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Daniel Dunaief

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Group of partisans including Abba Kovner - his Vilna Partisans Brigade
Abba Kovner with rifle, famed Partisan from the Vilna Ghetto and founder of the Ghetto Fighters House Museum in Israel
Jewish female couriers disguised as “Aryans” who engaged in espionage, conveying news between isolated ghettos
An excavated canister in which some of the “Oneg Shabbat” secret archival documentation by Warsaw Ghetto prisoners was hidden

By Daniel Dunaief

Paula S. Apsell wants to correct one of the more insidious myths about Jews during the Holocaust.

Director Paula S. Apsell

The award-winning filmmaker is showing the documentary Resistance – They Fought Back at the Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington on July 25, offering numerous examples of Jews who fought against the murderous Nazi regime.

The film from Apsell, who will be at the Cinema Arts Centre screening to speak with the audience, chronicles resistance in many forms, from getting married in secret, to having children, to holding concerts, to caring for the poor, to smuggling food and weapons into ghettos and, ultimately, to guerilla combat.

These stories of courage and a readiness to fight back when any form of resistance could mean severe punishment or death not just for the person rebelling but for many others paint a completely different picture than the one in which Jews surrendered meekly to their fate.

“There were seven rebellions in death camps, and six of them were led by Jews,” said Apsell, who won numerous awards as executive producer for PBS NOVA films. “They still mustered the courage to rebel knowing they would die in the rebellion” and almost all of them did.

The survival rate among Jews in general and those who the Germans found were rebelling, which includes many in their late teens and early 20’s who were fighting to protect and defend their families, was low.

While she was an executive producer at PBS for the Nova science series in 2016, Apsell traveled to Lithuania near Vilnius, where she produced a documentary for PBS about Jews who were brought to a site to burn the bodies of thousands of other Jews whom the Nazis had murdered.

At night with shackles on, they used spoons to dig a tunnel over the course of 76 days. When they escaped, they filed off their shackles and raced towards a forest, with 11 of them surviving through the rest of the war.

Building on this story, Apsell, who worked with Lone Wolf Media and co-directed the documentary with Kirk Wolfinger, started gathering information for the Resistance film in 2019 and completed editing the movie in September of 2023.

Apsell, who herself is conservative about what she shares with her eight and 11-year old grandchildren, suggested the documentary is appropriate for juniors in high school or older, unless they have had some level of education about the Holocaust.

Compelling lives

Amid the many stories of courage and sacrifice, Apsell felt a particular connection with Bela Hazan.

A courier who brought information, money and weapons to the ghettos, Hazan posed as a Polish Christian woman and traveled along dangerous roads surrounded by Nazis who would imprison, torture or kill her if they knew of her work.

After Hazan survived the dangers of the war, her son Yoel Yaari, who hadn’t heard of his mother’s wartime activities, found two notebooks containing details about her work.

Yaari, who is the Henri and Erna Leif Professor for Research in Neurodegenerative Diseases at the Hebrew University Faculty of Medicine in Jerusalem, has told people through articles and his book “Portrait of a Woman” about his mother’s “astounding courage and what she had done for the Jewish people,” said Apsell. “We can all learn about courage in adversity.”

Apsell suggested that scholars knew about the way Jews had resisted, but that lay audiences often say they thought Jews went to their death as sheep to the slaughter.

Other ways to watch the film

Apsell is in the final stages of putting together a broadcast deal, which she hopes will be ready in January to coincide with Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is on January 27.

She also plans to work with organizations that have relationships with schools and libraries so students can access the information.

These stories “ought to be a much more visible part of the history of the Holocaust,” she said.

“I had a mission to tell these stories,” Apsell said. “I felt like it was a personal commitment and a responsibility” to share these stories.

While Apsell appreciates and acknowledges that people who weren’t Jewish helped their Jewish friends, neighbors and even strangers, she felt like the focus on resistance has often been on outside help.

“In this film, my emphasis was on Jews rescuing other Jews,” she said.

The film includes interviews with five Jewish survivors who were among the resistance fighters. Resistance also uses considerable archival footage from organizations that had recorded interviews. The film’s narrators include actors Corey Stoll, Dianna Agron and Maggie Siff.

Dr. Jud Newborn, lecturer, author and curator at the Cinema Arts Centre, had an immediate reaction when he viewed the film.

“I was stunned,” said Newborn, who is an expert on Jewish anti-Nazi resistance and served as the founding historian of New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage. “No documentary covers the panoply of Jewish resistance in its many forms and in such a moving as well as revelatory manner.”

Newborn, who will host a discussion with Apsell right after the screening, added that he thought this was a “groundbreaking film.”

While Newborn describes all manner of Jewish resistance in his multimedia lecture programs, he learned new stories because the movie pulls together “the most cutting edge information,” he said. “The subject of Jewish resistance breaks stereotypes and is deeply inspiring and energizing and it’s also deeply moving because they had to overcome obstacles unlike any people under Nazi occupation or indirect rule.”

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The Cinema Arts Centre, 423 Park Ave., Huntington will screen Resistance – They Fought Back on Thursday, July 25 at 7:15 p.m. with filmmaker Paula S. Apsell in person followed by discussion with moderator Dr. Jud Newborn. Tickets are $18 per person in advance at  www.cinemaartscentre.org or at the box office.  For more information, please call 631-423-7610.

