Generally, we don’t need distractions. We’re distracted enough, what with our electronic devices allowing us to check the weather in Albany during a storm, the latest trends on social media, the minute-to-minute value of our investments, and the world of sports news and scores.
And yet, there are those times when we desperately need a distraction. Our boss, for example, might ask about a project for which we’ve done almost no work and that we promised to work on last week, but that we didn’t get to because we were, well, distracted by other things.
Everyone likely has their own bag of go-to distractions that they turn to in moments when they need to deflect or distract someone just long enough for a meeting to end, a temper tantrum to subside, or an anxiety to abate.
I often start with almost factual information. By getting a sensational and exciting story almost correct, I trigger people to check their own phones to see if they can prove me wrong about some detail that isn’t as important as recognizing some bigger problem, like not getting an assignment done.
This phone check also tends to pull people’s minds into their electronic devices, where they might see text messages that need attention, a picture of their dog that reminds them of an upcoming trip to the vet, or some other big news that will divert their attention away from my almost factual statement and whatever other subject I’m trying to avoid.
Then, there’s always passion. I’m a generally level-headed person who stays calm, even when discussing subjects that are near and dear to me. Dialing up the passion, like changing the decibel level in a soft song with a message, can be distracting and effective. “I can’t believe the spectacular sportsmanship that women’s softball team displayed when they carried the player from the other team around the infield so she could touch all the bases after she fell. I’m so inspired.”
That, of course, also encourages people to dive back into their phones. Most of the time, that is effective unless the phone reminds them of whatever I’m trying to avoid, in which case, I turn to other methods.
Reverently appreciating silence is also an effective method. It’s the slow-down-so-we-can-think moment. Staring off into the distance, putting up a finger as if I’m coming up with some great idea, and then thanking that person for giving me that time can often alter the trajectory of a meeting.
Once the silence ends, I slowly offer an awed appreciation for the value of time and space, an admiration for nature, or anything else that suggests a depth that counterbalances my ineffective presentation.
Poignant anecdotes or even effective and dramatic metaphors, if given the opportunity to share them, can also suggest that I’m capable of deep thoughts, even if I haven’t had any related to the incomplete assignment.
Then, of course, there’s the Socratic method. Someone asks me something about an assignment, and I lean into it, asking a wide range of questions about the assignment, its direction, our target audience, and opportunities to build on it.
The answers to those questions sometimes reveal more about the expectations.
I never pretend to have a stomachache. I know people do that, but I get stomachaches often enough that I wouldn’t even pretend to have one, lest my system decided to oblige me and turn my charade into an afternoon of discomfort.
In a pinch, I metaphorically beat up on myself, suggesting how I could have done better on this and that I am disappointed in the pace at which I’m completing this project. It’s hard to beat up on someone who has already accepted responsibility and is eager to make amends.
A reconstruction by Ludovic Slimak of the arrows Homo sapiens likely used 54,000 years ago in France.
Credit: Ludovic Slimak
By Daniel Dunaief
Have bow and arrow, will travel, even in Eurasia 54,000 years ago.
An archaeological site in the south of France that’s 70 miles from the coastline called Grotte Mandrin not only provided evidence that Homo sapiens and Neanderthals lived in this area around the same time, but also offered proof that early humans used bow and arrows to hunt for prey like bison and wild horses.
Jason Lewis. Photo from SBU
In research published in the journal Science Advances, Jason Lewis, a Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at Stony Brook University; Ludovic Slimak, cultural anthropologist at the University of Toulouse-Jean Jaurès; and Laure Metz, an archaeologist at Aix-Marseille University, shared an extensive analysis of stone artifacts that demonstrated the use of bows and arrows.
These hunting tools, which inhabitants of the cave could use to pursue herd animals migrating between the Mediterranean region and the plains of Northern Europe, provide the earliest evidence of mechanically propelled projectile technology from Eurasia.
“We looked for diagnostic evidence of a very powerful impact once the stone tip hits something,” said Lewis. “We can see experimentally what type of damage” is produced on the tips of the arrows. The damage to these arrows is in line with everything that modern archers are doing because the tools human ancestors used were so light, Lewis added.
The collaborative effort to study these arrows in labs across two continents involved an extensive analysis of the flaking pattern around the tips of the arrows. The researchers didn’t find any of the organic materials that the early hunters would have used to create the bow.
This technology, which likely took about an hour to make, likely enabled Homo sapiens to bring down prey. Effective hunting from about 10 to 20 yards likely would have required more than one arrow, particularly with the size and strength of the targets.
At an archaeological site in the Middle East, scientists described stone tools around the same time that look similar to the bows and arrows humans in Eurasia used.
“The evolving modern humans were developing and using projectile technology,” Lewis said.
Cultural differences
Lewis, Slimak and Metz showed in a seminal paper last year that Homo sapiens and Neanderthals had lived in the same cave, sometimes separated by a year or even a season.
While these two types of humans lived around the same time and in the same place, they didn’t share the same technology or have the type of cultural exchange that would enable Neanderthals, who typically hunted with hand-thrown spears, to use the same hunting tools.
“There’s no evidence of learning exchange,” Lewis said. Neanderthals did not start using the smaller points typical of the arrows or that would have been used as projectiles.
“It doesn’t look like there was a cultural exchange between the two groups,” Lewis said, as the artifacts from the time Neanderthals occupied the cave didn’t include any arrows.
Cultures sometimes develop identities that preclude using technology from other groups. Such cultural differences existed in the Maale and neighboring Tsamai people in Southwestern Ethiopia.
