Zinnias are the perfect choice for homegrown bouquets. Pixabay photo
By Alice Dawes
National Garden Week takes place annually in the first full week of June. This year it is held from June 1 to 7. It is spearheaded by National Garden Clubs, a nonprofit national organization headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri that promotes the love of gardening, floral design, and civic and environmental responsibility.
The day is about bringing more awareness to the importance of gardening and preserving gardening traditions and practices by passing on knowledge to new gardeners. Most importantly, the day is about simply enjoying gardening.
The Three Village Garden Club, organized over 90 years ago, is a member of the National Garden Clubs along with 30 other local garden clubs on Long Island. The club meets weekly on Tuesdays at 10:30 a.m. at the Setauket Neighborhood House and welcomes our community members to join us to learn about gardening skills, environmental action and civic programs to enhance our community. Information about our current meeting topics can be found at threevillagegardenclub.org and selecting ‘upcoming events’ in the tool bar.
The club protects and enhances our Three Village Garden Club Arboretum at the end of Bates Road in Setauket and encourages all to visit and enjoy a walk through nature. Pets on leashes only, please!
The club provides educational programs on floral design, gardening pointers and youth creative projects through Emma Clark Library’s educational program series. With Emma Clark we also provide a Teddy Bears’ Picnic every summer at the Three Village Garden Club Arboretum for our younger neighbors to enjoy.
National Garden Week is a time to have an adventure in planting, create and savor our wonderful gardens and the plants we grow there. Plant something new, make a bouquet for your home and introduce our children to the wonders of growing with nature during National Garden Week
Author Alice Dawes has been a member of the Three Village Garden Club for over 20 years.
We are only six people away from anyone in the world.
We probably don’t have to go that far to find people who live throughout the United States.
That means we have friends, relatives, professional colleagues, former classmates and others who can make a difference.
New Yorkers likely have the support of Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand when it comes to critical funding for the National Institutes of Health and for the National Science Foundation, whose financial support is under severe threat from the current budget the senate is considering and that the house has already passed.
Cuts in these areas will have critical and irreversible consequences for us, our children, our families and our future.
The money that goes into science has paid enormous dividends over the decades. The United States is able to outcompete many other nations because it has attracted the world’s best researchers to cutting edge areas.
These people drive the future of innovation, provide medical expertise that saves lives, and start companies that provide numerous high paying jobs around the country.
Cutting back means retreating from the world stage, enabling other nations to develop treatments and cures for diseases that might cost us much more money or become less accessible to those who weren’t in on the ground floor.
It also will hurt our economy, as patents and processes lead to profits elsewhere.
Shutting off the valve of innovation will turn fertile fields of scientific exploration and innovation into barren deserts.
This is where those six degrees comes in. New Yorkers probably don’t need to urge our senators to commit to scientific budgets. But senators from other states, hoping to remain in favor with their party and to act in a unified way, might not be as comfortable supporting scientific research when they and their constituents might believe they don’t stand to gain as much from that investment in the short term. After all, not every state has leading research institutions such as Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University, a top-rated research institution and a downstate flagship for the SUNY system.
You remember those relatives whose politics are different from your own and who often create a scene at Thanksgiving or the holidays? Well, it’s time to talk with them, not at them. Let them know how much you, they and, an argument that’s hard to ignore, their parents and their children stand to lose if they stop investing in science.
How about that annoying guy at the company retreat who is thrilled to talk about how sad the elites are these days?
Talk to him, too. Let him know that his parent with Alzheimer’s or his uncle with a debilitating condition could one day benefit from discoveries in labs that desperately need funding.
Indeed, his own hearing or vision might depend on continued investment into research about diseases that become more prevalent as he ages.
We all benefit from these discoveries and we all lose out when we stop investing or contributing.
As for his children, they might get jobs in companies that don’t yet exist but that will form as a result of the discovery of products or processes that arise out of research.
The United States is still the only nation to send people (and it’s only men so far) to the moon, allowing them to set foot on a place other than our incredible planet.
Those moments and achievements, even decades later, inspire people to want to become astronauts, to join NASA, to provide the kind of information and research that make future missions possible.
While we don’t need funding for everything, we benefit from ongoing efforts and discoveries in direct and indirect ways. Shutting down labs, reducing internships and graduate school offerings, and stopping the process of asking questions creates headwinds for innovation, the economy and medical discoveries.
