Under the rumbling No. 7 line el along Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights hangs the red, blue and yellow sign of the Ecuadorian consulate. Clusters of down-and-out men sit on the sidewalk around the sign, waiting for a job that never comes. Most haven’t worked in weeks – or months, in some cases.

The immigrants’ usual living arrangement of two to three people per apartment is now closer to seven or eight as they struggle to pay the rent. Some can’t afford housing and become homeless. Those without documentation hesitate to seek social services and must often ask their families in Ecuador for money.

“If I’m going to starve, I’m better off starving in my country,” said Patricio Garces, an Ecuadorian-born U.S. citizen who plans to return home this year.

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Rosa Martinez used to stroll to the local money transfer office in Corona every week to send $200 to her family in Cuenca, Ecuador.

She still goes to the Delgado Travel office, but not to send money. Instead, it is she who collects a little cash from those family members in Cuenca.

“My husband used to earn $140 a day working three, four days a week as a construction worker,” said Martinez, 48. “Now he gets $80 a day and works two, maximum three days a week.”

The economic downturn has battered the nation in recent months, but it also has deeply affected countries like Ecuador, where a recently improved standard of living has devolved with less money flowing from immigrants working in the U.S.

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When they’re not in class, Regis High School seniors Ruben Martinez and Julian Penero spend two to four days a week delivering meals or offering computer tutoring at the Carter Burden Center for the Aging on the upper East Side.

“Whenever we do anything small, whether it’s getting a fork for them or bringing them their meal or helping them figure out how to send an e-mail, they’re always so thankful to us,” said Martinez.

“Sending an e-mail comes by nature to us, but when we help someone do that and they’re so grateful, that’s so rewarding to us,” he said.

The Regis model soon may extend to city public schools.

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Debora Alvo was getting on an uptown 3 train at the 72 Street station when suddenly the subway doors closed on the stroller holding her 3-year-old daughter, Carly.

A man standing inside the train car helped Alvo force the doors open. Alvo, 44, said the only reason Carly wasn’t injured was because the girl’s hands were inside the stroller at the time.

“Oh my God, it freaked me out,” Alvo said of the January incident. “I actually didn’t take the subway for a long time. My daughter was terrified. Finally, I assured her that we would try it one more time and if it was scary we wouldn’t do it again.”

Danger Lurks

For many parents, the subway is the best way to get around the city. But traveling on the train with children can be dangerous. That’s why the Transit Authority has a longstanding advertising campaign urging parents fold strollers and carry them – and their tots – on the train.

“That is not feasible because you have to juggle carrying the baby in one arm,” said Alvo, who lives on the Upper West Side. “The stroller in the other, and then if anything happens, you don’t even have a free arm to push your way into anywhere.”

The Transit Authority eliminated a stroller ban in 1990 amid protests from parents and women’s rights organizations. Within two years of the ban being lifted, 27 children had been hurt in the subway, according to news reports. At the time, the agency said most of the stroller accidents occurred on escalators or stairways, where children were bounced off their seats. But in other cases, children in strollers were caught in subway doors.

A.J. Pierce remembers when a wheel of his two-year-old son’s stroller got caught in between the closed doors of a No. 2 as they rushed to get the train. His son, Damien, was not hurt. Pierce, 21, said it’s happened two more times since.

“I am not trying to run into a train door like that anymore,” said Pierce, who lives in East New York. “I will just let the train go.”

All subway cars have sensitive edges that would stop the train from moving if anything gets stuck between the doors and prevent anyone from being dragged, said Charles Seaton, a Transit Authority spokesman.

“The conductor is in charge of closing the doors and he has all the view of the doors,” Seaton said. “But don’t blame this all on the conductor. Is the people who shouldn’t put the strollers into the closing doors.”

Mind the Gap

The Transit Authority’s website also urges parents to watch out for the gap between the platforms edge and train. The Authority also suggests boarding with strollers near the conductor’s car because it makes it easier to get attention in case of a problem.

That’s advice Pierce takes. He said most of the conductors leave the doors open until he gets in. Still, there have been exceptions.

“If I feel it was my fault the doors closed on me,” Pierce said, “I wouldn’t report it. But if he sees me and he still closed the doors, I will.”

In September 2008, two transit workers were awarded with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s heroism medal for saving a baby girl in a stroller who tumbled from a subway platform to the tracks as an L train was approaching the Atlantic Avenue station in Brooklyn. The workers jumped to the tracks and walked toward the approaching train, waving their arms to alert the motorman about 300 feet away.

The stroller could have rolled onto the tracks because platforms tilt toward the tracks to allow for drainage, officials said at the time. The Transit Authority said parents should keep strollers away from the edge and apply the brake.

Unlike walking through subway cars, none of the agency’s safety tips are mandatory rules. Parents can’t be fined for pushing an open stroller on the subways.

“It’s just a safety precaution,” said James Anyansi, a Transit Authority spokesman.

Enforcement Issue

Karyl Cafiero, a staff member of the New York City Transit Riders Council (NYCTRC), a citizens advisory group, said until traveling on the subway with an open stroller is made a violation, parents and police would continue to ignore the safety recommendations.

“The police don’t want to go up to some woman who has a four-year-old and pushing a stroller,” Cafiero said. “What is he going to say to her? You have to fold your stroller up? If they are not getting any incentives, if there is no code of enforcement, then they are not going to touch it.”

