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Daniel Dunaief

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Stony Brook University's played in the summer Olympics with Team Puerto Rico's women's basketball team. Photo from India Pagan

Stony Brook University’s India Pagan, competing in the Olympics for Puerto Rico, took several shots against China in the preliminary round of the basketball tournament, but none of them went in.

India Pagan at the summer Olympics opening ceremony. Photo from India Pagan

Against Belgium, the 6-foot-1-inch forward finally put the ball through the hoop, something she’d done so frequently at Stony Brook that she scored over 1,000 points as a Seawolf.

“I remember the first one I made” at the Olympics, said Pagan. “I didn’t have to stress anymore. I couldn’t stop smiling.”

Pagan, who was on Puerto Rico’s first women’s Olympic basketball team, scored two baskets and sank two free throws, scoring six points in that game.

Despite the challenges and restrictions created by the Delta variant of COVID-19 and the three losses the Puerto Rican team had in games against China, Belgium and Australia, Pagan had plenty of reasons to smile as she enjoyed everything from the opening ceremonies to taking selfies with some of the best athletes in the world to some limited sightseeing.

After a lengthy journey to the other side of the world, Pagan cheered her way through an opening ceremony full of familiar pageantry, but devoid of its customary shouting spectators.

“It was surreal to me,” Pagan said. “I watched this on TV a couple of years ago. Walking with the flag, with the whole delegation of Puerto Rico, seeing the stage, the torch, the dances, the acts of music, everything, it was just so beautiful.”

Pagan said she cried three or four times during the ceremonies.

Behind the scenes, Pagan said the time spent waiting for the ceremonies to begin and the hours on their feet amid the excitement took their toll.

“By the end of the night, all of our backs hurt, our feet hurt,” she laughed. “Thankfully, we didn’t have practice the next day, so we had a little time to recover.”

Around the games, Pagan soaked in the atmosphere and reveled in the moment on one of the world’s largest, albeit emptiest, athletic stages.

One of the big stories to come out of the Olympics involved American gymnast Simone Biles, who pulled out of most of the competition amid concerns about her mental health and her ability to get her bearings while flying and twisting through the air.

“We understood the mental health aspects” of Biles’s decision, Pagan said. “She’s got to do what’s best for her. We did feel for her.”

Pagan said the Puerto Rican basketball team met with their coach, who told them they could speak with a doctor or a psychologist if they needed support.

Pagan missed her family and friends but didn’t need those mental health services during her time in Tokyo.

Pagan was thrilled to run into several superstars in their sports, taking selfies with National Basketball Association star Jayson Tatum from the Boston Celtics, and with Spanish basketball sensations Marc Gasol, who currently plays for the Los Angeles Lakers and his brother Pau, who retired from the NBA in 2019 after an 18-year career. She also ran into Serbian tennis great Novak Djokovic.

“Seeing those people was cool for me,” Pagan said.

Pagan takes a photo with Spanish basketball sensation Pau Gasol. Photo from India Pagan

Everyone had to wear face shields in the dining hall which made conversations, even among teammates, challenging.

“It was tough to interact” while she was eating, Pagan said.

She did, however, have the opportunity to speak and play games with other masked athletes in a recreational area. Pagan and teammates Jada Stinson and Jacqueline Benitez visited with athletes from the South African soccer and track teams, and several teams from Ireland, Italy and Iran while playing table tennis, pool and darts.

During her stay in Tokyo, Pagan recalled the lives of two people she and her family recently lost. She wrote the names of Tatiana Mayas, one of her closest childhood friends, and Gloria Sotomayor, a friend of her mother’s, on a white ribbon and pinned them on a memorial tree.

While the athletes couldn’t explore Tokyo on their own or travel much outside the Olympic village, they took a bus tour to Mt. Fuji, which, at 12,380 feet, is the tallest mountain in Japan.

“If we got off the bus and the [International Olympic Committee] found out, they would have kicked us out of the Olympics,” Pagan said.

Pagan remained appreciative of an opportunity she didn’t take for granted, especially since she has no guarantee that she or the Puerto Rican team will return for the 2024 Olympics in Paris.

“I was ready for anything and I was grateful for anything,” Pagan said.

In addition to returning with a collection of memories, photos and selfies, Pagan brought back numerous souvenirs for herself and her family.

She purchased a letterman jacket that she said she “had to have,” because it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

She also purchased shoes, shirts, key chains, umbrellas, pins and notebooks.

“It was like Christmas,” she laughed. The gifts were worth the money, as her family’s faces “lit up” when she produced their presents.

During her Olympics, she appreciated the outpouring of support for her and for the team.

“My phone has never blown up as much as it did when I was at the Olympics,” said Pagan, who is returning to Stony Brook to earn her master’s this fall and to use a fifth year of eligibility the National Collegiate Athletic Association granted to athletes amid the pandemic.

She left North America with 6,000 Instagram followers and returned with 11,000.

One of the first things she did when she returned, after sharing presents, crying and catching up with family, was to get behind the wheel.

“I couldn’t wait to drive my car and be free and go wherever I wanted to, instead of being restrained and told to stay in one place or being locked up in a room,” Pagan said.

She hopes the team will return to the next Olympics in Paris in 2024.

“Hopefully, we’ll be back,” she said. “This experience will definitely help us grow as a program. We’re on our way up.”

As for what’s next, she plans to rest and recover from the exhausting and exhilarating trip and to add the Olympic rings tattoo to her leg.

