♪♪ >> From NJ PBS Studios, this is "NJ Spotlight News" with Brianna Vannozzi.

>> Hello, and thanks for joining us tonight.

I'm Joanna Gaggis.

Brianna Vannozzi is off.

Coming up, World Cup fever.

We've got one of the final teams staying in New Jersey.

We'll tell you who it is and look at all the teams that have come through and how one social media influencer is helping to put the Garden State on a global stage.

And later, imagine being able to take an entire snapshot of the southern sky.

We'll talk with one Rutgers astrophysicist joining the effort to map the cosmos and under never before.

But first, about it.

Cyclospora will to know about the parasit that's ruining summer for funding for N. J. Spotlight in part by N. J. M. Insur the insurance needs of re for more than 100 years.

We've actually seen the headlines about a diarrhea parasite spreading across the country this summer, and the concern is real.

The culprit is a microscopic parasite called cyclospora, and the CDC says it's now sickened more than 1,600 people nationwide, with thousands more cases under review.

Here in New Jersey, there are approximately 80 cases so far, but health officials say it's not considered an outbreak.

Stephanie Silvera is an epidemiologist and chair of the Department of Public Health at Montclair State University.

She's here to tell us how to avoid it and what to do if we get it.

Stephanie, thanks for talking to us.

Obviously, this is an issue that a lot of folks are really starting to pay attention to and there's a lot of fear and concern.

I want to start with just laying the ground rules.

What is cyclospora and how does it affect the body?

So cyclospora is a microscopic single-celled parasite and it infects the human intestine.

So people may have heard cyclospora or cyclosporiasis.

Cyclosporiasis is the infection that results from being infected with cyclospora.

The most common symptoms, unfortunately, occur about 7 to 14 days after you've been exposed to the contaminated food or something that you may have had to drink.

The most common side effects are this watery diarrhea.

That's most common.

You can also have a lot of abdominal bloating and gas, stomach cramping, a lot of fatigue.

Often that comes along with a loss of appetite, some nausea, and sometimes a mild fever.

The biggest issue with this is that if left untreated, you can have symptoms for up to six to seven weeks.

And there are times when your symptoms will seem to recover and then will return.

- Okay.

This is very concerning because it's hard to know if it's, you know, seven to 14 days later, I'm sure, what you ate, what caused it.

And then I would imagine there are people who might have an upset stomach or saying, "Oh no, do I have cycloseriasis?"

Does it have to be all of these conditions in order for it to be this parasite?

Do you need to get a stool test?

What does one do to be sure?

So the only way to truly be sure is to have a stool test and to look for those spores.

The good news is there is a treatment.

The most common treatment for this is Bactrim, which is an antibiotic, but obviously you have to speak to your physician about that.

The people who I think need to be most concerned are the ones with any infectious disease, right?

Very young children, people who are older, and anybody who is immunocompromised because they're going to be most at risk for having some more severe outcomes.

I think the key, if you are not getting treated through a physician, is to make sure that you stay hydrated.

Drink a lot of water or other fluids that you're able to keep down because the biggest risk for any diarrheal illness is dehydration.

Okay, we're hearing that it's coming from produce and we're in the dead of summer.

This is the time when you probably eat the most produce.

I know we do in my house.

Do we have to give it up?

Can we wash it away?

Can we scrub it away?

As I'm hearing some people recommend, what do we do?

So right now, I would avoid any pre packaged salad mix or those vegetable trays.

Those are going to be the biggest culprits here.

You're also unfortunately, and my family loves blackberries and raspberries.

Those tend to be a source of risk as well as things like snow and sugar snap peas.

The best way to prevent this is really having anything cooked to at least 158 degrees.

So, you know, if you really like your berries, maybe it's time to have a pie or to enjoy them as a jam.

The most the safest options for fruits and vegetables is anything that has a peel so that you can wash it, peel it, wash it again, and then serve it.

Unfortunately, simply washing or common methods like vinegar or even some commercial produce methods are simply not reliable enough to make sure that you kill those spores.

Okay, if you do have a peeled, let's say it's an orange or it's a mango, do you need to wash it with soap?