Urge those outside of New York to write to their senators, to make the kind of choices that will support and enrich the country and to prevent a one-way road to a dead end. We don’t have to agree on everything, but it’s worth the effort to encourage people to let our elected officials know that their constituents understand what’s at stake.
A senator from Mississippi might not care what you, a New Yorker, thinks, but he’s more likely to pay attention to a resident in his district. We need science whisperers in every state. We can not and will not let the NIH budget decline without a fight. Take a jog, practice yoga, meditate. Then, go talk to those relatives and encourage them to support science and the future.
Perhaps you have noticed that there is little to no national news in our newspapers and on our website? We assume you understand that it is not because we are unaware of what is happening in our country and in the world. Most of us here at the company start each day with the news via radio or television or cable and even with news flashes from different sources on our cellphones. We talk about those items in the office and listen or watch when we return home.
In fact, that’s the problem.
We can’t seem to escape the plethora of upsetting news that fills our waking hours. But we strive to provide one retreat from the chaotic world in which we live: the hometown news.
That is not to say we report no bad news in our towns and villages. Of course we do. News is news. But one positive about local news: to a large extent, we can bask in the good events that occur and have some degree of control over what happens around us. We can take pride in our students’ achievements, we can make our voices heard in development plans if we know what is going on, we can get to know our interesting neighbors from their profiles, we can plan our weekends from the many offerings in the calendar. In short, local news is a mirror held up to our daily lives whose many details can’t be found anywhere else.
We strive to make local news an oasis amid a sea of distressing troubles.
That means, we regularly turn away letters and opinion pieces that protest against national and international politicians and policies unless what is happening affects us only locally. But if you want to express your strongly held views on a local matter, however minute, we provide a platform from which you can be heard.
To get broader news, there are many sources. To get local news, there is only us, the hometown paper or website. We don’t want to be thought of as smaller versions of daily newspapers any more than children are to be considered smaller adults.
In that way, we have not changed.
However, gathering and disseminating the news has dramatically changed, even as computers and the internet started to alter the industry fifty years ago, right around the time our company began.
Pixabay image
You are probably aware of the revolutionary switch from hot type associated with Ben Franklin’s day, to the cold type that referred to mainframe and then desktop computers half a century ago. Now, when you walk into a news building, if you can find one, you see that the offices are largely empty. Many staff members are working remotely.
What does that mean?
In some ways, it is a win. We can interview by FaceTime, cover meetings by zoom, write up our stories, sometimes in record time and send them into the office or post to the web via the internet. All of this can be accomplished while we are still in our pajamas, drinking our coffee, and without our having to pay a babysitter if we take turns with our spouse, who is also working remotely.
If the children have already grown up and left home, well then, we can put in a load of wash, go back to work, pause to change the load to the dryer, and resume where we left off. And if we move, we can still keep our jobs.
In some ways, it’s a loss. Talking with each other digitally is not the same as talking together in the office, where we can bounce ideas around the room and watch each other’s body language. I believe we are more polite, stilted even, on a zoom gathering. Digital has sucked away the personal.
We at TBR News Media are functioning with four key positions filled remotely. Quality may not be suffering, but we certainly miss our staffers, their chatter and their random thoughts.
Our Lady of Hope grotto at Hope Academy in Mount Sinai. Photo courtesy Hope House Ministries
By Fr. Francis Pizzarelli
Fr. Francis Pizzarelli
Recently there have been a series of articles in our major newspapers indicating that our overdose death rate due to heroin and fentanyl are down.
This evidence, although very positive, is also very misleading. As someone who has been in the trenches working with addiction for more than three decades, I do believe that overdose deaths are down. However, I don’t think it’s accurate to conclude that the abuse of heroin and fentanyl is down.
Since the opioid epidemic gained national recognition, most states started to provide Narcan training which is a simple nasal spray that can reverse an overdose.
Since Narcan kits are very accessible and the training is very simple, more and more people are making sure they have a Narcan kit at their parties.
Every morning when I wake up in the little cottage that I live in on the grounds of Hope Academy in Mount Sinai, I see Our Lady of Hope grotto. Nestled in the trees behind the grotto, I see 120 crosses in the garden of remembrance. They represent the 120 mostly young people who have overdosed and died in our larger community since the pandemic.
