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LIU Post Scientist Teams Up with Cardinals’ DeJong

 

Dr. Lawrence Rocks, an LIU Chemistry professor who authored “The Energy Crisis” in 1972 and worked with Congress to create the Department of Energy, teamed up with St. Louis Cardinals’ shortstop Paul DeJong to do a laboratory experiment.

They were looking to prove the theory that baseballs fly further the warmer they are. What had until now been an unproven old wives’ tale was given serious treatment by the world-renowned scientist and MLB star with a degree in biochemistry.

“As you decrease temperature, you get less bounce, like an automobile tire on a very cold day – it’s a little more brittle. As you increase temperature, the elastomers get a little mushy; you get less bounce,” Rocks told CBS News.

The findings of the experiment show that the baseball’s bounce does indeed increase with temperature – but only up to a point. Around 80 degrees, it starts to decline – resulting in a bell curve for a graph showing temperature on the X axis and bounce height on the Y axis, according to CBS News.

 

LIU Post Unveils Student Farm

BROOKVILLE, N.Y.— Despite the cold and rainy weather, approximately sixty students attended the  ribbon cutting for its new on-campus Student Farm this Thursday.  As part of LIU Post’s focus on experiential learning, the Student Farm offers a unique opportunity for students to learn real life skills in an unconventional way. At the Student Farm, students engage in hands on learning in environmental sustainability.  Students are growing a variety of vegetables and herbs; learning about soil science, pest management, and irrigation while developing their patience, responsibility, and self-confidence.

The ribbon cutting featured short statements from campus and regional leaders including noted natural food chef, Bhavani Jaroff; Nassau County Soil and Water Conservation District Manager, Patricia Manzi; along with students and professors who are working on the project.  The campus Nutrition Club provided garden-fresh snacks at the ribbon cutting.
The Student Farm is supported by the LIU Post Center for Sustainability which offers students novel interdisciplinary learning opportunities.  Professor Vic DiVenere helped the students plan and execute the farm over the summer.  DiVenere is a skilled gardener and an avid agroecologist, who said, “Our goal is to create an organic farm where the students can learn to create a rich organic soil base for the crops without relying on pesticides and synthetic fertilizers that harm soil ecology and water resources.  The goal is to grow foods rich in nutrients.”

Through the Center for Sustainability, the goal is to grow the Student Farm and expand its academic value through new courses and sustainability programs.  The Student Farm is an excellent platform for exploring deeper local and global questions about food sustainability and international food production systems.  As the farm expands, some student participants will work on building relationships with local non-profit organizations who focus on sustainable food production, school gardens, and anti-hunger programs.

“We’re trying to build a campus culture of sustainability and I think food is one of the cornerstones of what we’re trying to do,” said Scott Carlin, Associate Professor of Geography, Earth, and Environmental Science at LIU Post and the Director of the Center for Environmental Sustainability. “Almost all of our speakers have spoken about our relationship to the ground, our relationship to the food we eat, that the soil the food is grown in is really important for nurturing ourselves and nurturing our planet. Sustainability is about many things, but it’s mainly about health. Healthy people, healthy planet and trying to figure out how do we begin to do that a little more successfully than we are doing right now.”

 

 

 

LIU Egyptologist Cited in Scientific American about New Great Pyramid Discovery

In an article titled “Cosmic-Ray Particles Reveal Secret Chamber in Egypt’s Great Pyramid,” Scientific American reports that new technology that tracks particles called “muons” has been used to discover an approximate 30 foot chamber within the Great Pyramid in Egypt. This chamber could lead to new theories about how the pyramids were built.

LIU Post professor Bob Brier, an Egyptologist and author of the book The Secret of the Great Pyramid (Smithsonian), was quoted extensively in the article, calling the discovery “real news.”

“Brier has a third theory,” the article reads. “In 2007, he and French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin suggested that the Grand Gallery formed part of a huge counterweight system. Weights sliding down the floor of the Grand Gallery could have raised the hefty, granite blocks that comprise the King’s chamber, he says. He speculates that the new space could be part of a second counterweight system higher up.

“The results also seem to reject the theory, put forward by Houdin and Brier, that the builders of the Great Pyramid used an internal ramp to raise blocks up to the highest levels. ‘These data suggest that the ramp is not there,’ says Brier. ‘I think we’ve lost.'”

