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Daniel Dunaief

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CSHL’s David Spector (center) and postdoctoral fellows Rasmani Hazra on left and Gayan Balasooriya on right. Photo courtesy of CSHL

By Daniel Dunaief

One came from India, the other from Sri Lanka. After they each earned their PhD’s, they arrived on Long Island within seven months of each other about seven years ago, joining a lab dedicated to studying and understanding cancer. Each of them, working on separate projects, made discoveries that may aid in the battle against heart disease.

Working for principal investigator David Spector at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, postdoctoral fellow Rasmani Hazra, who grew up in Burdwan, India, found a link between a gene that affects cancer in mice that also can lead to a problem with the development of heart valves.

Hazra worked with two long noncoding RNAs that are highly expressed in mouse embryonic stem cells, which have the ability to differentiate into many different types of cells.

Specifically, she found that mice that didn’t have Platr4 developed heart-related problems, particularly with their valves.

At the same time, postdoctoral fellow Gayan Balasooriya, who was born and raised in Sri Lanka, discovered that a single, non-sex gene is governed by different epigenetic mechanisms based on whether the gene is inherited from the mom or the dad.

While it was known that males are more susceptible to heart disease than females, researchers did not know which copy of the gene related to those diseases are expressed. This discovery could help in understanding the development of heart defects.

“Although we ended up at heart development” in both of these published studies, “we didn’t initiate” looking for heart-related information, said Spector. “The science led us there.

Spector, however, expects that the lessons learned about differentiation in the context of the developing heart can also “impact out knowledge about tumors” which he hopes will eventually lead to advances in how to treat them.

He added that any clinical benefit from this work would take additional research and time.

An on and off switch

In Hazra’s study, which was published in the journal Developmental Cell, she worked with Platr4 because humans have several possible orthologous genes. 

When Platr4 expression, which shuts down after birth, is deleted from cells or embryos, the mice died from heart valve problems.

The human equivalent of Platr4 is located on chromosome 4. At this point, clinical case studies have connected the deletion of this chromosome to cardiac defects in humans.

Hazra said her project initially examined the function of these long non-coding sections of RNA. She was exploring how they affected differentiation. She found this link through in vitro studies and then confirmed the connection in live mice.

Spector explained that this work involved extensive collaborations with other researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, including teaming up with researchers who can do electrocardiograms on mice and who can assess blood flow.

A shared mouse imaging resource also helped advance this research.

“One of the advantages of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is that we have over 10 shared resources, each of which specializes in sophisticated technologies that scientists can use on their own projects,” he said. Each lab doesn’t have to learn and develop its own version of these skills.

Hazra plans to continue to study other long noncoding RNA. She is also working on glioblastoma, which is a form of brain cancer.

Hazra plans to start her own lab next fall, when she completes her postdoctoral research.

Inactive gene

Balasooriya, meanwhile, published his research in the journal Nature Communications.

He used RNA sequencing to identify numerous genes. He also looked at whether the RNAs originated from the mom or dad’s genes in individual cells.

Also planning to start his own lab next fall, Balasooriya found changes that alter gene expression between the alleles from the mother and the father experimentally and through data mining approaches.

“What was most surprising in my studies is that [he identified] the gene from the father’s side and the mother’s side are regulated in a different manner,” Balasooriya said. “I’m interested in following up on that finding.”

The next step for him is to look not only at the heart, but, more broadly, at how monoallelic gene expression changes the way regulators affect development and disease.

“I want to do a deep dive to find out the mechanisms” involved in this expression of a single copy of the gene, Balasooriya said, which could provide ways to understand how to control the process.

In the long run, this kind of research could provide insights into ways to treat heart disease as well as other diseases like cancer and immune diseases.

Growing up in the North Western Province in Sri Lanka, Balasooriya was interested in math and science. After he finished his bachelor’s degree in biology in Sri Lanka, he earned a master’s in molecular biology at the University of Hertfordshire in England. He “got so excited about biology and exploring new fields” that he decided to pursue his PhD at the University of Cambridge, England.

After college, he worked in computer science for a while and realized he was not passionate about it, which encouraged him to do his master’s. The experience in computer science helped him with bioinformatics.

As for Spector, he is pleased with the work of both of his postdoctoral researchers. “This is what being a principal investigator is all about, having young people join your lab, sitting down with them, discussing a potential project, not really knowing where it’s going to go,” he said.

He described both members of his team as “extremely successful” who were able to make discoveries that they shared in prestigious journals. Balasooriya and Hazra both laid the groundwork to go and start their own careers. 

“Seeing the fruits of their work is the most rewarding experience” as the leader of a lab, Spector said.

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Elon Musk. Pixabay photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

Our story begins some time around now. No, there’s no chocolate, despite the season, and there’s no meadow where everything is edible.

No, our modern-day story begins where so much of us live these days, online.

You see, a famous and once marvelous company called Twitter is run by an eccentric, wealthy and successful businessman named Elon Musk, who somehow figured out how to create and mass produce electric cars that require no gas and that sound like spaceships.

Musk has decided, after many hours of running Twitter, that he needs to find a successor.

