982, Ben Model sat in a film history class and watched a series of silent movies with his peers. The early 16mm prints had no sound tracks backing them and Model felt the disinterest of his classmates.

“It really bothered me that these movies were bombing in front of film students every week,” said Model, 55, who grew up enchanted by three things: silent movies, the art of filmmaking and music, having started piano lessons when he was 5. “So I figured, I don’t really know what I’m doing, but it’s got to be better than nothing.”

Photo by Larry Smith
Ben Model at the Library of Congress Packard Preservation Campus Theater. Photo by Larry Smith

So he approached his professor and offered to play piano during the screenings to liven the experience for the audience — an idea the professor loved. From then on, until he graduated two years later, Model (pronounced Moe-del) served as the maestro for two to three film screenings per week in the basic cinema history class as well as a film historian’s class — providing the music for many of the earliest movies ever made, from Auguste and Louis Lumière’s 50-second-long actuality films depicting military events and everyday scenes to Thomas Edison’s studio films to the works of pioneer filmmakers D.W. Griffith and Sergei Eisenstein.

Through his new gig, he met and befriended renowned silent film accompanist Lee Erwin, who was an organist in theaters during the 1920s and was, at the time, playing the giant Wurlitzer organ at Carnegie Hall Cinema in Manhattan, one of the few repertory theaters back then. Erwin served as Model’s mentor, someone whose brain the young college student often picked, learning what works, what doesn’t, what to do, what not to do.

While Model only started doing this to engage his peers in early films, he wound up turning it into a career spanning more than 30 years. He currently serves as one of the leading silent film accompanists and most well-respected silent film historians, traveling around the world in a wide variety of venues presenting silent films and providing unforgettable live scores for hundreds of them.

Ben Model at the Egyptian Theatre, Boise Idaho. Photo by Paul Collins

Model has been a resident silent film accompanist at the Museum of Modern Art since 1984; the Library of Congress’ Packard Campus Theatre since 2009; the Silent Film Days in Tromsø portion of the Tromsø International Film Festival in Norway, home to Verdensteatret, Norway’s oldest cinema in use, dating back to 1916, for 12 years; the historic Egyptian Theatre in Boise, Idaho, where he performs scores with a full orchestra; recently played in theaters in Connecticut, Maryland and Ohio and frequently performs at museums and schools; will be playing at the Turner Classic Movies film festival next month; and, since 2006, can be seen locally at Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington once a month during the theater’s Anything But Silent program.

Model is also a lecturer, film programmer and visiting professor of film studies at Wesleyan  University in Connecticut, as well as the creator of New York City’s Silent Clowns Film Series, launched in 1997 as the premiere, regularly scheduled showcase for silent film comedy, from Buster Keaton to Laurel & Hardy. 

“There’s something so immersive about the experience of silent films, especially when you see it with live music,” Model said. “It’s ironic that because of what’s missing from the film, you’re actually much more involved and engaged, because the imagination is filling in everything: the sound, the colors, pieces of the story, the gags. You’re assembling them in your head, in a group setting. You can get lost in it; you feel like you’re almost part of what’s going on — it’s like a trance.”

A trance, he said, he’s long been in. “When I started doing this, I realized that throughout my life, anything surrounding silent film kind of just worked out for me,” he said.

It all started with Charlie Chaplin. While some little kids were obsessed with dinosaurs and others with trains and trucks, young Model gravitated toward The Tramp, consuming all his films he could find and reading biographies and film books on his craft. That paved the way for Chaplin’s contemporaries like Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd.

When he was 12, Model, who grew up in Larchmont in Westchester County, received a book called “The Silent Clowns” written by Walter Kerr, a New York Times theater critic in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s and silent film fanatic himself, which became something of a sacred text to the young boy. Because Kerr lived close by, and had amassed a huge collection of these movies he wrote about, Model’s parents encouraged him to reach out to the author.

“So I wrote him a letter telling him I was interested in seeing more silent films,” Model said, explaining that, in the mid-70s, he had to wait for them to show up on television and there was a lot of movies he read about that he just couldn’t find. “Walter Kerr called me four days later. Over the next 15 to 20 years, a few times a year, I’d go over and he’d say, ‘So, what do you want to see?’ So I grew up going to the guy who literally wrote the book on silent film comedy.”