To read more, click here.

 

 

LIU Pharmacy Professor Featured on NPR “Public Health Minute”

Dr. John Lonie, an Associate Professor at LIU Pharmacy, was featured on Public Health Minute talking about the importance of health coaching.

https://soundcloud.com/publichealthminute/latimer-pharmacists-and-health-coaching-dr-john-lonie

Health coaching is an innovative communication technique that pharmacists can use in their practice to allow patients make long-term health behavior changes.

Dr. Lonie’s research focuses on using novel communication techniques in pharmacy practice to improve patient health outcomes. Specifically, he’s exploring how training pharmacists to also be health coaches will improve medication adherence with chronic medications. Dr. Lonie’s research interests also include the development of empathy in pharmacy students, pharmacists and other health care practitioners.

Public Health Minute (PHM) is a one minute segment in which the creator and host, Dr. William Latimer, interviews researchers and medical professionals about a wide variety of public health topics.  It airs on 12 National Public Radio stations around the country.

LIU Pharmacy Expands Research Under NIPTE Grants

LIU Pharmacy’s faculty and students are hard at work on impactful research, making the most of opportunities generated by the University’s membership in an elite pharmacy research consortium. This consortium, the National Institute for Pharmaceutical Technology and Education (NIPTE), has seven top 10 schools in U.S. News and World Report’s ranking of college pharmacy programs among its membership, including the University of Minnesota, the University of Texas, and Purdue University.

One year after LIU joined NIPTE, two research grants received through the consortium have been expanded. These grants facilitate research in the University’s Lachman Institute for Pharmaceutical Analysis, an analytical laboratory equipped with advanced analytical instrumentation in support of pre-clinical drug development research, industrial drug development and pharmaceutical compounding activities.

Under one NIPTE grant, LIU Pharmacy faculty and students are studying how tablets dissolve in biorelevant media, or fluids that simulate what is found inside the human body. The goal is to determine and measure differences between dissolution in biorelevant media and dissolution in water (the standard method for testing solid dosage forms), improving the drug development process for drug manufacturers and outcomes for patients.

LIU Pharmacy is also working with researchers at the University of Iowa on a clinical study involving transdermal patches. LIU Pharmacy students and faculty are using mass spectrometry to determine the level of a drug in patients’ blood after they have worn a transdermal patch for a given length of time. Through the study, researchers at Iowa and LIU are examining how much the amount of drug in a patch varies between different manufacturers, and how much it varies among patches made by the same manufacturer.

LIU’s work in conjunction with researchers at Iowa is just one example of the opportunities that faculty and students have as a result of membership in NIPTE. As LIU Pharmacy continues to conduct research in its institutes – with and without NIPTE partners – the University is poised to become a top destination for elite pharmaceutical researchers and motivated graduate students.

Victoria’s Secret Model Jourdana Phillips Teams with LIU Brooklyn to Promote Literacy

 

Annual Read for the Record event connects LIU with the community

BROOKLYN, N.Y.— On Thursday, October 19, Campus Life and Jumpstart partnered to host a new LIU Cares tradition, Read for the Record. Read for the Record is a nationwide initiative where schools across America all read one book on the same day.More than 80 children aged 2 – 5-year-old visited campus. Thirty-five LIU Brooklyn volunteers had lunch with the children, read the book Quackers by Liz Wong, and helped to facilitate engaging activities.

Celebrity guest Jumpstart alum/Victoria Secret Model Jourdana Phillips and Akua Williams joined LIU student volunteers to read to the children and support this important initiative.

About LIU Cares: LIU Cares, a multi-campus, multi-dimensional initiative, provides access to evolving and active partnerships with community agencies and organizations, and is designed to connect LIU’s 20,000 students, 3,500 faculty and staff, and 200,000 alumni to the power of service through volunteerism and community engagement—locally, nationally, and globally.

The mission of LIU Cares is to provide a destination for individuals at LIU to develop thoughtful approaches to community engagement, service learning and discovery.

