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Stony Brook University

The team celebrates their win last Saturday night. Photo from Stony Brook Athletics

The Seawolves women’s basketball team kept it rolling at Island Federal Arena as they extended their season-long winning streak to 10 games in a row with a 76-38 victory over NJIT on Feb. 5. With the win, Stony Brook becomes one of just eight teams in the nation that are currently on a 10-game winning streak or better. The Seawolves’ 10-game winning streak is tied for the fifth-longest active winning streak in the nation.

With the win, Stony Brook improves to 19-2, 10-1 America East on the season. The Seawolves clinched their fifth-straight season with 10 or more wins in conference play. The 19 wins are the most by any America East team this season and are tied for the sixth-most in the nation. Stony Brook is one of 11 teams in the nation to currently have 19 wins or more. Seawolves’ head coach Ashley Langford becomes the first head coach in program history to win 19 games in her first year at the helm.

The team was led by a trio scoring in double figures. Senior guard Anastasia Warren led the way with a game-high 18 points, she was followed by senior guard Earlette Scott with 15 points, and graduate forward India Pagan who chipped in 11 points.

Graduate forwards McKenzie Bushee and Leighah-Amori Wool finished with near double-doubles. Bushee tallied nine points and nine rebounds and Wool recorded nine points and 10 rebounds.

The Seawolves’ defense stymied the Highlanders’ offense as they held them to 38 points. The 38 points were the fewest that an opponent has scored against Stony Brook this season. The Seawolves limited NJIT to single-digits in the second, third, and fourth quarters (eight points, six points, nine points). It was also the fewest points that it surrendered against an America East opponent since New Hampshire scored 37 points on February 16, 2019.

The 38-point margin of victory is tied for the second-largest margin of victory this season for Stony Brook. The Seawolves also knocked off Hartford by 38 points (77-39 on Jan. 2) and defeated Delaware State by 41 points (87-46 on Nov. 9).

The team was back on the court on Feb.  9, when it travels to Lowell, Mass. to face UMass Lowell. Results were not available as of press time. 

A collection of tools found in Grotte Mandrin of both Neanderthals and modern humans. The pointier tools were made by modern humans about 54,000 years ago. Image from Ludovic Slimak

By Daniel Dunaief

Two Stony Brook University researchers are helping a team of scientists rewrite the timeline of modern humans in Europe.

Prior to a ground breaking study conducted in the Rhône Valley in a cave called Grotte Mandrin in southern France, researchers had believed that homo sapiens — i.e. earlier versions of us — had arrived in Europe some time around 45,000 years ago.

Scientists had been studying the stone tools in this cave for close to 30 years that seemed inconsistent with the narrative that Neanderthals had exclusively occupied Europe at that point. Researchers found key evidence in this cave, including advanced tools and teeth that came from modern humans, that pushed the presence of modern humans back by about 10,000 years to about 56,800 years ago, while also indicating that the two types of humans interacted in the same place.

“This is a huge paradigm shift in our understanding of modern human origin expansion,” said Jason Lewis, a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at Stony Brook University and Assistant Director at the Turkana Basin Institute in Kenya. “We can demonstrate that it was modern humans. We have a whole series of radiometric dates to shore that up 100 percent. Any method that was useful was applied” to confirm the arrival of homo sapiens in southern France.

Ludovic Slimak, CNRS researcher based at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaures, is the lead author on a 130-page paper that came out this week in Science Advances. Slimak has been exploring a site for 24 years that he describes as a kind of Neanderthalian Pompei, without the catastrophe of Mount Vesuvius erupting and preserving a record of the lives the volcano destroyed.

“This is a major turn, maybe one of the most important since a century,” Slimak explained in an email.

The early Homo sapiens travelers left behind clues about their presence in a rock shelter that alternately served as a home for Homo sapiens and Neanderthals in the same year.

“We demonstrate in our paper that there is less than a year, maybe a season (six months), maximal time between the last Neanderthal occupation in the cave and the first Sapiens settlement,” Slimak wrote. “This is a very, very short time!”

The scientists came to this conclusion after they developed a new way to analyze the soot deposits on the vault fragments of the cave roof, he added.

