Stony Brook University SUNY Korea

July 8, 2021 More than 150 million Americans have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. But even as that number approaches fifty percent of the U.S. population, misinformation and misconceptions about the vaccine and the science behind it are making it difficult to drive that number to even safer levels. Addressing the issue, the Stony Brook University Labor Council hosted a COVID-19 vaccine panel on June 23 that featured a diverse group of Stony Brook experts, moderated by Stacey Finkelstein, associated professor of marketing in the College of Business, and vice president for academics, UUP West Campus. “The underpinnings of vaccine hesitancy are numerous and deal with questions ranging from science to psychological biases,” Finkelstein said. “Anti-vax attitudes are not the same as being hesitant, and even those who are pro-vaccine may experience hesitancy… People who are hesitant have questions, and we’re hoping to answer some of them here today.” Kenneth Kaushansky, senior vice president of health sciences at Stony Brook University, took on questions surrounding the current COVID variants, including the Delta variant, which he described as “totally expected.” “We know that the natural history of virtually every viral infection is that it will mutate with time,” he said. “By ‘variant’ we mean that the nucleic acid structure changes. Most of those changes are irrelevant, but occasionally the virus creates a mutation that makes it more transmissible or enables it to escape immune system surveillance.” Kaushansky said the variant is now in almost every state in the United States and that mutations have changed the infectivity, but not in any way that affects the ability of natural or vaccine-induced immunity to deal with it. “This variant is supposed to be a bit more infectious than the other viruses, but it’s completely covered by neutralizing antibody responses that are directed by any of the vaccines that are generated,” said Erich Mackow, professor, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook. He said a very small number of breakthrough cases — around 1 in 10,000 — are yielding mild COVID positivity but not serious disease. “These vaccines seem to be almost 100-percent effective against serious disease, hospitalization and death, which is a very important point.” Bettina Fries, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Renaissance School of Medicine, pointed out that those who have received a full course of vaccines and who are infected now are not being hospitalized or dying. “We’re seeing younger people coming in, and yes, they don’t get as sick as the older folks, but they do get sick, and in some cases, very sick,” she said. “That is the reason the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) is pushing for everybody to get vaccinated.” Immunologist Catherine Feintuch addressed confusion surrounding Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval and the difference between full FDA authorization and emergency-use authorization. “Look at it as comparing a courthouse wedding to a country club wedding,” she explained. “At the end of the day the two people are still married, but the bells and whistles are different. With the emergency-use authorization, you have all the critical safety and efficacy information submitted. The only piece that’s missing is the six-month follow-up data. Moderna and Pfizer have already submitted for full authorization approval. We’re in unprecedented times, but no steps were skipped and the safety and efficacy data we have is very, very good.” The panel also reviewed concern for potential long-term effects as a contributor to the vaccine decision-making process. “When we talk about vaccines, what we are actually doing is giving somebody a substance against which their body makes an antibody response,” said Fries. “This antibody response sort of becomes a cell memory response that will remember this antibody response. If years from now you need to fight coronavirus again, your body will still be able to mount this antibody response.” Fries said that vaccine-hesitant people may fear an unwanted immune response that accidentally recognizes not only the virus, but something else that you have in your body, which is called an autoimmune response. “We would have seen that already, and we didn’t,” she said. “After two months your antibody response is at its max. If you don’t see it by then, there’s no reason to believe that you’ll see it 10 years from now. There have been patients that had thromboembolic events (blood clots) that we are looking into. But there’s no biological evidence that supports something developing 10 years from now, and the concern of the vaccine somehow getting integrated into your genome is also not biologically supported.” Mackow said that “the other side of the coin is that instead of worrying about the side effects of the vaccine, what we should be worrying about is the long-term effects that we don’t know about from having gotten COVID and whether damage from the infection will predispose us to later pulmonary or cardiac disease. Those are going to be much more worrisome going forward.” Feintuch offered a sobering observation regarding future exposure. “Everyone’s going to be exposed to coronavirus at some point,” she said. “It’s here to stay for the foreseeable future, and unless you plan to isolate and mask yourself for years, you will be exposed. So, you really can’t compare the vaccine versus nothing; the appropriate comparison is getting the vaccine versus getting coronavirus.” Fries advised those who were pregnant that the only way they can protect their baby is by being vaccinated before the baby is born. “From a protective point of view, you protect your baby best if you give them as many antibodies as possible before they are born,” she said. Ruobing Li, assistant professor, School of Communication and Journalism, addressed the difficulties presented by the proliferation of misinformation. “Many people are misinformed and just don’t know it,” she said. “They truly believe in their information as much as we believe in the information that we’ve gathered here.” She also advised double-checking your own information when it seems to conflict with someone else’s. “Try not to treat the conversation as a corrective lecture,” she warned. “Many times you hear, ‘Oh, I just read it on Facebook’ or ‘I just saw it on Twitter.’ People don’t realize those are just platforms and not sources of the information. They are not going to be responsible for every single piece of information that’s circulating on them.” Kaushansky offered some final guidance and advised not to wait get vaccinated. “You can take precautions and be as careful as possible, but if you go out there’s a chance you might get infected,” he said. “Why wait? People who work in the health sciences didn’t wait. There’s not a lot to fear here.” Fries said that in every worldwide pandemic, the breakthrough came with vaccines. “Go ask the older folks who saw kids die of measles growing up. Polio was a nightmare two generations ago. Plague killed a third of Europe in the 1300s and recurred until the 19th century. With all of these, progress came from hygiene and vaccination. Almost every physician at Stony Brook Medicine got vaccinated. Why? Because we saw those patients die, we saw terrible and devastating loss. 40,000 kids lost a parent during this pandemic.” “As a psychologist, I know that fear and risk are very personal judgments, and it’s really important to listen and heed the experiences of those who have been on the frontlines treating patients,” said Finkelstein. “Sometimes we process things emotionally, but we really need to think about the very real consequences to not being vaccinated.” — Robert Emproto Click here to read the original article

July 6, 2021 REMINDERS: Ice Cream Social TOMORROW and More As more of us have begun to return to campus today, here are just a few reminders to help us all thrive this summer and fall … Stronger Together. Reminder #1: ICE CREAMJoin us for a free Ice Cream Social tomorrow – Wednesday, July 7, 12-2 pm – outside the Stony Brook Union  (rain location: Student Union lobby). Student Affairs will also be hosting an Open House event called Stony Brook Union: Yesterday and Today – with tours every 20 minutes highlighting the new, and improved, Union and where to find all the services you need. Reminder #2: Submit Your Full Vaccine Status for Relaxed COVID ProtocolsOn June 23, we shared a Coming Back Safe and Strong Update highlighting new COVID protocols from the Governor’s Office of Employee Relations (GOER), including more relaxed guidance for fully vaccinated individuals, including no need to physically distance, wear a mask, test weekly or self-screen daily in non-healthcare settings. If you haven’t yet, you can submit your full vaccination status simply and directly on your personal SOLAR account. Click here for instructions. Reminder #3: Affirm That You’ve Read and Will Follow GOER GuidanceBy this Friday, July 9 (or within three business days of returning to campus for remote workers), New York State requires that all State employees affirm they have read and understand their obligation to follow GOER’s revised guidance and its provisions. It’s easy and can be accomplished right on SOLAR. Find detailed instructions here: Revised Workplace Guidance – Instructions. Reminder #4: Be sure to check out/bookmark our new Stronger Together website, with a page highlighting the Latest COVID19 Guidance. There’s also a Calendar of Events featuring seminars, live entertainment and opportunities for informal gatherings with others on campus. In addition to films at the Staller Center and exhibits at the Zuccaire Gallery, you’ll find a HealthierU nutrition-based ‘pop-up tent, Yoga on the Staller Steps and well-being walks. We look forward to sharing more news over the coming weeks and months. Click here to read the original article

July 1, 2021 Researchers at Stony Brook University and the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have identified the primary reaction mechanism that occurs in a rechargeable, water-based battery made from zinc and manganese oxide. The findings, published in Energy and Environmental Science, provide new insight for developing grid-scale energy storage.   Before renewable energy sources like wind and solar power can be fully integrated into the electric grid, scientists must develop advanced batteries that can store these intermittent sources of power. Researchers at the Center for Mesoscale Transport Properties (m2m), a DOE Energy Frontier Research Center led by Stony Brook in collaboration with Brookhaven Lab, are currently studying water-based batteries as a safe and scalable solution. “As we think about big batteries that can back up the grid, we’ve become very interested in using water as the electrolyte, rather than the flammable solvents that are used in traditional lithium-ion batteries,” said Distinguished Professor Esther Takeuchi, director of m2m and co-author of the study. Takeuchi, from Stony Brook’s Department of Materials Science and Chemical Engineering, holds a joint appointment at Brookhaven Lab. “We are very mindful