“Even though [bows and arrows] might be logically or objectively advantageous, some cultures suggest that ‘that’s not what we do,’” Lewis said.
Indeed, cultural differences have occurred in other areas that groups haven’t bridged, despite the availability of similar resources and the chance to learn the technology.
At the cave in Grotte Mandrin, researchers found a large collection of stone tools in Layer E of the cave.
The scientists believe the numerous arrows could have been the early equivalent of a munitions dump.
While bows and arrows would have provided a hunting advantage to Homo sapiens, the technology doesn’t explain why the two groups of early humans occupied the cave or dominated the area at different times.
“I doubt it comes down strictly to stone tool technology,” Lewis said. “There’s not a continuous march of occupation and expansion” as the interactions between the two populations were long lasting and complex.
Homo sapiens and Neanderthals moved up into a region and then moved back. This is akin to the way European settlers interacted with Native Americans when ships first crossed the Atlantic.
The Europeans moved into the region, interacted with people who already in the country, returned home, and then, at a later point crossed the ocean again.
Arrow studies
To understand the technology used to create these arrows, Metz and Slimak have spent years studying the way rocks flake off or get damaged in response to contact with animals or objects they hit when shot through the air.
Working for over a decade, Metz has been conducting experimental replication of the effect of use on these stone tools.
Scientists who shoot these stone arrows into carcasses from butcher shops can see the flaking pattern and scratches on the arrows.
Lewis explained that the flaking on the arrow heads could not have been made during the creation of the arrows themselves.
“Only high velocity strikes” could produce such markings, Lewis said.
These kinds of studies combine geology, physics and natural science. Lewis said John Shea, Anthropology Professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at Stony Brook University, has pioneered the study of such technology during the Pleistocene Ice Ages.
Lewis explained that his primary role is to bring the contextual understanding about how various types of early humans were using the landscape and interacting with the animals.
He also brings the context of work he does in Africa around the same time period as a comparator.
Lewis explained that more research would be forthcoming from this site.
“This is part of a larger modern human ability to conceptualize the world,” Lewis said. Early humans were trying to change their environment to match their needs, with boats, clothing, dwelling structures and other elements of their lives.
Such tool use could reduce hunting time and could enable a greater division of labor, suggesting that “each person didn’t have to do everything” to meet basic needs.
India Pagan greets fans after a game in Marburg, Germany. Photo by Stefan Tschersich
India Pagan. Photo by Stefan Tschersich
India Pagan. Photo by Stefan Tschersich
India Pagan. Photo by Stefan Tschersich
India Pagan. Photo by Stefan Tschersich
India Pagan. Photo by Stefan Tschersich
By Daniel Dunaief
Learning a new basketball system was challenging: learning German was even harder.
For India Pagan, who speaks English and Spanish, communicating with her coach and fans in her first experience in professional basketball after graduating with a Master’s from Stony Brook University proved difficult.
Early in the season, playing for BC Pharmaserv in Marburg, Germany, head coach Patrick Unger spoke to her in English, but he’s “translating it in his head in German,” Pagan said. Sometimes, she took what he said the wrong way.
When Unger said something, Pagan recalled that she “took it in a personal way, which make me get in my head,” she said.
After speaking with Unger, she cleared the air, which helped her understand more of what he wanted.
Pagan lived and worked a continent away from her family in New London, Connecticut, who had been regular visitors and supporters during her college playing days as a member of the Seawolves.
Moises Pagan, India’s father, was grateful for the opportunity to connect with his daughter electronically. “Thank God for FaceTime,” he said. “That helped.”
Off the court, Pagan adjusted to life in a different culture while living in an apartment with three teammates. She and her teammates had some of the typical issues that affect college students who move in with strangers when they first start living life apart from their families.
Some of her teammates were more attentive to cleaning their dishes or buying necessities.
One of Pagan’s biggest frustrations was that she likes to sleep late. Some of her teammates would knock on doors and ask for something in the morning.
“One thing I learned is that when I get another roommate, I’m really going to set boundaries” so that she can get the rest she feels she needs, Pagan said.
In addition, Pagan, whose parents grew up in Puerto Rico and who has a strong cultural and national identity tied to the island territory, found it difficult to purchase the kind of foods she knows she enjoys eating.
Pagan’s parents Moises and Carmen sent their daughter a care package filled with spices and packaged foods. The only problem: it took 28 days to arrive. The parcel “sat in Frankfurt for eight days,” Moises Pagan said. He called the post office in the United States, and representatives said they also saw that the package wasn’t moving, but that there was “nothing they could do.” When the food items finally arrived, India brought a teammate who spoke German with her, to translate.
Amid local and global health concerns, Pagan said the team had its share of illnesses. In her first week in Germany, she was sick. “You have to be kidding me,” she recalled thinking. “I’m sick already and we weren’t even playing games.”
Pagan got the first week off. After that, she said, players on her team passed along a few colds, which weren’t Covid but were still unpleasant.
On the court
While Pagan had an opportunity to play and continue to develop her game, the team didn’t make the playoffs and was heading into the final few weeks of the season with a losing record. “We know we’re a good team,” Pagan said. “The majority of games, we lost by a couple of points. We never found our rhythm this season.”
Pagan went from helping lead the Stony Brook women’s basketball team through successful seasons to debuting on a professional team that struggled to put wins together. “Basketball will always be fun, but losing so many games by five points got really frustrating and obviously isn’t for anyone,” she said.
