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Daniel Dunaief

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Stem cell growth, required for kernel development, is controlled in corn by a set of genes called CLEs. But how these genes change the corn is complicated. Using CRISPR genome editing, CSHL researchers found they could change kernel yield and ear size by fine-tuning the activity of one of the CLE genes, ZmCLE7. In the image: an unmodified corn cob with normal ZmCLE7 gene activity (1) is packed with regular rows of kernels. Shutting off ZmCLE7 (2) shortened the cob, disrupted row patterns, and lowered kernel yield. However, decreasing the same gene’s activity (3) led to an increase in kernel yield, while increasing the gene’s activity (4) decreased the kernel yield. Jackson Lab/CSHL 2021

By Daniel Dunaief

The current signal works, but not as well as it might. No signal makes everything worse. Something in the middle, with a weak signal, is just right.

By using the gene-editing tool CRISPR, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Professor Dave Jackson has fine-tuned a developmental signal for maize, or corn, producing ears that have 15 to 26 percent more kernels. 

Dave Jackson. Photo from CSHL

Working with postdoctoral fellow Lei Liu in his lab, and Madelaine Bartlett, who is an Associate Professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Jackson and his collaborators published their work earlier this week in the prestigious journal Nature Plants.

Jackson calls the ideal weakening of the CLE7 gene in the maize genome the “Goldilocks spot.” He also created a null allele (a nonfunctional variant of a gene caused by a genetic mutation) of a newly identified, partially redundant compensating CLE gene.

Indeed, the CLE7 gene is involved in a process that slows the growth of stem cells, which, in development, are cells that can become any type of cell. Jackson also mutated another CLE gene, CLE1E5.

Several members of the plant community praised the work, suggesting that it could lead to important advances with corn and other crops and might provide the kind of agricultural and technological tools that, down the road, reduce food shortages, particularly in developing nations.

“This paper provides the first example of using CRISPR to alter promoters in cereal crops,” Cristobal Uauy, Professor and Group Leader at the John Innes Centre in the United Kingdom, explained in an email. “The research is really fascinating and will be very impactful.”

While using CRISPR (whose co-creators won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in October) has worked with tomatoes, the fact that it is possible and successful in cereal “means that it opens a new approach for the crops that provide over 60% of the world’s calories,” Uauy continued.

Uauy said he is following a similar approach in wheat, although for different target genes.

Recognizing the need to provide a subtle tweaking of the genes involved in the growth of corn that enabled this result, Uauy explained that the variation in these crops does not come from an on/off switch or a black and white trait, but rather from a gradient.

In Jackson’s research, turning off the CLE7 gene reduced the size of the cob and the overall amount of corn. Similarly, increasing the activity of that gene also reduced the yield. By lowering the gene’s activity, Jackson and his colleagues generated more kernels that were less rounded, narrower and deeper.

Uauy said that the plant genetics community will likely be intrigued by the methods, the biology uncovered and the possibility to use this approach to improve yield in cereals.

“I expect many researchers and breeders will be excited to read this paper,” he wrote.

In potentially extending this approach to other desirable characteristics, Uauy cautioned that multiple genes control traits such as drought, flood or disease resistance, which would mean that changes in the promoter of a few genes would likely improve these other traits.

“This approach will definitely have a huge role to play going forward, but it is important to state that some traits will still remain difficult to improve,” Uauy explained.

Jackson believes gene editing has considerable agricultural potential.

“The prospect of using CRISPR to improve agriculture will be a revolution,” Jackson said.

Other scientists recognized the benefits of fine-tuning gene expression.

“The most used type/ thought of mutation is deletion and therefore applied for gene knockout,” Kate Creasey Krainer, president and founder of Grow More Foundation, explained in an email. “Gene modulation is not what you expect.”

While Jackson said he was pleased with the results this time, he plans to continue to refine this technique, looking for smaller regions in the promoters of this gene as well as in other genes.

“The approach we used so far is a little like a hammer,” Jackson said. “We hope to go in with more of a scalpel to mutate specific regions of the promoters.”

Creasey Krainer, whose foundation hopes to develop capacity-building scientific resources in developing countries, believes this approach could save decades in creating viable crops to enhance food yield.

She wrote that this is “amazing and could be the green revolution for orphan staple crops.”

In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration is currently debating whether to classify food as a genetically modified organism, or GMO, if a food producer used CRISPR to alter one or more of its ingredients, rather than using genes from other species to enhance a particular trait.

To be sure, the corn Jackson used as a part of his research isn’t the same line as the elite breeding stock that the major agricultural businesses use to produce food and feedstock. In fact, the varieties they used were a part of breeding programs 20 or more years ago. It’s unclear what effect, if any, such gene editing changes might have on those crops, which companies have maximized for yield.