Model said in terms of his performances, he’s primarily an improviser — relying on his background as a silent film devourer and improv comedian in college to let things come to him naturally, he said, like musicians do in jazz. But if he hasn’t seen the film before, he’ll watch it in advance to take note of different story and action beats in order to stay ahead of the movie and provide certain underscores when needed.

“Ben is creating a virtual time machine of the original movie-going experience and transporting our audiences to another era,” said Raj Tawney, director of publicity and promotions for Cinema Arts Centre, adding that audiences during Anything But Silent nights are always fully engrossed: laughing, shrieking and hooting and hollering. “There’s an undeniable respect for Ben’s choice of film, his vast historical knowledge, and the commitment to giving the best performance to each film. He’s a rock star in his own right.”

Model said he loves performing at Cinema Arts Centre because of its monthly embrace of these old films.“You’d be hard-pressed to find a suburban art cinema that thinks silent movies are worth showing,” Model said. “At Cinema Arts Centre, they recognize that sound is only part of the film landscape.”

He encourages people of all ages to come and experience a silent film. He recalled the impact a screening of Keaton’s 1928 film “Steamboat Bill, Jr.” from 10 years ago had on an 8-year-old girl, whose father later told Model that the film, its presentation and her experience that night was the subject of her college essay.

“Everyone involved with these films is dead, but even one from 100 years ago is just as entertaining as it was when it was first released,” Model said. “Silents are able to make the trip across several decades sometimes better than sound movies. It’s just so rewarding to be able to help these films live again, and build the next audience for them.”

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From left, Karen Chen-Wiegart, Silvia Centeno from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and BNL’s Juergen Thieme and Garth Williams in front of a computer image of Jan Van Eyck’s ‘Crucifixion,’ which they used to study the effects of soap formation in oil paintings. Photo from BNL

By Daniel Dunaief

Paintings can be so evocative that they bring images and scenes to life, filling a room with the iridescent flowers from an impressionist or inspiring awe with a detailed scene of human triumph or conflict. While the paints themselves remain inanimate objects, some of them can change over time, as reactions triggered by anything from light to humidity to heat can alter the colors or generate a form of soap on the canvas.

Recently, a team led by Silvia Centeno, a research scientist of the Department of Scientific Research at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, explored the process that caused lead-tin yellow type I to form an unwanted soap. Soap formation “may alter the appearance of paintings in different ways, by increasing the transparency of the paints, by forming protrusions that may eventually break through the painting surface, or by forming disfiguring surface crusts,” Centeno explained in an email.

Karen Chen-Wiegart with her husband Lutz Wiegart at Paumanok Vineyards in Aquebogue in November of 2017. Photo by Jen You

A team that included Karen Chen-Wiegart, who is an assistant professor at Stony Brook  University and has a joint appointment at Brookhaven National Laboratory, looked specifically at what caused a pigment common in numerous paintings to form these soaps. The research proved that the main component in lead-tin yellow pigment reacts, Centeno said. The causes may be environmental conditions and others that they are trying to discover. Lead-tin yellow changes its color from yellow to a transparent white. The pigment was widely used in oil paintings.

The pigment hasn’t shown the same deterioration in every painting that has the reactive ingredients, which are heavy-metal-containing pigments and oil. This suggests that specific environmental conditions may contribute to the pace at which these changes occur. Most of the time, the changes that occur in the paintings are below the surface, where it may take hundreds of years for these soaps to form.

The scientists are hoping this kind of research helps provide insights that allow researchers to protect works of art from deterioration. Ideally, they would like a prognostic marker that would allow them to use noninvasive techniques to see intermediate stages of soap formation. That would allow researchers to follow and document change through time. The scientists analyzed a microscopic sample from the frame of a painting from Jan Van Eyck called “Crucifixion,” which was painted in 1426.

Samples from works of art are small, around several microns, and are usually removed from areas where there is a loss, which prevents any further damage. Samples are kept in archives where researchers can do further analysis. In this case, a microscopic sample was taken from the frame of the painting, from an area where there was already a loss.