In addition to receiving ongoing and positive support from her parents, India Pagan also remained in touch with Ashley Langford, who coached Pagan during her final year at Stony Brook.
“It’s always great hearing from [Coach Langford],” said Pagan. Langford reminded Pagan that she’s a great player, that she should attack and play her game, and should believe in herself. “Small phrases like that” really helped, Pagan said.
Langford said she tries to remind all first-year professional players that there’s a learning curve and that there will be moments they don’t enjoy. “What I tried to tell India, too, is that it’ll get better and stick with it,” she said.
Langford also highlighted how the officiating is different. Players might get called for travels more or less often in one league. She urged Pagan to dominate, which, the coach said, would make it difficult to take her out of the lineup.
“You’ve got to make him play you,” Langford urged.
Personal growth
Pagan felt she grew as a basketball player and as a person. She described the German style of play as “quicker and more physical.”
When a shot went up, her coach wanted everyone to go for a rebound, rather than sending one or two guards back to protect against a fast break on the other end.
“In some respects, I am a better basketball player,” she explained. “I learned some new moves and learned a lot about my game.”
During the season, Pagan and two of her teammates couldn’t go home for Christmas. They visited with their head coach and his family, which included three children. “I was thankful for the family I got to spend time with over here,” Pagan said. She also visited bigger cities, which were over an hour and a half from where she lived, as often as she could.
When she returns home, Pagan is looking forward to visiting with family, eating crab legs and taking a trip to Dunkin’ Donuts.
She has not decided where she’ll play next year and is exploring various options, including joining a Puerto Rican league.
Nature plays a slow game, drawn out over millions of years, of hide and seek. First, spectacular and elaborate creatures lived hunted, reproduced, and avoided predators millions of years ago. After they died in places like Dorset in the United Kingdom, their bodies became preserved in the muddy, shallow marine environment. The sediment was then covered over by rock layers and safely preserved.
Eric Wilberg in Coyote Buttes, Utah in 2018
Fast forward about 185 million years, after waves crashing upon the shore erode those rocks on a beach and expose those fossils.
Indeed, in 2017, in a UNESCO World Heritage site where scientists and fossil hunters and paleontologists like 19th century star Mary Anning made key discoveries, archeology enthusiasts Paul Turner and Lizzie Hingley found the head, backbone and limbs of a creature scientists had imagined, but hadn’t, until then, discovered.
Called a thalattosuchian, which is an ancient sister of modern day crocodile ancestors, this finding extended the timeline of when these coastal marine crocodiles lived.
In late 2019, Dr. Roger Benson, who was then at the University of Oxford, reached out to Pedro Godoy, a postdoctoral researcher at Stony Brook who Benson co-supervised during his PhD, and Eric Wilberg, Assistant Professor at the Department of Anatomical Sciences at Stony Brook University. The team, which included Alan Turner, Professor in the Department of Anatomical Sciences at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook, planned to describe and characterize the fossil.
Benson said he had never met Wilberg before but had “read his work on croc evolution and really admired his systematic approach.”
This ancient crocodilian creature, which was about six feet long and was likely either a sub adult or an adult, is the first “thalattosuchian fossil complete enough to definitively identify as a member of the group of rocks older than about 180 million years ago,” Wilberg explained.
Wilberg, Godoy (who is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Sao Paolo), Turner and Benson (who is currently Macaulay Curator of Dinosaur Paleobiology at the American Museum of Natural History), recently published their study on this fossil in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
Godoy said that Wilberg is “an expert in this group of animals and it was great working with him on this.” Godoy added that this was an “important finding, which helps us fill a gap in the evolution of thalattosuchians.”
Benson suggested that this fossil provides a glimpse into the origin of thalattosuchians, indicating that the group originated before this fossil. The particular organism is the first discovered in a new species gathered by the two fossil hunters (see related story on right).
The Thalattosuchian group lived until the Early Cretaceous period, about 130 million years ago. These predators likely fed on fish or cephalopods like ancient octopi or squid.
Recently, another team of scientists discovered a thalattosuchian skull in Morocco, which is about five to 10 million years older than the Turnersuchus Wilberg described.
The discoveries “support our prediction that thalattosuchians evolved millions of years earlier —probably in the late Triassic” around 200 million or more years ago, Wilberg added. His analysis determined that the thalattosuchian lineage diverged from its last common ancestor with crocodile-relatives during the Triassic period.
Wilberg and other researchers will be on the lookout for additional specimens which can add details to the understanding of this species. This specimen was missing most of the front of the skull, all of the hindlimb and pelvis and most of the tail.
Specific features
By examining the spinal column and part of the forelimb, Wilberg explained that this species did not have forelimbs that evolved into flippers, like later descendants in the group. It would have been similar in overall body form to living crocodiles, which means that it likely had similar swimming capabilities.
The specimen included a couple of partial teeth. Like all living crocodiles, it likely continually replaced its teeth throughout its life. Its bite force would have been less than a similar sized modern crocodile. The modern crocodylian skull evolved structural reinforcements to allow it to withstand the massive bite forces it generated.
Thalattosuchians skulls were “not as well reinforced, so they were probably not able to bite as hard,” Wilberg wrote. It seems likely that the “muscles that generate fast bites were large in this group, so they may have evolved for fast bites to capture small-moving prey.”
The Turnersuchus probably lived close to the coast in relatively shallow water. Like living crocodiles, it also likely spent time out of the water to bask in the sun (it was also cold blooded) and lay eggs. The climate of the region when this species lived would have been warmer than the current climate of the United Kingdom.
