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Power of 3

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CSHL Associate Professor Stephen Shea and Postdoc Yunyao Xie in Shea’s lab. Photo from CSHL/2020

By Daniel Dunaief

Good parenting, at least in mice, is its own reward.

No, mice don’t send their offspring to charter schools, drive them to endless soccer and band practices or provide encouragement during periods of extreme self doubt.

What these rodents do, however, protects their young from danger.

When a young mouse wanders, rolls or strays from the nest, it becomes distressed, calling out mostly to its mother, who is the more effective parent, to bring it back to safety.

Responding to these calls, the mother mouse carries the young back to the safety of the nest.

This behavior involves a reward system in a region of the mouse brain called the ventral tegmental area, or VTA. When the mouse effectively retrieves its young, the VTA releases the neurotransmitter dopamine, which is the brain’s way of saying “well done!”

In a paper published in December in the journal Neuron, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Associate Professor Stephen Shea and his postdoctoral researcher Yunyao Xie, who worked in the lab from 2019 to 2021, likened the release of dopamine in this area to a neurological reward for engaging in the kind of behavior that protects their young.

The research “proposes a mechanism that shapes behavior in accordance with that reward,” Shea said. The connection between dopamine in a reward system is an established paradigm.

“There was plenty of smoke there,” he said. “We didn’t pull this out of thin air.”

Indeed, in humans, mothers with postpartum depression have disrupted maternal mood, motivation and caregiving. PPD is linked to dysfunction of the mesolimbic dopamine system, which is a neural circuit that involves the VTA, Xie explained.

“Studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) revealed that the reward brain areas including VTA in healthy mothers have higher response to their own babies’ smiling faces than those in mothers with PPD,” Xie added.

What’s new in this research, however, is that it is “a study of how these signals use mechanisms to shape behavior and social interaction,” Shea said.

How the process works

The feedback loop between dopamine in the VTA and behavior involves a cumulative combination of dopamine interactions.

Dopamine is not at its highest level when the mouse mom is engaging in effective pup retrieval.

“Dopamine is shaping future, not current behavior,” Shea said. “If dopamine was driving the mouse on a current trial, a high dopamine level would be associated with high performance. The trial found the opposite: a low dopamine level was associated with high performance in a given trial, and vice versa.”

Like a skater laying her blades down effortlessly and gracefully across the ice after spending hours exerting energy practicing, the mother mouse engaged in the kind of reinforcement learning that required less dopamine to lead to effective pup saving behavior.

As the performance increases, dopamine diminishes over time, as the reward is “more expected,” reflecting a nuanced dynamic, Shea said.

To test the correlation between dopamine levels in the VTA and behavior, Shea and Xie created an enclosure with two chambers. They put a naive virgin female mouse, which they called surrogates, on one side and played specific sounds behind a door on each side of the chamber. The test mice initially had “no experience in maternal behaviors,” Xie explained.

As these surrogates became more experienced by either observing mothers or practicing on their own, the amplitude of the VTA dopamine signals got smaller.

To provide a control for this experiment, Xie monitored a group of naive virgin female mice who spent less time with pups and had to figure out how to retrieve them on their own under similar neurological monitoring conditions. The dopamine signals in this group stayed elevated over days and their performance in maternal behaviors remained poor.

Through these experiments, Xie and Shea concluded that “there is a negative correlation between the dopamine signals in the VTA and their performance in maternal behaviors,” explained Xie.

‘Mind blowing’ moment

In her experiments, Xie used optogenetic tools that allowed her to inhibit the activity of dopaminergic neurons in the VTA with high temporal precision.

Shea appreciated Xie’s hard work and dedication and suggested the discoveries represent a “lot of her creativity and innovation,” he said.

A native of China, Xie said her grandparents used to have a garden in which they taught her the names and morphologies of different plants during her childhood. She enjoyed drawing these plants.

In graduate school, she became more interested in neuroscience. She recalls how “mind-blowing” it was when she learned about the work by 1963 Nobel laureates Alan Hodgkin, Sir Andrew Fielding Huxley and John Eccles, who established a mathematical model to describe how action potentials in neurons are initiated and propagated.

In the study Xie did with Shea, she found that the dopamine signals in the VTA encoded reward prediction errors in maternal behaviors that was consistent with the mathematical model.

In the bigger picture, Xie is interested in how neural circuits shape behaviors. The neural circuits of most natural behaviors, such as defensive behaviors and maternal behaviors are hard-wired, she added.

Mice can also acquire those behaviors through learning. She is interested in how pup cues are perceived as rewards and subsequently facilitate learning maternal behavior. She found a great fit with Shea’s lab, which focuses on the neural mechanism of maternal behavior.

Xie enjoyed her time at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where she could discuss science with colleagues by the bench, at the dining room or at one of the many on site seminars. She also appreciated the opportunity to attend neuroscience seminars with speakers from other schools, which helped expand her horizons and inspire ideas for research.

Next steps

As for the next steps, Shea said he believes there is considerable additional follow up research that could build on these findings. He would like to apply methods that measure the activity in individual neurons. Additionally, with a number of targets for dopamine, he wants to figure out what areas the neurotransmitter reaches and how the signals are used when they get there. More broadly, he suggested that the implications for this research extend to human diseases. 

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From left, Alea Mills and Xueqin Sun Photo from CSHL

By Daniel Dunaief

People have natural defenses against cancer. Proteins like P53 search for unwelcome and unhealthy developments. 

Sometimes, mutations in P53, which is known as the “guardian of the genome,” rob the protein of its tumor fighting ability. In more than seven out of ten cases, the brain tumor glioblastoma, which has a grim prognosis for people who develop it, has an intact P53 protein.

So what happened to P53 and why isn’t it performing its task?

That’s what Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Professor and Cancer Center member Alea Mills and postdoctoral researcher Xueqin “Sherine” Sun wanted to know.

Starting with the idea that something epigenetic was somehow blocking P53, Sun conducted numerous detailed experiments with the gene editing tool CRISPR-Cas9.

She knocked out parts of the chromatin regulating machinery, which determines whether factors for DNA replication, gene expression, and the repair of DNA damage can access genes and perform their tasks.

The researchers wanted to find “something specific to glioblastoma,” Mills said in an interview. Working with a team of researchers in Mills’s lab, Sun focused on the protein BRD8.

In experiments with mice, Sun and her colleague inhibited this specific protein by destroying the gene that encodes it. That step was enough to stop the tumor from growing and allowed the mouse to live longer.

Mills and Sun published their work in the prestigious journal Nature just before the holidays.

