Shhh. Listen. If what you hear is nothing, then maybe you’re onto something.
Noise envelops us. Some of it, like the sound of a Broadway musical, the waterfall laughter of a giggling child, or the deep resonant breath of a humpback whale surfacing amid floating cubes of ice in Alaska can give us peace, pleasure and joy.
Many noises, however, are irritants or worse. We step out of a loud airplane onto a jetway, where loudspeakers announce the boarding in group four of a flight awaiting takeoff. We walk through a crowded airport, as fathers shout to their children, a woman calls to ask Breanne if she “wants fries with her burger,” and a man informs his wife that he “has to pee so badly that he’s not sure he’s going to make it.”
We step outside of the airport, where whistles from people directing traffic echo in our ears and where officials in orange vests bark orders at drivers to “vacate this spot immediately!”
We try to ignore many of the harsher and more abrasive sounds, even though our nervous system tracks noises as a way to protect us in case someone yells something we need to hear.
And then there are those wonderful moments when we hear nothing, not even the buzzing of a lightbulb, a dog drinking in the next room, or a cat cleaning himself on a nearby chair.
Silence.
If it lasts long enough, it’s the pause that refreshes, giving our ears a rest and our brains a chance to hear an inner voice that might otherwise get lost.
We can find those moments when we’re on our own. When we’re surrounded by others, the silence is harder to discover, as we either speak or hear the noises they make as they unwrap a newspaper, chew their gum, or shake their leg up and down so rapidly that the material from their pants makes a repetitive rubbing sound.
But then, we can go to a meditation or yoga class or a religious or memorial service and reflect with others who sit still like a slope of shaded stones in an Ansel Adams photo.
During those moments, we can slow our breathing, think beyond the constant fast twitch need to act and react to our phones, and can allow our minds to make unexpected connections.
During one of those recent times, I pondered symmetry in nature, where you can draw a line down the middle of something like our faces, and see that the image on one side, excluding freckles, beauty marks, and that scar from the time we tripped and got stitches, is incredibly similar to the one on the other.
With so much chaos in nature, I wouldn’t expect such symmetry. At a distance, most leaves have remarkable symmetry, as do the shape of most animals. Human designs often have a pleasing symmetry, with windows, flying buttresses and A-frame houses looking remarkably similar on the left and right. Almost every field or arena for a sporting event has some symmetry, except for those with irregular outfield fences.
During a recent service, I enjoyed time when I couldn’t look at my phone and when I could read religious text. I haven’t considered these texts in a while and was drawn in by their drama and story value, as opposed to the spiritual and life guidance I often imagine. Basic struggles for power, sibling rivalries, and the search for food and stability dominate these narratives, which makes it clear why religion (and mythology) continue to offer connections for people whose lives, at least on the surface, are considerably different from the ones people lived lo those many years ago.
Ultimately, silence can be refreshing, giving us auditory time and space to reflect and to clean a cognitive filter cluttered with chaos and cacophony.
As Erin Brockovich (the real life version and the one played by Julia Roberts in the eponymous movie) discovered, some metals, such as hexavalent chromium can cause cancer in humans.
Chengfeng Yang and Zhishan Wang
Environmental exposure to a range of chemicals, such as hexavalent chromium, benzo(a)pyrene, arsenic, and others, individually and in combination, can lead to health problems, including cancer.
Recently, Stony Brook University hired Chengfeng Yang and Zhishan Wang, a husband and wife team to join the Cancer Center and the Pathology Departments from Case Western Reserve University in Ohio.
The duo, who have their own labs and share equipment, resources and sometimes researchers, are seeking to understand the epigenetic effect exposure to chemicals has on the body. Yang focuses primarily on hexavalent chromium, while Wang works on the mechanism of mixed exposures.
In part one, TBR News Media highlights the work of Wang. Next week, we will feature the efforts of Yang.
——————————-
In certain areas and specific job sites, people can be exposed to environmental pollutants.
Sometimes, the introduction of a metal or element can cause cancer after long term exposure. The effect of another carcinogen can be synergistic in triggering disease, triggering a stronger progression of cancer than an individual exposure alone.
Zhishan Wang, who joined Stony Brook in March and is a Professor of Research in the Department of Pathology, is trying to understand what changes this mixed exposure creates at a molecular level.
“If we find out some gene or pathway change, we can try to intervene,” said Wang, who is a member of the Stony Brook Cancer Center and earned MD and PhD degrees from her native China.
Among the many possible environmental triggers, Wang chose to study arsenic, which is common in rock soil and water and is present in some places in drinking water.
“People living in high exposure areas to arsenic and [who] are also cigarette smokers have a significantly higher risk of lung cancer,” she said.
Arsenic can cause three different kinds of cancer: skin, bladder and lung cancer. For skin cancer, Wang explained that direct contact can lead to the kind of irritation that promotes the disease.
As the heavy metal works its way through the body, parts of it get excreted through the urine system, which means that bladder cells come into contact with it as well.
For a long time, scientists knew arsenic exposure through drinking water caused lung cancer. The underlying mechanism for the development of that cancer was not well understood.
Wang’s lab studies the mechanism by which arsenic and benzo(a)pyrene (or BAP) co-exposure increases lung cancer risk. Exposure to arsenic alone causes cancer, but it takes a long time in animal models. Arsenic and BPA co-exposure significantly increases lung cancer risk.
Wang’s study showed that co-exposure increases lung tumor burden and malignancy. She plans to continue to study the mechanism of how arsenic and BAP co exposure increases lung cancer risk.
“That’s our big goal: to try to find some useful method to prevent this tumor from happening,” she said.