Pagan appreciates the opportunity to play a game she loves at the Olympic level.

“It was a blessing and an honor,” Pagan said.

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From left, postdoctoral researcher Yunjun Zhao and Brookhaven Lab biochemist Chang-Jun Liu in a greenhouse with poplar trees. Photo from BNL

By Daniel Dunaief

Plants not only make our food, produce the oxygen we breathe, and provide key ingredients in medicines, but they could also contribute chemicals that might otherwise require fossil fuels to produce.

Scientists have known since 1955 that poplar trees produce small amounts of a product called p-hydroxybenzoic acid that they attach to the lignin in their cell walls. What they didn’t know, however, was how they were attached.

After years of cloning genes and, more recently, using the gene editing tool CRISPR, Chang-Jun Liu, a plant biochemist at Brookhaven National Laboratory, and collaborators in Japan discovered the gene that codes for an enzyme that catalyzes the attachment of pBA to the lignin.

Up to now, companies have produced pBA by using fossil fuels as raw materials and for the energy required to generate enough heat and pressure for the catalytic reactions.

This discovery, which Liu published in the journal Nature Plants, could provide a more eco-friendly way to produce a chemical involved in the manufacture of toothpaste, shampoos, commercial moisturizers, shaving gels, and spray tanning solutions, among other products.

The global market value of p-hydroxybenzoic acid was $59 million in 2020 and is expected to climb to $80 million in the next five years.

“We wanted to identify the enzyme that is responsible for attaching pBA into lignin and reconstitute this pathway and promote its storage in the cell wall,” Liu said. Ideally, he’d like to combine the pathways that produce the donor molecule containing pBA with their enzyme to promote pBA storage in cell walls.

Once Liu found the gene responsible for that enzyme, he did what scientists typically do to check on the importance of a genetic sequence: first, he knocked it out and second, he overexpressed it.

By knocking out the genetic sequence, he found that poplar trees stopped producing pBA. Overexpressing the gene, on the other hand, not only increased the amount of this chemical by about 48 percent, but also raised the strength of the lignin and, consequently, the durability of the cell wall.

Aside from the benefit of increasing the natural production of the chemical, changing the amount of pBA could have implications for the environment and industry. Less durable lignin, which has a lower amount of pBA, could be useful in producing pulp, paper and biofuel, making it easier to access the biomass of the wood.

More durable lignin could be useful in the timber industry, while also enabling the plant to remove more carbon, mostly in the form of carbon dioxide, from the air.

“If we can engineer the plant to produce more of this carbon-dense compound, … particularly in the root, we can fix more carbon into the underground fraction, which will absorb more carbon from the air to promote carbon sequestration,” Liu said.

A long process

The work that led to identifying the gene that codes for the enzyme that attaches pBA to lignin took about 15 years.

Liu knew this enzyme worked to attach pBA, among other chemicals, in a test tube, but the journey to prove its importance in the poplar trees took considerable work.

Liu cloned 20 genes that are expressed in woody tissues and encoded enzymes called acyltransferases. While expressing these enzymes, he mixed them with an isotope-labeled carbon, which allowed him to check to see whether the enzyme contributed to the process of attaching pBA to lignin.

He tried using RNA interference to knock down the targeted gene, but that didn’t work.

The breakthrough that established the importance of this gene came when Liu used CRISPR. 

Next steps

Scientists aren’t sure of the specific steps or even why plants produce pBA in the first place.

Plants produce pBA through the shikimate pathway, but the exact routes leading to pBA formation are still undiscovered. 

As for why plants produce pBA, one hypothesis is that the plant uses a higher amount as a defense mechanism, making its lignin harder to remove for an insect. It could also provide resistance to mechanical stress caused by wind or snow.

“We do not have solid evidence to prove that,” he said, but “we need to explore that further.”

Liu also hopes to take a synthetic biology approach to build a more effective pathway by using the enzyme to make the plant a partner in producing pBA and in capturing and storing organic carbon.

The biochemist hopes to find a commercial partner who might be interested in exploring the development of a process that occurs naturally in poplar trees.

The environmental impact of increasing pBA in plants on the ecology of the areas in which these poplar trees might grow is unclear.

“We do not know at this moment whether this will benefit or be harmful to the soil microbial community,” he said. “In some cases, it can help the plant absorb more nutrients. It potentially can also kill other microbial life.”

For the plant, it’s unclear what the effect of higher pBA might be. The enzyme Liu identified moves pBA from inside the cell to the cell where, which would likely mitigate any toxicity because that is dead material. 

“We expect the increase of cell wall-bound pBA should promote the trees’ ability in withstanding environmental changes,” he explained.

Altering the cell’s metabolic processes by rebuilding a new pathway that produces high amounts of pBA could negatively affect a tree’s normal growth. Liu would need to conduct more experiments to explore this possible effect.

A resident of Rocky Point, Liu lives with his wife Yang Chen, who is a special education teacher assistant at Rocky Point Middle School. Their son Allen is in his third year at Purdue University, while Bryant is in his second year at the University of Southern California. The family enjoys skiing and hiking trips.

The work to confirm the link between the gene and the production of pBA involved numerous post doctoral researchers.

Liu appreciates the effort of his research team over the years. “I’m very happy that we were finally able to resolve this issue,” he said.

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Pixabay photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

Years ago, restaurants had smoking and non-smoking sections. Airlines reserved parts of the plane for people who smoked and those who didn’t.

