Senior Rachel Mashal, the class of 2016 salutatorian, put fruit flies on a restricted diet to determine whether lower food intake would ward off drug addiction — specifically caffeine addiction — while also extending life. (As it turned out, it did both.) Meanwhile, classmate Sarah Moussavi took on one of neuroscience’s most perplexing, and intriguing, questions: How certain are humans in their own decision-making? To reach a conclusion, she conducted a computer-controlled experiment at the NYU Center for Neural Science. more

Mepham High School senior Erin Gilroy had completed all the science and math credits she needed to graduate by the end of 11th grade. Then she doubled up on English and social studies classes this fall. That enabled her to graduate from Mepham six months early — and get a big head start on her soccer training at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. more

Kennedy High School junior Claire Kelly spent three weeks last summer at the University of Chicago, delving deep into the human brain, examining the connection between impulsivity and drug addiction. Senior Rachel Mashal, the class of 2016 salutatorian, put fruit flies on a restricted diet to determine whether lower food intake would ward off drug addiction — specifically caffeine addiction — while also extending life. (As it turn out, it did both.) And senior Alexis Tillman hung out on lonely street corners (with either her mom or dad nearby) for weeks, filming homeless panhandlers to determine what, precisely, might persuade charitable passersby to give them loose change or even a dollar or two. more

Nassau County police are seeking a suspect or suspects in a rash of four burglaries that occurred within 10 hours of one another in Bellmore and North Merrick last Thursday. more

In its final report, issued Dec. 10, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Common Core Task Force called on the state to place a four-year moratorium on the use of students’ state test scores to evaluate … more

Robert Bazarewski is running unopposed this year for the North Bellmore Board of Fire commissioners. more

Five longtime members of the Bellmore Fire Department are running for a single post on the Bellmore Fire District Board of Commissioners this year. They are Gary Horn, Dennis Roskop, John Scalesi, Robert Taylor and Paul Zuckerberg. more

When Merokean Jean Petter recently drove to Charlie Chapman’s Bellmore home, she felt like she was picking up the president of the United States. She arrived at the house at 5 a.m., flanked by 10 motorcyclists, for the first leg of an exciting journey to the National World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. more

SUNY Geneseo junior Sara Rosenzweig finished seventh at the NCAA Division III Atlantic Regional Championships to lead the Knights to first place out of 44 teams. Geneseo hosted the meet at Letchworth State Park. more

The drug addicts’ brain scans that Dr. Stephen Dewey takes appear in psychedelic shades of red, yellow, green and blue, each indicating a level of brain activity — or inactivity. Red means excited. Blue is dormant. Dewey is the laboratory director for behavioral and molecular neuro-imaging at the North Shore-LIJ Feinstein Institute for Medical Research. In that capacity, he’s put hundreds of addicts’ brains to the test — the positron emission tomography test, that is — seeking to understand precisely what happens to the mind when a pot smoker lights up or a heroin junkie shoots up. And, he has found, it isn’t pretty. more