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Daniel Dunaief

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The Vietnam memorial in Bill Richards Park in Hauppauge. Photo from Town of Smithtown

By Daniel Dunaief

The first day Kevin O’Hare arrived in Vietnam, a bullet flew over his head during reverie. Vietcong fighters regularly targeted the assembled morning crowd of soldiers who stood in formation to honor the flag.

Kevin O’Hare
Wayne Johnson

“That was a shock,” recalled O’Hare, a resident of Kings Park who is a retired sales director for RJR Nabisco and who served in the army from 1966 to 1968. “I jumped in the bunker as fast as I could.”

O’Hare, who shared memories of his time in the military, wants to ensure that others have an opportunity to reflect and appreciate the soldiers who served during the war amid a time of civil discontent in the United States.

In 1966, the hamlet of Hauppauge created what O’Hare and others believe is one of the first tributes to those serving in Vietnam. The “Vietnam Era Hauppauge Honor Roll” memorial sits in Bill Richards Park near Suffolk County’s H. Lee Dennison Building off Veterans Memorial Highway and will soon add plaques with the names of O’Hare and navy veteran Wayne “Mickey” Johnson.

Officials have considered the possibility of moving the memorial, O’Hare said, although he would prefer that it remain in the park.

Close calls

O’Hare’s near miss during reverie was one of several other times he could have been severely injured or worse, including two incidents when mortar landed without exploding outside his tent. “They were duds,” he said. “If they had gone off,” said the 78-year old father of two and the grandfather of four, “I wouldn’t be here.”

In April of 1967, O’Hare was in a bunker with five other men. A mortar round came in and killed three of his fellow soldiers.

At another point, a man approached O’Hare with a bag. As he got closer, the man tried to strap the satchel around O’Hare. Two infantry men assigned to protect O’Hare saw the exchange and shot the man before he could plant explosives that would have killed O’Hare.

So, what made this American soldier worth an attempted assassination?

Boosting morale

Bob Hope with Joey Heatherton

Initially a mortar man, O’Hare’s experience with the Soupy Sales comedy show in New York prior to his tour of duty attracted the attention of army brass. Officials asked O’Hare to help run the shows for the United Service Organization, or USO.

Started in 1941, these shows entertained troops stationed overseas and gave them a taste of home half a world away. The entertainment “took them away from the war,” said O’Hare, “even for two hours. They looked forward to it.”

In some ways, the shows were the antidote to people like Hanoi Hannah, a radio broadcaster from North Korea who chided American troops, suggesting that their girlfriends back home were cheating on them or that they were fighting an unjust and unwelcome war.

The USO shows featured Hollywood stars, who were determined to bring their talents to members of the military who might otherwise feel disconnected from American life or who might be physically or emotionally wounded. Seats in the first 10 rows for these often crowded shows were reserved for the wounded.

O’Hare worked with celebrities including Bob Hope, an entertainer who hosted the Academy Awards 19 times.

Hope, who later became an honorary veteran for visiting the troops starting in World War II and ending with the Persian Gulf War, was eager to visit the wounded in the hospital after his show, O’Hare recalled.

Crazy hair and a helicopter ride

Comedienne Phyllis Diller, who was famous for her wild hair and self-deprecating stand up routines, also traveled to Vietnam. During Diller’s visit, O’Hare recalled, the army arranged to transport her in a Huey, a helicopter with a single blade. Nervous about flying in a small helicopter, Diller asked O’Hare if he could help her fly in the larger Chinook, which has two blades.

After receiving the approval of senior officers, O’Hare strapped a chair next to a pole in the Chinook. Sandwiched between the cue cars on one side of the helicopter and her clothing on the other, Diller rode in her preferred helicopter.

Before she returned to the United States, Diller drew a self-portrait, with spiky hair and a smile on her face and signed her name for O’Hare.  “That’s the craziest autograph I ever had,” O’Hare recalled. It wasn’t, however, the last.

Legendary actor and future head of the National Rifle Association, Charlton Heston, who played Moses in the 1956 film The Ten Commandments, also made the long trip to Vietnam to entertain the troops. On his last day before returning the states, Heston chatted with O’Hare. Heston, who autographed a program for O’Hare, asked him when he would return to the States. O’Hare recalled being nervous speaking with the intense and direct Heston.

Kevin O’Hare meets actor Charlton Heston during the actor’s visit to Vietnam in 1967.

“When you get back,” Heston urged, “you’re going to see my new movie.” When he returned to the States, O’Hare saw the film Heston mentioned: Planet of the Apes.

In addition to working with celebrities including five winners of the Miss America contest, O’Hare coordinated shows in between these high-profile visits. He kept a list of the people who could play instruments. When he found out about a drummer, a guitarist and others who could play instruments, he formed a band that provided live performances.

O’Hare also helped bring a show to the Black Virgin Mountain near Cambodia. For his work bringing that show to the troops, O’Hare won the Bronze Star.

Respect for others

While the Kings Park resident appreciates the recognition, he knows, despite escaping serious injury and death in Vietnam, that he had a considerably easier experience than many of other members of the military.

He recalled the terrible job of “tunnel rat” that the smallest and lightest men had to perform. Once the Americans found some of the tunnels built under their bases and scattered throughout the country, the tunnel rat had to try to flush out the enemy. The Vietcong left scorpions, tarantulas and snakes for the Americans. Seeing the disadvantage of fitting the profile for this job, some servicemen tried to gain weight quickly so they wouldn’t fit in small tunnels that often became death traps.