Nonetheless, as a proof of concept, the research Jackson’s team conducted will open the door to additional scientific efforts and, down the road, to agricultural opportunities.

“There will undoubtedly be equivalent regions which can be engineered in a whole set of crops,” Uauy wrote. “We are pursuing other genes using this methodology and are very excited by the prospect it holds to improve crop yields across diverse environments.”

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Photo from Pixabay

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

I have a surprising amount of “found time” these days.

I still have numerous responsibilities and deadlines, but the time between activities, when I’m walking and talking with my wife, when I’m driving to the supermarket or when I’m preparing dinner, my mind is free of the pattern it had developed over the course of the last four years.

No, I wasn’t training for the Olympics and no, I wasn’t preparing a machine to land on the Red Planet. I was, like so many other people, living my life and reading the headlines.

More often than not, the 45th president of the United States consumed the news cycle. Periodically, I wrote about him, but, for the most part, despite reading and reacting to the things other people wrote, I recognized that few ideas or thoughts I had were original or even worth printing.

Yet, I found myself reading and reacting with friends and family, pondering whether he was setting new presidential precedents.

While my body hasn’t gone on any distant vacations, except for a relaxing ski weekend, my mind suddenly has more time. Indeed, even when there are headlines about Supreme Court decisions related to the former president, I glance at a few sentences and move on to other things.

So what am I doing with all this found time? In no particular order, here are a few ways I have reengaged my mind:

■ I’m reading more books. I have had Walter Isaacson’s biography of Ben Franklin next to my bed for a while. I’m now parsing through it more closely, enjoying the reality of an iconic American, learning about his love for travel and his well-known sense of self worth.

■ I’m thinking about Mars. At first, of course, I couldn’t help wondering how Marvin the Martian from the Bugs Bunny era might react to the Perseverance rover landing next to his home. On a more serious note, I enjoyed the absolutely giddy scene at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where scientists and engineers have been working tirelessly for years for this moment and where they saw and heard sights and sounds from Mars that bring us all closer to the planet’s surface.

■ I’m noticing the lighting around our neighborhood. As we approach spring, the colors of the light have changed, turning ordinary homes into glowing domiciles. If I were selling some of the houses around me, I would take pictures of them during the sunrise and sunset, showing prospective buyers these residences when they are glowing.

■ I’m becoming preoccupied with sports again. I am following the Brooklyn Nets more closely and, more directly, am excited for the days and weeks ahead when my son might play baseball. In his last year of high school, he has an opportunity to play for his school and himself, if the school and the league are able to get through an entire season during the pandemic.

■ I’m marveling, in a distant and impersonal way, at the turnabout in press coverage. CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post have toned down their Washington criticism, while the New York Post and Fox News seem intent to point out all the flaws and dangers of the new administration. The teeter-totter has tilted in the other direction now, with the New York Post attacking White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki with some of the same concerns that the more liberal papers attacked the previous press secretary.

■ Lastly, I’m listening to everything around me better. The children playing down the street and the returning birds calling to each other in the trees have captured my attention.

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Feinstein Institutes’ Drs. Kevin Tracey and Christina Brennan break down the current COVID-19 clinical trials and treatments. Photo courtesy of The Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research

By Daniel Dunaief

In a collaboration between Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and Northwell Health’s Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, doctors and researchers are seeking patients with mild to moderate symptoms of COVID-19 for an at-home, over-the-counter treatment.

The two-week trial, which will include 84 people who are 18 years old and older, will use a high, but safe dose of Famotidine, or PEPCID, in a double-blind study. That means that some of the participants will receive a placebo while others will get the Famotidine.

Volunteers will receive the dosage of the medicine or the placebo at home and will also get equipment such as pulse oximeters, which measure the oxygen in their blood, and spirometers, which measure the amount of air in their lungs. They will also receive a scale, a thermometer, a fitness tracker and an iPad.

Dr. Christina Brennan. Photo courtesy of The Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research

Northwell Health will send a certified phlebotomist — someone licensed to draw blood — to the participants’ homes to collect blood samples on the first, 7th, 14th, and 28th day of the study.

The study is the first time CSHL and Northwell Health have designed a virtual clinical trial that connects these two institutions.

“What is very powerful with our work with Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is the ability to do a virtual trial and utilize patient-recorded outcome measures,” said Christina Brennan, a co-investigator on the study and Vice President for Clinical Research for Northwell Health. “I’m thrilled that we’re doing this type of virtual trial. It’s very patient-centric.”

While reports about the potential benefits of Famotidine have circulated around the country over the last year, this study will provide a data-driven analysis.

“If we study this in the outpatient population, then we might have an opportunity to see if [Famotidine] really does play a role in the reduction of the immune overreaction,” Brennan said.

At this point, researchers believe the drug may help reduce the so-called cytokine storm, in which the immune system becomes so active that it starts attacking healthy cells, potentially causing damage to organs and systems.

