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Corina Amor ©Len Marks Photography, 2022/CSHL

By Daniel Dunaief

What if scientists could train the immune system to recognize something specific on the outside of unwanted cells?

That’s what new Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory fellow Corina Amor is doing, as she found an antigen on the surface of senescent cells. She hopes to train a patient’s T-cells to search for these cells, much like providing a police dog with the scent of a missing person or escaped convict.

Amor, who joined Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in January after earning her medical degree in  at Universidad Complutense de Madrid in Spain and her PhD in the lab of CSHL Adjunct Professor Scott Lowe, recently found a surface molecule called uPAR that is upregulated on senescent, or aging, cells.

If senescent cells excessively accumulate, it can lead to tissue decline and disease like lung and liver fibrosis, Lowe, who is the Cancer Biology Chair at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, explained in an email. Senescent cells also contribute to tissue decline as people age.

Studies suggest eliminating these senescent cells could provide therapeutic benefit, she added.

Using artificial T-cells, called CAR-T, for Chimeric Antigen Receptor, Amor looks to use specific antigens to find these senescent cells and eliminate them.

“It was sort of a crazy idea, but it worked and, while much more preclinical and clinical work needs to be done, the concept could lead to better treatments for lung and liver fibrosis, and other diseases that increase as we age,” Lowe wrote.

The combination of an inflamed environment and an ineffective immune system can create conditions that favor the growth and development of cancer.

Amor, who currently has one technician and is planning to add a graduate student this summer at her lab at CSHL, is building on her PhD research.

“My doctoral work was the development of the first CAR-T cells that are able to target senescent cells,” she said. “We were the first in the world to do this.”

Amor, who was recently named to the 2022 Forbes 30 under 30 Europe list, describes this approach as a new frontier for treating senescent cells and one in which researchers would need to clear numerous hurdles before developing clinical therapies.

She is searching for other antigens on the surface of cancerous and fibrous cells that would increase the specificity of these synthetic immune cells.

Combining antigens could be the key to avoiding off target effects that might cause the immune system to attack healthy cells.

Amor plans to tap into CSHL’s affiliation with Northwell Health to analyze clinical samples that might provide a better understanding of various potential markers.

Fellowship route

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is one of several programs in the country that provides talented researchers with the opportunity to go directly from finishing their PhD to leading their own lab.

Amor is following in the footsteps of her MSKCC mentor Lowe, who also had been an independent fellow at CSHL.

Lowe saw some similarities in their career paths, as they both made “unexpected discoveries during our Ph.D. research that were not only important, but clearly set a path for future research,” he explained in an email.

Lowe describes Amor as an “intense and driven scientist” who has an “extraordinary bandwidth to get things done, and a mental organization that allows her to execute science efficiently.” He believes her work is game changing at many levels and opens up numerous new directions for scientific study.

Lowe is “extraordinarily proud of [Amor] for becoming a CSHL fellow – and I hope she both contributes and benefits from the lab as I did,” he wrote in an email.

Amor said CSHL provided an ideal balance between finding collaborators who worked in similar areas, without competing for the same resources and conducting similar research.

“The last thing you want is to go somewhere and be completely isolated,” she said. “You also don’t want to be at a place where there’s three other people doing the same thing and you’re not adding anything.”

She feels like she had a “nice synergy” with CSHL, which is trying to expand its immunology research. 

As the first person to bring cellular therapy to CSHL, she has already started collaborating with several groups. 

Amor recognizes the challenges ahead in training scientists who often have their own ideas about the questions they’d like to ask.

“The science is the easy part” and it comes naturally, but there is a “learning curve in how to manage people,” she said.

She appreciates the opportunity to talk with senior researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and plans to attend courses and seminars for principal investigators who are starting out.

When she was in graduate school, Amor said she rotated through different labs. When everything didn’t work as she might have hoped during those rotations, she said she had the opportunity to learn from those experiences.

“When training people in the lab, I try to be really specific about what I want to do” while also ensuring that the researchers understand and appreciate the bigger picture and context for individual experiments, she said.

Originally from Madrid, Amor felt comfortable during her five years in Manhattan and is enjoying the open space and fresh air of Long Island in her role at CSHL. She also appreciates the chance to kayak in the waters around Long Island.

When she was around seven years old, Amor said her mother Esperanza Vegas was diagnosed with breast cancer. By participating in a clinical trial for a new drug, her mother fought off the disease.

“That made me realize how important science and research is,” Amor said.

During her educational training, Amor went directly from high school into a six-year program in which she earned a bachelor’s degree and a medical degree.

By the time she finished her PhD, she was hooked on research.

She appreciates the advice she received from Lowe, who encouraged her to conduct experiments despite the risks.

“Don’t get paralyzed at the beginning by fear,” she said. “Do the experiment and see what happens.”

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Paul Freimuth and co-author Feiyue Teng, a scientist in Brookhaven Lab’s Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN), at the light microscope used to image bacteria in this study. Photo from BNL

By Daniel Dunaief

Researchers regularly say they go wherever the science takes them. Sometimes, however, the results of their work puts them on a different path, addressing new questions.

So it was for Paul Freimuth, a biologist at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Freimuth was studying plant proteins of unknown function that he thought might play a role in the synthesis or modification of plant cell walls. The goal was to produce these proteins in bacteria or yeast to facilitate an understanding of the protein structures.

When he inserted plant genes into bacteria, however, one of those genes experienced a phase shift, producing a misfolded protein that, when produced in high enough quantities, killed the bacteria.