The article generated considerable buzz in the scientific community, where it was in the 99th percentile among those published at the same time in attracting attention and downloads. It also attracted attention on social media platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn.

“We see this as a major discovery, and are not surprised that many others think that the impact is extraordinary,” Mills said. The paper “has the potential of having a significant impact in the future. The work is completely novel.”

While finding a connection between BRD8 and glioblastoma suggests a target for researchers to consider in their search for new glioblastoma treatments, a potential new approach for patients could be a long way off.

“We cannot predict how long it will take to be able to help patients” who have glioblastoma, Mills said.

A promising step

From left, Alea Mills and Xueqin Sun Photo from CSHL

Still, this finding provides a promising step by showing how knocking out the BRD8 protein can enable P53 to gain access to a life threatening tumor.

Sun and Mills said BRD8 and its partners lock down genes that are normally turned on by P53.

“What you inherit from mom and dad is one thing,” said Mills. “How it’s packaged, the epigenetic mechanism that keeps it wrapped up or open, is key in how it’s all carried out within your body.”

By targeting BRD8, Mills and her team opened the chromatin, so P53 could bind and turn on other cancer fighting genes.

After receiving patient samples from Northwell Health, Stanford and the Mayo Clinic, the team studied tissue samples from patients battling glioblastoma. Those patients, they found, had higher concentrations of BRD8 than people without brain cancer.

Researchers and, down the road, pharmaceutical companies and doctors, are careful to make sure removing or reducing the concentration of any protein doesn’t have so-called “off target effects,” which would interfere with normal, healthy processes in cells.

Mills said they tested such actions in the context of neural stem cells in the brain. At this point, removing BRD8 didn’t have any “deleterious consequence,” she said. 

Her lab is working to see the effect of reducing or removing the mouse version, also called Brd8, during development by engineering mice that lack this protein.

Future research

An important next step in this research involves searching for and developing viable inhibitors of the BRD8 protein.

For histone readers like BRD8, researchers look for an active domain within the protein. The goal is to interrupt the interface in their interactions with histones.

In creating molecules that can block the action of a protein, researchers often start with the structure of the protein or, more specifically, the active site.

Sun, who is currently applying for jobs to run her own lab after working at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory for over eight years, is hoping to purify enough of the protein and determine its structure.

Sun is working on x-ray crystallography, in which she purifies the protein, crystallizes it and then uses x-rays to determine the atomic structure.

Sun described the search for the structure of the protein as an “important direction” in the research. “Once we solve the structure” researchers can focus on drug design, testing and other experiments.

She suggested that the search for a small molecule or compound that might prove effective in inhibiting BRD8 would involve optimizing efficiency and activity.

There is a “long way to go” in that search, Sun added.

She is working to generate a chemical compound in collaboration with other groups.

A long, productive journey

Born and raised in China, Sun has been an active and important contributor to Mills’s lab.

“I’ll miss [Sun] personally as well as in the lab,” Mills said. “She’s been a really good role model and teacher across the Cold Spring Harbor campus and in my lab.”

Mills is “really excited about [Sun’s] future,” she said. “She’ll be really great” at running her own lab.”

For her part, Sun enjoyed her time on Long Island, where she appreciated the natural environment and the supportive culture at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

Sun described her time on Long Island as a “very exciting and satisfying journey.” 

She is determined to study and understand cancer for a number of reasons.

“I know people who died of cancer,” she said. “It’s a terrible disease and it’s urgent to find more efficient therapeutic strategies to stop cancers and improve human heath.”

Sun is also eager to embrace the opportunity to mentor and inspire other students of science.

“Teaching is very important,” she said. She looks forward to helping students grow as professionals to create the “next generation of scientists.”

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From left, Darren Martin and Benjamin Hsiao during a visit to Ram’s Head Inn on Shelter Island. Photo from Darren Martin

By Daniel Dunaief

One person’s garbage is another’s treasure.

Benjamin Hsiao

Benjamin Hsiao has plans to convert garbage — from dog poop to food waste and even cardboard boxes — into the kind of low cost materials and fertilizers that can help combat climate change. His primary target is agricultural residues because of their volume and collectability.  

A Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Stony Brook University, Hsiao and collaborator Darren Martin at the University of Queensland in Australia recently were awarded one of 16 multidisciplinary grants totaling $11.4 million from the National Science Foundation’s Convergence Accelerator program.

Hsiao, who is the primary investigator, will receive $570,000 over the next nine months in Phase I of the research effort while Martin will collect $180,000 from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia.

The researchers plan to take a zero waste approach to create a circular system that will generate efficiencies, reduce pollution and combat climate change.

The research is focused on creating immediate solutions for current problems, Hsiao said.

The NSF received “many quality submissions” and chose the winners after a rigorous review process, the NSF said.

The proposal from Hsiao and Martin stood out as it is “based on strong science” and make a clear connection to climate change,” NSF officials said.

Hsiao and Martin were delighted with the award and the opportunity not only to make contributions through their own research, but also to work with some of the other recipients.

“I am so pleased on many counts,” Martin explained in an email from Australia. First, Martin and Hsiao, who met at a conference in 2014, followed through on long standing plans to work together. Second, this program, which the NSF started in 2019, is about “early engagement with the market to get feedback on new technologies and platforms.”

Martin suggested it was akin to a “business model boot camp” that includes support and opportunities to pressure test ideas early. “This approach could really accelerate and compress the number of years traditionally taken to see helpful new technologies out in society sooner.”

If they are successful and effective, the scientists can apply for competitive Phase II funding within the year, which includes $5 million for two years and which four or five of the Phase I recipients, who are from a host of A-list research institutions, will receive.

Solids and liquids

Hsiao has been working with solid plant-based waste to create filters that can purify water at a low cost since 2009.

“Nanoscale cellulose materials can be used for water purification,” said Hsiao.

The needles of plants, from shrubs to bushes to feedstock, all have the same cellulosic nanostructure. Hsiao’s technology can convert these different feedstock into similar carboxy-cellulose nanofibers that can be used as purifying agents with negative charge. These filters can remove oppositely charged impurities.

Additionally, Hsiao plans to use solid plant based biomass to create a biogel. Rich in nutrients, the biogel is like the naturally occurring residue that is at the bottom of streams, which is a nutrient-rich mix of dead trees and grass.

The biogel, which is also funded by the NSF, has three applications. First, it can replace soil to grow food or for seed germination, which could be useful to grow food in space. It can also reduce the impact of drought.

Second, it can make a farm more resistant to drought because the material in biogel retains water for a longer period of time and amid drier conditions.

