Starting Thursday, Aug. 19, Stony Brook University students can come Down Port to shop, eat and enjoy what the village has to offer.
Created in 2019 as a partnership between the Port Jefferson Parking and Mobility Department, the university’s office of Community Relations and the Port Jefferson Business Improvement District, the program had to stop in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Kevin Wood, the village’s parking and mobility administrator.
Now, nearly a year and a half later, students can take advantage of it again.
“When Stony Brook came back from remote learning, it signaled to me that we should bring the bus back,” Wood said. “The university is looking at Port Jefferson as its downtown, so the bus makes it a direct link there now.”
Photo from Kevin Wood
The shuttle is free to students and runs four days a week — Thursdays through Sundays. It starts at the university’s SAC circle and then moves to the Hilton Garden Inn Hotel, SBU’s Chapin Apartments, Stop and Shop East Setauket, Arden Place in the village and ends at the LIRR before heading back to the campus.
“Stony Brook University is proud to partner with Port Jefferson and the Business Improvement District to provide the student shuttle service for shopping, dining and entertainment in the village,” said SBU Community Relations Director Joan Dickinson.
Wood added that the shuttle is a 19-passenger vehicle and is ADA compliant.
“Anytime we can bring visitors who spend money to the village without having to park is a win,” he said.
Mayor Margot Garant said the village welcomes all SBU students, staff and residents.
“The shuttle is important to connect the Brook to Port Jeff Village, and to ensure the student body are welcome and have safe, easy access to our shops and restaurants,” she said. “We encourage them to sit back and enjoy the ride!”
The Port Jefferson Station/Terryville Chamber of Commerce finished off its Summer Concert Wednesdays Aug. 11 with a classic car show, performances by the School of Rock and a BMX stunt show in the Port Jefferson/Terryville train car park.
Dozens of families attended to enjoy the rock concert put on by Port Jefferson’s School of Rock singing classics from Queen and other iconic rock bands.
“It’s been so rewarding to see this concert series grow and evolve over the years,” said Suffolk County Legislator Kara Hahn (D-Setauket), one of the sponsors. “The turnout this year was some of the best I’ve seen with a mix of young families, retirees, veterans and music lovers coming together to enjoy a free night out in the community.”
The BMX bike show, presented by Dialed Action from New Jersey, featured two skilled BMX bikers who amazed the crowd with their daring stunts, from flipping upside down to imitating Superman in the sky.
“The BMX stunts are a yearly favorite and always bring out a crowd,” Hahn said.
Despite the COVID-19 Delta variant becoming a concern as cases spike up again, families continued to attend the three-part Summer Concert Wednesdays while keeping in mind the need to socially distance.
For this year, the series also hosted a Hawaiian-themed night followed by a tribute to Long Island’s frontline workers. The other show was a ’60s night with Just Sixties, including a tribute to veterans.
The events were sponsored by Brookhaven Town Councilman Jonathan Kornreich (D-Stony Brook) and the chamber of commerce with Hahn.
“We ended the series last night on a high note, with music from the School of Rock Port Jefferson, a classic car show, BMX stunts and some free ice cream on a hot summer night,” she said.
On Saturday, Aug. 14 cars from the last century geared up to tackle the ascent on East Broadway in Port Jefferson village to commemorate the 1910 hill climb.
Sponsored by the Port Jefferson Harbor Education & Arts Conservancy, in partnership with the village, the event allows vintage car enthusiasts to retrace the original hill climb course as spectators cheer them throughout this historic tribute.
According to the event chair, Bob Laravie, this was the seventh recreation of the climb – its original, as the name states, being in 1910.
“We’re celebrating right where the original cars ran,” he said. “We had every decade starting from 1909 up to one car from 1980.”
The conservancy decided to bring back the hill climb in 2010, with the plan to run again every five years. After a successful 2015 run, the pandemic halted the 2020 event.
So, the 2021 hill climb was highly anticipated for people who love old cars. While many drivers were local to Port Jefferson and its surrounding communities, others came from across Long Island — as far as Queens and Montauk. One couple brought their 1911 Hupmobile Model 20 roadster across the Sound on the ferry to participate.