In an email, Principal Investigator Tobias Janowitz, Assistant Professor and Cancer Center Member at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, wrote that “there are some retrospective cohort studies” that suggest this treatment might work, although “not all studies agree on this point.”

In the event that a trial participant developed more severe symptoms, Janowitz said the collaborators would escalate the care plan appropriately, which could include interrupting the use of the medication.

In addition to Janowitz, the medical team includes Sandeep Nadella, gastroenterologist at Northwell, and Joseph Conigliaro, Professor of the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research.

Janowitz said he does not know how any changes in the virus could affect the response to famotidine.

In the trial, volunteers will receive 80 milligrams of famotidine three times a day.

The dosage of famotidine that people typically take for gastric difficulties is about 20 milligrams. The larger amount per day meant that the researchers had to get Food and Drug Administration approval for an Investigational New Drug.

“This has gone through the eyes of the highest regulatory review,” Brennan said. “We were given the green light to begin recruitment, which we did on January 13th.”

Volunteers are eligible to join the study if they have symptoms for one to seven days prior to entering the trial and have tested positive for the virus within 72 hours.

Potential volunteers will not be allowed in the trial if they have had other medications targeting COVID-19, if they have already used Famotidine in the past 30 days for any reason, if they have severe COVID that requires hospitalization, have a history of Stage 3 severe chronic disease, or if they are immunocompromised by the treatment of other conditions.

Brennan said Northwell has been actively engaged in treatment trials since the surge of thousands of patients throughout 2020.

Northwell participated in trials for remdesivir and also provided the steroid dexamethasone to some of its patients. The hospital system transfused over 650 patients with convalescent plasma. Northwell is also infusing up to 80 patients a day with monoclonal antibodies. The hospital system has an outpatient remdesivir trial.

“Based on all our experience we’ve had for almost a year, we are continuously meeting and deciding what’s the best treatment we have available today for patients,” Brennan said.

Janowitz hopes this trial serves as a model for other virtual clinical trials and is already exploring several potential follow up studies.

Brennan said the best way to recruit patients is to have the support of local physicians and providers. 

People interested in participating in the trial can send an email to [email protected] or call 516-881-7067.

When the study concludes, the researchers will analyze the data and are “aware that information on potential treatments for COVID-19, no matter if the data show that a drug works or does not work, should be made available to the community swiftly,” Janowitz wrote in an email.

The decision to test this medicine as a potential treatment for COVID-19 arose out of a conversation between Director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Cancer Center Dave Tuveson and CEO of the Feinstein Institute Kevin Tracey.

“I got involved because I proposed and developed the quantitative symptom tracking,” Janowitz explained.

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Photo from Pixabay

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

If you can do it, I highly recommend getting away from your life, even if it’s just for a day or a weekend.

Despite the ongoing threat from COVID-19, we took a weekend ski trip. We called the small inn where we hoped to stay and asked if they required masks of their guests.

“When you get here, you’ll see that there’s almost no common space,” the innkeeper said. “You’ll be in a small hallway.”

That was music to our ears and, as it turned out, exactly as he described. We only saw two other guests that weekend and that was in the parking lot.

Upon check in, we called the family that ran the inn, who directed us, unseen and contactless, to our room, where an old fashioned key, not a key card, awaited us on the kitchen table.

After we emptied the luggage from our car, we raced up a foggy mountain filled with hairpin turns to the ski slope after 9 p.m. to pick up our equipment. I had read that the ski slope recommended getting the gear the night before to save time the next morning. With only two other customers at the rental center that night, we maneuvered through the process quickly.

Something about getting away from the sameness of the last year was incredibly liberating. We woke up later than usual, had a light breakfast and headed to the slopes. Assured that the three parking lots were full, my wife suggested driving to the closest lot, where a friendly parking attendant suggested we could take our chances and circle the lot. Sure enough, my wife spotted someone pulling out of a spot just as we arrived.

The only remaining obstacle between us and blazing a trail down the mountain was a lift ticket.

Clearly, we weren’t the only ones pining for an outdoor sport, as an enormous line awaited. My wife discovered that the line was for rentals and that the ticket line had only two other people.

Grateful for the time we saved procuring equipment the night before, we put on our skis and shuffled towards one of the closest lift lines.

Sitting on a lift for the first time, dangling above skiers and snow boarders who did everything from carving their way down the mountain to sliding on their backside as their skis popped off, we shed the sameness of home life, home responsibilities and home entertainment.

The first time down the mountain, we reminded ourselves to keep our weight forward. My feet and legs, which have spent far too much time tucked underneath me in a chair at home, appreciated the chance to set the pace and direction.