Working with several interns over the course of five years, as well as a few other principal investigators, Freimuth discovered that this protein had the same effect as antibiotics called aminoglycosides, which are the current treatment for some bacterial infections. He recently published the results of these studies in the journal Plos One.

Aminoglycosides enter the cell and cause ribosomes to create proteins in an error-prone mode, which kill the bacterial cells. The way these proteins kill the cells, however, remains a mystery. Antibiotic-treated cells produce numerous proteins, which makes determining the mechanism of action difficult.

The protein Freimuth studied mirrors the effect of treating cells with aminogylcosides. Researchers now have a protein they can study to determine the mechanism of cell killing.

To be sure, Freimuth said the current research is at an early stage, and is a long way from any application. He hopes this model will advance an understanding of how aberrant proteins kill cells. That information can enable the design of small molecule drugs that mimic the protein’s toxic effect. He believes it’s likely that this protein would be toxic if expressed in other bacteria and in higher cells, but he has not tested it yet.

With antibiotic resistance continuing to spread, including for aminoglycosides, Freimuth said the urgency to find novel ways to kill or inhibit bacterial growth selectively without harmful side effects has increased.

Aminoglycosides cause the ribosome to shift coding phases or to make other errors. The model toxic protein he studied resulted from the bacteria starting to translate amino acids at an internal position, which produced a new, and, as it turns out, toxic sequence of amino acids.

The phase-shifted gene contained a stop codon located just 49 codons from the start site, which means that the toxic protein only contained 48 amino acids, which is much shorter than the average of 250 to 300 amino acids in an E. coli protein.

Since the model toxic protein was gene-encoded rather than produced by an antibiotic-induced error in translation, Freimuth’s team were able to study the sequence basis for toxicity. The acutely toxic effect was dependent on an internal region 10 amino acids in length.

Narrowing down the toxic factor to such a small region could help facilitate future studies of the mechanism of action for this protein’s toxic effect.

Misread signal

Freimuth and his team discovered that the bacteria misread the genetic plant sequence the researchers introduced. The bacteria have a quality control mechanism that searches for these gibberish proteins, breaking them down and eliminating them before they waste resources from the bacteria or damage the cell.

When Freimuth raised the number of such misfolded proteins high enough, he and his colleagues overwhelmed the quality control system, which he believes happened because the misfolded protein affected the permeability of the cell membrane, opening up channels to allow ions to flood in and kill the cell.

He said it’s an open question whether the protein jams open existing channels or becomes directly incorporated into the membrane, compromising membrane stability.

He showed that cells become salt-sensitive, indicating that sodium ion concentration increases. At the same time, it is likely that essential metabolites are leaking out, depriving the cell of compounds it needs to survive.

Now that the bacteria has produced this protein, Freimuth can use various tools and techniques at BNL, including the X-ray beamlines for protein crystallography and the cryo electron microscope, which would provide ways to study the interaction of the protein with cell components. High resolution structures such as the ones he hopes to determine could be used to guide drug design.

Freimuth is in the process of applying for National Institutes of Health funding for additional research, which could help the NIH’s efforts to counter the increasing spread of antibiotic resistance.

Freimuth has worked at BNL since 1991. He and his wife Mia Jacob, who recently retired from her role in graphic design in Stony Brook University’s Office of Marketing and Communication, reside in East Setauket.

The couple’s daughter Erika, who lives in Princeton and recently got married, works at Climate Central as an editor and writer. Their son Andrew works in Port Jefferson at an investment firm called FQS Capital Partners.

When Freimuth is not working at the lab, he enjoys sailing, kayaking and canoeing. During the pandemic, he said he purchased a small sailboat, with which he has been dodging the ferry in Port Jefferson Harbor.

Originally from Middletown, Connecticut, Freimuth was interested in science from an early age. He particularly enjoyed a mycology class as an undergraduate at the University of Connecticut.

As for his unexpected research with this protein, the biologist is pleased with the support he received from Brookhaven National Laboratory.

He said BNL enabled him to address the biofuel problem from protein quality control, which is a new angle. “BNL appreciates that valuable ideas sometimes bubble up unexpectedly and the lab has ways to assist investigators in developing promising ideas,” he said.

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Photo from PSEG

For the fourth consecutive year, PSEG Long Island has earned the ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year Sustained Excellence Award, the most prestigious ENERGY STAR award offered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

PSEG Long Island was recognized for its incentives and rebate programs that encourage customers to buy the most energy-efficient lighting fixtures and appliances.

“PSEG Long Island values its partnership with ENERGY STAR, and we’re excited to see the impact we’ve made to help customers save on their energy bills and reduce their carbon footprint,” said Michael Voltz, PSEG Long Island director of Energy Efficiency and Renewables. “We are proud to be recognized for our ongoing commitment to a clean energy future.”

Each year, the ENERGY STAR program honors a group of businesses and organizations that have made outstanding contributions to protecting the environment through superior energy achievements. ENERGY STAR award winners are selected from a network of thousands of ENERGY STAR partners. They lead their industries in the production, sale and adoption of energy-efficient products, homes, buildings, services and strategies ─ efforts that are essential to fighting the climate crisis and protecting public health.

PSEG Long Island ENERGY STAR savings for customers

PSEG Long Island customers can save money and cut their fossil fuel use by purchasing the most energy efficient outdoor equipment with rebates of up to $600 on lawn, garden and pool equipment. Using energy efficient pool heaters, lawnmowers and lawn equipment can help reduce customers’ carbon footprint and also lower energy bills. Also, chargeable electric tools are quieter, cleaner and easier to use than traditional gas equipment; and they require less maintenance. To view PSEG Long Island’s ENERGY STAR ® rebates and learn about other energy efficiency programs, visit www.psegliny.com/efficiency.