Since he left the army, O’Hare has continued to try to serve some of his fellow vets. He sits with vets and talks at a bagel store. He has also helped restore monuments like the one at Bill Richards Park, so people don’t forget the service and sacrifice of other Long Islanders. O’Hare is also the president of the Citizen’s Police Academy. 

For his consistent and enduring contributions to the community, O’Hare has won several admirers. “Nothing is too much work for him,” said Legislator Leslie Kennedy (R-Nesconset). “He does more than 20 or 30-year-olds. He’s a rocket.”

Proud of his service

Wayne Johnson on the amphibious ship USS Hermitage in 1970.

A navy veteran who served from 1968 to 1972 and a 1967 graduate of Hauppauge High School, Wayne “Mickey” Johnson is excited about the prospect of seeing his name alongside those of other members of the community who served during Vietnam.

Johnson would like his grown sons to see his name on the memorial along with those of some of his high school friends.

“I’m proud of my service,” said Johnson, who spent two years stationed in Puerto Rico and two years stationed on the amphibious ship USS Hermitage, which included a six month stint in the Mediterranean.

Johnson, who is a resident of Patchogue, said his father, Vandorn Johnson, served in the navy during World War II and the Korean conflict.

Johnson, whose brother shares a name with his father and is preparing the additional plaques, said he knows his father would be pleased with his service.

Johnson said he doesn’t mind if the memorial moves. “Wherever it is, I’ll find it,” he said. “I couldn’t be happier to be on it.”

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From left, Alea Mills and Xueqin Sun Photo from CSHL

By Daniel Dunaief

People have natural defenses against cancer. Proteins like P53 search for unwelcome and unhealthy developments. 

Sometimes, mutations in P53, which is known as the “guardian of the genome,” rob the protein of its tumor fighting ability. In more than seven out of ten cases, the brain tumor glioblastoma, which has a grim prognosis for people who develop it, has an intact P53 protein.

So what happened to P53 and why isn’t it performing its task?

That’s what Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Professor and Cancer Center member Alea Mills and postdoctoral researcher Xueqin “Sherine” Sun wanted to know.

Starting with the idea that something epigenetic was somehow blocking P53, Sun conducted numerous detailed experiments with the gene editing tool CRISPR-Cas9.

She knocked out parts of the chromatin regulating machinery, which determines whether factors for DNA replication, gene expression, and the repair of DNA damage can access genes and perform their tasks.

The researchers wanted to find “something specific to glioblastoma,” Mills said in an interview. Working with a team of researchers in Mills’s lab, Sun focused on the protein BRD8.

In experiments with mice, Sun and her colleague inhibited this specific protein by destroying the gene that encodes it. That step was enough to stop the tumor from growing and allowed the mouse to live longer.

Mills and Sun published their work in the prestigious journal Nature just before the holidays.

The article generated considerable buzz in the scientific community, where it was in the 99th percentile among those published at the same time in attracting attention and downloads. It also attracted attention on social media platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn.

“We see this as a major discovery, and are not surprised that many others think that the impact is extraordinary,” Mills said. The paper “has the potential of having a significant impact in the future. The work is completely novel.”

While finding a connection between BRD8 and glioblastoma suggests a target for researchers to consider in their search for new glioblastoma treatments, a potential new approach for patients could be a long way off.

“We cannot predict how long it will take to be able to help patients” who have glioblastoma, Mills said.

A promising step

From left, Alea Mills and Xueqin Sun Photo from CSHL

Still, this finding provides a promising step by showing how knocking out the BRD8 protein can enable P53 to gain access to a life threatening tumor.

Sun and Mills said BRD8 and its partners lock down genes that are normally turned on by P53.

“What you inherit from mom and dad is one thing,” said Mills. “How it’s packaged, the epigenetic mechanism that keeps it wrapped up or open, is key in how it’s all carried out within your body.”

By targeting BRD8, Mills and her team opened the chromatin, so P53 could bind and turn on other cancer fighting genes.

After receiving patient samples from Northwell Health, Stanford and the Mayo Clinic, the team studied tissue samples from patients battling glioblastoma. Those patients, they found, had higher concentrations of BRD8 than people without brain cancer.

Researchers and, down the road, pharmaceutical companies and doctors, are careful to make sure removing or reducing the concentration of any protein doesn’t have so-called “off target effects,” which would interfere with normal, healthy processes in cells.

Mills said they tested such actions in the context of neural stem cells in the brain. At this point, removing BRD8 didn’t have any “deleterious consequence,” she said. 

Her lab is working to see the effect of reducing or removing the mouse version, also called Brd8, during development by engineering mice that lack this protein.

Future research

An important next step in this research involves searching for and developing viable inhibitors of the BRD8 protein.

For histone readers like BRD8, researchers look for an active domain within the protein. The goal is to interrupt the interface in their interactions with histones.

In creating molecules that can block the action of a protein, researchers often start with the structure of the protein or, more specifically, the active site.

Sun, who is currently applying for jobs to run her own lab after working at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory for over eight years, is hoping to purify enough of the protein and determine its structure.

Sun is working on x-ray crystallography, in which she purifies the protein, crystallizes it and then uses x-rays to determine the atomic structure.

Sun described the search for the structure of the protein as an “important direction” in the research. “Once we solve the structure” researchers can focus on drug design, testing and other experiments.

She suggested that the search for a small molecule or compound that might prove effective in inhibiting BRD8 would involve optimizing efficiency and activity.

There is a “long way to go” in that search, Sun added.