This creature was likely not an apex predator, with larger hunters like ichthyosaurs, pleiosaurs and probably sharks likely preying on it.
“We don’t have any direct evidence of predation from these groups on thalattosuchians, but it probably happened,” Wilberg added.
This particular fossil, like many other discoveries, has numerous unknowns. The gender of the individual (which scientists often determine by comparing body sizes) is unclear.
This particular find will “continue to be important moving forward in determining how thalattosuchians are related to other fossil crocodiles — every new species discovered is a chance to test existing hypotheses of how they are related to one another” which is important in determining how evolution occurred in the group, Wilberg explained.
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The fossil hunters who lent their names to an ancient crocodile
By Daniel Dunaief
The beaches along the southern shore of the United Kingdom have rich and ancient stories to share.
Lizzie Hingley and Paul Turner. Photo from Lizzie Hingley
Lizzie Hingley and Paul Turner — friends who met on the beach and started working together in 2016 — are eager to gather clues about the past. Fossil hunters at the UNESCO World Heritage Site in Charmouth in the United Kingdom, which is about a three-hour drive southwest from London, Hingley and Turner discovered fragments of an unusual fossil starting in 2017. “Initially, we just saw random bones,” explained Hingley, who finds, prepares and sells some of the fossils on her website. Some fragments appeared to be a jaw in the clay next to an initial stone block containing multiple bones.
Hingley, who lives a ten minute walk from a beach that is also referred to as the Jurassic Coast, said that it’s “very unusual to come across anything with lots of bones in it on the beaches.” She took the find to her workshop, where she used an air abrasive and pneumatic chisel. She noticed it was semi-articulated, which means the bones were arranged in something resembling a natural order.
It took about one and a half years for Hingley and Turner to collect all the pieces of this fossil. Turner found the first main block, Hingley discovered the jaw next to it, Turner uncovered the next two and she found the last piece.
“It was quite difficult to collect as it was coming out of a huge glacial landscape,” said Hingley.It likely fell out of the cliff 50 years earlier and had been traveling to the front of the slip over the years. “This meant that, although we did try to dig for it, the best way to recover it was to wait for nature to uncover it for us,” she added.
Lizzie Hingley holding the ichthyosaur jaw she found when she was eight. Photo by Craig Chivers
Hingley and Turner visited daily to make sure they didn’t miss any pieces. The Charmouth Heritage Centre staff found a few loose vertebrae and reunited them with the rest of the fossil.
Hingley, who is one of about 15 people who regularly search parts of the seven miles of beaches almost daily, wanted to do more than collect this fossil — she wanted to know its history. Through her network, she found Roger Benson, who was a Professor of Paleobiology at the University of Oxford.
“It was great to work with him and see the scans being done,” she said. “He was instrumental” in bringing together a team of researchers who could analyze the finding and put it into historical context.
Indeed, Benson reached out to several researchers at Stony Brook University, including his former postdoctoral researcher Pedro Godoy, Assistant Professor Eric Wilberg and Professor Alan Turner (see related story on left) to gather information.
Close-up of ichthyosaur jaw. Photo by Lizzie Hingley
Their work concluded that this was a new species of marine crocodile. The ancient crocodile relative was named Turnersuchus hingleyae, after the fossil hunters who discovered it.
“It’s wonderful to have my name go down in history,” said Hingley, who also has a gastropod named after her.
Hingley, who is 35, started looking for fossils when she was six in Dorset, first on family holidays and then at every opportunity she could get. Over the years, she has found ichthyosaur skulls, ammonites measuring half a meter across, shark skin and teeth and numerous blocks containing hundreds of ammonites. When she was eight, she found a 20 centimeter ichthyosaur jaw, which is still part of her own collection.
Hingley is thrilled with her job, in which “every day is different and you never know what you are going to find or be working on,” she wrote. “I get to spend a lot of time in nature on the beach; the tide changes the beach every day, too.”
Benson described the beaches where Hingley and Turner search for new fossils as a European “pilgrimage for paleontologists.”
Hingley added that the process of erosion, which reveals fossils hidden in the cliffs along the beach, is something of a double edged sword, revealing fossils and threatening to carry them away.
A storm can decimate a beach and destroy fossils when the tide is too high to collect examples of creatures that lived as many as 185 million years ago. At the same time, erosion along the coast, caused by some of these same storms, reveals new fossils.
Walking along the beach, Hingley explained that it is almost incomprehensible to imagine the time scale separating her from the creatures who died so long ago.
The environment on the Jurassic Coast didn’t change much over those millennia.
“It is odd to think that you are collecting from the sea bed when it’s coming out of the cliff many meters above you,” she wrote. “The distance and time that these fossils have travelled to be found is incredible.”
I have had one of those weeks where the phrase “It’s a small world after all” applies.
Let’s start with events from over three decades ago, shall we?
I had spent considerable time with Michelle when I was in college, as we both loved biology and studied coenzymes together.
I had met Michelle’s father several times, mostly when a group of us visited her house. Her father, who was a doctor, was a wonderful host.
I had also met Michelle’s father’s partners in his medical practice. We spoke to each other on a first-name basis.
One of his partners and I were in a spacious kitchen as the sun was setting over a nearby hill. The partner asked me my last name.
When I spelled it out, he studied me closely.
“I had a roommate in medical school with exactly the same last name,” he said.
I held my breath.
“His first name was Ivan.”
A small electric shock worked its way through my body.
“That was my father,” I replied.
“Was?” he asked.
My father had died months earlier after an exhausting and painful battle with cancer.