Wang believes the cancer cells caused by the mixed exposure increases the number of cancer stem cell-like cells, which could mediate therapeutic resistance.
Wang explained that generating the mouse model took considerable time and effort. She tried to find the exposures during particular windows of time that lead to cancer.
“By using this model, we can do a lot of data analysis” including single cell analysis and can determine which cluster or pathway will change.
Choosing SBU
Wang suggested she and her husband chose Stony Brook for several reasons. The couple would like to help the University earn a National Cancer Institute (NCI) designation, which would give scientists the ability to compete for ambitious, well-funded, multidisciplinary efforts.
Both Wang and Yang “lead NCI-funded research programs that will enhance the [Cancer Center’s] eligibility for NCI designation,” explained Kenneth Shroyer, chair of the Pathology Department at Stony Brook.
Shroyer, who described both researchers as “highly competitive candidates with the potential to enhance the status of any cancer center,” is looking forward to working with his newest recruits.
Wang is eager to use the tissue bank at Stony Brook, which Shroyer explained has also attracted other cancer research scientists recruited to the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook.
The new scientists also hope to tap into the expertise at nearby Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, which has become one of the leading centers in creating organoids.
In the early years of her training during her MD and PhD years in China, Wang developed her technical skills. Through her career, she has worked on several genes that play important roles in carcinogenesis. Down regulation of the gene known as SOCS3, for suppressor of cytokine signaling 3, plays an important role in arsenic and BAP co-exposure caused lung tumorigenesis.
Early in their careers, Wang worked in her husband’s lab for seven years until she received her own research funding.
Outside of work, Wang enjoys playing badminton and ping pong. She also cooks every day. She and her husband bring her home cooked meals to work.
When she was in high school, Wang had ambitions to become a writer. Her teachers regularly read her work out loud to the class.
Her father, who was a lawyer, had encouraged her to join the legal profession. She had heard that people called others “smart” when they joined the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. “I want people to call me smart,” she said, so she changed her career and went to medical school at Tongji Medical University where she earned top scores.
Her father had a stroke, surviving afterwards for seven years. When she was in medical school, Wang hoped to learn ways to help him. Wishing she could have done more, she pursued clinical research in the lab. She passed the tests to become a practicing physician in the United States, but she was more inspired to work as a scientist.
As for her work at Stony Brook University, Wang appreciates the beauty of Long Island. She hopes this is their “last move,” as they continue their careers.
While for now, the pandemic is officially in the rearview mirror, according to the World Health Organization, it’s worth considering what we can and can’t blame on COVID-19. For starters, here are a few things that aren’t the fault of the pandemic.
— A favorite sports team’s defeat. Every team had to deal with COVID-19. The pandemic didn’t affect my team’s best athletes any more than any other team’s stars.
— The weather. It’s going to rain, and it’s going to be too hot and too cold. That happened before the pandemic, and it’s going to happen afterward. Global warming, if anything, might have slowed slightly as more people stayed home each day.
— Unrequited love. Authors throughout history have found this topic particularly appealing. A would-be romantic goes out into the world with a proverbial heart filled with affection and admiration. Cupid hits that person with an arrow, creating a wellspring of dedication and devotion toward someone who doesn’t return the favor. The pandemic might have made it harder to know where we stood with each other, but unrequited love will continue to cause problems and lead to sad-but-relatable romantic comedies.
— Bad grades. We all have moments when we don’t study enough, the right way, or even the right material. The pandemic might have made it harder to focus or to care about theorems or memorizing dates, but it’s not the fault of the virus. It might have been tougher to concentrate in those early days, with dogs barking, parents yelling into Zoom calls, and people dropping off food at our front door.
— Anger in Washington. This is one of the easiest to dispel. Did you pay any attention to the vitriol coming out of the nation’s capital before 2019? It’s not as if the parties suddenly decided fighting each other was more valuable than getting anything done or compromising. The words under the Washington DC license plate shouldn’t read “taxation without representation,” which refers to the fact that residents pay taxes but don’t have federal representation. Instead, it should read: “Grrrrrrrrrrr!”
— Biased journalism. As a member of the media, I understand the frustration with the written and spoken words on TV and in print. The left hates Trump; the right hates Biden and ne’er the ‘twain shall meet. The pandemic didn’t pour gasoline on that dumpster fire. Media organizations staked out their territory prior to the pandemic and have remained more faithful to their talking points than many people do to their own marriage vows.
Okay, now, what about the things we can blame on the pandemic.
— Mental health strain. While the pandemic may be gone, we haven’t wrapped our arms around the mental health impact. We spent way too much time on our phones, making us feel simultaneously connected and disconnected while the pool of frustration continues to get deeper.
— Educational gaps. Students will never get back those days and the lessons they missed during the pandemic. Classes condensed their syllabi, lowering requirements and expectations for each class and for graduation. Students of all ages missed lessons and assignments that might have inspired them and that would have helped them reach previous educational requirements.
— Social graces. A first-grade teacher recently told me that their school still can’t bring all the first-grade classes together. When they do, the students argue about resources and space. Prior to the pandemic, students from several classes could easily play together. Hopefully, that will change as the students age and fill in gaps in their ability to interact.
Even as we hope to move past the pandemic, we can’t ignore the difficult reality, forcing parents, teachers, children and members of society to relearn lessons about acting and interacting. No, we can’t take cues from Washington, but maybe we can overcome deficiencies exacerbated by the pandemic.
It sounds like something straight out of a superhero origin story.