Third, the biogel can induce vegetation or plant growth in drier or sandier areas. Such growth, which could occur along the shoreline of Long Island, could help reduce erosion, Hsiao said. The biogel can also reduce desertification.

Martin explained that Stony Brook University and the University of Queensland have two different biogel platforms that they may hybridize.

Hsiao’s team is “very strong in the chemistry and physical chemistry side,” Martin wrote. “Being based in a Chemical Engineering School, we have been pretty good over the years at finding the most efficient, cost-effective ways to manufacture bio-based materials and composites at scale.”

Fertilizer

Building and expanding on this work, Hsiao is focusing on the liquid waste from biomass as well.

“With the new thinking, we have a circular design,” he said.

Using a nitric acid treatment that is similar to composting and that removes human pathogens, liquid biomass can become an effective fertilizer, which sanitizes animal and human waste.

Nitric acid also releases the existing nutrients in feedstock, which provides more nitrogen and phosphorous to help plants grow.

The ideal treatment would involve providing a controlled amount of fertilizer each day, Hsiao explained.

Farmers, however, can’t put that kind of time and resources into spraying their fields. Instead, they spray a fertilizer that becomes run off when it rains. Artificial intelligence and robots can deploy fertilizer in a more cost effective manner.

The nitrogen from the run off winds up in streams and other water bodies, where it can cause a process called eutrophication, leading to the kind of algal blooms that rob oxygen of water, making it more difficult for desirable marine life to survive and close beaches to swimming.

By using an efficient process for producing fertilizer that includes taking the inedible parts of plants, and making them a part of the circular process, run off could decrease by “half or even more,” Hsiao said.

Martin added that he and Hsiao have, in the back of their minds, a plan to create scalable fertilizer for single family farms in developed and developing nations.

“Our modeling may indeed show that ‘distributed manufacturing’ of the biogels from agricultural residues using a ‘mobile factory placed on the farm’ may be the smartest way to get there,” Martin explained. “This is exactly the sort of question the Convergence Accelerator is designed to test.”

Martin said that he hopes this technology lead to an array of jobs that support farming under a variety of circumstances.

Sorghum, which is one of his favorite crops, is ultra resilient and is of increasing global importance. Its ability to withstand environmental stress and thrive on low input marginal farmland make it the ‘golden crop of the future,’ Martin added.

This crop makes it an “attractive option to transform infertile land into profitable agrivoltaic farms supplying raw materials for emerging non-foo markets such as these biogels,” Martin wrote.

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Kaushik Mitra. Photo from SBU

By Daniel Dunaief

From over 66 million miles away, they take pieces of a puzzle and try to fill in the picture. In addition to looking at what’s there now, they also use clues to look back in time.

For the last eight years, researchers suspected that the presence of manganese oxide suggested that Mars had atmospheric oxygen billions of years ago. That’s because, on Earth and in water, oxygen converts manganese to manganese oxide.

Such a process whets the appetite in the search for prehistoric life on Mars that, like so many creatures on Earth, breathed oxygen.

The Martian story, however, involves puzzle pieces that came together in a different way.

In a paper published last month in Nature Geosciences, Kaushik Mitra, a postdoctoral researcher at Stony Brook University in the Department of Geosciences, suggested through geochemical modeling that oxygen on Mars, even if it was abundant billions of years ago, wouldn’t have created manganese oxide.

That’s because the water on Mars was acidic, with a pH of less than 5.5, which is below the neutral 7 level. Under those conditions, oxygen wouldn’t oxidize manganese.

Using experiments, Mitra showed that the manganese oxide could form in acidic water in other ways.

“Mars and Earth fluid conditions are very different,” Mitra said. “What I showed in my experiments is that oxygen in acidic fluids will not be able to oxidize manganese.”

Mitra conducted research that were part of his PhD work in Jeffrey Catalano’s lab at Washington University in St. Louis, MO. 

Taking oxygen out of the picture, Mitra also detailed previous efforts that might explain the presence of manganese oxide, such as ultraviolet light. The manganese oxides formed in sub surface fractures, which this light couldn’t reach.

So, what happened?

“If the originally proposed (and plausible) oxidants were not the cause, there had to be some culprit,” Mitra explained in an email. “So there had to be some other oxidant.”

Bromine and chlorine

Enter chlorine and bromine, which are both halogens, or reactive non-metallic elements.

No one had looked into the potential of oxyhalogen compounds to produce manganese oxides in Mars-like conditions.

Bromate, which is a bromine atom attached to three oxygen atoms, can oxidize manganese in orders of magnitude faster than other oxidants, particularly in acidic conditions. Chlorate, which is also a chlorine atom attached to three oxygen atoms, alone can’t do it, but, with a small quantity of bromate, can create quantities of manganese oxide.

The oxygen attached to chlorine and bromine can come from water or any other ingredient, and doesn’t need oxygen gas to form.

“People didn’t really appreciate until [Mitra’s] paper came along that [manganese] is highly reactive towards these oxyhalogen compounds that he has been working with, so it gives us a whole new way to think about how [manganese-oxides] might form on Mars,” Joel Hurowitz, Associate Professor in Geosciences at Stony Brook University, explained in an email. Mitra has been working as a postdoctoral researcher in Hurowitz’s lab since November of 2021.

While oxygen may not have caused the change in manganese, the search for Martian life doesn’t end here. Some organisms, including on Earth, don’t need oxygen to survive.

Extremophiles, which can survive in the Great Salt Lake, the Dead Sea, and around hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean, do not need oxygen.

Mitra’s research “teaches us to be cautious in our astrobiology strategy and consider all the alternative possibilities,” Hurowitz explained. “It is entirely possible that Martian life did not depend on [oxygen] or produce [oxygen] as a by-product of its metabolism.”

For the first two billion years of life on Earth, high concentrations of oxygen would have been toxic to microbial life, Hurowitz added.

To be sure, just because halogens like chlorine and bromine can explain the presence of manganese oxide instead of oxygen doesn’t rule out the possibility that Mars had oxygen.

Paradigm shift

Mitra has continued his exploration of the importance of oxyhalogen species in Hurowitz’s lab to improve the understanding of how they interact with various mineral phases that are considered key records of paleoenvironmental conditions on Mars.

On a more immediate scale, Mitra’s approach to his work has created something of a paradigm shift in Hurowtiz’s lab. When the postdoctoral researcher arrived at Stony Brook, he immediately started between 30 and 40 separate experiments within the span of a month. 

This effort contrasts with the attempt to create one perfect, completely controlled experiment that can take months of time that might be lost if something went wrong.