I hadn’t developed “reporter” mode, which is what my children call it when questions leap at rapid fire pace from my brain to my mouth. Instead, I tried to imagine this man and my father as roommates in medical school.
I asked a few questions, for which he had short and not particularly informative answers. Later that night, I called my mom to tell her about the interaction. She said she knew the man and that he and my father were roommates and friends for a short time.
That brings me to story number two. I frequently receive pitch emails from people in the field of public relations. These executives from all over the country and the world — including Japan and Australia — email me with ideas to get their clients into the TBR newspapers.
I can’t always see a direct link between the coverage of stories in a community newspaper on Long Island and ideas that sometimes seem localized to other parts of the planet. When the connection seems tenuous, I don’t always read the emails all that carefully.
Recently, I received one such pitch and, despite not having a strong interest in the subject, read through the entire thing. The public relations executive was suggesting we cover a lecturer, author and authority figure in a particular field.
The first and middle names sounded familiar. When I got to the end of the pitch, where the email shared the person’s background, I realized that this woman and I attended the same college.
In fact, when I saw her picture, I immediately recognized her. She looked remarkably similar to how she looked decades ago —so, kudos to her for an ability to defy the effects of aging and gravity. That, I thought as I looked at her wrinkle-free face, could also be a topic she shares with audiences at conferences.
She not only attended college at the same time and place, but was in the same dorm for three years. In our sophomore year, I was her Secret Santa, which means that I bought small gifts for her and asked friends and roommates to leave them surreptitiously outside her dorm room. It’s a fun gift exchange and improves mental health during exams and amid shorter daylight hours.
One night, I sat at a dinner with my friends, before the “Secret Santa reveal,” suppressing a satisfied smirk as her roommate described what a wonderful Secret Santa her friend had.
Her roommate quoted from the poem I had left her (in my roommate’s considerably more aesthetically pleasing handwriting) with a bottle of bubble bath. Wouldn’t it be funny if the secret to her youthful appearance were bubble baths, which she started using many years ago after getting an inexpensive Secret Santa gift? Probably not.
Either way, it’s a small world where unexpected connections can and do crop up, even in random emails.
When they can’t stand the heat, bay scallops can’t get out of the proverbial kitchen.
A key commercial shellfish with landings data putting them in the top five fisheries in New York, particularly in the Peconic Bay, bay scallops populations have declined precipitously during a combination of warmer waters and low oxygen.
In a study published in the journal Global Change Biology, Christopher Gobler, Stony Brook University Endowed Chair of Coastal Ecology and Conservation and Stephen Tomasetti, a former Stony Brook graduate student, along with several other researchers, showed through lab and field experiments as well as remote sensing and long-term monitoring data analysis how these environmental changes threaten the survival of bay scallops.
Stephen Tomasetti. Photo by Nancy L. Ford/ Hamilton College
Bay scallops are “quite sensitive to different stressors in the environment,” said Tomasetti, who completed his PhD last spring and is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. Of the regional shellfish, bay scallops are the most sensitive to environmental stress.
Indeed, since 2019, bay scallops have declined by between 95 and 99 percent amid overall warming temperatures and extended heat waves. These declines have led to the declaration of a federal fishery disaster in the Empire State.
Tomasetti used satellite data to characterize daily summer temperatures from 2003 to 2020, which showed significant warming across most of the bay scallop range from New York to Cape Cod, Massachusetts. He monitored four sites with sensors in the water in addition to satellite data during a field deployment with scallops.
At the warmest site, which was in Flanders Bay, New York, the temperature was above the 90th percentile of its long term average during an eight-day period that overlapped with the scallop deployment. The bay scallops in Flanders Bay were “all dead by the end of the heat wave event,” Tomasetti said.
At the same time, low levels of oxygen hurt the bay scallops which, like numerous other shellfish, feed on phytoplankton. Oxygen levels are declining in some of these bays as nitrogen from fertilizers and septic systems enter these waterways. High nitrogen levels encourage the growth of algae. When the algae die, they decay, which uses up oxygen and releases carbon dioxide into the water.
Field and lab studies
In the field, Tomasetti measured the heartbeat of bay scallops in East Harbor, Massachusetts by putting optical infrared sensors on them that took heartbeat readings every 15 minutes for a month.
Stephen Tomasetti conducts field work in East Harbor during the summer of 2020.
When the average daily temperature increased, their average heart rate climbed, which the scientists used as a proxy for their respiration rate. A higher respiration rate meant that the scallop was expending energy more rapidly, potentially leading to reductions of energy reserves.
Additionally, Tomasetti measured how quickly the scallops fed on algae in the lab under warm temperatures and low oxygen.These conditions caused the scallops to stop feeding or to feed slowly. Tomasetti interpreted this as a sign that they were waiting out the stress.
In the lab, bay scallops in the same conditions as the bays from Long Island to Massachusetts had the same reactions.
While a collection of fish and invertebrates feed on bay scallops, the effect of their die off on the food web wasn’t likely severe.
“I think there are other prey items that are likely redundant with scallops that cushion the impact,” Gobler explained in an email.
Solutions
Stephen Tomasetti with his wife Kate Rubenstein in East Harbor during the summer of 2020.
As for solutions, global warming, while an important effort for countries across the planet, requires coordination, cooperation and compliance to reduce greenhouse gases and lower the world’s carbon footprint.
On a more local and immediate scale, people on Long Island can help with the health of the local ecosystem and the shellfish population by reducing and controlling the chemicals that run off into local waters.