How, after all, were people addicted to nicotine supposed to get through a meal or a plane ride, especially one that could take hours, without lighting up?

Society knew back then that smoking was harmful for the smoker. We knew that each person ran the risk of lung, mouth and throat cancers, among others, from inhaling the toxins in cigarettes.

Slowly, we also started to learn about the dangers of second-hand smoke. People who didn’t light up cigarettes and cigars couldn’t simply move away from that smoke, especially if they were in the same house, the same car, or even, for several hours, on a plane together.

Over time, health officials started to piece together the kind of information that made it clear that non smokers needed protection.

Slowly, restaurants and planes banned smoking. And yet, despite the years of no-smoking policies on planes, the flight attendants or the videos we watch before take off include threats about the consequences of disabling or dismantling smoke detectors in bathrooms.

We also knew, at great cost, that drinking and driving was enormously problematic. People getting behind the wheel after having a few drinks at dinner or while watching a sporting event with their buddies risked the lives of those in their own car, as well as anyone else unfortunate enough to be on the road at the time.

Groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving and Students Against Drunk Driving came together to fight against habits that put others at risk. While drunk driving still occurs throughout the world, the awareness of the dangers of drinking and driving and, probably just as importantly, the vigilance with which police forces cracked down on people while they were driving impaired has helped to reduce the threat. In 2018, alcohol-impaired driving fatalities was 3.2 per 100,000, which is a drop of 65% since 1982, according to Responsibility.org.

Drunk driving remains a public health threat, with advertisements encouraging people not to let friends drive drunk and organizations like MADD continuing to fight to reduce that further.

While risking the potential for false equivalence, the current pandemic presents similar challenges, particularly regarding wearing masks. Yes, masks are a nuisance and we thought we were done with them, particularly in the early part of the summer when the infection rate declined and vaccinations increased.

With the Delta variant raging throughout the country, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends masks for anyone indoors and for those in larger, outdoor settings, regardless of their vaccination status.

Now, living without a mask and drinking or smoking are not the same. Drinking and smoking are riskier activities adults engage in and that are not a basic necessity, like breathing.

At the same time, however, people opting not to wear masks because they don’t want to or because that was so 2020 are risking more than their own health. They are sharing whatever virus they may have, in some cases with people whose health might be much more at risk.

When I’m sweating at the gym, I find the masks uncomfortable and distracting. I do, however, continue to wear them because they are a way to protect other people in the room.

I hope I don’t have COVID-19, but I can’t be sure because I have been vaccinated and I could be an asymptomatic carrier.

Students, many of whom can’t receive the vaccine, are better off learning at school than at home or, worse, in a hospital bed. If you’re not wearing a mask for you, consider putting one on for everyone else. 

Together, we can and will get through what seems like a viral sequel no one wanted. Until there’s a better way, consider wearing a mask to protect others. If people could do it during the Spanish Influenza in 1918 and 1919, we can do it, too.

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H. Reşit Akçakaya during a recent bird watching expedition. Photo by T. Lybvig

By Daniel Dunaief

In the world of conservation, scientists and policy makers have relied on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species to understand just how likely species are to go extinct, often as a result of human actions.

When a species moves from one threat level to another, conservationists typically spring into action, taking steps to protect individuals within a species and the habitat in which that species lives.

A team of over 200 scientists in 171 institutions tested a new measure, called the Green Status, that is designed to measure how effective those conservation efforts have been.

“There are always stories about conservation successes,” said H. Reşit Akçakaya, one of the leaders of the effort who helped develop the methodology for this new metric. The scientists wanted to “create a standard, objective way of recognizing the success and effectiveness of conservation measures. That is very important. We need optimism. People don’t act unless there is hope.”

The Green Status monitors a species recovery, measuring the impact of past and future conservation efforts. Researchers including Akçakaya, who is a Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at Stony Brook University, came up with a formula to determine Green Status. 

The formula includes elements conservations consider important: it should be safe from extinction, it should have a large enough population to have all its natural interactions with the other parts of the ecosystem, and it should be represented in every ecosystem in which it naturally exists and has existed.

The scientists considered the trade-offs between practicality in aiming for a system that is feasible to apply to many species and comprehensiveness, which incorporates relevant aspects of, and factors involved in, species recovery, Akçakaya explained in an email.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature Green Status of Species will join the IUCN Red List to provide a more complete update on a species’ conservation condition, which includes their extinction risk and recovery process.

In a new paper, published in Conservation Biology, scientists from around the world contributed to creating preliminary Green Status for 181 species.

It took seven years from the time the scientists came up with the method, developed it further to make it applicable to all species, published papers, organized workshops and other consultations to get feedback and tested the method.

Akçakaya, who has been involved with the Red List since 1999, said the new system provides information about the status of the species that goes beyond the risk of extinction.

“It’s not sufficient to prevent extinction,” Akçakaya said. “We want them to recover as well.”

One of the challenges in developing this method was in deriving definitions that apply across all species and that are not specific to the conditions and threats any one species faces.

Extinction is difficult to measure but easy to conceptualize, he explained. Recovery, on the other hand, is “not as clear cut.”

The first goal of this enterprise was to come up with ways of standardizing how to measure the recovery of a species that would reflect whether conservation efforts were working.

A species on the Red List might have been critically endangered over a decade earlier. After considerable conservation effort, that species may still be critically endangered, according to the same Red List.

That, however, does not indicate anything specific about whether the conservation efforts are working.