When modern humans arrived in the Rhône Valley, they likely turned to Neanderthals, who had occupied the area considerably longer, as scouts to guide them, Slimak suggested.

Homo sapiens likely traveled by boat to France at the same time that other Homo sapiens journeyed over the water to Australia, between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago.

“We know that when Mandrin groups reached western Europe, Eurasian populations perfectly master navigation at the other end of the continent,” Slimak explained in an email. “It is then very likely that these technologies were at this time period well known by all these populations.”

Different tools

In addition to fossils, scientists have focused on the tools that Homo sapiens produced and used. Homo sapiens likely used bows or spears with mechanical propulsion, while Neanderthals had heavy hand-cast spears, Slimak explained.

The modern human technology was “very impressive,” Slimak added. They are exactly the same technologies we found in the eastern Mediterranean at the very beginning of the Upper Paleolithic in the same chronology [as] the Grotte Mandrin.”

The tools were small and pointed and looked like the kind of arrowheads someone might find when hiking along trails on Long Island, Lewis described. “It’s never been suggested or demonstrated that Neanderthals made bows and arrows or complex projectiles,” he said.

Once they discovered teeth of Homo sapiens, the researchers found the conclusive fossil proof of “who was there doing this,” Lewis said. “Even on a baby tooth, you can distinguish Neanderthals from modern humans.”

While researchers have excavated other caves in the Middle Rhône Valley region, they have not used such stringent methods, Lewis explained. “Mandrin is truly unique for the vision it gives us into this period of the past,” he explained in an email. He described Mandrin as more of a rock shelter than a cave, which is about 10 meters wide and eight meters deep.

The importance of timing

With the importance of providing specific dates for these discoveries, scientists who specialize in ancient chronology, such as Marine Frouin, joined the team.

Frouin, who started working in the Grotte Mandrin in 2014 when she was a post-doctoral fellow at the Luminescence Laboratory at the University of Oxford, looks for the presence of radioactive elements like potassium, thorium and uranium to determine the age of sediments. When these elements decay, they emit radiation, which the sediments accumulate.

Frouin likened the build up of radioactive elements in the grains to the process of charging a battery. Over time, the radioactive energy increases, providing a signal for the last time sunlight reached the sediment.

Indeed, when the sun reaches these grains, it eliminates the signal, which means that Frouin collected samples in lower light, transported them to a lab or facility in darkness, and then analyzed them in rooms that look like a photographer’s darkroom studio.

Frouin conducted the first of three approaches to determining the timing for these discoveries. She used luminescence on quartz, feldspar and flint and was the first one to obtain dates in 2014. Colleagues at the Université de Paris then conducted Thermoluminescence dating on burnt flint, while the lab of Andaine Seguin-Orlando at the University Paul Sabatier Toulouse 3 provided single grain dating.

The three labs “were able to combine all our results together and propose a very precise chronology for this site with very high confidence,” she explained in an email.

Frouin, who arrived at Stony Brook University in January of 2020, has designed and built her own lab, where she plans to study samples and advance the field of luminescence dating.

At this point, luminescence dating can provide the timing from a few hundred years ago to 600,000 years, beyond which the radioactive signal reaches its maximum brightness. Trained as a physicist, Frouin, however, is developing new techniques to find larger doses from grains that data at least over a million years old.

Journey to France

During this period of time on the Earth, the climate was especially cold. That, Lewis said, would favor the continued use of the cave by Neanderthals, who could have survived better under more challenging conditions.

At around 55,000 years ago, however, something may have shifted in the modern human population that allowed Homo sapiens to survive in a colder climate. These changes could include projectile weapons, more advanced clothing and/or social cooperation.

“These are all hypotheses we are dealing with,” Lewis said. “In this case, it seems like a tentative exploration by modern humans into Western Europe.”

The cave itself would have been especially appealing to Neanderthals or modern humans because of its geographic and topological features. For scientists, some of those same features also helped provide a chronological record to indicate when each of these groups lived in that space.

Near the cave, the Rhône River provides a way to travel. The cave itself is situated at a bottleneck through which groups of migrating animals such as horse, bison and deer traveled to follow their own food sources.

“It’s one of the most strategic points in Southern France,” Lewis said.

