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You’ll be surprised at how much better you will feel — and how much sharper your thinking is if you add walking to your daily regimen. METRO photo

By David Dunaief, M.D.

Dr. David Dunaief

What does it take to get us out of our seats? We know that exercise is good for our long-term physical and mental health, but it’s still elusive for many of us. It’s just too tempting to let the next episode of our new favorite series autoplay or to answer those last few emails.

Many of us tried to get out of gym class as kids and, as adults, we “want” to exercise, but we “don’t have time.” I once heard that the couch is as bad as the worst deep-fried food; it perpetuates inactivity. Even sleeping burns more calories than sitting and watching TV.

I have good news. There is an easy way to get tremendous benefit in very little time. You don’t need expensive equipment, and you don’t have to join a gym. You can even sharpen your wits — with your feet.

The New York Times’ Science Times carried an article a few years ago about Esther Tuttle. At the time, Esther was 99 years old, sharp as a tack and was independently mobile, with no mobility aids required. She continued to stay active by walking in the morning for 30 minutes and then walking again in the afternoon. The skeptic might say that this is a nice story, but its value is anecdotal at best.

Well, evidence-based medicine backs up her claim that walking is a rudimentary and simple way to get exercise that shows incredible benefits. One mile of walking a day will help keep the doctor away. For the step-counters among you, that’s about 2,000 steps a day for an adult with an average stride length.

Does walking improve brain function?

Walking also has a powerful effect on preserving brain function and even growing certain areas of the brain (1). Walking between six and nine miles a week, or just one mile a day, reduced the risk of cognitive impairment over 13 years and actually increased the amount of gray matter tissue in the brain over nine years. Whoa!

Participants who had an increase in brain tissue volume also had a substantially reduced risk of developing cognitive impairment. Interestingly, the parts of the brain that grew included the hippocampus, involved with memory, and the frontal cortex, involved with short-term memory and executive decision making. There were 299 participants who were dementia free at the start of the trial. The mean participant age was 78. Imagine if you started younger?

In yet another study, moderate exercise reduced the risk of mild cognitive impairment with exercise begun in mid-to-late life (2).

Even better news is that, if you’re pressed for time or if you’re building up your stamina, you can split a mile into two half-mile increments. How long does it take you to walk a half-mile? You’ll be surprised at how much better you will feel — and how much sharper your thinking is.

How does walking affect mood?

Researchers performed a meta-analysis of other studies related to the relationship between exercise and depression. They found that adults who walked briskly for about 75 minutes per week cut their risk of depression by 18 percent (3). That’s only half of what the Centers for Disease Control recommend. 

If you ratchet up your exercise to running, a study showed that mood also improves, mollifying anger (4). The act of running actually increases your serotonin levels, a hormone that, when low, can make people agitated or angry. So, exercise may actually help you get your aggressions out.

How do I reset my sitting ‘habit?’

A particular challenge I hear these days is that working from home reduces much of the opportunity to walk. There’s less walking down the hall to a meeting or to refill your water bottle. Instead, everything is only a few steps away. It’s as if our work environment is actually working against us.

If you need a little help getting motivated, here is a terrific strategy to get you off the couch or away from your computer: set an alarm for specific points throughout your day and use that as a prompt to get up and walk, even if it’s for only 15 minutes. The miles will add up quickly.

A client of my wife’s schedules meetings for no more than 50 minutes, so she can walk a “lap” around her house’s interior between meetings. She also looks for opportunities to have a good old-fashioned phone call, rather than a video call, so she can walk around while she’s talking or listening. Of course, this is one person, but it might give you some ideas that will work for you.

Walking has other benefits as well. We’ve all heard about the importance of doing weight-bearing exercise to prevent osteoporosis and osteoporotic fractures. Sadly, if you don’t use them, bones weaken and break. Walking is a weight-bearing exercise that helps strengthen your joints, bones and muscles.

So, remember, use your feet to keep your mind sharp and yourself even-tempered. Activities like walking will help you keep a positive attitude, preserve your bones and help increase the plasticity of your brain.