The Red List “doesn’t tell us how much more we need to work to get to a level that we can call recovered,” Akçakaya explained.

The Green Status is not currently a part of conservation policy decisions, particularly because it has only been applied to 181 species. The IUCN, however, which is the world’s largest network of conservationists and conservation scientists, has approved it.

Getting from 181 to tens of thousands will take several years, although Akçakaya said he “has a good start” and he has interest from different people who are involved in conservation.

“We are on our way” towards creating a metric that affects conservation policy, he said. “It will take several years to be used” to affect conservation policies for threatened species.

When the Green Status is more broadly available for a wider collection of species, Akçakaya believes it will provide a way for government officials to make informed decisions.

The IUCN, however, does not tell local and national officials what to do with the information provided with the Red List or with the Green Status.

In developing the Green Status, Akçakaya worked with numerous scientists and conservationists. For this methodology, the researchers received hundreds of comments from people who  shared insights online. They also announced the work within the IUCN network, through which they received feedback.

Part of the larger advances in the context of the Green Status came from looking not only at the resilience of the species, but also at what the species is doing in the ecosystem. “Is it fulfilling its ecological role and its function in the ecosystem?” Akçakaya asked.

The Stony Brook scientist is pleased with the Green Status work. The intelligence of the group is larger than the intelligence of any one person, he said.

The group “had the same goal,” he added. “It was a really satisfying experience in terms of how we came up with a system.”

The Green Status can help balance the conservation news. While conserving biodiversity is urgent, one of the things this measure can achieve is to formalize the successes.

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Pixabay photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

Welcome to the casino. Just by being alive today, you’ve all punched your ticket to the worldwide slot machine.

Now, the machines operate the way people expect, most of the time. They follow their programming, they make the loud noises as the three wheels inside of them spin and then show images on those three wheels.

The machine doesn’t cost anything to play. You don’t have to put in quarters or tokens or anything else. You just sit down and a machine starts spinning.

In fact, when you sit in one of our relatively unclean chairs, because we’re much more about playing the game than we are about cleanliness or safety, the process begins.

The chairs are close together, so you and your neighbor can compare notes on how you’re doing in this game, can share stories about your lives and can enjoy time out, away from the limitations of quarantine and all the other frustrations that you’ve had to endure for so long.

We do everything we can to discourage masks. We want you to be able to share the freedom that comes from seeing each other’s faces clearly.

And, if you should happen to need to use the bathroom, we don’t have any annoying signs about washing your hands. In fact, we don’t even recommend soap. What is the value of soap, after all? It’s probably some corporate scheme to boost profits somewhere.

We mean, come on, right? The cavemen didn’t have soap and they lived long enough to become fossils. That should be good enough for you, too, right? Before they died, they drew cool things on the wall, sharing stories that survived years after they did.

Now, we want to share a few details about our cool slot machines. You want to know a secret? We didn’t build these machines. We know, it’s hard to believe, but they just appeared one day, as if a stork or another kind of flying creature brought them. Well, not all of them. That’s the incredible thing. A few of them appeared and, after we started playing them, they copied themselves. The more we played them, the more they produced new copies.

Now, you might have heard that these machines can be bad for you. But, hey, so many other things are bad for you, too, and you still do them, right? You have a little too much to eat or drink now and then, and you maybe put a recycling bottle in the wrong trash can, but who pays attention to those things?

Anyway, so, these original machines built themselves the same way, most of the time. Each time a new machine appeared, they worked the same way, with images flying across the screen.

Every so often, when the machines made enough copies of themselves, they changed slightly. We’re not exactly sure why or how that happened, but it’s perfectly normal, we think.

The newest versions of these machines spin at a faster rate and also copy themselves more rapidly. One of them, which is now the most common type, has a big D on its side. That’s the dominant machine.

Actually, at this point, we’d kind of prefer people stop playing the game. You see, each time you play the game, not only does that D version copy itself, but our people are telling us that we run the risk of creating other types of the machine that might have worse features.

But, wait, how can you stop playing? What can keep you out of a casino that’s everywhere? Well, there’s a special thing you can get at any local drug store that someone puts in your arm. After you get it, you become almost invisible to the machine. That may be the best way to get away from these monsters.

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Brandpoint photo

At the same time that the United States battles against the more infectious Delta variant of the COVID-19 virus, hospitals in Suffolk County are experiencing similar trends among those infected and who need medical attention.

The Delta variant accounts for over 80% of those infected in the county, according to Dr. Gregson Pigott, commissioner of the Suffolk County Department of Health Services. The percentage of positive tests has climbed from below 1 percent earlier in the summer to between 2 and 3 percent.

“People over 65 find themselves more vulnerable and more ready to accept the vaccine. Younger people can consider themselves invincible. That is leading to greater hospitalizations than we’ve seen among those who are under 65.”

— Dr. Sunil Dhuper

Those figures are likely even higher “given that it is all dependent on the numbers of persons being tested and why,” Dr. Susan Donelan, medical director of Healthcare Epidemiology at Stony Brook University, explained in an email.

Meanwhile, the percentage of law enforcement members in Suffolk County who are vaccinated is lower than that for the county as a whole. According to the county Police Department, through May, 47% of law enforcement had received a vaccine compared with 57% for the county. Acting SCPD Commissioner Stuart Cameron is encouraging members to get vaccinated.

Health care workers are concerned about the general ongoing trends with the virus.