Since 2014, PSEG Long Island has provided more than $360 million in rebates to customers purchasing energy-efficient appliances, lighting fixtures and other home and commercial equipment, saving approximately 2.3 million MWh of energy. This is equivalent to removing more than 214,000 gasoline-fueled cars from our roads or the amount of energy required to power more than 193,500 homes annually.

“We know it’s going to take all of us working together to tackle the climate crisis, and the 2022 ENERGY STAR award-winning partners are demonstrating what it takes to build a more sustainable future,” said EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan, who noted that companies like PSEG Long Island “are showing once again that taking action in support of a clean energy economy can be good not only for the environment, but also for business and customers.”

ENERGY STAR® is the government-backed symbol for energy efficiency, providing simple, credible, and unbiased information that consumers and businesses rely on to make well-informed decisions. Thousands of industrial, commercial, utility, state, and local organizations—including more than 40 percent of the Fortune 500®—rely on their partnership with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to deliver cost-saving energy efficiency solutions. Since 1992, ENERGY STAR and its partners helped American families and businesses avoid more than $500 billion in energy costs and achieve more than 4 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas reductions. More background information about ENERGY STAR’s impacts can be found at www.energystar.gov/impacts and state-level information can be found at www.energystar.gov/statefacts.

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A migration journey through a Bedouin camp in the Negev Desert (Saharan-Arabian desert), Israel (2017) – a scene that will likely be more common in many areas of the world due to increasing 21st Century droughts. Photo y Gallya Lahav
Stony Brook-led research combined social science and climate models in a paper published in International Migration Review

Drought and the potential increase in the number of droughts worldwide due to climate change remains a concern for scientists. A recent study led by Stony Brook University researchers suggests that human migration due to droughts will increase by at least 200 percent as we move through the 21st Century. Based on a series of both climate and social science modeling systems and other social science data, the study findings imply that migration may force the need to adjust sociopolitical policies to offset widespread human displacement in the future. The study is published in International Migration Review.

According to lead author Oleg Smirnov, PhD, Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Stony Brook University, the research team worked from an ensemble of 16 climate models to generate drought projections for rest of the 21st Century. They centered on two greenhouse gas emissions scenarios: an optimistic one consistent with the Paris Agreement, and a pessimistic one based on current use of energy and greenhouse gas emissions.

It is important to note that while the Groundswell report assesses human migration projections due to climate change by 2050 in six world regions, this study analyzes potential drought-induced human migration around the entire world for the whole century going forward.

Both Smirnov and co-author Gallya Lahav, PhD, a migration specialist and Associate Professor of Political Science at Stony Brook University, assessed the sociopolitical climates and policies in connection with the climate models. Co-authors and climate experts Minghua Zhang, PhD, of Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS), and Tingyin Xiao of Princeton University, generated global drought projections for two emissions scenarios for the period of 2008 to 2100 in order to complete the analysis.

Overall, they project there will be a massive increase in drought-induced migration in the coming years – 200 percent more based on the optimistic climate projections and as high as 500 percent more if world leaders fail to cooperate on climate change mitigation measures.

“One interesting finding is that we also identified a large group of people who will want to migrate but fail to do so as droughts cover large areas of land making possible destinations difficult to get to or inferior to their land of origin,” explains Smirnov.

The authors estimate that this segment of “immobile” people will also increase by about 200 percent in the optimistic scenario, yet almost 600 percent under the “business as usual” or pessimistic scenario.

“Our models make us not only concerned about the increasing number of environmentally displaced people that may spread across the globe, but we are equally, if not more, concerned about the large number of these ‘immobile’ persons – who may be desperate to leave but unable to do so, which may contribute to social suffering and instability,” emphasizes Smirnov.

Furthermore, “given that environmentally-induced migrants largely fall outside of international legal frameworks like the Refugee Convention which protects those fleeing war or conflict, a multi-lateral holistic policy approach is vital in this grey area,” adds, Lahav, a previous consultant to the United Nations Population Division.

Despite the scientific quest to systematically assess and predict future migratory outcomes, the researchers agree that the social science aspect of the study may have additional unknown variables and complexities when projecting because of the political aspects of migration. The authors write “we can only talk about potential migration pressures, as opposed to actual migration, since we do not know how future political responses will affect and potentially constrain future migration flows. Similarly, we do not rely on the absolute number of migrants, since these numbers are sensitive to the arbitrary modeling assumptions.”

As the researchers chart the drought-induced migration models toward the end of the 21st Century, they warn that many countries will have large numbers of migrating peoples. They state that the largest number of people displaced by drought under unmitigated change would occur in these countries: Nigeria, Egypt, China, Turkey, Algeria, Mexico, Morocco, and Venezuela. The projected largest number of immobile persons would be those in Turkey, Mexico, Morocco, Algeria, Brazil, Mali, and China.

Overall, say Smirnov and colleagues, the study findings provide solid evidence that global climate change mitigation would be less costly in terms of human suffering and economic loss from drought-induced migration than policies designed to deal with the overwhelming challenges of unmitigated climate change.

This research is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the “Cyber-Enabled Discovery and Innovation” collaborative (grant numbers 0940822 and 0940744).

 

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A. Laurie Shroyer Photo by Jeanne Neville/Stony Brook University

By Daniel Dunaief

Publish or perish.

It’s the academic paradigm that defines the importance of getting great research and ideas in front of the public. Not only does publishing enable researchers to share discoveries, but it also provides additional rungs on a career ladder.