Centeno worked with a group led by Cecil Dybowski, a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Delaware, who has used solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy available at the university to study soap formation since 2011.

She also partnered with Chen-Wiegart to work at BNL’s National Synchrotron Light Source II, a powerful tool with numerous beamlines that can see specific changes on an incredibly fine scale. Centeno said she was very pleased to add Chen-Wiegart’s expertise, adding that she is “an excellent collaborator.”

When they started working together, Chen-Wiegart worked at BNL as an assistant physicist, and then became an associate physicist. As a beamline scientist, she worked at a beamline led by Juergen Thieme, who is a collaborator on this project as well. The researchers see this as an initial step to understand the mechanism that leads to the deterioration of the pigment.

The team recently applied for some additional beamline time at the NSLS-II, where they hope to explore how porosity, pore size distribution and pore connectivity affect the movements of species in the soap formation reactions. The humidity may have more impact in the soap formation. The researchers would like to quantify the pores and their effects on the degradation, Chen-Wiegart said.

In addition, Centeno plans to prepare model samples in which she accelerates the aging process, to understand, at a molecular level, what might cause deterioration. She is going to “try to grow the soaps in the labs, to see and study them with sophisticated techniques.”

Chen-Wiegart will also study the morphology at microscopic and macroscopic levels from tens of nanometers to microns. Both Centeno and Chen-Wiegart are inspired by the opportunity to work with older paintings. “I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to enjoy works of art as part of my daily work,” Centeno said.

Chen-Wiegart was eager to work with art that was created over 500 years ago. “The weight of history and excitement of this connection was something enlightening,” she said. “Thinking about it and processing it was a unique experience.”

A resident of Rocky Point, Chen-Wiegart lives with her husband Lutz Wiegart, who is a beamline scientist working at the Coherent Hard X-ray Scattering beamline at BNL. People assume the couple met at BNL, but their relationship began at a European synchrotron called ESRF in France, which is in Grenoble.

The couple volunteers at the North Shore Christian Church in Riverhead in its Kids Klub. For five days over the last five summers, they did science experiments with children who are from 4 to 11 years old.

The scientific couple enjoys the natural beauty on Long Island, while traveling to the city for cultural events. They kayak in the summer and visit wineries.

As for her work, Chen-Wiegart is excited about continuing her collaboration with Centeno.“The intersection between science, art and culture is inspiring for me.”

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Above, the royal court of the 2018 Miller Place-Rocky Point St. Patrick’s Day Parade, from left, Queen Jordan McClintock, Lady Miranda Navas and Lady Melanie Weidman
Andrew J. Streeff is this year’s Grand Marshal

The communities of Miller Place and Rocky Point, along with the neighboring hamlets of Brookhaven’s North Shore, are gearing up for an annual rite of spring. The Friends of St. Patrick’s 68th annual Miller Place-Rocky Point St. Patrick’s Day Parade will take place on Sunday, March 11. The event will kick off at the comer of Harrison Avenue in Miller Place at 1 p.m. sharp and will proceed east along Route 25A before ending at the comer of Route 25A and Broadway in downtown Rocky Point. Route 25A will be closed to traffic at noon to prepare for the event.

The committe has named longtime committee member and co-owner and chef of the Hartlin Inn in Sound Beach Andrew J. Streeff as this year’s grand marshal.

In keeping with the tradition of recognizing aspiring young women in the community,  the title of parade queen has been bestowed upon Jordon McClintock of Wading River. McClintock is a senior at Shoreham-Wading River High School and is an aspiring physician. The queen will be graciously escorted at the parade by her ladies-in-waiting Miranda Navas, a senior at Rocky Point High School, and Melanie Weidman, a self-employed model and dancer from Sound Beach.

This year’s parade will feature veteran and community groups and organizations, along with elected officials from all areas of our government. Of course, no parade would be complete without the presence of local fire departments, high school bands, Irish dancing, Scout troops and many colorful floats. Be sure to come down to cheer your favorite on! There is something on this special day for everyone, as this local parade reaches historic proportions by carrying on a 68-year community tradition.

