From left, graduate students Thomas Reilly and Hanxiao Wu with Weisen Shen. Wu and Shen are holding two of the 183 sensors they will place in the Antarctic. The team is shipping the sensors in the black container, which will travel through Port Hueneme, California and New Zealand before reaching the South Pole. Photo by Maeve McCarthy/ Angela Gruo
By Daniel Dunaief
While it’s easy to see and study materials in valleys or on the tops of bare mountains, it’s much more difficult to know what’s beneath 2.7 kilometers of ice. Turns out, that kind of question is much more than academic or hypothetical.
At the South Pole, glaciers sit on top of land that never sees the light of day, but that is relevant for the future of cities like Manhattan and Boston.
The solid land beneath glaciers has a strong effect on the movement of the ice sheet, which can impact the melting rate of the ice and sea level change.
Weisen Shen, Assistant Professor in the Department of Geosciences at Stony Brook University, recently received over $625,000 over the course of five years from the National Science Foundation to study the unexplored land beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet at the South Pole.
The subglacial water and hydrosystems, together with geology such as sediment or hard rocks, affect the dynamics and contribute to the movement speed of the ice sheet.
Once Shen provides a better understanding of the material beneath the ice, including glacial water, he can follow that up with other researchers to interpret the implications of ice sheet dynamics.
“We can predict better what’s the contribution of the Antarctic ice sheet to the sea level change” which will offer modelers a way to gauge the likely impact of global warming in future decades, he said.
Using seismic data
Starting this November, Shen and graduate students Siyuan Sui, Thomas Reilly and Hanxiao Wu will venture for two months to the South Pole with seismic monitors.
By placing 183 seismic nodes and installing an additional eight broad-band seismic stations, Shen and his team will quantify the seismic properties and, eventually, use them to infer the composition, density and temperature structure of the crust and the uppermost mantle.
The temperature when they place these monitors will be 10 to 30 degrees below 0 degrees Fahrenheit. They will need to do some digging as they deploy these sensors near the surface.
While the South Pole is believed to be geologically stable, signs of sub-glacial melting suggest the crust may bear a higher concentration of highly radioactive elements such as uranium, thorium and potassium.
Those natural elements “produce heat all the time,” said Shen.
The process and analysis of seismic waves works in the same way it would for the study of a prism. Looking at the refraction of light that enters and leaves the prism from various angles can help researchers differentiate light with different frequencies, revealing clues about the structure and composition of the prism.
Earth materials, meanwhile will also cause a differentiation in the speed of surface waves according to their frequencies. The differentiation in speeds is called “dispersion,” which Shen and his team will use to quantify the seismic properties. The area has enough natural waves that Shen won’t need to generate any man-made energy waves.
“We are carefully monitoring how fast [the seismic energy] travels” to determine the temperature, density and rock type, Shen said.
The water beneath the glacier can act like a slip ’n slide, making it easier for the glacier to move.
Some large lakes in Antarctica, such as Lake Vostok, have been mapped. The depth and contours of sub glacier lakes near the South Pole, however, are still unclear.
“We have to utilize a lot of different methods to study that,” said Shen.
The Stony Brook researcher will collaborate with colleagues to combine his seismic results with other types of data, such as radar, to cross examine the sub ice structures.
The work will involve three years of gathering field data and two years of analysis.
Educational component
In addition to gathering and analyzing data, Shen has added a significant educational component to the study. For the first time, he is bringing along Brentwood High School science teacher Dr. Rebecca Grella, A PhD graduate from Stony Brook University’s Ecology and Evolutionary Biology program, Grella will provide lectures and classes remotely from the field.
In addition to bringing a high school teacher, Shen will fund graduate students at Stony Brook who can help Brentwood students prepare for the Earth Science regents exam.
Shen is working with Kamazima Lwiza, Associate Professor in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook, to bring Earth Science, including polar science, to schools in New York City and on Long Island with a bus equipped with mobile labs.
Lwiza, who is the Principal Investigator on the EarthBUS project, will work together with Shen to build a course module that includes a 45-minute lecture and exhibition.
Shen feels that the project will help him prepare to better educate students in graduate school, college, and K-12 in the community.
He feels a strong need to help K-12 students in particular with Earth Science.
As for students outside Brentwood, Shen said he has an open door policy in which the lab is receptive to high school and undergraduate students who would like to participate in his research all year long.
Once he collects the first batch of data from the upcoming trip to the South Pole, he will have to do considerable data processing, analysis and interpretation.
While Shen is looking forward to the upcoming field season, he knows he will miss time in his Stony Brook home with his wife Jiayi Xie, and his four-and-a-half year old son Luke and his 1.5 year old son Kai.
“It’s a huge burden for my wife,” Shen said, whose wife is working full time. When he returns, he “hopes to make it up to them.”
Shen believes, however, that the work he is doing is important in the bigger picture, including for his children.
Record high temperatures, which are occurring in the United States and elsewhere this summer, will “definitely have an impact on the dynamics of the ice sheet.” At the same time, the Antarctic ice sheet is at a record low.
“This is concerning and makes [it] more urgent to finish our work there,” he added.
After several decades without my civil service responsibilities cropping up, I recently received a summons to appear for jury duty.