Indeed, Allied Forces during World War II recognized the importance of this site, landing in Provence on August 15, 1944. The progression into Europe mirrored the expansion of modern humans, said Lewis, who studies history and is particularly interested in WWII.

The site faces northwest in a part of the Rhône Valley in which the mistral wind, which is a cold and dry strong wind, can reach up to speeds of 60 miles per hour. During the glacial period, the wind blew dust that came off the tundra of northern Europe, filling the cave with fine grain sediment that helped preserve the site. Using that dust, scientists determined that Neanderthals had occupied that cave for almost 100,000 years. Around 55,000 years ago, modern humans showed up, who were replaced again by Neanderthals.

A resident of Stony Brook, Lewis lives with his wife Sonia Harmand, who is in the same department at Stony Brook and with whom he has collaborated on research, and their daughter Scarlett.

A native of Dover, Pennsylvania, Lewis decided to study evolution after reading a coffee table book at a friend’s house when he was 13 that included descriptions of the work of the late paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey. After reading that book, Lewis said evolution made sense to him and he was eager to participate in the search for evidence of the changes that led to modern humans.

His first field experience was in a Neanderthal site in France, where he also traveled to the Turkana basin in Kenya for a project directed by Rutgers University. Ultimately, he wound up working for Rutgers and has conducted considerable research in Kenya as well.

“After working at Rutgers, I came to Stony Brook to work for [Richard Leakey in a field school at [what would become] the Turkana Basin Institute,” he said. The combination of his earlier aspirations to join Leakey, his first research field experiences including time in France and Kenya, and his eventual work with Leakey and his role at TBI were a part of his “circle of life.”

Lewis is thrilled to be a part of the ongoing effort to share information discovered in a cave he called a “magical place. The satisfaction at being there is high.”

For Slimak, the years of work at the site have been personally and professionally transformational. After taking necessary breaks from the rigors of excavating on the cave floor, he is now more comfortable sleeping on a hard floor than on a soft mattress.

Professionally, Slimak described this paper as the culmination of 32 years of continuous scientific efforts, which includes a “huge amount of very important unpublished data” that include social, cultural, economic and historical organization of these populations.

The current paper represents “only the visible part of the iceberg and many important enlightenment and other fascinating discoveries from my team will be made available in the coming months and years.”

A tough beginning

A native of Bordeaux, France, Frouin had a tough start to her work at Stony Brook. She arrived two months before the pandemic shut down many businesses and services, including driving schools and social security offices.

When she arrived, she didn’t have a driver’s permit or a credit history, which meant that she relied on the kindness and support of her colleagues and transportation from car services to pick up necessities like groceries.

A resident of Port Jefferson, Frouin, who enjoys playing electric guitar and does oil painting when she’s not studying sediments, said it took just under a year to get her American driver’s license.

Frouin, who has an undergraduate and a graduate student in her lab and is expecting to add another graduate student soon, appreciates the opportunity to explore the differences between the north and south shore of Long Island. 

As for her contribution to this work, she said this effort was “extremely exciting. I’m doing what I wanted to do since I was a kid. We were able to answer many questions that maybe 20 years ago, we weren’t able to answer.”

SBU Mall Walkers returns

Stony Brook University has announced the return of the Mall Walkers, a fun and easy free exercise program co-sponsored by Stony Brook University Hospital and Smith Haven Mall in Lake Grove, that meets on the last Wednesday of the month at 10 a.m. 

Members walk around the inside of the mall at their own pace, and after their workout enjoy a complimentary light snack and the opportunity to socialize. Membership includes monthly talks on a variety of health and wellness topics offered by experts from Stony Brook Medicine.

The Mall Walkers meet nine times a year (there will be no meeting in July, August and December). Walking dates for 2022 are February 23, March 30, April 27, May 25, June 29, September 28, October 26 and November 30. For more information, contact Stony Brook Medicine at 631-444-4000.

Jason Trelewicz Photo from SBU

By Daniel Dunaief

One day, ships in the Navy may not only last longer in the harsh environment of salt water, but some of their more complicated parts may also be easier and quicker to fix.