For further information regarding parade updates, please visit www.friendsofsaintpatrick.org.

Photos from James McElhone

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Chicken Soup

By Barbara Beltrami

A bunch of us were hanging around waiting for the meeting to start. Sally was going through wads of tissues and cough drops and looked and sounded miserable. “Why didn’t I just stay home?” she whined. “What you need, Honey, is some nice homemade Jewish penicillin aka chicken soup,” I declared. Keiko shook her head. “No. No. Must drink broth with ginger and cabbage. Very good for chest and throat,” she countered.

When I came home, I got to thinking about these remedies and checked them out on the internet. As it happens, many doctors endorse chicken soup for its ability to open up sinus passages and fight inflammation. Does it actually have to be made by a Jewish grandmother? No medical evidence for that, but I think so because I am one!

And sure enough, I found reasonable evidence of the values of ginger and cabbage. The ginger with its spiciness helps unclog nasal passages, fights inflammation and soothes sore throats; and cabbage, loaded with vitamin C, antioxidants and sulfur is a good anti-inflammatory. Now I’m not saying these are foolproof or will cure you. But hey, I don’t think they can make you any worse and maybe they really can make you feel better.

Chicken Soup

Chicken Soup

 

YIELD: Makes 8 to 10 servings

INGREDIENTS:

One 5-pound roasting chicken

1 large onion, peeled

2 celery ribs, with leaves

8 to 10 carrots, peeled and cut into thirds

1 handful parsley

Salt and freshly ground white pepper, to taste

Chicken bouillon cubes, to taste (optional)

DIRECTIONS: Place all ingredients in a large stockpot. Add 8 to 10 cups water and bring to a boil. Simmer, uncovered, one hour. Remove chicken from pot and peel off white meat; coarsely shred, place in a container, cover and refrigerate. Return remaining chicken and bones to pot and simmer, covered, another hour. In a colander or wire mesh strainer, strain entire contents of pot. Return broth and carrots to pot.

Separate bones, gristle and skin from dark meat and discard; refrigerate or freeze dark meat for another use. Cover and refrigerate broth and carrots; once fat has risen to top and hardened, gently remove it and discard or reserve for another use. When ready to serve soup, ladle a few cups of the cold broth and add the cold chicken breast into a smaller pot. Simmer that and the large pot of broth until barely boiling. Place hot chicken breast pieces, carrots and broth into soup bowl.

Serve immediately with separately cooked noodles, rice or matzo balls.

Ginger Broth with Cabbage

Ginger Broth with Cabbage

YIELD: Makes 6 servings

INGREDIENTS:

8 scallions, green part removed, trimmed and sliced

8 cups chicken broth

1/4 head cabbage, washed and shredded

One 4-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and sliced into 1/2-inch pieces

4 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed

Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

DIRECTIONS: In a large pot combine all ingredients. Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to medium and simmer for 20 to 30 minutes; strain and remove all solids except cabbage. Serve hot with rice, soba noodles or shredded chicken.

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Photo courtesy of Kent Animal Shelter
Logan

MEET LOGAN! Logan is a very handsome 2-year-old, domestic long-haired cat who was recently turned in to Kent Animal Shelter. His owners were moving and couldn’t take him with them.

Logan is a very easy going guy and would be an awesome addition to any household. He comes neutered, microchipped and is up to date on all his vaccines. Look how he’s waiting for his next adventure. Could that be with you?

Kent Animal Shelter is located at 2259 River Road in Calverton. The adoption center is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day. For more information on Logan and other adoptable pets at Kent, visit www.kentanimalshelter.com or call 631-727-5731.

Update: Logan has been adopted!

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Symptoms of a concussion can be as subtle as mild lethargy to as severe as coma.

By Matthew Kearns, DVM

There is so much attention recently on the effect of concussions on the human brain. Starting with the studies run through the NFL, we parents are now looking at the risks and long-term effects of concussions on children that play contact sports. My son Matty is only in the ninth grade and before he can participate in lacrosse this spring, he has to take a test that evaluates his brain function. If, during the season, he sustains a head injury, he will retake the test to see if he did receive any brain injuries that may require he sit out for a while.