The summons brought back memories of a jury I served on years ago. While I was sitting in the courtroom waiting as a court officer chose names of potential jurors for a criminal case, a woman sitting next to me asked my name. When I told her, she said I’d be picked for that jury.
I smirked because there were 200 of us in the room.
Two names later, they called me. I looked back quizzically at the woman, who smiled and walked out of the room with the others who weren’t called.
I served on that jury. It was a buy and bust drug case. I listened carefully as the defense attorney questioned the under cover police officer who tried to buy drugs from the defendant.
When the defense attorney asked how many such operations the policeman had been on, the number was high enough to raise questions about how well he remembered this defendant.
The officer said he made notes, which the defense attorney asked him to read. Going through the notes, he described someone who was about the same build and age as the defendant. He also described a leather jacket with a specific insignia. That was not the defense attorney’s finest moment, as the defendant was wearing that exact same jacket to court. Whoops!
The rest of the trial wasn’t particularly memorable. On closing, the defense attorney suggested that the defendant became addicted to drugs when he served in Vietnam. The judge asked us to focus only on whether the defendant broke the law and not on how he might have gotten addicted to drugs.
After the judge sent us to deliberate, the foreman suggested that we take a vote. Who thought the man had drugs in his possession?
Every hand shot up.
Who thought he intended to sell those drugs?
Everyone but one person agreed.
We asked her about her concerns. She said she had ordered lunch and wanted her hamburger and fries. We told her we’d be happy to pitch in and give her money for a lunch if that was the only reason she wasn’t voting to convict.
Was that, we wondered, paying her for a verdict?
It didn’t matter. She wanted to wait. When lunch came, we ate quietly, waiting for the moment we could take another vote. The holdout said the burger wasn’t good and the fries were soggy.
Gnashing our teeth, we voted again. This time, we all voted to convict. One of the other jurors asked her if she had any other concerns or questions. She shook her head.
When we knocked on the door to let the officer know we were ready, he told us to wait. We spent another three hours in that room.
We returned to the courtroom, where the foreman announced our verdict. The defense attorney polled us all on both counts.
Once we were out in the hallway, I asked the prosecutor why we had to wait so long. She said the judge had held them in the courtroom, figuring that we’d have a verdict before lunch. When he heard we broke for lunch, he told everyone to leave and return in an hour.
Everyone but the defendant came back. The defense attorney spent the next few hours calling his relatives and trying to bring him back.
“What’s going to happen?” I asked.
The police would go to his residence and there would be a warrant for his arrest. He would also enter a database. How hard, I wondered, would the police search for him?
She suggested they would look, but that he was more likely to be caught committing another crime.
“He’s out because someone wanted a soggy burger?” I asked.
She shrugged.
With cell phones and an electronic footprint, the system today may work better than it did then.
It’s almost easier to figure out what makes Earth unique among the planets than it is to list the ways humans are unique among Earth’s inhabitants. Earth is, after all, the only blue planet, filled with water from which humans, and so many other creatures, evolved. It is also the only planet on which seven enormous plates deep beneath the surface move. These unique features have led scientists to expect certain features that give Earth its unique geological footprint.
Not so fast.
According to a recent paper in the high-profile journal Nature in which Timothy Glotch, Professor of Geosciences at Stony Brook University, was a co-author, the moon has a vast swath of over 50 kilometers of granite in the Compton-Belkovich Volcanic complex, which is on the its far side.
Usually formed from plate tectonics of water bearing magma, the presence of this granite, which appears in greater quantities around the Earth, is something of a planetary mystery.
“Granites are extremely rare outside of Earth,” said Glotch. “Its formation process must be so different, which makes them interesting.”
The researchers on this paper, including lead author Matt Siegler, a scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, suggest a range of possibilities for how the granite formed. Over three billion years ago, the moon, which, like the Earth, is over 4.5 billion years old, had lava that erupted to form the Compton-Belkovich Volcanic Complex, or CBVC. Researchers think most volcanic activity on the moon ended about two billion years ago.
This illustration shows the Compton-Belkovich Volcanic Complex (CBVC) on the Moon’s far side and the boxed area indicated a large granite zone, which could not be picked up by topography. Image courtesy of Matthew Siegler/Planetary Science Institute/Nature
The magma formed as a result of a melting of a small portion of the lunar mantle. Melting could have been caused by the addition of water or the movement of hot material closer to the surface. Scientists are not completely sure about the current nature of the lunar core.
As for the granite, it might have come from fractionation, in which particles separate during a transition from different phases, in this case from a hot liquid like magma to a solid.
Additionally, the presence of granite could suggest that some parts of the moon had more water than others.
“There are other geochemical arguments you could make,” Glotch said. “What we really need are to find more samples and bring them back to Earth.”
The analysis of granite on the moon came from numerous distant sources, as well as from the study of a few samples returned during the Apollo space missions. The last time people set foot on the moon was on the Apollo 17 mission, which returned to Earth on Dec. 19, 1972.
A 10-year process
The search and study of granite on the moon involved a collaboration between Glotch and Siegler, who have known each other for about 18 years. The two met when Glotch was a postdoctoral researcher and Siegler was a graduate student.
In 2010, Glotch published a paper in the journal Science in which he identified areas that have compositions that are similar to granite, or rhyolite, which is the volcanic equivalent.