She is working to generate a chemical compound in collaboration with other groups.

A long, productive journey

Born and raised in China, Sun has been an active and important contributor to Mills’s lab.

“I’ll miss [Sun] personally as well as in the lab,” Mills said. “She’s been a really good role model and teacher across the Cold Spring Harbor campus and in my lab.”

Mills is “really excited about [Sun’s] future,” she said. “She’ll be really great” at running her own lab.”

For her part, Sun enjoyed her time on Long Island, where she appreciated the natural environment and the supportive culture at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

Sun described her time on Long Island as a “very exciting and satisfying journey.” 

She is determined to study and understand cancer for a number of reasons.

“I know people who died of cancer,” she said. “It’s a terrible disease and it’s urgent to find more efficient therapeutic strategies to stop cancers and improve human heath.”

Sun is also eager to embrace the opportunity to mentor and inspire other students of science.

“Teaching is very important,” she said. She looks forward to helping students grow as professionals to create the “next generation of scientists.”

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METRO photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

One day, you’re playing with your twin sons at home, running around with a ball on the driveway, calling and waving to neighbors who pass by when they walk their dogs or take their daily stroll through the neighborhood.

The next day, your life changes.

You want to know why or how, but you’re too busy trying to apply the brakes to a process that threatens the nature of your existence and your current and future happiness.

Your son had some gastrointestinal issues for a few weeks. You took him to the pediatrician and he said he’s got to get over a virus.

You wait, hope, and maybe say a few extra prayers, because the hardest thing for any parent to endure is the sickness of a child.

You check on him, day after day, hoping he’s better, only to find that there’s no improvement.

Suddenly, three weeks later, you’re in the hospital, trying to keep yourself, your spouse, and your other son calm while doctors remove a malignant brain cancer in a 5-year-old boy who defines “goofy” and “playful.”

One of our close friends in our neighborhood just started this unimaginable battle against a disease many of us know all too well, although the specific form of cancer varies.

Their babysitter shared the horror of the prior weekend with me outside the window of her passing car, where she normally would have driven both the twins to school.

I heard the story because I asked about the empty car seat in the back, where both boys typically showed me whatever stuffed animals or toys they had decided to bring to school, either for show and tell or because they were carrying an object that began with a particular letter.

As I talked with the babysitter, who spoke in the kind of hushed and dramatic tones often associated with discussions about serious health crises, I thought about how hard it was and will be for the other son. I thought he needed the kind of 5-year-old normalcy that might become hard to find when he’s worried about his brother and the anxious adults around him.

I asked him to show me what he was holding. He had a pink llama, who he said wanted to poop on my head or on my dog’s head.

I told him that my dog wouldn’t appreciate the poop unless the stuffed llama somehow pooped pink marshmallows.

He laughed, flashing all his straight baby teeth.

As I walked home, I thought of all the things my wife and I planned to offer our neighbors. Maybe we’d babysit the healthy son, walk their dogs, help with house chores, bring over food, do anything to lighten the unbearably heavy load.

I also thought about all the scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University I have known who are working towards cures for cancer.

Many of them know someone in their family, their friend group, their neighborhood, or their schools who, like my daughter’s beloved first-grade teacher, suddenly were in a battle for their lives against a disease that steals time and joy from people’s lives.

Their labs often invite or include family members of people with cancer to staff meetings and discussions about their work, making the connection between what the scientists are studying and the people desperate for solutions.

It seems utterly cliche to write it, but I’m going to do it anyway: we should appreciate and enjoy the days we have when we’re not in that battle. The annoyance of dealing with someone who got our order wrong at a restaurant seems so spectacularly small in comparison. 

We can appreciate that the person who seems like a total jerk for cutting us off on our way home may also be the one racing back to hug his child or spouse after an impossible day that changed his life.

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From left, Darren Martin and Benjamin Hsiao during a visit to Ram’s Head Inn on Shelter Island. Photo from Darren Martin

By Daniel Dunaief

One person’s garbage is another’s treasure.

Benjamin Hsiao

Benjamin Hsiao has plans to convert garbage — from dog poop to food waste and even cardboard boxes — into the kind of low cost materials and fertilizers that can help combat climate change. His primary target is agricultural residues because of their volume and collectability.  

A Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Stony Brook University, Hsiao and collaborator Darren Martin at the University of Queensland in Australia recently were awarded one of 16 multidisciplinary grants totaling $11.4 million from the National Science Foundation’s Convergence Accelerator program.

Hsiao, who is the primary investigator, will receive $570,000 over the next nine months in Phase I of the research effort while Martin will collect $180,000 from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia.

The researchers plan to take a zero waste approach to create a circular system that will generate efficiencies, reduce pollution and combat climate change.

The research is focused on creating immediate solutions for current problems, Hsiao said.

The NSF received “many quality submissions” and chose the winners after a rigorous review process, the NSF said.

The proposal from Hsiao and Martin stood out as it is “based on strong science” and make a clear connection to climate change,” NSF officials said.

Hsiao and Martin were delighted with the award and the opportunity not only to make contributions through their own research, but also to work with some of the other recipients.

“I am so pleased on many counts,” Martin explained in an email from Australia. First, Martin and Hsiao, who met at a conference in 2014, followed through on long standing plans to work together. Second, this program, which the NSF started in 2019, is about “early engagement with the market to get feedback on new technologies and platforms.”

Martin suggested it was akin to a “business model boot camp” that includes support and opportunities to pressure test ideas early. “This approach could really accelerate and compress the number of years traditionally taken to see helpful new technologies out in society sooner.”