“It has actually changed the way that I think about experimental project methods,” Hurowitz wrote. “It’s a great new way to explore geochemistry and my students are adopting many of the approaches he’s brought into the lab.”

Hurowitz described Mitra as a “great addition” to the group.

A passion for science

A native of Bhagalpur, India, which is in the state of Bihar, Mitra had a strong interest in chemistry during his youth.

He attended the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, where he earned an integrated Bachelors and Masters of Science Degree in Applied Geology.

Mitra, who currently lives in Centereach, is fluent in English, Hindi and Bengali and is learning Nepali, the native language of his spouse Priyanka Sharma who is from Nepal.

Sharma, who is an Indian Nepali, is applying for graduate school in English Literature and Comparative Literature.

An avid reader whose favorite genre is philosophy, Mitra is currently reading Fyodor Dostoesky and Friedrich Nietzsche.

A long distance runner, Mitra ran a 10K in Queens last year and would like to run a half marathon in the spring.

He will likely finish his postdoctoral research by next year, at the latest, at which point he will apply for a faculty job.

Passionate about teaching, Mitra has been a committed mentor to other students at Stony Brook, Hurowitz said.

Mitra created a YouTube channel for geology and geochemistry undergraduates and graduates in which he shares lessons about geoscience and chemistry in English and Hindi, which is available at https://www.youtube.com/@kmicalmindset6322.

“I am trying to inspire more people to come into planetary geoscience,” he said, especially undergraduates.

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Nandita Kumari at the 53rd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Woodlands, Texas in March of 2022. Photo by Delia Enriquez Draper from the Lunar and Planetary Institute

By Daniel Dunaief

Some day in the not too distant future, an astronaut may approach rocks on the moon and, with a handheld instrument, determine within minutes whether the rock might have value as a natural resource or as a source of historical information.

That’s the vision Nandita Kumari, a fourth-year graduate student in the Department of Geosciences in the College of Arts and Sciences at Stony Brook University, has.

In the meantime, Kumari was part of a multi-institutional team that recommended two landing sites in the moon’s south polar region for future Artemis missions. 

Nandita Kumari at a San Francisco Volcanic Field, where she was doing stress and strain measurements of cinders. Photo by Saurabh Subham.

The group, which included students from the University of Arizona, the University of California Los Angeles, and the University of Buffalo, used several criteria to recommend these two sites.

They looked at the resources that might be available, such as water and rocks, at how long the areas are in sunlight and at how the features of the land, from the slope of hills to the size of boulders, affects the sites accessibility.

“These two sites ended up fulfilling all these criteria,” Kumari said. Models suggest water might be present and the regions are in sunlight more than 80 percent of the time, which is critical for solar-powered devices.

The group used high-resolution data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to create a map of all the rocks and to model the geological diversity of the site. They used infrared images to gather data from areas when they were dark. They also added temperature readings.

To the delight of the team, NASA selected both of the sites as part of a total of 13 potential landing locations.

Planetary scientist David Kring advised the group during the process. Kring has trained astronauts and worked on samples brought back from the Apollo missions.

At the end of the first year of her PhD, Kumari received encouragement to apply for the virtual internship with Kring from Stony Brook Geosciences Professor Tim Glotch, who runs the lab where she has conducted her PhD work.

Putting a number on it

Kumari said her thesis is about using machine learning to understand the composition of resources on the moon. She would like to use artificial intelligence to delve deeply into the wealth of data moon missions and observations have been collecting to use local geology as a future resource.

“Instead of saying something has a ‘little’ or a ‘lot’” of a particular type of rock that might have specific properties, she would like to put a specific numerical value on it.

An engineer by training, Kumari said she is a “very big fan of crunching numbers.”

Since joining the lab, Kumari has become “our go-to source for any type of statistical analysis me or one of my other students might want to conduct,” Glotch explained.

The work Kumari has done provides “large improvements over traditional spectroscopic analysis techniques,” Glotch added.

In examining rocks for silicic properties, meaning those that contain silicon, most scientists describe a rock as being less or more silicic, Kumari said.

“It’s difficult to know whether 60 percent is high or 90 percent is high,” she added. Such a range can make an important difference, and provides information about history, formation and thermal state of the planet and about potential resources.

With machine learning that trains on data collected in the lab, the model is deployed on orbiter data.

The machine learning doesn’t stop with silica. It can also be extended to search for helium 3 and other atoms.

Understanding and using the available natural resources reduces the need to send similar raw materials to the moon from Earth.

“There has to be a point where we stop” transporting materials to the moon, said Kumari. “It’s high time we use modern practices and methods so we can go through really large chunks of data with limited error.”

The machine learning starts with a set of inputs and outputs, along with an algorithm to explain the connection. As it sorts through data, it compares the outputs against what it expects. When the data doesn’t match the algorithm, it adjusts the algorithm and compares that to additional data, refining and improving the model’s accuracy.

A love for puzzles

Kumari, who grew up in Biharsharif, India, a small town in the northern state of Bihar, said this work appeals to her because she “loves puzzles that are difficult to solve.” She also tries to find solutions in the “fastest way possible.”

Kumari was recently part of a field exploration team in Utah that was processing data. The team brought back data and manually compared the measurements to the library to see what rocks they had.

She wrote an algorithm that provided the top five matches to the spectroscopic measurements the researchers found. Her work suggested the presence of minerals the field team didn’t anticipate. What’s more, the machine provided the analysis in five minutes.

The same kind of analysis can be used on site to study lunar rocks.

“When astronauts go to the moon, we shouldn’t require geology experts to be there to find the best rocks” she said. While having a geologist is the best-case scenario, that is not always possible. “Anyone with a code in their instruments should be able to decide whether it is what they’re looking for.”

As for her interest in space travel, Kumari isn’t interested in trekking to the moon or Mars.

While she believes the moon and Mars should be a base for scientific experiments, she doesn’t think people should focus on colonizing either place.

Such colonization ideas may reduce the importance of working on the challenges humans have created on Earth, including climate change.

“You can’t move to Mars,” Kumari said. The litmus test for that occurred during Covid, when people had to isolate.

“If we couldn’t stay in our homes with all the comfort and everything, I do not see a future where this would be possible with stringent constraints on Mars,” she added.

An advocate for women in STEM fields, Kumari said women should pursue scientific careers even if someone else focuses on their mistakes or tries to break their confidence.

“The only way to stop this from happening is to have women in higher places,” she explained. “We should also be supportive of each other and grow together.”