My ears delighted at the shushing sound and my eyes drank in the magnificence of mountains gently piercing through a blanket of clouds that changed from white and grey to orange and pink during the approaching sunset.

We had a few challenging moments. Numerous skiers went maskless until reminded by a lift attended, while some people seemed genuinely disappointed when I didn’t agree to share a lift with them. When I explained to one of them that I was being, “COVID-safe,” she said she was already vaccinated. I told her I hadn’t and was being careful.

A few errant snowboards passed perilously close to my legs before colliding into a tree, while lift lines were sometimes too crowded for comfort.

Still, the ability to get away from a life that, as my daughter describes, “remains on pause even as it moves forward,” provided a refreshing and memorable change to our routines.

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Pixabay photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

Panic, which started in my stomach and had seeped so deep into the sinews of my fingers that I could barely write my own name, was overcoming me.

I was staring at the problem, knowing that I could do it if I calmed down, but also fearing that the answer wouldn’t come in time.

I had studied this type of organic chemistry problem for weeks, had attended every extra help session Randy, my teaching assistant and the head teaching fellow for the class, gave, including several late in the evening on Sunday nights.

If I froze up for too long, I ran the risk of not finishing that problem or the test. I couldn’t come up with a solution, and I couldn’t move on.

Then, it hit me. No, it wasn’t the solution. It was Randy’s overwhelming cologne. My teaching fellow was walking up and down the rows of the testing site, making sure no one was cheating, while responding to requests to go to the bathroom.

Something about his cologne brought me back to one of the many study sessions, helping me break the mental logjam in my head and sending me toward the solution that was right under my nose.

As we enter the 11th month of this pandemic, we can see and hear many of the cues we would get if we were continuing to live the lives we took for granted, but we are much more limited in what we can smell, especially if we are sticking with federal guidelines and staying put.

So, what smells do I miss the most?

While I enjoy visiting Long Island beaches in the summer, when the trio of hazy, hot and humid hovers in the air, I particularly appreciate the cold, salt spray of a winter beach, when the scent of crispy and frozen seaweed blends with air that seems to have brought hints of its cold journey across the ocean.

Then, of course, there is the missing smell of the kinds of foods that aren’t in our own kitchens or right next door. One of my favorite restaurants, the Good Steer sends out the scent of their onion rings in every direction around the building, calling to me and recalling my youth when my late father would watch happily as all three of his sons consumed our double order of onion rings, alongside our burger supremes.

While all ice might seem to smell the same, the scent of Alaska’s glaciers brings a frozen crispness to an inhospitable climate. Marveling at the ice around a cruise my wife and I took over two decades ago, I inhaled the cool fresh scent of frozen water.

Then there’s the food from all over the world. The enticing smells of freshly baked baguettes and fruity macarons in Parisian patisseries, the welcoming scent of fish caught earlier that day on Hawaiian beaches or the symphony of smells from places like Faneuil Hall, where Boston accents form the acoustic backdrop for the smell of flowers, steaks, and baked beans.

With spring just a month away, I turn to thoughts of baseball and Yankee Stadium. Yes, of course, numerous odors throughout the stadium — from other fans who could use some of Randy’s cologne to restrooms that don’t smell like a rose garden — aren’t the first things that come to mind. I’m talking about the smell of the grass and the dirt after the grounds crew waters it. That baseball field scent conjures infinite possibilities, from triple plays to triples off the wall, from immaculate innings to grass-stained catches. The smell of hot dogs and soft buns entice us as vendors march up and down the stairs nearby.

These days, we can see and hear people through FaceTime calls, but we can’t smell them. That person might love orange Tic Tacs, tuna fish sandwiches, fresh roasted coffee or any of a host of other scents — cinnamon rolls, perhaps —that define her the same way the light highlights a crooked-toothed smile. We might find Tic Tacs that remind us of them, but, without the combination of scents, including their laundry detergent, their soap or their conditioner, or their physical presence, we are missing that olfactory connection.

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Weisen Shen. Photo by John Griffen/SBU

By Daniel Dunaief

Like so many others during the pandemic, Weisen Shen has had to pivot in his job.

An Assistant Professor in the Department of Geosciences at Stony Brook University, Shen has historically focused his efforts on understanding the geothermal heat flux, or the movement of heat from the core of the Earth, in Antarctica.

Constrained by travel restrictions created by the COVID-19 pandemic, Shen has decided to put his 180 seismometers to good use on Long Island.

“We have seismometers that stay in the basement of our building,” Shen said. “We can’t use them in Antarctica because of the travel ban and other complexities, and we want to make use of them in our community to understand the geology of Long Island.”

Shen is looking for students who might be interested in geology and who might like to plant a seismometer in their backyard, gathering information about how the flow of seismic waves deep beneath their homes and backyards reveals details about the structure, temperature and composition of the land miles below the surface.