With resistance to widely used drugs becoming increasingly prevalent among bacteria, researchers and doctors are searching for alternatives to stem the tide.
That’s where shape shifting molecules may help. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Professor of Organic and Click Chemistry John Moses and his team have attached the drug vancomycin to a molecule called bullvalene, whose atoms readily change position and configuration through a process called a thermal sigmatropic rearrangement as atoms of carbon break and reform with other carbon atoms.
The combination of the bullvalene and vancomycin proved more effective than vancomycin alone in wax moth larva infected with vancomycin resistant Enteroccoccus bacteria.
“Can I make a molecule that changes shape and will it affect bacteria? That was the question,” Moses said. The promising early answer was, yes!
Moses believes that when the bullvalene core is connected to other groups like vancomycin, the relative positions of the drug units change, which likely change properties related to binding.
The urgency for novel approaches such as this is high, as drug resistant bacteria and fungi infect about 2.8 million people in the United States per year, killing about 35,000 of them.
In his own life, Moses said his father almost died from a bacterial infection five years ago. Vancomycin saved his father’s life, although the infection became resistant to the treatment. Other drugs, however, conquered the resistant strain.
“We need to work hard and develop new antibiotics, because, without them, there will be a lot more misery and suffering,” Moses explained.
To be sure, an approach like this that shows promise at this early stage with an insect may not make the long journey from a great idea to a new treatment, as problems such as dosage, off target effects, toxicity, and numerous other challenges might prevent such a treatment from becoming an effective remedy.
Still, Moses believes this approach, which involves the use of click chemistry to build molecules the way a child puts together LEGO blocks, can offer promising alternatives that researchers can develop and test out on a short time scale.
“We shouldn’t be restricted with one set of ideas,” Moses said. “We should keep testing hypotheses, whether they are crazy or whatever. We’ve got to find alternative pathways. We’re complementary” to the standard approach pharmaceutical companies and researchers take in drug discovery.
Looking to history, Moses explained that the founders of the Royal Society in 1660 followed the motto “nullius in verba,” or take nobody’s word for it. He believes that’s still good advice in the 21st century.
The shape shifting star
Moses has described this bullvalene as a Rubik’s Cube, with the parts moving around and confounding the bacteria and making the drug more effective.
The CSHL scientist and his team don’t know exactly why shape shifting makes the drug work in this moth model.
He speculated that the combination of two vancomycin units on either side of a bullvalene center is punching holes in the cell wall of the bacteria.
Moses is eager to try to build on these encouraging early developments. “If you can make it, then you can test it,” he said. “The sooner the better, in my opinion.”
Moses acknowledged that researchers down the road could evaluate how toxic this treatment might be for humans. It didn’t appear toxic for the wax moth larvae.
Welcoming back a familiar face
Adam Moorhouse Photo by Rebecca Koelln
In other developments in his lab, Moses recently welcomed Adam Moorhouse back to his team. Moorhouse, who serves as Chemistry Data Analyst, conducted his PhD research in Moses’s lab at the University of Oxford.
Moorhouse graduated in 2008 and went on to work in numerous fields, including as an editor for the pharmaceuticals business and for his own sales consultancy. In 2020, he had a motorcycle accident (which he said was his fault) in which he broke 16 bones and was hospitalized for a while. During his recovery, he couldn’t walk.
At the time, he was working in the intense world of sales. After the accident, Moorhouse decided to build off his volunteer work with disabled children and become a high school teacher. After about 18 months of teaching, Moorhouse reconnected with Moses.
“It’s nice getting here and thinking about chemistry and thinking about ideas and communicating those ideas,” Moorhouse said.
He has hit the ground running, contributing to grants and helping to translate intellectual property into commercial ventures.
The chance to work on projects that get molecules into humans in the clinic was “really exciting,” Moorhouse said. “I’m back to try and support that.”
Moorhouse will be working to procure funding and to build out the business side of Moses’s research efforts.
“Where I’d like to lend a hand is in driving ongoing business discussions,” Moorhouse said. He wants to “get these small molecules into the clinic so we can see if they can actually treat disease in humans.” The vehicle for that effort eventually could involve creating a commercial enterprise.
Like Moses, Moorhouse is inspired and encouraged by the opportunity for small operations like the lab to complement big pharmaceutical companies in the search for treatments.
Moses believes the work his lab has conducted has reached the stage where it’s fundable. “We’ve done something that says, ‘we checked the box,’” he said. “Let’s find out more.”
Currently living on campus at CSHL, Moorhouse appreciates the opportunity to do some bird watching on Long Island, where some of his favorites include woodpeckers, herons, egrets, robins and mockingbirds.
He is tempted to get back on a motorcycle and to return to mountain biking.
As for his work, Moorhouse is excited to be a part of Moses’s lab.
“Back in my PhD days, [Moses] was always an idea machine,” Moorhouse said. “The aim is to move ideas to the clinic.”
Most of us engage in group movements that don’t make our day. We get in a car, sit in traffic as we wait for other cars to pass or for lights to turn green, all the while surrounded by other people doing the same thing.
Group movements start at a young age, which we witness when we stop for school buses that pick up students. A line of buses then brings those students into the parking lot.
Our entertainment and discretionary decisions follow some of the same patterns as we travel by car, bus, or train to sporting events or, in our case, recently, concerts.
And yet, the experience and the excitement we share in our interactions are markedly different.
My wife and I attended a recent performance by Janet Jackson as a part of her Together Again tour.
Unlike 15 years ago when we last saw Janet Jackson at Madison Square Garden, we asked our son to take us to and from the concert. That’s one advantage of the passage of time.