LIU Announces Dr. Randy Burd as Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs

Accomplished Researcher to Bolster LIU’s Upward Trajectory in Academics and Research

Long Island University President Dr. Kimberly R. Cline announced another important step forward in establishing LIU as a nationally recognized teaching and research university, with the selection of Dr. Randy Burd as the new Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs.

Dr. Burd joins LIU from the University of Arizona where he led the University’s global research and strategic partnerships in the office of Research, Discovery and Innovation, and holds a faculty appointment as a Professor of Nutritional Sciences.  At the University of Arizona, Dr. Burd oversaw the expansion of initiatives to increase global research and created partnership infrastructures that connected faculty to new international research opportunities. With extensive expertise in technology and innovation, he built a research development team to link faculty research programs with novel internationally recognized academic distance curricula.  His research has been funded by the United States Department of Agriculture, the National Institutes of Health, American Institute for Cancer Research Foundation, and industry.

“Randy Burd has a proven record as a researcher and innovator,” Eric Krasnoff, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Long Island University, said.  “He will complement our experiential approach to learning and springboard LIU into the top ranks of national research universities.”

“Randy Burd possesses the world-class research and academic credentials that will move Long Island University forward and help realize our bold vision,” President Cline said.  “He will help continue our upward trajectory and further advance LIU as a great teaching and research university.  We are honored to welcome Randy to our senior leadership team.”

“There is notable momentum at LIU in academics and research innovation, and I am excited to join the LIU leadership team that is advancing the University forward,” Dr. Burd said.  “First and foremost, ensuring academic excellence and positive student outcomes is my highest priority.  I am honored to be included in a leadership team that understands the power that research has to change the world, and I look forward to working with LIU leadership and faculty to cultivate research opportunities at LIU.  With innovative leadership, top-notch faculty and engaged students, I see great things on the horizon at LIU.”

LIU is achieving results from its program of strategic investments. This year, LIU was recognized as one of the top 20 selective private colleges in the nation on the “Overall Mobility Index,” assembled by researchers from Harvard, Stanford, and Brown as part of the Equality of Opportunity Project. LIU Post (the University’s primary campus for the purpose of regional and national evaluation and rankings) climbed 12 places in US News and World Report’s ranking of Regional Universities (North) and was named to The Princeton Review’s “Best Northeastern Universities” list for the first time in the University’s history. These accolades follow comparable laurels from such prestigious publications and research organizations as Forbes and the Brookings Institution.

At LIU, Dr. Burd will help lead a team that is pursuing cutting-edge research, including Dr. John Pezzuto, Vice President of LIU Health and Research, and a recipient of the Volwiler Research Award by the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy, who served on the 14-member search committee.

Dr. Burd serves on several editorial boards, including Nutrition and Cancer.  He is a member of NAFSA: Association of International Educators, and the Society for Thermal Medicine.  Among his accolades includes serving as Visiting Professor at the Universidad de las Américas Puebla, Mexico and he presents lectures in both nutrigenomics and entrepreneurship across the globe.  He previously served as Director of Pre-clinical Therapeutics in the Department of Radiation Oncology at Thomas Jefferson University before he was recruited to the University of Arizona to establish a Nutrigenomics program to identify new bioactive compounds that could be developed into therapeutics.

Dr. Burd received his undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences from the State University of New York (SUNY) College at Buffalo, and his Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biophysics in 1998 from the Roswell Park Cancer Institute Graduate Division, SUNY at Buffalo.

President Cline thanked the 14-member search committee, composed of faculty and administrators from throughout the University, for a process that led to such an outstanding appointment.

“I am grateful to all the members of the committee who devoted so much of their time to this thorough process,” President Cline added.

“This position sets the agenda for LIU to move forward and develop its commitment to innovative teaching and cutting edge research,” Dr. John Lutz, Chair of the English Department at LIU Post, member of the search committee and Chair of the Post Faculty Council, said, “Dr. Randy Burd impressed the search committee with his academic vision, commitment to excellence, and track record as a researcher.”

“The committee recognized immediately that Dr. Burd has strong academic credentials and a world class research profile,” Dr. Michael Kavic, a Physics Professor at LIU Brooklyn and member of the search committee, said.  “What became apparent as the interview process continued, however, was that Dr. Burd possessed a dynamic vitality and sense of vision that set him apart from all the other candidates. I am convinced he will propel the academic mission and research efforts of our university to new levels of excellence.”