Science journals with greater impact can raise the visibility of up-and-coming researchers, helping them win more competitive grants, get papers published in other journals, and receive coveted promotions and tenure.

In a recent study led by A. Laurie Shroyer, Professor of Surgery and Vice Chair for Research at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, women authors in positions considered significant — first, second or last — appeared at a rate that was below their representation in academic medical school faculty for the three top ranking medical journals.

Published in the journal PLOS ONE of 1,080 author citations from 2002 to 2019 in The Lancet, the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine, a team of researchers determined that women were listed as senior, or last, authors 18.6 percent of the time. Meanwhile, 26.8 percent of women were first authors.

The first and last author rates for women were lower than the 37.2 percent of women full-time academic faculty members, according to Shroyer. “This is truly striking. I never in my wildest dreams thought [the publication rate for women] was this low” particularly for last authors.

Indeed, the percentages varied by journal, with the New England Journal of Medicine coming in the lowest for first authors, at 15.83 percent, and the Journal of the American Medical Association showing the highest rate, at 35.39 percent. Lancet had 29.39 percent.

In response to emailed questions about the study, officials at the New England Journal of Medicine indicated that the journal does not ask authors to self-identify.

“With a group of publishers lead by the Royal Society of Chemistry, we’re developing best practices for encouraging diversity among authors,” said Eric Rubin, M.D., PhD and Editor-in-Chief of the NEJM. “Diversity in medicine is important, and we are taking steps where we can to encourage change or highlight inequities.”

In September 2021, the NEJM published an editorial that said having more diversity among researchers is one way to help make trials more representative. Additionally, in April 2021, the NEJM published a Special Report about the diversity of the medical student body.

“We believe we must diversify our own ranks and encourage diversity at all stages of medical training,” Dr. Rubin added.

The Lancet, meanwhile, indicated that the data they collected on gender representation among their authors, peer reviewers and Editorial Advisory Board members led them to develop new strategies to improve gender representation in the editorial process, including a diversity pledge and no all-male panel policy, according to a public relations statement. All Lancet International Advisory Boards are now 50 percent women. This past March, the Lancet hosted a webinar on gender equity.

Shroyer lauded The Lancet for providing a public disclosure of their author gender profiles. The Lancet’s “positive actions are admirable,” she said..

A request for comment from the Journal of the American Medical Association was not returned by press time.

While the JAMA women first author rate did not demonstrate a statistically significant difference from the Association of American Medical Colleges, it was different, at 20.8 percent for last authors and for any significant author role, at 32.8 percent compared to 37.2 percent overall.

To be sure, Shroyer and co-author Henry Tannous, chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery Division and co-director of the Stony Brook Heart Institute, didn’t receive the kind of information that would help shed greater light on the publishing process.

Shroyer explained that it would be helpful to have journal-specific editorial office data on author specific and publication specific details for manuscripts received, reviewed and accepted.

Without access to editorial office databases, “it will not be possible to discern the potential reasons behind the lower women author publication rates,” Shroyer explained, adding that with the unknown rate of gender-based submissions, it is possible that the relative proportion of submitted articles published might not be different between men and women.

“My hope is that this publication may inspire all of these top medical journals to publish their own summary reports and to share their own editorial office databases to facilitate future research in this field,” she said.

An ongoing pattern

Shroyer began investigating the author and publication characteristics associated with multiple successful publications in top medical research journals in late 2017.

To determine if the pattern had changed over time, Shroyer and Tannous divided the publication rates into early, 2002 to 2008; mid, 2009 to 2014; and late, 2015 to 2019. Using samples from these years, Shroyer concluded that there were no differences over time.

Among other conclusions, Shroyer said women first authors less commonly published clinical trials as compared with observational study designs. Their projects were also more frequently focused on infectious disease topics. Men, on the other hand, published more work focused on cardiovascular topics.

Shroyer added that the sampling of three journals’ records does not prove a gender bias. She could only show a discrepancy in the author publication rates.

She’s an advocate for individual investigator-based identifiers that are just numbers, which would allow for a more thorough and detailed analysis of any trends in publication rates.

This research provides a call for “greater transparency and accountability” Shroyer said.

As a potential optimistic sign, Shroyer found that first/ last authors with the same gender more often published clinical trials and had higher Web of Science citation counts, compared with first authors with different genders. First authors who were the same gender as last authors also had higher multiple top medical research journal publications.

While this doesn’t necessarily point to a clear mentor benefit, Shroyer suggests this connection between women principal investigators and their research staff may create greater publishing opportunities and advancement for women in science.

“My hope is that we can find ways to help each other,” she said. “Preliminary analysis shows potential promise.”

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Kevin Reed. Photo courtesy of Stony Brook University

By Daniel Dunaief

Rain, rain go away, come again some other day.

The days of wishing rain away have long since passed, amid the reality of a wetter world, particularly during hurricanes in the North Atlantic.

In a recent study published in the journal Nature Communications, Kevin Reed, Associate Professor and Associate Dean of Research at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University, compared how wet the hurricanes that tore through the North Atlantic in 2020 would have been prior to the Industrial Revolution and global warming.

Reed determined that these storms had 10 percent more rain than they would have if they occurred in 1850, before the release of fossil fuels and greenhouse gases that have increased the average temperature on the planet by one degree Celsius.

The study is a “wake up call to the fact that hurricane seasons have changed and will continue to change,” said Reed. More warming means more rainfall. That, he added, is important when planners consider making improvements to infrastructure and providing natural barriers to flooding.