That’s thanks to the mechanical engineering efforts of researchers at Stony Brook University and Brookhaven National Laboratory, who have been teaming up to understand the microstructural origins of corrosion behavior of parts they produce through laser additive manufacturing into shapes with complex geometries.

The Navy is funding research at the two institutions.

Eric Dooryhee. Photo from BNL

“As you would expect you’d need near any marine environment with salt water, [the Navy] is interested in laser additive manufacturing to enable the production of parts at lower cost that have challenging geometries,” said Jason Trelewicz, Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Stony Brook University. Additionally, the Navy is hoping that such efforts can enable the production of parts with specific properties such as corrosion resistance on demand.

“If you’re out at sea and something breaks, can you make something there to replace it?” asked Trelewicz. Ideally, the Navy would like to make it possible to produce parts on demand with the same properties as those that come off a manufacturing line.

While companies are currently adopting laser additive manufacturing, which involves creating three-dimensional structures by melting and resolidfying metal powders one layer at a time with the equivalent of a laser printer, numerous challenges remain for developing properties in printed materials that align with those produced through established routes.

Additive materials, however, offer opportunities to structure products in a way that isn’t accessible through traditional techniques that create more complex geometry components, such as complex heat exchangers with internal cooling channels.

In addition to the science remaining for exploration, which is extensive, the process is driving new discoveries in novel materials containing unique microstructure-chemistry relationships and functionally graded microstructures, Trelewicz explained.

“These materials are enabling new engineering components through expanded design envelopes,” he wrote in an email.

With colleagues from BNL including Research Associate Ajith Pattammattell and Program Manager for the Hard X-ray Scattering and Spectroscopy Program Eric Dooryhee, Trelewicz published a paper recently in the journal Additive Manufacturing that explored the link between the structure of the material and its corrosive behavior for 316L stainless steel, which is a corrosion resistant metal already in wide use in the Navy.

The research looked at the atomic and microstructure of the material built in the lab of Professor Guha Manogharan at Penn State University. Working with Associate Professor Gary Halada in the Department of Material Science and Chemical Engineering, Trelewicz studied the corrosive behavior of these materials.

Often, the surface of the material went through a process called pitting, which is common in steels exposed to corrosive environments, which occurs in cars driven for years across roads salted when it snows.

The researchers wanted to understand “the connection between how the materials are laser printed, what their micro structure is and what it means for its properties,” Trelewicz said, with a specific focus on how fast the materials were printed.

While the research provided some structural and atomic clues about optimizing anti corrosive behavior, the scientists expect that further work will be necessary to build more effective material.

In his view, the next major step is understanding how these defects impact the quality of this protective film, because surface chemical processes govern corrosive behavior.

Based on their research, the rate at which the surface corrodes through laser additive manufacturing is comparable to conventional manufacturing.

Printed materials, however, are more susceptible to attack from localized corrosion, or pitting. 

At the hard x-ray nanoprobe, Pattammattel explored the structure of the material at a resolution far below the microscopic level, by looking at nonstructural details.

“It’s the only functional beamline that is below 10 nanometers,” he said. “We can also get an idea about the electronic structures by using x-ray absorption spectroscopy,” which reveals the chemical state.

Pattammattel, who joined BNL in 2018, also uses the beamline to study how lung cells in mice interact with air pollutants. He described “the excitement of contributing to science a little more” as the best part of each day.

Meanwhile, Dooryhee as involved in writing the seed grant proposal. By using the x-rays deflected by the variety of crystalline domains or grains that compose the materials, HE can interpret the material’s atomic structure by observing the diffraction angles. The discrete list of diffraction angles is a unique fingerprint of the material that relates to its long-range atomic ordering or stacking.

In this study, researchers could easily recognize the series of diffraction peaks associated with the 316L stainless steel.

Dooryhee was able to gather insight into the grain size and the grain size distribution, which enabled him to identify defects in the material. He explained that the primary variable they explored was the sweeping rate of the laser beam, which included 550, 650 and 700 millimeters per second. The faster the printing, the lower the deposited energy density.

Ultimately, Dooryhee hopes to conduct so-called in situ studies, in which he examines laser additive manufacturing as it’s occurring.

“The strength of this study was to combine several synchrotron techniques to build a complete picture of the microstructure of the [additively manufactured] material, that can then be related to its corrosion response,” he explained in an email.