We don’t have specific tests for dogs or cats, but there are ways to evaluate your pet for a possible brain injury. Starting the process of evaluating our pets for concussions requires we, as owners, know what the most common causes of brain trauma and injuries are. These include brain injuries from vehicular accidents and all sorts of blunt trauma to the head like getting hit with a baseball or baseball bat/blunt instrument, a fall from a porch or deck, getting kicked by an animal or running into something like a tree or wall. Smaller dogs can get these injuries falling from their owners arms, rough housing with larger dogs or being attacked by larger dogs (where the smaller dog is picked up and shaken). 

The initial injury comes from a decrease in the blood flow to the brain secondary to brain edema (swelling) or bleeding. Unfortunately, this increase in pressure leads to a secondary increase in arterial blood flow/pressure to the brain and decreased venous blood drainage. This combination of initial swelling after trauma and the body’s response to the increased pressure is what leads to cell death and long-term effects. 

Symptoms can be as subtle as mild lethargy to as severe as coma. More subtle symptoms are squinting, reluctance to move, decreased appetite and sleeping more. Your veterinarian may be able to pick up additional symptoms related to pupil size, reactions to stimuli (light, sound), systemic blood pressure, heart rate and temperature.

Depending on the severity of the symptoms, either your veterinarian or an emergency veterinarian can also give you an idea of prognosis of recovery and possible long-term complications.

Head injuries need to be seen immediately. If your pet is very lethargic or comatose, make sure to be careful moving your pet. Also try to keep your pet’s head above the rest of its body to improve drainage. More severe cases of head trauma require hospitalization, intravenous fluid therapy, supplemental oxygen and medications to regulate blood pressure and reduce intracranial edema.

In conclusion, if a head injury occurs, please monitor your pet closely or, better yet, have it evaluated by your veterinarian ASAP.

Dr. Kearns practices veterinary medicine from his Port Jefferson office and is pictured with his son Matthew and his dog Jasmine.

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A 2013 study found that when taken together, iron and calcium supplements increase the risk of developing glaucoma. Stock photo
Some supplements may increase risk
Dr. David Dunaief

By David Dunaief, M.D.

Glaucoma is the second-leading cause of blindness in the world, behind cataracts. It is neurodegenerative (deterioration of the optic nerve) with increased intraocular pressure (IOP) — pressure inside the eye — as an indicator that nerve damage is more likely. The most common types of glaucoma are open angle and angle closure. Open-angle glaucoma represents about 90 percent of U.S. cases and is caused by clogging of the eye’s drainage canals over time (1). Because it develops slowly and over time, its symptoms are not always obvious.

Glaucoma initially causes peripheral vision loss and then works its way inward to the central vision. If untreated, it can lead to irreversible blindness (2). The occurrence of this disease is rising, with an estimated three million Americans affected and a predicted level of roughly 3.4 million in the U.S. by 2020.

Fortunately, there are treatments. Some revolve around reducing fluid production in the eye, such as beta blockers and carbonic anhydrase inhibitors. Others work to increase fluid drainage, such as cholinergics and prostaglandin analogs. Still others do both (1). None of these treatments reverse lost vision or damage. They only slow or halt its progression to preserve your remaining sight. Therefore, prevention and early detection are crucial.

Glaucoma risk factors include age — starting at 40, although those over 65 have higher risk and those over 80 have the highest risk —and race, with African-Americans at a five-times higher risk than those of European ancestry. In the Baltimore Eye Survey, a family history of the disease dramatically increased risk, with siblings having greater probability than offspring of developing the disease (3). Other risk factors include steroid use, including asthma inhalers, eye injury, nearsightedness and hypertension. Finally, the higher the IOP, the greater the risk for progression in open-angle glaucoma (4).

Effect of increased visual field testing

In the Advanced Glaucoma Intervention Study, it was found that visual field testing by an ophthalmologist every six months for patients at higher risk was better at predicting disease progression than annual testing (5). The result was that, with more frequent testing, the researchers were 50 percent more likely to detect progression of the disease, if it were to occur.