Since that paper, Glotch and others have published several research studies that have further characterized granitic or rhyolitic materials, but those are “still relatively rare,” Glotch said.
Long distance monitoring
Led by Siegler and his postdoctoral researcher Jiangqing Feng, the team gathered information from several sources, including microwave data from Chinese satellites, which are sensitive to the heat flow under the surface.
The team also used the Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment, which is a NASA instrument on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, that measures surface temperatures.
Part of the discovery of the silicic sites on the moon comes from the identification of the element thorium, which the Lunar Prospector Gamma Ray Spectrometer found. Similar to uranium or plutonium, thorium is radioactive and decays.
Another piece of data came from the Grail mission, which measures the lunar gravity field.
Glotch suggested that the study involved a “daisy chain of observations.” In his role, he tried to identify sites that might be rich in granite, while Siegler applied new data to these areas to learn more about the underground volcanic plumbing.
In addition to doing long distance monitoring, Glotch engages in long distance recreational activities. The Stony Brook professor is preparing for a November 11th run in Maryland that will cover 50 miles. He expects it will take him about 10 or 11 hours to complete.
Looking at other planets
By analyzing granite on the moon, which could reveal its early history, geologists might also turn that same analysis back to the Earth.
“Can we use the results of this study to take a more nuanced view of granite formations on Earth or other bodies in our solar system?” Glotch asked. “We can learn a lot, not just about the moon, but about planetary evolution.”
NASA is planning a DAVINCI+ mission to Venus in the coming decade, while a European mission is also scheduled for Venus. Some researchers have suggested that Venusian terrains, which are referred to as Tesserae, might be granitic.
“If Venus has continent-like structures made of granite, that’s interesting, because Venus does not appear to have plate tectonics either,” Glotch said.
Closer to Earth, some upcoming missions may offer a better understanding of lunar granite. The first is a small orbiter called Lunar Trailblazer that will have sensitive remote instruments. The second is a part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, which will include a small lander and rover that will land on the Gruithuisen Domes.
Conference in Italy
In the shorter term, Glotch and Siegler plan to attend the 10th Hutton Symposium in Italy.
Glotch is eager to discuss the work with researchers who are not planetary scientists to “get their take on this.”
He is excited by the recent planetary decadal survey, which highlighted several priorities, which include lunar research.
In his opinion, Glotch believes the survey includes more high priority lunary science than in previous such surveys.
Countries including India, China, Israel and Japan have a renewed national interest in the moon. South Korea currently has an orbiter at the moon.
All this attention makes the moon a “really good target for U.S. science to maintain our leadership position, as well as providing a tool for geopolitical cooperation,” Glotch added.
A vendor from last year's Sea Glass Festival. Photo from Cold Spring Harbor Whaling Museum
By Daniel Dunaief
One person’s old discarded glass bottle is another person’s artwork, raw material for a necklace, or artifact with a compelling historical back story.
After a well-attended debut last year, the Whaling Museum in Cold Spring Harbor is hosting its second annual Sea Glass festival on July 23rd from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The event, which attracted over 600 people in 2022, will run two hours longer than last year and will include hourly flameworking demonstrations on the lawn of the museum’s Wright House.
Last year, “we thought we’d get 30 weirdos like me who maybe like beach trash,” said Nomi Dayan, Executive Director of The Whaling Museum. “We had this huge outpouring of interest. We weren’t expecting this many people, which was the most we’ve ever had [at an event].”
Brenna McCormick-Thompson will lead a jewelry workshop at the event.
Dayan is hoping to accommodate and appeal to even more visitors at the family-friendly event with the additional two hours, numerous local exhibitors, and sea glass competitions for best in show, most unusual and best historical piece.
General admission for the festival is $15 in advance and $20 at the door. Attendees can also register in advance for a Sea Glass and Wire Wrapping Workshop, which costs $25 in advance and, if there’s room, $30 at the door. Participants 12 and over will learn how to secure sea glass and design their own necklace. Materials, including sea glass, copper and silver wire and leather lanyard, are included.
Brenna McCormick-Thompson, Curator of Education at the museum, will help lead the workshop. People will “leave will new skills and completed pieces of jewelry,” McCormick-Thompson said. “It’s nice when you have an audience that’s just as excited to learn new things as you are.”
Gina Van Bell, Assistant Director at the Museum, suggested the festival was a “family event” and said she hoped adults brought their children to learn about the history of sea glass. The museum is featuring presentations, a glass-themed scavenger hunt and crafts throughout the day which are included with admission.
Sea glass color and aging
Mary McCarthy
Mary McCarthy, Executive Director of the Beachcombing Center who has been beach combing for 20 years, will help people identify sea glass by color during talks at noon and 2 p.m. People can “date glass based on a certain shade” of blue, for example, said McCarthy, who is based in Maryland and has over 30,000 Instagram followers interested in her insights, pictures and finds.
In a photo she shared of colored glass, McCarthy said the oldest color is a dark, olive green that is nearly black, which is referred to as “black glass” and is nicknamed “pirate glass.” Those finds were produced before or near the turn of the 18th century.
Combing beaches and finding unexpected artifacts left from earlier generations offers its own rewards. “People find mental health or inner peace in the search,” McCarthy said. “Searching a coastline is a sacred process. People can find things that are meaningful to them personally, but also historically.”