“The numbers are alarming,” said Dr. Sunil Dhuper, chief medical officer at St. Charles Hospital. “There’s a heightened level of awareness amongst the staff of what’s happening locally and at the state and national level.”

Unlike those who contracted the virus and needed hospitalization in 2020, the majority, about 53%, are between the ages of 19 and 64, according to Pigott.

Additionally, about 99% of patients hospitalized for COVID complications are unvaccinated, according to Dr. Adrian Popp, chair of Infection Control at Huntington Hospital/Northwell Health and associate professor of medicine at Hofstra School of Medicine.

He added that the vaccinated patients are either asymptomatic or have mild symptoms, which means that the risk of hospitalization or mortality is significantly lower even among those with breakthrough infections than for those who are unvaccinated.

The lower number of hospitalized patients who are over 65 likely reflects the comfort level they have with the inoculation.

“People over 65 find themselves more vulnerable and more ready to accept the vaccine,” Dhuper said. “Younger people can consider themselves invincible. That is leading to greater hospitalizations than we’ve seen among those who are under 65.”

The percentage of people fully vaccinated in Suffolk County is 57.8% as at Aug. 4.

“The vaccine has been shown to be safe and effective,” Pigott wrote in an email. “We encourage all residents to get vaccinated to protect themselves and their loved ones, and so that new vaccine-resistant variants of SARS-CoV-2 [the virus that caused the pandemic] do not have the opportunity to emerge.”

Area hospitals have been watching the infection and vaccination trends in the area closely.

St. Charles and Northwell are currently engaged in corporate discussions about when to start testing patients who are vaccinated but might be carriers.

The New York State Department of Health guidelines recently suggested that as long as the positive testing rate was below 2%, hospitals didn’t need to test patients if they are vaccinated when they have elective surgeries.

“We are very concerned about that now,” Dhuper said.

St. Charles Hospital is considering whether to start doing nasal swabs for all patients getting elective surgery to prevent putting patients and employees at risk.

Meanwhile, at Huntington Hospital, employees who do not get the vaccine will need to be tested weekly or biweekly, according to Popp.

As for people concerned about being around others who may have the virus without displaying symptoms, he added that it is “difficult to know when you are exposed.”

The only way to know if someone is infected is to get tested with the COVID PCR nasal swab.

While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hasn’t changed its definition of exposure, which includes being within 6 feet for more than 15 minutes indoors with an infected person, Popp recognized that “one can argue that transmission of infection may occur in less than 15 minutes.”

The Huntington Hospital doctor added that riding in an elevator or sharing a car ride with an infected person for under 15 minutes is “very risky due to the small, enclosed space without ventilation associated with the Delta variant that is 50% more transmissible.”

Better treatment

Doctors, nurses and other health care professionals have benefited from their experience with the virus. Hospital administrators feel prepared to handle the variety of symptoms patients have when they need medical attention.

“We now have clear parameters regarding the use of remdesivir, steroids, and other agents,” SBU’s Donelan explained in an email. “Proning is now a proven patient management technique. The role of anticoagulation is well understood.” The proning term means putting a patient in a prone position so the individual is lying face down.

Dhuper said the length of COVID stays at St. Charles have declined because of better treatment and the overall better immune status of those who contract the virus.

“We have come up with better management in terms of who needs to be ventilated, and who needs to be in a prone position prior to ventilation,” he said.

As for the implications for schools, which will reopen for the fall within the next month, medical care professionals urged parents and educational administrators to remind students of the same messages from earlier in the pandemic.

Students should wear masks, social distance, wash their hands and, most importantly, get vaccinated if they are 16 and above, Popp urged.

Current drug trials are underway for children under 16, with results expected in December, Popp said, which means that students in that age group will attend in-person classes with the same protections, albeit amid a more transmissible form of the virus than last year.

Dhuper reminded residents that the response to the virus can range from asymptomatic to extended hospital stays or death.

“People have to know that [these outcomes] can happen in any age group,” he said. “It all depends on the viral load and the immune response. The bottom line is that you have to protect yourself, and you have to protect your family and the community around you. The only way we can be ahead of the curve is by taking the vaccine.”

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Coach Ken Eriksen during practice with Team USA Softball. Photo by Jade Hewitt from USA Softball

Some days, you win a close race against the best in the world by a fingernail, the way Michael Phelps did in 2008 in the 100-meter butterfly.

Coach Ken Eriksen with members of Team USA softball team. Photo by Jade Hewitt from USA Softball

Other days, your team, after thousands of hours of practice, working hard, watching video and dancing on a bus — more on this later — you lose by that same margin.

That’s how Team USA Softball’s coach Ken Eriksen, who contributed his last volunteer hour to traveling around the world on behalf of the country, felt after losing 2-0 to Japan in the gold medal game at the Tokyo Olympics.

“The difference between gold or silver is almost microscopic,” Eriksen said. “Japan had a good day.”

A turning point in the gold medal game came in the bottom of the sixth inning when American third-basemen Amanda Chidester lined a ball that hit off her counterpart at third base and into the shortstop’s mitt, who threw to second base to get a double play, ending a potential American rally from a 2-0 deficit.

“When that play occurred, that’s the first time in the game that I said, ‘This may not be our day,’” Eriksen, a 1979 graduate of Ward Melville High School said.

The head coach was pleased with the preparation and effort from a team of 15 players, including pitching legends Cat Osterman and Monica Abbott, who returned for one more chance at an Olympic medal.

“I thought we played a very good tournament,” Eriksen said from Tampa, Florida, where he has been the University of South Florida head softball coach for the last 24 years.