People come to that garden to find peace and to remember a loved one who has overdosed and died because of the opioid epidemic. It has become holy ground; a safe place for people to gather without shame, blame or guilt.
As most treatment programs will report, no matter what their model, there are no beds available and there are endless waiting lists for people to be treated. In addition, we do not have enough trained professionals in the area of mental health and substance use disorders to treat the epidemic need.
What further alarms me are the proposed Medicaid cuts that will profoundly impact those battling addiction and mental health. If those proposals are put in place, we will clearly see an increase in this senseless loss of life.
Addiction, alcoholism and mental health challenges can be overwhelming for the patient and for the family. But people do recover and reclaim their lives. To empower people on the road to recovery, we need more comprehensive treatment services, not less. We need more profoundly dedicated professionals, not less, if we hope to substantially temper this terrible human tragedy.
If we stand up to this very important life issue with a loud voice so all can hear us, I am hopeful that we can empower people to stay on the road to recovery and wellness and reclaim their lives.
Father Francis Pizzarelli, SMM, LCSW-R, ACSW, DCSW, is the director of Hope House Ministries in Port Jefferson.
Your kidneys do far more than filter waste and fluid from your body. They maintain your blood’s health, help control your blood pressure, make red blood cells and vitamin D, and control your body’s acid levels. With all these functions relying on them, it’s crucial to keep them operating well.
When kidney function degrades, you can experience hypertension or cardiovascular problems. In later stages of chronic kidney disease (CKD), you may require dialysis or a kidney transplant. For the best outcomes, it’s critical to identify CKD early and arrest its progression to more serious stages. However, of the estimated 35.5 million U.S. adults who have CKD, as many as 9 in 10 are not even aware they have it (1).
Unfortunately, early-stage CKD symptoms are not obvious and can be overlooked. Among them are foamy urine, urinating more or less frequently than usual, itchy or dry skin, fatigue, nausea, appetite loss, and unintended weight loss (2).
Fortunately, simple tests, such as a basic metabolic panel and a urinalysis, can confirm your kidney function. These indices include an estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), creatinine level and protein in the urine. eGFR is a calculation and, while the other two indices have varying ranges depending on the laboratory used, a patient with an eGFR of 30 to 59 is classified as having mild disease. The eGFR and the kidney function are inversely related, meaning as eGFR declines, the severity of CKD increases.
What can be done to address early-stage CKD, before you experience complications? Several studies have evaluated different lifestyle modifications and their impacts on its prevention, treatment and reversal.
What creates the greatest kidney risks?
Among the greatest risks for your kidneys are uncontrolled diseases and medical disorders, such as diabetes and hypertension (1). If you have — or are at risk for — diabetes, control your blood sugar levels to limit kidney damage. Similarly, if you have hypertension, controlling it will put less stress on your kidneys. For these diseases, it’s important to have your kidney function tested at least once a year.
In addition, obesity and smoking are risk factors and can be managed by making lifestyle changes.
How can diet help protect your kidneys?
Fruits and vegetables may play a role in helping patients with CKD. In a one-year study with 77 patients, results showed that fruits and vegetables work as well as sodium bicarbonate in improving kidney function by reducing metabolic acidosis levels (3).
What is the significance of metabolic acidosis? Body fluids become acidic, and it is associated with CKD. The authors concluded that both sodium bicarbonate and diets including fruits and vegetables helped protect the kidneys from further damage in patients with CKD. Alkali diets are primarily plant-based, although not necessarily vegetarian or vegan. Animal products tend to cause an acidic environment.
In the Nurses’ Health Study, results show that animal fat, red meat and sodium all negatively impact kidney function (4). The risk of protein in the urine, a potential indicator of CKD, increased by 72 percent in those participants who consumed the highest amounts of animal fat compared to the lowest, and by 51 percent in those who ate red meat at least twice a week. With higher amounts of sodium, there was a 52 percent increased risk of having lower eGFR levels.
The most interesting part with sodium was that the difference between higher mean consumption and a lower mean consumption was not large, 2.4 grams compared to 1.7 grams. In other words, a difference of approximately a quarter-teaspoon of sodium per day was responsible for decrease in kidney function.