The senior vice president for academic affairs is responsible for the academic quality of the educational programs taught by LIU faculty members across all of the campuses. LIU’s search consultant was Witt/Kieffer.

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LIU Brooklyn Scientists Part of Groundbreaking Discovery, Reports News 12

News 12 Brooklyn was on hand to report a groundbreaking discovery in astrophysics by a contributing team of scientists at LIU Brooklyn.

The discovery of a phenomenon called a neutron star merger has implications that help prove Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. LIU’s radio telescope in New Mexico helped observe the event for the first time.

Astrophysicist Michael Kavic told News 12, “It allows us to get a complete picture of the system and the system is really very extreme. It’s a system where the laws of physics are really pushed to their limits so there’s a great deal for us to learn by looking at it in all these many different kinds of ways, through all these many different kinds of instruments.”

The discovery was the subject of a celebratory press event at the National Book Club October 16, hosted by the National Science Foundation.

Fox 5 News Features LIU Post Interprofessional Simulation Center

Jodi Goldberg of Fox 5 News (and an LIU Post alum) came to Long Island University to report the new state-of-the-art Interprofessional Simulation Center, which celebrated its ribbon cutting and grand opening during Homecoming weekend.

The Center is a critical part of the University’s experiential approach to educating the next generation of health-care professionals.  Modeled after the state-of-the-art simulation lab facilities in LIU Brooklyn’s Harriet Rothkopf Heilbrunn School of Nursing, the lab promotes collaboration among future nurses and health professionals, preparing them for roles in an increasingly complex and interdisciplinary health care environment. The center simulates real-world situations, using advanced simulation equipment.  The participants learn proper interventions, refine interprofessional skills, and increase confidence in their abilities.

Goldberg spoke with Stacy Gropack, Dean of School of Health Professions and Nursing at LIU, Assistant Dean Paul Dominguez, and three LIU Post students.

The Interprofessional Simulation Center replicates a hospital setting, complete with mannequins that simulate patients on which students can safely practice clinical skills, such as taking vitals, checking blood pressure, and moving and washing patients.

“The ‘sim man,’ which is our most advanced, can do everything from give blood to have a heart attack, to simulate a seizure,” Stacy Jaffee Gropack told Fox 5.

LIU Inducted into Phi Kappa Phi, One of the Nation’s Oldest Honor Societies

On Friday, October 13, Long Island University was inducted as the 344th chapter of Phi Kappa Phi, the second oldest honorary society in the United States, admitting the top 10 percent of students from all majors and colleges. In the Great Hall at Winnick House, Dr. Mary Todd, Executive Director of Phi Kappa Phi, came from Baton Rouge, Louisiana to preside over the installation ceremony that included a strong presence of senior administrators.

“The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi is pleased to welcome Long Island University to its community of scholars,” said Society Executive Director Dr. Mary Todd. “Its mission—to provide excellence and access in private higher education—melds nicely with the Society’s mission, and its holistic focus on advisement is a model of campus-wide attention to student success.”

Phi Kappa Phi, the second oldest honorary society in the United States, admits the top 10 percent of students from all majors and colleges. Phi Kappa Phi was founded in 1897 at the University of Maine with the idea that it would be valuable to recognize and celebrate academic excellence in all disciplines. Today, the prestigious organization has initiated more than 1.5 million members, creating a vast global network of scholars, professionals and thought leaders.

LIU’s Phi Kappa Phi newly-elected officers include President Dr. Joan Digby, President-elect Dr. James Clarke, Secretary Melissa Antinori Berninger, Treasurer Dr. Stacey Horstmann Gatti, Public Relations Officer Dr. Katherine Ahern, Awards and Grants Coordinator Dr. Lauren Mullins, Chapter Officer Dr. Michael Kavic and Chapter Administrator Tracey Christy.

With approximately 230 new freshmen in LIU’s Honors College this year, Phi Kappa Phi’s affiliation with LIU could not be more timely or more befitting of the University. This partnership brings with it opportunities for many generous undergraduate and graduate scholarships.

The installation was attended by administration, faculty and students, followed by a celebratory luncheon. The first student induction will take place in Spring 2018.

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