References:

(1) Neurology Oct 2010, 75 (16) 1415-1422. (2) Arch Neurol. 2010;67(1):80-86. (3) JAMA Psychiatry 2022. 79(6), 500-559. (4) J Sport Exerc Psychol. 2010 Apr;32(2):253-261.

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.

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Brownies

By Heidi Sutton

While throwing together a boxed mix of brownies is obviously the easiest way, homemade brownies are so worth the extra effort. While some people prefer chewy brownies and others prefer fudgy and chocolaty ones, both of the following recipes are easy to prepare and produce a delicious crowd-pleasing treat. Whip up a batch for your next Big Game Day or Valentine’s Day. 

Best Ever Chewy Brownies

Recipe courtesy of Food Network

YIELD: Makes 8 to 10 servings

INGREDIENTS:

Nonstick cooking spray, for spraying the baking pan

1 cup granulated sugar 

1 cup dark brown sugar 

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1⁄2 teaspoon kosher salt 

2 large eggs plus 2 yolks 

1 stick unsalted butter, melted 

8 ounces semisweet chocolate chips 

1⁄2 cup vegetable oil 

11⁄4 cups all-purpose flour 

1⁄4 cup cocoa powder 

DIRECTIONS: 

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Line a 9-by-13-inch baking pan with parchment paper and spray with cooking spray. Combine the granulated sugar, brown sugar, vanilla, salt, whole eggs and yolks in a large bowl; set aside. Melt the butter and chocolate in a double boiler, then whisk together until fully combined. Mix in the vegetable oil. Pour the chocolate mixture into the sugar mixture and mix until fully combined. Fold in the flour and cocoa.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 30 to 35 minutes. Let cool completely before slicing.

Sweetheart Dark Chocolate Brownies

Recipe courtesy of Culinary.net

YIELD: Makes 10 servings

INGREDIENTS:

For the brownies:

1/2 cup butter, cut into pieces

4 ounces dark chocolate, chopped

2 eggs, at room temperature

3/4 cup white sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

For the glaze:

2 ounces semisweet chocolate

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

DIRECTIONS: 

Preheat the oven to 350°F. In small pot over low heat, melt 1/2 cup of butter and 4 ounces of dark chocolate together until smooth. Add eggs one at a time, and whisk to combine after each addition. Add sugar and vanilla and stir to combine. Add flour, cocoa powder and salt and stir until smooth.

Transfer batter into a 9 x 9 aluminum foil lined baking pan and place it into the oven for 25 minutes and bake until done.

While brownies are baking, melt together semisweet chocolate and 1 tablespoon of unsalted butter for the glaze. Once melted, set aside. When brownies are done, let them cool. Once cooled, drizzle glaze over brownies, and spread it on top using an offset spatula.

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Want to upgrade your brownies? Before you add the batter to the pan try adding walnuts, pecans, peanuts, marshmallows, crushed pretzels, peppermint extract, chopped candies, chocolate chips or dried fruit. 

Leftover brownies will keep in an airtight container at room temperature for 1-2 days, in the fridge for up to 4 days, or in the freezer for up to 3 months.

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METRO photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

The number of Advanced Placement courses has expanded dramatically since parents were the age of their high school children.

Whereas we could have taken, say, four or five APs, the modern high school student can graduate with considerably more.

Current students can and sometimes do take as many as eight, nine, 10 or more AP classes, in the hopes of knocking the socks off college admissions counselors, guidance counselors and future prospective employers. All those AP classes can also give students enough college credits to help them graduate in under four years.

I’d like to propose my own list of AP classes for future generations.

— AP Listening. So many people love to talk, to hear their own voices, and to tell others how they’re wrong even before people can share a fully formed opinion. In this class, students would be required to listen to new ideas, to consider them and to react and interact with others. Speaking would be considerably less important than listening carefully.

— AP Conspiracy Theory. We all know that conspiracy theories are as ubiquitous as “Welcome” signs in corner stores. This AP class would look deeply at some of the most detailed conspiracy theories, giving students a chance to question everyone and everything, including those people who create and pass along conspiracies.

— AP Saying No. To borrow from former First Lady Nancy Reagan, saying “no” to drugs, among other things, is a healthy and important part of growing up and making the most of the college experience. The class could provide students with a wide range of situations in which students say “no” without damaging their ego or social status.