Dooryhee grew up in Burgundy France, where his grandfather used to grow wine. He worked in the vineyards during the fall harvest to help pay for his university studies. Dooryhee has worked at BNL for over 12 years and appreciates the opportunity to collaborate with researchers at Stony Brook University.

Kevin A. Reed. Photo from Stony Brook University
As climate events continue to cause substantial widespread loss, damage, and financial costs that fall heavier on developing nations, a new commentary in the inaugural issue of PLOS Climate by two researchers, including Stony Brook University’s Professor Kevin A. Reed, calls for developed nations to direct resources toward operationalizing extreme weather events and impact attribution. While this kind of attribution technology is commonplace in the research community, if used by governments it could play a vital role in improving the global response to climate change by making that response more equitable and effective.

Authors Reed and Michael F. Wehner at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, point out the costs of extreme weather over the past 50 years are unevenly distributed across the world. Generally, the most financially expensive weather events have been hurricanes in the U.S., but the deadliest events are droughts and floods in developing nations.

“Our idea is to help guide and push operational centers and governments to use attribution technology to better quantify losses and damage due to climate change, so that the developed world can be better responsive to losses and damages in the developing world,” says Reed, Associate Professor and Associate Dean of Research at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS).

The authors urge that extreme weather event attribution – science that quantifies the influence of anthropogenic climate change on specific individual events – can indeed play a significant role in quantifying loss and damage. They cite two examples in Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and a series of global heat waves over more than 25 years.

“While there has been much discussion about operationalizing extreme weather event attribution, none such exists today,” they write. “Rather attribution statements are performed by a myriad of academic-minded groups, mostly as research projects.”

They add that the credibility of extreme weather event attribution statements has been demonstrated for a wide variety of impactful events, and that observational, computational and statistical tools are readily available.

“Thus, we call on the funding agencies of developed nations to direct resources to their weather forecast services to begin to operationalize extreme weather event and impact attribution.”

#15 Anthony Roberts, during last Wednesday's game. Photo from Stony Brook Athletics

Stony Brook was not able to overcome its hot-shooting hosts, as Vermont knocked off the Seawolves in a battle of the top two teams in the preseason poll Jan. 12 at Patrick Gymnasium in Burlington.

Tykei Greene and Anthony Roberts each led Stony Brook with 13 points, as Stony Brook was not able to fend off a Vermont attack that drilled 19, 3-pointers en route to the win.

The Seawolves came out hot in the first half, making eight of their own 3-pointers on 13 attempts but went just 1-for-10 in the second 20 minutes of action and were not able to make it up inside the arc. With the loss, Stony Brook fell to 9-6 overall and 1-1 in America East play.

“Vermont played great. They came in shooting 29 percent from three as a team but were able to hit 15 of their first 21, so have to give them a lot of credit. We played very well offensively in the first half, shooting 56 percent from the field and yet we were still down double figures. We have a quick turnaround coming so we can’t sulk over a poor result,” said  head coach Geno Ford. 

The Stony Brook men’s basketball game versus New Hampshire, scheduled for Saturday, Jan. 15, was postponed due to COVID-19 issues within the New Hampshire program. The game has been rescheduled for Monday, Feb. 7 at 7 p.m. at Island Federal Arena. To exchange your tickets, call 631-632-9753.

Renowned New York City based dance company, Complexions Contemporary Ballet returns to Stony Brook University’s Staller Center for the Arts, 100 Nicolls Road, Stony Brook on Saturday, Feb. 5 for a spectacular evening on the Main Stage featuring their two newest full length pieces performed on the same program for the very first time, in celebration of Black History Month. The show starts at 8 p.m

Under the artistic direction of dance Icons Dwight Rhoden and Desmond Richardson, (both former principal dancers with ALVIN AILEY DANCE and star choreographers), COMPLEXIONS will perform two monumental pieces, “WOKE” and LOVE ROCKS”, born out of the current crisis’ we are facing in the world. Through dance, COMPLEXIONS confronts this moment in time and the question of what it means to exist in today’s society and how we connect in spite of it.