Alvo doesn’t believe parents should be fined for having an open stroller in the subway. She said one solution is for conductors to keep the doors opened a couple of seconds longer.

“Any other city in the world you get to walk around like a human being,” Alvo said, “except in New York City, where you have to race like a rat.”

Rachel Schnur, of the Bronx, wants to be a homegrown scientist. But the Yeshiva University biomedical sciences student is feeling awfully lonely. Science isn’t a popular career path – especially for students who want to stay in New York.

“I know a lot of people don’t even consider it,” she said.

Schnur isn’t the only one worried about the state of America’s science education. The Obama administration has called for tripling the number of science fellowships in graduate education in the 2010 budget to draw more students into the field.

Push for Fellowships

Though the fellowships would be national in nature and awarded by the National Science Foundation, New York area professors and students said the extra funding could give a boost to local science education.

“That would be very helpful,” said Subrata Saha, the director of the Biomedical Engineering Program at the SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn.

Saha said there is a demand for more funding for science programs in New York’s universities.

The only local school that makes it on the list of 20 best biological science universities nationwide is Columbia University. It tied for 15th place in the ranking list compiled by U.S. News and World Report. Among chemistry and physics programs, Columbia places 11th, again as the only school in the Empire State to make the Top 20.

California, with Stanford University and CalTech, and Massachusetts, with Harvard and MIT, still outpace New York in science education.

Timothy Short, an associate professor of biology at Queens College and the City University of New York Graduate Center, said making more grants available is crucial for the success of science education in New York.

“In our department, we don’t have enough new graduate students coming in to replace the ones leaving,” he said, noting there aren’t enough fellowships to give to new students.

Finding money for studies, he said, is “extremely difficult.”

Only 1 in 10 applicants get funding from the National Science Foundation, Short noted. Others have to rely on institutional aid, or grants from smaller foundations.

Salary Gap

If science students can’t find funding, they probably won’t enroll. Unlike some other fields, practically nobody pays their own way through their graduate-level science education, Short said.

Funding is necessary because students can’t expect to be making huge salaries once they graduate, said David M. Holland, professor of mathematics and director of the Center for Atmosphere Ocean Science at New York University.

According to job listing site Indeed.com, the average scientist in New York earns $90,000 per year – 21 percent higher than the nationwide average salary of $74,000. By comparison, the median wage for lawyers in New York is $115,000. Lawyers also have more future earning potential than scientists, according to the site’s statistics.

“You’re not in science for the money,” Holland said.

Schnur agreed. “You go in because you love it.”

But even the strongest love won’t help you study if there isn’t any money available. If the country doesn’t invest in science education, many promising would-be scientists will turn to other professions, Schnur said.

Brain Drain Fear

“We are not going to go into a field where we see no future,” she said. “We lose too many bright minds that way.”

The percentage of Gross Domestic Product that is used for funding physical, mathematical and engineering sciences has declined for three decades, according to the 2010 federal budget proposal.

“It’s very, very hard,” said Schnur about the process. She said she is constantly applying for grants and fellowships so that she can keep studying.

“Unless people are paid to do PhD’s, it will not happen,” Holland said.

New York area professors and students agree that funding scientific study is an investment with a crucial payoff.

“People here are coming up with innovative ideas that will change the society,” said Ivan Corwin, a mathematics students at New York University.

“It’s a very good investment compared to their future contribution,” Saha said.

Nour Abbas (not her real name) was a translator for the U.S. military in Iraq when she and her father were shot by insurgents as he walked her to work in 2005. Her father was killed. She still carries the scars, physical and otherwise.

Abbas fled the country and eventually was reunited with her family in Bay Ridge. But there’s no happily-ever-after-ending to her story: Abbas’ college-educated brothers can’t find jobs, her mother is terribly homesick and considering a return Iraq.

New changes in Abbas’ life, though, could separate her again from her mother and siblings.

The last place you might think to look for honeybees is on a rooftop in Brooklyn, but that’s exactly where they are. In Fort Greene to be exact. John Howe started keeping bees nine years ago and has been hooked ever since. Two beehives sit three stories up on the roof of his Fort Greene home, where he has lived for the past 31 years.

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As Robert Lopez tells it, his trouble began nearly two years ago when he plucked a bundle of fake dynamite from the trash and took it to his St. Felix Street home with plans to turn the fake bomb into a piggy bank.

Now Mr. Lopez, 38, a career maintenance man with no criminal record beyond a 10-year-old marijuana violation, is set to appear in court on false-bomb charges that could put him in prison for up to four years.

“On 9/11, from my roof of my building I could see the top of the towers smoking,” Mr. Lopez said in tears. “I’m not that kind of a person. I’m not a terrorist. I wouldn’t hurt nobody like that. Never.”

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La Marqueta, the marketplace under the Metro-North tracks in East Harlem, once boasted 510 vendors. Now there are only six.

Residents and community leaders are pushing for the redevelopment of the 73-year-old city-owned market to address the scarcity of fresh foods in a neighborhood where two in three adults are overweight or obese.

More than 2 million students make class trips to the Bronx Zoo annually, and some 2,000 teachers get educational training at the world-renowned facility.

But the with Wildlife Conservation Society facing $15 million in budgets cuts, staff has been laid off, some animals are being shipped out of town – and education programs are being targetted for reductions.