— AP Social Media Etiquette, or SME, for short. Some seniors get into colleges well before their colleagues. When they do, they post pictures of themselves on campus, their parents wearing gear from the school that admitted them, and the school emblem or insignia with confetti coming down from the top of the screen. Yes, you got into college, and yes, that’s wonderful, but other members of your class are still applying and don’t need to feel awful because they haven’t gotten in anywhere yet.

— AP It’s Not About Me (or, perhaps, INAM). Yes, this is a bit like a psychology class, but instead of studying theories and psychology legends, these students could explore real-life scenarios in which, say, Sue becomes angry with John. John may not have done anything in particular, but Sue may be reacting to someone else in her life, like her parents forcing her to take AP It’s Not About Me instead of going to soccer practice.

— AP Take Responsibility. When something goes wrong at school, work or in the house, it’s far too easy to point the finger at someone else. In this class, students can learn how to take responsibility, when it’s appropriate, and demonstrate courage, leadership, and initiative in accepting responsibility for their mistakes.

— AP Personal History. Each of us has our own story to tell. Colleges urge prospective students to find their authentic voice. That’s not always easy in a world filled with formulas and scripted and structured writing. In this personal history class, students could take a microscope to their own lives and to the lives of their extended family, understanding and exploring characteristics and life stories. Students might discover family patterns they wish to emulate or to avoid at all costs.

— AP Tail Wagging. While the world is filled with problems, students could explore modern and historical moments and ideas that inspire them and that give them reasons to celebrate. This class could blend a combination of historical triumphs with small daily reasons to celebrate or, if you prefer, to wag your tail.

— AP Get to Know Your Parents. High school students who are well ahead of their time emotionally and intellectually may come to the conclusion many others reach before their mid 20’s: that their parents are, big shock here, people! Yeah, we do ridiculous thing like send them in the wrong clothing to school, miss important dances, and embarrass them by kissing them in front of their friends. This course could help accelerate the process of seeing parents for the imperfect creatures who love them unconditionally.

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METRO photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

Not every student graduating from high school wants to go to college. In the middle of the last century, many traditional high schools in New York offered three tracks to a diploma: academic, vocational and general. Somewhere along the way, those last two seem to have disappeared or at least become less visible. But for those students not wishing to continue with their academic education, that’s a loss, and some educators and business people are realizing that.

In Boston, there is a new initiative to bring together high schoolers wishing career training with hospitals greatly understaffed and needing more workers. There is also at least one such effort locally to place interested students on a track to a well-paying job on Long Island’s north shore.

First the Boston story. The Mass General system, the city’s largest employer, needs people to fill the 2000 job vacancies in its hospitals. Bloomberg Philanthropies has stepped forward with a $38 million investment, to connect a small high school with the hospitals in a program that will involve some 800 students, leading them to jobs in medical services. “Students will earn college credits as they train for careers in nursing, emergency medicine, lab science, medical imaging and surgery,” according to an article in The New York Times this past Thursday.

METRO photo

Bloomberg, by the way, has pledged to invest $250 million over five years in ten cities and regions, pairing high schoolers with hospitals in an effort to help both. Howard Wolfson, education program lead at Bloomberg Philanthropies, was quoted by the NYT as saying, “There is a growing sense that the value of college has diminished, relative to cost. This [program] should not be construed as anti-college—every kid who wants to go should have the opportunity. But at the same time, we have to acknowledge the reality that, for a lot of kids, college is not an option, or they want to get on with their careers.”

The foundation was started by Michael Bloomberg, New York’s former mayor, who grew up in Boston. Funding will also go to New York, Philadelphia, Nashville, Houston, Dallas, Charlotte and Durham, as well as rural regions in Tennessee and Alabama. The idea is for students to choose a specialty by the end of tenth grade, and then train for the remaining two years in those areas of interest. Attention has been increasing on vocational education in the last few years, according to a state report in Massachusetts. Similar interest would probably be echoed here in New York.