We left the car about four-tenths of a mile from the arena. Walking more rapidly than the cars inching along next to us, we followed the line of people trekking along the shoulder to the entrance.
A woman leaned out of her window and asked us if we knew if the place would sell refreshments. We said we hoped so, but weren’t sure. She gave us an appreciative and friendly wave, despite the fact that we were completely unhelpful.
People wore a wide range of outfits, with some clad in T-shirts showing a younger version of Janet from earlier concerts and others adorned in dresses and high-heeled shoes.
While waiting to get inside the arena, we spoke with a couple behind us, who were celebrating their 5th wedding anniversary and her graduation from nursing school.
Once Ludacris took the stage, the crowd, which included every age group from young children to gray-haired seniors, shouted, swayed and responded to his songs.
Cooled by a light and intermittent breeze, the crowd roared its appreciation with the left side screaming at full throat to outdo the right.
A father, mother and daughter two rows ahead of us had clearly come to see Janet, sitting and eating popcorn despite Ludacris’ exhortations for everyone to stand and shout.
Before Janet took the stage, the arena displayed a photo montage from 50 years of Janet, showing the many faces of her public life.
I wasn’t tall enough to see over a man two rows in front of me. I looked around him to see the stage and the numerous screens with images of Janet and her dancers.
As I listened and watched a show in which Janet changed her wardrobe several times, I appreciated the energy such a concert must take to put on at the age of 56. She isn’t sprinting around the stage, but she still breaks into some of her iconic moves, with sweat gleaming on her forehead.
She urged the audience to turn on their phone flashlights, which created a wave of swaying bright lights along the lawn and in the seats.
While I reveled in familiar songs, I wished the heavy and loud bass and drums didn’t overwhelm Janet’s voice. I also second-hand smoked a high dose of marijuana, as the smokestack attached to the person two seats away from me must have felt as lit up as the stage by the finale.
The experience, which I shared with thousands of thrilled audience members, brought me back to the times and places where I heard these same songs decades ago. As we followed the crowd back to our cars (or, in our case, to meet our son), I could feel the glow the concert created for an appreciative audience. For a few hours, the strangers we might otherwise see as obstacles on the way to something else came together during a joyful concert.
Lou Gehrig with his teammates June 21 1939. Photographer unknown
By Daniel Dunaief
‘The greatest of all, the game which seems to breathe the restless spirit of American life, that calls for quick action and quicker thinking, that seems characteristic of a great nation itself, is baseball.’
— Photographer Charles M. Conlon, 1913
Jackie Robinson, Lou Gehrig, Yogi Berra, Babe Ruth, Roberto Clemente and pictures of numerous other legends of the baseball diamond are coming to the Long Island Museum in Stony Brook.
Starting May 18 and going through October 15, the History Museum at the LIM is featuring two baseball exhibits.
In one, called Picturing America’s Pastime, the museum is showcasing a collection of images from the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum’s Archive. In the other, called Home Fields, the museum has brought together objects and photos from the Ducks field in Central Islip, the new and old Yankee Stadium, Shea Stadium, Citi Field, Ebbets Field and the Polo Grounds. The objects come from regional private collections, including some from the Shea family for whom the home of the original Mets was named.
The museum, which charges $10 admission, is hosting a members only opening reception on June 15. Membership costs $40 for an individual and $60 for a family. At the reception, the museum will serve baseball-inspired food, including Cracker Jacks and popcorn.
Picturing America’s Pastime
In one of the pictures, photographer Charles Conlon captured a determined Ty Cobb successfully stealing third base on July 23, 1910, with the throw going by New York Highlanders third baseman Jimmy Austin. Unlike the instant gratification of modern-day digital photographs, Conlon didn’t know he caught and immortalized the moment until later, when he developed the picture.
The exhibit mixes intimate photos of heroes and legends, with a picture from an unidentified photographer of Yankee legend Lou Gehrig holding court in the dugout with his teammates on June 21, 1939 at Yankee Stadium after returning from the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. Diagnosed with amyotropic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, which is now widely known as “Lou Gehrig disease,” Gehrig gave his speech in which he declares himself “the luckiest man on the face of the Earth” 13 days after the photographer snapped the dugout picture.
“He’s having this semi-private moment with his second family,” described Joshua Ruff, the Co-Executive Director of Collections and Programming at the Long Island Museum. “It’s just amazing that somebody had the wherewithal to capture that photographically and to save that memory for us.”
The pictures also feature an image of Jackie Robinson, clad in a Montreal Royals uniform, entering the Dodgers clubhouse on April 10th, 1947, five days before Robinson became the first black player in Major League Baseball and seven years before the Supreme Court struck down segregation in public schools in Brown vs. the Board of Education. In the photo, taken by William C. Greene, Robinson is holding up a baseball glove in the air and entering a door with the words “Dodgers Club House” above and “Keep Out” below.
The pictures featured in the exhibit are “much more than about the history that’s being achieved on the field,” Ruff added.
The Picturing America’s Pastime exhibit also includes a photo of the 1920 St. Louis Giants from the Negro League, as well as the Muskegon Lassies with the team bus in 1947.
In a snapshot from Chicago’s Comiskey Park in May 1916 by an unidentified photographer, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson sits on the ground with four bats across his right knee. The photo was taken four years before Baseball Commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis banned Jackson and seven of his teammates for life from the sport for the Black Sox scandal of 1919.
The pictures also include more recent heroes, such as Japanese sensation Ichiro Suzuki, photographed by Brad Mangin in 2006 at Oakland’s McAfee Coliseum. In his trademark move before he hit, Suzuki is tugging at the right shoulder of his uniform with his left hand while holding the bat vertically in his right.