Shen, who lives in Syosset, installed a seismometer in his own backyard, which has allowed him to see the signal from the local train station in Sayville. “We seek help from [the local community] to allow us to deploy a seismometer in their back or front yard for a month or so,” Shen said.

Planting a seismometer would involve digging a 15 centimeter by 15 centimeter hole that is 5 inches deep. Shen and his team would cover it. The seismometer wouldn’t need local electricity because it has a lithium battery. 

After about a month, the scientists would dig it out, put dirt back in, and return the backyard to the way it looked prior to taking these measurements.

The machine doesn’t make any noise and does not pick up any sounds from inside people’s homes.

The signal will contribute “to our understanding of the Earth,” Shen explained, including details about the crustal and mantle structure, seismic activities, and the Earth’s vibrations due to civil activities such as the rumbling of trains.

Shen is “more than happy to share data” with the people who host his seismometers. He also expects to produce a research paper based on his studies from Long Island.

He is charging the batteries and testing the instruments and plans to plant them in the field as early as the end of February.

People who would like to participate can reach out to Shen by sending him an email at [email protected]. Please include “Volunteer Long Island Imager” in the subject line.

Recent Antarctica Studies

While Shen is focusing his geothermal expertise on Long Island, he hasn’t abandoned or ignored Antarctica, a region he has focused research efforts on because of the vulnerability of the ice sheet amid climate change. He is also interested in the geothermal structure in the area, which reveals information about its geology and tectonics, which remain mysteries residing below the ice. 

Grounded during the pandemic, Shen spent several months gathering and analyzing considerable available data, hoping to understand what happens deep below the frozen surface.

“We are trying to analyze so-called ‘legacy data’ that has been collected over the past two decades,” he said.

On a fundamental level, Shen is trying to quantify how much heat is coming out through the crust, which includes heat coming from the deeper earth in the mantle and the core as well as within the crust.

Traveling beneath the oceans towards the center of the Earth, which would be considerably hotter and more difficult than 19th century author Jules Verne’s fantastic fictional voyages, would expose people to temperatures that increase, on average, about 10 to 30 degrees celsius per kilometer.

Some of the heat comes from the way the planet formed. In addition, unstable isotopes of potassium, uranium and thorium release heat as they decay, which mostly happens within the Earth’s crust. 

In areas with large ice sheets sitting on top of the land, the geothermal heat can melt some of that ice, creating a layer of water that accelerates the ice sheet movement. Indeed, pulling an ice cube across dry ground takes more energy than dragging that same cube across a wet surface.

Moving ice more rapidly towards the periphery will increase melting which, coupled with climate change, could increase the amount of water in Antarctica, particularly in the western region.

Comparing the two ice melting effects, Shen believes global warming, which is more rapid and has shorter term outcomes, plays a more important role in changing the liquid characteristics of Antarctica than geothermal heating, which is longer term.

In collecting available legacy data, Shen analyzed information from the entire western part of Antarctica, as well as parts of the central and eastern regions.

Using a measure of the geothermal heat flux, Shen found some unexpected results, particularly on Thwaites Glacier, beneath which he found a large area with elevated geothermal heat flux. 

Studying geomagnetic data, he compared their results with the results from geomagnetically derived results. In the future, he will combine the two different methods to improve the assessment. 

In a publication last summer in Geophysical Research Letters, Shen presented a new map of the geothermal heat flux for Antarctica with a new resolution of 100 kilometers by 100 kilometers, which is a much higher resolution than earlier studies, which are typically done at 600 kilometer by 600 kilometer ranges.

In West Antarctica, he found a more modest heat flux, despite the area being more tectonically active.

Finally, a major take of the paper, Shen said, is that the Thwaites glacier has a high geothermal heat flux, which could explain why the ice moves more rapidly and readily.

As for his future work, in addition to exploring the seismology of Long Island, Shen said he would pursue his National Science Foundation grant to look for additional water in the boundary between the ice sheet and the mantle.

He is working on “using high frequency seismic records to look for data,” he said.

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Valentina Bisogni. Photo from BNL

By Daniel Dunaief

Nature plays a wonderful game of hide-and-seek with its secrets.

One day, Joan might be searching for, say, an apple tree in the forest. Joan might consider all the elements that appeal to an apple tree. She might expect the journey to take two hours but, to her surprise, discovers a tree on the way.

That’s what happened to Valentina Bisogni, a physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Bisogni, who works at the National Synchrotron Lightsource II, wanted to figure out how the thickness in a magnetic film affected traveling modes involving the spin property of electrons, known as spin waves. Specifically, she wanted to control the energy of the spin wave.

This might be important in future devices that involve passing along information through an electron’s spin rather than through charge, which is the current method. Controlling the spin wave could be another way to optimize the performance or improve the efficiency of future devices.