of environmental impact. In the rare event that something goes wrong with this technology — if a giant, grid-scale battery started to leak — leaking salt water is a lot safer than leaking something flammable.” “It’s also hard to find something cheaper than water,” Takeuchi said, expanding on the cost efficiency of deploying water-based batteries across the grid. Cost efficiency and safety were two factors Takeuchi and her colleagues also kept in mind for their latest study on the zinc and manganese oxide-based battery, as both materials are cheap, abundant and nontoxic. Scientists have studied rechargeable batteries comprised of these compounds before, but the research was widely inconclusive. “We found several papers, all published within the last few years in very high profile journals, that all came to different conclusions on what the reaction mechanism in this battery actually was,” Takeuchi said. “So, we decided to take this on as an area of interest.” To understand the complex reaction mechanism in the zinc/manganese oxide rechargeable battery, the researchers turned to the National Synchroton Light Source II (NSLS-II), a DOE Office of Science User Facility at Brookhaven Lab. NSLS-II is an ultrabright x-ray light source that can reveal the structural and chemical makeup of samples down to the atomic scale. There, the research team ran three rounds of experiments, one at the Quick x-ray Absorption and Scattering (QAS) beamline and two at the X-ray Fluorescence Microprobe (XFM) beamline. Starting at QAS, the team ran x-ray absorption spectroscopy experiments to probe the battery’s electrochemical changes. These results from QAS presented important yet puzzling data; there was too much current passing through the battery to be explained by oxidation state changes. “That’s when we realized we needed to do an operando imaging experiment,” Takeuchi said. Operando experiments occur while the sample is operating or as a chemical reaction is occurring. For battery studies, that means data is collected while the battery charges and discharges. Many of NSLS-II’s advanced beamlines, including QAS, specialize in operando experiments. But for this study, the research team ran two experiments at XFM, where they could also conduct element-specific imaging. First, they produced an elemental map of the electrode and electrolyte. “That’s really where the breakthrough came,” Takeuchi said. “SBU Professor Ken Takeuchi suggested that we map the electrolyte while the battery discharges, pause the experiment, and then continue the discharge. We saw that while the battery discharged, manganese was moving from the cathode into the electrolyte. The manganese concentration kept increasing as long as the battery was discharging, and once we put the reaction on pause, the concentration stayed the same.” In the second round of experiments, the team continuously cycled the battery — that is, charged and discharged the cell many times. “Element-specific imaging with high detection sensitivity is a distinguishing characteristic of (synchrotron-based) x-ray fluorescence microscopy,” said co-author Ryan Tappero, lead beamline scientist at XFM. “It’s the high sensitivity that allowed us to capture subtle differences in manganese abundance across the electrode-electrolyte interface.” “We were able to definitively see that as the battery discharged, the manganese concentration in the electrolyte increased, and as the battery charged, the manganese concentration decreased,” Takeuchi said. The results enabled the research team to determine the true reaction mechanism taking place in the battery: a manganese dissolution-deposition reaction. “We demonstrated that manganese dissolves from the solid cathode and into the electrolyte as the battery discharges, then it redeposits on the cathode as the battery charges,” Takeuchi said. “The manganese is not just changing from a solid to a liquid, but rather, it is dissolving and electrochemically depositing as a new phase.” Takeuchi added, “This was an operando-enabled breakthrough. We’ve spent years developing and testing these methods at NSLS-II. Without them, this reaction mechanism would be very difficult to sort out. It explains why there were so many contrary reports in the literature.” The researchers say their findings set the stage for pushing water-based, grid-scale energy storage solutions forward, no longer having to rely on trial-and-error-based approaches to modifying and optimizing this class of batteries. “This series of experiments is a great example of the teamwork that is required to solve large, complex problems,” Takeuchi said. “We had team members from NSLS-II, Brookhaven’s Interdisciplinary Sciences Department, Stony Brook University and our graduate students — people from all different backgrounds — putting their heads together, each contributing to get this data. Collaboration can bring great benefits to science.” — Stephanie Kossman, Brookhaven National Laboratory Click here to read the original article

June 16, 2021 In a new video, Distinguished Professor Scott McLennan and Associate Professor Joel Hurowitz of the Department of Geosciences at Stony Brook University talk about their experience with the Mars exploration rover Perseverance, which is on a two-year investigative mission looking for signs of life on the Red Planet. “Mars has always held out something special in the public imagination,” McLennan says. “People are looking for something that’s really exciting, and something that’s positive and something that shows we can still do things that are really important.” “Being a part of a team that’s landing something on Mars, that feeling never gets old,” Hurowitz says. “I highly recommend it if you can be a part of a team like that.” The professors discuss their work on the project, the challenges they face and the emotions they felt as they watched the rover land on a planet 293 million miles away. Click here to read the original article