Home Fields
The Home Fields exhibit, meanwhile, features a collection of paraphernalia from local ballparks, such as a bleacher from the old Yankee Stadium, and seats from the Polo Grounds (where the Yankees and, for two years, the Mets played), Shea (home of the Mets) and Ebbets Field, where the Brooklyn Dodgers played before leaving in 1958.
The museum, which has a Derek Jeter bat from 2007, will display a World Series ring from 1969, when the Miracle Mets defeated the heavily favored, 109-win Baltimore Orioles that included stars Brooks Robinson and Jim Palmer.
A replay of seven minutes of the fifth and final game from the 1969 NBC radio broadcast will play in the background, providing ambient baseball sounds for guests. The museum is coordinating a revolving slide show of images from that game in the Home Fields exhibition.
The museum also has a piece of the outfield fence from Shea and pieces of the scoreboard from Yankee and Shea stadiums.
A private collector loaned the museum the on deck circle from 2000 subway series between the Mets and the Yankees. In that series, which was the third consecutive World Series victory for the Yankees, Yankee pitcher Roger Clemens threw a piece of Met Mike Piazza’s broken bat towards the Mets catcher as he made his way towards first on a foul ball, bringing both teams out of their dugouts.
Ruff suggested that the exhibits could spur a range of memories from fans of all ages. Born in Baltimore, he calls himself a “lifetime baseball fan” whose favorite players are Cal Ripken Jr. and Eddie Murray. He has loved attending Mets and Yankees games.
Ruff likens these two exhibitions to “playing in the sand box. Hopefully, that will be the same for people that walk through. Whether you’re a fan of the Mets, the Yankees, the Reds or whoever your team is, there’s a lot to appreciate and enjoy when you come see these shows.”
The Long Island Museum is located at 1200 Route 25A in Stony Brook. For more information, call 631-751-0066 or visit www.longislandmuseum.org.
What if my dog had opposable thumbs, understood technology, had his own phone and could, and wanted to, take pictures of me?
Yes, I know that’s a lot of “ifs,” but, given how often I take pictures of him in different lighting, rolling on his back in the grass, lifting his ears when I call for him and wagging excitedly to go in the car, I can’t help imagining the kinds of pictures he might take of me.
— Picking up poop. This one would probably be one of his favorites. Having an OCD owner, he might enjoy opening his phone and showing his pet pals how I turn my head as I reach for his solid waste. He might ask them to notice my shallow breathing and my pursed lips. He might also suggest they observe the way I pull my head back as far as my short arms allow from his poop while I try to get as much of it as possible into a bag.
— The frenetic play face. Sometimes, my excitement gets the best of me. My dog might show his friends how I purse my lips, raise my eyebrows and pull my cheeks back in an expression that looks like excitement bordering on mania. We were once sitting with another family in an already awkward social situation. When their dog came out, I instinctively made that face, causing the conversation to stop and adding to my list of awkward moments, courtesy of dad.
— The tug-of-war face. From his vantage point, I’m sure he sees me gritting my teeth as if I’m tugging with my mouth. He might point out to his pet pals, if he had a photo, that I bend my knees and make a low, growling noise to match his sounds.
— The bad doggy face. Sometimes, dogs struggle to distinguish between their toys and, say, a Derek Jeter signed baseball that either was too close to the edge of a desk or that fell on the floor. He might take out a picture that shows me pointing, stomping my feet, and shouting words that often include “no” or “don’t do that” or “bad doggy.”
— The don’t hump my leg face. The arrival of company sometimes gets the whole house excited. My dog might show his friends how his owners shake their heads, roll their eyes, frown, point and shout some combinations of the words “no” and “down” and “he doesn’t normally do this.”
— The down on all fours moment. I can imagine dogs chatting about how adorable — or maybe ridiculous — it is when their owners get down on their hands and knees to play. They might show their friends how we smile and tilt our heads as they approach. Then, of course, they might laugh as they observe how slowly we move in this position. They can cross the backyard on all fours in seconds, while we don’t stay down for long.
— The my-human-needs-a-friend face. Dogs can sense, either from the sounds we make or our body posture, when we are feeling down. My dog reacts to my tone. He jumps up, wags and throws his head into my knees when he hears me telling a story filled with conflict or when I raise my voice after hanging up after a frustrating call. In a picture, he might show me sitting at my desk, shoulders slumped, with my head down and my eyes nearly closed. In that picture, he might brag to his fellow dogs about his value as a companion.
— The my-human’s-team-just-won face: Pets probably find sports somewhere between amusing and unnerving. Humans shout at the TV, jump up and down, and scream “no” and “yes” in rapid succession. When it’s all over, if our team wins, we might reach down and pet them with so much energy and enthusiasm that we jump up and down, holding their paws as we dance and shout with them.
Lucas Cheadle with two pieces of artwork in his office, from left by Porferio Tirador 'Gopher' Armstrong, a Cheyenne-Caddo native from Oklahoma and Oklahoma Kiowa artist Robert Redbird. Photo by Austin Ferro
By Daniel Dunaief
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Assistant Professor Lucas Cheadle knows a thing or two about under represented groups in the field of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.
Of Chickasaw, Choctaw and Cherokee lineage, Cheadle, who was born in Ada, Oklahoma, was recently named one of 31 inaugural Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s (HHMI) Freeman Hrabowski scholars.