Transmitting charge creates unwanted heat, which can damage the components of an electronic device and limit its usefulness. Heat also creates energy inefficiencies.

Valentina Bisogni with a collection of tomatoes in a garden in Bellport Village. Photo by Claudio Mazoli.

Bisogni, who arrived at BNL in 2014, has been working on a beamline called Soft Inelastic X-ray Scattering, or SIX. Each of the new beamlines at the nearly billion-dollar facility has its own acronym and number that corresponds to their location in the accelerator ring.

Before she planned to apply an electric field that might control the spin wave, however, Bisogni figured she’d explore the way thinner iron materials affected the spin.

That’s when the metaphorical apple tree appeared, as the thickness of iron films, that were as thin as one to 10 nanometers, helped control the spin wave before applying any electric field.

“This result was not expected,” Bisogni said. This was preparatory work to a more detailed, dedicated study. 

“Not having had any benchmark of iron crystals in general with the technique I am using, it was logical to study this system from a bulk/ thin form to a very thin film,” she explained in an email.

Bisogni and a team from Yale University recently published the results of this work in the journal Nature Materials.

While this unexpected result is encouraging and could eventually contribute to the manufacture of electronic devices, Bisogni said this type of discovery helps build a fundamental understanding of the materials and their properties at this size.

“For people assembling or designing devices or wave guides, I think this is an ingredient that has to be considered in the future,” Bisogni said.

This kind of result could enable the optimization of device performance. When manufacturers propagate a signal based on spin dynamics, they would likely want to keep the same frequency, matching the signal along a medium from point A to point B.

The effect of the thickness on the spin was like a power log, which is not quite exponential as the experimenters tested thinner material, she said.

Bisogni plans to continue with this collaboration, as the group is “excellent in preparing and characterizing this kind of system.”

In the bigger picture, Bisogni is focused on quantum materials and altering their spin.

She is also overseeing the development of a system called Opera, which copies the working conditions of electronic devices. Opera is the new sample environment available at SIX and is developed within the research project to copy device-working conditions in the beamline’s measurement chamber.

Bisogni ultimately hopes her work may improve the energy efficiency of electronics.

A resident of Bellport Village, Bisogni lives with her partner Claudio Mazoli, who is the lead scientist for another beamline at the NSLS II, called the Coherent Soft X-ray Scattering, or CSX.

Bisogni said the couple frequently enjoy exchanging ideas and have an ongoing active collaboration, as they share several scientific passions.

The couple met at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France when they were working in the same lab.

Bisogni was born and raised in Spoleto, which is in the province of Perugia in the center of Italy. Bisogni speaks Italian and English as well as French and German after her work experience in France, Germany and Switzerland.

Bisogni said she and Mazoli are “very food-centric” and can find numerous epicurean opportunities in the area of Long Island and New York City. The weather is also similar to home, although they miss their family and friends from Italy.

The couple purchased a house together during the pandemic and have been doing some work to shape the house to their needs. They remodeled the bathrooms in an Italian/ European style, purchased a German washing machine and dryer and painted some walls.

In the summer, Bisogni, who likes to eat, cook and grow vegetables, enjoys spinach, tomatoes and light-green zucchini.

As for her work, Bisogni is currently pleased with the state of her beamline, although she said its development took considerable team effort and time during the development, construction and commissioning.

At this point, her research team includes two and a half permanent scientists and two post-doctoral scientists. Within the team, they have two post-doc researcher positions looking to fill, one for her research project and another dedicated to her colleague’s research project.

Ultimately, Bisogni is excited with the opportunities to make fundamental discoveries at work.

“It is, in general, very exciting, as most likely you are doing something for the first time,” Bisogni explained in an email. “It is true that you may fail, since nobody is going to tell you if what you are doing is going to work or not, but if you get it right, then it is extremely rewarding.”

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Photo from Pixabay

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

For the past week, I’ve had birds on my brain.

For starters, Central Park birders headed to the famous urban greenway recently to catch sight of a snowy owl, the first time people documented the presence of the bird in the park in about 130 years. 

I wrote to a bird expert, Noah Strycker, who is both a celebrated avian author, having written “Birding without Borders,” and a master’s candidate at Stony Brook University in the laboratory of Heather Lynch, a penguin scientist and the IACS Endowed Chair for Ecology & Evolution.

Strycker responded to numerous questions about the owl and the snowstorm that blanketed the region earlier this week.

In response to a question about exactly what might bring a snowy owl to the city, Strycker suggested that these birds often “irrupt,” a word for traveling greater distances than normal, south from their normal Arctic range in winters following good breeding summers. 

“Their appearance in New York may be related to an abundance of lemmings in the Arctic last summer,” Strycker wrote. In other words, these well-fed birds may have been able to journey further from the Arctic after a bountiful summer.