If they are successful and effective, the scientists can apply for competitive Phase II funding within the year, which includes $5 million for two years and which four or five of the Phase I recipients, who are from a host of A-list research institutions, will receive.

Solids and liquids

Hsiao has been working with solid plant-based waste to create filters that can purify water at a low cost since 2009.

“Nanoscale cellulose materials can be used for water purification,” said Hsiao.

The needles of plants, from shrubs to bushes to feedstock, all have the same cellulosic nanostructure. Hsiao’s technology can convert these different feedstock into similar carboxy-cellulose nanofibers that can be used as purifying agents with negative charge. These filters can remove oppositely charged impurities.

Additionally, Hsiao plans to use solid plant based biomass to create a biogel. Rich in nutrients, the biogel is like the naturally occurring residue that is at the bottom of streams, which is a nutrient-rich mix of dead trees and grass.

The biogel, which is also funded by the NSF, has three applications. First, it can replace soil to grow food or for seed germination, which could be useful to grow food in space. It can also reduce the impact of drought.

Second, it can make a farm more resistant to drought because the material in biogel retains water for a longer period of time and amid drier conditions.

Third, the biogel can induce vegetation or plant growth in drier or sandier areas. Such growth, which could occur along the shoreline of Long Island, could help reduce erosion, Hsiao said. The biogel can also reduce desertification.

Martin explained that Stony Brook University and the University of Queensland have two different biogel platforms that they may hybridize.

Hsiao’s team is “very strong in the chemistry and physical chemistry side,” Martin wrote. “Being based in a Chemical Engineering School, we have been pretty good over the years at finding the most efficient, cost-effective ways to manufacture bio-based materials and composites at scale.”

Fertilizer

Building and expanding on this work, Hsiao is focusing on the liquid waste from biomass as well.

“With the new thinking, we have a circular design,” he said.

Using a nitric acid treatment that is similar to composting and that removes human pathogens, liquid biomass can become an effective fertilizer, which sanitizes animal and human waste.

Nitric acid also releases the existing nutrients in feedstock, which provides more nitrogen and phosphorous to help plants grow.

The ideal treatment would involve providing a controlled amount of fertilizer each day, Hsiao explained.

Farmers, however, can’t put that kind of time and resources into spraying their fields. Instead, they spray a fertilizer that becomes run off when it rains. Artificial intelligence and robots can deploy fertilizer in a more cost effective manner.

The nitrogen from the run off winds up in streams and other water bodies, where it can cause a process called eutrophication, leading to the kind of algal blooms that rob oxygen of water, making it more difficult for desirable marine life to survive and close beaches to swimming.

By using an efficient process for producing fertilizer that includes taking the inedible parts of plants, and making them a part of the circular process, run off could decrease by “half or even more,” Hsiao said.

Martin added that he and Hsiao have, in the back of their minds, a plan to create scalable fertilizer for single family farms in developed and developing nations.

“Our modeling may indeed show that ‘distributed manufacturing’ of the biogels from agricultural residues using a ‘mobile factory placed on the farm’ may be the smartest way to get there,” Martin explained. “This is exactly the sort of question the Convergence Accelerator is designed to test.”

Martin said that he hopes this technology lead to an array of jobs that support farming under a variety of circumstances.

Sorghum, which is one of his favorite crops, is ultra resilient and is of increasing global importance. Its ability to withstand environmental stress and thrive on low input marginal farmland make it the ‘golden crop of the future,’ Martin added.

This crop makes it an “attractive option to transform infertile land into profitable agrivoltaic farms supplying raw materials for emerging non-foo markets such as these biogels,” Martin wrote.

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Pixabay photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

When our children were young, a friend recently told me, she viewed the parents of people she met through a binary process.

A mom of two boys, she figured she had a better chance, at least in the first 10 years or so of her sons’ lives, of interacting with the parents of other boys. When she met girls and their families, she was polite and friendly, without putting too much effort into getting to know them.

Fast forward almost two decades, and her children, like mine, are out of the house. She and her husband have an adorable small dog that they dote on, transferring their abundant parenting attention to a canine companion.

Nowadays, my friend said, she sees people through a similar lens. She takes her small dog to a dog park, where a fence separates pets under 40 pounds from the bigger, heavier versions. When she meets someone outside the park with a dog, she’s more likely to pay attention to their names and their stories if they have a small dog.

As I considered what she said about the parents of boys and girls, as well as the owners of dogs of different sizes, I wondered about the metaphorical fences we create.

Sure, those fences make it easier for us to find people who have similar interests and opinions and who might not challenge us or disagree with us in our decision-making. Those fences also, however, separate us from others with whom we might have even more connections or common interests than we thought, especially if the filter for our “in” and “out” groups is as arbitrary as having sons, daughters or small dogs.

What if a man with a large dog worked in a similar field, had two children about my friend’s offspring’s ages, and went to the same college at the same time? Then again, what if a woman on the other side of the fence had nothing in common with my friend? She had no children, grew up in another country, worked in a completely different field, and didn’t see any of the same movies or read the same books? Would that make her less or more interesting? Perhaps that woman might be fascinating for her life experiences, compelling for her opinions, and amazing in her own way.

Recently, I sat in the window seat of a plane next to a large man who was stuck in the middle. An army veteran, he laughed as we reached our destination, saying he was unaccustomed to landing in planes. I took the bait, asking him why. He said he’d made over 150 jumps out of airplanes. 