Lucas Cheadle. Photo by Steve Ryan/ AP Images for HHMI
The first scholars in this highly competitive and unique program, which drew 1,036 applicants, will receive funding that will last at least five years and could get as much as $8.6 million each for their promising early research and for supporting diversity, equity and inclusion in their labs.
“This is the first time a program of this type and magnitude has been attempted,” said HHMI Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer Leslie Vosshall. The scholars are “doing things that set them in the top one percent in creativity and boldness and we are certain we are going to have really healthy, inclusive, diverse labs.”
Vosshall said the scholars, which include scientists from 22 institutions, including Columbia, Harvard, Duke, Cornell, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, hit it “out of the park” in their science and diversity efforts.
HHMI, which has committed $1.5 billion for Freeman Hrabowski Scholars, will award about 30 of these select scholarships every other year for the next 10 years, supporting promising scientists who can serve as mentors for under represented groups while also creating a network of researchers who can provide advice and collaborations.
The first group of scientists to receive this support is “diverse in such a way that it reflects the U.S. population,” Vosshall said.
The program is named after Freeman Hrabowski, who was born in Birmingham, Alabama and was president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, from 1992 to 2022. Hrabowski, who was arrested during the civil rights movement, created a tutoring center in math and science for African Americans in high school and college and helped create the Meyerhoff Scholars Program.
Cheadle was celebrating the December holidays in Oklahoma when he learned he was a semifinalist, which was “really surprising and exciting,” he recalled. Becoming an HHMI scholar is “amazing” and “very validating,” he said.
Bruce Stillman, President and CEO of CSHL, suggested that HHMI recognition is “a prestigious achievement” and, in a email, wrote that he was “pleased that [Cheadle] was included in the list of remarkable scientists.”
Stillman predicted that Cheadle’s passion about increasing diversity in science would have a “major influence” on CSHL.”
Scientific questions
Cheadle appreciates how HHMI funds the scientist, not individual projects. With this unrestricted funding, which includes full salary and benefits and a research budget of about $2 million over the first five years and eligibility to participate in HHMI capital equipment purchasing programs, Cheadle and other scholars can pursue higher-risk, higher-reward projects.
“If I have a crazy idea tomorrow, I can do that with this with funding,” Cheadle explained.
Cheadle, who joined CSHL in August of 2020, studies the way the immune system shapes brain development, plasticity and function. He also seeks to understand how inflammatory signals that disrupt neural circuit maturation affect various disorders, such as autism.
Last September, Cheadle and his lab, which currently includes six postdoctoral researchers, two PhD students, one master’s student, a lab manager and two technicians, published a paper in Nature Neuroscience that showed how oligodendrocyte precursor cells, or OPCs, help shape the brain during early development.
Previously, scientists believed OPCs produced cells that surrounded and supported neurons. Cheadle’s recent work shows that they can play other roles in the brain as well, which are also likely instrumental in neural circuit construction and function.
When young mice raised in the dark received their first exposure to light, these OPCs engulfed visual processing circuits in the brain, which suggested that they helped regulated connections associated with experience.
With this new position and funding, Cheadle also plans to explore the interaction between the development of nerves in the periphery of the brain and different organs in the body, as well as how immune cells sculpt nerve connectivity.
He is not only studying this development for normal, healthy mice, but is also exploring how these interactions could explain why inflammation has arisen as such an important player in neurodevelopmental dysfunction.
Stillman explained that Cheadle’s work will “have broad implications.”
A talented, balanced team
Cheadle is committed to creating a balanced team of researchers from a variety of backgrounds.
“As principal investigators,” Cheadle said, “we have to actively work to have a diverse lab.”
He has posted advertisements on women’s college forums to garner more applications from women and under represented groups. He has also adopted a mentorship philosophy that focuses on inclusivity.
Cheadle explained that he hopes to be adaptable to the way other people work. Through weekly lab meetings, mentorship arrangements and reciprocal interactions, he hopes to provide common ground for each aspiring scientist.
He recognizes that such goals take extra effort, but he feels the benefits outweigh the costs.
During annual events, Cheadle also leans in to the cultural diversity and differences of his staff. He hosts a pre-Thanksgiving pot luck dinner, where everybody brings a food item that’s important and close to them.
Last year, he made pashofa out of cracked corn that his stepmom sent him from the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma. Pashofa is a traditional meat and corn Chickasaw dish. Other lab members brought tropical beverages common in Brazil.
In terms of diversity in science, Cheadle believes such efforts take years to establish. Through an approach that encourages people from different backgrounds to succeed in his lab, Cheadle hopes to share his thoughts and experiences with other researchers.
Cheadle last summer hosted a Chickasaw student on campus to do research. He is working with the Chickasaw Nation to expand that relationship.
As for the Freeman Hrabowski scholars, Vosshall said all HHMI wants to do is “allow everybody to do science.-
—————————————————————————————
HHMI Chief Scientific Officer Vosshall celebrates benefits of diversity in science
By Daniel Dunaief
It’s not one or the other. She believes in both at the same time. For Leslie Vosshall, Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, science and diversity are stronger when research goals and equity work together.
Leslie Vosshall. Photo by Frank Veronsky
That’s the mission of the new and unique HHMI Freeman Hrabowski Scholars program. HHMI this week named 31 inaugural scholars as a part of an effort designed to support promising scientists who provide opportunities to mentor historically under represented groups in research.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Assistant Professor Lucas Cheadle was among the 31 scientists who became HHMI scholars (see related story above), enabling him to receive financial support for the next five years and up to $8.6 million for the next decade.
In an interview, Vosshall said the “special sauce of this group” of scientists who distinguished themselves from among the 1,036 who applied was that they excel as researchers and as supporters of diversity. Bringing in people who may not have had opportunities as scientific researchers not only helps their careers but also enables researchers to take creative approaches to research questions.