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CSHL’s David Spector (center) and postdoctoral fellows Rasmani Hazra on left and Gayan Balasooriya on right. Photo courtesy of CSHL

By Daniel Dunaief

One came from India, the other from Sri Lanka. After they each earned their PhD’s, they arrived on Long Island within seven months of each other about seven years ago, joining a lab dedicated to studying and understanding cancer. Each of them, working on separate projects, made discoveries that may aid in the battle against heart disease.

Working for principal investigator David Spector at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, postdoctoral fellow Rasmani Hazra, who grew up in Burdwan, India, found a link between a gene that affects cancer in mice that also can lead to a problem with the development of heart valves.

Hazra worked with two long noncoding RNAs that are highly expressed in mouse embryonic stem cells, which have the ability to differentiate into many different types of cells.

Specifically, she found that mice that didn’t have Platr4 developed heart-related problems, particularly with their valves.

At the same time, postdoctoral fellow Gayan Balasooriya, who was born and raised in Sri Lanka, discovered that a single, non-sex gene is governed by different epigenetic mechanisms based on whether the gene is inherited from the mom or the dad.

While it was known that males are more susceptible to heart disease than females, researchers did not know which copy of the gene related to those diseases are expressed. This discovery could help in understanding the development of heart defects.

“Although we ended up at heart development” in both of these published studies, “we didn’t initiate” looking for heart-related information, said Spector. “The science led us there.

Spector, however, expects that the lessons learned about differentiation in the context of the developing heart can also “impact out knowledge about tumors” which he hopes will eventually lead to advances in how to treat them.

He added that any clinical benefit from this work would take additional research and time.

An on and off switch

In Hazra’s study, which was published in the journal Developmental Cell, she worked with Platr4 because humans have several possible orthologous genes. 

When Platr4 expression, which shuts down after birth, is deleted from cells or embryos, the mice died from heart valve problems.

The human equivalent of Platr4 is located on chromosome 4. At this point, clinical case studies have connected the deletion of this chromosome to cardiac defects in humans.

Hazra said her project initially examined the function of these long non-coding sections of RNA. She was exploring how they affected differentiation. She found this link through in vitro studies and then confirmed the connection in live mice.

Spector explained that this work involved extensive collaborations with other researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, including teaming up with researchers who can do electrocardiograms on mice and who can assess blood flow.

A shared mouse imaging resource also helped advance this research.

“One of the advantages of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is that we have over 10 shared resources, each of which specializes in sophisticated technologies that scientists can use on their own projects,” he said. Each lab doesn’t have to learn and develop its own version of these skills.

Hazra plans to continue to study other long noncoding RNA. She is also working on glioblastoma, which is a form of brain cancer.

Hazra plans to start her own lab next fall, when she completes her postdoctoral research.

Inactive gene

Balasooriya, meanwhile, published his research in the journal Nature Communications.

He used RNA sequencing to identify numerous genes. He also looked at whether the RNAs originated from the mom or dad’s genes in individual cells.

Also planning to start his own lab next fall, Balasooriya found changes that alter gene expression between the alleles from the mother and the father experimentally and through data mining approaches.

“What was most surprising in my studies is that [he identified] the gene from the father’s side and the mother’s side are regulated in a different manner,” Balasooriya said. “I’m interested in following up on that finding.”

The next step for him is to look not only at the heart, but, more broadly, at how monoallelic gene expression changes the way regulators affect development and disease.

“I want to do a deep dive to find out the mechanisms” involved in this expression of a single copy of the gene, Balasooriya said, which could provide ways to understand how to control the process.

In the long run, this kind of research could provide insights into ways to treat heart disease as well as other diseases like cancer and immune diseases.

Growing up in the North Western Province in Sri Lanka, Balasooriya was interested in math and science. After he finished his bachelor’s degree in biology in Sri Lanka, he earned a master’s in molecular biology at the University of Hertfordshire in England. He “got so excited about biology and exploring new fields” that he decided to pursue his PhD at the University of Cambridge, England.

After college, he worked in computer science for a while and realized he was not passionate about it, which encouraged him to do his master’s. The experience in computer science helped him with bioinformatics.

As for Spector, he is pleased with the work of both of his postdoctoral researchers. “This is what being a principal investigator is all about, having young people join your lab, sitting down with them, discussing a potential project, not really knowing where it’s going to go,” he said.

He described both members of his team as “extremely successful” who were able to make discoveries that they shared in prestigious journals. Balasooriya and Hazra both laid the groundwork to go and start their own careers. 

“Seeing the fruits of their work is the most rewarding experience” as the leader of a lab, Spector said.

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From left, Patricia Wright with Pamela Reed Sanchez, President and CEO of the Seneca Park Zoo Society with the Warrior Award, a depiction of a tree growing out of rock, designed and created by artists at the Corning Museum of Glass. Photo courtesy of Amanda Lindley

By Daniel Dunaief

For only a short period of time, Patricia Wright was just a primatologist who studies the charming lemurs of Madagascar.

Now the Herrnstein Professor of Conservation Biology and Distinguished Service Professor at Stony Brook University, Wright first trekked to the island nation off the southwest coast of the African continent in 1986 to understand and study these unique primates.

Within a year, she realized she wouldn’t have much to observe and understand in a perilously short time if she didn’t also work to protect them, their habitat, and many other threatened and endangered animals and plants.

With the help of the government of Madagascar, Wright created a protected area known as Ranomafana National Park, which includes 41,500 hectares of space, keeping loggers, poachers and others from threatening to eradicate animals and plants that are unique to the country.

Between the original effort to create the national park and today, Wright has collected numerous honors and distinctions. She has won three Medals of Honor from the Malagasy government and become the first female recipient of the coveted Indianapolis Zoo Prize in 2014.

Recently, the Seneca Park Zoo in Rochester, New York named Wright its inaugural “Conservation Warrior,” providing her with a $20,000 prize in recognition for conservation work that has had a lasting, meaningful impact on species survival.

Patricia Wright with her Warrior Award from the Seneca Park Zoo.

“Dr. Wright’s early years were spent in Rochester, New York and it is fitting that the inaugural Conservation Warrior award be bestowed upon arguably the most influential conservationist to come out of the Finger Lakes region,” Pamela Reed Sanchez, President and CEO of the Seneca Park Zoo Society, explained in an email.

The newly anointed conservation warrior recently traveled to Montreal as a member of the Madagascar delegation at the fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, or COP-15.

While she’s in Montreal, she plans to meet with conservation donors in an all-out effort to save wildlife on Madagascar, where almost all the reptiles and amphibians, half of its birds and all of its lemurs are only found on the island nation.