Such an addition to the workforce in hospitals would also serve to better meet the needs of patients. And more well-paying jobs would ideally increase a city’s middle class, allowing students from some low-income households to graduate and move right into a good position. Some of the Bloomberg money is pegged for school social workers and mental health clinicians to further enable the students to succeed in this program.

And since a number of these students will probably come from minority families, they will help diversify the current staffs and better reflect the patient load in the hospitals. There are, according to NYT and Bloomberg’s Wolfson, some two million job openings that exist in health care across the nation. That number will probably double by 2031.

While this program targets hospital needs, other such feeder schools could aim to fill shortages of teachers and in other careers offering opportunity.

Our local program, similar in aiming to fill positions with guaranteed jobs for trained workers, is organized by the Bridgeport and Port Jefferson Ferry Company. Additional personnel will enable the ferry company, which employs a crew of 11 per boat, to continue carrying at least 450,000 cars and trucks, and some 300,000 walk-on passengers between the two states each year. That’s been their average, and perhaps it will increase as their newest boat, The Long Islander, is added in August to the fleet.

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Stock photo

By Shannon L. Malone, Esq.

Shannon L. Malone, Esq.

Many of our clients have been inquiring about how traffic summons is being handled in Suffolk County, in particular, speeding tickets; the answers to these questions, depending on where in the county the ticket was received, tickets being prosecuted in the village in town, courts across Long Island may not be handled in the same way as those received elsewhere.

How is a speeding ticket handled if received in one of the five western towns of Suffolk County, Long Island?

For example, suppose you receive a ticket for speeding in the five western towns, Huntington, Smithtown Babylon Islip in Brookhaven, and not in an incorporated village, such as Head of the Harbor, Port Jefferson, Nissequogue, Islandia, and others. In that case, your case will be prosecuted in the central traffic court on Veterans Memorial Highway in Hauppauge in the H Lee Dennison building. The Suffolk County traffic and parking violations agency works in many ways, like the Department of Motor Vehicles.

How is the speeding ticket handled if received in an incorporated village or one of the eastern towns on Long Island?

Suppose you receive a speeding ticket in an incorporated village or one of the towns on the east end of Suffolk County, such as Riverhead, Southampton, East Hampton, or Southold. Your case will be prosecuted in the local court in that village or town. 

Each of these courts has its own rules concerning personal appearances; however, since the district attorney’s office in Suffolk County prosecutes speeding tickets and other moving violations, the same rules governing what dispositions of your ticket are possible in the traffic court in Hauppauge might not prevail. Specific plea-bargaining guidelines bind the prosecutors in the traffic court, while the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office has its flexible guidelines.

Take-Away

It is important that your attorney is fully aware of the different prosecutorial guidelines that are in place in the particular court where your speeding ticket is pending. Many law-abiding individuals tend to plead guilty instinctively, especially if it’s their first ticket. However, pleading guilty can result in a heavy fine, a possible increase in your car insurance rates, and as many as 6 to 11 points on your driving license. 

Shannon L. Malone, Esq. is an Associate Attorney at Glynn Mercep Purcell and Morrison LLP in Setauket. She graduated from Touro Law, where she wrote and served as an editor of the Touro Law Review. Ms. Malone is a proud Stony Brook University alumna.

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Evan Musterman with lead SRX beamline scientist Andrew Kiss at the SRX beamline. Photo by Kevin Coughlin/Brookhaven National Laboratory

By Daniel Dunaief

When he took over to lead the sub micron resolution X-ray spectroscopy, or SRX, beamline at Brookhaven National Laboratory on January 1, 2020, Andrew Kiss expected to balance between improving the machinery and helping visiting scientists use it. The pandemic, however, altered that balance.

BNL received components for the beamline in December 2019, when the researchers were going to try to take a fraction of the available x-ray time to install and commission it, all while still running experiments. The pandemic, however, kept scientists from visiting the site. That meant Kiss and his colleagues could dedicate more time to technical enhancements.

“Since the pandemic shut down the user program, this gave us an opportunity to focus all of our time on the new equipment” that visiting researchers could tap into when they returned, he explained in an email.