The National Kidney Foundation recommends diets that are higher in fruit and vegetable content and lower in animal protein, including the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet and plant-based diets (2).
In my practice, when CKD patients follow a vegetable-rich, nutrient-dense diet, they experience substantial kidney function improvements. For instance, one patient improved his baseline eGFR from 54 to 63 after one month of dietary changes, putting him in the range of “normal” kidney functioning. Note that this is one patient, not a rigorous study.
How often should you have your kidney function tested?
It is important to have your kidney function checked as part of your regular physical. If your levels are low, you should address the issue through medications and lifestyle modifications to manage and reverse early-stage CKD. If you have common risk factors, such as diabetes, smoking, obesity or high blood pressure, or if you are over 60 years old, talk to your doctor about regular testing.
Don’t wait until symptoms and complications occur. In my experience, it is much easier to treat and reverse CKD in its earlier stages.
References:
(1) CDC.gov. (2) kidney.org. (3) Clin J Am Soc Nephrol. 2013;8:371-381. (4) Clin J Am Soc Nephrol. 2010; 5:836-843.
Dr. David 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.
Lake House guests on froint porch ca. 1913. Photo courtesy Beverly C. Tyler
Catboat Setauket rigged with a canopy and engine to take Lakeside House guests on excursions. Sailing made some of the guests nervous, so Capt. Tyler did both sailing and motoring. Photos courtesy Bev Tyler
Catboat Setauket circa 1913. Photo courtesy Beverly C. Tyler
Beverly S. Tyler and Edith Griffin Tyler in 1912
Lake House Setauket ca. 1902. Photo courtesy Beverly C. Tyler
Shore Acres after last expansion ca. 1925. Photo courtesy Barbara Russell
By Beverly C. Tyler
As the shipbuilding era was ending in Stony Brook and East Setauket in the 1870s, the Long Island Railroad was completing the North Shore Line to Port Jefferson. The coming of the railroad made it possible for people and products to travel quickly overland and opened the Three Village area to tourism, especially from New York City
Until the railroad came, most travel and commerce to and from Long Island ports was conducted by ship. As the railroad became more efficient and reliable, tourism began to increase, especially during the summer months. Hotels, tourist homes and summer cottages opened in Stony Brook and Setauket, as they did throughout Long Island, to accommodate the influx of visitors.
By 1902, there were six hotels or tourist homes in Stony Brook and ten in Setauket-East Setauket which offered weekly rates. In Stony Brook, the Pine View House, run by Israel Hawkins, advertised as a family recreation summer boarding house with accommodations for 25 guests. Guests at the Pine View had the use of a beach house at West Meadow Beach.
In East Setauket, Shore Acres was a large boarding house overlooking Setauket Harbor. Shore Acres was run by Mr. and Mrs. William D. Oakes and had 30 rooms and one bathroom with a wash basin in each room. “In the large dining room on Sundays, the meal was usually chicken, slaughtered on Saturday evening, fresh garden vegetables and homemade ice cream.” (Long Island Museum 1981 exhibit Summer at the Shore). Boating and bathing were popular activities during these summers and Shore Acres had its own docks and boats for the use of guests. As noted by Barbara Russell, “Later, Mr. Oakes had a motorboat and would take boarders over to Whitehall Beach to spend afternoons.” (Down the Ways – The Wooden Ship Era)
In Setauket, the Lakeside House, now the Setauket Neighborhood House, had accommodations for 25 guests at $6.00 to $8.00 per week. The Lakeside House was run by my grandfather Captain Beverly Swift Tyler.
In 1879, he was master and 3/8 owner of the “Willow Harp”. She was a coastal schooner and carried coal from New Jersey to East Setauket. Beginning about the turn of the century, Captain Tyler, who then spent much of his time running the Lakeside House, would take guests on sailing outings on his catboat “Madeline” which was anchored in Setauket Harbor.
After he married my grandmother Edith Griffin in 1912, who first came to Setauket to stay a week at the Lakeside House with her sister Carolyn, she became the Lakeside hostess and manager of the kitchen and boarding house staff. Lucy Hart Keyes, born 1900, commented that she worked at the Lakeside house as a young girl and that Mrs. Tyler was “an easy person to work for.”