Do you wash it with a brush?

How do you ensure that if there is something on the outside, you do not kind of get into the fruit?

- Kind of get into it, yeah.

I think the best option there would be to wash it with a mild soap vinegar with a brush.

So you want to give it a good scrub, then peel it.

Make sure you throw that peel away and then just eat what's inside.

It's a great time for watermelon too.

- Yeah, watermelon sounds great.

A lot of melons sound great right now.

So there are 80 cases as of the time that we're talking right now in New Jersey.

I know it's a moving number, but health officials in the state say that that doesn't constitute an outbreak.

Is this more common than we realize, or is it, why is that not considered an outbreak?

So an outbreak is simply when you have a higher number than what you would typically expect at any given time.

I suspect that the number is probably significantly higher.

Remember, this is based on reporting systems where if people aren't reporting their systems to their physician or to health departments, we don't really know.

This leads into the need for us to have better public health surveillance and monitoring, which at this point, especially for this particular parasite, we simply do not have.

Yeah, let's talk about that.

I know that the CDC made some changes to a program that's called the Foodborne Disease Active Surveillance Network.

The shorter title there is FoodNet.

This tracks many different types of parasites and foodborne illness.

They cut it back recently from eight to two.

Cyclospora was on that list of those that got cut.

What does that type of tracking do?

How does it operate and how does it impact public health?

- So that system monitors, right?

And we look for cases, right?

It's a little bit more of an active surveillance.

Without that, again, with anything that has a 7 to 14 days incubation period, we cannot sort of predict what's going to happen.

We cannot get out warnings.

It also makes it a lot harder to identify when outbreaks are happening and then identify the source.

Unfortunately, we are not in a situation with cyclospora where we don't have the information or we don't know how to get the information.

We are in a situation where there's been a dismantling of a public health system that was working and was efficient and was effective.

And that is having widespread impact, not just on people who are getting sick, which is obviously very important, but we're looking at the impact that this is having on food suppliers, not knowing where the outbreak came from, not being able to tell people specifically which foods to avoid.

So as we just mentioned, there's sort of this wholesale avoidance of fruits and vegetables, which is not generally the message we want to get out.

There's also an undermining of public trust in our food system, which I think can be very dangerous long term.

Yeah, you raise some really great points.

There is there's an economic impact to all of this on top of the public health impact.

As folks do avoid the fruits and vegetables that impacts farmers.

We know farmers are already struggling with very tight margins.

There are as of we as we know right now more than 1600 cases confirmed, but more than 5000 I believe the number is 100 right now being investigated at the time that we're talking and it's across 34 states.

Do you know if health officials are any closer to identifying where it could be coming from?

We're hearing rumblings that it could be tied to fast food chains.

Is there any clarity there?

I haven't heard any clarity.

I know there's typically, right, lettuce is probably one of the most common places that we're gonna look for this.

And so anybody that's serving lettuce for fast food, big chains where they're getting it from these markets where the lettuce is mixed in to large vats to be distributed are potential sources.

But right now we don't have any way of specifically knowing which lettuce where it came from a batch number.

And so unfortunately, we just have to be extra vigilant in what we're eating right now.

If you are a person who loves lettuce, if you love salad, is there a way to still serve it in your home safely?

You know, I think this is a great time to grow lettuce at your home.

You can also you know, I would say the pre bagged salads are at greater risk because you're getting leafy vegetables from many different sources that get mixed together and then package so that automatically increases the risk.

If you're buying a single head of lettuce, your risk is going to be somewhat lower than if you're buying it in the bag.

Yeah, and of course, if you can peel a vegetable, that's always a good thing too, right?

Yep, any vegetables or fruits that can be peeled, those are the ones that you're going to want to pick for the time being.

All right, good advice.

As always, Stephanie Silvera helping us break down these things one by one as they come to us and affect our lives, hoping everyone out there stays safe.

The epidemiologist and chair now of the Department of Public Health at Montclair State University, Stephanie, thank you.

Thank you for having me.

Do you ever wonder if we're alone in the universe or if there's more out there?