The beamline, which postdoctoral researcher Evan Musterman is enhancing further with diffraction techniques to reveal information about strain (see related story here), is in high demand. During the current cycle, 324 researchers applied for beamline time, while 99 time slots were allocated.

Scientists have a range of ways of discovering which beamline might best suit their research needs, including word of mouth. Kiss has had conversations with researchers who describe how they read something in a research paper and have similar goals.

Scientists “usually have a good idea of what instrument/ facility to use and why it is good for their research so informal conversations at conferences and seminars can be very useful,” Kiss said.

Most of Kiss’s time is dedicated to ensuring the stability and reliability of the beamline, as well as extending its capabilities to scan larger regions with less overhead, he explained.

“All of this is to help the researchers that come to the beamline, but my hope is that with this baseline of reliable and fast data acquisition, I can focus more on scientific topics such as metal additive manufacturing,” Kiss wrote.

With the SRX, Kiss can explore applied questions related to corrosion effects or how a material is modified by exposure to different gases, liquids or other parameters.

Working at the beamline has given Kiss an unusual perspective outside the lab. A few years ago, he received a notification about a recall on baby food he purchased that could have elevated levels of something unhealthy in it. His second thought, after making sure he didn’t give any to the child, was to wonder how much was in the food and if he could measure it. Before he could bring it to the lab, the contaminated food was already taken away with the garbage.

Kiss enjoys his work and suggested that the field attracts a “certain type of person and, once you are there, it is tough to pull yourself away from the instrument and the community of researchers around you,” he explained.

In addition to making basic discoveries in fields such as materials science, Earth science and biological sciences, the SRX beamline has played an important role in studies that have affected public policy.

Indeed, a study in 2022 showed that veterans who worked in Iraq and Afghanistan near burn pits had oxidized particles of iron and titanium in their lungs. “This is not direct evidence it came from a burn pit, but these were not seen in healthy lungs,” Kiss said. Only a few places in the world had the kind of machinery with a bright enough source and high enough resolution to discover these particles.

Kiss and collaborators from other laboratories, universities and medical institutions appreciated the opportunity to have a “positive impact on these soldiers’ lives by providing the measurements to get them help,” he said. The discovery of these elements in the lungs of veterans who lived near burn pits and suffered health consequences, which the study at SRX and other facilities helped demonstrate, led to the Pact Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022 and which provides $280 billion in federal funding for the health effects veterans suffer after exposure to such toxins.

SRX has high spatial resolution and is highly sensitive to trace concentrations for elemental mapping and chemical composition. SRX is an x-ray fluorescence microscope with “high spatial resolution and highly sensitive to trace concentrations for elemental mapping and chemical composition,” Kiss said. “If that can be used to help people’s lives, that is a wonderful thing.”

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Evan Musterman at the SRX beamline. Photo by Kevin Coughlin/Brookhaven National Laboratory

By Daniel Dunaief

It’s everywhere, from holding the water we drink to providing a cover over the Norman Rockwell painting of “The Three Umpires” to offering a translucent barrier between our frigid winter backyards and the warm living room.

While we can hold it in our hands and readily see through it, glass and its manufacture, which has been ongoing for about 4,000 years, has numerous mysteries.

Indeed, given enough temperature and time, glass crystallizes. Controlling the process has been used to increase strength and chemical durability, tailor thermal properties and more over the last several decades.

Evan Musterman, who studied the way lasers served as a localized heat source to induce single crystal formation in glass when he was a graduate student at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania-based Lehigh University, joined Brookhaven National Laboratory in September as a postdoctoral researcher.

Musterman, who received funding for nine months at the end of his PhD program through the Department of Energy’s Office of Science Graduate Student Research program when he was at Lehigh that enabled him to work at BNL, is adding scanning x-ray diffraction mapping as a more user-ready technique at the Submicron Resolution X-ray Spectroscopy beamline (or SRX) that he used as a graduate student. 

The beamline looks at x-ray fluorescence measurements, which provide information about the elemental distribution and chemical information, such as oxidation state and bond distances, in an experimental sample. The next component scientists are looking for is using diffraction to inform the crystal structure of the material and to gather information about strain, explained Andrew Kiss, the lead beamline scientist for the SRX.