June 14, 2021 The following was written by Stony Brook School of Communication and Journalism alumna Jasmin Suknanan ’18, Associate Finance Editor at BuzzFeed.  If you knew me from 2015 to 2018 when I was a journalism student, you probably remember my non-stop chatter about food, travel, and social media. Or perhaps you recall a few glimpses of me sitting in the Melville Library Starbucks — caramel macchiato by my side — working on a new advice post for my blog. I was working toward a career as a lifestyle writer, and my past internship experiences at beauty, fashion, food, and pop culture websites solidified me as a strong candidate for the job after graduation. That was 2018. But in 2020, the pandemic changed the trajectory of my career in ways I never saw coming. Two weeks after graduating from Stony Brook University, I began a fellowship as a food video producer at INSIDER, one of my dream companies. I starred in videos highlighting New York City restaurants, interviewed chefs from all over the world, produced more content than anyone else on the video side, and I took on ambitious field shoots that challenged the status quo of my team’s content (and it all paid off tenfold). So it came as a total shock when I didn’t get promoted to Associate Producer after my fellowship ended. I was distraught, unemployed, and facing off against student loan payments. Over 90 job applications later, I landed another fellowship on the editorial team at BuzzFeed, another dream company. I had applied to BuzzFeed every year since my sophomore year of college and now, finally, the hiring manager was on the other line offering me the role. I began working there in March 2019 covering, well, just about everything you see on the BuzzFeed website — recipes, Twitter and Reddit threads, celebrity trends, travel, millennial culture, and (of course) quizzes. While I enjoyed the role, I learned from the hiring manager that once our fellowship program ended in March 2020, there would be no guarantee that we would be converted into staff writers; internships in the media industry were no longer a pipeline to hire. Having already experienced this first hand at INSIDER, I took it to heart. I was determined to stay employed at BuzzFeed, which meant I needed to be ready to pounce at the first sight of an opportunity to move up. So when I saw that the market team was hiring a Jr. Writer to cover lifestyle products, I threw my hat into the ring for the role. At that point, I had only gone through about four months of my year-long fellowship. I knew I had all the skills for the market job, but it felt a little too early to just abandon the fellowship role. At the same time, I knew that hesitating could cost me the opportunity — besides, trying and not succeeding was better than not trying at all. The hiring manager for my fellowship helped me secure an internal interview with the market team’s deputy editor. And my editor at the time put in a good word since I had a knack for writing about lifestyle in an impactful way. I ended up getting the job. Our team faced massive growth since 2019 as we surpassed our goals with flying colors. And when the pandemic hit in 2020, we proved to be a huge asset to the company. The pandemic was a learning experience for everyone. As its financial toll on everyday people became more apparent, I felt lucky to still have an income and to have saved a little over the years. But I quickly realized that I had been doing the bare minimum when it came to my finances. And as the first in my family to attend college and become a corporate employee, I felt like the bare minimum wasn’t enough. I thought about the other people in my position whose financial literacy also stopped at simply paying down debt and stashing away cash here and there. We only took the steps we were familiar with, which is what our families knew enough about to teach us. I explored other ways to improve my finances and build a more solid nest egg with long-term goals in mind. I listened to financial podcasts while I worked, read personal finance-focused books, and spent my evenings researching even more about the financial topics I still had questions on. I spent almost every waking hour consuming content around finance and the more I learned, the more I loved it. I came to understand the importance of building generational wealth, especially for a first generation American in the workforce like myself. And it seemed as if others were also interested in learning about the steps they needed to take to improve their financial lives. I started to feel like teaching others everything I was learning about money could be bigger than anything I was doing on the largest editorial team at BuzzFeed. Unfortunately, BuzzFeed didn’t have a personal finance team at the time. And then — as if the universe had read my heart and knew what I wanted — our site director announced that they were looking for someone to write personal finance articles and build out a vertical for BuzzFeed. I couldn’t have emailed her faster to share my interest. Again, I jumped on the opportunity and gave myself to the process, and it wound up paying off. Without a doubt, my work as BuzzFeed’s first Associate Personal Finance Editor has given me the unique opportunity to pioneer content at a very early stage