He and his unit jumped out of planes at 800 feet, although he didn’t need to do much jumping, as he felt as if a hand pulled him out when he got to the opening. He never had to pull a chord, as the parachute automatically started opening within a second of leaving the plane.

On one type of plane, he stepped out and immediately started falling. Another had a small “bubble” outside the entrance, where he and others stood before leaving the plane. One of his army unit once forgot about the platform, took a small hop on the landing, and then rolled along the entire side of the plane. The others heard as his body scraped the airplane all the way to the back. Fortunately, the impact didn’t cause severe injuries.

One of the many instructions he received was to keep his chin on his chest as he exited. On his first jump, he didn’t, which caused enough discomfort that he never made that mistake again. He reached the ground at 38 miles per hour, at which point he was supposed to tuck and roll, ending on his back. Once, a crosswind turned him upside down and he landed on his head, cracking his helmet and causing a concussion.

Listening to his stories, I learned about something I will likely never do and connected with someone I will likely never see again. He did, however, expand my horizons and share his compelling life experiences, among other stories. I appreciated the opportunity to connect with someone who lives outside whatever fences I intentionally or unintentionally put up around me.

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Photo by David Ackerman

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

Maybe it sounds like I’m tooting our horn too much, but I have to say how proud I am of the columnists who write for our papers and website. They are clearly bright and offer the reader information and knowledge that aren’t usually found even in a big metro daily or a glossy magazine. They are, collectively and individually, one of the main reasons our hometown newspapers have managed to survive while so many of our colleagues, 25% of them in the nation, have had to shut their doors.

Readers want to learn from our regular columnists, who, by the way, are local residents. That’s not surprising, though, because the population we serve is exceptional, accomplished in their own right, and can be expected to harbor such talent. Let me explain.

The columnists are found in the second section of the newspaper, called Arts & Lifestyles. In the interest of full disclosure and without false modesty, I point out and salute my youngest son, Dr. David Dunaief. He is a physician totally committed to helping his patients, and the high regard is returned by them in equal measure, as testimonials about him confirm. In addition, he writes every week about current medical problems and brings readers up to date with the latest research and thinking regarding common ailments. I know him to be a voracious reader of medical journals and he footnotes his sources of expertise at the end of every “Medical Compass” column. 

Dr. Matthew Kearns is a longtime popular veterinarian who writes “Ask the Vet,” keeping our beloved pets healthy. Michael E. Russell is a successful, retired financial professional who cannot cut the cord with Wall Street, and  shares his thoughts on the economy and suggesting current buys on the stock market. He will also throw in something irreverent, or even askance, to keep you tuned in. 

Also writing knowledgeably on the contemporary scene about finance and the economy is Michael Christodoulou, who is also an active financial advisor. Ever try to read your auto insurance policies? If I had trouble falling asleep, they would knock me out by the second paragraph. Enter A. Craig Purcell, a partner in a long-established local law firm, who is attempting to explain auto insurance coverage, a merciful endeavor, with his column. His words do not put me to sleep. Shannon Malone will alternate the writing for us. Michael Ardolino, a well-known realtor, somehow manages to make both ends of a real estate transaction, for buyers and sellers, sound promising at this time. 

Our lead movie and book reviewer is the highly talented Jeffrey Sanzel. In addition to being a terrific actor, he is a gifted writer and almost always feels the same way about what he is reviewing as I do. No wonder I think he is brilliant.  Father Frank has been writing for the papers for many years and always with great integrity and compassion. 

John Turner, famous naturalist and noted author and lecturer, keeps us apprised of challenges to nature. This is a niche for all residents near the shorelines of Long Island. He also writes “Living Lightly,” about being a responsible earth dweller. Bob Lipinski is the wine connoisseur who travels the world and keeps us aware of best wines and cheeses.

Lisa Scott and Nancy Marr of the Suffolk County League of Women Voters, keep us informed about upcoming elections, new laws and important propositions. Elder law attorney Nancy Burner tells us about Medicare, estate planning, wills gifting, trustees, trusts and other critical issues as we age.

The last columnist I will mention is Daniel Dunaief, who, like bookends for my salute, is also my son. Among several other articles, he writes “The Power of Three,” explaining some of the research that is performed at Stony Brook University, Brookhaven National Labs and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. He makes a deep dive into the science in such a way that layman readers can understand what is happening in the labs. He has been paid the ultimate compliment by the scientists for a journalist: they pick up the phone and willingly talk to him, unafraid that he will get the story wrong or misquote them. In fact, he has been told a rewarding number of times by the researchers that his questions for the articles have helped them further direct their work.

When my sons began writing for TBR News Media, a few readers accused me of nepotism. I haven’t heard that charge now in years.

P.S. Of course, we can’t forget Beverly C. Tyler and Kenneth Brady, stellar historians both.

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Kaushik Mitra. Photo from SBU

By Daniel Dunaief

From over 66 million miles away, they take pieces of a puzzle and try to fill in the picture. In addition to looking at what’s there now, they also use clues to look back in time.

For the last eight years, researchers suspected that the presence of manganese oxide suggested that Mars had atmospheric oxygen billions of years ago. That’s because, on Earth and in water, oxygen converts manganese to manganese oxide.

Such a process whets the appetite in the search for prehistoric life on Mars that, like so many creatures on Earth, breathed oxygen.

The Martian story, however, involves puzzle pieces that came together in a different way.