So, borrowing a page from Willy Wonka, he provides invitations that cost 3 cents per tweet to enter a sweepstakes.

When he narrows the field down to those who get the golden tweet, he plans to invite a group of five people to come to a virtual, top secret Twitter tour.

A few people try to make fake tickets, but the ever vigilant Musk spots the fraud. Day after day, people wait until, finally, five people, some of whom have never tweeted in their lives, have a chance to run the company.

Musk appears on screen wearing a top hat and a menacing smile. He demands that no one record what they see or take a screenshot of the secrets he is prepared to share.

Each person has a tiny image — about 1/4 the size of Musk’s — as they virtually walk through a factory floor.

On the first stop, Musk invites them to join him in the secret Hunter Biden/ New York Post room. Ah, yes, the story about the infamous laptop, which will undoubtedly become a part of an extensive investigation into the Biden progeny, is in this room.

“Don’t try to read anything!” he snaps.

But, of course, one of the contestants can’t resist. With a special tool that tracks eye movements, Musk knows that contestant No. 1, who is chewing gum constantly, is trying to decipher all the information. Her screen develops a horrible virus that turns it (and her entire computer) purple.

“You see?” he says, shaking his virtual head at the other small characters. “That’s what you get when you don’t listen. Oh, look, here they come now.”

Wearing virtual clothing embroidered with the Tesla logo, a modern day group of Oompa-Loompas appears on screen.

“Oompa, loompa, doompa dee do.

I’ve got another riddle for you.

Oompa loompa, doompa dee dee

if you are wise, you’ll listen to me.

What do you get when you don’t listen to Musk?

A virus on your computer that will kill it before dusk.

Who do you think should have the last laugh?

It certainly won’t be you or your staff.

Take a moment to ponder this fact,

Running Twitter may take too much tact.”

“Well,” Musk interrupts, waving away the virtual characters. “That’s enough of that. Now, let’s go for a virtual boat ride.”

In everyone steps as a boat careens through a choppy river, passing one door after another, with the names of celebrities who have been suspended hanging from each virtual room.

The boat stops near an embankment. The Musk character invites his guests to look at some special doors.

When he turns around, his virtual eyes widen in shock, his lower jaw drops down to his knees, and he hunches his shoulders.

“How? What? Wait, what’s going on?” he stammers, looking closely at the faces of his remaining four contestants.

Sure enough, on screen, Musk recognizes that two of the faces are the same as his, while the other two look like versions of Donald Trump.

“No, but, I made this game,” he whines. “How will we find out who wins?”

“Ah,” one of the Trumps says. “For that, you’ll have to tune into the sequel, which will only cost $99 and will become a collector’s item in no time.”

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Isabella Rossellini ‘s new one woman show Darwin’s Smile reconciles two worlds that are often at the opposite ends: art and science. Photo by © André Rau/CSHL

By Daniel Dunaief

A model and actress, Isabella Rossellini has spent her life as a part of numerous stories. Nowadays, the 70-year old Rossellini, who has a home in Bellport, is eager to share the next chapter in her story-telling.

This time, Rossellini will bring her one-woman show “Darwin’s Smile,” which she originally wrote in French but will perform in English, to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s Grace Auditorium for a two-day run on Saturday and Sunday, March 4 and 5, 2023.

Tapping into her love for animals, Rossellini plans to share her observations and insights about the nexus between her art as an actress and the science she studied and observed when she earned her Master’s Degree from Hunter College in animal behavior and conservation.

“What I would like to do is share my wonderment and stupor about information I learned” about animals, Rossellini said in a recent interview with Times Beacon Record News Media. “Science is notoriously difficult. The language is very enigmatic. Even to read Darwin is complicated. Once you get it, it’s really incredible.”

Indeed, Rossellini wrote the show as an extension of  the 1872 book by Charles Darwin titled Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, which was published 13 years after his famous On the Origin of Species.

Darwin studied a range of expressions from people all over the world and discovered that some of those expressions, such as smiling, responding to fear, or being disgusted, are the same regardless of the cultural background.

Darwin, Rossellini said, believed that evolution through natural selection shaped these expressions of emotion, the same way natural selection might affect a bone, the horns on a buck or the shape of a bird’s beak. The core of emotion across species appeals to her as an actress and as someone who appreciates and admires animals.

“Modeling is all about expression,” said Rossellini, who was the world’s highest paid model in 1982. “Yes, you have to be beautiful, and all this. What makes a good model is not so much beauty. People respond to emotion, rather than a beautiful nose or a beautiful mouth.”

As she did with her series of shorts called “Green Porno,” in which Rossellini dressed as creatures such as a praying mantis, shrimp, snails, spiders, and whales, among others, and described their mating, Rossellini uses humor to entertain and educate in “Darwin’s Smile.”

At one point, she dresses as a peacock with an attractive tail. Darwin, Rossellini said, found the brilliant colors of those feathers overwhelming, which gave him a headache.

Rossellini emerges from her peacock costume in another costume and sings a song, slowly, in French.

In her show, Rossellini uses her acting skills to convey emotions that use the same words. Repeating “I love you and I want to be with you all my life,” she shares that thought with rage, love and sadness, making it clear through her acting that humans derive meaning from a range of cues.