of my career while I dive even deeper into a topic that has become very important to me. Since creating personal finance content, I have gotten insight from billionaire wealth managers, women of color making waves in investing, and everyday millennials working to fund their futures. I am grateful for all of my experiences — blogging, paid and unpaid internships, the fellowship that ended in heartbreak, the fellowship that ended with a job offer, and my current role. If I could give advice to current students and recent graduates, it’d go something like this: Be flexible with the verticals you’re willing to cover. Don’t knock it ‘till you try it — you might uncover an affinity for reporting on something you never thought you could enjoy. And, that coverage could be a huge asset when it comes to finding your next opportunity. It’s easy to think that you no longer have to (virtually) attend networking events or pay attention to job listings once you have a role. But you should dig your well before you’re thirsty. Never stop learning and never stop improving. Don’t be afraid to tell people what you’re interested in. When an opportunity opens up, you’ll be at the top of their mind because they know where your passions lie. Also, don’t be afraid to ask for what you want.   Click here to read the original article

June 3, 2021 STONY BROOK, NY, June 3, 2021 – A novel urine screening test that uses the protein Keratin 17 (K17) as a biomarker to detect new or recurrent bladder cancer may change diagnostics for a certain form of the disease called urothelial carcinoma (UC). The methodology behind the test stems from research at Stony Brook University led by Kenneth Shroyer, MD, PhD. The findings are reported in a paper published in the American Journal of Clinical Pathology.  Some 81,000 cases of bladder cancer are diagnosed in the United States each year according to the American Cancer Society. Accurate detection of bladder cancer, or urothelial carcinoma (UC), is often difficult, expensive and involves invasive testing. Going forward, this new method, based on the detection of K17 in urine specimens, could help guide treatment by improving diagnostic accuracy. “It is important to find new biomarkers to more accurately detect UC since standard methods used in most cytology labs are based primarily on microscopic details that do not always clearly distinguish cancer from benign cells,” explains Dr. Shroyer, the Marvin Kuschner Professor and Chair of Pathology at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University and inventor of the K17 test. Previously, Dr. Shroyer and his colleague, Dr. Luisa Escobar-Hoyos (an Assistant Professor at Yale), co-directed a team of Stony Brook University students and collaborators to demonstrate that K17 is a highly sensitive and specific biomarker for UC in tissue biopsy and surgical specimens. The current published study builds on these findings to show that K17 testing could also be performed as a non-invasive test on urine specimens. Using various urine sample sets, the Stony Brook team found that the urine K17 test detected UC in 35/36 (97 percent) of cases that were confirmed by biopsy, including 100 percent of cases with high-grade UC. From these results and other findings based on the testing, the authors conclude that K17 testing is a highly sensitive and specific diagnostic test for initial screening and for detection of recurrence across all grades of UC. Dr. Shroyer and his colleagues believe the potential of this test as a non-invasive way to detect UC will help to transform not only diagnostic practices but earlier treatment intervention and prognosis of UC. The K17 test is being developed commercially by KDx Diagnostics, Inc., a start-up biotech company, which has a license with The Research Foundation for The State University of New York. Recently, KDx has been awarded a breakthrough device designation from the Food and Drug Administration for its assay test with K17. For years, the Shroyer lab, in collaboration with Dr. Luisa Escobar-Hoyos, has been exploring K17 as a biomarker for various cancers, including UC and pancreatic cancer. Furthermore, the research team continues to advance the understanding of how K17, once thought to be only a structural protein, fundamentally impacts numerous hallmarks of cancer. Click here to read the original article

June 3, 2021 STONY BROOK, NY, June 3, 2021 —Stony Brook University Heart Institute is now offering its patients the latest generation of the Watchman FLX™ device, which provides protection from strokes for people who have atrial fibrillation (AFib), a type of arrhythmia or irregular heartbeat, that is not caused by a heart valve problem. Stony Brook is one of a select number of sites in New York State to offer the new Watchman FLX device. The procedure, which closes off the part of the heart where 90% of stroke-causing clots come from, will be done in Stony Brook University Hospital’s new Advanced Multifunctional Cath/EP Lab. The large, 845-square-foot multi-functional laboratory has been carefully designed and outfitted with state-of-the-art technology to allow the Heart Institute physicians to perform a full range of procedures. People with AFib, the most common type of heart rhythm disorder, have an increased risk of stroke by 5 times on average. Blood thinners are often prescribed to help prevent strokes but “some experience bleeding problems or have other reasons why blood thinners aren’t the best option,” explains Eric Rashba, MD, Director, Heart Rhythm Center at Stony Brook Heart Institute. The Watchman device, which is about the size of a quarter, provides an alternative to the lifelong use of blood thinners (anticoagulants) for people with AFib by blocking blood clots from leaving the heart and possibly causing a stroke.    