 

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Fawzia Mirza. Photo by Monica Schipper
A scene from 'The Queen of My Dreams'. Photo courtesy of Baby Doll Productions
A scene from 'The Queen of My Dreams'. Photo courtesy of Baby Daal Productions

TBR News Media reporter Daniel Dunief recently interviewed Fawzia Mirza, Director and writer of the film “The Queen of My Dreams.” Set across two continents and spanning three decades, the movie, which will be screened at the Stony Brook Film Festival on July 19 at 7 p.m., highlights the similarities and tensions between a Pakistani Muslim mother and daughter during their formative years.

Listen to the episode now.

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Simon Birrer Photo by Andrea Hoffmann

By Daniel Dunaief

When he was young, Simon Birrer asked his parents for a telescope because he wanted to look at objects on mountains and hills.

Simon Birrer.  Photo Studio, Mall of Switzerland

While he was passionate about science and good at math, Birrer didn’t know at the time he’d set his sights much further away than nearby hills or mountains in his professional career.

An Assistant Professor in the department of Astronomy and Physics at Stony Brook University, Birrer uses telescopes that generate data from much further away than nearby hills as he studies the way light from distant galaxies bends through a process called gravitational lensing. He also works to refine a measure of the expansion of the universe.

“All matter (including stars in galaxies) are causing the bending of light,” Birrer explained in an email. “From our images, we can infer that a significant fraction of the lensing has to come from dark (or more accurately: transparent) matter.”

Dark matter describes how a substance of matter that does not interact with any known matter component through a collision or pressure or absorption of light is transparent.

While they can’t see this matter through various types of telescopes, cosmologists like Birrer know it’s there because when it gets massive enough, it creates what Albert Einstein predicted in his theory of relativity, altering spacetime. Dark matter is effectively interacting with visible matter only gravitationally.

Every massive object causes a gravitational effect, Birrer suggested.

When a single concentration of matter occurs, the light of a distant galaxy can produce numerous images of the same object.

Scientists take several approaches to delens the data. They rely on computers to perform ray-tracing simulations to compare predictions with the astronomical images.

The degree of lensing is proportional to the mass of total matter.

Birrer uses statistics and helps draw conclusions about the fundamental nature of the dark matter that alters the trajectory of light as it travels towards Earth.

He conducts simulations and compares a range of data collected from NASA Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope.

Hubble constant

Beyond gravitational lensing, Birrer also studies and refines the Hubble constant, which describes the expansion rate of the universe. This constant that was first measured by Edwin Hubble in 1929.

“An accurate and precise measurement of the Hubble constant will provide us empirical guidance to questions and answers about the fundamental composition and nature of the universe,” Birrer explained.

During his postdoctoral research at UCLA, Birrer helped develop a new “formalism to measure the expansion history of the universe accounting for all the uncertainty,” Tomasso Treu, a Vice Chair for Astronomy at UCLA and Birrer’s postdoctoral advisor. “These methodological breakthroughs lay the foundation for the work that is being done today to find out what is dark matter and what is dark energy,” which is a force that causes the universe to expand at an accelerating rate.

Treu, who described Birrer as “truly outstanding” and one of the ‘best postdocs I have ever interacted with” in his 25-year career, suggested that his former student was relentless even after impressive work.

Soon after completing a measurement of the constant to two percent precision, Birrer started thinking of a “way to redo the experiment using much weaker theoretical assumptions,” Treu wrote in an email. “This was a very brave thing to do, as the dust had not settled yet on the first measurement and he questioned everything.”

The new approach required considerable effort, patience and dedication.

Birrer was “motivated uniquely by his intellectual honesty and rigor,” Treu added. “He wanted to know the answer and he wanted to know if it was robust to this new approach.”

Indeed, researchers are still executing this new measurement, which means that Treu and others don’t know how the next chapter in this search. This approach will, however, lead to greater confidence in whatever figure they find.

Larger collaborations

Simon Birrer. Photo by Rebecca Ross

Birrer is a part of numerous collaborations that involve scientists from Europe, Asia, and Middle and South America.

He contributes to the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). A planned 10-year survey of the southern sky, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory is under construction in northern Chile.

The Simonyi Survey Telescope (SST) at the observatory will survey half the sky every three nights. It will provide a movie of that part of the sky for a decade.

The telescope and camera are expected to produce over 5.2 million exposures in a decade. In fewer than two months, a smaller commissioning camera will start collecting the first light. The main camera will start collecting images within a year, while researchers anticipate gathering scientific data in late next year or early in 2026.

The LSST is expected to find more strong gravitational lensing events, and in particular strongly lensed supernovae, than any prior survey.

Birrer is the co-chair of the LSST Strong Lensing Science Collaboration and serves on the Collaboration Council of the LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration.

Birrer is also a part of the Dark Energy Survey, which was a predecessor to LSST. Researchers completed data taking a few years ago and are analyzing that information.

From mountains to the island

Born and raised in Lucerne, Switzerland, Birrer, who speaks German and the Swiss dialect, French and English, found physics and sociology appealing when he was younger.