On a scientific level, Rossellini would like to challenge the idea that research into animals can’t include a recognition of their emotions. The science of behaviorism suggested that researchers shouldn’t “project any emotion into animals,” she said. Many scientists look, instead, directly at the behavior of animals.

“Darwin did not have that problem,” she said. He recognized that his dog was happy to see him and that a cat was angry.

As for the emotions she feels when she views her own acting performances, Rossellini suggested her experience mirrors that of many other actors and actresses. “It’s difficult to see oneself on screen in front of everybody,” she said. The mental image she has of herself sometimes conflicts with what she sees on screen.

“It’s very disturbing,” she said. “I don’t really like to watch my past work.”

The movies also create some melancholy for her, as they can evoke memories of her experiences during filming. She said the film “Blue Velvet” conjures thoughts of the time she and the cast, with whom she shared close friendships, worked together in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Sometimes she watches her movies twice. The first time, she adjusts to herself on screen. The second time, she follows the storyline and plot.

In terms of movies that came out this year, Rossellini said the film EO, which is about the life of a donkey who performs in a circus and then moves from one challenging circumstance to another, “makes you feel for the farm animal.” She described the film, which was made in Poland by director Jerzy Skolimowski, as “kind of beautiful.”

As for her life, Rossellini, who is the daughter of famed director Roberto Rossellini and actress Ingrid Bergman, said her interest in animals started when she was around 14 and her father gave her the book King Solomon’s Ring by Konrad Lorenz.  

When she read the book, she thought “this is what I want to be,” Rossellini said. Only later, after modeling and acting, both of which she continues to do, did she add ethology to the mix. 

———————————————

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, 1 Bungtown Road, Cold Spring Harbor will host a special performance of “Darwin’s Smile” at Grace Auditorium on March 4, with doors opening at 5 p.m. The show starts at 6 p.m., followed by a reception and Q&A with Rossellini led by Helen Hou, an assistant professor and neuroscientist at CSHL. 

An encore performance (sans Q&A and reception) will be held March 5, with doors opening at 3 p.m. and showtime at 4 p.m. For tickets, visit www.cshl.edu. For further information, call 516-367-8800.

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From left, Patricia Wright with Pamela Reed Sanchez, President and CEO of the Seneca Park Zoo Society with the Warrior Award, a depiction of a tree growing out of rock, designed and created by artists at the Corning Museum of Glass. Photo courtesy of Amanda Lindley

By Daniel Dunaief

For only a short period of time, Patricia Wright was just a primatologist who studies the charming lemurs of Madagascar.

Now the Herrnstein Professor of Conservation Biology and Distinguished Service Professor at Stony Brook University, Wright first trekked to the island nation off the southwest coast of the African continent in 1986 to understand and study these unique primates.

Within a year, she realized she wouldn’t have much to observe and understand in a perilously short time if she didn’t also work to protect them, their habitat, and many other threatened and endangered animals and plants.

With the help of the government of Madagascar, Wright created a protected area known as Ranomafana National Park, which includes 41,500 hectares of space, keeping loggers, poachers and others from threatening to eradicate animals and plants that are unique to the country.

Between the original effort to create the national park and today, Wright has collected numerous honors and distinctions. She has won three Medals of Honor from the Malagasy government and become the first female recipient of the coveted Indianapolis Zoo Prize in 2014.

Recently, the Seneca Park Zoo in Rochester, New York named Wright its inaugural “Conservation Warrior,” providing her with a $20,000 prize in recognition for conservation work that has had a lasting, meaningful impact on species survival.

Patricia Wright with her Warrior Award from the Seneca Park Zoo.

“Dr. Wright’s early years were spent in Rochester, New York and it is fitting that the inaugural Conservation Warrior award be bestowed upon arguably the most influential conservationist to come out of the Finger Lakes region,” Pamela Reed Sanchez, President and CEO of the Seneca Park Zoo Society, explained in an email.

The newly anointed conservation warrior recently traveled to Montreal as a member of the Madagascar delegation at the fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, or COP-15.

While she’s in Montreal, she plans to meet with conservation donors in an all-out effort to save wildlife on Madagascar, where almost all the reptiles and amphibians, half of its birds and all of its lemurs are only found on the island nation.

Wright hopes to raise $250 million for the country and $50 million for Centre ValBio (CVB), the research station she created in Ranomafana in 2003 and that employs 80 Malagasy staff. CVB has developed a conservation network around CVB that includes work with 75 villages.

Drew Fellman, who directed and wrote the Island of Lemurs documentary, encouraged donors to support Wright’s efforts. Wright and CVB are at the “front line of defense and anyone who cares [about] wildlife and endangered species should lend them a hand,” Fellman wrote in an email. He described how some species of lemurs are down to fewer than 10 individuals and “without conservation, there will be nothing left to research.”

In areas where conservation isn’t a priority, the region has lost habitat and biodiversity. In the northern areas of Madagascar, loggers and timber exporters reduced rainforest areas to grasslands, she said.