“WOKE” is a physical reaction to the daily news. A bold and dynamic socially conscious one act ballet featuring the full company that examines our humanity in conjunction with today’s political climate.

LOVE ROCKS, which also features the full company, is set to the powerful music of Grammy Award-winner Lenny Kravitz. It is a fun, thrilling and moving dance and a tremendous compliment to “WOKE”.

Dancing these two pieces together in the same program is a challenge for the company. Complexions Dance is working overtime through extreme pandemic conditions to create this unique program for the Staller Center as they present it to the University community and greater Long Island region.

Tickets range from $42 to $58. For more information or to order, visit www.stallercenter.com,  call 631-632-ARTS or email [email protected].

Major Sponsors are News 12 – Campolo, Middleton & McCormick – Danfords Hotel & Marina – Friends of the Staller Center – Hilton Garden Inn – Island Federal – Jefferson’s Ferry – Renaissance – Stony Brook Medicine – Suffolk County – WLIW – Paul W. Zuccaire Foundation.

COVID GUIDELINES

The Staller Center prioritizes the safety of its patrons, staff and students, and will enforce strict Covid-19 protocols for the Fall 2021 season. At this time, visitors must show proof of full vaccination or proof of a negative Covid-19 test taken within 72 hours of the event (children ages 12 and under are exempt when accompanied by a parent or guardian who meets the requirements). Additionally, each audience and staff member must wear a mask while inside the venue. All audience members will be advised to not attend if they feel unwell, have symptoms of Covid-19 or have recently been exposed to someone with the disease.

With these guidelines, the Staller Center ticket policy for return or exchange of tickets will be liberalized to accommodate patrons who cannot attend due to the above.

ABOUT THE PERFORMER

Complexions Contemporary Ballet was founded in 1994 by Master Choreographer Dwight Rhoden and the legendary Desmond Richardson with a singular approach to reinventing dance through a groundbreaking mix of methods, styles and cultures. Today, Complexions represents one of the most recognized, diverse, inclusive and respected performing arts brands in the World. Having presented an entirely new and exciting vision of human movement on 5-continents, over 20-countries, to over 20-million television viewers and to well over 300,000 people in live audiences, Complexions is poised to continue its mission to bring unity to the world one dance at a time.

Complexions has received numerous awards including The New York Times Critics’ Choice Award. It has appeared throughout the US, including the The Joyce Theatre and Lincoln Center in NYC, The Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Paramount Theatre/Seattle, The Music Center/Los Angeles, Winspear Opera House/Dallas, The Cutler Majestic Theater/Boston, The Music Hall/Detroit, and has toured extensively around the world to venues including The Bolshoi Theater, The Kremlin, The Mikhailovsky Theater, and the Melbourne Arts Center.

The company’s foremost innovation is that dance should be about removing boundaries, not reinforcing them. Whether it be the limiting traditions of a single style, period, venue, or culture, Complexions transcends them all, creating an open, continually evolving form of dance that reflects the movement of our world—and all its constituent cultures—as an interrelated whole.

Together, Rhoden and Richardson have created in Complexions an institution that embodies its historical moment, a sanctuary where those passionate about dance can celebrate its past while simultaneously building its future. In the 27 years since its inception, the company has continued to awaken audiences to a new, exciting genre with their singular approach of reinventing dance and contemporary ballet. Their work has borne witness to a world that is becoming more fluid, more changeable, and more culturally interconnected than ever before—in other words, a world that is becoming more and more like Complexions itself.

With stunning gifted dancers and powerful choreography, Complexions has been hailed as a “matchless American dance company” by the Philadelphia Inquirer. “Companies like Complexions are game-changing: they’re forging a path for what ballet can be instead of what it historically has been.”- The Guardian

Sean Clouston. Photo by Rachel Kidman

By Daniel Dunaief

The same wind that powers sailboats, makes kites dart through the air, and causes flags to flutter can make being outdoors in a group safer, particularly during the pandemic.

While public health officials have suggested that being outdoors with others amid the pandemic is safer than remaining inside, the strength of the wind can affect the level of protection provided by wide open spaces.

That’s the conclusion Sean Clouston, Associate Professor in the Program in Public Health and the Department of Family, Population and Preventive Medicine at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, reached after studying public health data from 96,000 cases of COVID in Suffolk County from March 16, 2020 to December 31, 2020.