“I was interested in how the world works,” he said.

While attending college at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, he became eager to address the numerous unknown questions in cosmology and astrology.

“How little we know about” these fields “dragged me in that direction,” said Birrer.

An avid skier, mountaineer and soccer player, Birrer bikes the five miles back and forth to work from Port Jefferson.

In addition to adding a talented scientist, Stony Brook also brought on board an effective educator.

Birrer is “knowledgeable and caring, patient and at the same time, he knows how to challenge people to achieve their best,” Treu explained. “I am sure he will be a wonderful addition to the faculty and he will play a leading role in training the next generation of scientists.”

In terms of the advice he found particularly helpful in his career, Birrer suggested he needed a nudge to combine his passion for theory with the growing trove of available data. His PhD advisor told him to “touch the data,” he said. The data keeps him humble and provides a reality check.

The friction between thought and data “leads to progress,” Birrer added. “You never know whether the thoughts are ahead of the experiments (data) or whether the experiments are ahead of the thoughts.”

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METRO photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

When our children were young, our first, primary and most important mission was to make sure they were safe and healthy.

We didn’t sit down at the beach because each of them had a tendency, like me I suppose, to head directly into the water. Sometimes, they weren’t on board with our efforts to protect them.

We would put them in a car seat and, almost instantly, they would arch their backs so far that it was impossible to strap them in.

Or we would try to apply sunscreen and they would wiggle away and giggle, as we dropped a glob of white cream on the floor or sprayed it into the air.

We made them hold our hands even when they didn’t want to touch us. Anyone who read last week’s column can understand why my children, in particular, might not want to hold my intolerably sweaty hand during the heat of the summer.

We also urged them to wear bike helmets, even though they weren’t cool, to wear mittens or gloves in the winter and to get enough sleep so they could function the next day at school or at their numerous basketball/baseball/softball/volleyball/music practices over the weekend or in the evening after a long day of listening to adults talk at them.

One day, after a particularly exciting and challenging basketball game for our son, one of his friends asked if he could bring him to a movie with his family.

“Uh, I guess so,” I shrugged, as I counted the basketballs I shoved into a mesh bag to make sure I had exactly the number the league had given me. “What movie?”

“Hunger Games,” my son’s friend said.

I looked at my wife. I’d heard that the movie was particularly violent and knew that our son, who was under nine, might struggle to make it through a PG-13 movie, particularly one that involved violence among children.

“Are you sure you want to go?” I whispered to our son, hoping that I could encourage him to do something else that evening that might not cost him and, perhaps, us some sleep.

“Daaaaddd,” he said, giving me the can’t-you-be-a-fun-dad-just-this-once look.

My wife and I locked eyes, trying to figure out if either of us should step in and suggest that we’d rather he didn’t go.

We rolled the dice, holding our breath as he jogged away from us across the gym.

We considered taking a nap before he came home, just to prepare ourselves for a restless night.

When he finally returned, he had a broad grin on his face.

“You gotta see the movie, it’s amazing,” he said.

We weren’t sure whether he was just being tough in front of his friend or if he really liked it. Each of the next eight times we asked, he never changed his answer or wavered.

That night, all of us slept well.

Fast forward to today. Our kids are watching and streaming whatever appeals to them. Somehow, one of them asked if we had seen the series “Black Mirror,” suggesting it was a modern version of “The Twilight Zone.”

The first episode, with Salma Hayek, was clever and amusing at the same time. Playing herself, Hayek was particularly funny. Psychologically, it was what we thought and expected.

Then, we watched a few more episodes that became darker and more unnerving. Both of us lost some sleep after watching scenes that exceeded our gore threshold.

We started a text chain with our children, letting them know that we liked the first one and then felt as if the program did a bait-and-switch on us, taking us in a different direction from the psychological into the painful and gory.

They instantly offered their thoughts on different episodes and what they advised was appropriate for mom and dad to watch.

Our kids sent messages like “this one is not scary” and “I think it’s safe to watch.”

At least as far as some TV programs, we’ve come full circle. We are no longer trying to offer them parental guidance, at least where movies are concerned. Maybe they can help establish a new film rating system for sensitive parents.

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Daniel Marx in front of one of the magnets at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Photo courtesy of BNL

By Daniel Dunaief

In a world filled with disagreements over everything from presidential politics to parking places, numbers — and particularly constants — can offer immutable comfort, as people across borders and political parties can find the kind of common ground that make discoveries and innovations possible.

Many of these numbers aren’t simple, as anyone who has taken a geometry class would know. Pi, for example, which describes the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, isn’t just 3 or 3.14.

In classes around the world, people challenge their memory of numbers and sequences by reciting as many digits of this irrational number as possible. An irrational number can’t be expressed as a fraction.

These irrational numbers can and do inform the world well outside of textbooks and math tests, making it possible for, say, electromagnetic radiation to share information across a parallel world or, in earlier parlance, the ether.

“All electronic communication is made up of waves, sines and cosines, that are defined and evaluated using pi,” said Alan Tucker, Toll Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics at Stony Brook University. The circuits that send and receive information are “based on calculations using pi.”

Scientists can receive signals from the Voyager spacecraft, launched in 1977 and now over seven billion miles away, thanks to the ability to tune a circuit using math that relies on pi and numerous mathematical formulas where the sensitivity to the signal is infinite.