In the bigger picture, Wright said Madagascar needs funding immediately as the country is “closer to the brink of extinction with so many more species.” Saving plants and animals in Madagascar extends beyond committing to the protection and stewardship of vulnerable creatures. It also could provide benefits for people.

“So many lemur species are close relatives [to humans] and contain genetic information” about Alzheimer’s, diabetes and other conditions, she said. Additionally, creatures like bamboo lemurs regularly eat large quantities of cyanide, which would kill humans. Understanding how they can tolerate such high quantities of cyanide could provide an antidote.

The forests in the national park, which might otherwise attract loggers, prevent erosion, silting and landslides, she explained.

The benefit of a research stations like CVB extend beyond gathering information and conducting experiments.

In a recent correspondence in Nature Communications, lead author Timothy Eppley, a postdoctoral fellow at San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance along with three other scientists including Wright, argues that field research stations “are on the front line of biodiversity conservation, acting as no-take zones that rewild surrounding ecosystems.”

In the correspondence, Eppley and his colleagues said that these stations are “invisible” in global environmental policy, despite their importance in conservation.

“Our point in the paper is that this has not been given any conservation attention,” said Wright. “Nobody is funding us for doing conservation” even though these sites are “conservation engines. We should be given recognition and more conservation money.”

Eppley, who leads SDZWA’s lemur conservation program, added that the Nature correspondence didn’t include any of the data the group collected.

While Eppley cautioned in an email sent from Madagascar that it’s difficult to generalize about conservation efforts at field stations, he said many have some conservation initiatives or projects, or that some element of their research includes a strong conservation component.

“Without the conservation piece, all other research will eventually disappear: we need the ecosystem and animals to exist in the first place,” he explained.

Eppley suggested that scientists often approach conservation initiatives that they can test on a small scale and then, if they are effective, find the best way of scaling up those initiatives for entire protected areas, landscapes, countries or broader geographic regions.

As for the honor Wright received from the Seneca Park Zoo, Eppley believes such recognition dovetails with their recent correspondence piece in Nature Communications.

Wright “founded CVB and has been tirelessly building it into a globally recognized field research station,” he wrote.

Bringing international recognition to the work being done at CVB “highlights the overall importance of field research stations and why they need to be included in global environmental policy frameworks,” Eppley added.

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Takeout food. METRO photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

I could take it personally, you know. I mean, come on! Does this happen to everyone?

Okay, so, check it out. First, I’m coming back from the airport, and I’m starving. I don’t tend to eat too much on days when I’m on a plane. I have a sensitive stomach, yeah, right, poor me, and I’m a bit, which is an understatement, of a neurotic flier. The combination doesn’t tend to make travel, food and me a harmonious trio.

Okay, so, there I am in the car, on the way home, and my wife can tell that I’m hungry. Ever the solution-finder, she suggests I order food from a local restaurant. When I call, the woman on the phone takes my order, which includes a salad with blackened chicken, and tells me I have to get there within half an hour because they’re closing.

When we arrive home, I bring in my small bag, grab the keys, and race out to the restaurant.

“Are you Dan?” she asks hopefully as I step towards the counter.

“Yes,” I say, realizing that I’ve cut the half-hour mark pretty close.

“Here’s your food,” she says, shoving the bag across the counter.

“This is everything?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says, as she rings me up and is clearly eager for me to step outside so she can lock the door and go on to the portion of her evening that doesn’t involve taking food requests, handing people food and charging them for it, all while standing near a gratuity jar that says, not so subtly, “Even the Titanic tipped.” That, I suppose, should inspire me to consider forking over a few extra dollars.

I stop at the supermarket for a few items next door, drive home and bring the bag into the dining room, where my wife opens it.

“Uh, Dan?” she says tentatively. “They forgot your salad.”

“What?” I rage, between clenched teeth in the kitchen as I unload the groceries.

“Your salad isn’t here. Did they charge you for it?”

“Yes,” I say, as I grab some slices of turkey I bought for lunch and a few salad items.

The next day, I called the restaurant to explain that my food didn’t come. The manager said he came in that morning and saw a salad with blackened chicken in the refrigerator. He says he can make a new one that day or can leave me a gift card. I opt for a new salad,

When I arrive, the same redheaded woman with a nose ring from the night before greets me.

“If it makes you feel better, I forgot much bigger parts of other people’s order,” she says, with a curious mix of sheepishness, humor and pride.

“No, how is that supposed to make me feel better?” I ask.

Still in food ordering mode, and perhaps not having learned my lesson, I ordered two breakfasts the next morning and, this time, received a single order that was a hybrid of my wife’s and mine.

That night, my wife and I went to a professional basketball game. Stunningly, the person operating the scoreboard had the wrong statistics for each player and the wrong names and uniform numbers of the players on the floor.

What’s happening? Is customer service a thing of the past? Are we better off with artificial intelligence or online systems?

I realize that the missed food could have happened with anyone at any time and that the thankless job of taking orders, preparing food and making sure people get what they order isn’t particularly exciting. 

Are people not taking responsibility in their jobs? Are they proud of their mistakes? Has customer service become like our appendix, a vestigial organ in our culture?