Waste management practices that limit nutrients are “super helpful,” Tomasetti said. “Supporting restoration (like the clam sanctuaries across Long Island that are increasing the filtration capacities of bays) is good.”
Gobler is encouraged by county, state and federal official responses to problems such as the decline in bay scallops, including the declaration of a federal disaster.
Long Island experience
A graduate student at Stony Brook for five years, Tomasetti was pleasantly surprised with the environment.
He had lived in New York City, where he taught high school biology for five years, before starting his PhD.
His perception was that Long Island was “a giant suburb” of New York. That perspective changed when he moved to Riverhead and enjoyed the pine forest, among other natural resources.
He and his wife Kate Rubenstein, whom he met while teaching, enjoyed sitting in their backyard and watching wild turkeys walking through their property, while deer grazed on their plant life.
Initially interested in literature at the University of Central Florida, Tomasetti took a biology course that was a prerequisite for another class he wanted to take. After completing these two biology classes, he changed his college and career plans.
Teaching high school brought him into contact with researchers, where he saw science in action and decided to contribute to the field.
At Hamilton College, Tomasetti has started teaching and is putting together his research plan, which will likely involve examining trends in water quality and temperature. He will move to the University of Maryland Eastern Shore in Princess Anne, MD this fall, where he will be an assistant professor in coastal environmental science.
As for his work with bay scallops and other shellfish on Long Island, Tomasetti looked at the dynamics of coastal systems and impacts of extreme events on economically important shellfish in the area.
Tomasetti is not just a scientist; he is also a consumer of shellfish.His favorite is sea scallops, which he eats a host of ways, although he’s particularly fond of the pan seared option.
The number of people battling significant symptoms from the flu and respiratory syncytial virus has been coming down since its peak in January, as these infections have run their course.
“This year, we experienced the most severe flu and RSV waves in decades, and our COVID wave wasn’t small either,” said Sean Clouston, associate professor of Public Health at Stony Brook University.
The number of these illnesses was high as people no longer wore masks in places like schools and after people experienced lower-than-usual illnesses in the months before the mask mandate was lifted, creating fertile ground for viruses to spread.
“The most likely reason that the current flu and RSV seasons have improved is that we have had such a bad season earlier on that we have hit a natural ceiling on the ability for these diseases to successfully infect more people,” Clouston said in an email.
As for COVID-19, the numbers of people who have developed significant illnesses has continued to decline as well, through a combination of the natural immunity people have after their bodies successfully fought off the infection and from the protection offered by the vaccine and boosters.
Doctors added that the vaccine and natural immunity hasn’t prevented people from getting infected, but they have helped people avoid severe and potentially life-threatening symptoms.
“All these people who run around saying, ‘My vaccine isn’t working because I got reinfected,’ are missing the point,” said Dr. Bettina Fries, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Stony Brook Medicine. “It is working. It doesn’t protect you from infection, but [it does prevent] a bad outcome.”
Indeed, during the most recent COVID surge during the winter, Fries said the hospital continued to care for patients, most of whom recovered.
Vaccine timing
Amid discussions from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and health organizations throughout the state and country about the timing of future booster shots, local health care providers indicated the increasing likelihood of an annual COVID booster.
Fries said we will get to an annual vaccination for COVID, adding, “It’s the same as we see with the flu.”
In general, people aren’t rushing off to get an updated COVID booster.
“To maximize the protective value of the vaccine while minimizing the number of vaccines you use, people should likely get the vaccine two weeks before they anticipate heavy exposure,” Clouston said.
For most people, that would mean getting the shot in early November to prepare for larger indoor gatherings, like Thanksgiving and the December holidays.
In a recent article in the journal Lancet, researchers conducted an extensive analysis of COVID reinfection rates.
The study dealt only with those people who had not had any vaccinations and addressed the effectiveness of natural immunity from preventing infections and from the worst symptoms of the disease.
Prior infections in general didn’t prevent people from getting reinfected, but it does “protect you from getting a really bad disease and dying,” Fries said.
Long COVID
Even with the number of people contracting COVID declining, the overall population of people battling symptoms of long COVID, which can still include anything from loss of smell and taste to chronic fatigue, continues to increase.
“There’s a plethora of symptoms of long COVID,” Fries said. “We’ll have to figure out how to classify this and hopefully come up with better therapy. Right now, we can only symptomatically treat these patients.”
Dr. Sritha Rajupet, director of the Stony Brook Medicine Post-COVID Clinic, explained in an email that some patients who have lost their sense of smell or have a distorted sense of taste have tried a process called a stellate ganglion block “after several case reports and early research have shown that it could be helpful.”
In such a procedure, doctors inject a local anesthetic on either side of the voice box into the neck. Rajupet said that “additional research and clinical trials still have to be performed.”
Newborns and COVID
As for children infected with COVID soon after birth, doctors suggested that the impact has been manageable.
“The great majority of young children who contract COVID do quite well and recover fully,” Dr. Susan Walker, pediatrician with Stony Brook Children’s Services, explained in an email. “The impact on their development from having actually experienced COVID illness is minimal.”
Children hospitalized with more significant illness from COVID might experience temporary developmental regression which is common in children hospitalized for any reason. The developmental impact seems more tied to social isolation.
“Children born during the pandemic spent their first years of life rarely seeing adults or children other than those in their immediate family,” Walker said. “The result is that many of these kids became excessively stranger anxious and timid around others.”
The lost social opportunities, the pediatrician said, resulted in delays in the personal/social domain of development. She added, “The good news is that kids are resilient and, in time, with appropriate social stimulation, [these children] should be able to regroup and catch up developmentally.”