She has seen pieces of glass made in occupied Japan, from the Prohibition era, and from other time periods. On a recent kayaking trip to a coastal landfill near a major city on the east coast, she found an Abraham Lincoln paperweight. For McCarthy, the discovery is among her top five favorite finds.
When she’s not presenting, McCarthy, who will serve as a judge on the Sea Glass of the Year contest, will also help people identify their own sea glass discoveries.
She isn’t surprised by the enthusiastic response to the Whaling Museum’s festival. “I’ve attended festivals with over 10,000 people, where people wait in line for an hour to have sea glass identified,” she said.
George William Fisher
Meanwhile, at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., George William Fisher, author and local expert on antique bottles, will present the Origins of Sea Glass: Beverage Bottles and Medicine Bottles, including milk and condiment bottles.
This year, Fisher will focus on beverages through the ages, going back to the early 1840s. He will explore the evolution of design, including a look at bottles from the 1920’s.
One of his favorite bottles is an Emerson Bromo-Seltzer bottle, which counteracted the effect of digestive problems caused by a lack of refrigeration.
Attendees at his talks can handle objects, although guests can look at some of the more expensive findings without touching them.
While wending their way around local sea glass vendors, visitors can explore the museum and can listen to a live musical performance by The Royal Yard, as Stuart Markus and Robin Grenstine showcase sea shanties by the sea shore.
The Big Black Food Truck will also serve food in front of the museum. Last year, the truck offered a peanut butter and chicken sandwich, which Van Bell described as “surprisingly delicious.”
Visitors can also partake in candy made to look like sea glass.
Festival origins
The sea glass festival started when Dayan surveyed some of the 6,000 items in the museum’s collection. Some of her favorites include 19th century glass bottles. The museum had hosted glass workshops at the end of December.
Even though sea glass doesn’t have a link to whaling, Dayan was pleased to see the historic connection visitors made to their findings and to the glass that the ocean reshapes and polishes. The museum is “about illuminating a rich connection to the ocean that surrounds us,” she said. Sea glass provides an “artistic way to do that.”
The Whaling Museum is located at 301 Main Street in Cold Spring Harbor. To purchase tickets to the Sea Glass Festivalor to reserve a spot for the workshop, visit www.cshwhalingmuseum.org. For more information, call 631-367-3418.
Clare Flynn conducts a census count of gentoo penguins at Neko Harbour in Antarctica in January 2023.
By Daniel Dunaief
Humans may have nothing on penguins when it comes to viral marketing. Almost immediately after the Covid pandemic shut down tourism in parts of Antarctica, some gentoo penguins likely altered their choice of nesting sites.
Clare Flynn with her award- winning poster at the Pacific Seabird Group annual meeting in Feb. 2023. Photo by William Kennerly
As if the penguins got an avian email alert indicating that tourists eager to send a post card from the only post office in Antarctica weren’t coming, these flightless birds quickly divvied up desirable real estate, which, for a gentoo penguin, means bare rock on which they make nests out of pebbles.
“Antarctica is seen as a mostly pristine place where humans have very little impact,” said Clare Flynn, a PhD student in the lab of Heather Lynch, the Institute for Advanced Computational Sciences Endowed Chair for Ecology & Evolution at Stony Brook University.
Flynn used a combination of ground counts from researchers and drone footage to tally the nests during the Covid years. Based on these numbers, she concluded that tourism has been “depressing the population sizes at Port Lockroy” and nearby Jougla Point.
The study suggests that even limited human visits to remote locations can alter decisions by wildlife, affecting the kind of reproductive choices that could, over time and with greater numbers of people coming, affect population sizes.
Pomona College Biology Professor Nina Karnovsky, who is an undergraduate thesis advisor and mentor for Flynn but didn’t participate in this research, suggested that this kind of analysis highlights the need for greater awareness of human influence.
“It shows that people even visiting the colony can have impacts,” Karnovsky said. “Tourism is a double-edged sword. You want people to experience Antarctica and see how precious life there is.” At the same time, researchers don’t want any such visits to have negative side effects.
Nest numbers
The number of penguin nests in Port Lockroy surged to 978 in the 2021/ 2022 breeding season. That is considerably higher than the 535 nesting pairs in the 2018/2019 season, according to data compiled and analyzed by Flynn. What’s more, when the post office returned to normal operations, bringing back tourists in 2022 and 2023, the nest number at Port Lockroy returned to its earlier levels, at 529.
The overall number of nesting gentoo penguins didn’t change dramatically in a cluster of gentoo penguin colonies around Wiencke Island during Covid, as many of these birds likely shifted their breeding locations from nearby sites that don’t have as much human activity, such as Damoy Point.
“It’s shocking how quickly [the changed nesting sites] happened,” Flynn said, occurring over the course of two years, not generations. “Tourism is just ramping up when the penguins are choosing nesting sites.” The shifting nest sites accounted for most of the increase in Port Lockroy and Jougla Point. Some of the gentoo penguins who may have skipped a breeding season, however, also might have decided to give it a go amid the pandemic closure.
Post office attraction
Flynn and Lynch have a few theories about what caused these nesting patterns.