I’m the type of consumer who would eagerly become more loyal and would recommend services when the people who work at these establishments show me they care, want my business, and can be bothered to provide the products I purchased. Companies, and their staff, should recognize that I’m likely not the only one who enjoys efficient, professional and considerate customer service.

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Luisella Lari. Photo from BNL

By Daniel Dunaief

Some day, physicists and members of the public who benefit from their discoveries may be happy that Luisella Lari had limited musical and sports talent.

Lari, who grew up in Torino, Italy, tried numerous sports and instruments, especially with her parents’ encouragement.

Luisella Lari studies continuous feature drawings of the Electron Ion Collider. Photo from BNL

After gamely trying, Lari blazed her own trail, which has led her to become Project Manager and senior scientist for the Electron Ion Collider, a one-of-a-kind nuclear physics research facility at Brookhaven National Laboratory. BNL won the rights to construct the EIC, which the lab will plan and develop over the course of the next decade, from the Department of Energy in 2020.

By using a 2.4 mile circumference particle collider, physicists will collide polarized electrons into ions with polarized protons to answer a host of questions about the nature of matter. They will gather information about the basic building blocks of nuclei and how quarks and gluons, the particles inside neutrons and protons, interact dynamically through the strong force to generate the fundamental properties of these particles, such as mass and spin.

Lari, who joined the EIC effort on October 3rd, described her role, which includes numerous meetings, calls and coordinating with multinational and multi-state teams, as a “dream job.”

“I’m so excited to be a part of a project that can help the next generation of physicists,” Lari said. “It’s my turn to participate in the construction” of the cutting edge facility. BNL is coordinating with numerous other labs nationally, including the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator in Virginia, an internationally on the project.

Amid her numerous responsibilities, Lari will ensure that effective project management systems, cost controls and project schedules are developed, documented and implemented. Core competencies of the team she is responsible for include procurement, quality and safety.

EIC applications

The EIC has numerous potential applications across a host of fields. It could lead to energy-efficient accelerators, which could lower the cost of accelerators to make and test computer chips. The EIC could also provide energetic particles that can treat caner cells and improve the design of solar cells, batteries and catalysts. The EIC may also help develop new kinds of drugs and other medical treatments.

Lari explained that she provides a review and approval of the safety evaluations performed by experts. She suggested this suits her background as she did similar work earlier in her career.

Luisella Lari on a recent vacation to Mackinac Island.

Lari has made it a priority to hire a diversified workforce of engineers, technicians and quality and safety managers who can contribute to a project that BNL will likely start constructing in 2026 and 2027.

“I am a strong supporter of building a diverse workforce at levels of the organization,” she explained in an email. “I am strongly convinced that it will add value to any work environment and in particular in a scientific community.”

Applying her experience

Lari isn’t just an administrator and a project coordinator —  she is also a physicist by training.

She earned a master’s degree in nuclear engineering from Politecnico di Torino University in Italy and a PhD in physics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne in Switzerland.

Early in her professional career, Lari worked at Thales Alenia Space, an aerospace company in Turin, Italy, where she collaborated for the development of her master’s thesis. She worked for two years at the company, performing tasks that included testing internal fluid supply lines for one of the International Space Station’s pressurized modules that connects the United States, European and Japanese laboratories in orbit.

She enjoyed the opportunity to work for a “really interesting project” and still routinely uses the NASA system engineering handbook.

She also worked for about a dozen years as an applied physicist and planning officer at CERN, a particle physics lab, which is on the border between France and Switzerland near Geneva.

Lari also served as a project manager and scientist for the European Spallation Source, a neutron source under construction in Sweden. She coordinated ESS Accelerator Project budgets and ran data-driven safety analyses.

Recently, Lari was a senior manager at Fermi National Accelerator in Illinois, where she coordinated international partner contributions to the Proton Improvement Plan II, which upgraded the accelerator complex.

A need to know

When Lari was in middle school, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant melted down. As a school assignment, she had to explain what happened. At that point, she said she understood nothing, which motivated her to want to become a nuclear engineer.

She was “fascinated by nuclear energy.” When she worked at CERN, she had not been studied much about accelerator physics. She attended meetings where sophisticated discussions physics took place and was driven to learn the material.

“All my life, which started when I was a child, I wanted to understand the world around me,” she said. Her work in project management for scientific projects is also her passion, she said. “My mother would say to me when I was younger that I should choose my job in a way that I would do something I like, because I will spend half my life doing it.”

In addition to committing to understanding the physics and helping other scientists pursue their curiosity, Lari said she appreciates the opportunity to collaborate.

While Lari never became proficient in music or athletics, she enjoys dancing and is looking forward to attending Broadway musicals in New York.

She has hosted her parents at each of the places where she has worked, broadening their horizons.

As for her work, Lari recalls being impressed by the ability of the managers at the LHC to summarize complex work in a few pages and to make big picture decisions that affected so many other scientists. She became impressed and inspired “by the power of the project administrator approach,” she said. She also appreciates the opportunities to interact with experts in several fields, which gives her the chance to “better understand and learn.”

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By Daniel Dunaief

Like the rest of the state and country, Suffolk County is grappling with a shortage of pediatric amoxicillin, the drug most often used to treat bacterial infections such as strep throat and ear infections.