Long ago, back when my son was shorter than I, and when he listened to more of what I said, I was driving him and his teammate back from a baseball game that was more than an hour away from our house.
Those were the days when such long rides were part of our weekend routine, as we packed athletic gear, food, paper towels and flip-flops into the car to enable our children to compete against other children from distant towns or neighboring states, while also taking off their cleats and running into a deli to use the bathroom.
I don’t recall the details of the game because, even then, my son played in so many of them that the entire montage of memories blurs into a collection of highs, lows and everything in between.
Halfway home, we were the first car to stop at a red light. When another car pulled up next to us, we recognized the father of one of my son’s teammates.
Looking straight ahead, the father was screaming at the top of his lungs. My son and his teammate, who usually filled the car with nonstop commentary about the game, school, weekend plans and anything else that came to mind, were stunned into silence.
The three of us shifted our heads and saw his son sitting in the front seat with his head down, absorbing the ongoing verbal blows from his father, who had started gesticulating and was so frustrated that he spit on the windshield as he shouted.
During the entire red light, the father excoriated his son. As we drove away, my son’s teammate shared his memories of the game, pointing out that the boy in the other car had made a key error and struck out late in a close game.
METRO photo
After our next game, my son and I got in the car, and I had a chance to look at us more closely in the metaphorical mirror.
No, I wasn’t screaming at him. No, I didn’t spit on the window. The pattern I noticed, however, was one in which my son — when he was alone with me — focused only on the things that went wrong. He lamented everything he did wrong or didn’t do right. Sometimes, I recalled, I piled on, telling him how he could or should have done something differently.
As I tried to get a few words in after that game, he cut me off. He continued to criticize his performance until he was too exhausted to speak, at which point he urged me to talk.
I didn’t want to review the game. I wanted to discuss our interactions.
After considerable back and forth, I set new ground rules not for coach/player interactions, but for father/son discussions, particularly as they pertained to sports.
I never wanted to discuss whatever he thought went wrong in a game first. I wanted to begin with everything he did well. That could include positioning, fouling off a tough pitch, supporting his teammates, calling for a ball — even one that he dropped — and having a long at bat.
Then, we discussed what could have gone better. He threw the ball to the right base, but the throw was too low. He was fooled on a high pitch at the end of an at bat.
The first game after our discussion, he started off by criticizing himself. But then, something remarkable happened: he remembered our last discussion, and we started with everything he did well. Those first few moments built a positive foundation around which to start making improvements.
In future games, he started to focus on ways to perform well, even after he had struck out or had made a mistake. Instead of focusing on the ways he might have let himself or the team down, he wanted the opportunity to help.
Braving the bugs, Alistair Rogers (right) and his colleague Stefanie Lasota collect leaf samples in Alaska for analysis. Photo by Roy Kaltschmidt
By Daniel Dunaief
Alistair Rogers lives, thinks and works on opposite extremes.
At the same time that he gathers information from the frigid Arctic, he is also analyzing data from the sweltering tropical forests of Panama and Brazil. He visits both regions annually and, within one eight-day span, saw a Polar Bear in Utqiaġvik (formerly known as Barrow), Alaska and a tarantula in Brazil.
Alistair Rogers. Photo from BNL
That’s not where the extremes end. Rogers is also studying plants at the physiological level to understand how best to represent processes such as photosynthesis, respiration and stomatal conductance in climate models.
The leader of the Terrestrial Ecosystem Science & Technology Group in the Environmental and Climate Sciences Department at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Rogers recently was honored as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The AAAS has named fellows every year since 1874 to recognize their contributions to the advancement of science. Previous honorees included astronaut and former Johnson Space Center Director Ellen Ochoa, a founding member of the NAACP and scholar W.E.B. Du Bois and inventor Thomas Edison.
Lisa Ainsworth, Research Leaders of the Global Change in Photosynthesis Unit for the USDA Research Service, nominated Rogers, who served as a mentor for her when she conducted her PhD research.
“[Rogers] is one of the world’s authorities on understanding how plants respond to atmospheric change and in particular rising carbon dioxide concentration,” Ainsworth said. He’s an experimentalist who “built a bridge to the scientific computational modeling community.”
Ainsworth suggested she would not have the career she developed if it weren’t for the support she received from Rogers.
Rogers, who the Department of Energy recognized as an Outstanding Mentor three times and has been at BNL since 1998, “makes you believe in yourself when you don’t have any reason to do that. He believes in you before you know you should believe in yourself,” Ainsworth said. For his part, Rogers is “delighted to be honored and recognized as a fellow.”
Carbon dioxide sinks
For all the extremes in his work, Rogers has been collecting data from plants to address a range of questions, including how they will react to and affect environmental changes caused by global warming.
Through photosynthesis, plants are responsible for absorbing about a third of the carbon dioxide humans produce through the burning of fossil fuels.
The uptake of carbon dioxide by plants and oceans has limited warming so far to 1.2 degrees Celsius above pre-Industrial temperatures. Without such carbon dioxide removal by oceans and plants, the temperature would already be 3 degrees warmer.
The models his work informs are trying to understand what will happen to the carbon dioxide subsidy in the future.
“In order to work out how warm it’s going to get, you need to know the carbon dioxide concentration and the climate sensitivity (how much warmer it will get for a given amount of carbon dioxide),” he explained in an email.