“When you bring in people from the ‘out group’ who have been historically excluded, they have an energy of getting into the playing field,” she said. That innovation can translate into successful risk taking.
As an example, Vosshall cited Carolyn Bertozzi, a chemist at Stanford University who shared the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for helping to develop the field of bioorthogonal chemistry, which involves a set of reactions in which scientists study molecules and their interactions in living things without interfering with natural processes.
Her lab developed the methods in the late 1990’s to answer questions about the role of sugars in biology, to solve practical problems and to develop better tests for infectious diseases. “This scrappy band of women chemists tried this crazy stuff” which provided “massive innovations in chemical biology,” Vosshall said. Mainstream science often solidifies into a groove in which the same thing happens repeatedly. “Innovation comes from the edges,” she added.
In her own to hire staff in her lab, Vosshall has taken an active approach to find candidates from under served communities. “People who have pulled themselves up have worked so hard to get to where they are,” she said. “It’s important to dig deeper to find talent everywhere.”
Keeping away from the off-ramp
The number of under represented groups in science has improved over the last few decades. Indeed, when Vosshall joined Rockefeller University, where she is the Robin Chemers Neustein Professor, she couldn’t count 10 women faculty. Now, 23 years later, that number has doubled.
The number of people in under represented groups in graduate programs has increased. The problem, Vosshall said, is that they “take the off-ramp” from academic science” because they don’t always feel “welcome in the labs.” Supporting diversity will keep people in academic science, who can and will make important discoveries in basic and translational science.
As a part of the Freeman Hrabowski program, HHMI plans to survey people who were trainees in these labs to ask about their mentoring experience. By tracking how developing scientists are doing, HHMI hopes to create a blueprint for building diversity.
HHMI has hired a consultant who will analyze the data, comparing the results for the results and career trajectories. The research institute will publish a paper on the outcome of the first cohort. Researchers in this first group will not only receive money, but will also have an opportunity to interact with each other to share ideas.
New approach
When Vosshall earned her PhD, she considered an alternative career. She bought a training book for the Legal Scholastic Aptitude Test and considered applying to law school, as she was “fed up with how I was treated and fed up with science”
Nonetheless, Vosshall, who built a successful scientific career in which she conducts research into olfactory cues disease-bearing insects like mosquitoes seek when searching for humans, remained in the field.
To be sure, Vosshall and HHMI aren’t advocating for principal investigators to hire only people from under represented groups. The promising part of this scholarship is that HHMI found it difficult to get the final number down to 31, which “makes me optimistic that the [scientific and mentorship] talent is out there,” she said. Over the next decade, HHMI plans to name about 30 Freeman Hrabowski scholars every other year. If each lab provides research opportunities across different levels, this will help create a more diverse workforce in science, which, she said, benefits both prospective researchers and science.
James Rossie conducting field work at Lake Turkana. Photo by Susanne Cote
By Daniel Dunaief
Dead men might not tell tales but fossilized apes and the soil around them may change a narrative. That’s what happened recently when a large collaboration of researchers gathered clues from an ape fossil in Moroto, Uganda that lived 21 million years ago and from a detailed analysis of the soil.
James Rossie in his lab. Photo by Emily Goble
Scientists have long thought apes started climbing upright, which is an important evolutionary step, all those years ago to reach fruit in a habitat dense with trees. Recent evidence from two publications in the journal Science, however, suggest that the habitat included grassland and woodlands.
James Rossie, Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Stony Brook University, studied the teeth of the fossil, called Morotopithecus, to determine what this ancient ape ate.
“The important thing about the teeth of Morotopithecus is a shift towards folivory” or leaf eating, Rossie said. “The surface of the molars were elongated with well-developed crests” which indicate that this primate consumed leaves rather than fruit.
By contrast, molars of animals that eat fruit are more rounded. Additionally, carbon isotope dating of the enamel suggest that they fed on water-stressed plants. This discovery and analysis changes not only the narrative of this particular ape species, but also of the evolutionary progression and habitat of primates.
A rendering of ancient apes foraging in trees. Image courtesy of Corbin Rainbolt
This analysis indicated that apes lived in areas of open woodlands, where there were patches of trees separated by stretches of grassland about 10 million years earlier than scientists originally believed. During the miocene period, they would have had to evade predators such as Simbakubwa, an extinct carnivore that was larger than a lion.
“It was very unexpected that an ape with upright, versatile climbing abilities was living in a seasonal woodland with open, grassy patches, rather than in a closed tropical forest,” said Laura MacLatchy, a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan and the leader on the study.
“The findings have transformed what we thought we knew about early apes, and the origins for where, when and why they navigate through the trees and on the ground in multiple different ways,” Robin Bernstein, Program Director for Biological Anthropology at the National Science Foundation, said in a statement. “The effort outlines a new framework for future studies regarding ape evolutionary origins.”
The fossils Rossie and his colleagues examined including the lower part of a face, the palate, upper teeth, a couple of vertebrae, the lower jaw, and a complete femur. It’s unclear if these fossils came from one individual or from a collection of apes. With considerable wear and tear on the teeth of the upper jaw, the owner of those bones was an adult, Rossie said.
The mandible of an ancient ape with the left molar enlargement inset. Photo by Laura MacLatchy
By studying the bones as puzzle pieces that fill in a narrative, researchers concluded that the smaller, thick femur, or thigh, bone helped the ape climb quickly and effectively up the trunks of trees.
