Bruce Stillman is still very determined even if he sounds frustrated. I interviewed the CEO of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory last week when the research institution released, for the first time, a set of numbers indicating the positive economic impact of CSHL on Long Island.

While proud of an institution that has produced eight Nobel Prize winners, Stillman sounded a theme I hear regularly when I interview scientists at CSHL, Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University: The country isn’t investing enough in research.

“The reduction in federal funding means we do have to support the institution through philanthropy more than we’ve been doing in the past,” Stillman said. “Hopefully, Congress will realize they should reverse the dramatic reduction in funding in the federal budgets. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Indeed, investments in research around the country make sense on many levels. For starters, many of us have unfortunate direct experience with a deadly disease like cancer, which slowly tears through a person’s body. We have also witnessed friends who have demonstrated spectacular courage and determination in the face of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s or other neurodegenerative diseases.

Inspired by our friends and neighbors, we walk, run or do triathlons and we spend time in church, synagogues and mosques praying for them and for strangers battling the same affliction.

Scientists aren’t just looking for ways to lessen the symptoms or ease the pain — they’re also working to find signs of the disease before they appear. Angelina Jolie raised awareness of the potential benefits of preventing problems when she elected to have several surgeries.

As their doctors would rush to tell them, people shouldn’t have surgeries just because a famous actress did. Places like CSHL can provide the kind of knowledge that provides information that empowers informed decisions.

“There’s a lot of misinformation on the Internet,” Stillman said. “What the scientific community is trying to do is to make sure the information about genomics and medicine is correct and [people aren’t relying on information] out there that is misleading.”

Beyond the applied science part, however, researchers who are doing basic science often wind up making critical discoveries. By only funding those projects that might have a direct impact on human health, can and will be too self-limiting. What we learn can and often does help us. On the other side of that scale, what we don’t know can’t have any impact.

And then there’s the financial benefit. Research often has a multiplier effect, creating jobs, bringing in revenue and supporting the local economy.

“Everybody knows, including politicians, that science is an economic driver,” Stillman said. “If you take away public research funding, you’re basically giving up.”

Stillman said that what’s gone on in the last 15 years in the United States “bucks the trend since World War II, when the U.S. was invested and was a world leader in research.”

Stillman himself, who was born in Australia, has won numerous awards and runs his own DNA lab, said he came to this country because of American leadership in research, but now “things are changing rapidly. People like me will not come to this country because there’ll be opportunities elsewhere.”

CSHL, BNL, Stony Brook and LIJ are all huge economic benefits for Long Island, Stillman said.

“Unless this gets reversed,” he warned, “we’ll be in trouble.”

So, what will turn the tide?

“There’ll come a time when one can’t ignore the government role in economic development,” he said. It’s happened before, he argues, as investments in research after World War II helped bring the U.S. out of debt.

As a result future generations benefited enormously — and will do so again.

A friend recently forwarded an amusing Time Out article that included a list of things you’d never hear a parent say in New York City. I’d like to offer a suburban version, with the qualifying caveat that these are probably things you’d rarely hear a suburban parent say:

“Searching for a parking spot when three of my kids are late for their activities is so much fun. I’m sure one will open up soon and it’ll be incredibly close to where we need to go.”

“Awesome, the price of gas went up again. How about that? That’ll give us a chance to practice our math skills, guessing at the percentage increase in the cost of filling our tank.”

“An away game? Great. That gives us so much quality time to play a real-life version of an arcade game from our generation: Frogger.”

“You told your six friends we’d be driving? Fantastic, but you know our car only fits four, right?”

“Oh, hey, that’s a great idea. I’ll drive and you completely ignore me with a huge grin on your face while you type into your electronics. I thoroughly enjoy talking to myself.”

“You need one purple sock, one red sock and a Dr. Seuss hat in the next 20 minutes? Sure, no problem.”

“Why would my child need to sign up for another activity?”

“You hear that? Ah, yes, the leaf blower and the car alarm. Early morning music for the whole family.”

“Of course we can go to the new frozen yogurt place for breakfast.”

“Hey, I understand. Your son needed to practice his hitting outside at 6 a.m. because he has a big game. Well, good luck to him.”

“I’m sure we can find an art store that’s open at 11 p.m. tonight for a project that’s due tomorrow.”

“I don’t know how they do it. But every year they seem to put together exactly the right combination of kids for each class.”

“The teachers are just getting better and better. I’m sure all the tutors in this town are going to struggle to find students who need any extra help.”

“They have it so much harder than we did when we were young, poor dears.”

“Why, yes, I think we should change everything we do so that we can live like the Jones family. That’s a great idea, staying up until 2 a.m. on Monday nights. I’m not sure why we didn’t think of that sooner.”

“The older generation looks so much better in selfies than the younger one.”

“Fantastic, you’ve signed up for a team with all the same players for another season. That means the same parents will all get to hang out together and watch the same set of neuroses unfold during each quarter of the game.”

“They’ve added more standardized testing? What an incredible opportunity to learn and grow. You’re going to be so much further ahead than children in Japan, who are wasting their time with new material every day.”

“I’d love to answer your question, honey, but I’m not sure if there’s anywhere around here that I can get coffee first.”

“I’m sure there’s a great restaurant open close by at 11 p.m. on a Monday night that’ll be thrilled to have our team of 25 celebrate the end of another great season.”

“Oh, great, here comes Sheila, whose kids are so much better than mine, yours and those of everyone else. I can’t wait to hear about all the awards her kids have won this week.”

“So glad we were able to provide such a complete meal for the raccoons last night.”