Flynn suggested the nesting sites at Damoy Point and Dorian Beacon, where the number of nesting colonies declined during the lockdown, may have been close to carrying capacity, which means that prospective penguin parents found the equivalent of No Vacancy signs when they searched for places to build their nest.
Sites near the post office were not at carrying capacity prior to the pandemic. From visual inspection of the drone images, these sites had available bare rock, which is a limiting factor for gentoo penguins.
Flynn believes that pedestrian traffic may have dissuaded penguins from creating nests.
Human disturbance
Boat traffic may also be dissuading gentoo penguins from nesting. While there is a limit to the number of people who can land at any given time, people often cruise around the area in zodiacs, which increases the noise and could create a physical barrier for swimming penguins.
Last month, Lynch brought Flynn’s analysis of nesting numbers during the pandemic to the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting in Finland. Policy makers are considering implementing a no-wake zone in Port Lockroy harbor as a first step to reduce disturbance.
While the number of nests typically varies by year at these sites, the dramatic increases and decreases lie outside that normal range, Flynn said. She called the numbers “eye popping,” as Port Lockroy had the largest population size ever recorded in 2021/ 2022 and Jougla Point saw the largest population size in 2021/2022 in over 20 years. Damoy Point and Dorian Beacon, by contrast, had huge drops.
Understanding the effects of tourism is becoming increasingly important, particularly as the appetite for travel to this area increases.
While gentoo penguins are doing well overall, an increase in the kind of tourism that exists at Port Lockroy could affect their breeding success.
“We need to understand how increasing levels of tourism affect these species so that the effects in conjunction with climate change effects don’t cause a disaster” for several penguin species, Flynn added.
Rewarding pivot
Flynn hadn’t intended to study the effects of Covid on the gentoo penguin. Instead, she was using drone images to identify whether penguins nested in the same place from one year to the next.
While Flynn was annotating images from 2018 through 2021, Lynch noticed the changes at Port Lockroy during those years. After Flynn took a deeper dive into the numbers, she made a new poster just one week before presenting her results at the Pacific Seabird Group annual meeting in February.
The “exhausting” effort, as Flynn put it, paid off, as she won runner up honors for best PhD poster at the conference. She has since sent the results out to Biological Conservation for publication.
Ecology spark
Flynn grew up near Baltimore and attended Pomona College, where she anticipated exploring her interest in math. She switched her focus to ecology. An ecology and evolution class she took with Karnovsky cemented her decision and brought her into the world of seabirds.
Karnovsky recalled how Flynn “loved collecting data,” which, in Southern California is “not a walk in the park, literally.” Flynn had to contend with cactus and poison ivy on an owl project.
Karnovsky believes her former student could “go on and do great things in this field.”
At one point about five years ago, Karnovsky told Flynn she might “go to Antarctica one day to study penguins,” Flynn recalled. At the time, Flynn thought the idea sounded “crazy.”
Karnovsky’s suggestion about Flynn’s future was less crazy than it was prescient.
When she’s not following her research calling, Flynn enjoys following recipes. She makes baked goods and is particularly fond of a blueberry muffin recipe she found in Bon Appétit magazine. Instead of putting in too many blueberry, which sink in the muffin, she makes a blueberry compote and sprinkles lemon zest sugar on top.
As for her future, Flynn hasn’t decided on a post PhD plan. This could include becoming a professor or pursuing a data science career.
“I could see her becoming a really wonderful professor because she also sees mentoring as really important,” Karnovsky said.
Better yet, picture 100 drinking vessels, all of different sizes, lined up next to each across a long table.
Now, on a cold day, when you’re not that thirsty but could use something to warm your hands, you might choose a mug that allows heat to bring comfort against a cold wind and frigid temperatures.
On a hot day, when you’re running, gardening or watching your child play yet another sporting event, you might choose an insulated cup that has plenty of ice cold water. That container also might have condensation on the outside, which could give your palms a respite from the pools of sweat clinging to them.
When you’re handing your two-year-old a cup filled with milk, soy milk, water or juice, the container likely has a lid and a drinking attachment.
These cups can all be different sizes and shapes, can serve various purposes and can hold different amounts of liquid.
Even before you touch one of them or take a sip, no matter how eager you are for the liquid inside, you can imagine the feel of the cup in your hand, and you can gauge just how much your mouth and body can expect. You’re likely to take small sips of a scalding cup of hot chocolate, while you might down eight ounces of iced cold water in a matter of seconds.
What would you do if you had a cup mismatch?
Let’s say you were incredibly thirsty after a long run on a mid-July day when you pushed yourself to go further or faster than you had in months. Instead of a tall glass filled with water or a water bottle, you take out a shot glass. The water might be just as cold, but the amount could leave you wanting more and disappointed, even before you lift that small glass to your lips.
At various points in life, the size of the glass (OK, now I’m speaking figuratively) from which we drink doesn’t align with our expectations or hopes.
We want a day, an interaction, or an outing that fills a large cup, and, yet, the lived experience falls short of our hopes.
As a barometer of our expectations, the cup, like the small shot glass filled with barely enough water to wet our parched lips, can feel like it’s too small, leaving us disappointed and thirsty.
As we go through life, we, our friends, and our family members experience times – after a storm, amid a physical or mental health crisis, after leaving a satisfying job, to name a few – when the size of the cup, as a measure of the expected dose of happiness, coherence, joy, or meaning, falls short.