Laravie said there were about 60 vehicles at the start of the climb, parked outside the Village Center.
“We’ve done this every five years since the 100th anniversary and we look forward to doing it again in four years,” said Lisa Perry, president of the conservancy.
Mayor Margot Garant said the event speaks about the village’s role in the automobile industry which many people are not fully aware of. She noted that after the building — which is now the Village Center — was no longer used for making boats, car engines were created inside its walls.
Some of the early 20th-century cars at the event very well could have had their engines made in Port Jefferson.
“It’s great to see the turnout today,” Garant said at the event. “And, more importantly, to celebrate the history of the village in another dimension.”
Photo courtesy of Rocky Point Sound Beach Chamber of Commerce
Photo courtesy of Rocky Point Sound Beach Chamber of Commerce
Photo courtesy of Rocky Point Sound Beach Chamber of Commerce
Photo courtesy of Rocky Point Sound Beach Chamber of Commerce
Photo courtesy of Rocky Point Sound Beach Chamber of Commerce
Photo courtesy of Rocky Point Sound Beach Chamber of Commerce
Photo courtesy of Rocky Point Sound Beach Chamber of Commerce
Photo courtesy of Rocky Point Sound Beach Chamber of Commerce
Photo courtesy of Rocky Point Sound Beach Chamber of Commerce
Photo courtesy of Rocky Point Sound Beach Chamber of Commerce
The Rocky Point Sound Beach Chamber of Commerce held a ribbon cutting ceremony for the grand opening of Long Island Lending a Helping Hand, Inc. at 341 Route 25A in Rocky Point on August 2.
Guests who attended included Assemblywoman Jodi Giglio, Councilwoman Jane Bonner, Chamber President Gary Pollakusky and the RPSB Chamber board, the Girl Scouts, volunteers, local media and residents.
Long Island Lending a Helping Hand is a food pantry and resource center that helps provide assistance for families in need. They offer families and individuals school supplies, food, diapers, formula, clothing, furniture as well as other resources and support around the holidays.
Founder, Dawn Lang, said “In 2014, I realized that there was a real need in my local community. Many people “in need” have jobs, sometimes more than one, and are still struggling to get by sometimes having to make a difficult decision of whether to pay a bill or buy food / diapers. Some have family and friends to lean on but many others do not. That’s why I created…Long Island Lending a Helping Hand…we do our best to fill in the gap and help people who are in need.”
“We are so appreciative of founder Dawn Lang and Donna McCauley’s commitment to our community. It is with great pride that the chamber formally welcomes this brick & mortar Food Pantry and Resource Center to the community,” added Gary Pollakusky.
Operating hours are Sunday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m, Wednesday and Thursday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., closed Monday and Tuesday. For more information regarding Long Island Lending a Helping Hand, please visit www.lilahh.com.
In order to ensure sufficient electrical supply at a time of sustained extreme heat and humidity and the successive failures of third-party owned supply systems, PSEG Long Island is following established procedures to address resource capacity concerns. Based on current system conditions, PSEGLong Island is now urging all customers on Long Island and in the Rockaways to reduce electric use as much as possible during the peak hours of 3 and 7 p.m. today.
In addition to the typical demand challenges faced during high heat, PSEG Long Island has been working with the third-party owners of two interconnections that provide electricity to the service area and currently require repairs.
While PSEG Long Island has taken emergency measures to bring additional capacity online and will continue to implement available options in accordance with established contingency plans, today’s peak demand is at risk of exceeding the available energy supply. Reductions in customer energy use are also required to reduce demand.
PSEG Long Island urges customers to:
Eliminate ALL nonessential electric use.
Run air conditioners only if needed for health reasons.
Use fans instead of air conditioners when possible.
If air conditioning is needed, set home thermostats or air conditioner units to 78 degrees.
