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Steve Israel and the Global Institute at LIU Host “Elections and How We Think”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From Brexit to the election of President Trump to last week’s unexpectedly strong Democratic wins, politics are going through a constant state of upheaval, unraveling institutions and norms, with impacts on policies and alliances throughout the world.

In an effort to understand these trends, former Congressman Steve Israel, Chairman of the Global Institute at LIU, moderated a unique, nonpartisan panel November 16 in the Atrium of the Tilles Center for the Performing Arts on “Elections and How We Think.” The panel featured Drew Westen, Ph.D., author of “The Political Brain,” and neuroscientist Dr. Sam Barnett, two of the foremost experts in understanding how the workings of the human brain can effectively anticipate political behavior.

Congressman Israel, who was the former head of messaging for the House Democratic Caucus, introduced the discussion by telling the audience full of democrats, republicans, and independents that when someone on the other end of their political spectrum sounds like “they are living on another planet,” it’s because, neurologically-speaking, they just might be. This phenomenon that Israel deemed “the partisanship of the mind,” stems from the idea that progressives and conservatives filter their experiences through different sides of the brain. One side centers on reason. The other, emotion.

“The thing is, we have always been as a society—and this isn’t just in the United States, this is around the world—we always had a balance between the two. And the balance was fortified by things like Walter Cronkite, by exposure to true news that really was fair and balanced, by spending the time necessary to read,” Israel said.

Political messaging that appeals to one side over the other has done little to reconcile the growing divide in our electorate.

Dr. Sam Barnett, SBB Research Group CEO and neuroscientist, discussed research he had conducted last year with EEGs measuring the brain activity of viewers while viewing the March 2016 Republican primary debate. His findings that brain functioning increased tremendously when watching Donald Trump during the debate. Barnett’s focus group of Illinois voters was able to correctly predict the state primary’s outcome by ranking each candidate by neural activity, placing Trump first, Cruz second, Kasich third, and Rubio fourth. Although not scientific proof of a recipe for political success, it nevertheless prompted a conversation about how political communication, persuasion and biology may be intertwined.

Dr. Drew Westen, author of The Political Brain and professor of psychology and psychiatry at Emory University, further discussed the role of emotion in determining the political life of the nation. Westen showed how politicians can capture the hearts and minds of the electorate through examples of what candidates have said –or should have said—in debates, speeches and ads.

This fascinating discussion delved into a lengthy Q&A session with the audience of more than 150 members, which contained students, elected officials, union representatives, and community members.

LIU Hornstein Center Poll Finds Majority of Americans Oppose More Restrictive Approach to Immigration

A new Long Island University Hornstein Center for Policy, Polling and Analysis poll finds that a majority of Americans oppose President Trump’s efforts to make immigration policies more restrictive, including opposition both to his plans to build a wall along the southern border with Mexico and end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

While 35 percent favor President Trump’s plan to build a wall along the Southern border to enhance border security, a 54 percent majority opposes that policy. Respondents were also asked about President Trump’s plan to end the DACA program, just 31 percent supported that policy, while 53 percent opposed it.

The LIU survey found that while 38 percent of Americans believe that current immigration policy is not strict enough, 53 percent either want to maintain current immigration policies or make them less restrictive. Underpinning attitudes about immigration, an overwhelming 63 percent of Americans agree with the statement that “immigration into the United States is a good thing” while just 19 percent believe that it “is a bad thing.”

“Despite making a major push to make immigration policies more restrictive, the American people oppose the specifics of President Trump’s efforts, including building a wall and ending the DACA program,” said Dr. Edward Summers, Fellow at the Hornstein Center. “Americans continue to see immigration as a good thing for our nation, which undercuts efforts to curb it.”

The findings are based on a published public opinion poll conducted from October 29-November 5, 2017 conducted through SurveyMonkey of 813 Americans.

“We are encouraged from the results that our web-based survey is providing valuable insight,” said Dr. Summers. “The Steven S. Hornstein Center has a robust research portfolio, and we are excited to explore these crucial public policy issues.”

Dr. Summers, who obtained his PhD in Public Policy, is a Fellow at the Hornstein Center. His career includes experience in public policy, higher education, and opinion research.

Questions and results follow:

Long Island University
Steven S. Hornstein Center for Policy, Polling, and Analysis
Immigration Survey
October 29-November 5, 2017

1) When it comes to immigration in the United States, which of the following best describes your position?
The current immigration policy is not strict enough, it should be harder for a person from a foreign country to become a citizen of the United States: 38%
The current immigration policy is fair, and I think it should not be any harder nor easier for someone to become a citizen of the United States: 34%
The current immigration policy is too strict, it should be easier for a person from a foreign country to become a citizen of the United States: 19%
No opinion: 9%
2) President Trump has said that he would build a wall on the Southern border of the United States to enhance border security, what is your opinion of this?
Approve: 35%
Disapprove: 54%
No opinion: 11%

3) Do you think immigration into the United States is a good thing or a bad thing?
Good thing: 63%
Bad thing: 19%
No opinion: 18%

4) President Trump recently announced that he would end the Deferred Action for
Childhood Arrivals (DACA), an executive order issued in 2012 that granted eligible Dreamers protection from deportation. What is your position on President Trump’s decision to end the DACA program?
Approve: 31%
Disapprove: 53%
No opinion: 15%

Polling Methodology
This Long Island University Steven S. Hornstein Center for Policy, Polling & Analysis poll was conducted online through SurveyMonkey from October 29-November 5, 2017 in English to 813 Americans over the age of 18. Polling data was sorted by age, gender & geographic location in efforts to ensure a nationwide representative sample. This poll has an overall margin of error of +/- 4.4 points.

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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.

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