While Strycker didn’t catch sight of the owl this time, he did see one on Long Island last winter. They appear on the south shore almost every year, although it’s unusual to see one in Central Park because they prefer beaches and open areas, which are closer to a normal tundra habitat.

As for the rare birds Strycker has seen in the area, he said he got to see a Western Tanager and an Ash Throated Flycatcher in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn this fall. These are birds from the western part of the country, which don’t visit the Empire State too often.

Vagrant birds, which occur in areas outside their typical range, can appear in the area, a byproduct of a wrong turn during a long migration. So, what happens to birds during a snowstorm, I wondered.

For the snowy owl, if he were still here, the precipitation probably wouldn’t have been much of a problem, as his name suggests.

“Flying through falling snowflakes isn’t as much of an issue as flying in high winds, which do, occasionally, literally blow birds off course,” Strycker wrote.

During the storm, many bird species will tuck themselves in a protected spot, like in a dense tree to ride out the flakes.

Noah Strycker with a northern saw-whet owl

“This is a good time to watch your hedges and evergreen trees, which provide nice cover in the winter,” Strycker suggested.

Strycker said people could do seed eating birds — like sparrows, finches, cardinals, doves, chickadees, and jays — a favor by restocking a feeder before a snowstorm.

“They will all come to bird feeders for sunflower seeds and suet,” he said.

Snowy owls, on the other hand, don’t need handouts or feeders. They find their food, typically small mammals, by using their keen senses of sight and hearing. Shaped like a disc, an owl’s face concentrates faint sounds of rustling under the snow, allowing it to find prey it can’t see.

Strycker has always wanted to find an owl footprint in the snow, which looks like a snow angel. The owl lands on the snowy landscape to find its prey and lifts off, leaving footprint evidence of its meal.

As for the effect of the snow on a bird’s survival, Strycker said most of the birds in the area manage through the colder months.

“Snowstorms have been occurring in New York for a very long time, so birds that spend the winter here have mostly adapted to surviving them,” Strycker wrote.

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Qiang Li. Photo courtesy of BNL

By Daniel Dunaief

Decades ago, most people could only tune to shows like The Jetsons to imagine interactive televisions in which people could see each other during conversations.

Qiang Li. Photo courtesy of BNL

In modern times, hand held devices and laptop computers have turned those science fiction ideas into everyday realities, as people can tell their phones to call their mom, to provide the outdoor temperature or to help them recall the name of a movie they saw decades ago.

These helpful technological devices, however, may some day go the way of the clunky desktop computers of yesteryear, as scientists around the world work to turn the vision of a quantum computer into a reality.

Scientists hope to develop a next generation of quantum computer that is faster, smarter, more flexible and more energy-efficient than current technological devices. They hope these devices could be the key to future technological breakthroughs, inspiring them to figure out how to bring the theory to life.

Collaborating with scientists at Ames Laboratory in Iowa, Qiang Li, SUNY Empire Innovation Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Stony Brook University and Leader of the Advanced Energy Materials Group at Brookhaven National Laboratory, recently published a study in the journal Nature Materials that provided fundamental information that might contribute to the field of quantum computers.

The group of scientists, which included Li’s PhD student Pedro Lozano, discovered a light-induced switch that twists the crystal lattice of a semimetal, turning on an electron current that the team believes is nearly dissipationless.

When currents move through wires between utilities and people’s homes and offices, that current encounters resistance, losing energy along the way, as if the movement towards the home created a tax on the journey. Similarly, dissipation inside an electronic device can sap some of the energy needed to transmit information or a signal, reducing the effectiveness of the process.

Li and BNL physicist Genda Gu synthesized, patterned and characterized the material at BNL, while Jigang Wang, a senior scientist at Ames Laboratory, performed the light-induced lattice twisting. The team helped create the light-induced switch.

Li described the effort as “fundamental research” and cautioned that any such advancement is more of a principal study, rather than a step closer to making any new qubit (the basic unit of quantum information) device.

“This is an experimental study to show that this is possible,” Li said. “It’s a demonstration of feasibility that you can harness chirality for building quantum information systems.”

With chirality, electrons have a handedness based on whether their spin and momentum are aligning in the same or opposite direction.

Once electrons have chirality, they can travel much easier, enabling a more direct and predictable route from one place to another.

Scientists like Li would like to create physical systems that enable them to control the chirality, preventing the spin from switching from one direction to the other.

Numerous factors can disrupt the chirality of an electron, including imperfections in the material.

A pulse-triggered light-induced switch can change the topology of a Weyl semimetal, making it possible to enable the movement of electrons that are nearly dissipationless. “For pure electronics, even computer chips, electrons consume a lot of energy because of electrical resistance,” Li said. “A chiral current [however] will travel without resistance, in ideal cases without chirality flipping.”