Only run nonessential home appliances such as washing machines, dishwashers and pool pumps in the morning or late evening to avoid the peak demand hours of 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Do not cool an empty house. Set your thermostat higher when you are away, or use a smart thermostat to control the temperature in your home. Customers can receive an incentive on qualifying thermostats for enrolling in PSEG Long Island’s Smart Savers Thermostat program, which can be used to control usage during peak summer days. Visit https://www.psegliny.com/smartsavers for more details.
Close blinds and draperies facing the sun to keep out the sun’s heat.
Set your ceiling fan to spin quickly, counterclockwise to push air downward toward the floor
Businesses should reduce lighting use to a minimum
Commercial buildings should set air conditioners to maximum efficiency and raise the thermostat setting
PSEG Long Island will also ask its Major Accounts customers, the largest in the service area, to voluntarily curtail their electric consumption.
Customers participating in the Direct Load Control – Smart Savers Thermostat Program will have their temperature increased by 4 degrees on home central air conditioning units via the internet between the hours of 3 and 7 p.m. today. Approximately 31,000 PSEG Long Island customers island-wide participate in Smart Savers. Commercial customers participating in Demand Response programs will receive financial incentives for committing to reduce their electric use during peak periods. Activating these programs can save about 45 MWs of electrical demand.
Long Island and the Rockaways may also experience outages due to excessive heat and the potential loss of supply. PSEG Long Island has mobilized extra repair crews, who are working 16-hour shifts around the clock to restore outages safely and as quickly as possible. Customers who experience an outage should call 1-800-490-0075.
State, city, and county emergency management authorities, and local elected officials have been notified by PSEG Long Island.
The safety of PSEG Long Island’s customers and employees is the company’s top priority.
PSEG Long Island wants to make sure customers who rely on electric life support equipment are aware of this event so that they can make arrangements in case they do lose power. PSEG Long Island urges customers to be prepared and to stay safe during this event. In the event of a medical emergency please call 911.
During extreme heat conditions, PSEG Long Island encourages all customers to:
Seek out air-conditioned spaces (if safe) if their homes become too warm.
Stay hydrated by drinking plenty of water. Avoid drinks with caffeine or alcohol.
Avoid wearing dark colors because they absorb the sun’s rays.
Never leave children or pets alone in enclosed vehicles.
Avoid strenuous exercise during the hottest part of the day, which is between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.
For years, Dee Earle Browning of Wading River had trouble sleeping. She tried changing mattresses, medications and used over-the-counter products to get a good night’s rest.
But she hated doing that and knew that taking NyQuil wasn’t the best option for her body. That’s when she delved deep into the world of CBD.
Dee Earle Browning inside her store. Photo by Julianne Mosher
It wasn’t her first time using cannabidiol — an oil that derives from the hemp plant. Browning said for years, she used CBD on her skin — which kept her face glowing and clear. After having back surgery and throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, she began researching the oil for medicinal and pain-relieving purposes. She and her husband, Lee Browning Jr., wanted to try more holistic approaches to physical, mental and emotional health. She fell in love.
She said that our bodies accept the cannabinoids in CBD products, and in her sleeping situation, the oil has a natural sleep aid that makes her relax at night.
“I learned that CBD is best anywhere on you because we have an endocannabinoid system, we have receptors in our body specifically built for cannabinoids,” she said. “So, I found that once I started doing tinctures, and the topical along with that, there was a lot of relief.”
Browning, who worked in the hospitality industry for two decades with chains like Hilton, Marriott and Holiday Inn, said that during the pandemic, she decided to make a career change that she knew could help other people.
“I always looked at hospitality as an industry of people taking care of people,” she said, “And then COVID happened and our industry got rocked.”
Browning and her husband began researching Your CBD Store, an international franchise that sells products made by SunMed. The company prides itself on using a CO2 extraction process, which eliminates the need for chemical solvents and produces a high-quality, full-spectrum CBD. For their zero-THC broad-spectrum products, the CBD is processed again to remove all traces of THC. Your CBD Store is the retailer that distributes these products.
“I found that those products were made in the USA — from seed soil, soil to oil — it’s all done here,” Browning said.