Wright hopes to raise $250 million for the country and $50 million for Centre ValBio (CVB), the research station she created in Ranomafana in 2003 and that employs 80 Malagasy staff. CVB has developed a conservation network around CVB that includes work with 75 villages.

Drew Fellman, who directed and wrote the Island of Lemurs documentary, encouraged donors to support Wright’s efforts. Wright and CVB are at the “front line of defense and anyone who cares [about] wildlife and endangered species should lend them a hand,” Fellman wrote in an email. He described how some species of lemurs are down to fewer than 10 individuals and “without conservation, there will be nothing left to research.”

In areas where conservation isn’t a priority, the region has lost habitat and biodiversity. In the northern areas of Madagascar, loggers and timber exporters reduced rainforest areas to grasslands, she said.

In the bigger picture, Wright said Madagascar needs funding immediately as the country is “closer to the brink of extinction with so many more species.” Saving plants and animals in Madagascar extends beyond committing to the protection and stewardship of vulnerable creatures. It also could provide benefits for people.

“So many lemur species are close relatives [to humans] and contain genetic information” about Alzheimer’s, diabetes and other conditions, she said. Additionally, creatures like bamboo lemurs regularly eat large quantities of cyanide, which would kill humans. Understanding how they can tolerate such high quantities of cyanide could provide an antidote.

The forests in the national park, which might otherwise attract loggers, prevent erosion, silting and landslides, she explained.

The benefit of a research stations like CVB extend beyond gathering information and conducting experiments.

In a recent correspondence in Nature Communications, lead author Timothy Eppley, a postdoctoral fellow at San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance along with three other scientists including Wright, argues that field research stations “are on the front line of biodiversity conservation, acting as no-take zones that rewild surrounding ecosystems.”

In the correspondence, Eppley and his colleagues said that these stations are “invisible” in global environmental policy, despite their importance in conservation.

“Our point in the paper is that this has not been given any conservation attention,” said Wright. “Nobody is funding us for doing conservation” even though these sites are “conservation engines. We should be given recognition and more conservation money.”

Eppley, who leads SDZWA’s lemur conservation program, added that the Nature correspondence didn’t include any of the data the group collected.

While Eppley cautioned in an email sent from Madagascar that it’s difficult to generalize about conservation efforts at field stations, he said many have some conservation initiatives or projects, or that some element of their research includes a strong conservation component.

“Without the conservation piece, all other research will eventually disappear: we need the ecosystem and animals to exist in the first place,” he explained.

Eppley suggested that scientists often approach conservation initiatives that they can test on a small scale and then, if they are effective, find the best way of scaling up those initiatives for entire protected areas, landscapes, countries or broader geographic regions.

As for the honor Wright received from the Seneca Park Zoo, Eppley believes such recognition dovetails with their recent correspondence piece in Nature Communications.

Wright “founded CVB and has been tirelessly building it into a globally recognized field research station,” he wrote.

Bringing international recognition to the work being done at CVB “highlights the overall importance of field research stations and why they need to be included in global environmental policy frameworks,” Eppley added.

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Luisella Lari. Photo from BNL

By Daniel Dunaief

Some day, physicists and members of the public who benefit from their discoveries may be happy that Luisella Lari had limited musical and sports talent.

Lari, who grew up in Torino, Italy, tried numerous sports and instruments, especially with her parents’ encouragement.

Luisella Lari studies continuous feature drawings of the Electron Ion Collider. Photo from BNL

After gamely trying, Lari blazed her own trail, which has led her to become Project Manager and senior scientist for the Electron Ion Collider, a one-of-a-kind nuclear physics research facility at Brookhaven National Laboratory. BNL won the rights to construct the EIC, which the lab will plan and develop over the course of the next decade, from the Department of Energy in 2020.

By using a 2.4 mile circumference particle collider, physicists will collide polarized electrons into ions with polarized protons to answer a host of questions about the nature of matter. They will gather information about the basic building blocks of nuclei and how quarks and gluons, the particles inside neutrons and protons, interact dynamically through the strong force to generate the fundamental properties of these particles, such as mass and spin.

Lari, who joined the EIC effort on October 3rd, described her role, which includes numerous meetings, calls and coordinating with multinational and multi-state teams, as a “dream job.”

“I’m so excited to be a part of a project that can help the next generation of physicists,” Lari said. “It’s my turn to participate in the construction” of the cutting edge facility. BNL is coordinating with numerous other labs nationally, including the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator in Virginia, an internationally on the project.

Amid her numerous responsibilities, Lari will ensure that effective project management systems, cost controls and project schedules are developed, documented and implemented. Core competencies of the team she is responsible for include procurement, quality and safety.

EIC applications

The EIC has numerous potential applications across a host of fields. It could lead to energy-efficient accelerators, which could lower the cost of accelerators to make and test computer chips. The EIC could also provide energetic particles that can treat caner cells and improve the design of solar cells, batteries and catalysts. The EIC may also help develop new kinds of drugs and other medical treatments.

Lari explained that she provides a review and approval of the safety evaluations performed by experts. She suggested this suits her background as she did similar work earlier in her career.

Luisella Lari on a recent vacation to Mackinac Island.

Lari has made it a priority to hire a diversified workforce of engineers, technicians and quality and safety managers who can contribute to a project that BNL will likely start constructing in 2026 and 2027.

“I am a strong supporter of building a diverse workforce at levels of the organization,” she explained in an email. “I am strongly convinced that it will add value to any work environment and in particular in a scientific community.”

Applying her experience

Lari isn’t just an administrator and a project coordinator —  she is also a physicist by training.

She earned a master’s degree in nuclear engineering from Politecnico di Torino University in Italy and a PhD in physics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne in Switzerland.

Early in her professional career, Lari worked at Thales Alenia Space, an aerospace company in Turin, Italy, where she collaborated for the development of her master’s thesis. She worked for two years at the company, performing tasks that included testing internal fluid supply lines for one of the International Space Station’s pressurized modules that connects the United States, European and Japanese laboratories in orbit.

She enjoyed the opportunity to work for a “really interesting project” and still routinely uses the NASA system engineering handbook.

She also worked for about a dozen years as an applied physicist and planning officer at CERN, a particle physics lab, which is on the border between France and Switzerland near Geneva.

Lari also served as a project manager and scientist for the European Spallation Source, a neutron source under construction in Sweden. She coordinated ESS Accelerator Project budgets and ran data-driven safety analyses.

Recently, Lari was a senior manager at Fermi National Accelerator in Illinois, where she coordinated international partner contributions to the Proton Improvement Plan II, which upgraded the accelerator complex.