While 10 percent may not seem like an enormous amount of rain on a day of light drizzle and small puddles, it represents significant rain amid torrential downpours. That much additional rain can be half an inch or more of rain, said Reed. Much of the year, Long Island may not get half an inch a day, on top of an already extreme event, he added.

“It could be the difference between certain infrastructure failing, a basement flooding” and other water-generated problems, he said. The range of increased rain during hurricanes in 2020 due to global warming were as low as 5 percent and as high as 15 percent.

While policy makers have been urging countries to reach the Paris Climate Accord’s goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above the temperature from 1850, the pre-Industrial Revolution, studies like this suggest that the world such as it is today has already experienced the effects of warming.

“This is another data point for understanding that climate change is a not only a challenge for the future,” Reed said. It’s not this “end of the century problem that we have time to figure out. The Earth has already warmed by over 1 degrees” which is changing the hurricane season and is also impacting other severe weather events, like the heatwave in the Pacific Northwest in 2021. That heatwave killed over 100 people in the state of Washington.

Even being successful in limiting the increase to 2 degrees will create further increases in rainfall from hurricanes, Reed added. As with any global warming research, this study may also get pushback from groups skeptical of the impact of fossil fuel use and more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Reed contends that this research is one of numerous studies that have come to similar conclusions about the impact of climate change on weather patterns, including hurricanes.

“Researchers from around the world are finding similar signals,” Reed said. “This is one example that is consistent with dozens of other work that has found similar results.”

Amid more warming, hurricane seasons have already changed, which is a trend that will continue, he predicted.

Even on a shorter-term scale, Hurricane Sandy, which devastated the Northeast with heavy rain, wind and flooding, would likely have had more rainfall if the same conditions existed just eight years later, Reed added.

Reed was pleased that Nature Communications shared the paper with its diverse scientific and public policy audience.

“The general community feels like this type of research is important enough to a broad set of [society]” to appear in a high-profile journal, he said. “This shows, to some extent, the fact that the community and society at large [appreciates] that trying to understand the impact of climate change on our weather is important well beyond the domain of scientists like myself, who focus on hurricanes.”

Indeed, this kind of analysis and modeling could and should inform public policy that affects planning for the growth and resilience of infrastructure.

Study origins

The researchers involved in this study decided to compare how the 2020 season would have looked during cooler temperatures fairly quickly after the season ended.

The 2020 season was the most active on record, with 30 named storms generating heavy rains, storm surges and winds. The total damage from those storms was estimated at about $40 billion.

While the global surface temperature has increased 1 degree Celsius since 1850, sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic basin have risen 0.4 to 0.9 degrees Celsius during the 2020 season.

Reed and his co-authors took some time to discuss the best analysis to use. It took them about four months to put the data together and run over 2,500 model simulations.

“This is a much more computationally intensive project than previous work,” Reed said. The most important variables that the scientists altered were temperature and moisture.

As for the next steps, Reed said he would continue to refine the methodology to explore other impacts of climate change on the intensity of storms, their trajectory, and their speed.

Reed suggested considering the 10 percent increase in rain caused by global warming during hurricanes through another perspective. “If you walked into your boss’s office tomorrow and your boss said, ‘I want to give you a 10 percent raise,’ you’d be ecstatic,” he said. “That’s a significant amount.”

Ecstatic, however, isn’t how commuters, homeowners, and business leaders feel when more even more rain comes amid a soaking storm.

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Milinda Abeykoon, lead beamline scientist at Pair Distribution Function Beamline, NSLS-II, aligning a sample holder for high-speed measurements, 2019. Photo courtesy of BNL

By Melissa Arnold

Over the past 75 years, Brookhaven National Lab (BNL) in Upton has become an international hub for innovative research and problem-solving. Their hard work has led to advancements in energy, medicine, physics and more, as well as seven Nobel Prizes.

A scientist at a fast neutron chopper at the Brookhaven Graphite Research Reactor (BGRR), 1953. Photo courtesy of BNL

This year, the Long Island Museum in Stony Brook will celebrate the lab’s myriad achievements and explore their deep roots in the area. The new exhibit, titled Atoms to Cosmos: The Story of Brookhaven National Laboratory, opens April 21.

BNL and the Long Island Museum started working on ideas for a future exhibition back in 2018 with plans to open in April of 2020. But as with other museums, the pandemic led to a halt in operations.

In some ways, the rescheduled timing of the exhibit is better than their initial plans.

“While the exhibition was temporarily shelved, both the lab and the museum wanted very much to still make it happen. We had done so much work in advance and preparation for it in 2020, and so we really wanted to get back to this opportunity,” said Joshua Ruff, Deputy Director and Director of Collections and Interpretation for the Long Island Museum. “We are especially pleased we were able to do it now, as it fits nicely with the lab’s 75th anniversary celebration.”

Brookhaven National Laboratory was founded in 1947 at the former site of the U.S. Army’s Camp Upton, becoming the first large research facility in the Northeast. At the time, they were exploring peaceful ways to utilize atomic energy. 

“The BNL site has been in federal ownership since 1917 when it became the location of Camp Upton. Before that, the site was used for the cordwood industry and there was a small farm near the eastern edge of what is now the lab,” explained Timothy Green, BNL’s Environmental Compliance Section manager. “After World War I, all of the buildings were sold at auction and the site sat empty until around 1934, when it was declared the Upton National Forest and the Civilian Conservation Corps started planting trees. At the end of World War II [and a second period as Camp Upton], the land was transferred to the Atomic Energy Commission and became Brookhaven National Laboratory.”

It took some time for local residents to adjust to having a laboratory in the area, Ruff said.