The design of the newer, Watchman FLX device used by the Heart Institute offers significant advantages to the patient, including:   - Advanced safety due to the new framing of the device that allows for more long-term stability and a more complete seal - Enhanced procedural performance that allows the physician to better maneuver and position the device during the procedure - A broader size range to permit treatment of a wider range of patient anatomies    “At the Stony Brook Heart Rhythm Center, in the hands of our expert team, we are excited to bring this latest innovation to effectively provide protection equivalent to anticoagulants for preventing strokes and avoiding the risk of serious bleeding,” said Dr. Rashba. “It has saved lives and improved my patients’ quality of life.”   Click here to read the original article

June 2, 2021 More than 200 Stony Brook University administrators, faculty, staff and students participated in the May 5 virtual event, “Breaking Silence: A Public Forum on Anti-AAPI Racism.” The forum was held in response to the escalating violence, discrimination and harassment directed at Asians and Asian Americans, and in honor of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, which recognizes the contributions and influence of Asian Americans and Pacific Islander Americans to the history, culture, and achievements of the United States. President Maurie McInnis opened the forum, saying, “I know that it is incredibly important that we take the time, not just this month, but year-round to talk about the pressures and prejudices that the AAPI community faces, and importantly, how we at Stony Brook University can respond to and support our colleagues and friends. We at Stony Brook are committed to ensuring that this university is always a place where the members of the AAPI community are supported, protected, and listened to.” Other remarks were delivered by Vice President for Equity and Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer Judith Brown Clarke, Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students Rick Gatteau, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Nicole Sampson, Professor of Applied Linguistics and Director of the Center for Multilingual and Intercultural Communication (MIC) Agnes He, and New York State Senator John Liu of Queens. He served as the event emcee. The forum was moderated by E.K. Tan, department chair, and Rosabel Ansari, interim graduate director, of the Department of Asian and Asian-American Studies. Forum participants spoke to denounce the scapegoating of Asian Americans for national crises, examined systemic racism against Asians and other minority groups in United States history, and promoted building anti-racist allyship. The event was held on Zoom and was open and free to all. Two videos were presented, created by Nerissa S. Balce, associate professor of Asian-American Studies, and Gary Mar, professor in the Department of Philosophy. Other faculty members who spoke to the history and effects of discrimination against Asian Americans included: James Mimura, Department of History; Crystal Fleming, Departments of Sociology and African Studies; Lori Flores, Department of History, and Charles Robbins, director of the Center for Changing Systems of Power. Student speakers included Judy Le and Khadija Saad. An open discussion was held among the participants, moderated by He and Heejeong Song, director of the Program in Korean Studies. Various on-campus and other resources were posted, questions were asked, personal experiences were shared and solutions proposed. The event was sponsored by the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies, the Center for Korean Studies, the Center for Multilingual and Intercultural Communication, the Japan Center at Stony Brook and the Mattoo Center for India Studies. The event was also co-sponsored by the Asian American Center Bridge, the Center for Changing Systems of Power, the Charles B. Wang Center, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Institute of Globalization Studies, the Office of the Dean of Students and the Office of Multicultural Affairs. Click here to read the original article

May 26, 2021 STONY BROOK, NY, May 26, 2021 – The accuracy of weather forecasting decreases with each additional day of forecasting and is limited in accuracy at two weeks. Now a new study published in Nature Communications and led by Hyemi Kim, PhD, Associate Professor in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) at Stony Brook University, highlights a way to improve weather forecasts beyond two weeks by using machine learning. Accurate weather forecasting has become increasingly important to society because of its socioeconomic value due to globalization, trade, travel, and the needs of policymakers and others such as risk managers. Reliable forecasts for weather conditions three-to-four weeks away (called the subseasonal range) can provide vital information about hazardous weather threats such as floods and heat waves. Professor Kim and colleagues focused on a phenomenon known as the Madden-Julian oscillation (MJO), a belt of thunderstorms that starts over the equatorial tropical Indian Ocean and moves slowly eastward toward the central Pacific Ocean, in a repetitious manner each year every 40 to 50 days. Scientists have used MJO as a key tool for three-to-four-week weather forecasting. However, computer modeling has not been able to simulate