Chiral electrons travel through the semimetal at a speed as high as 1/300th of the speed of light and can travel considerably further before a collision that alters its direction, speed, or other particle properties. The mean free path, which is the average distance a particle will travel between such disruptive events, for a typical metal is nanometers. By contrast the chiral electrons can move micrometers, which is thousands of times longer.

An unperturbed chiral electron could travel further distances over shorter intervals, carrying preserved coded information without losing much energy during movement. 

Scientists have sought ways to create a path through which electrons travel with this predictable spin. They can break chiral symmetry by applying a magnetic field, which led to the discovery of the chiral magnetic effect by a team of scientists from BNL and Stony Brook University, including Dmitri Kharzeev, in 2014.  

For this work, Li received the Brookhaven Science and Technology Award in 2019.

“Using a magnetic field is problematic for some computations,” he said. Besides, people don’t want a “big magnet around your computers.”

Another way is to send in the laser pulse, creating left-handed or right-handed polarization.

To determine the ideal pulse to change the material, Li and Wang partnered with several theorists from Ames Lab and Ilias Perakis, Professor and Chair of Physics at the University of Alabama — Birmingham.

The theorists conducted detailed analysis of the lattice vibrations and the ideal pulse energy needed to break symmetry in the Weyl semimetal. “There is a very strong collaboration between the theorists and the experimentalists,” Li said.

While the research remains fundamental and is unlikely to generate a specific product any time soon, Li said it has “attracted a lot of attention” from other scientists and is a significant step forward in establishing the basic principles for topology-enabled quantum logic and information systems.

Li and Wang have been collaborating on this project for about two years as scientists around the world are in a “horse race” to produce results in the arena of quantum computing.

A resident of Setauket, Li and his wife Meiling Shih, have two children. Shih, who worked in the Stony Brook Pharmacological Science Department and later at Morgan Stanley, is retired and is now a volunteer instructor of a Tai Chi class for local seniors, 

Li enjoys jogging and runs a few miles every other day.

Down the road, Li hopes to address how to make the two quantum bits talk to each other.

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William Shakespeare statue in Verona, Italy. Photo from DepositPhotos

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

Many years ago, Madonna, and the rest of us, were “Living in a Material World.”

Well, it seems to me that we are now living in an allegorical world.

You see, we’re on a boat that’s in rough seas. We are in the middle of a Corona storm, with howling winds that threaten to rip the sails off the masts.

At the same time, the boat has numerous leaks, while the waves from the right and from the left crash into the ship.

The modern day Montagues are blaming the waves from the left for causing the danger to our ship. Without those waves, we would be able to head off in a glorious direction toward a better sunset.

At the same time, the Capulets are shouting at the waves on the right, suggesting that they have interrupted the magnificent journey, making the ship spin and rock out of control.

Never a dull moment on that ship of ours, the former captain of the ship, who reluctantly removed his steely grip from the wheel, is facing an imminent investigation from a team comprised mostly of the Capulets, who have recruited a few members of the Montagues to engage in an extensive trial.

The majority of the Montagues have a Greek chorus that laments the terrible state of affairs and encourages the new captain, whom they don’t particularly like or trust, to make sure their way of life continues and their voices continue to be important in the search for Truth, Justice and the American Way.

At the same time, the Capulets have lined up a group of people who are just as earnest and eager in their beliefs, urging the captain to ensure the future safety of the ship and all its inhabitants.

Passing people buffeted about in life rafts, some Montagues urge the captain to move on and to focus resources and efforts on the people aboard the ship. Some Capulets, on the other hand, believe the people who built the ship in the first place were, at one time or another, adrift in life rafts themselves and would like to provide refuge and safety to these wayward travelers.

All the while, the Corona winds, which started our violently, calmed down quite a bit during the summer, and have increased in intensity following Thanksgiving and the December holidays, have increased in their intensity, tearing holes in the sails and threatening to pull at the seams of the stars and stripes.

Somewhere in the middle of the ship, people who don’t define themselves as either ardent Montagues or Capulets are tending to the wounded, preparing food for others, ensuring law and order, and making the kind of shields that deflect the wind, protecting individuals and the group.

The howling wind has made it difficult for the Capulets and the Montagues to hear each other, but that hasn’t stopped either of them from pointing fingers or from blaming the other side for the condition of the waterlogged ship.

People on this American vessel have heard that ships from other nations have made it out of the storm and are enjoying calmer seas, with warm sunshine and gentle breezes.

Some day, hopefully before too long, people on both sides will figure out a way to work together, to patch the holes in the sails, to help each other and to help take the ship to calmer waters.

The Corona storm isn’t passing on its own and the residents of the ship need to pull in the same direction to maneuver to the familiar, calmer seas, where residents of the ship can, once again, enjoy peace, good health and prosperity.

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