A Positron Emission Tomography Halo Scanner/Detector.
Photo courtesy of BNL

“The lab has often been misunderstood in its past, in fact from its origins. Many Suffolk County residents were not entirely sure that atomic research was safe, nor did they fully understand the relevance and significance [of that research] to their lives,” he explained. “The lab devoted years of hard work and financial resources to strengthen public dialogue and communication, which the exhibition details.”

Today, the lab employs almost 3,000 people and spans 5,320 acres.

The exhibit is co-curated by Joshua Ruff and Long Island Museum curator Jonathan Olly. They’ve included more than 140 items that showcase the lab’s growth and varied discoveries from the 1950s to the present day. The Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington is lending four of the objects, including a 1,000-pound, 94-inch square magnet lamina from the Cosmotron, BNL’s first major particle accelerator. 

Another 40 objects are coming directly from the lab. Their contribution includes equipment from their facilities, personal belongings of former director Maurice Goldhaber, and “Atoms for Peace,” a famous painting that came to symbolize the lab’s work in its early years.

“A lot of the scientific research at BNL over the years has involved [developing] and testing cutting edge technologies. When these machines are no longer useful they’re usually recycled. Fortunately we do have two examples in the exhibition of early PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scanners, one from 1961 and another from 1981,” Olly said. “In the case of these early machines, the focus was on the brain — the machines used radiation sensors arranged in a ring to produce a picture of a slice of your brain. Brookhaven scientists have used this PET technology (specifically the PETT VI scanner in the exhibition) in studying drug and alcohol addiction, eating disorders, ADHD, aging, and neurodegenerative disorders. The 1961 version is a prototype that was never used on patients.”

Also on view are an original chalkboard from the Graphite Research Reactor that still has writing on it; a 7-foot window from a bubble chamber that helped track the paths of atomic particles; and a detector that aided BNL chemist Raymond Davis Jr. in his Nobel Prize-winning neutrino research. 

Recently, the lab was a part of the ongoing effort to study and contain COVID-19. The exhibit will include a model of the virus, with the familiar spiky shape that’s become commonplace since the pandemic began.

“Scientists at the lab’s National Synchrotron Light Source II worked on imaging the virus and the proteins … that allowed it to attach to human cells. At the same time, BNL computer scientists began developing algorithms to evaluate existing chemicals and drugs that could potentially prevent infection. One past experiment by [BNL biophysicist] William Studier, the T7 expression system, ended up being critical to the rapid development of two of the vaccines,” Green said.

Both the Long Island Museum and BNL staff hope that visitors to the exhibit come away with a deeper interest in science and an appreciation for the lab’s work.

“There are 17 national laboratories scattered throughout the United States, and Long Islanders can be proud to have one in their backyard. Long Island children have been inspired to pursue careers in science as a result of attending educational programs at the lab during public visitor days dating back to the 1950s. And the lab is invested in addressing our real-world problems, whether the dangers posed by DDT on Long Island in the 1960s or COVID now. This summer BNL should be resuming their “Summer Sundays” visitor program, and I encourage everyone to visit the lab, walk around, talk to staff, and get a glimpse of our scientific present and future,” Olly said.

Atoms to Cosmos: The Story of Brookhaven National Lab is on view now through Oct. 16 in the Long Island Museum’s History Museum and Visitor Center’s Main Gallery, 1200 Rt. 25A, Stony Brook. Regular museum hours are Thursday through Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. Masks are required at this time, though health and safety guidelines are subject to change Admission is $10 for adults, $7 for seniors, and $5 for students 6 to 17 and college students with I.D. Children under six are admitted for free. Tickets are available at the door; pre-registration is not required. For more information visit longislandmuseum.org or call 631-751-0066. 

Learn more about Brookhaven National Lab at www.BNL.gov.

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Mehdi Damaghi. Photo from Stony Brook Hospital

By Daniel Dunaief

Do the birds on the Galapagos Islands, with their unique coloration, differently shaped beaks and specific nesting places, have anything to do with the cancer cells that alter the course of human lives?

For Mehdi Damaghi, Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, the answer is a resounding, “Yes.”

Damaghi uses the same principles of evolutionary biology to understand how cancer, which resides within human genes, works to adapt, as it tries to win the battle to survive.

“What we try to understand is the Darwinian principals of cancer,” said Damaghi. Cancer “adapts and reprograms themselves” to their environment to survive.

Damaghi, who arrived at Stony Brook four months ago from Moffitt Cancer Center, plans to address numerous questions related to cancer. He recently received a $4 million grant from the Physical Science in Oncology program (PSON) through the National Institutes of Health/ National Cancer Institute. Working with cancer biologists, clinicians, and computational scientists, he plans to define and understand cancer’s fitness.

“We are trying to study the core evolution of cancer cells and the normal stroma around them,” said Damaghi. “We are looking at the evolution of the tumor and some of the host cells.”

Cancer biologists are trying to build mathematical and theoretical models to explore the playbook cancer uses when confronted with threats, either in the form of a body’s natural defenses against it or from therapies against which it can, and often does, develop resistance.

Treating cancer could involve using adaptive therapy, which could enable people to control and live with cancer longer, Damaghi suggested.

In studying cancer’s phenotype, or the way the disease is expressed and survives, he hopes to understand factors in the microenvironment. Many cancers, he reasons, become more problematic as people age. Indeed, centuries ago, cancer wasn’t as prevalent as it is today in part because life expectancy was shorter.

Damaghi also has an evolutionary model to explore metastasis, in which cancer spreads from one organ or system to other parts of the body. He is looking at the earliest stages of breast cancer, to see what factors some of these cancers need or take from the environment that enables them not only to develop into breast cancer, but also to spread to other systems.