In the last few weeks, parents have gone to their local pharmacies, only to find that the liquid form of the medicine that’s suitable for their children is out of stock.

“There is a shortage,” said Dr. Sharon Nachman, chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Stony Brook Children’s Hospital, who estimates that the medicine isn’t available about half the time the hospital prescribes it. “We worry that it’s going to continue to happen.”

As more children are around their friends and family before and during the holidays “it’s going to get worse,” she added.

This, doctors said, is not a Long Island or even a New York state problem. It’s national.

Nachman’s granddaughter needed amoxicillin in Florida. Her daughter drove around from pharmacy to pharmacy until she found one that had the medicine.

Doctors suggested that a number of factors have contributed to the shortage. For starters, some urgent care centers and doctors around the country are prescribing amoxicillin when children have viral infections. The medicine not only isn’t helping with sore throats or other viral symptoms, but it also isn’t as available for the children who have bacterial infections.

Nachman urges parents to make sure their children have an infection for which amoxicillin or any other drug works before picking it up from the pharmacy.

“When the pediatrician does a viral test and you get a positive, you know what it is,” she said. “When they do a throat swab for strep and it’s negative, you know what it’s not.”

Nachman told parents to ask whoever is prescribing antibiotics like amoxicillin if their children really need the medicine.

“If there is a silver lining, it’s forcing clinicians to try not to over prescribe it,” said Dr. James Cavanagh, director of Pediatrics at Port Jefferson’s St. Charles Hospital.

Finally, the stock of amoxicillin is low nationally.

For parents, the effect of the shortage has ranged from the expected anxiety over a limited resource to an awareness of a new reality.

Indeed, earlier this year, parents struggled to find baby formula.

“They are accepting of it, given the climate we’ve been in with formula,” Cavanagh said. “Parents are unfortunately getting used to it.”

Other infections

With viruses like respiratory syncytial virus, the flu, and COVID-19 prevalent and increasing in communities around Long Island, children and adults are increasingly getting sick and exhibiting the kind of general symptoms that could be viral or bacterial.

Stony Brook Children’s Hospital continues to have a steady stream of patients.

“We were full before Thanksgiving, full on Thanksgiving and full after Thanksgiving,” Nachman said. “As soon as a bed opens, another child comes in.”

While strep throat is easy to diagnose, ear infections can be either viral or bacterial.

Pediatric associations offer various guidelines. For children who are 9 and over, parents can do watchful waiting, but for children who are younger, like 4 months old, parents should use antibiotics.

While childhood forms of amoxicillin are limited, adult supplies, in the form of pills and capsules, are not. Children as young as 7 years old can take pills as long as the milligrams of the pills to the kilograms of the child’s weight are appropriate for
the dosage.

Nachman said Stony Brook Children’s Hospital has been doing a lot more calling to pharmacies near where patients live to ensure they have amoxicillin.

“That takes extra time,” she said. Those efforts could mean that families may have to wait longer in the emergency room.

The amoxicillin shortage can be worse for families that don’t have cars.

“How are they getting their prescriptions filled?” Nachman asked. “This is just one more worry.”

Alternatives

Area doctors and pharmacists suggested that there are alternatives to the pediatric form of amoxicillin. Children who are old enough and meet weight requirements can take a pill.

Alternatively, with careful medical guidance, parents can open up the right dose for capsules and mix it with applesauce or some other foods, according to the American Association of Pediatrics.

Doctors can also prescribe other broad spectrum antibiotics, such as augmentin and omnicef. 

Using these other antibiotics, however, increases the risk of developing antibiotic resistant infections later.

“The next infection may be harder to treat,” Cavanagh said.

These other antibiotics also may eliminate some of the good bacteria in the gut,
causing diarrhea.

As doctors have increasingly prescribed some of these other medicines, pharmacies have seen the supply of alternatives decrease as well.

“Everyone follows the same algorithm” in prescribing medicine, which means the demand for other prescriptions is increasing, Cavanagh added.

Immune boost

Doctors said children can enhance their overall health and immune systems with healthy eating and sleeping habits and by making sure they are up to date with available preventive measures.

“Get vaccinated,” Cavanagh said. He also urged good hand washing routines.

Cavanagh added that children exposed to cigarette smoke in a house are also at a higher risk of ear infection. As for what constitutes enough sleep for a child, doctors recommend between eight and nine hours per night. That, doctors said, is tough to get for children who sleep with a cell phone near their beds.

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Ukrainian flag. Pixabay photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

As we round out the second week of December, I’d like to offer some suggestions for a 2022 time capsule.

— A Ukrainian flag. Ukraine, with help from Americans and many other nations, has fended off Russia’s ongoing military assault. The question for 2023 will be whether they can continue to defend the country amid a potential decline in international support.

— A waterlogged dollar. With inflation at decades-high levels, the dollar isn’t buying as much as it had been.

— Florida man makes announcement. I would include a copy of the New York Post front page the day after former president Donald Trump, to no one’s surprise, announced he would be running for president in 2024. A previous ardent supporter of the former president, the Post may be leading the charge in another political direction to find a new standard bearer for the GOP.