Interestingly, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force currently does not recommend screening for open-angle glaucoma, since it feels there is insufficient evidence (6). The American Academy of Ophthalmology recommends screening every two to four years starting at age 40, with increased frequency of every one to three years starting at age 55 and every one to two years for those 65 and older. More frequent screening is recommended for those who have more risk factors (7).

Preventative steps

There are several steps that may be valuable, including reducing chronic diseases associated with glaucoma such as type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s and erectile dysfunction. If we reduce their incidence, there may also be a reciprocal decline in glaucoma. In addition, avoiding or reducing supplementation with iron and calcium, while potentially increasing magnesium, may decrease incidence of the disease.

Diabetes and high blood pressure

In an analysis of two studies, diabetes increased the risk of open-angle glaucoma by greater than 200 percent (8). In the same analysis, however, systemic hypertension (high blood pressure) increased the risk by a meager 7 percent. This is yet another reason we need to control or prevent diabetes to preserve eye health, aside from diabetic retinopathy (disease of the back of the eye).

Erectile dysfunction association

Those with erectile dysfunction (ED) had an almost threefold increased risk of also having open-angle glaucoma, compared to those without the disorder (9). There may be vascular symptoms associated with open-angle glaucoma as demonstrated by the increased association with ED. The study suggests that the mechanism of action that both disorders have in common is endothelial dysfunction (inner lining of the blood vessels), which involves a decreased level of nitric oxide, a potent vasodilator, which enables the vessels to expand and relax. ED was also associated with high cholesterol and blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes. It is not unusual to find that many diseases have a common underlying pathology.

Supplements

A 2013 study found that supplementation with calcium and iron, looked at separately, increases risk of normal-tension glaucoma (NTG), glaucoma without increased pressure (10). The calcium and iron came from a variety of sources, including antacids, multivitamins and prescription and nonprescription supplements. Roughly one-third of glaucoma patients have NTG (11). Among Japanese patients, a study found that this number increases to two-thirds (12).

The supplementation study results showed that participants who took a composite of 800 mg daily of calcium were at an almost 2.5-times increased risk. Those who took 18 mg of iron on a daily basis were at an even higher risk, 3.8 times, of developing the disease. When taken together, iron and calcium increased risk by a resounding 7.2-fold. Interestingly, dietary sources of iron and calcium were associated with lower odds of glaucoma.

The good news is that a dose of 300 mg of magnesium citrate in patients with NTG showed a benefit in visual field over one month, compared to those who did not take magnesium (13). Although this was a randomized-controlled trial, it was also very small with only 30 patients.

While there are risk factors — such as family history, age and ethnicity — that can’t be changed, there are a number of modifiable factors as well. Glaucoma may be brought on by factors that are related to those causing systemic diseases. Therefore, it’s important to maintain good health overall to reduce the risk for glaucoma and its effects.

References:

(1) glaucoma.org. (2) Lancet. 2004;363(9422):1711. (3) Arch Ophthalmol. 1994;112(1):69. (4) Ophthalmology. 2007;114(10):1810. (5) Arch Ophthalmol. 2011;129(12):1521-1527. (6) Ann Fam Med. 2005;3(2):171. (7) AAO.org. (8) Br J Ophthalmol. 2012;96(6):872-876. (9) Ophthalmology 2012;119:289-293. (10) Curr Eye Res. 2013 Oct;38(10):1049-1056. (11) Ophthalmology. 1992;99(10):1499–1504. (12) Jpn J Ophthalmol. 1991;35(2):133–155. (13) Eur J Ophthalmol. 2010;20(1):131-135.

Dr. Dunaief is a speaker, author and local lifestyle medicine physician focusing on the integration of medicine, nutrition, fitness and stress management. For further information, visit www.medicalcompassmd.com or consult your personal physician.

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Anil Yazici, center, with Eren Ozguven, right, and Ayberk Kocatepe, left, who worked in Ozguven’s lab as a doctoral student, at a conference in Florida last year.Photo from Anil Yazici

By Daniel Dunaief

Anil Yazici wants to help the elderly population with transportation, public safety and emergency services and housing.