Photosynthesis is less efficient at higher temperatures, but is also more efficient amid an increased amount of carbon dioxide. Drier air also reduces the efficiency of the process as plants close their stomata to conserve water, which restricts carbon dioxide supply to their chloroplasts.
The transfer of water from land to the atmosphere most often occurs through stomata, so understanding the way these pores open and close is important in predicting cloud formation and other land-atmosphere interactions.
Ainsworth described how a typical day of field work gathering data could last for 16 hours. She appreciated how Rogers worked and played hard — he is a cyclist and a skier — while keeping the work fun. Indeed, Ainsworth said Rogers, on regular calls with two other professors, blends discussions about grants and work decisions with their first choice for their guesses at the New York Times wordle game.
Leadership roles
In addition to his leadership role at BNL, Rogers is also part of the leadership teams for the Next Generation Ecosystem Experiment — Arctic and the Next Generation Ecosystem Experiment —Tropics.
Rogers said the Arctic is seeing the biggest increase in temperature relative to anywhere else on the planet faster because of climate feedback. When ice and snow melt, it reveals surfaces that absorb more heat.
The tropics, meanwhile, have been more stable, although the region is expected to experience hotter, drier temperatures in the coming decades as well.
Alistair Rogers. Photo from BNL
The Department of Energy is studying these biomes because they are climatically sensitive, globally important and poorly represented in climate models.
Rogers is working with other scientists at BNL and around the world to understand these processes to feed his data collection and analysis into global models.
Using an analogy for developing these models, Rogers suggested trying to predict the time it would take to get to the airport. A traveler would need to know the distance and the mode of transport — whether she was walking, biking or riding in a car.
A model predicting the travel time would make assumptions about how fast a person could go in a car, while factoring in other data like the weather and traffic density at a particular time to anticipate the speed.
If the traffic model wasn’t sure of the maximum possible speed of a vehicle, the error associated with predicting the arrival time could be large, particularly when considering the difference between traveling in a steamroller or a Lamborghini on empty roads.
Climate models use a similar process. By studying the species of plants, Rogers can tell the models whether the plants are the equivalent of sports cars or steamrollers.
Big picture
The worst case scenario of earlier models is highly unlikely, although the scenario of a drastic reduction in carbon dioxide also hasn’t occurred. The models, however, still suggest that changes in human behavior are critical to protecting the future of the planet against the effects of climate change.
Rogers is encouraged by the declining cost of solar energy and the work developing countries have done to bypass some of the more polluting sources of energy from the industrial revolution. He is also pleased by the commitment from the Department of Energy to look for climate change solutions.
These elements “represent great opportunities for scientists like me” to work on these problems.
What says hello nonverbally more than a wave? I’m surprised nonhuman animals don’t do it more often. It’s efficient, requires minimal energy most of the time and can be as subtle as a lifted finger or as dramatic as a full-body wave signaling to someone at the top of the Eiffel Tower.
People wave to me frequently, particularly when I’m walking my dog. I suspect many of them are really waving to my dog. He is cuter, more charming and more personable than I am. Sure, I’m happy to engage in a conversation about the weather, the latest “Big Game,” my kids, or someone else’s family, but my dog is prepared to throw his head into someone’s knees as long as they pet him and assure him he’s wonderful.
Back to waving — I think the gesture merits categories, along with a short explanation.
— The-wave-or-maybe-not moment: We’ve all been there. Someone we kind of know or with whom we might want to interact appears to wave at us. Is that for me, we wonder? We consider swiveling our heads to check, but we’re not owls. We raise our hand tentatively. When we realize the more popular person behind us is the wave target, we awkwardly run our fingers through our hair. Great recovery, we mutter to ourselves.
— The “here-but-don’t-really-want-to-be” wave. Remember back when you were in high school, and your homeroom teacher took attendance? He or she would go down the list and when your name came up, you pulled your wrist back as casually as possible and pointed your fingers to the fluorescent lighting on the ceiling? It’s a wave and acknowledgment devoid of any enthusiasm.
— The “tickle the piano keys” wave. After lifting their wrists, some people wiggle their fingers next to their heads, as if they are tapping an imaginary musical instrument to send a visual and auditory greeting.
— The eraser wave. This can either be an enthusiastic or an unenthusiastic gesture. With this wave, people keep their fingers together and brush back and forth, as if they have an eraser in their hand and are removing an incorrect answer from the blackboard. This kind of wave can be an Eeyore greeting from the Winnie the Pooh series, in which he sighs and shares a burden with a deflated wave. With a head tilt, an affectionate smile, and faster side-to-side motion, this kind of wave can also signal a responsive and more enthusiastic greeting.
— The stiff-fingered-salute. Often offered by older men, this isn’t a wave so much as it is a signal that the person sees you, but does not intend to encourage any kind of dialog or further gesturing. It’s a nonverbal stop sign, telling you that he’s coming through, he sees you, and he would prefer that you keep whatever eye contact you’re going to make to a minimum. In fact, if you need to look at something, look at his flat and indifferent hand.
— The tree-swaying-in-a-blustery-wind wave. Yes, this is one of those moments when people are so thrilled to see you that they raise their arms over their heads and wave quickly back and forth. They may even catch some air. People waving this way don’t care what others think and, more importantly, want to share how excited they are to see you. This kind of wave transitions into a full-body hug.
— Finally, to end on the opposite end of the spectrum from where we began, there’s the wave from someone you might otherwise want to ignore. That wave says, “I’m over here, I see you, but you’re not responding.” It has the same characteristics as the excited greeting, except that it adds the need for acknowledgment. If you’re embarrassed, that may be a bonus.
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