Well, a new study is capturing images of the southern sky through a massive new camera, giving us never-before-seen images into the beyond.

Rutgers University is participating in the study, collecting the data, and analyzing it.

Saurabh Jha is a distinguished professor of physics and astronomy at Rutgers, who's helping to make sense of the results, and he recently joined us to share his excitement over the new project.

Saurabh Jha, so great to see you on the show.

Can you tell us a little bit more about this legacy survey of space and time, and what it will accomplish.

Yeah, this is going to be a huge revolutionary leap forward in our ability to observe the dynamic universe.

So with the Rubin Observatory in Chile, which is a large six and a half meter diameter telescope, and attached to that telescope is the world's largest digital camera, and it's going to take pictures of the sky unlike we've ever seen before.

With such a wide field of view, it can go and look at basically the whole sky in just a period of a few days, taking point after point after point.

And then after those few days, it's going to go back and do it over and over and over.

And so far, our views of the sky have really been images.

You've seen pictures from the James Webb Space Telescope or the Hubble Space Telescope.

Those are static images.

What the Rubin Observatory and its legacy survey of space and time are going to do is make a movie of the universe.

We're going to see the changing dynamic universe over 10 years getting images over and over of the sky, seeing all the different things that change in the universe.

So I'm very excited about that.

That's really near and dear to my own research.

I'm curious, is there anything you're looking for in particular when it comes to changes, when it comes to this dynamic universe?

Yeah, for me, my research is to study exploding stars, what we call supernovae.

So these are stars at the end of their lives, and some of them, not all, some of them explode.

And we can see those stellar explosions halfway across the universe.

And so far, over the past decades, we've observed thousands of these exploding stars.

And with the Rubin Observatory, over its 10-year survey, we're going to observe millions of exploding stars.

So for me, that's the research that I'm most excited with, study those stars and how they explode.

And the other thing about those is those exploding stars can tell us about things we don't see.

So one of the big discoveries that we've made over the last decades in astronomy is the idea that most of the universe is dark.

Most of the universe is stuff we can't see.

And so you might are we building a telescope for things we can't see?

And the reason is that what we see is the effects of those dark components of the universe on the things we can see.

So for example, dark matter and dark energy, those are two parts of the universe that we have inferred that must exist out there because of their effects on the things that we can see.

And in particular, what I study... What is that?

Can I jump in here?

What is dark matter?

What is dark energy?

Just put that into layman's terms.

We don't know.

That's the great question.

Those are the questions that the Rubin Observatory is going to try and figure out.

What are those things?

Those are basically names that we have for things that we know must be out there because of the effects that we see.

So, for example, we see that galaxies spin faster than they should, or clusters of galaxies, the galaxies move around faster than they should.

We see the whole universe expanding faster and faster with time.

That's not what we expected if there wasn't anything else out there, any of this dark matter or dark energy.

So we see the effects of those things on the stars and galaxies that we can observe, and we don't know what they are.

We want to know what they are.

And so with the Rubin Observatory and its survey, what we're going to do is we're going to study these galaxies and exploding stars in more detail and in more numbers than we've ever had before.

And that's going to help us hopefully understand what is dark matter and what is dark energy beyond the effects that we already know about.

- So we know that this is a 10-year study.

Let me ask you this.

How do you believe that the images, the data that comes out of this will help to shape perhaps an entire generation of study of the universe?

For sure.

This is a long-term endeavor, and so we're really excited that it has just started.

And in fact, just with a few weeks or even a year of data, we're going to learn, we're going to go beyond what we had done before.

So that's going to be very exciting.

So throughout the 10-year survey, it's not like you have to wait till all 10 years are done and then we'll learn something.

Throughout that survey, we're going to learn more and more about the universe.

So I'm very excited for students, especially like graduate students or undergraduate students or even elementary school students or high school students.

As this LSST starts now, the things that we're going to learn from the data over the next decade, you know, should revolutionize our understanding of astronomy and cosmology and our place in the universe.

So it's a really exciting time for that long survey to begin.

The Rubin Observatory is in Chile.

I have to ask how did Rutgers get involved in this?

That's right.