She added that the Your CBD Store franchise has third-party testing for its products.
Photo by Julianne Mosher
“There were so many positives about this company, and I was like, ‘this is what I want to do,’” she said. “I already have a background of being in the industry of taking care of people, but this also feeds my passion for health and wellness.”
Based in Florida, the chain has over 600 affiliates in the U.S. and U.K. There was not one Your CBD Store in Suffolk County. The closest location is currently in Long Beach, along with 22 across the Long Island Sound in Connecticut.
“They’re beautiful stores, and they’re all about educating people about CBD, which was so important to dispel the myths out there,” she added. “I was using it myself and finding results, and the more I read about it, I knew I wanted to be part of the community that dispels some myths and shows that there are some alternative options for health and wellness.”
Browning’s job, not only as the owner of the shop, is to educate each and every customer that walks through her doors. She said people have come in with all different types of ailments — pain, insomnia, anxiety and depression. Some parents use the products to help their children with ADHD or autism. SunMed even has a pet line to help out stressed cats and dogs.
She takes the time to talk to each person and figure out what the best regimen would be.
“You have receptors in your body specifically for cannabinoids, it’s just figuring out you know how to best produce those cannabinoids,” she said. “It’s also trying out and figuring out what your body actually needs … And making sure you’re taking it in a way that your body is going to absorb it, and it’s going to stay in your system longer.”
Founded by owner Rachel Quinn, Browning was intrigued by the company because it was owned by a woman who sought out pain relief herself.
“I wanted to bring this to the masses, and I really want people to see how much it has helped me,” she said. “It was great because it was founded by a woman in pain and then her desire to share it with everyone. That for me, was so empowering being a woman and a woman of color to have the opportunity to follow in her footsteps and help other people.”
The Port Jefferson Station location opened up on July 12, with an official ribbon cutting hosted by the Port Jefferson Station/Terryville Chamber of Commerce on July 23. The store is located at 590 Patchogue Road (Route 112) across from Moloney Funeral Home in what was once the former location of a Jack in the Box restaurant.
Browning said that her husband bought the property a few years ago, and nothing had moved into the first-floor storefront. A developer, he helped give the space a facelift, painting and redoing it to give it a beachy spa vibe.
“We want a space that really is welcoming, inviting and makes people feel comfortable to share the challenges that they’re working through,” she said.
Compared to other CBD retailers, Your CBD Store says it all — it’s there for you.
Photo by Julianne Mosher
“Your CBD Store is a company that is all about community. It is all about education. It is all about high-quality products. It is all about health and wellness,” she said. “We focus on getting to know our consumers as they come in, so that we can help them make the right choice for them … That’s important.”
Browning said their goal is to educate people and see if CBD can help change their lives the way it did for Browning and her family.
“If you’ve never had any CBD products, here’s an opportunity to come in and try something,” she said. “Whether it’s a topical for pain, water soluble, a tincture or gummy, all of these are set up every day, so that people can at least try it and see if it gives you some of the relief that you’re looking for.”
You can check out the Port Jefferson Station store by following their Facebook and Instagram pages.
More than 140 students filled their summer mornings with athletics, crafts, friends and games at the Shoreham-Wading River Central School District’s 2021 Summer Round-Out Program, which has been offering summer activities to students for close to four decades.
The program, grouped by age and held at Miller Avenue School, enabled students to participate in creative art projects, outdoor sports and themed activities, with high school and college students working as their counselors. Directors Dylan Busch and Bob Szymanski made certain the diverse opportunities for the students were geared to further develop social, recreational and educational skills in a safe and fun environment.
Many of the counselors were former campers including recent graduates Meghan Klotz and Emma Longboat, who both shared that they enjoy witnessing the new friendships formed among the younger students.
Stony Brook University's played in the summer Olympics with Team Puerto Rico's women's basketball team. Photo from India Pagan
Stony Brook University’s India Pagan, competing in the Olympics for Puerto Rico, took several shots against China in the preliminary round of the basketball tournament, but none of them went in.