In 1906, my grandfather built the catboat “Setauket” in an area behind the Lakeside House. The “Setauket” was the second boat he built, the first being the “Madeline,” which, according to Roger Tyler, Captain Tyler’s nephew, “was built with the comments and help of friends and neighbors whose advice he took and later regretted. When the ‘Setauket’ was being built and comments were again offered, Captain Tyler this time pointed out that the ‘Madeline’ was their community boat and that he was building the ‘Setauket’ by himself.”
Sailboats and the harbors and inlets of the Three Village area were part of the attractiveness of the community at the turn of the century. Captain Tyler used the “Setauket” to take guests on excursions on the Sound and around Setauket and Port Jefferson Harbors. The “Setauket” was also built to race in local competitions in Port Jefferson Harbor. When the “Setauket” was built, Captain Tyler sold the “Madeline,” which was a fairly good racing catboat. Roger Tyler said that the “Setauket” was raced in Port Jefferson and was a consistent winner against all competition including the “Madeline.” Tyler commented that, “it got to be so that they wouldn’t tell Bev when a race was to be run and a few times he found out about them only just and hour or so before the race, but raced and won anyway.”
The tourism era in Setauket and Stony Brook continued strong until World War I. Captain Tyler sold the Lakeside House to Eversley Childs in 1918. Childs, who – the story goes–only wanted the tourist home for its liquor license, which he transferred to the St. George Golf and Country Club gave the Lakeside House to the community for its use. A number of other tourist homes in the Three Village area continued into the 1930s.
Beverly Tyler is Three Village Historical Society historian and author of books available from the Three Village Historical Society, 93 North Country Rd., Setauket, NY 11733. Tel: 631-751-3730. http://www.TVHS.org
Walking out of the returnable bottle vestibule at the local supermarket, I looked up to see a swirl of black forms, circling and swooping over the parking lot. I quickly counted eighteen crows and wondered what they were doing and what species was involved? A dozen landed on the building parapet, sitting in even spaced intervals about three feet apart and began vocalizing — I got the answer to the second question as their deeply nasal caw gave them away — I was watching a flock of Fish Crows, or as a flock of crows is also called “A Murder of Crows,” right here in a suburban parking lot.
Fish Crows, which breed here, are a member of the Corvid family (or Corvidae) which has three other representatives of this fascinating bird family on Long Island — Blue Jay, American Crow and the Common Raven, a relative newcomer to the island’s avifauna. (The Raven is also the largest songbird in the world, an interesting factoid you can impress people with at cocktail parties). There are twenty-three corvid species in North Americawith other representatives of the family including magpies,nutcrackers, and scrub jays.
A blue jay. Pixabay photo
As for the answer to the first question about their collective behavior, each and every bird was doing something important since such rapid communication was taking place between crows. The perched birds called repeatedly, almost incessantly, projecting their head forward to emphasize the call, so much so I thought they might tumble from the building edge! A few more joined the scene flying north from the nearby home improvement store and they proceeded to land on the parking light poles of the supermarket, cawing as they flew in.
I watched for at least ten minutes as they called back and forth and I felt simultaneously amused and frustrated in not being able to enter their world and understand what the fuss was all about.The spring mating season would soon be here with the birds pairing up to raise the next generation of fish crows. Was this the crow equivalent of a farewell party? Whatever the reason, it was a pleasure to watch a group of animals socializing in such an animated way. It brought a smile to my face.
Another supermarket customer came out and once he passed the entrance overhang looked up, presumably drawn by my upward gaze and the raucous calling. He formed his arms as if he were firing a rifle and raised them in the direction of the birds. My smile immediately disappeared as his attitude and intent was clear. I said something to him that I cannot repeat in this family newspaper and his reaction, so immediate and spontaneous as to reveal his true attitude, darkened my mood for much of the day.
In fact, his attitude of hostility toward crows is an all too common one. Based on New York State hunting regulations, promulgated by the Department of Environmental Conservation, you can kill as many crows as you want, each and every day, during a six month hunting season running from September 1st to March 31st. All this despite the fact that virtually no one hunts crows to eat them — they are shot for “sport.” The state agency, created to “conserve the environment,” one that you support with hard earned tax dollars, is in support of suffering and a wanton waste of life.