The signal from the spacecraft, which is over 16 years older than the average-aged person on the planet, takes about 10 hours to travel back and forth.

“Think of 1/x, where x goes to 0,” explained Tucker. “Scientists have taken that infinity to be an infinite multiplier of weak signals that can be understood.”

Closer to Earth, the internet, radio waves and TV, among myriad other electronic devices, all use generated and decoded calculations using pi.

“All space has an unseen mathematical existence that nobody can see,” said Tucker. “These are heavily based on calculations involving pi.”

Properties of nature

Constants reflect the realities of the world. They have “a property that is fundamental and absolute and that no one could change,” said Steve Skiena, Distinguished Teaching Professor of Computer Science at Stony Brook University. “The reason people discovered these constants as being important is because they are relating things that arise in the world.”

While pi may be among the best known and most oft-discussed constant, it’s not alone in measuring and understanding the world and in helping scientists anticipate, calculate and understand their experiments.

Chemists, for example, design reactions using a standard unit of measure called the mole, which is also called Avogadro’s number for the Italian physicist Amedeo Avogadro.

The mole provides a way to balance equations, enabling chemists to determine exactly how much of each reactant to combine to get a specific amount of product.

This huge number, which is often expressed as 6.022 times 10 to the 23rd power, represents the number of atoms in 12 grams of carbon 12. The units can be electrons, ions, atoms or molecules.

“Without Avogadro’s number, it would be impossible to determine the ratio of particular reactants,” said Elliot Smith, a postdoctoral researcher at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory who works in John Moses’s lab. “You could take an educated guess, but you wouldn’t get good results.”

Smith often uses millimoles, or 1/1000th of a mole, in the chemical reactions he does.

“If we know the millimoles of each reactant, we can calculate the expected yield,” said Smith. “Without that, you’re fumbling in the dark.”

Indeed, efficient chemical reactions make it possible to synthesize greater amounts of some of the pharmaceutical products that protect human health.

Moles, or millimoles, in a reaction also make it possible to question why a result deviated from expectations. 

Almost the speed of light

Physicists use numerous constants.

“In physics, it is inescapable that you will have to deal with some of the fundamental constants,” said Alan Calder, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Stony Brook University.

When he models stellar explosions, he uses the speed of light and Newton’s gravitational constant, which relates the gravitational force between two objects to the product of their masses divided by the square of the distance between them.

The stars Calder studies are gas ball reactions that also involve constants.

Stars have thermonuclear reactions going on in them as they evolve. Calder uses reaction rates that depend on local conditions like temperature, but there are constants in these.

Calder’s favorite number is e, or Euler’s constant. This number, which is about 2.71828, is useful in calculating interest in a bank account as well as in understanding the width of successive layers in a snail shell among many other phenomena in nature.

Electron Ion Collider

The speed of light figures prominently in the development and calculations at Brookhaven National Laboratory as the lab prepares to build the unique Electron Ion Collider, which is expected to cost between $1.7 billion and $2.8 billion.

The EIC, which will take about 10 years to construct, will collide a beam of electrons with a beam of ions to answer basic questions about the atomic nucleus.

“It’s one of the most exciting projects in the world,” said Daniel Marx, an accelerator physicist in the Electron Ion Collider accelerator design group at BNL.

At the EIC, physicists expect to propel the electrons, which are 2,000 times lighter than protons, extremely close to the speed of light. In fact, they will travel at 99.999999 (yes, that’s six nines after the decimal point) of the speed of light, which, by the way, is 186,282 miles per second. That means that light can circle the globe 7.48 times per second.

The EIC will increase the energy of ions to 99.999% of the speed of light. With only three nines after the decimal, the protons will be traveling at a slower enough speed that the designers of the collider will make the proton ring about 4 inches shorter over 2.4 miles to ensure that the protons and electrons arrive at exactly the same time.

The EIC will attempt to answer questions about the mass and spin of the nucleus. They hope to understand what happens with dense systems of gluons. By accelerating nuclei or protons to higher energies, they will get more gluons and will look for evidence of gluon saturation.

“The speed of light is absolutely fundamental to everything we do,” said Marx because it is fundamental to relativity and the particles in the accelerator are relativistic.

As for constants, Marx suggested that its value might look like a row of random numbers, but if those numbers are a bit different, that could “revolutionize” an understanding of physics.

In addition to a detailed understanding of atomic nuclei, the EIC could also lead to new technologies.

When JJ Thomson discovered the electron, he toasted it by saying, “may it never be of use to anyone.” That, however, is far from the case, as the electron is at the heart of electronics.

As for pi, Marx, like many of his STEM colleagues, appreciates this constant.

“Once you look at the mathematical statement of pi, and how it relates in various ways to other quantities in math and physics, it deepens your appreciation of how beautiful the whole universe is,” Marx said.

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METRO photo

By Daniel Dunaief

The Food and Drug Administration last week approved donanemab, or Kisunla, an intravenous treatment for early stage Alzheimer’s disease, adding a second medication for mild stages of a disease that robs people of memory and cognitive function.