India Pagan at the summer Olympics opening ceremony. Photo from India Pagan
Against Belgium, the 6-foot-1-inch forward finally put the ball through the hoop, something she’d done so frequently at Stony Brook that she scored over 1,000 points as a Seawolf.
“I remember the first one I made” at the Olympics, said Pagan. “I didn’t have to stress anymore. I couldn’t stop smiling.”
Pagan, who was on Puerto Rico’s first women’s Olympic basketball team, scored two baskets and sank two free throws, scoring six points in that game.
Despite the challenges and restrictions created by the Delta variant of COVID-19 and the three losses the Puerto Rican team had in games against China, Belgium and Australia, Pagan had plenty of reasons to smile as she enjoyed everything from the opening ceremonies to taking selfies with some of the best athletes in the world to some limited sightseeing.
After a lengthy journey to the other side of the world, Pagan cheered her way through an opening ceremony full of familiar pageantry, but devoid of its customary shouting spectators.
“It was surreal to me,” Pagan said. “I watched this on TV a couple of years ago. Walking with the flag, with the whole delegation of Puerto Rico, seeing the stage, the torch, the dances, the acts of music, everything, it was just so beautiful.”
Pagan said she cried three or four times during the ceremonies.
Behind the scenes, Pagan said the time spent waiting for the ceremonies to begin and the hours on their feet amid the excitement took their toll.
“By the end of the night, all of our backs hurt, our feet hurt,” she laughed. “Thankfully, we didn’t have practice the next day, so we had a little time to recover.”
Around the games, Pagan soaked in the atmosphere and reveled in the moment on one of the world’s largest, albeit emptiest, athletic stages.
One of the big stories to come out of the Olympics involved American gymnast Simone Biles, who pulled out of most of the competition amid concerns about her mental health and her ability to get her bearings while flying and twisting through the air.
“We understood the mental health aspects” of Biles’s decision, Pagan said. “She’s got to do what’s best for her. We did feel for her.”
Pagan said the Puerto Rican basketball team met with their coach, who told them they could speak with a doctor or a psychologist if they needed support.
Pagan missed her family and friends but didn’t need those mental health services during her time in Tokyo.
Pagan was thrilled to run into several superstars in their sports, taking selfies with National Basketball Association star Jayson Tatum from the Boston Celtics, and with Spanish basketball sensations Marc Gasol, who currently plays for the Los Angeles Lakers and his brother Pau, who retired from the NBA in 2019 after an 18-year career. She also ran into Serbian tennis great Novak Djokovic.
“Seeing those people was cool for me,” Pagan said.
Pagan takes a photo with Spanish basketball sensation Pau Gasol. Photo from India Pagan
Everyone had to wear face shields in the dining hall which made conversations, even among teammates, challenging.
“It was tough to interact” while she was eating, Pagan said.
She did, however, have the opportunity to speak and play games with other masked athletes in a recreational area. Pagan and teammates Jada Stinson and Jacqueline Benitez visited with athletes from the South African soccer and track teams, and several teams from Ireland, Italy and Iran while playing table tennis, pool and darts.
During her stay in Tokyo, Pagan recalled the lives of two people she and her family recently lost. She wrote the names of Tatiana Mayas, one of her closest childhood friends, and Gloria Sotomayor, a friend of her mother’s, on a white ribbon and pinned them on a memorial tree.
While the athletes couldn’t explore Tokyo on their own or travel much outside the Olympic village, they took a bus tour to Mt. Fuji, which, at 12,380 feet, is the tallest mountain in Japan.
“If we got off the bus and the [International Olympic Committee] found out, they would have kicked us out of the Olympics,” Pagan said.
Pagan remained appreciative of an opportunity she didn’t take for granted, especially since she has no guarantee that she or the Puerto Rican team will return for the 2024 Olympics in Paris.
“I was ready for anything and I was grateful for anything,” Pagan said.
In addition to returning with a collection of memories, photos and selfies, Pagan brought back numerous souvenirs for herself and her family.
She purchased a letterman jacket that she said she “had to have,” because it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
She also purchased shoes, shirts, key chains, umbrellas, pins and notebooks.