In a paper published last month in Nature Geosciences, Kaushik Mitra, a postdoctoral researcher at Stony Brook University in the Department of Geosciences, suggested through geochemical modeling that oxygen on Mars, even if it was abundant billions of years ago, wouldn’t have created manganese oxide.

That’s because the water on Mars was acidic, with a pH of less than 5.5, which is below the neutral 7 level. Under those conditions, oxygen wouldn’t oxidize manganese.

Using experiments, Mitra showed that the manganese oxide could form in acidic water in other ways.

“Mars and Earth fluid conditions are very different,” Mitra said. “What I showed in my experiments is that oxygen in acidic fluids will not be able to oxidize manganese.”

Mitra conducted research that were part of his PhD work in Jeffrey Catalano’s lab at Washington University in St. Louis, MO. 

Taking oxygen out of the picture, Mitra also detailed previous efforts that might explain the presence of manganese oxide, such as ultraviolet light. The manganese oxides formed in sub surface fractures, which this light couldn’t reach.

So, what happened?

“If the originally proposed (and plausible) oxidants were not the cause, there had to be some culprit,” Mitra explained in an email. “So there had to be some other oxidant.”

Bromine and chlorine

Enter chlorine and bromine, which are both halogens, or reactive non-metallic elements.

No one had looked into the potential of oxyhalogen compounds to produce manganese oxides in Mars-like conditions.

Bromate, which is a bromine atom attached to three oxygen atoms, can oxidize manganese in orders of magnitude faster than other oxidants, particularly in acidic conditions. Chlorate, which is also a chlorine atom attached to three oxygen atoms, alone can’t do it, but, with a small quantity of bromate, can create quantities of manganese oxide.

The oxygen attached to chlorine and bromine can come from water or any other ingredient, and doesn’t need oxygen gas to form.

“People didn’t really appreciate until [Mitra’s] paper came along that [manganese] is highly reactive towards these oxyhalogen compounds that he has been working with, so it gives us a whole new way to think about how [manganese-oxides] might form on Mars,” Joel Hurowitz, Associate Professor in Geosciences at Stony Brook University, explained in an email. Mitra has been working as a postdoctoral researcher in Hurowitz’s lab since November of 2021.

While oxygen may not have caused the change in manganese, the search for Martian life doesn’t end here. Some organisms, including on Earth, don’t need oxygen to survive.

Extremophiles, which can survive in the Great Salt Lake, the Dead Sea, and around hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean, do not need oxygen.

Mitra’s research “teaches us to be cautious in our astrobiology strategy and consider all the alternative possibilities,” Hurowitz explained. “It is entirely possible that Martian life did not depend on [oxygen] or produce [oxygen] as a by-product of its metabolism.”

For the first two billion years of life on Earth, high concentrations of oxygen would have been toxic to microbial life, Hurowitz added.

To be sure, just because halogens like chlorine and bromine can explain the presence of manganese oxide instead of oxygen doesn’t rule out the possibility that Mars had oxygen.

Paradigm shift

Mitra has continued his exploration of the importance of oxyhalogen species in Hurowitz’s lab to improve the understanding of how they interact with various mineral phases that are considered key records of paleoenvironmental conditions on Mars.

On a more immediate scale, Mitra’s approach to his work has created something of a paradigm shift in Hurowtiz’s lab. When the postdoctoral researcher arrived at Stony Brook, he immediately started between 30 and 40 separate experiments within the span of a month. 

This effort contrasts with the attempt to create one perfect, completely controlled experiment that can take months of time that might be lost if something went wrong.

“It has actually changed the way that I think about experimental project methods,” Hurowitz wrote. “It’s a great new way to explore geochemistry and my students are adopting many of the approaches he’s brought into the lab.”

Hurowitz described Mitra as a “great addition” to the group.

A passion for science

A native of Bhagalpur, India, which is in the state of Bihar, Mitra had a strong interest in chemistry during his youth.

He attended the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, where he earned an integrated Bachelors and Masters of Science Degree in Applied Geology.

Mitra, who currently lives in Centereach, is fluent in English, Hindi and Bengali and is learning Nepali, the native language of his spouse Priyanka Sharma who is from Nepal.

Sharma, who is an Indian Nepali, is applying for graduate school in English Literature and Comparative Literature.

An avid reader whose favorite genre is philosophy, Mitra is currently reading Fyodor Dostoesky and Friedrich Nietzsche.

A long distance runner, Mitra ran a 10K in Queens last year and would like to run a half marathon in the spring.

He will likely finish his postdoctoral research by next year, at the latest, at which point he will apply for a faculty job.

Passionate about teaching, Mitra has been a committed mentor to other students at Stony Brook, Hurowitz said.

Mitra created a YouTube channel for geology and geochemistry undergraduates and graduates in which he shares lessons about geoscience and chemistry in English and Hindi, which is available at https://www.youtube.com/@kmicalmindset6322.

“I am trying to inspire more people to come into planetary geoscience,” he said, especially undergraduates.

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Pixabay photos

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

Even as we study evolution, we ourselves evolve over time. No, we don’t learn to fly or to breathe underwater. We change over the decades, in part because of social pressure and in part because, well, our cells, organs and experiences align to make us different decadal versions of ourselves. With that in mind, I’d like to share some snapshots from my life.

First decade:

Likes: I adored my parents (most of the time). I also appreciated the opportunity to make new friends and to play any game that involved chasing a ball.

Dislikes: long distances running, homework, dark nights, losing electricity, sitting in the middle of a station wagon with my legs cramped under me. 