Musterman hopes to build on the electron diffraction mapping he did during his PhD work when he studied the crystals he laser-fabricated in glass. X-rays, he explained, are more sensitive to atomic arrangements than electrons and are better at mapping strain.

Musterman’s “background in materials science and crystal structures made him an excellent candidate for a post-doc position,” Kiss said.

The SRX has applications in material science, geological science and biological imaging, among other disciplines. 

Glass questions

For his PhD research, Musterman worked to understand how glass is crystallizing, particularly as he applied a laser during the process. He explored how crystal growth in glass is unique compared with other methods, leading to new structures where the crystal lattice can rotate as it grows.

Musterman finds the crystallization of glass ‘fascinating.” Using diffraction, he was able to watch the dynamics of the earliest stages after a crystal has formed. In his PhD work, he used a spectroscopy method to understand the dynamics of glass structure before the crystal had formed.

Musterman started working at the SRX beamline in June of 2022. He was already familiar with the beamline operation, data collection and types of data he could acquire, which has given him a head start in terms of understanding the possibilities and limitations.

In his postdoctoral research, he is developing diffraction mapping and is also finishing up the experiments he conducted during his PhD.

Himanshu Jain, Musterman’s PhD advisor at Lehigh who is Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, was pleased with the work Musterman did during his five years in his lab. Jain sees potential future extensions and applications of those efforts.

Musterman’s research “forms a foundation for integrated photonics, which is expected to revolutionize communications, sensors, computation and other technologies the way integrated circuits and microelectronics did 50-60 years ago,” Jain explained in an email. The goal is to “construct optical circuits of single crystal waveguides in a glass platform.”

Musterman’s work “showed details of these optical elements made in glass by a laser,” he added.

Jain, who is an alumnus of BNL, indicated that his lab is continuing to pursue the research Musterman started, with his former graduate student as a collaborator and guide.

Musterman appreciates the opportunity to work with other scientists from different academic and geographic backgrounds. In addition to working with other scientists and helping to refine the functionality of the SRX beamline, he plans to continue glass and glass crystallization research and their interactions with lasers. As he refines techniques, he hopes to answer questions such as measuring strain.

As glass is heated, atoms form an ordered crystalline arrangement that begins to grow. The nucleation event and crystal growth occurs at the atomic scale, which makes it difficult to observe experimentally. Nucleation is also rare enough to make it difficult to simulate.

Most theories describe crystal nucleation and growth in aggregate, leaving several questions unanswered about these processes on single crystals, Musterman explained.

As they are for most material processing, temperature and time are the most important factors for glass formation and glass crystallization.

Historically, studies of glass structure started shortly after the discovery of x-ray diffraction in 1913. In the 1950’s, S. Donald Stookey at Corning discovered he could crystallize glass materials to improve properties such as fracture resistance, which led to a new field of studies. Laser induced single crystal formation is one of the more recent developments.

Musterman and his colleagues found that laser crystallization does not always produce the same phase as bulk crystallization, although this is an active area of research.

Musterman created videos of the earliest stages of crystal growth under laser irradiation by direct imaging and with electron and x-ray diffraction.

Kiss anticipates that Musterman, who is reporting to him, will build infrastructure and understanding of the detection system in the first year, which includes building scanning routines to ensure that they know how to collect and interpret the data.

Once Musterman demonstrates this proficiency, the beamline scientists believe this expanded technical ability will interest scientists in several fields, such as materials science, energy science, Earth and environmental science and art conservation.

Pitching in with former colleagues

While Musterman is not required to work with other beamline users, he has helped some of his former colleagues at Lehigh as they “try to get their best data,” he said. He has also spoken with a scientist at Stony Brook University who has been collecting diffraction data.

A native of Troy, Missouri, Musterman lives in an apartment in Coram. When he was younger, he said science appealed to him because he was “always curious about how things worked.” He said he frequently pestered his parents with questions.

His father John, who owns a metal fabrication and machining business, would take various ingredients from the kitchen and encourage his son to mix them to see what happened. 

As for the future, Musterman would like to work longer term in a lab like Brookhaven National Laboratory or in industrial research.