“It was like Christmas,” she laughed. The gifts were worth the money, as her family’s faces “lit up” when she produced their presents.
During her Olympics, she appreciated the outpouring of support for her and for the team.
“My phone has never blown up as much as it did when I was at the Olympics,” said Pagan, who is returning to Stony Brook to earn her master’s this fall and to use a fifth year of eligibility the National Collegiate Athletic Association granted to athletes amid the pandemic.
She left North America with 6,000 Instagram followers and returned with 11,000.
One of the first things she did when she returned, after sharing presents, crying and catching up with family, was to get behind the wheel.
“I couldn’t wait to drive my car and be free and go wherever I wanted to, instead of being restrained and told to stay in one place or being locked up in a room,” Pagan said.
She hopes the team will return to the next Olympics in Paris in 2024.
“Hopefully, we’ll be back,” she said. “This experience will definitely help us grow as a program. We’re on our way up.”
As for what’s next, she plans to rest and recover from the exhausting and exhilarating trip and to add the Olympic rings tattoo to her leg.
Pagan appreciates the opportunity to play a game she loves at the Olympic level.
From left, postdoctoral researcher Yunjun Zhao and Brookhaven Lab biochemist Chang-Jun Liu in a greenhouse with poplar trees. Photo from BNL
By Daniel Dunaief
Plants not only make our food, produce the oxygen we breathe, and provide key ingredients in medicines, but they could also contribute chemicals that might otherwise require fossil fuels to produce.
Scientists have known since 1955 that poplar trees produce small amounts of a product called p-hydroxybenzoic acid that they attach to the lignin in their cell walls. What they didn’t know, however, was how they were attached.
After years of cloning genes and, more recently, using the gene editing tool CRISPR, Chang-Jun Liu, a plant biochemist at Brookhaven National Laboratory, and collaborators in Japan discovered the gene that codes for an enzyme that catalyzes the attachment of pBA to the lignin.
Up to now, companies have produced pBA by using fossil fuels as raw materials and for the energy required to generate enough heat and pressure for the catalytic reactions.
This discovery, which Liu published in the journal Nature Plants, could provide a more eco-friendly way to produce a chemical involved in the manufacture of toothpaste, shampoos, commercial moisturizers, shaving gels, and spray tanning solutions, among other products.
The global market value of p-hydroxybenzoic acid was $59 million in 2020 and is expected to climb to $80 million in the next five years.
“We wanted to identify the enzyme that is responsible for attaching pBA into lignin and reconstitute this pathway and promote its storage in the cell wall,” Liu said. Ideally, he’d like to combine the pathways that produce the donor molecule containing pBA with their enzyme to promote pBA storage in cell walls.
Once Liu found the gene responsible for that enzyme, he did what scientists typically do to check on the importance of a genetic sequence: first, he knocked it out and second, he overexpressed it.
By knocking out the genetic sequence, he found that poplar trees stopped producing pBA. Overexpressing the gene, on the other hand, not only increased the amount of this chemical by about 48 percent, but also raised the strength of the lignin and, consequently, the durability of the cell wall.
Aside from the benefit of increasing the natural production of the chemical, changing the amount of pBA could have implications for the environment and industry. Less durable lignin, which has a lower amount of pBA, could be useful in producing pulp, paper and biofuel, making it easier to access the biomass of the wood.
More durable lignin could be useful in the timber industry, while also enabling the plant to remove more carbon, mostly in the form of carbon dioxide, from the air.
“If we can engineer the plant to produce more of this carbon-dense compound, … particularly in the root, we can fix more carbon into the underground fraction, which will absorb more carbon from the air to promote carbon sequestration,” Liu said.
A long process
The work that led to identifying the gene that codes for the enzyme that attaches pBA to lignin took about 15 years.
Liu knew this enzyme worked to attach pBA, among other chemicals, in a test tube, but the journey to prove its importance in the poplar trees took considerable work.