Through the microenvironment, he is looking for biomarkers that might signal a potential tumor development and metastasis long before a person shows signs of an aggressive form of the disease.

“We look at the tumor as a part of a whole ecosystem that can have different niches and habitats,” he said. “Some can be hypoxic and oxidative, and others can be like a desert on Earth, where not much grows and then cancer evolves.”

Damaghi challenges cells in a culture or organoids, which are miniature, three-dimensional live models of human cells, with different microenvironmental conditions to see how they respond. He exposes them to hormones, immune cells, and hypoxic conditions.

“We try to understand what is the adaptation mechanism of cancer to this new microenvironment and how can we push them back to the normal phenotype,” he said.

Like other scientists, Damaghi has demonstrated that many of these cancer cells use sugar. Removing sugar caused some of the cancer to die.

Increasing the survival for patients could involve knowing what kinds of micro-environments cancer uses and in what order. Deprived of sugars, some cancers might turn to amino acids, dairy or other sources of food and energy.

Damaghi thinks researchers and, eventually, doctors, will have to approach cancer as a system, which might have a patient-specific fingerprint that can indicate the resources the disease is using and the progression through its various diseased stages.

Choosing Stony Brook

Damaghi appreciates the depth of talent in cancer sciences at Stony Brook University. He cited the work of Laufer Center Director Ken Dill and Cancer Center Director Yusuf Hannun. He also suggested that the Pathology Department, headed by Ken Shroyer, was “very strong.”

For their part, leaders at Stony Brook were pleased to welcome, and collaborate with, Damaghi. Hannun suggested Stony Brook recruited Damaghi because his research “bridges what we do in breast cancer and informatics.”

Shroyer, meanwhile, has already started collaborating with Damaghi and wrote that his new colleague’s focus on breast cancer “overlaps with my focus on pancreatic cancer.”

To conduct his research, Damaghi plans to look at cells in combination by using digital pathology, which can help reveal tumor ecosystems and niches.

He also appreciated the work of Joel Saltz, the Founding Chair in the Department of Biomedical Informatics. “In the fight against cancer, we all need to unite against this nasty disease,” Damaghi said. “From looking at it at different angles, we can understand it first and then design a plan to defeat it.”

Originally from Tehran, Iran, Damaghi is the oldest of five brothers. He said his parents encouraged them to explore their curiosity.

Damaghi, whose wife Narges and two daughters Elissa and Emilia are still in Tampa and hope to join him before long, has hit the ground running at Stony Brook, where he has hired three postdoctoral researchers, a lab manager, four PhD students, two master’s candidates, and three undergraduates.

Damaghi is inspired to conduct cancer research in part because of losses in his family. Two grandparents died from cancer, his aunt has breast cancer, and his cousin, who had cancer when he was 16, fought through the disease and is a survivor for 20 years.

Damaghi bicycles and plays sports including soccer. He also enjoys cooking and said his guests appreciate his Persian kebobs.

As for his arrival in Stony Brook, he said it was “the best option for me. It’s a great package and has everything I need.”

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Above, from left, CSHL Associate Professor Steven Shea, Yunyao Xie, a former postdoctoral researcher in Shea’s lab, and Roman Dvorkin at work. Photo from CSHL

By Daniel Dunaief

The black box has a blue spot.

Often considered so mysterious that it has been called “the black box,” the brain has a small cluster of cells called the locus coeruleus (LC), or blue spot because it appears blue.

The LC is the predominant source of the neurotransmitter noradrenaline, which plays numerous roles, including triggering the “fight or flight” response, sleep/wake regulation and memory.

Recently, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Associate Professor Stephen Shea and his post doctoral researcher Roman Dvorkin demonstrated that the LC was involved in normal maternal social behavior. In the publication Journal of Neuroscience, they demonstrated that surrogate mothers had a spike in this neurotransmitter just at the time when they retrieved young pups that had rolled out of the nest.

“Most of the research on noradrenaline and the LC has been involved in non-social behavior,” said Shea. Researchers have recorded it extensively during “cognitive tasks and memory formation.”

The evidence for its involvement in social behaviors has been more indirect. With the exception of a study 35 years ago that made a few recordings in cats, the current research is the “first time anyone has recorded” the LC during a more normal social behavior, Shea said.

Research on this blue spot could prove valuable in connection with understanding and treating a wide range of diseases and disorders. Noradrenaline (NA) is “one of the systems that is disturbed in anxiety and depression,” Dvorkin said. It also may be involved in other diseases, like autism. Scientists have conducted research on the LC and ADHD, Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease, Dvorkin explained.

Some studies have also linked Rett syndrome, for example, which is a rare inherited genetic disorder that affects mostly girls and can alter the ability to speak, walk and eat, to lower levels of noradrenaline.

“There’s evidence that the LC has pathology in Mecp2 mice,” said Shea, referring to a gene traced to Rett. “We are working on that directly.”

Researchers believe studying the structure of the LC could lead to diagnostics and therapeutics for some of these diseases. Dvorkin suggested that this kind of research is “important to see how it works under normal, awake conditions.”

Monitoring the release of this neurotransmitter during a typical social behavior among female mice provides a context-connected understanding of its potential role.

“When people are studying this, they often use investigator-contrived tasks,” Shea said. “This is the system that preexisted for mice to use for other purposes.”

Shea has done earlier work with the LC, particularly as the sense of smell is so prominent in social interactions for mice. He demonstrated that anesthetized mice exposed to the scent of an unfamiliar mouse react as if they have a familiarity with the mouse. 