Nikhil Palekar, Medical Director of the Stony Brook Center of Excellence for Alzheimer’s Disease and Director of the Stony Brook Alzheimer’s Disease Clinical Trials Program. Photo courtesy Stony Brook Medicine/Jeanne Neville

The monoclonal antibody drug from Eli Lilly joins Leqembi from drug makers Eisai and Biogen as ways to reduce the characteristic amyloid plaques that are often used to diagnose Alzheimer’s.

While the medications offer ways to slow but do not stop or reverse Alzheimer’s and come with potential significant side effects, doctors welcomed the treatment options for patients who are at risk of cognitive decline.

Dr. Nikhil Palekar, Medical Director of the Stony Brook Center of Excellence for Alzheimer’s Disease and Director of the Stony Brook Alzheimer’s Disease Clinical Trials Program, has been in the field for about two decades.

“Only in the last three years have I finally become quite optimistic” about new treatments, said Palekar, who is a consultant for Eisai. “We’ve had so many failures in the last few decades” with the current medications targeting the core pathologies.

That optimism comes at a time when more people in the United States and around the world are likely to deal with diseases that affect the elderly, as the number of people in the United States who are 85 and older is expected to double in the next 10 years.

The rates of Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia is about 13 percent for people between 75 and 84 and is 33 percent for people over 85 according to the Alzheimer’s Association.

The Alzheimer’s Association issued a statement welcoming the addition of Kisunla to the medical arsenal.

“This is real progress,” Joanne Pike, Alzheimer’s Association president and CEO, said in a statement. The approval “allows people more options and greater opportunity to have more time.”

To be sure, Leqembi, which was approved in June of 2023 and Kisunla aren’t a guarantee for improvement and come with some potentially significant side effects.

Some patients had a risk of developing so-called amyloid-related imaging abnormalities, which includes brain edema, or ARIA-E or hemorrhaging, or ARIA-H in the brain.

ARIA can resolve on its own, but can, in rare cases, become severe and life-threatening.

Patients taking these medications receive regular monitoring, including MRI’s before various additional treatments.

Patients are “monitored carefully” before infusions to “go over symptom checklists to make sure they don’t have neurological symptoms,” said Palekar. “If they have any symptoms, the next step is to head to the closest emergency room to get an MRI of the brain, which is the only way to know if a side effect is causing symptoms.”

Nonetheless, under medical supervision, patients who took the medication as a part of clinical trials showed a progressive reduction in amyloid plaques up to 84 percent at 18 months compared to their baseline.

The benefits for Leqembi, which is given every two weeks, and Kisunla, which is administered every four weeks, were similar in terms of slowing the effect of cognitive decline, said Dr. Marc Gordon, Chief of Neurology at Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks.

“Neither of them is a cure for Alzheimer’s,” said Gordon. “These medications are not a home run, but at least we’re on base.”

Not eligible

Not everyone is eligible to take these monoclonal antibody treatments.

These drugs are not available for people who have progressed beyond the mild stage of the disease. Clinicians advised those who are showing potential signs of Alzheimer’s to visit their doctors before the disease progresses beyond the point where these drugs might help.

Additionally, people on blood thinners, such as Eliquis, Coumadin, and Warfarin, can not take these drugs because a micro bleed could become a larger hemorrhage.

People who have an active malignant cancer also can’t take these drugs, nor can anyone who has had a reaction to these treatments in the past. The people who might likely know of an allergic reaction to these drugs are those who participated in clinical trials.

Doctors monitor their patients carefully when they administer new drugs and have epinephrine on hand in case of an allergic reaction.

Patients with two alleles – meaning from both parents – of a variant called APOE ε4 have a higher incidence of ARIA, including symptomatic, serious and severe AIRA, compared to those with one allele or non-carriers. 

If patients have this variant on both alleles, which occurs in about 15 percent of Alzheimer’s patients, Gordon and Palekar both counsel patients not to take the drug.

“We don’t think the risk is acceptable” for this patient population, Gordon said.

Ultimately, Palekar believes patients, their doctors and their families need to make informed calculations about the risks and benefits of any treatment, including for Alzheimer’s.

Beyond drugs

Palekar added that recent studies have also shown that an increase in physical exercise and activity, such as aerobic activity three times a week for 45 minutes each time, can “significantly help in patients with cognitive symptoms of Alzheimer’s Disease,” he said.

After consulting with a physician to ensure that such activity is safe, patients can use a stationary bike or take walks which can benefit their bodies and their brains.

Additionally, various diets, such as the mind diet that combines the mediterranean diet and the DASH diet, which emphasize eating green leafy vegetables and berries among other things, can benefit the brain as well.

Patients also improve their cognitive health by continuing mental activity through games as well as by retaining social connections to friends, family and members of the community.

Like many other people, Palekar witnessed the ravages of Alzheimer’s first hand. As a teenager, he saw his aunt, who was smart, caring and loving, stare out the window without being able to communicate and engage in conversation as she battled the disease.

As a condition involving amyloid plaques, tau proteins, and inflammation, Alzheimer’s disease may require a combination of treatments that address the range of causes.

“There’s going to be a combined therapy,” said Gordon. “Just like when we’re treating cancer, we don’t have just one drug. It’s going to be important to figure out the sequencing and whether drugs are given sequentially or cumulatively. It has to be a multi-faceted approach.”