While some have a negative view of crows,a more positive view is developing, fostered by a recognition they are remarkably smart birds, a fact borne out by experiment and observation.
The results of a recently published trial relating to “geometric regularity” bears this out. In this study, researchers rewarded crows if they correctly identified a shape which is different from a group of other displayed shapes — like four stars and a crescent. If a crow pecked at the crescent it would be given a treat, a delicious mealworm! The crows’ abilities were tested when it came to shapes that were different but in more subtle ways such as a square and another quadrilateral figure with which the angles and lines varied little. The subtletydidn’t matter as the birds pecked the correct symbol and got the mealworm.
We know from ample experiments and observations that crows are one of the few bird groups that use tools. In one famous set of experiments, crows had to know to drop rocks into a tube of water to raise the water level enough to reach a floating treat. They did this well and when confronted with two tubes, one containing water and the other sand, knew not to bother with the sand filled tube.
In another experiment crows knew to insert one tube into another to gain enough length to reach food. The use of compound tools, as displayed by crows, has only been seen in Great Apes.
To round out the intelligent capabilities of crows, they are known to recognize and distinguish human faces, being able to remember them for many years. What’s the reason for such intellectual prowess? Well, part of it has to do with the fact that corvids have large brains in comparison to their bodies. But the main reason has to do with the high density of neurons corvid brains possess and the overall complicated structure of the corvid brain.
This time of year crows and other corvids have paired up to breed and raise a new generation. They will stay paired for the next couple of months but as summer wanes and the cooler weather arrives you’ll notice a change in their behavior. The pair bonds dissolve and the crows, ever gregarious and social, will spend the winter in flocks which can number in the hundreds, during which time individual crows observe the behavior of other crows learning:What do they eat? In what direction and how far do they fly from their overnight winter roost to find feed? How do they detect and avoid predators?This social aspect of crows also helps to explain their overall adaptability and intelligence, traits that if my fellow shopper knew, might result in him replacing his knee jerk aggressive gesture with a sense of admiration.
A resident of Setauket, author John L. Turner is a naturalist, conservation co-chair of the Four Harbors Audubon Society, and Conservation Policy Advocate for the Seatuck Environmental Association.
A Column Promoting a More Earth-Friendly Lifestyle
By John L. Turner
John Turner
Over the past several weeks and continuing now in a diminished fashion, hundreds of millions of birds have been migrating north to their breeding grounds to raise the next generation. Colorful songbirds like warblers, tanagers, thrushes, grosbeaks, vireos, and many other groups are winging their way through the night to reach their desired destinations, using, remarkably, the celestial constellations and the Earth’s magnetic fields to orient themselves and stay on course until they arrive at their breeding grounds.
On their travels these birds face a gauntlet of challenges so the question is: would you like to take a simple step to help ensure they successfully complete their remarkable journeys? Shut off unneeded interior lights or pull down blinds to prevent the light from bleeding outward. Also, and more importantly, turn off exterior lights. A number of studies have documented that lighting confuses and disorients birds just as it does to moths, drawing them into unfriendly environments like developed areas where feral and free roaming pet cats and glass windows are abundant. By reducing the amount of ambient light we can help migrating birds safely reach their nesting sites. Plus, you’ll save a little in energy costs.
A resident of Setauket, author John L. Turner is a naturalist, conservation co-chair of the Four Harbors Audubon Society, and Conservation Policy Advocate for the Seatuck Environmental Association.
Angelika Drees at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Drees is pointing to the pipe that runs clockwise, while, on the other side of that pipe, is another one (marked in yellow tape) that runs counterclockwise. Photo by Daniel Dunaief
By Daniel Dunaief
Finely tuned accelerators, constructed underground in rings that are over 1.5 miles long, can reveal secrets about the smallest parts of matter. At the same time, the work researchers do, which involves accelerating electrons, ions and other sub atomic particles, operates at a level considerably smaller than a human hair, using sensitive equipment under tightly controlled, high energy conditions.
Indeed, at this scale, researchers need to account for energies and changes that wouldn’t affect most human activities, but that can have significant impacts on the work they are doing and the conclusions they draw.
Over the years, accelerator physicists have encountered a wide range of challenges and, for a time, unexplained phenomena.