— A red dot. Certainly, the Republicans taking over the majority in the house will have important consequences, with numerous investigations and a divided government on the horizon, but Republicans didn’t win as many national elections as anticipated.

— A miniature replica of the Supreme Court, with the words Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in front of it. The Supreme Court case, which reversed the Roe v. Wade decision, removed the federal right to an abortion, enabling states to pass new laws and contributing, in part, to smaller midterm wins for Republicans.

On the much smaller personal front:

— Throat lozenges. I got COVID-19 for the first time this year and my throat was so painful for a week that I couldn’t talk. The lozenges didn’t work, but they would highlight numerous efforts to reduce pain from a virus that was worse than any flu I’ve ever had.

— The number 62. This, yet again, wasn’t the year the New York Yankees won the World Series. Nope, they didn’t even get there, yet again falling, this time without winning a single game, to the Houston Astros. It was, however, a wonderful chase for the American League home run record by Aaron Judge, who just signed a $360 million extension with the Yankees.

— Wedding bells and a tiny nerf football. For the first time in years, my wife and I attended two family weddings this year. We loved the chance to dance, catch up with relatives, eat great food, and run across a college baseball field with a $7 nerf football we purchased from the hotel lobby store.

— A miniature swamp boat. On one of the more memorable trips to New Orleans to visit our son, my wife and I saw numerous alligators and heard memorable Louisiana tales from Reggie Domangue, whose anecdotes and personal style became the model for the firefly in the Disney movie “The Princess and the Frog.”

— A shark tooth. During the summer, Long Islanders worried about local sharks, who bit several area swimmers. The apex predator, which is always in the area, likely had higher numbers amid a recovery in the numbers of their prey, which are menhaden, also known as bunker fish and, despite the prevalence of the music from the movie “Jaws,” does not include humans.

— A Good Steer napkin. My favorite restaurant from my childhood closed after 65 years, leaving behind an onion ring void and shuttering the backdrop to numerous happy family outings. If I had a way to retire expressions the way baseball teams  retire numbers, I would retire the words “Burger Supreme” on a food version of Monument Park.

— A giant question mark. Scientists throughout Long Island (and the world )constantly ask important questions. Some researchers will invent technology we may use all day long, like cell phones. Others may make discoveries that lead to life-saving drugs. Let’s celebrate great questions.

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Egypt’s coral reefs, shown here in a recent photo of the Red Sea in Egypt, remain one of the few pristine reef systems worldwide. Photo by Maoz Fine

By Daniel Dunaief

While global warming threatens most of the warm water reefs of the world, the reefs off the coast of Egypt and nearby countries are capable of surviving, and even thriving, in warmer waters.

That, however, does not mean these reefs, which live in the Northern Red Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba and are along the coastline of Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, are safe. 

Karine Kleinhaus

Indeed, several factors including unsustainable tourism, sewage discharge, coastal development, and desalination discharge threaten the survival of reefs that bring in more money than the Great Pyramids.

Recently, Karine Kleinhaus, Associate Professor at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University, published a letter in the prestigious journal Science that suggested it’s time to conserve the Egyptian reefs, which constitute about 2 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

Along with co-author Ellen Pikitch, Endowed Professor of Ocean Conservation Science at SOMAS, whe urged an expanded and fortified marine protected network. As of now, the MPAs only protect about 4 percent of Egypts’s waters.

Kleinhaus, who is President of the Red Sea Reef Foundation which supports scientific research on the reefs, also urged more effective fisheries management and enforcement and an investment in sustainable tourism practices and infrastructure that mitigates land-based pollution, such as waste-water treatment infrastructure and garbage disposal mechanisms.

Science published the letter just days before the 27th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27), which was held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

During the COP27 conference, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) committed up to $15 million to scale reef-positive blue economic growth and conservation finance in the Red Sea in partnership with the Global Fund for Coral Reefs.

Kleinhaus called the investment a “great start” in protecting a “valuable global treasure. It’s great that the US recognizes the value of this place and that the US is working to contribute to preserve it.”

Other work ahead

Kleinhaus added that considerable works lies ahead to protect one of the few reefs capable of surviving climate change. “We can’t turn the clock back right this minute on warming the oceans, [but] we can stop the conditions that are happening along the Red Sea reef,” she said.

Kleinhaus suggested that all the threats to the reefs are significant. Tourists who are not educated about the fragility of the nature they’ve come to see have damaged the reef. Scuba divers, meanwhile, smash into the reefs with their tanks or drag their regulators and other gauges over the reefs, killing or injuring them.

Kleinhaus with a grouper in Eilat.

During Covid travel restrictions, Kleinhaus heard that some parts of the reef, which would have otherwise been damaged by visitors, recovered. Raw sewage and general pollution reaching the reefs also threatens marine life, as is over fishing.

Other reefs, such as the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, have sustained damage from global warming. Kleinhaus described those reefs as a “warning that things are going to change.”

Transplanting parts of the Red Sea reef into other parts of the world to enhance temperature resilience is unlikely to work, Kleinhaus said. These reefs include a diverse ecosystem that supports it, including algae, bacteria, invertebrates and fish.