A need to know

When Lari was in middle school, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant melted down. As a school assignment, she had to explain what happened. At that point, she said she understood nothing, which motivated her to want to become a nuclear engineer.

She was “fascinated by nuclear energy.” When she worked at CERN, she had not been studied much about accelerator physics. She attended meetings where sophisticated discussions physics took place and was driven to learn the material.

“All my life, which started when I was a child, I wanted to understand the world around me,” she said. Her work in project management for scientific projects is also her passion, she said. “My mother would say to me when I was younger that I should choose my job in a way that I would do something I like, because I will spend half my life doing it.”

In addition to committing to understanding the physics and helping other scientists pursue their curiosity, Lari said she appreciates the opportunity to collaborate.

While Lari never became proficient in music or athletics, she enjoys dancing and is looking forward to attending Broadway musicals in New York.

She has hosted her parents at each of the places where she has worked, broadening their horizons.

As for her work, Lari recalls being impressed by the ability of the managers at the LHC to summarize complex work in a few pages and to make big picture decisions that affected so many other scientists. She became impressed and inspired “by the power of the project administrator approach,” she said. She also appreciates the opportunities to interact with experts in several fields, which gives her the chance to “better understand and learn.”

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Egypt’s coral reefs, shown here in a recent photo of the Red Sea in Egypt, remain one of the few pristine reef systems worldwide. Photo by Maoz Fine

By Daniel Dunaief

While global warming threatens most of the warm water reefs of the world, the reefs off the coast of Egypt and nearby countries are capable of surviving, and even thriving, in warmer waters.

That, however, does not mean these reefs, which live in the Northern Red Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba and are along the coastline of Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, are safe. 

Karine Kleinhaus

Indeed, several factors including unsustainable tourism, sewage discharge, coastal development, and desalination discharge threaten the survival of reefs that bring in more money than the Great Pyramids.

Recently, Karine Kleinhaus, Associate Professor at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University, published a letter in the prestigious journal Science that suggested it’s time to conserve the Egyptian reefs, which constitute about 2 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

Along with co-author Ellen Pikitch, Endowed Professor of Ocean Conservation Science at SOMAS, whe urged an expanded and fortified marine protected network. As of now, the MPAs only protect about 4 percent of Egypts’s waters.

Kleinhaus, who is President of the Red Sea Reef Foundation which supports scientific research on the reefs, also urged more effective fisheries management and enforcement and an investment in sustainable tourism practices and infrastructure that mitigates land-based pollution, such as waste-water treatment infrastructure and garbage disposal mechanisms.

Science published the letter just days before the 27th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27), which was held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

During the COP27 conference, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) committed up to $15 million to scale reef-positive blue economic growth and conservation finance in the Red Sea in partnership with the Global Fund for Coral Reefs.

Kleinhaus called the investment a “great start” in protecting a “valuable global treasure. It’s great that the US recognizes the value of this place and that the US is working to contribute to preserve it.”

Other work ahead

Kleinhaus added that considerable works lies ahead to protect one of the few reefs capable of surviving climate change. “We can’t turn the clock back right this minute on warming the oceans, [but] we can stop the conditions that are happening along the Red Sea reef,” she said.

Kleinhaus suggested that all the threats to the reefs are significant. Tourists who are not educated about the fragility of the nature they’ve come to see have damaged the reef. Scuba divers, meanwhile, smash into the reefs with their tanks or drag their regulators and other gauges over the reefs, killing or injuring them.

Kleinhaus with a grouper in Eilat.

During Covid travel restrictions, Kleinhaus heard that some parts of the reef, which would have otherwise been damaged by visitors, recovered. Raw sewage and general pollution reaching the reefs also threatens marine life, as is over fishing.

Other reefs, such as the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, have sustained damage from global warming. Kleinhaus described those reefs as a “warning that things are going to change.”

Transplanting parts of the Red Sea reef into other parts of the world to enhance temperature resilience is unlikely to work, Kleinhaus said. These reefs include a diverse ecosystem that supports it, including algae, bacteria, invertebrates and fish.

“We don’t have the scientific knowhow to transplant entire ecosystems at this time,” said Kleinhaus

Evolution of resistance

Kleinhaus explained that heat resistance in the Red Sea reefs developed through natural selection of the coral animals.

During the last Ice Age, the Red Sea got cut off from the Indian Ocean, which meant the temperature climbed and the sea didn’t have any rivers emptying into it. When the Ice Age ended, waters rose into the Red Sea that carried coral from the Indian ocean. The coral that survived had to be tolerant of heat and salt.

“That is the working hypothesis as to why the corals in the northern Red Sea are resilient,” Kleinhaus explained in an email. “They were selected to tolerate hotter water than where they live now.” She called this resilience a “lucky break” for the reefs.

Unusual path

Kleinhaus, who grew up in Westchester, New York, followed an unusual path into marine research.

After attended medical school in Israel at Tel Aviv Medical School, she practiced briefly as an obstetrician in New York. From there, she was the divisional vice president for North America for an Israeli biotechnology company.

Egypt’s coral reefs, shown here in a recent photo of the Red Sea in Egypt, remain one of the few pristine reef systems worldwide. Photo by Maoz Fine

Kleinhaus was reading about the effect of heatwaves and global warming on coral reefs. Upset that they were dying, she decided to make a career change and earned her master’s degree in Marine Conservation and Policy at Stony Brook’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences.

The common thread in her career is that she was working on cell therapy using cells from the placenta, which is an extension of her obstetrics career. Nowadays, she studies reproduction in corals.

Like humans, corals have the hormones estrogen, progesterone and testosterone. Unlike humans, reefs are hermaphrodites and can switch back and forth between genders. Kleinhaus is exploring the relationship between hormones and the stages of reproduction in coral.

Numerous species of coral spawn once a year within 20 minutes of each other. Their reproduction is tied to the moon cycle. Kleinhaus has collected over two and a half years of data and plans to publish those results in a scientific journal.

She started diving in 1993 and said she enjoys seeing the colors, the shapes, the fish, turtle, octopuses, dolphin and barracuda. Invertebrates and sponges also contribute to the “overwhelming and glorious” experience of visiting reefs.

Down the road, she’d like to collect information from the COP27 conference and write a follow-up piece that would include more deep research about policies and conditions of the reef.

The point of the letter was to “highlight that this has to be protected and it’s a serious interest to everybody in Egypt.”

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From left to right, physician assistants Michelle Rosa and Katherine Malloy, Dr. David Fiorella and Dr. Jason Mathew visit Joseph Annunziata in his hospital bed. Photo from Stony Brook Medicine

By Daniel Dunaief

Joseph “Bob” Annunziata, a resident of Kings Park, wants you not to be like him.