So the amazing thing, so the Rubin Observatory is, there are people from all over the world involved, but the prime sort of sponsors of the Rubin Observatory are the National Science Foundation in the United States, which really built the observatory, the telescope that you're looking at right there, and the United States Department of Energy, which is the institution, the organization that built the digital camera, the world's largest digital camera.

So you need both.

You need the telescope and the camera to take the pictures.

And once that, you know, that enterprise, basically anyone in the United States or in Chile or other partners around the world can get the data.

So at Rutgers we're very interested in ideas about galaxies and the universe, how the universe has formed, how it's evolved with time, what is dark matter, what is dark energy.

So Rutgers astronomers have been involved in planning for Rubin and working on how Rubin is going to observe the universe for a long time.

So we're really excited about getting this data, getting as things get started and seeing what we can see.

And I know you touched on the camera, but just help us better understand the magnitude of this camera that we're talking about.

This is not something you pick up in your hands.

That's right.

So, you know, in your phone, you have a little tiny camera that takes beautiful pictures.

This camera is the size of an automobile.

So it is a huge, large digital camera.

And it's the thing that allows us to take a picture of a wide part of the sky.

So many full moons in diameter.

If you can imagine looking up at the full moon and you say, oh, that's a pretty small piece of the sky, this camera can do many full moons across at one time.

And because it's attached to such a big telescope that can collect a lot of light, we don't have to take a long exposure.

So this camera takes an exposure about 30 seconds and then it moves on to the next piece of the sky and takes another picture.

And so every 30 seconds or so new data is coming from the telescope, gets sent off to processing centers in the United States and other places in the world, and then that data become available.

So over and over, big pictures of the sky, you know, just one image from the Rubin Observatory and its camera would fill 400 high-definition TVs.

So if you think about 400 flat-screen TVs, you'd have to put them side-by-side just to observe at the pixel level one image from the Rubin camera.

And then we're gonna get an image like that every 30 seconds or so.

And so every night that the weather is good, the telescope is gonna be observing for 10 years.

So we're gonna collect tons and tons of data, petabytes of data, filling up hard drives all around the world, and then you know we're gonna see that movie of the universe.

So that's really the most exciting thing.

Absolutely incredible and really just makes you realize how tiny we are in this massive universe that we exist in.

Sirab Jha, distinguished professor of physics and astronomy at Rutgers University.

Thank you.

Thanks very much.

We've all been glued to our TV screens during the World Cup to see what happens on the pitch, but it's on social media where we've been able to see behind the scenes the players interacting with the fans.

And one New Jersey social media influencer is helping with that.

She's known as that food chick, but suddenly Olivia DiMatteo has been thrust into the world of soccer and she's loving it.

She's been using social media to help highlight all the teams coming through and staying in New Jersey, specifically at Montclair's MC Hotel, which has become something of an unofficial hub for fans to gather and meet their favorite players.

She's here to tell us what it's been like and what the fans and tourists have been experiencing here.

Olivia, great to have you on the show.

From that food chick to now that soccer chick, do we need to update your moniker here?

I think we might, honestly.

At least until finals.

This has been such a very cool experience to watch you online, kind of keeping us all in the loop, as three teams, three international teams, have come into New Jersey, come into Montclair, and stayed at the MC Hotel.

What has that experience been like for you?

I mean, it's been surreal.

It's been so much fun.

You know, every time a team checks in, you're surrounded by tons of fans from all over New Jersey, people traveling from out of state, even out of the country, just to get a glimpse of the players walking into the hotel.

So it's really been a high energy, awesome experience all around.

It's been really cool to see what it looks like to me is the fan experience actually growing.

And I could point to Norway where it looked like the groups just got larger and larger.

But are there any kind of standout moments just in terms of how the fans have reacted or tried to kind of connect with their favorite players?

Well, the fans went crazy when they saw Erling Haaland walk through, so that was probably the biggest moment.

And I think at one point when Norway was leading to compete against Brazil, there was probably two or three thousand fans just surrounding the hotel, all trying to see them.

So that was great.