An assistant professor in civil engineering at Stony Brook University, Yazici is organizing a series of meetings to address the needs of the elderly. He is recruiting a host of speakers from around the world and is inviting the public to listen and participate in roundtable discussions for a two-day event at the Hilton Garden Inn at Stony Brook as a part of a Research Coordination Network.

The workshop schedule with a list of speakers will be available around mid-March. Those interested in attending can visit the website https://you.stonybrook/edu/agingpopulationrcn/events/rcn-workshops/.

Yazici received a $499,999 four-year grant from the National Science Foundation last fall to develop a way to study the connection between smart and connected communities and areas with varying resources and population densities. The group will host workshops at the University of Michigan and at Florida State University.

Anil Yazici, right, with Harold Walker, left, a professor and chair in the Department of Civil Engineering and Laura Coronel, center, a member of the class of 2017.Photo by Erin Giuliano

The goal is to maintain mobility and access to services for the aging population. “Our focus is to involve aging populations within smart and connected communities … which generally employ technology to address mobility and access,” he explained in an email.

Yazici would like to get the government, communities and researchers to work together to address these issues. Groups involved in the effort will produce white papers, which can provide a proposal to help governments and community organizations plan various services.

Jacqueline Mondros, the dean of SBU’s School of Social Welfare and assistant vice president for Social Determinants of Health, described housing and transportation as “two of the most problematic issues of older adults, particularly in suburbia and rural areas.”

Mondros, who will be giving one of the talks in April, hopes the tech sector and engineering dedicate more attention to this area. She believes this effort will provide a greater understanding of the kind of connectedness that will help seniors and their caregivers. She also hopes the initiative helps people learn “about the intersection between connectivity and technology and social intervention.”

The funding for this effort is designed to create networks and develop ideas. Further work to develop projects, however, would require additional financial support.

Developing a broad plan in an area such as transportation will require flexible and location-specific solutions. Indeed, Long Island reflects such varying dynamics. Areas in or closer to the city have higher population density and a deeper transportation infrastructure, with subways, buses and trains offering transportation throughout the area. Further out east, however, the population density drops considerably, limiting such options.

“Once you don’t drive” when you’re in suburbia “it’s almost impossible to get around and go where you need to go,” Mondros said. People end up in “social isolation [which] clearly creates poor health outcomes and depression.”

Presenters will include people with expertise from Europe and Australia who can bring the solutions they have developed through smart and connected communities. Some locations have developed a system to help the aging population with routine transportation.

Anil Yazici after he went spearfishing for Mediterranean parrotfish in Turkey.Photo by Meliha Yazici

In one community, Yazici learned about a personal network in which people call each other to provide rides for regular travel, like weekly doctor or hospital visits. The network, which was organized through a church, involved calls to find rides through church members.

Eren Ozguven, who met Yazici in high school in Turkey and is a collaborator on the project, plans to do a presentation at Stony Brook on the challenges the aging population faces during hurricanes.

That includes a look at “how the technology usage is shaping this and how [to] provide better accessibility and safety during evacuations and sheltering,” Ozguven, who is an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at FAMU-FSU College of Engineering in Tallahasse, Florida, explained in an email. “We are hoping to have very fruitful brainstorming sessions with practitioners, researchers, students and the public.”

More broadly, Yazici’s work is focused on the resilience of various civil engineering systems, such as transportation.

Organizational networks require contact among all the various infrastructure agencies, he said. They need to keep in contact and make decisions through context. He is working on a way to measure resiliency, so that when storms break communication links and disrupt power grids, the agencies in charge of those systems can restore them to previous levels.

He would like to see how to make an agency’s response to a disruption more efficient. Resilience can be improved through developing sound models for a physical infrastructure response.

A resident of Harlem where he lived during his postdoctoral training, Yazici has had to create his own system to ensure a successful commute. He leaves early, before much of the reverse commuting traffic builds, and returns home late. Yazici, who has been at Stony Brook since the fall of 2014, said he appreciates the opportunity to contribute to a new and growing department.