Those tough times become disheartening. We might lose faith or feel slighted or cheated. We need more to fill our cup.
While we can seek to fill the largest cup around with successes, accomplishments, support, and affection, we can also rethink the container.
A small child pouring water into a Dixie cup, for example, might be incredibly successful if a few drops make it.
As adults, the juxtaposition of our daily expectations against our experiences can dictate our mood and reflect our evaluation of the quality of the day. When something happens that reduces the likelihood of our achieving or enjoying our lives, we can feel like we’re holding a frustratingly empty cup that we have little prospect of filling.
Instead of being disappointed, we might consider reaching for a different container. I’m not suggesting that we aim low or that we stop striving for personal achievement and growth.
A smaller cup, however, breaks the iconic model of the optimistic half-full cup or the pessimistic half-empty container. Instead, we can choose to fill a smaller cup.
Over time, we can increase the size of the cup, filling it each time until it runs over.
This process might restore our sense of accomplishment and help us appreciate what we have and not lament what’s missing.
As life changes, we can redefine what we need to feel fulfilled.
From left, Sam Kleeman, Assistant Professor Tobias Janowitz, Miriam Ferrer Gonzalez and Emma Davidson. Photo by Caryn Koza/CSHL
Sam Kleeman at Lake Tahoe
Sam Kleeman in front of a sequoia grove at Yosemite.
By Daniel Dunaief
This is part 2 of a two-part series.
Cancers not only compromise human health, but they can also suppress the body’s immune response. A little studied small protein called cystatin C, which is secreted by numerous cells, may render the immune system less effective in its response to tumors.
Sam Kleeman, a PhD student in Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Assistant Professor Tobias Janowitz’s lab, recently published results in the journal Cell Genomics that demonstrate a link between elevated levels of this protease inhibitor, the suppression of the immune system, and the development of cancer.
Kleeman was able to demonstrate a potential role “Cystatin C might play in damping down the immune response to tumors,” he said.
Cystatin C is a known cysteine protease inhibitor, but the biological and organ-level relevance of this has not been characterized in detail. This protein could be one of many mechanisms by which glucocorticoids can reduce the effectiveness of the immune system.
Cystatin C could drive the progression of the disease, which could explain why Kleeman has found evidence that higher levels coordinate with worse outcomes.
Starting with the data
Pursuing an interest in data- driven research, Kleeman, who has a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery from New College at the University of Oxford, searched the UK Biobank, which provides health data for numerous people in the United Kingdom.
In this Biobank, Kleeman, who joined Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in August of 2020, found that cystatin C was the best prognostic indicator of cancer deaths.
“I was a little surprised by this,” Kleeman said as he had heard of cystatin C as a marker of kidney function, but was not aware of any association with cancer mortality. Some studies had found evidence for this previously, but those were in small cohorts and were poorly understood, he explained.
A healthy kidney clears most proteins quickly, pumping it out into urine. A kidney that’s not functioning optimally, however, allows it to accumulate.
In his research, Kleeman removed cystatin C selectively in cancer cells, causing the tumors to grow more slowly. The main changes in the architecture of the tumor was that it reduced the frequency of macrophages with expression of a protein called Trem2. While the exact mechanism is not known, it’s likely that immune control of the tumor increases without cystatin C.
Kleeman also demonstrated a similar effect on the connection between levels of Covid-19 and mortality in a paper published in iScience.
The biological mechanism explaining the correlation is nuanced. Patients with higher levels of glucocorticoids can be associated with poor outcomes. It is not a simple relationship, he said, which makes causality difficult to assess.
Kleeman believes cystatin C secretion in response to glucocorticoids has context dependency. Not all cells posses inducible cystatin C secretion.
The research primarily found that only macrophages and cancer cells can secrete cystatin C in response to glucocorticoids.
He describes a “two hit” model, by which glucocorticoids plus an inflammatory stimulus recruit macrophages. The model applies to all inflammatory stores, but is co-opted in the case of cancer.
At this point, drugs aren’t available to inhibit or reduce cystatin C. Instead, Kleeman suggested that a viable research target route might involve creating a specific antibody.
Some researchers have created so-called knockout mice, which don’t have this protein. These mice can survive without it, although eliminating all cystatin C creates other problems.
Kleeman speculated that the protein could play a role in preventing significant immune reaction against sperm.
Indeed, this protein is secreted at high levels in the testes. Males without it have lower sperm function and production.
Kleeman hopes this work acts as a starting point to understand the mechanism better by which glucocorticoids modify immune response to cancer, and to investigate cystatin C as a possible therapeutic target.
Long standing partnership
As an undergraduate, Kleeman took a class with Janowitz, which kicked off a mentorship that now spans two continents.
Kleeman appreciates the comfort level Janowitz has in working on higher-risk, higher-reward topics or on ideas that haven’t already attracted considerable attention from other scientists.
“There’s a tendency in science towards group think,” Kleeman said. In the history of medicine and science, many widely accepted theories turn out to be wrong. “Patients undoubtedly benefit from a diversity of thought in science and medicine,” he explained.