By combining public health data with the daily reports from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Clouston found that days in which the temperature was between 60 and 84 degrees Fahrenheit and in which the wind was about 5 miles per hour or less had higher COVID-19 transmission than those days in which the wind speed was faster.

This kind of study, which was recently published in the journal BMC Infectious Disease, might affect the guidance policy makers provide to reduce the risk of COVID transmission during outdoor gatherings.

“If you’re imaging yourself as a policy maker and you want to contain COVID, what do you do?” Clouston asked rhetorically. Vaccines and masks are established tools. Ensuring airflow is higher might also be important, he suggested.

Indeed, amid the early days of the pandemic in 2020, public officials closed parks in Suffolk County for a while and eventually reopened them.

An alternative could be to provide access to parks where wind speed is also protective, or to reduce the use of parks where social distancing is difficult and where wind speed is lower.

At the same time, residents might want to protect themselves by putting out fans in their backyard or some other airflow devices to keep the flow of air moving during a social gathering, reducing the chance of transmitting the virus. People might want to avoid using tents that reduce the flow of air around them.

Additionally, people could eat out at restaurants where the airflow is stronger. 

Diners can search for places where the air “moves around, so the outdoor experience is as protective as possible,” Clouston said. He recognized that the data had some variability between when people who went outside might have contracted COVID. The air flow could increase and then decrease and the average length of time from exposure to symptoms and testing could differ between people.

“Any time we deal with humans, this is the problem,” Clouston said. Researchers can’t control for everything. Instead, they have to assume people make decisions in a consistent, but variable, way.

The larger data set, with close to 100,000 cases, enabled Clouston and his colleagues to average out the effects of the time when people reported their positive COVID tests.

For numerous cases, people had a good idea where and how they contracted COVID. Even when they were at outdoor events, such as a barbecue, some people had indoor parties where they ate together.

In addition, merely being outdoors didn’t reduce the risk if people were standing in the equivalent of stale air, where wind couldn’t reach them and help carry viral particles away from others who attended these events.

Being outside if the air isn’t moving is similar to being indoors in a space with a very large ceiling and a wide space between walls, he explained. It is safer than a small room, but it is not inherently safe on its own.

As for air circulation indoors, Clouston said people have suggested that moving air in buildings could reduce the spread of the virus.

Testing the effects of having HEPA filters or air filtration systems run continuously in hospitals  compared to areas that don’t have such units could reveal the benefit of having these air flow systems. Some studies have been done on this, although more work is ongoing, he said. 

Clouston suggested that other environmental conditions could also impact the transmissibility of the virus. The heat index, for example, might explain why wind speed might be important.

The heat index “might diminish the effect or make it stronger,” Clouston said. “It can push people indoors.”

Clouston worked on this study with Stony Brook colleagues in the Department of Family, Population and Preventive Medicine Assistant Professor Olga Morozova and Professor Jaymie Meliker. The team has worked with the Suffolk County Department of Health since 2020 on different aspects of COVID modeling.

Clouston was surprised that the research revealed a threshold model wind speed. He was also surprised to see that the speed was so low. “You only need a little airflow,” he explained.

The Stony Brook scientist looked at where the positive cases were located by zip code. The summer distribution and the spatial distribution was somewhat unclear, he said.

The spread of COVID was distributed by population size and density. Population size and density are likely more important than alterations in microclimate in the summer.

The analysis is important for places when and where outdoor exposures are most common, he explained.

“This may be true in the summer on Long Island or in the winter in southern states like Louisiana when outdoor activities are more comfortable,” he wrote in an email.

Clouston has several ongoing projects. He has papers discussing the role of social inequalities and COVID, a paper looking at clinical risk factors for COVID at Stony Brook Hospital, and one describing the initial wave of COVID in World Trade Center responders.

He would like to look at the effect of outdoor protests during 2020 on the spread of COVID, which would require data on attendance at those events and at the ones in New York City.

Photo from Stony Brook Athletics

The Stony Brook University women’s basketball program secured its first road win in conference play as it defeated Maine (5-9, 2-2 America East), 63-44, on January 9 at the Cross Insurance Center.