Accelerator physicist Angelika Drees has worked at Brookhaven National Laboratory since 1997 and has experience and expertise with several accelerators. She is currently working on the Electron Ion Collider (EIC), a unique instrument that will explore quarks and gluons — particles inside the atomic nucleus — that will have applications in medicine, materials science, and energy.
Drees does luminosity calculations. She tries to ensure more collisions. At the same time, she seeks to protect the equipment while keeping the backgrounds as low as achievable.
Drees works with a loss monitor and is responsible for that system, which includes over 400 monitors. The majority of these are installed between two beam pipes.
Lost signal
Drees has worked since 1997 at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), which is in its last experimental runs before it provides some of the materials for the new EIC.
As an accelerator, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider has beam position monitors that are comprised of two opposing striplines inside the beam pipe that measure the position of the beam. These striplines, which are on either side of the beam, look at the difference in induced signal amplitude. Equal amplitude, with a difference of zero, implies that the beam is in the center.
While the engineers knew that the material for the cables, which transmit signals from the beam position monitor to the system that sees its location, would shrink when exposed to temperatures of 4 degrees Kelvin, they hadn’t adjusted the design to prepare for the change.
When the electronics shrunk after being exposed to temperatures close to absolute zero, which help make the magnets superconducting, they pulled themselves out of their power source.
“We could not see the position of the beam,” Drees explained. “This was during the so-called sextant test, and the beam was not (yet) circling.”
The magnets operated independent of the beam position monitors.
For about a year they could see the beamline 20 meters downstream. Before Drees arrived, the team updated the cables, putting kinks that allowed them to shrink without interfering with their operation of pulling themselves out of the power source.
“It was repaired and, ever since, there has been no further issue,” she said.
‘Weird variation’
Before she arrived at BNL, Drees conducted her PhD work at the Large Electron-Positron Collider, or LEP, which has now become the site of the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland.
The LEP was 27 kilometers long and was between 30 meters and 160 meters underground. It stretched below France and Switzerland. Some part of it was in soil that is affected by Lake Geneva. Half of the LEP was embedded below the Jura bedrock and the other half was embedded in softer sedimentary deposits close to the lake.
Scientists saw regular variation in their results, with a peak to peak beam energy of about 250 parts per million. By studying the timing of these peaks to a regular 28-day and daily cycle, they connected it to the moon.
“The moon not only affects Earth’s oceans, but the actual crust and thus the LEP ring inside it,” Drees explained.
The moon wasn’t the only outside influence on the LEP. Rainwater penetrated the tunnel.
The magnet yokes had concrete between metal laminations. The concrete absorbed the humidity and expanded, increasing pressure on the metal laminations.
That changed the magnetic permeability and the transfer function, which indicates how much bending magnetic field researchers get out of a magnet with a specific electric current.
Rain took about two weeks to show up in the data, as the water took that long to reach and alter the concrete.
During her PhD on the LEP beam energy measurement and calibration, Drees searched for environment effects as a part of her thesis.
While others discovered the moon tides before she arrived, she and other researchers couldn’t account for a ground current that was penetrating into the equipment.
Acting like an extra and inexplicable power source, this current changed the magnetic field.
The extra energy invalidated earlier results. The error bar was four times larger than they originally thought, causing the LEP working group to withdraw a paper and commit to redoing the analysis.
The energy disappeared from midnight to 4 am. Back then, researchers at the LEP were so eager for an explanation that they posted a message on a TV screen, offering an award, like a bottle of champagne, to anyone who could explain what was happening.
Suspecting planes might be contributing, Drees sent a student to the airport to monitor flights. The police, however, weren’t too pleased with this data gathering, initially questioning, then sending the student away.
Drees met with the power authority, who had measured ground currents in the area for years that stopped during those same post midnight hours.
That provided the necessary clue, as the trains — and, in particular the French ones — had contributed this unexplained energy.
Unlike the Swiss trains, which operate with alternating current, the French trains use direct current, which had affected their experiments.
Looking forward
Angelika Drees on her horse Pino.
Originally from Wuppertal, Germany, Drees balances the mentally demanding and inspirational challenges of working at these colliders with manual labor.
She earned money during her undergraduate and graduate school days by shoeing horses.
Drees currently owns a horse and works regularly on a horse farm, throwing hay bales and repairing fences.