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Stony Brook University. File photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Like colleges around the state and country, Stony Brook University is preparing for the possibility that New York State students will no longer be required to pass Regents exams to graduate from high school.

Stony Brook University Provost Carl Lejuez. File photo

During Covid-19, when many schools including SBU made reporting Scholastic Aptitude Tests, or SATs, or American College Testing, or ACTs, optional, the university continued to take a broader view of college applicants.

“The idea of holistic admissions has been something that has been gaining steam for a while,” said Provost Carl Lejuez in a wide ranging interview. Such an approach brings numerous potential student strengths into the admissions decision process.

“Judging by the success we’ve been having, we feel good about our ability to bring in the best students and help them succeed,” Lejuez added.

The admissions process at SBU has been considering additional factors, such as students’ educational experiences and opportunities, the adversity they experienced, and their trajectory and improvement.

A flagship public university, Stony Brook has become an important higher education entry point for students who are first-generation college applicants.

The university does not “want to make the process so onerous that it becomes less successful when you think of low income, first generation students who may not have a lot of the same opportunities” as students in wealthier, more established school districts, Lejuez said. The university wants to be “rigorous and equitable” in the strategy for bringing in the best students.

In the meantime, Stony Brook University recently completed its first full week after the departure of President Maurie McInnis, who had led the school for four years and is now the president of Yale University.

“The mark of a good leader is an organization that continues to thrive when they’ve gone and that is something, because they’ve created the right infrastructure and hired the right people and developed the right culture” that McInnis did, Lejuez said. “While folks are eager to have our permanent leadership in place, things are exactly how they should be.”

Indeed, Stony Brook in the coming days is expected to announce an interim president, who will take the reins for the university while the school conducts a national search, chaired by Stony Brook Council Chairman Kevin Law, for the seventh president.

Since McInnis’s departure, Stony Brook Medicine Executive Vice President Dr. William Wertheim has overseen operations as Officer-in-Charge.

Professor grades

In evaluating professors, Stony Brook uses student-driven evaluations. The university also has peer faculty observe classes and provide feedback.

“We are revising a lot of our promotion and tenure guidelines,” said Lejuez. “We’ve been very, very clear that you have to be an excellent teacher as well as an excellent researcher here at Stony Brook.”

Stony Brook emphasizes the importance of teaching at faculty orientation, where administrators urge new professors to visit and get to know the options available at the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching.

Through various assessments, SBU is working to ensure students are learning the lessons and ideas they should in classes.

The university made its first set of revisions this year by providing a midpoint feedback at the three-year mark for professors on a six-year tenure track throughout the university. Such feedback had been available for faculty in the College of Arts of Sciences previously.

“When you see professors who are struggling with their research or teaching, they should be getting feedback,” said Lejuez. “Sometimes they don’t get it until they’re going up for tenure. That’s not fair to the students or the faculty for that matter.”

To help students throughout their educational journey, Stony Brook invested several million dollars in increasing the number of advisors, while also increasing the support within the tutoring center.

These efforts have paid dividends, as the retention rate from first year to second year for students, which had been in the mid 80 percent range, is moving higher. Within two or three years, SBU would like to see that number reach 92 percent or more.

As for international efforts, the university plans to connect resources in places like the Turkana Basin Institute in Kenya, Centre ValBio in Madagascar and SUNY Korea, which is a partnership between SBU, SUNY and the South Korean government.

“I, as well as several deans and faculty, have made trips to all three in the past year and we are increasing our support,” said Lejuez. “We have also been ramping up fundraising efforts.”

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METRO photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

If sweat were a valuable commodity, I’d be in high demand.

As it is, however, my thick, heavy high-volume sweat is as welcome as a cup of warm water on a hot, sticky day.

When I was a teenager and attended basketball camp, I used to sit in the back seat with two other campers, squeezing my thick thighs together as much as possible to avoid sharing the sweat that coated my legs.

I had and continue to have the kind of sweat glands that would give marathoners from Ethiopia a run for their money.

No, I can’t run as far or as fast as a marathon runner, but I still sometimes looked like one, especially on those summer days when I walked a few miles to work and arrived in a puddle-stained suit.

Fortunately, the public, even before the notion of “fake news” became trendy, rarely had high expectations for the attire of a reporter.

When the temperature and humidity are high enough, I can picture the various characters from the Disney/Pixar movie “Inside Out” pushing and shoving as they try to climb into a small raft in a sweat-drenched control room.

The process almost always starts on my upper lip. That’s where beady sweat scouts come out, checking to see if it is indeed worth alerting the rest of my body that it’s a good time to join the fun.

Within seconds, my arms and wrists have the almost modest effect of glistening, as a thin layer of perspiration can catch the sun at just the right angle, giving my skin a mildly reflective look. After a few short moments, the production line kicks into higher gear. My fingers, which often swell when I walk more than a mile or so, become drenched.

I have had a few occasions when I’ve run into people who introduce me to others in this condition. When they stick out their hands to shake mine, I’m stuck.

While holding my hand back is disrespectful, soaking someone I’ve met with a soggy handshake makes the wrong kind of first impression.