Yazici moved eight times when he was younger, as the family followed his father Mesut, who was also a civil engineer, from projects including water treatment plants to industrial waste processing. His father tried to dissuade him from following in his footsteps. His academic position, however, doesn’t require Yazici to follow projects from one place to another.

Starting in his first year in college, Yazici played bass in a band. He performed mostly ’70s Turkish progressive rock. He enjoys making music and plans to start an ensemble with his students to have a live music event after graduation.

As for his work, Yazici appreciates the opportunity to study areas that cross disciplines and that help people. “What drives me and most of the academics I know is to make a difference in people’s lives,” he explained in an email. “This could be through teaching and seeing students evolve personally and professionally or researching a topic to solve a problem and improve someone’s life.”

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A musical adventure for the whole family

By Rita J. Egan

The University Orchestra at Stony Brook University is preparing to take audience members on a one-hour musical adventure. The ensemble will present its annual family orchestra concert, Adventures in Orchestral Music, at the Staller Center for the Arts on March 6.

Conductor Susan Deaver said the orchestra is planning a night filled with concertos from a variety of composers from all over the world such as America, Russia, Germany, England and Argentina. The list of songs include Mikhail Glinka’s overture to “Ruslan and Lyudmila,” Aaron Copland’s “Hoe-Down” from “Rodeo,” Morton Stevens’ “Hawaii Five-O” and John Williams’ “Star Wars Epic, Part II.” “They all sound different from one another, so it’s kind of different palettes of orchestral color,” Deaver said.

The conductor said the 70-piece orchestra consists of strings, brass, woodwind and percussion sections. While most of the musicians are college undergraduates, three are high school students who are part of the Stony Brook Young Artists Program. There are also a few graduate students who are nonmusic majors and five teaching assistants. The students’ majors range from music to biology, math and biochemistry. “The common thread is that they’ve all seriously studied music at some point,” Deaver said.

The night will feature a solo by 16-year-old violinist Mariana Knaupp, the winner of the 2017 Stony Brook Young Artists Program Concerto Competition. Mariana will perform the first movement of Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto in G Minor, the piece she played for the competition, with the orchestra. “She sounded great, and she had a lot of poise as a performer; she played really, really well,” Deaver said. “We have a competition, and they’re all playing really well, but there’s something that usually points to one person.”

Mariana, who lives in Huntington and is homeschooled, has studied violin for 11 years with Thalia Greenhalgh and is part of the Stony Brook University Young Artists Program. The violinist is a member of the string ensemble Metrognomes, which performs a few times a year at nursing homes, sports venues and holds benefit concerts for disaster victims. For seven years, she also has been a part of the Gemini Youth Orchestra and has played at Symphony Space and Lincoln Center. She said she’s excited about her first time playing with a full orchestra and was surprised when she won the competition.

“I didn’t really expect to win because there were a lot of really good players involved,” Mariana said in a recent phone interview. “It was a really nice surprise that I won, and I’m very excited to actually play with an orchestra because I’ve wanted to for several years now.”

Mariana said when her violin teacher asked her what she wanted to play for the competition, she knew she wanted a romantic concerto. She has been playing her chosen piece for a year now and said it’s a beautiful concerto that she’s looking forward to sharing with the family concert audience.

“I would just like to be able to play the concerto as the composer intended it and just convey what he would have wanted in a performance,” Mariana said. The violinist has enjoyed rehearsals with the orchestra and said when she attends college she hopes to major in math, English or neuroscience. She plans on taking music classes as electives and playing with a university orchestra.

Like past family concerts, Deaver said the orchestra members will interact with the audience, talking with them about the different instruments and music. The musicians also have some surprises in store for attendees. “Myself and the orchestra, I think we are always energized by the audience because we’re interacting with them more, and it kind of breaks down any barriers that you might have,” Deaver said. “They’re really part of the concert almost, the audience since we’re interacting with them, I think we all feel really energized from it.”

The University Orchestra at Stony Brook University presents Adventures in Orchestral Music on March 6 at the Staller Center for the Arts, 100 Nicolls Road, Stony Brook at 7:30 p.m.. All tickets are $5. For more information or to purchase tickets, call 631-632-ARTS (2787) or visit www.stonybrook.edu.music.

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