The Seawolves had three players score in double-digits, senior guard Anastasia Warren led the team in scoring with a team-high 15 points. Graduate forwards India Pagan and Leighah-Amori Wool followed closely behind finishing with 13 points and 12 points, respectively.

Stony Brook came out strong and took an early lead at the start of the game, a product of a 14-0 scoring run. The Seawolves were able to continue the momentum into the second quarter where they led the Black Bears by 21 points, the largest lead of the contest.

Maine rallied back in the second half cutting the lead to only eight with 9:27 to go, but Stony Brook did not let the Black Bears get any closer than that as Wool hit back-to-back three pointers to secure the Seawolves’ lead.

Stony Brook improved to 11-2, 2-1 America East and has won four of its last five games, as it heads into a matchup with Vermont on Wednesday night back on the Island.

STATS AND NOTES

  • Warren’s team-high 15 points mark the fifth time this season that she has led the scoring for the Seawolves.
  • Junior guard Gigi Gonzalez recorded a career-high four steals and dished out a team-high five assists. It was the fifth time this season that she dished out five or more assists in a game.
  • Pagan’s 13 points mark the seventh time this season she has finished in double figures – Stony Brook has won each of those contests.
  • Stony Brook’s defense forced 18 turnovers and only let up 14 points in the paint, the lowest amount Maine has scored in the paint all season. The 18 forced turnovers are the second-most forced against the Black Bears this year.
  • The 21 made free-throws are a new season-high for Stony Brook
  •  Stony Brook held the Black Bears well below their average shooting clips, as they only managed 29.1 percent from the field and 23.1 percent from beyond the arc. Their season averages are 37.8 and 25.5, respectively.
  • It was the fifth time this season that Stony Brook held an opponent under 50 points. The 44 points allowed are tied for the second-fewest the Seawolves allowed in a game this season (held Rutgers to 44 points on Nov. 16). Stony Brook has held each of its last two opponents to under 50 points (limited Hartford to a season-low 39 points on Jan. 2).
  •  The Seawolves are now 10-0 when they outrebound their opponents, winning the battle on the boards, 46-26.
  • The team also improved to 5-1 when three players score in double figures.

“I’m pleased with today’s win on the road versus a good Maine team that is hard to beat at home. We started the game very focused which we’ve been talking about as a team. Again, our defense and rebounding ultimately won the game,” said head coach Ashley Langford.

Elijah Olaniyi during Saturday's game. Photo from Stony Brook Athletics

Leading by as much as 21 in the second half, the Stony Brook men’s basketball program was able to hold off a Maine run that saw the lead cut as close as five en route to a win in the America East opener, 80-72, on Jan. 8 at Island Federal Arena.

Elijah Olaniyi and Tykei Greene led the Seawolves with 16 points apiece, two of five players in double figures for the home team. Olaniyi, in his return, also recorded five rebounds, two steals and a big block to seal the game late.

Greene finished a rebound away from a double-double, hauling in a team-high nine rebounds to aid Stony Brook’s advantage on the glass. The Seawolves flew ahead to a 64-43 lead with 9:06 to go after a Greene free throw but Maine rallied back to 73-68 but Stony Brook would not let them get closer than that.

Stony Brook now sits 9-5 on the season, winners of six of its last seven.

“Thrilled we won,” said head coach Geno Ford.”I think we felt like at the ten-minute mark we huddled up and were concerned that the crowd might leave early, so we wanted to keep them until the end. I wish that was it, but I give Maine credit. They kept playing and we didn’t do as good of enough job, obviously. We only had 11 turnovers, we were 16-of-20 from the foul line but it felt like they were all in one little bunched up stretch where the game was able to get tightened down. When it did get to a one or two possession game, Elijah had a huge play, Jahlil had a huge deflection where Juan stole it after we turned it over and we were able to get it back and get fouled. There were more positives than negatives and anytime you win a conference game they don’t give you bonus points for winning by a certain amount. Happy to move and get on to the next one, clearly we have somethings we need to clean up.” 

Up next, the team headed to Burlington Vermont on Jan. 12 for a matchup that pits the top two teams in the America East preseason poll. Results were not available as of press time.