My sister-in-law carries a collection of mostly healthy snacks in her purse for when my typically charming and delightful brother enters the hangry stage of the day and needs food to carry him to the next meal.

I don’t often become frustrated or angry when I’m hungry. I do, however, become embarrassed when I can feel the thick, heavy drops of sweat racing down my back, slaloming down my legs and collecting in my shoes.

Maybe I should suggest to my wife that she carry wipes, paper towels, an electric fan, or a magical towel that comes out of a tiny purse but can absorb a full day’s worth of sweat. I bet Mary Poppins could pull that off.

Since I’m not always with my wife and this isn’t her problem, I rub my hands against my legs. That kind of works, although that then leaves a soaked hand print on the outside of my pant leg which is usually met by the layer of moisture accumulating on the inside of my pants.

Now, dry fit shirts have become a true gift for me, as they don’t immediately become drenched with perspiration. Maybe some day someone will invent a dry fit suit, which looks like normal business attire, but doesn’t become a magnet for moisture.

I know astronauts drink a purified form of urine, the moisture they exhale and their own sweat. When I interviewed Astronaut Scott Kelly several years ago, he mentioned that he particularly enjoyed the taste of the purified water aboard the International Space Station, where he lived for 340 straight days.

I suppose that means I’d be a valuable commodity as an older, slower moving astronaut, assuming that I didn’t need to drink every ounce and then some, of what I produced when I sweat.

Oh well, that probably won’t work and I’m not that eager to travel into space. In the spirit of reduce, reuse, recycle, maybe I should figure out how to turn my own sweat into an icy cold drink.

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From left, Adrian Krainer and Danilo Segovia with the Breakthrough Prize, which Krainer won in 2018. Photo from Danilo Segovia

By Daniel Dunaief

For many young children, the ideal peanut butter and jelly sandwich doesn’t include any crust, as an accommodating parent will trim off the unwanted parts before packing a lunch for that day.

Similarly, the genetic machinery that takes an RNA blueprint and turns it into proteins includes a so-called “spliceosome,” which cuts out the unwanted bits of genetic material, called introns, and pulls together exons.

Adrian Krainer. Photo from CSHL

When the machinery works correctly, cells produce proteins important in routine metabolism and everyday function. When it doesn’t function correctly, people can contract diseases.

Danilo Segovia, a PhD student at Stony Brook University who has been working in the laboratory of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Professor Adrian Krainer for seven years, recently published a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences about an important partner, called DDX23, that works with the key protein SRSF1 in the spliceosome.

“We obtained new insights into the splicing process,” said Krainer, who is the co-leader of the Gene Regulation & Inheritance program in the Cancer Center at CSHL. “The spliceosome is clearly important for every gene that has introns and every cell type that can have mutations.”

Krainer’s lab has worked with the regulator protein SRSF1 since 1990. Building on the extensive work he and members of his lab performed, Krainer was able to develop an effective treatment for Spinal Muscular Atrophy, which is a progressive disease that impacts the muscles used for breathing, eating, crawling and walking.

In children with SMA, Krainer created an antisense oligonucleotide, which enables the production of a key protein at a back up gene through more efficient splicing. The treatment, which is one of three on the market, has changed the prognosis for people with SMA.

At this point, the way DDX23 and SRSF1 work together is unclear, but the connection is likely important to prepare the spliceosome to do the important work of reading RNA sequences and assembling proteins.

Needle in a protein haystack

Thanks to the work of Krainer and others, scientists knew that SRSF1 performed an important regulatory role in the spliceosome.

What they didn’t know, however, was how other protein worked together with this regulator to keep the machinery on track.

Danilo Segovia in the lab at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Photo by Constance Burkin/CSHL

Using a new screening technology developed in other labs that enabled Segovia to see proteins that come in proximity with or interact with SRSF1, he came up with a list of 190 potential candidates.

Through a lengthy and detailed set of experiments, Segovia screened around 30 potential proteins that might play a role in the spliceosome.

One experiment after another enabled him to check proteins off the list, the way prospective college students who visit a school that is too hilly, too close to a city, too far from a city, or too cold in the winter do amid an intense selection process.

Then, on Feb. 15 of last year, about six years after he started his work in Krainer’s lab, Segovia had a eureka moment.

“After doing the PhD for so long, you get that result you were waiting for,” Segovia recalled.

The PhD candidate didn’t tell anyone at first because he wanted to be sure the interaction between the proteins was relevant and real.

“Lucky for us, the story makes sense,” Segovia said.

Krainer appreciated Segovia’s perseverance and patience as well as his willingness to help other members of his lab with structural work.

Krainer described Segovia as the “resident structural expert who would help everybody else who needed to get that insight.”

Krainer suggested that each of these factors had been studied separately in the process, without the realization that they work together.

This is the beginning of the story, as numerous questions remain.

“We reported this interaction and now we have to try to understand its implications,” said Krainer. “How is it driving or contributing to splice assembly.”

Other factors also likely play an important role in this process as well.

Krainer explained that Segovia’s workflow allowed him to prioritize interacting proteins for further study. Krainer expects that many of the others on the list are worth further analysis.

At some point, Krainer’s lab or others will also work to crystallize the combination of these proteins as the structure of such units often reveals details about how these pieces function.