“I like physical labor,” she said.
Several years ago, she traveled to Portugal, where she stopped at a farm with a Lusitano stallion. The horse had a loose shoe. While she couldn’t speak Portuguese with the person leading the stallion, who, as it turned out, was the national riding coach, she let him know that she could help.
After she repaired the shoe, he asked if she wanted to ride. She found riding this stallion in the back woods of Portugal “amazing.”
“Very brainy work and very physical work balances each other well,’ she said.
As for the colliders, Drees is looking forward to the construction of the EIC, even as she has bittersweet sentiments about RHIC closing down.
Ultimately, building the EIC presents challenges that she is eager to face.
I’m one of those individuals that doesn’t wait until hot weather to light the barbecue grill. I enjoy grilling most anytime, including during snowstorms and frigid temperatures. However, I draw the line when outside is experiencing heavy torrential downpours.
Like most grill enthusiasts, my menu includes steaks, chops, burgers, hot dogs, ribs, sausage, chicken, pork, shrimp, seafood (especially tuna steaks), potatoes, and so on. I also love to grill most vegetables, including corn, portabello mushrooms, broccoli rabe, radicchio, eggplant, Romaine lettuce, cabbage, green beans, tomatoes, artichokes, asparagus, Brussels sprouts, onions, carrots, and peppers of any type, especially hot chilis. I’ve even grilled kielbasa, mortadella, gnocchi, pineapple, peaches, octopus, clams, and oysters.
While grilling, I enjoy a glass of chilled white or rosé wine. One of my go-to whites is the 2022 Ruffino “Lumina” Pinot Grigio “delle Venezie” DOC, Italy. It’s clean, crisp, easy-to-drink with sliced apple, tangerine, and pear flavors. Dry, with hints of bitter almond, dried flowers, and citrus. I enjoy noshing on some grilled radicchio while sipping this wine.
Here are some others I recommend:
2022 Mezzacorona “Dinotte,” Vigneti delle Dolomiti IGT, Red Blend, Trentino-Alto Adige, Italy. (Briefly aged in French oak barrels) Blend of Teroldego, Marzemino, and Merlot grapes. Purple-red with considerable spicy fruit; red currant, cranberry, blueberries, and chocolate-cherry. Dry, with notes of vanilla, spices, and plum. Pair with grilled eggplant brushed with garlic-olive oil.
2023 Bolla Chianti DOCG Tuscany, Italy. Bright ruby with notes of raspberry, spicy morello cherry, chestnuts, violets, and sage. Dry, medium body with flavors of blackberry jam, plum, fennel, and bitter almond. I serve it with grilled teriyaki marinated tuna steaks.
2020 Fiamme Montepulciano d’Abruzzo “Riserva,” DOC, Abruzzo, Italy. Deeply colored with a bouquet and flavor of dark fruit… plums, black cherry, and black currants. Notes of dried herbs, vanilla, tobacco, chocolate, and anise. A plate of grilled spicy Italian sausages with fennel says it all.
2017 Bolla Amarone della Valpolicella “Classico,” DOCG, Veneto, Italy. Full flavors of dried cherries, dark chocolate, figs, black plum, and bitter almonds. Notes of anise, espresso, rosemary, cinnamon, and wild berries. Almost port-like, with sensations of rich spicy fruit. Pair it with a ribeye steak cooked medium rare with smoky mushrooms.
2023 Tre Monti, Vigna Rocca “Albana Secco,” DOCG, Emilia-Romagna, Italy. (Made with 100% organic Albana di Romagna grapes). Light golden with a lively bouquet and taste of apricot, melon, yellow plum, and bitter almonds. Hints of orange rind, honeysuckle, and dried flowers. I pair this with grilled pineapple and peaches.
Bob Lipinski is the author of 10 books, including “101: Everything You Need To Know About Whiskey” and “Italian Wine & Cheese Made Simple” (available on Amazon.com). He consults and conducts training seminars on Wine, Spirits, and Food and is available for speaking engagements. He can be reached at www.boblipinski.com OR [email protected]
I’m one of those individuals that doesn’t wait until hot weather to light the barbecue grill. I enjoy grilling most anytime, including during snowstorms and frigid temperatures. However, I draw the line when outside is experiencing heavy torrential downpours.
Prev