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Pixabay photo

By Fr. Francis Pizzarelli

Father Frank Pizzarelli

As 2024 unfolds, we find ourselves at war in the Middle East and in the Ukraine. Tens of thousands of innocent people have been slaughtered because of hate.

We have people running for public office peddling the election lie, demeaning and name-calling fellow Americans who are also running for public office. The people in power sit in silence and by their silence they affirm it’s okay to peddle lies and hatefully assassinate another person’s character.

In the religious community, many of our major religious leaders keep silent and are complicit, making excuses for those who hate and have no respect for the human person.

Congress is paralyzed. They were elected to lead and for the most part are frozen in place and distracted by nonsense, instead of really doing the people’s business.

COVID has impaired our educational system. The next generation of college students are ill prepared to continue higher education. Many don’t even know what a declarative sentence is. They possess very weak critical thinking and writing skills. On some levels, we as educators have failed them. We must do things differently.

They have little or no interest in civics, or on becoming the next generation of public leaders. They are more fixated on their cell phones and their social media platforms.

Every semester I ask my freshman at St. Joseph’s University and Suffolk County Community College how many would be willing to hand in their cell phone for the semester. The reaction is unfortunately predictable. You would think I was asking for a kidney. Last semester not one student was willing to take the risk and do this.

As a student of human behavior, I have seen a steady increase in student isolation, student disconnectedness, anxiety, and depression. When I raised these observations, they affirmed what I was seeing. I asked why? They said COVID, cellular technology intensified their insecurity and their fear of reaching out and honestly not knowing how to do it!

However, hope still lives. Those same students indicated that they wanted to make a difference in the world. They wanted to feel and strengthen their human connectedness. I am cautiously optimistic with the right support and education their human connectedness will grow and be strengthened.

They are our next generation of leaders, teachers, social workers, law enforcement professionals, and healthcare professionals just to name a few of the professions before them. We need this generation to recapture compassion, service and the desire to make the world a better place. I am hopeful that they will do a better job than we did.

Father Francis Pizzarelli, SMM, LCSW-R, ACSW, DCSW, is the director of Hope House Ministries in Port Jefferson.

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Taco Belle

MEET THE GORGEOUS TACO BELLE!

Can Purr-fection come in a cuter package? We think not … This lovable female Persian mix at the Smithtown Animal Shelter is approximately eight years young (estimated birthdate: 2015) and was found emaciated at her namesake; Taco Bell. She is outgoing, affectionate, vocal and a full-time love machine.

When she first arrived at the shelter she had severe tummy issues. However,  the Smithtown Animal Shelter has her gastrointestinal issues down to science, which can be managed through a restricted diet. As a result, her hair has grown lush and thick, she has packed on weight and is ready for a family to adore her around the clock.

Taco Belle is outgoing and loving with everyone and would do well in a home with kids, other cats and even dogs. She is just learning how to properly use a litter box and does have accidents from time to time. The staff at the shelter are hoping to find her a good home that can be patient through the learning process.

If you are interested in meeting Taco Belle, please fill out an application to schedule time to properly interact with her in a domestic setting.

The Smithtown Animal & Adoption Shelter is located at 410 Middle Country Road, Smithtown. Visitor hours are Monday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. (Sundays and Wednesday evenings by appointment only). For more information, call 631-360-7575 or visit www.townofsmithtownanimalshelter.com.

 

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Jin Koda and Amanda Lee at the recent 243rd annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in New Orleans. Photo by Jenny Zhang

By Daniel Dunaief

Hollywood is not the only place fascinated with the birth of stars. Indeed, researchers at Stony Brook University, among many other academic institutions, have focused considerable time, energy and effort into understanding the processes that lead to the creation of stars.

Astronomers had tried, unsuccessfully, to detect molecular clouds in the galaxy outskirts, which is how stars form in the inner part of galaxies.

About 18 years ago, a NASA satellite called GALEX discovered numerous newly formed stars at the edges of a spiral galaxy M83, which is 15 million light years from Earth. 

Leading an international team of scientists, Jin Koda, Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Stony Brook University, together with his former undergraduate student Amanda Lee, put together data and information from a host of sources to describe how these stars on the outer edge of the galaxy formed.