When he completes his PhD, Kleeman said it would be a “dream to have a dual appointment” in which he could conduct research and work in the clinic with patients. To get there, he knows he needs to establish his research profile that includes a genuine track record of achievement while demonstrating that he can function as a reliable and effective clinician.
Kleeman’s thesis research lies outside the field of cystatin C, which started out as a curiosity and developed into the recent publication. He wanted to “understand what UK Biobank could teach us about cancer patients.” With Janowitz and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Professor Hiro Furukawa, Kleeman is working to understand how a specific type of cancer could cause an auto-immune disease.
A resident of Forest Hills, Kleeman lives about 45 minutes from the lab. Outside of work, he enjoys visiting national parks. He has visited 10 so far, including Yosemite National Park, Zion and Rocky Mountain National Park.
Professionally, Kleeman feels it is a privilege to be a PhD student. He appreciates that he can explore his interests without too many restrictions and is eager to make the most of the opportunity.
Yes, sometimes, I’m an annoying morning person, ready to poke my wife in the arm, kiss her cheek, or play peek-a-boo with a son who can barely open his heavy lids to notice me.
No, my son is not two, and yet, I still have the urge to smile at him and play games in the morning.
I’m the lone morning wolf in my family. Even my dog, who is as far from a wolf as a dog could be, sometimes closes his eyes tightly when I get up too early for him, hoping I’ll go away or, maybe, I won’t see him. No matter how much his fur blends in with the carpet, it’s impossible not to notice a 95-pound dog.
On the other end of the circadian spectrum, I start to fade early each day. Surrounded by family and friends, much of the time, who enjoy late-night snacks, conversations, giggle fests, and games, I can barely keep my head up and my eyes open.
“You look so tired,” someone will say at about 10 p.m.
“Huh?” I’ll respond, trying to figure out if they’re talking to me. “Oh, yeah, well, I got up early today.”
I get up early almost every day. Getting up late for me means climbing out of bed after 8 am.
I’d like to alter my circadian clock sometimes, but I can’t.
Sensing my imminent departure into dreamland, my wife sometimes asks me a question or two at the utterly reasonable hour of 10:30 pm. I do my best to pick up my head and offer a coherent answer, knowing that the top few floors of my cognitive team have packed up, turned off the lights and tucked themselves in for the night.
The balance between the morning and night person in our marriage means that one of us can handle whatever time-sensitive needs or responsibilities might arise throughout the day. We have shifts.
When we go out on dates, which we can do on any given night as empty nesters, we typically lean towards the earlier side for our outings. The other diners at the early bird special are often decades older than we, although we also sometimes eat with families who have young children.
Our circadian differences extend to the seasons as well. I love the winter, when the sun isn’t too bright, and the air is cooler. Skiing is one of my favorite sports.
My wife, naturally, revels in the summer sun, basking in the extra sunlight each day and soaking up the warmth of the midday sun.
These seasonal differences also mean that one of us often feels energized and inspired by the season. With my wife dressed in numerous layers, we can take a stroll in cooler weather.
During those days when the sun bakes the sidewalk, and the humid air weighs on my shoulders, I can carry ice water or my wife can obligingly dump a welcome ice cube down my back.
Apart from the bookends of each day, we find times when we can give each other our best, reveling in the accomplishments of our children, observing the absurdities of life, and laughing at the differences in approaches to play between our dog and cats.
Even as we are in the middle of my wife’s favorite season, I enjoy the summer more than I otherwise would, knowing that she’s fulfilled and, when I need it, ready to search for a comforting ice cube sometime around mid-afternoon, when I prepare to pass the baton towards her favorite time of day.
From left, Sam Kleeman, Assistant Professor Tobias Janowitz, Miriam Ferrer Gonzalez and Emma Davidson. Photo by Caryn Koza/CSHL
By Daniel Dunaief
This part one of a two part series.
It’s a bit like shaking corn kernels over an open flame. At first, the kernels rustle around in the bag, making noise as they heat up, preparing for the metamorphosis.
That’s what can happen in any of the many laboratories scattered throughout Long Island, as researchers pursue their projects with support, funding and guidance from lab leaders or, in the science vernacular, principal investigators.
Sometimes, as happened recently at the benches of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Assistant Professor Tobias Janowitz, several projects can pop at around the same time, producing compelling results, helping advance the careers of developing scientists and leading to published papers.
PhD graduate Miriam Ferrer Gonzalez and MD/ PhD student Sam Kleeman recently published separate studies.
In an email, Janowitz suggested the work for these papers is “time consuming and requires a lot of energy.” He called the acceptance of the papers “rewarding.”
In a two-part series, Times Beacon Record News Media will describe the research from each student. This week, the focus is on Ferrer Gonzalez. Check back next week for a profile of the work of Kleeman.
Miriam Ferrer Gonzalez
Miriam Ferrer Gonzalez. Photo by Caryn Koza/CSHL
Miriam Ferrer Gonzalez was stuck. She had two results, but couldn’t seem to figure out how to connect them. First, in a mouse model of the ketogenic diet — heavy on fats, without including carbohydrates —cancer tumors shrunk. That was the good news.
The bad news, which was even more pronounced than the good, was that this diet was not only starving the tumors, but was triggering an earlier onset of cachexia, in which bodies weaken and waste away. The cachexia overpowered the mice, causing them to die sooner than if they had a normal diet.