Favorite food: pizza and grilled cheese with ketchup. It’s not for everyone, but I loved it.

Favorite sport to play: basketball.

Favorite sport to watch: baseball.

Biggest worry: finding parents.

Second decade:

Likes: time with friends, the freedom to drive somewhere on my own (later in the decade, of course).

Dislikes: tough teachers eager to teach me too many lessons, rejections from friends, and too many questions from parents. Waiting for parents to pick me up (until I could drive). Developing an intolerance to dairy, which removed pizza, ice cream and mac and cheese from food options.

Favorite food: Good Steer burger supremes with a root beer and ballpark hot dogs.

Favorite sport to play: baseball

Favorite sport to watch: baseball.

Biggest worry: Losing parents. Getting into college.

Third decade

Likes: getting a job where someone not only paid me to do something I wasn’t sure I was qualified to do, but also sent me on planes to do it. Spending time with friends. Going on vacations with friends and family.

Dislikes: working on weekends and holidays. Going on horrible dates with people who were a little too eager to see fights where teeth got knocked out during hockey games. Then again, some of those unsuccessful dates still bring a smile to my face.

Favorite food: Thai food at a restaurant on the Upper East Side.

Favorite sport to play: volleyball.

Favorite sport to watch: baseball.

Biggest worry: Finding enough time to exercise.

Fourth decade:

Likes: enjoying the miraculous connection that comes from meeting girlfriend/wife. Listening to my wife laugh and seeing her smile. Holding my son and daughter and feeling them relax enough to go to sleep.

Dislikes: trying to figure out how to handle when children got sick, needing something we didn’t have, and packing enough stuff in the diaper bag and the car for needy children.

Favorite food: Who tastes food at this point? We inhaled it in between picking up the food the kids spilled on the floor or in the car.

Favorite sport to play: softball in Central Park.

Favorite sport to watch: my daughter’s active and exciting volleyball matches and my son’s soccer games. I knew nothing about soccer, so I could just be a supportive father and fan without offering unwelcome and unhelpful advice.

Biggest worry: How to keep kids healthy.

Fifth decade:

Likes: holidays, vacations and not needing to stand over the kids when they got too close to the water. Hooray for independent swimming.

Dislikes: driving everywhere with kids and their friends who made the car stink so badly at times that I opened windows in freezing temperatures. Watching kids disappear into their cell phones.

Favorite food: fresh fish on vacations.

Favorite sport to play: I barely played anything. I coached kids and bobbed and weaved between the entitled requests from parents.

Favorite sport to watch: daughter’s volleyball and son’s baseball.

Biggest worry: helping steer kids in the right direction.

Sixth decade:

Likes: time with family and friends, days when pain in my hip stays the same or, rarely, is less than the day before.

Dislikes: not knowing how to handle important technology, an awareness that I’m older than my friend’s parents were when I was growing up, and I thought they were old.

Favorite food: anything that doesn’t keep me up at night.

Favorite sport to play: baseball or anything that doesn’t cause pain the next day.

Favorite sport to watch: baseball.

Biggest worry: the speed at which each day, month and year passes. The prevalence of anger for its own sake and the health of the planet our children are inheriting.

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Nandita Kumari at the 53rd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Woodlands, Texas in March of 2022. Photo by Delia Enriquez Draper from the Lunar and Planetary Institute

By Daniel Dunaief

Some day in the not too distant future, an astronaut may approach rocks on the moon and, with a handheld instrument, determine within minutes whether the rock might have value as a natural resource or as a source of historical information.

That’s the vision Nandita Kumari, a fourth-year graduate student in the Department of Geosciences in the College of Arts and Sciences at Stony Brook University, has.

In the meantime, Kumari was part of a multi-institutional team that recommended two landing sites in the moon’s south polar region for future Artemis missions. 

Nandita Kumari at a San Francisco Volcanic Field, where she was doing stress and strain measurements of cinders. Photo by Saurabh Subham.

The group, which included students from the University of Arizona, the University of California Los Angeles, and the University of Buffalo, used several criteria to recommend these two sites.

They looked at the resources that might be available, such as water and rocks, at how long the areas are in sunlight and at how the features of the land, from the slope of hills to the size of boulders, affects the sites accessibility.

“These two sites ended up fulfilling all these criteria,” Kumari said. Models suggest water might be present and the regions are in sunlight more than 80 percent of the time, which is critical for solar-powered devices.

The group used high-resolution data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to create a map of all the rocks and to model the geological diversity of the site. They used infrared images to gather data from areas when they were dark. They also added temperature readings.

To the delight of the team, NASA selected both of the sites as part of a total of 13 potential landing locations.

Planetary scientist David Kring advised the group during the process. Kring has trained astronauts and worked on samples brought back from the Apollo missions.

At the end of the first year of her PhD, Kumari received encouragement to apply for the virtual internship with Kring from Stony Brook Geosciences Professor Tim Glotch, who runs the lab where she has conducted her PhD work.

Putting a number on it

Kumari said her thesis is about using machine learning to understand the composition of resources on the moon. She would like to use artificial intelligence to delve deeply into the wealth of data moon missions and observations have been collecting to use local geology as a future resource.

“Instead of saying something has a ‘little’ or a ‘lot’” of a particular type of rock that might have specific properties, she would like to put a specific numerical value on it.

An engineer by training, Kumari said she is a “very big fan of crunching numbers.”

Since joining the lab, Kumari has become “our go-to source for any type of statistical analysis me or one of my other students might want to conduct,” Glotch explained.