An army veteran, Annunziata urges residents and, in particular, other veterans, to pay attention to their medical needs and to take action when they find out they have a problem. 

A self-described “tough guy” who grew up in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, Annunziata put off medical care for a partially blocked left carotid artery and it caused a medical crisis.

“My brother and sister vets, if you got a pain or the doctor tells you to do something, do it,” he said. “It almost cost me my life. I don’t want that to happen to anyone else.”

Joseph Annunziata at his 80th birthday party

Annunziata, 80, was driving to the supermarket on Veterans Day when his right hand became limp and he was slurring his speech. Knowing he was in trouble, he turned the car around and drove 10 minutes to the Northport VA Medical Center.

The doctors evaluated him and rushed him to Stony Brook University Hospital, which is well equipped to handle stroke-related emergencies and is the only hospital in the state named one of America’s 100 Best Hospitals for Stroke Care for eight years in a row. 

Several doctors evaluated Annunziata, including by Dr. David Fiorella, Director of the Stony Brook Cerebrovascular Center and Co-Director of the Stony Brook Cerebrovascular and Comprehensive Stroke Center, and Jason Mathew, stroke neurologist.

“We identified that there was a severe blockage in the left side of his brain,” said Dr. Mathew. “If blood flow is not returned to this area, the patient is at risk for a larger area of stroke.”

Indeed, a larger stroke could have caused right side paralysis and could have robbed Annunziata of his ability to speak or worse.

Performing emergency surgery could protect endangered brain cells, but also presented some risk. If not removed carefully and completely, the clot in the carotid artery could travel into the brain or the stroke could expand over time due to a lack of sufficient blood flow to the left side of the brain.

Time pressure

Stony Brook doctors discussed the particulars of the case together and explained the situation to Annunziata, who could understand what they were describing and respond despite symptoms that threatened to deteriorate.

The hospital, which does between 200 and 250 interventional stroke treatments per year and handles many more strokes than that annually, has a group of health care specialists who can provide accessible information to patients who are not experts in the field and who need to make an informed decision under time pressure.

Stony Brook has become adept at “conveying this complex information in a time-sensitive way,” Dr. Fiorella said. In those cases for which surgery is the best option, each minute that the doctors don’t open up a blood vessel reduces the benefits and increases the risk of longer-term damage.

Stony Brook sees about one to two of these kinds of cases per month. As a whole, the hospital, which is a large referral center, sees numerous complex and unusual cerebrovascular cases of all types, Dr. Fiorella said.

Annunziata and the doctors decided to have the emergency surgery.

Dr. Fiorella used a balloon guiding catheter, which is a long tube with a working inner lumen that has a soft balloon on the outside of it that is designed to temporarily block flow. He deploys these occlusion balloons in most all stroke cases. 

The particular way he used it in these complete carotid occlusions is unique. The balloon guiding catheter makes interventional stroke procedures more efficient, safer, and the outcomes better, according to data for thrombectomy, Dr. Fiorella said. 

The occlusion balloon enabled Dr. Fiorella to control blow flow the entire time, which makes the procedure safer. The surgery took under an hour and involved a small incision in Annunziata’s right wrist.

Joseph Annunziata with his girlfriend Rosemarie Madrose

After the surgery, Annunziata was able to speak to doctors and call Rosemarie Madrose, his girlfriend of five and a half years. “He came out talking,” said Madrose. “I could understand him. I was relieved.” Four days after the emergency operation, Annunziata, who also received post operative care from Dr. Yuehjien Gu, Neurocritical Care Unit Director, left the hospital and returned to his home, where he spent the next morning preparing a welcome meal of a scrambled egg and two slices of toast.

The doctors attribute Annunziata’s quick recovery to a host of factors. Getting himself to the hospital as soon as symptoms started saved precious minutes, Dr. Fiorella said, as “time is brain.” He also advised against driving for people having stroke-like symptoms, which can include slurred speech, numbness, weakening of the arm or leg and loss of vision in one eye.

Dr. Fiorella urged people to call for help or to get a ride in an ambulance. Stony Brook has two mobile stroke unit ambulances, which are equipped with technology to assess patients while en route, saving time and alerting doctors in the hospital to patients who might need immediate attention and intervention.

These mobile units, which are available from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., have helped reduce death and disability for stroke and have cut down the length of stays in the hospital.

People or family and friends who are observing someone who might be having a stroke can call 911 and indicate that the patient is having stroke-like symptoms. The emergency operator will alert the mobile stroke unit of a possible case if the unit is available and the patient is in range.

Helping a veteran

The doctors involved in Annunziata’s care were well aware of the fact that they were treating a veteran on Veterans Day.

“Oftentimes, we think about how we can give back more than just a thank you” to people like Annunziata, who “risked his life and helped his country the way he could,” said Dr. Mathew. “I’m helping him the way I can help.”

Dr. Fiorella added that he thought it was “wonderful” to “help someone who’s given so much to our country on Veterans Day.”

Army origin

Annunziata explained that he wound up in the Army through a circuitous route.  “We watched all the war movies” when he was young and wanted to join the Marines, he said.

When he went to enlist in 1962, he was told there was a two and a half year wait. He and his young friends got the same reception at the Air Force, Navy and the Army. As they were leaving the Army building on Whitehall Street, he and his friends ran into a sergeant with numerous medals on his uniform. The sergeant urged them to go back up the hallway and enter the first door on the right and indicate that they wanted to expedite the draft. About a week later, Annunziata was drafted and got a 15 cent token in the mail for a train trip to Wall Street.

After basic training at Fort Dix, he was stationed in Greenland, where Annunziata operated a radar at the top of a mountain for two years. He participated in drills in which he had to catch American planes flying overhead.

Fortunately, he said, even during the height of the Cold War and just months after the Cuban Missile Crisis, Annunziata never spotted a Russian threat, even though the base was just 20 minutes from Russian air space.

Having gone through emergency surgery that likely saved his life, Annunziata urges residents to pay attention to any medical needs on their radar.

Dr. Fiorella was amazed at how quickly Annunziata expressed concern for his fellow veterans during his recovery.

“One of the first things he talked about was, ‘How can I use what happened to me to help other vets?’” Dr. Fiorella said.

Annunziata’s girlfriend Madrose, who is grateful that the procedure saved his life, said he “didn’t listen to me. He knew he had to do this. I kept saying, ‘When are you going to do it?’ He said, ‘I will, I will, I will.’ He learned the hard way.” She added that they both know he is “extremely lucky.”

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