Ferrer, a student in residence from Spain who was conducting her research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory while earning her PhD at the University of Cambridge in the UK, thought the two discoveries were paradoxically uncoupled. A lower tumor burden, she reasoned, should have been beneficial.
In presenting and discussing her findings internally to the lab group, Ferrer received the kind of feedback that helped her hone in on the potential explanation.
“Finding out the mechanism by which a ketogenic diet was detrimental for both the body and the cancer was the key to explaining this uncoupling,” Ferrer explained.
The adrenal glands of mice fed a ketogenic diet were not producing the necessary amount of the hormone corticosterone to sustain survival. She validated this broken pathway when she discovered higher levels of corticosterone precursors that didn’t become functional hormones.
To test this hypothesis, she gave mice dexamethasone, which boosted their corticosterone levels. These mice had slower growing tumors and longer lives.
Ferrer recently published her paper in the journal Cell Metabolism.
To date, the literature on the ketogenic diet and cancer has been “confusing,” she said, with studies that show positive and negative effects.
“In our study, we go deeper to explain the mechanism rather than only talking about glucose-dependency of cancer cells and the use of nutritional interventions that deprive the tumor of glucose,” said Ferrer. She believed those factors are contributing to slower tumor growth, but are not solely responsible.
Thus far, there have been case studies with the ketogenic diet shrinking tumors in patients with cancer and, in particular, with glioblastoma, but no one has conducted a conclusive clinical trial on the ketogenic diet.
Researchers have reported on the beneficial effects of this diet on epilepsy and other neurological diseases, but cancer results have been inconclusive.For the experiments in Janowitz’s lab, Ferrer and technician Emma Davidson conducted research on mouse models.
Ferrer, who is the first author on the paper, has been working with this system for about four years. Davidson, who graduated from the College of Wooster in Ohio last year and is applying to MD and MD/PhD programs, contributed to this effort for about a year.
Next steps
From left, Emma Davidson, Assistant Professor Tobias Janowitz, Sam Kleeman and Miriam Ferrer Gonzalez. Photo by Caryn Koza/CSHL
Now that she earned her PhD, Ferrer is thinking about the next steps in her career and is considering different institutions across the country. Specifically, she’s interested in eating behavior, energy homeostasis, food intake and other metabolic parameters in conditions of stress. She would also like to focus on how hormonal cycles in women affect their eating behavior.
Originally from a small city in Spain called Lleida, which is in the western part of Catalonia, Ferrer appreciated the opportunity to learn through courses and conferences at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
Until she leaves the lab in the next few months, Ferrer plans to work with Davidson to prepare her to take over the project for the next year.
The follow up experiments will include pharmacologically inducing ferroptosis of cancer cells in mice fed a ketogenic diet. They hope to demonstrate that early induction of ferroptosis, or a type of programmed cell death, prevents tumor growth and prevents the tumor-induced reprogramming of the rest of the body that causes cachexia.
These experiments will involve working with mice that have smaller and earlier tumors than the ones in the published paper. In addition, they will combine a ketogenic diet, dexamethasone and a ferroptosis inducing drug, which they didn’t use in the earlier experiments.
Janowitz has partnered with Ferrer since 2018, when she conducted her master’s research at the University of Cambridge. As the most senior person in Janowitz’s lab, Ferrer has helped train many of the people who have worked in his lab. She has found mentoring rewarding and appreciates the opportunity to invest in people like Davidson.
Ferrer, who is planning a wedding in Spain in September, is a fitness and wellness fan and has taken nutrition courses. She does weight lifting and running.
Ferrer’s parents don’t have advanced educational degrees and they supported their three children in their efforts to earn their degrees.
“I wanted to be the best student for my parents,” said Ferrer, who is the middle child. She “wanted to make my parents proud.
The hand off
Emma Davidson and Miriam Gonzalez Ferrer examine an adrenal gland sample section from a cachectic mouse. Photo by Caryn Koza/CSHL
For her part, Davidson is looking forward to addressing ways to implement further treatment methods with a ketogenic diet and supplemental glucocorticoids to shrink tumors and prevent cachexia.
Davidson appreciated how dependable Ferrer was during her time in the lab. Just as importantly, she admired how Ferrer provided a “safe area to fail.”
At one point, Davidson had taken all the cells she was planning to use to inject in mice. Ferrer reminded her to keep some in stock.
“Open lines of communication have been very beneficial to avoid more consequential failures,” Davidson said, ”as this mistake would have been.”
Davidson developed an interest in science when she took a high school class called Principles in Biological Science and Human Body Systems. When she was learning about the cardiovascular system, her grandfather had a heart attack. In speaking with doctors, Davidson acted as a family translator, using the language she had studied to understand what doctors were describing.
Like Ferrer, Davidson lives an active life. Davidson is preparing for the Jones Beach Ironman Triathlon in September, in which she’ll swim 1.2 miles, bike 56 miles and run a half marathon. She plans to train a few hours during weekdays and even more on weekends for a competition she expects could take about six hours to complete.
Davidson started training for these events with her father Mark, an independent technology and operations consultant and owner of Exoro Consulting Group.
Longer term, Davidson is interested in medicine and research. After she completes her education, she will try to balance between research and clinical work.
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