Outside the lines, the Olympics presented numerous challenges. Even on their way to the Olympics, it was clear this would be a unique experience, as the only people on the flight to Japan were either athletes or the military.

Once in the country, they had numerous restrictions as a result of the Delta variant.

“The Japanese wouldn’t let you do much,” Eriksen said.

The team and coaches went to the ballpark and spent much of their time at the hotel. They couldn’t go outside and socialize with other athletes. Inside the village, they had to put on their masks everywhere.

Each morning, the players and coaches had a COVID saliva test, which built anxiety as the team waited for results in the afternoon.

“There was no release of stress to go out and just relax,” Eriksen said. “Elite athletes need that pressure release and coaches need it.”

Indeed, in addition to restrictions placed on the team, the athletes regularly heard from Japanese citizens who were upset that the Olympics even took place.

“Everywhere we went, we heard protests,” Eriksen said. “It’s unnerving. You’re there in allegedly the greatest athletic event in the world and in the host country, they don’t want you. When you’re hearing voices coming over megaphones behind a police line, it’s not normal.”

To counterbalance the stress and help the team, Eriksen said he slackened the reins, giving his players the green light to get “goofy.”

“People think of athletes as having ice in their veins. They are human beings.”

— Ken Eriksen

Led by infielder Valerie Arioto, 32, the team danced on the bus. Arioto did the “greatest rendition of Cher” and Kelly Clarkson, Eriksen said. The head coach also allowed the team to listen to music while practicing, giving them a chance to blow off steam while preparing for upcoming games.

Mental health

Eriksen said the softball team had already focused on the mental health aspects of the game, which gymnast Simone Biles brought to the world’s attention when she withdrew from the team and several individual events.

“We’ve been ahead of the curve on this for three or four years,” Eriksen said.

While people talk about softball and baseball as games of failure because a batter is considered successful if he or she gets on base once in three tries, Eriksen said the softball team describes the experience as a “game of opportunity,” by defining successes in ways other than batting averages.

Eriksen is grateful to Biles and Japanese tennis player Naomi Osaka, who withdrew from Wimbledon rather than face questions from the media, for raising the issue of mental health for athletes.

“People think of athletes as having ice in their veins,” he said. “They are human beings. The pressure on anybody that wears a U.S. uniform … is almost unfair.”

The rest of the world has improved in numerous sports, including softball, in part because American coaches have helped train them, Eriksen added. Through the Olympics, American players compete against their college roommates or coaches who worked with them earlier in their careers.

After the gold medal game ended in heartbreak for players who put everything they had into the game, Eriksen said he shared a few words with the team.

“This game will not be the toughest they’ll ever play,” he recalled. “The toughest game will start tomorrow: the rest of their life.”

He encouraged players to call him for any future support.

Having been an assistant coach with the gold-medal winning team in Athens in 2004, Eriksen recognized that the game fades quickly.

“Within five minutes, you have the realization that it’s over and the climb is the most exhilarating part,” he said.

Eriksen was pleased to have the support and leadership of 38-year-old Osterman and 36-year-old Abbott, who served as inspirations to their teammates. He described the two pitchers as the Nolan Ryans of their era.

“What God gave these people is absolutely rare,” Eriksen said, as they have maintained their athleticism well into their 30s.

Accumulated wisdom

After all his years on the diamond, first as a baseball player at Ward Melville and in college at USF, and then as a coach, Eriksen shared a few thoughts.

When he was hired, his athletic director at USF told him never to get in a conversation with parents because he’ll always lose. Twice in his career, he removed players from the team because their parents questioned him about playing time.

As for being around men’s and women’s teams, he suggested a difference among athletes of each gender.

“Women have to feel good to play good, men have to play good to feel good,” he said.

In his coaching career, he recalled one moment that mirrored a scene from the Kurt Russell movie “Miracle,” in which the actor played Coach Herb Brooks from the 1980 ice hockey team that defeated the Russians amid the Cold War in Lake Placid.

Before tryouts ended, Russell gave a stunned Olympic hockey league director his list of players.

In 2019, Eriksen said he, too, handed the Olympic softball league director a list of the 15 players who would be on the team before tryouts ended.

Eriksen said he is comforted by his decision to retire from coaching Team USA.

“If I never get on an airplane again, I’ll be okay,” he said. “Sometimes, it’s good to wake up in your own bed, drink coffee on the back porch and listen to the birds.

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Attendees at a conference at CSHL, an in-person tradition started in 1933. These conferences were suspended from 1943 to 1945 during WWII and were virtual during the pandemic in 2020 and for most of 2021. Photo by Miriam Chuai/CSHL

By Daniel Dunaief

For scientists, meetings and conferences aren’t just a chance to catch up on the latest research, gossip and see old friends: they can also provide an intellectual spark that enhances their careers and leads to new collaborations.

Amid the pandemic, almost all of those in-person conferences stopped, including the annual courses and meetings that Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory hosts. The internationally renowned lab has run meetings since 1933, with a few years off between 1943 and 1945 during World War II.

CSHL’s David Stewart. Photo by Gina Motisi/CSHL

While scientists made progress on everything from basic to translational research, including in laboratories that pivoted towards work on the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, they missed out on the kinds of opportunities that come from in-person interactions.

Assuming COVID infection rates are low enough this fall, CSHL is hoping to restart in-person conferences and courses, with the first conference that will address fifty years of the enzyme reverse transcriptase scheduled for Oct. 20th through the 23rd. That event was originally scheduled for October of 2020.