She believes the LC initiates sensory plasticity or sensory learning. NA can affect the sensory responses in parts of the brain that carry information, creating a stored memory. While his extensive work offers some clues about the role of the LC in mice, all vertebrates have the LC in their brain stems, including humans.

Shea said other research has demonstrated the involvement of the LC in cognitive tasks and memory formation, including during periods of sleep and wakefulness.

Blocking the release of noradrenaline is challenging in part because it is compact and the cells in the brain interact with so many of their neighbors, which makes turning on or off a specific signal from one region especially challenging.

At the University of Washington, Richard D. Palmiter and S.A. Thomas published a visible and definitive paper in 1997 in the journal Cell that brought the LC to other researcher’s attention.

These researchers created complete knockout mice, where they found that rodents lacking noradrenaline were “really bad mothers,” according to Shea.

In their research, Dvorkin and Shea used optogenetics and chemogenetics to inactivate the LC and the release of noradrenaline.

Future experiments

Below, a mouse retrieving a pup that has rolled out of its nest. Photo by Roman Dvorkin

The next step in this research could involve understanding the relative importance of the signal from the LC and noradrenaline.

In typical life settings, mice and other vertebrates confront competing signals, in which a pup rolls out of the nest at the same time that one of their many predators, like a hawk or other bird is circling overhead.

“That could be a next step” in this research, said Dvorkin.

Dvorkin believes it is possible to increase or decrease the threat level for mice gradually, in part because mice learn quickly when the threat is not real or what to avoid if the threat is too risky.

Shea is also looking more closely at courtship behavior.

The LC could be involved in sexual selection and in dominance hierarchies, enhancing the aggressive behavior of alpha males towards less dominant males. 

“We see big signals associated with events in courtship, including when the female and male begin to mate,” said Shea.

A resident of East Northport, Dvorkin lives with his wife Paolina and their nine year-old son Adam, who is in third grade at Pulaski Road School.

Originally from Afula in northern Israel, Dvorkin has been working in Shea’s lab for over five years. Outside the lab, he enjoys spending time with his family, taking pictures, and swimming at the JCC.

Dvorkin has enjoyed his work at CSHL, which he described as a “great experience in a beautiful place,” where he can appreciate the quiet and where he has received considerable support.

In the future, he’d like to apply his expertise in working on neuronal cell cultures and behaving animals to address translative questions, such as neurodegeneration.

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Pixabay photo

By Elof Axel Carlson

Elof Axel Carlson

In 1997 I sent Leah Dunaief several essays that I called Life Lines and I asked her if she thought these might be of interest to the readers of her new newspaper, the Village Times.  

About a month later she replied and said she retrieved my packet from her pile of correspondence and liked my essays and thus began a 25 year association and more than 400 columns of Life Lines as her newspaper chain grew in number across the North Shore of Long Island.  

My aim was to inform my readers of the importance of science in our lives. I am a professor, now retired, who taught in Canada (Queen’s University), UCLA, and Stony Brook University as well as holding visiting professorships over the years in San Diego State University, the University of Utah, the University of Minnesota, and Tugaloo College  in Mississippi.

I have also taught twice on Semester at Sea a floating campus that sales eastward or westward around the world for a semester with 500 students. I have taught also in programs for a federal program to raise science literacy in former USSR republics, including Samara —  on the Volga River, and Tbilisi in former Soviet Georgia. I have mentored 6 students through their PhDs in my laboratories and have published 15 books on genetics, the history of genetics, the eugenics controversy, and science and society conflicts. I love to teach and have taught thousands of students at UCLA and Stony Brook University in a course titled Biology 101-102 Biology – A Humanities Approach.

I argued that a knowledge of science and its history and its application to society is important in showing how science has greatly reduced infant mortality, greatly increased life expectancy, eliminated most communicable disease, and restored health to millions of people through its applications to our food industries, pharmaceutical industries, and public health programs.  

It gives us greater control over our lives and allows a person like me to live more than 90 years. I will be celebrating my 91st birthday in July and I am grateful that I have lived an examined life, avoided alcohol and other harmful agents in my life and have insights into how life works that are worth sharing.  

I read widely, love the arts and humanities, consider science to be part of the liberal arts education we should extend past K-12 to college level programs that make us informed citizens in a democracy and parents able to make informed decisions about their children’s well-being rather than relying on political ideologies or religious traditions first introduced two or three thousand years ago as guides for how to protect ourselves and our families.  

Science allowed me to understand how life works. I can follow it from atoms to molecules, macromolecules, cell organelles, cells, tissues, and organs. From there I can extend it to the population, the diversity of life on earth, and the importance of human stewardship of that life by informed ways using the earth’s bounty, protecting it from pollution, avoiding erosion, preventing desert formation, and preventing discharges of carbon dioxide from the fuels we use that lead to climate change that can flood our coastal cities and bring chaotic weather patterns around the world.  

I thank Leah Dunaief and her son Daniel for the many articles on science that inform North Shore readers of what is going on in our universities, research institute, and industries on Long Island. I thank you readers who have written to me, stopped me when I shopped in the local stores, or offered different points of view to which I would respond.  

I have lived an examined life, selected, as an Epicurean, from the best minds and writing of Western civilization. I am grateful for the gift of life to have lived this long. But now in my 90s I lack the energy I had ten years ago and have decided to use the time remaining in my life to work on my unpublished manuscripts and get them published or place them to print-on-demand programs on the internet. I much appreciate you, my reader, for the pleasure of having this opportunity,

Elof Axel Carlson

[email protected]

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