Liu cloned 20 genes that are expressed in woody tissues and encoded enzymes called acyltransferases. While expressing these enzymes, he mixed them with an isotope-labeled carbon, which allowed him to check to see whether the enzyme contributed to the process of attaching pBA to lignin.
He tried using RNA interference to knock down the targeted gene, but that didn’t work.
The breakthrough that established the importance of this gene came when Liu used CRISPR.
Next steps
Scientists aren’t sure of the specific steps or even why plants produce pBA in the first place.
Plants produce pBA through the shikimate pathway, but the exact routes leading to pBA formation are still undiscovered.
As for why plants produce pBA, one hypothesis is that the plant uses a higher amount as a defense mechanism, making its lignin harder to remove for an insect. It could also provide resistance to mechanical stress caused by wind or snow.
“We do not have solid evidence to prove that,” he said, but “we need to explore that further.”
Liu also hopes to take a synthetic biology approach to build a more effective pathway by using the enzyme to make the plant a partner in producing pBA and in capturing and storing organic carbon.
The biochemist hopes to find a commercial partner who might be interested in exploring the development of a process that occurs naturally in poplar trees.
The environmental impact of increasing pBA in plants on the ecology of the areas in which these poplar trees might grow is unclear.
“We do not know at this moment whether this will benefit or be harmful to the soil microbial community,” he said. “In some cases, it can help the plant absorb more nutrients. It potentially can also kill other microbial life.”
For the plant, it’s unclear what the effect of higher pBA might be. The enzyme Liu identified moves pBA from inside the cell to the cell where, which would likely mitigate any toxicity because that is dead material.
“We expect the increase of cell wall-bound pBA should promote the trees’ ability in withstanding environmental changes,” he explained.
Altering the cell’s metabolic processes by rebuilding a new pathway that produces high amounts of pBA could negatively affect a tree’s normal growth. Liu would need to conduct more experiments to explore this possible effect.
A resident of Rocky Point, Liu lives with his wife Yang Chen, who is a special education teacher assistant at Rocky Point Middle School. Their son Allen is in his third year at Purdue University, while Bryant is in his second year at the University of Southern California. The family enjoys skiing and hiking trips.
The work to confirm the link between the gene and the production of pBA involved numerous post doctoral researchers.
Liu appreciates the effort of his research team over the years. “I’m very happy that we were finally able to resolve this issue,” he said.
Things aren’t back to normal yet, and unfortunately for a few good weeks, we got a taste of what freedom from the pandemic was like.
People began getting vaccinated, families were reunited, and parties were officially free of restrictions.
The people that got vaccinated knew they could still be carriers, but a little cold is better than being on a ventilator, right?
Businesses were thriving at the start of the summer — after more than a year of having their doors shut and no revenue coming in.
But things turned pretty quickly, and we’re disappointed now.
The fact that people threw their masks away when Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) lifted the state restrictions was not the brightest move — we should have kept the restrictions just a tad bit longer because now we have the Delta variant and it’s not looking too good.
Since people (vaccinated or not) have had the chance to breathe again, party again and feel 90% normal again, they don’t want to bring back the masks.
We understand that. They’re uncomfortable and for us ladies, it takes our makeup off rather quick.
But we’re keeping them on (again) to keep other people safe.
Remember in the beginning of the pandemic when everyone was all in this together? We thanked first responders and believed the science. What happened? Why is this, all of a sudden, a hoax?
Some people cannot get vaccinated right now, and that’s okay. But there are other people who are choosing not to and are not being honest about it. They’re either too lazy or too afraid.
With schools reopening in a few weeks, the debates are increasing as to whether or not children should wear masks in school. Considering those under 12 cannot get vaccinated yet, and many parents have chosen not to have their children get the shot, we feel it’s imperative that students be required to mask up. With the surge of the Delta variant and the possibility of another one, the virus could potentially spread quickly in classrooms and then in the surrounding communities.
New vaccines, new medications and new things are terrifying — but public health is more important, and we still need to be in this together.
COVID-19 is never going to leave, but we can alleviate it.
Be smart and do your part to keep your loved ones, neighbors and yourself healthy.
Prev