One of the planned guest speakers for that conference, David Baltimore, who discovered the enzyme that enables RNA to transfer information to DNA and is involved in retroviruses like HIV, won the Nobel Prize.

“I am hoping that there will be significant participation by many eminent scientists, so that is in itself somewhat [of] a ceremonial start,” wrote David Stewart, Executive Director of meetings and courses at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

To attend any of the seven in-person meetings on the calendar before the end of the year, participants need to have vaccinations from either Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson or AstraZeneca.

Attendees will have to complete an online form and bring a vaccination card or certificate. Scientists who don’t provide that information “will not be admitted and will not get a key to their room or be able to attend the event,” Stewart said.

CSHL also plans to maintain the thorough and deep cleaning procedures the lab developed. 

Stewart hopes that 75 to 80 percent or more of the talks presented will be live, with a virtual audience that could be larger than the in-person attendance.

“It is important to have a critical mass of presenters and audience in-person, but there’s no real limit on how large the virtual audience could be,” he explained.

Typically, the courses attract participants from over 50 countries. Even this year, especially with travel restrictions for some countries still in place, Stewart expects that the majority of participants will travel from locations within the United States.

The Executive Director explained that CSHL was planning to introduce a carbon offset program for all travel to conferences and courses that the facility reimburses starting in 2020. After evaluating several options, they plan to purchase carbon offsets from Cool Effect and will encourage participants paying their own way to do the same or through a similar program.

The courses, meanwhile, will begin on October 4th, with macromolecular crystallography and programming for biology. CSHL hopes to run six of these courses before the end of the year, including a scientific writing retreat.

“We are looking to 100 percent enrollment for our courses, so likely this year that will largely be domestic,” Stewart explained.

The courses, which normally have 16 participants, may have 12 students, as the lab tries to run these training opportunities safely without masks or social distancing.

From March of 2020 through the end of last year, the lab had planned 25 meetings and 25 courses. As the pandemic spread, the lab pivoted to virtual meetings. “I felt like a car salesman trying to sell virtual conferences,” Stewart recalled. For the most part, the lab was able to keep to its original schedule of conferences, albeit through a virtual format.

In addition to the scheduled meetings, CSHL decided to add meetings to discuss the latest scientific information related to COVID research. 

Stewart approached Hung Fan, a retired virologist at the University of California at Irvine, to help put together these COVID exchanges. Those meetings occurred in June, July, August, October, and January. The sixth one recently concluded.

The meetings addressed “everything around the science of the virus,” Stewart said, which included the biology, the origin, the genomics, the immune response, vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics, among other scientific issues.

“There was a lot of excellent work being done around SARS-CoV-2,” Stewart said. “We were trying to identify that early on. It was helpful to have people who knew the field well.”

Fan said he combed through preprints like the CSHL-based bioRxiv and related medRxiv every day for important updates on the disease.

Fan described the scientific focus and effort of the research community as being akin to the Manhattan Project which built the atomic bomb during World War II, where “everybody said, ‘We have a common enemy and we want to apply all our capabilities to combating that.”

While Fan is pleased with the productive and valuable exchanges that occurred amid the virtual conferences, he recognized the benefit of sharing a room and a drink with scientific colleagues.

“A lot of the productive interactions at meetings take place in a social setting, at the bar, over dinner” and in other unstructured gatherings, he said. “People are relaxed and can share their scientific thoughts.”

After presentations, Fan described how researchers discuss the work presented and compare that to their own efforts. It’s easier to talk with people in person “as opposed to making a formalized approach through letters and emails.”

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METRO photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

One day, you wake up and your kids who called noodles “noonies” are getting ready for college.

No, not exactly. It’s a long journey filled with skinned knees, ripped tee shirts — don’t ask — eye rolling and muttering between clenched teeth. Still, here we are, as our kids prepare to move on from the educational minor leagues. Along the way, we went through numerous milestones. Please find below a few of the phases in our journey.

— Deer in the headlights. I’ve seen deer in my headlights. The only difference between them and us when we first brought our children home is that the deer’s eyes are open much wider. We almost instantly became sleep-deprived. Other than that, we had that frozen not-sure-where-to-move feeling, knowing we had to do something, but not exactly sure what or in what order to take care of those needs.

— Hating everyone. People meant well back in the days when our children were young and cried. Numerous people, who didn’t live with or even know our needy infants, offered unsolicited advice about what this scream or that scream meant. Strangers would tell us how our daughter’s cry meant she had gas, was hungry, needed her diaper changed, or was hot or cold. Yes, thanks, those are the options. Thanks for the help!

— Cooking the plastics. Yup, back in the early days, I was so sleep deprived that I put plastic bottles in a pot of boiling water to sterilize them and fell asleep. It wasn’t until I smelled the burning plastic that I realized how long I’d been out.

— Carrying everything: We couldn’t go four blocks without a diaper bag filled with everything, including the special toy each of them needed, diapers, wipes, ointment, sunscreen, bug spray, rain jackets, boots, and extra clothing.

— Straining our backs: Picking the kids up and playing with them was fun when they were under 20 pounds. When they reached 50 and above, holding them the entire length of a ski slope became impossible.

— Crazy sports parents: This phase lasted much longer than it should have. It was only when the kids reached late middle school that I appreciated the fresh air, the sparkling sunlight and the excitement of the moment. Exercise and making friends are the goal. Everything else, including winning, is gravy.