The longer legs of a human push us away from trees, making it harder to climb, while the shorter, sturdy legs of an ape enable it to get closer to the trunk and reach lower branches quickly.
Apes that fed on leaves would likely have had larger bodies to accommodate the need for a longer digestive tract. A heavier animal that navigated through trees would run the risk of falling to the ground if their weight caused a branch to break.
By climbing upright, apes could distribute their weight more evenly over several branches, enabling them to maneuver through the trees to the leaves while reducing the strain they put on any one branch.
In a second paper published together as a part of this analysis, soil researchers studied the environment at Moroto and at several other sites of similar age across eastern Africa.These soil scientists determined that the early habitat included forests and grasslands.
Cooperative work
Rossie believes the work of numerous scientists over a long period of time not only represents a paradigm shift in thinking about ape evolution and the environment in Africa, but also in the way scientists across a wide range of expertise collaborate.
James Rossie conducting field work at Lake Turkana. Photo by Susanne Cote
The researchers who trained Rossie and his colleagues were more competitive and guarded, he said. They didn’t share information with each other about their findings and wanted other researchers to learn about their findings through journal publications.
“We decided to take a different strategy” about a dozen years ago, he said. “It occurred to us that these separate silo attempts to reconstruct these environments were incompatible, with different methods and strategies. We couldn’t put it together into a coherent picture.”
By working together with the same methods, the scientists had comparable data and developed a coherent picture. Such broad collaborations across a range of fields required a “bit of a leap of faith,” he added. The scientists knew and trusted each other.
Indeed, Rossie and MacLatchy have known each other since the early 2000s when MacLatchy first asked Rossie to study other fossils.
Bringing numerous researchers across a range of expertise was a “game theory experiment,” Rossie added. Researchers could have published smaller papers about each site more quickly, but chose to combine them into the more meaningful synthesis.
MacLatchy suggested that the work on this project that involved sharing data across multiple sites, as well as joining forces in a range of expertise, makes it possible to reconstruct habitats with much greater detail.
“We are also able to obtain a regional perspective, which is not possible if interpretations are based on individual fossil sites,” she said. “I’d like to think this kind of collaboration will become standard.”
A resident of Centerport, Rossie is a hockey fan and is pulling for the Islanders.
He enjoys studying teeth because a single tooth can provide considerable information about an animal’s place among other species and about its strategies for getting and processing food.
His professional studies have come full circle. As a college junior at St. Lawrence University, he attended a field school run by Harvard University and the National Museum of Kenya at Lake Turkana. Almost every moment of that experience made him more eager to pursue paleontology as a career.
“As fate would have it, my field project is now centered on an area on the west side of Lake Turkana that I first visited back in 1995,” he explained.
The Turkana Basin Institute serves as his home base during the field season and he is grateful for their ongoing logistical support.
As for future work, Rossie is studying the fossils of at least four different species of apes in Lake Turkana in Kenya.
Time marched forward at the same pace that it always has, and yet, the pandemic, which altered so much about our experiences, seemed to alter the fourth dimension.
Initially stuck in homes, we developed new routines, worked at kitchen tables or desks and spent considerably more time with family members and our pets throughout the day than anticipated.
For students, the pandemic altered opportunities and created challenges unseen for a century.
And yet, each year, as in this one for our daughter, the annual rite of passage of a graduation following an amalgam of typical and unique experiences awaits.
As these students march to “Pomp and Circumstance,” listen, or half-listen, to graduation speakers and glance at their supportive families who are thrilled to mark the milestone, celebrate their achievement and come together, what will be going through the minds of these new graduates?
Some may reflect on the typical academic stresses and achievements that helped them earn their diploma. They will consider the hours spent on lab experiments, the late-night workouts at the gym before a big game, and the endless rehearsals for shows and performances. They may bask in the attention of friends they made from around the country or around the corner.
They also might consider the parts they missed or the sudden change from their expected pathways.
Students, who were studying abroad, suddenly needed to return home as quickly as possible. They had to make sure they had their passports and visas, booked flights, and cleared out of rooms that might have just started to feel like home.
Others, like our daughter, raced back to their dorms from spring break, packed everything up and drove home.
As the weeks and months of uncertainty caused by a pandemic that gripped the country for more than two years progressed, some students recognized that they would not have some opportunities, like studying abroad. They might have filled out forms, learned important words in a different language, and chosen classes carefully that they couldn’t take.
Student-athletes, actors and artists, many of whom worked hard for months or longer together, were on their own as fields and stands stood empty.
These students may recognize, more than others, that plans may need to change in response to uncertainty caused by health concerns, storms or other issues.
Amid these disruptions and changes in routine, students and their families needed to pivot. They connected with friends online, entertained themselves at home, often on electronic devices, and tried to learn online.
Undoubtedly, they missed learning opportunities inside and outside the classroom. I heard from numerous students about lowered expectations and abridged syllabi, with American History classes designed to go to 2016 that stopped in 1945, at the end of World War II.
It will be up to students to fill those holes and to recognize the opportunities to become lifelong learners.
Indeed, as people search for a label for these graduates, perhaps the list will include the pivot generation, the empty stadium generation, and the virtual learning generation.
Historically, commencement speakers have exhorted graduates to embrace the opportunity to learn, to question the world around them and to seek out whatever they need.
After the pandemic adversely affected some of the students, perhaps some of them will learn and develop a stronger and more determined resilience, enabling them to keep their goals in sight even amid future uncertainties.
In the meantime, they and we can embrace the normalcy of a routine that allows them to watch the familiar clock as it slowly moves through the minutes of a commencement address.
Prev