The work Kumari has done provides “large improvements over traditional spectroscopic analysis techniques,” Glotch added.

In examining rocks for silicic properties, meaning those that contain silicon, most scientists describe a rock as being less or more silicic, Kumari said.

“It’s difficult to know whether 60 percent is high or 90 percent is high,” she added. Such a range can make an important difference, and provides information about history, formation and thermal state of the planet and about potential resources.

With machine learning that trains on data collected in the lab, the model is deployed on orbiter data.

The machine learning doesn’t stop with silica. It can also be extended to search for helium 3 and other atoms.

Understanding and using the available natural resources reduces the need to send similar raw materials to the moon from Earth.

“There has to be a point where we stop” transporting materials to the moon, said Kumari. “It’s high time we use modern practices and methods so we can go through really large chunks of data with limited error.”

The machine learning starts with a set of inputs and outputs, along with an algorithm to explain the connection. As it sorts through data, it compares the outputs against what it expects. When the data doesn’t match the algorithm, it adjusts the algorithm and compares that to additional data, refining and improving the model’s accuracy.

A love for puzzles

Kumari, who grew up in Biharsharif, India, a small town in the northern state of Bihar, said this work appeals to her because she “loves puzzles that are difficult to solve.” She also tries to find solutions in the “fastest way possible.”

Kumari was recently part of a field exploration team in Utah that was processing data. The team brought back data and manually compared the measurements to the library to see what rocks they had.

She wrote an algorithm that provided the top five matches to the spectroscopic measurements the researchers found. Her work suggested the presence of minerals the field team didn’t anticipate. What’s more, the machine provided the analysis in five minutes.

The same kind of analysis can be used on site to study lunar rocks.

“When astronauts go to the moon, we shouldn’t require geology experts to be there to find the best rocks” she said. While having a geologist is the best-case scenario, that is not always possible. “Anyone with a code in their instruments should be able to decide whether it is what they’re looking for.”

As for her interest in space travel, Kumari isn’t interested in trekking to the moon or Mars.

While she believes the moon and Mars should be a base for scientific experiments, she doesn’t think people should focus on colonizing either place.

Such colonization ideas may reduce the importance of working on the challenges humans have created on Earth, including climate change.

“You can’t move to Mars,” Kumari said. The litmus test for that occurred during Covid, when people had to isolate.

“If we couldn’t stay in our homes with all the comfort and everything, I do not see a future where this would be possible with stringent constraints on Mars,” she added.

An advocate for women in STEM fields, Kumari said women should pursue scientific careers even if someone else focuses on their mistakes or tries to break their confidence.

“The only way to stop this from happening is to have women in higher places,” she explained. “We should also be supportive of each other and grow together.”

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Photo from Wikimedia Commons

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

I heard from a friend, who heard from another friend whose neighbor’s cousin is the babysitter of someone who works in Congress. So, it has to be true.

Here’s the deal: I know some of the concessions Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) made to become speaker of the house.

The person who heard it fourth hand was in the bathroom, minding his own business, trying, from what I understand, to make his best guesses at Wordle on his phone while battling an upset stomach when three of the principal negotiators in the process entered the bathroom and spoke in whispers.

The first concession is that McCarthy must begin each day by saying the words “we are all equal, but some are more equal than others,” at which point he’s supposed to subtly make the letters G and O in sign language with his hands to show that he’s thinking about “Animal Farm” author George Orwell.

Then, he has to look at the audience carefully to see if Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) has had a bad night. If Gaetz gives him a particular signal, he’s not allowed to bang his gavel too loudly, to prevent a headache from getting worse.

Once he’s gotten everyone’s attention, he then agreed that he’ll lead the house in the Pledge of Allegiance, pausing when he reached the “under God” section to make it clear that religion is not only okay, but that many people, particularly those who might not have otherwise voted for him, believe in God.

When President Joe Biden (D) gives his state of the union address, he will give at least 15 head shakes, five winces and nine arched eyebrows. At the end of the speech, to defend former president Donald Trump (R), he plans to take a page out of the previous speaker’s playbook by picking up the copy of Biden’s speech and tearing it up in disgust as it were the first chapter of a book he’d like to ban from libraries around the country.

Speaking of beyond belief, McCarthy has then agreed that if Rep. George Santos (R-NY), whose name might have changed by the time this is relevant, is still in the house, McCarthy should ask him to sing a few songs.

For starters, according to Santos’s resume, he has won at least three Grammy awards, which means he has a wonderful and lyrical singing voice.

When things get too tense during deliberations with other Republicans, let alone the Democrats who are ruining the government and the country, McCarthy has a playlist for Santos. He’s going to sing the Meghan Trainor song, “Lips are Movin,” with a slight modification in the wording.“If my lips are moving, then I’m lyin’, lyin’, lyin’, baby.”

If things continue to be tense for hours, as a politician continues grandstanding, Santos can provide a Billy Joel encore, again with a slight tweak:

“Honesty is such a lonely word

I am certainly so untrue

Honestly is hardly ever heard

And rarely what I give to you.”

Following the example of Trump, McCarthy also agreed to hug a flag in public at least three times a year, to normalize the behavior and to demonstrate his commitment to America and the country’s values.

He also promised to support at least 13, for the original colonies, investigations in his first year as speaker, with a commitment to at least another dozen in his second.

Finally, in a subtle gesture meant to celebrate the political right, he planned to stand to the right of the podium and only to hit the gavel with his right hand while pausing to emphasize the word “right” every time he utters it.

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