— Giving them space (aka, it’s not about us). As they reached adolescence, our children needed to make their own decisions. Tempting as it was to jump in and redirect them or even to kiss them before they left the car for middle school, we bit our tongues as often as we could, leaving us feeling lonely and nostalgic in our cars as they joined their friends.

— Beautiful naps: Giving them space allowed us to do what we wanted. After years of living our lives while monitoring and helping theirs, we had a chance to do exactly what we wanted, which started with restorative naps.

— Sending them into space. We aren’t putting them in a Jeff Bezos rocket ship or sending them to the International Space Station, but we are preparing to give them an opportunity to explore the world outside our house.

— Looking at the calendar differently. With both of them on the way to their futures, we can choose places to visit that didn’t interest them. We can visit these places when school is in session, which should mean lower costs for us.

— Telling other people how to take care of their kids: With our free time, we see parents struggling with young children. We, of course, know better. Or maybe not.

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Coach Ken Eriksen with members of Team USA softball team. Photo by Jade Hewitt from USA Softball

Coached by 1979 Ward Melville High School graduate Ken Eriksen, Team USA softball team ran out of walk-off magic in the gold medal game Tuesday.

After coming from behind to beat Australia, 2-1, and then Japan by the same score in the last two games before the final, Team USA couldn’t rally to beat Japan in the gold medal game, falling 2-0.

Coach Ken Eriksen during practice with Team USA. Photo by Jade Hewitt from USA Softball

Eriksen, who had a successful college baseball career, has extensive softball coaching and playing experience, including as the current head coach of the University of South Florida for over 24 years. He has had several roles with the national team over the years, including as an assistant on the 2004 Olympic team that won gold in Athens. He became head coach of Team USA in 2011.

Members of the local athletic community expressed their admiration for the coach and his involvement at the Olympic games.

“For one of our former student athletes to be coaching on the highest stage possible in the world is something we’re so proud of,” said Kevin Finnerty, athletic director of the Three Village Central School District. Eriksen’s role shows “that our students, through hard work, effort and time can” reach their goals.

Joseph Burger, who has been coaching softball at Ward Melville for seven years, appreciated the connection between Eriksen and the high school.

“When you have a Ward Melville graduate coaching the Olympic team, that sheds a great light on the sport and what we’re trying to do here,” Burger said. “This is very positive for the program.”

Burger appreciated how Team USA showed sportsmanship at the end of the loss, which, he said, reflects well on the coach.

Burger, who posted the Team USA softball schedule on the high school softball team’s Instagram page, said the games set a great example for his players.

The Olympians are “aggressive toward the ball,” he said.

Rising Ward Melville junior third baseman and team captain Alicea Pepitone watched the gold medal game.

“They played their hearts out this whole series in the Olympics,” said Pepitone, who would like to play in college. “They should be proud, even though it didn’t go down the way they wanted it to.”

Pepitone thought it was “awesome” that Coach Eriksen attended Ward Melville. She recalls watching softball in the Olympics in 2008.

“I want to be one of those girls on that field and wearing that jersey,” she said.

Reached by email before the final game, Eriksen responded to TBR’s questions from Tokyo.

TBR: Who were some of your softball mentors growing up in Setauket?

Eriksen: My coaching mentors from Long Island were Russ Cain at Gelinas Junior High School and Coach Everett Hart. They were both tremendous teachers. They both taught the game, and you would never know you were up by 10 or down by 10. They treated and respected the game as it should be … a teaching platform for life.

TBR: Have you emulated any of the coaching patterns you observed as a player?

Eriksen: Most definitely. It’s all about the players’ ability to be prepared for any situation and trust them to react to the situations.

TBR: What is the best advice you received as a player?

Eriksen: Trust your preparation. Less is more.

TBR: Do you use that advice with the players on USA softball? 

Eriksen: Every day.

TBR: Is the sport of softball any different than it was during the age of Jennie Finch?

Eriksen: It’s more competitive worldwide now than it was prior to 2008. You can see that by the competition in the last four World Championships and the 2021 games.

TBR: Does the sport require any different skill sets?

Eriksen: Absolutely as it does comparatively to baseball.

TBR: How is USA softball any different from softball in the rest of the world?

Eriksen: The expectations sometimes are unrealistic in respect of not thinking it’s a global game.

TBR: Does your team or does the program emphasize specific skills that differentiate it from softball in the rest of the world?

Eriksen: Not really. Everyone spends an inordinate amount of time trying to be flawless.

TBR: What is different about coaching and playing?

Eriksen: It was easier to play! Only had to worry about me!

TBR: Have you had to learn different skill sets as a coach than you had as a player?

Eriksen: Obviously when you are dealing as a manager in any organization there is a “human hierarchy of needs” that each player presents to you as a coach. When you have a unit that is together for years, you better understand the people first.

TBR: Was it challenging to coach and play softball without anyone in the stands?

Eriksen: Not really. When you are locked into the moment, all noise is irrelevant in the heads of elite athletes.

TBR: Was the team able to provide the energy and excitement that the crowd might normally offer in the context of a more typical softball game or season?

Eriksen: We bring it every day regardless. That happens when you wear U-S-A on the front of your jersey.

TBR: What’s next after the Olympics?

Eriksen: For me … getting away from the spotlight. Won’t be hard. I love the “game,” but it’s a game. It’s not my whole life. The old saying … “gone fishing.”

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