Their work demonstrated star-forming molecular clouds in this outer area for the first time.

“These molecular clouds at the galaxy edge are forming stars as much as the molecular clouds in normal parts of galaxies” such as molecular clouds around the sun, Koda explained.

Before their discovery, Koda said astronomers had considered that new-born stars at galaxy edges could have formed without molecular clouds.

Koda recently presented this work at the 243rd annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in New Orleans.

Indeed, partnering with scientists from the United States, Japan, France and Chile, Koda, who is the Principal Investigator on the study, and Lee found evidence of 23 of these molecular clouds on the outskirts of the M83 galaxy.

Combining data from a host of telescopes for this research, Koda and Lee found “higher resolution than before,” Lee said. “We could see a peak of atomic hydrogen in that region, which we didn’t know before.”

While helium also exists in the molecular clouds in the galaxy edges as well as in the atomic gas and in stars, it does not emit light when it’s cold, which makes its signature harder to detect.

Scientists are interested in “why we weren’t able to detect these molecular clouds for such a long time,” Lee said. “We ended up using a different tracer than what is normally used.”

The group came up with a hypothesis for why the molecular clouds were difficult to find. Carbon monoxide, which typically helps in the search for such clouds, is dissociated in the large envelopes at the galaxy edges. Only the cores maintain and emit this gas.

A collaboration begins

When Lee, who grew up in Queens, started at Stony Brook University, she intended to major in physics. In her sophomore year, she took an astronomy class that Koda taught.

“I was very interested in studying galaxies and the evolution of galaxies,” Lee said.

After the course ended, she started working in Koda’s lab.

“Her tireless efforts made her stand out,” Koda explained in an email. Koda appreciates how speaking with students like Lee helps him think about his research results.

Lee is “particularly good at identifying and asking very fundamental questions,” he added.

At one point about two years before she graduated in 2022, Lee recalled how Koda shared a picture of M83 and described the mystery of star formation at the outskirts of galaxies.

Two years later, by delving into the data under Koda’s supervision, she helped solve that mystery.

“I didn’t know my work would end up contributing to this project,” Lee said. “It’s really exciting that I was able to contribute to the big picture of star formation” in distant galaxies.

Since graduating from Stony Brook, Lee has been a PhD student for the last year and a half at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

At this point, Lee is still working towards publishing a paper on some of the work she did in Koda’s lab that explores the formation of stars in the inner disk of M83.

“Broadly,” she said, the two research efforts are “all related to the same picture.”

For her part, Lee was pleased with the opportunity to work with such a geographically diverse team who are all contributing to the goal of understanding star formation.

Future focus

The area they observed is relatively small and they would like to see more regions in M83 and other galaxies, Koda explained.

Finding so many molecular clouds at once in the small region “encourages us to hypothesize that the process is universal,” although scientists need to verify this, Koda said.

The researchers also discovered more atomic gas than they would expect for the amount of molecular clouds. A compelling discovery, this observation raised questions about why this abundant atomic gas wasn’t becoming molecular clouds efficiently.

“We need to solve this mystery in future research,” Koda explained. He is pleased with the level of collaboration among the scientists. “It’s very interesting and stimulating to collaborate with the excellent people of the world,” he said.

A resident of Huntington, Koda grew up in Tokyo, where he earned his bachelor’s, master’s and PhD degrees. When he moved to the United States, Koda conducted post doctoral studies for six years at Cal Tech. 

About 15 years ago, he moved to Stony Brook, where he replaced Professor Phil Solomon, who was one of the pioneers of molecular cloud studies in the Milky Way galaxy.

Science appeals to Koda because he is “interested in how things work, especially how nature works,” he said.

In this work, Koda suggested that the molecular clouds have the same mass distribution as molecular clouds in the Milky Way, indicating that star formation is the same, or at least similar, between the Milky Way and galaxy edges.

Koda made the discovery of the molecular clouds and the hypothesis about the carbon monoxide deficient cloud envelope in 2022. Since then, he and his team have obtained new observations that confirmed that what they found were the “hearts of molecular clouds,” he said.

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