“Absolutely. Everything is just perfect in the suburbs.”

When you’re meeting deadlines every week, dealing with angry clients, when traffic takes forever for an important meeting or when body parts that all worked together for all those years now seem to be pulling in opposite directions, it’s easy to let the whole notion of romance slip.

Sure, we have Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, birthdays and Valentine’s Day — well, you have Valentine’s Day.

I’m not a big fan of mass, romantic gestures on cue that support the card and flower industries, when we can make our boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands or wives feel special. But, much of the time, especially when we’ve got kids who have mastered the art of playing on our last nerve with the kinds of conversations that are soaked in sarcasm and disrespect, we might find it a tad challenging to find the time, energy and resources to raise the level of our romantic game.

And yet, one day our children, who just yesterday seemed to have absolutely no use for the opposite sex, have made that remarkable transition from whispering to each other about who they like to mustering the courage to speak to that person.

Recently, our daughter and her friends have been pulled into the whirlwind of an eighth-grade formal.

The communication network is extraordinarily efficient and reliable. Everyone, it seems, knows who is asking everyone else. It’s too bad they can’t add some algebra to the messages they’re all delivering to each other or, perhaps, a few Latin phrases that might be on an AP exam.

As an aside, it’s too bad meteorologists, who still seem to be living with egg on their faces from the big blizzard miss of 2015, can’t develop a forecasting model with the same level of middle school accuracy.

These kids seem to have taken a page from the birds on suburban streets, who sing loudly through the day, calling to their would-be partners to come share some quality time in their cheery, oak, maple and dogwood trees. One boy interrupted everyone’s lunch in the cafeteria, took a microphone and asked a girl to the formal.

Another suitor, who wanted to go to the dance with a softball player, took softballs and wrote one letter on each ball, to spell out “formal”?

And, speaking of sporting equipment, another courageous boy filled a girl’s locker with ping pong balls, which spilled out on the floor when she opened it. In the back of her locker, he’d put a note saying he finally found enough, uh, balls to ask her to the dance. She said “yes.”

There have been a few broken hearts and a few near misses, with a girl saying “yes” to someone just as another boy approached her with flowers. Those flowers suffered an unfortunate fate in the hands of the tardy suitor.

Learning that a boy she didn’t want to accompany to the dance planned to ask her at an after-school activity, another girl changed her plans and was suddenly missing in action.

Fortunately, it seems that, on balance, the anxiety level and frustration is considerably lower than the amusement these classmates have for this process.

As the boys are finding increasingly clever ways to ask the girls to the dance, I can’t help wondering if adult women and men find a similar satisfaction with a good romantic comedy or chick flick once in a while. The sound of those birds singing outside our homes may be just as recognizable and pleasant as a part of the courtship dance to men as they are to women — or indeed to the growing children.

Adolescence stinks. I’m not talking about the heightened age of self-consciousness, the potential for bullying, the physical and emotional growing pains, or the shifting alliances with friends who become enemies who become friends again.

Those all stink applying the definition of the quintessentially American expression: “That stinks.”

What I’m describing is the literal smell, as in “Ooh, those roses smell beautiful”; or “Wow, that smell reminds me of the time I went to Montauk and we saw dolphins and whales while drinking aromatic hot chocolate with whipped cream.” With their spectacularly busy schedules, thanks to us, no doubt, teenagers live in the same uniforms day after day.

The last thing we do before going to bed, or the first thing we do when we get up in the morning, is to throw those uniforms in the washing machine.

We can’t and don’t wash their footwear every night. We can air it out, we can put deodorizers in it, we can even, in a fit of pique, rush out and buy them a new set of Storm Trooper cleats to protect ourselves, but, eventually, the sneakers in the cabinet by the door — or tucked in the basement — develop a cloud of toxic fumes above them.

On the positive side, I suppose, the horrific stench could be like smelling salts. If they are suddenly feeling tired or they bump into one wall too many, as soon as they go down on the ground, they smell their own and everybody else’s cleats and spring back into action.

“I’m fine,” they say, as they wobble on one knee, “just get me off that floor.”

Sensing that their sweat-driven, body-changing odors may be offensive, some children use deodorants, scented moisturizers or perfume — in the case of my daughter’s friends. That’s like diving into a pool that is way too hot and way too cold, confusing the senses without defeating the odor.

I recently brought my son and a friend back from a basketball practice and pulled up next to a mom who was shuttling home six sweaty teammates. We rolled down our windows at a red light and my nose felt as if it had returned to the gym. No car, not even one with a new car smell, would stand a chance against the pungent odors of adolescence marinating in her three rows of boys.

“Oh, hey,” I said, as the boys greeted each other through their open windows. “I guess you got the bigger carpool duty today.”

“Uh huh,” she grunted, making it clear she’d somehow drawn the short, smelly straw.

“That’s, um, a lot of sweat in there, huh?” I said.

She winced while concentrating on breathing only through her mouth.

When the light turned green, I thought about those incredible first few months of our kids’ lives. The smells from the delicate shampoos were like the kind of subtle flavor waiters describe to entice us into ordering the specials of the day.

Even after those magnificent miracles of life no longer occupied a room, their comforting smell made us forget the late nights of “what’s wrong with her, why won’t she go to sleep,” or the “why is she crying now,” reminding us, instead, of how sweet life can be.

Maybe the smell assault is one more way adolescents challenge authority figures. When their feet enter the room, we don’t need to see their frustrated faces or hear their answers-with-attitude to know another battle is about to begin, filled with arguments that sometimes don’t make sense — and scents that make their own arguments.