And then the second thing was when England had two of the players go on the roof and they were actually throwing down water bottles that were signed for fans.

People were throwing shoes up and were throwing their shirts up trying to get, you know, the players to sign them.

So seeing the teams interact with the kids and the fans that way, it was a really special moment for everybody.

Now you were hired by the MC Hotel to help kind of raise the profile of these players coming in.

How would you explain the work that you've been doing to do that to get some of this fan experience generated, to generate some of that excitement?

Yeah, so the MC Hotel actually reached out to me about six months ago, and I started doing content for them on the staycations I was doing there to just bring overall awareness to the hotel and the restaurants.

And then once they had the team stay there, they reached out to me to continue that relationship with them, to keep promoting the hotel.

And those videos that I did literally blew up.

I mean, I think we're at almost probably half a million to a million views between the four or five videos I did.

So it's been, you know, a great experience working with the hotel.

How would you say that this has put Montclair and the MC Hotel and maybe New Jersey overall on the map internationally?

Well, it's funny, the hotel in Montclair is fairly new.

I think it opened up in 2019.

And there really wasn't too much buzz around it.

And then with the videos that I've been doing, I feel like all I've been talking about lately is the MC Hotel in Montclair.

So it's definitely gaining a ton of traction with people in the surrounding areas now wanting to stay there and now wanting to support them because they've been so great to the team's players and fans that have come.

And yeah, it's just been an overall awesome experience.

Help us understand your backstory a little bit because like we said, you are That Food Chick.

That's your brand.

You built this business.

Today's a significant day for that business.

You can tell us about it.

But how did you get into this?

How does it change or not the work that you do on social media?

Yeah, so that food chick actually turns three years old today.

So July 15th, 2023 was my first ever post.

And I went back and looked at it, it was just a picture of a pizza, you know, so we've come a long way in three years.

But yeah, I mean, the relationships I've built in the past three years has really just helped grow this platform.

And then, you know, partnering with the hotel and partnering with, you know, other hotel owners and restaurant owners to keep growing it.

It's, you know, it's been great.

We're almost at 20,000 followers in the three years since I've started it.

Obviously, New Jersey has hosted a number of matches.

But one of the things that I find most exciting about the World Cup has been this traction online of international travelers coming here and really appreciating the food and the culture that America has to offer and very different experiences depending on which city or state you end up in.

What did you see here in New Jersey?

Have you tapped into some of that craze, having a food site yourself?

- Yeah, so I actually made a video maybe two or three weeks ago, right when the World Cup was starting as like a New Jersey tour guide for the tourists.

So I made a list of all my top restaurants within a 30 minute radius of the stadium, trying to get the fans to stay in New Jersey to go out to dinner.

I was hearing that a lot of people were going to New York to try to do the whole New York experience and were patronizing those restaurants, when in reality, New Jersey really needs the business.

I know that we've got a big match coming up.

We have the final here in New Jersey.

What can you tell us about perhaps a team that might have already booked at the MC Hotel?

Yeah, so the MC, you know, we already knew that they were going to be hosting a final team and now we do know that it is going to be Spain.

So that is very exciting.

So they should be checking in any moment now.

Okay, so what's the plan for you as Spain comes in?

Anything different?

Anything new, exciting that we can expect to see?

Well, I think just because it is a final team checking in that the excitement is going to be through the roof.

I mean, now that the other teams were great and they had, you know, their huge fan base, but to have a final team staying in Montclair is just massive.

Like who would have ever thought?

But yeah, it's I'm going to get as much footage as I can.

I'm going to put out as much as I can legally, and you know, I'm just excited for you know, my followers to get more engaged and the fans in the area to get more engaged with the MC and with FIFA in general.

This is all great stuff.

It's been so fun to watch you fun to kind of tap into the excitement for those who aren't there who can't be on the ground.

You definitely bring a slice of it right into our homes right into our phones Olivia DiMatteo Instagram influencer and owner of that food check.

to see what happens with Thank you so much.

That's for the entire team here at spotlight news.

Thanks for being with us.

We'll see you right back here tomorrow.

RWJBarnabas Health.

Learn more at rwjbh.org.

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