Segovia and Krainer worked together with Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Professor Leemor Joshua-Tor, who does considerably more biochemistry work in her research than the members of Krainer’s lab.

When a cowboy met a witch

A native of Montevideo, Uruguay, Segovia came to Stony Brook in part because he was conducting research on the gene P53, which is often mutated in forms of human cancer.

Segovia had read the research of Ute Moll, Endowed Renaissance Professor of Cancer Biology at Stony Brook University, who had conducted important P53 research.

“I really liked the paper she did,” said Segovia. “When I was applying for college in the United States for my PhD, I decided I’m for sure going to apply to Stony Brook.”

Even though Segovia hasn’t met Moll, he has benefited from his journey to Long Island.

During rotations at CSHL, Segovia realized he wanted to work with RNA. He found a scientific connection as well as a cultural one when he discovered that Krainer is from the same city in Uruguay.

Krainer said his lab has had a wide range of international researchers, with as many as 25 countries represented. “The whole institution is like that. People who go into science are naturally curious about a lot of things, including cultures.”

Segovia not only found a productive setting in which to conduct his PhD research, but also met his wife Polona Šafarič Tepeš, a former researcher at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory who currently works at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research. Tepeš is originally from Slovenia.

The couple met at a Halloween party, where Segovia came as a cowboy and Tepeš dressed as a witch. They eloped on November 6, 2020 and were the first couple married after the Covid lockdown at the town hall in Portland, Maine.

Outside of the lab, Segovia enjoys playing the clarinet, which he has been doing since he was 11.

As for science, Segovia grew up enjoying superhero movies that involve mutations and had considered careers as a musician, scientist or detective.

“Science is universal,” he said. “You can work wherever you want in the world. I knew I wanted to travel, so it all worked out.”

As for the next steps, after Segovia defends his thesis in July, he is considering doing post doctoral research or joining a biotechnology company.

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Catch a screening of 'The Candidate' on July 12.
Update: The event on July 10 has been postponed to October 7.

By Daniel Dunaief

Films can take us far from our lives, even as they can also bring us closer to truths about our world.

From July 9 to 12, the Cinema Arts Centre, 423 Park Ave., Huntington is presenting a four-day festival that highlights the intersection between politics and Hollywood. The screenings, which cost $16 for nonmembers and $10 for members, will include the films Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Best Man, and The Candidate.

On the first night, former Congressman and the festival’s curator Steve Israel will host a discussion entitled “Campaigning on Celluloid: How Cinema Informs and Reflects Changing Political Communication on Film.”

Israel, who taught a class at Cornell University about politics and film after he left public office, selected the movies.

‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington’ will be screened on July 10.

“I thought it would be interesting and fun to offer a similar series” to the films he discussed at Cornell “on Long Island to the general public,” he said.

Israel describes the film The Best Man, which pits the principled William Russell, played by Henry Fonda, against the populist opportunist Joe Cantwell, acted by Cliff Robertson, as eerily prescient of recent political battles.

“It’s an example of a film in 1964 that was regarded as entertaining and implausible that has been overtaken by the reality,” said Israel.

The Cinema Arts Centre is debuting this series of movies this year and may run another similar program in future years.

Israel anticipates a discussion about how films are a “projection of our times and politics often influences films,” and added that some films seem political, but they aren’t, while others don’t seem political, but they are.

‘The Best Man’ will be screened on July 11.

“We are going to explore that dynamic,” Israel explained.

Atticus Finch, the hero in Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird, served as a role model for Israel, who spent his early time in public service trying to emulate the determined lawyer. “Atticus Finch wouldn’t survive in our current political environment,” Israel said.

The novel is relevant in the world of today, as a modern day Finch would struggle to confront the anger, vitriol and division that defines contemporary society, Israel suggested.

The reality of the modern political environment has surpassed the fiction, making the two satirical novels Israel has written difficult to produce.

“The market for satire is dead because the reality has surpassed the story,” Israel added. 

Non partisan

Nate Close, the Director of Marketing and Communications at the Cinema Arts Centre, explained that the mission of the festival is to be nonpartisan.

Indeed, guest speakers come from both parties, with republican Representative Peter King joining Israel for a discussion after Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and political strategist and policy advisor Basil Smikle participating in the post discussion after The Candidate.

The festival hopes to “shine a light on how these two institutions [politics and Hollywood] influence American culture and shape each other,” said Close. “There’s interplay there.”

Films are “more important than ever,” said Israel. “You sit through it, you take in the textures, the characters and the writing” and it “should inspire us to think.

Program Schedule:

Tuesday, July 9 at 7:30 p.m.

Campaigning on Celluloid: How Cinema Informs and Reflects Changing Political Communication on Screen — Lecture with former Congressman Steve Israel

*Postponed to October 7: Wednesday, July 10 at 7 p.m.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington — Film screening and discussion with Rep. Steve Israel and Rep. Peter King

Thursday, July 11 at 7 p.m.

The Best Man — Film screening and discussion with Steve Israel

Friday, July 12 at 7 p.m.

The Candidate — Film screening and discussion with Rep. Steve Israel and Basil Smikle

For tickets, visit www.cinemaartscentre.org. For more information, call 631-423-7610.

 

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