“We don’t have the scientific knowhow to transplant entire ecosystems at this time,” said Kleinhaus

Evolution of resistance

Kleinhaus explained that heat resistance in the Red Sea reefs developed through natural selection of the coral animals.

During the last Ice Age, the Red Sea got cut off from the Indian Ocean, which meant the temperature climbed and the sea didn’t have any rivers emptying into it. When the Ice Age ended, waters rose into the Red Sea that carried coral from the Indian ocean. The coral that survived had to be tolerant of heat and salt.

“That is the working hypothesis as to why the corals in the northern Red Sea are resilient,” Kleinhaus explained in an email. “They were selected to tolerate hotter water than where they live now.” She called this resilience a “lucky break” for the reefs.

Unusual path

Kleinhaus, who grew up in Westchester, New York, followed an unusual path into marine research.

After attended medical school in Israel at Tel Aviv Medical School, she practiced briefly as an obstetrician in New York. From there, she was the divisional vice president for North America for an Israeli biotechnology company.

Egypt’s coral reefs, shown here in a recent photo of the Red Sea in Egypt, remain one of the few pristine reef systems worldwide. Photo by Maoz Fine

Kleinhaus was reading about the effect of heatwaves and global warming on coral reefs. Upset that they were dying, she decided to make a career change and earned her master’s degree in Marine Conservation and Policy at Stony Brook’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences.

The common thread in her career is that she was working on cell therapy using cells from the placenta, which is an extension of her obstetrics career. Nowadays, she studies reproduction in corals.

Like humans, corals have the hormones estrogen, progesterone and testosterone. Unlike humans, reefs are hermaphrodites and can switch back and forth between genders. Kleinhaus is exploring the relationship between hormones and the stages of reproduction in coral.

Numerous species of coral spawn once a year within 20 minutes of each other. Their reproduction is tied to the moon cycle. Kleinhaus has collected over two and a half years of data and plans to publish those results in a scientific journal.

She started diving in 1993 and said she enjoys seeing the colors, the shapes, the fish, turtle, octopuses, dolphin and barracuda. Invertebrates and sponges also contribute to the “overwhelming and glorious” experience of visiting reefs.

Down the road, she’d like to collect information from the COP27 conference and write a follow-up piece that would include more deep research about policies and conditions of the reef.

The point of the letter was to “highlight that this has to be protected and it’s a serious interest to everybody in Egypt.”

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METRO photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

As we reach the beginning of December, we are only a month away from the inevitable promises to shed unwanted pounds.

Today, however, only a few days after our journeys to visit friends and families for Thanksgiving, I’d like to urge you to consider shedding unwanted baggage.

Metaphorically, we all lug unwanted baggage with us — remembering the spot where a girlfriend or boyfriend broke up with us; the moment we decided to substitute the wrong player in a game we were coaching; and the time our teacher gave someone else partial credit for the same answer on which we received no credit.

Some of that baggage is constructive, giving us the tools and the memory to learn from our mistakes and to have a perspective on the things that happen to us.

We might, for example, learn to cope with losses on the athletic field more gracefully when recalling how we felt the time we shouted at a coach, an umpire or an opposing player. Days, weeks, or years later, we might realize that we have the tools and the distance to understand the moment better and to develop a grace we might not have possessed when we were younger.

Extending the baggage metaphor, it seems that the more we carry with us everywhere, the harder it is to move forward. Baggage, like those unwanted pounds that make it harder to hike up a hill or to climb stairs, keeps us in place, preventing us from improving and moving forward.

Shedding pounds, which isn’t so easy itself, has a prescribed collection of patterns, often involving an attention to the foods we might mindlessly eat and a dedication to exercise.

But how do we get rid of the emotional baggage that gets in our way? What do we do to move forward when the burdens around us weigh us down?

For starters, we might learn to forgive people for whatever they did that annoys or puts us down. Forgiveness isn’t easy, of course. We sometimes hold onto those slights as if they are a part of our identity, becoming a doctor to show our biology teacher who didn’t believe in us that we are capable and competent or developing into a trained athlete after a neighbor insulted us.

Holding onto those insults gives other people unnecessary power over us. We can and should set and achieve our goals because of what we want and not because we continue to overcome limits other people tried to set for us.

We also might feel weighed down by our own self-doubt. As I’ve told my children, their peers and many of their teammates, we shouldn’t help our competitors beat us. Believing the best about ourselves is difficult.

We also don’t, and won’t, always win. It’s easier to carry the memories of the times we failed a test or when we didn’t reach the top of the mountain on a hike. Carrying those setbacks around with us for anything other than motivation to try again or to go further than we did before makes it harder to succeed.

Now is the time to set down that baggage, to walk, jog or even run forward, unencumbered by everything that might make us doubt ourselves and our abilities and that might make it harder to achieve our goals. While all that baggage might feel familiar in our hands, it also digs into our palms, twists our fingers and slows our feet.

Even before we resolve to eat better, to exercise, to lose weight and to look our best, let’s check or even cast aside our emotional and psychological luggage. Maybe dropping that baggage in the last month of the year will make achieving and keeping our New Year’s resolutions that much easier.

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