all aspects of MJO and therefore extended-range forecasts based on MJO information has a larger margin of error. The team combined state-of-the-art weather forecast models and observations with a machine learning process (a Deep Learning bias correction using all of the data) to forecast the MJO. With this Deep Learning bias correction, forecast errors in the MJO averaged over four weeks reduced by 80~90 percent. Professor Kim explains that computer models used for forecasting lose accuracy significantly when models try to reproduce MJO that crosses the Maritime Continent and moves eastward. Because of this, more model biases occur and predictions for global weather beyond two weeks becomes difficult. “Our study demonstrates that machine learning substantially reduces the MJO forecast errors from models, and this will help improve global extended range forecasts,” says Professor Kim. “Because we created a simple approach with machine learning, this method can be implemented into operational forecasts that are currently used for two-week weather forecasting and longer.” The researchers plan to apply their machine learning technique to test ways to improve forecasts of extreme weather events, such as hurricanes or heat waves in New York. The research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation (grant AGS-1652289). Click here to read the original article

May 24, 2021 On July 3, 2001, a research paper co-authored by Carol Carter, professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook, and a team of fellow researchers, was published. Its findings would open a new field of investigation into how pathogens escape from infected cells and reveal new opportunities for anti-viral drug development. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the discovery outlined in that paper, "Tsg101, a homologue of ubiquitin-conjugating (E2) enzymes, bind the L domain in HIV type 1 Pr55(Gag)." David Thanassi, professor and chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, cites Carter’s work as an example of the transformative power of research in real-world applications. “The discovery described 20 years ago in Carol’s paper illustrates the power of basic research to generate unexpected insights and open new avenues for the development of therapeutic approaches to combat viral and other diseases,” Thanassi said. “It is particularly relevant to celebrate this milestone achievement now, given the ongoing COVID-19 viral pandemic. In the search for new treatments, many researchers are pursuing the now-accepted strategy, as embodied by Carol’s work, of targeting cellular factors to develop antiviral measures.” “I had come home from a meeting in the late 1990’s when the HIV pandemic was raging, much like COVID-19 is doing now, but with abysmal antivirals and no vaccine on the horizon,” Carter recalled. “The National Institute of Health (NIH) leadership said to researchers, ‘You need to come up with some strategies to circumvent rapidly emerging drug-resistance.’” As the HIV crisis raged, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that by 1999, 33 million people were living with HIV worldwide, and that 14 million had died of AIDS. The same year, then-president Bill Clinton declared HIV/AIDS a threat to U.S. national security and issued an executive order to assist developing countries in importing and producing generic HIV treatments. (UNAIDS, a United Nations program dedicated to worldwide HIV and AIDS response, estimates that 78 million people have become infected with HIV and 35 million have died from AIDS-related illnesses since the first cases were reported more than 35 years ago.) “Drug-resistance was emerging as a major threat because there were very few good drugs on hand,” said Carter. “It struck me that this was the time to entertain an idea that would have been laughed out of the room at an earlier time: the concept of targeting cellular instead of viral encoded gene products.” Carter said the latter puts pressure on viral evolution to select for resistant variants that can evade the drugs, a concern that is less likely to apply to cellular gene products. “Viruses exploit cells,” explained Carter. “Cells don’t make, maintain or change gene products for the convenience of the virus.” Stony Brook’s laboratory screened a library of “house-keeping genes” for any that were recognized by HIV, identified several, and focused on one called Tsg101 that showed itself early on to be differentially employed by the virus and host. In uninfected cells, Tsg101 plays an instrumental role in sending proteins the cell no longer wants to the “garbage pail,” compartments where such proteins are degraded. For example, Tsg101 ensures that proteins that signal continuous cell growth, as occurs in cancers, are removed from the cytoplasm. In contrast, in HIV-infected cells, Tsg101 is recruited to sites of virus assembly at the cell periphery. There, it still facilitates removal of the assemblages from the cytoplasm, however this recruitment permits the virus to exit into the extracellular space instead of a degradative chamber. Tsg101 stands for ‘Tumor Suppressor Protein #101.  “It was the 101st gene product reported to the Protein Data Bank with that description and initially thought to suppress tumor growth,” Carter said. “Learning that produced an ‘aha!’ moment because experiments that we had done by that point were indicating that HIV needed Tsg101 to get viral particles out of the cell and because we also knew HIV did not cause cancer. We’re still working on this, but the 20-year milestone demonstrates that HIV’s recruitment of Tsg101 was a great forecaster of the existence of virus-host interactions feasible to target for anti-viral drug development. Patents describing our translational effort have been granted or are pending.” In football terms, Tsg101 is the “quarterback” for the cellular team effort, also known as the ESCRT (endocytic sorting complexes required for trafficking) machinery that recognizes cargo coming into the cell and directs it to the proper subcellular destination, or “end zone.” Carter said that several laboratories both in the U.S. and around the globe are working on the ESCRT machinery and have established that several human viral pathogens encode L domains to recruit Tsg101 and depend on ESCRT for virus budding from cells. “Some labs are doing exquisite structural characterization of the ESCRT machinery components,” said Carter. “At this point, it has been discovered that ESCRT machinery is evolutionarily conserved from yeast to man. All species encode in their genomes identical or similar Tsg101 sequences that have remained essentially unchanged throughout evolution. This conservation indicates that the Tsg101 protein is unique and essential. It plays critical roles in cell division and neuronal cell pruning. Defects in the gene are embryonically lethal.” “This finding changed the course of the field and changed the course of the lab’s research,” said James Hurley, a structural biologist at Berkeley and one of the lead investigators of ESCRT machinery function. “I don’t think any other single paper has had as much impact on our lab’s research direction.” Hurley and Carter served together on National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientific advisory committees. Carter describes her research as both a rewarding adventure and a never-ending learning experience. “It’s been a fantastic journey,” said Carter. “Some of our compounds developed against HIV are able to inhibit replication of other human pathogens, including SARS CoV-2. It would be great if any of them proved to be useful therapeutics.” — Robert Emproto Click here to read the original article

May 18, 2021 A national team of researchers including Ira S. Cohen, MD, PhD, from the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, has identified a compound that prevents the lengthening of the heart’s electrical event, or action potential, which can cause a lengthening of the EKG’s Q-T interval and a dangerous and sometimes deadly arrhythmia called Torsades de Pointes. Many drugs that are effective against cancer, infections and other diseases, can induce a lengthening of the heart’s action potential as an adverse side effect, thus rendering these drugs unsafe or with risks outweighing their benefits for patients. This discovery may lead to a way to halt this dangerous side effect of commonly used drugs. The findings are published this week in PNAS. According to the American Heart Association, heart arrythmias contribute to about 200,000 to 300,000 sudden deaths a year, more than annual deaths from stroke, lung cancer or breast cancer. The drugs in question, as well as several that have been pulled from the market, cause a prolongation of the QT interval of the ECG (acquired Long Q-T Syndrome). Through both computational and experimental validation, the research team identified a compound named C28. They found that C28 not only prevents or reverses Q-T prolongation, it also does not cause any change on the normal action potential when used alone. The research demonstrates a significant step toward safer use and expanded therapeutic efficacy of certain medicines when taken in combination with C28. “These findings could prove ground-breaking in the effort to make some cancer drugs safer and bring other drugs back into the marketplace,” said Dr. Cohen, SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics, and Director of the Institute for Molecular Cardiology. “With many of these medications, there is a concentration of the drug that is acceptable, but at higher doses, it become dangerous. If C28 can eliminate the danger of QT prolongation, then these drugs can be used at higher concentrations, and in many cases, they can become more therapeutic.” Dr. Cohen, a renowned electrophysiologist, discovered components related to Long Q-T syndrome and has been researching the issue for decades in his Stony Brook laboratory. He discovered the steady state Na current as well as its slowly inactivating component. Together, these two currents are called persistent Na current. In collaboration with Richard Lin, MD, and Zhongju Lu, MD, PhD, he demonstrated that the persistent sodium current is a major cause of the dangerous Q-T prolongation in acquired Long Q-T syndrome. His lab includes investigations into the structure and function of potassium ion channels in the heart, initial research that has helped lead the research team to the identification of C28. Jianmin Cuil, PhD, co-author, head of the research team and Professor of Biomedical Engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering in Washington University in St. Louis, worked previously with Dr. Cohen on cardiac arrhythmias as a graduate student at Stony Brook University from 1986 to 1994. The research team also includes Xiaoqin Zou, PhD, Professor of physics, biochemistry, and a member of the Dalton Cardiovascular Research Center and Institute for Data Science and Informatics at the University of Missouri-Columbia. The Methodology The team selected a specific target, IKs, for this latest work because it is one of the two potassium channels that are activated during the action potential: IKr (rapid) and IKs (slow). They wanted to determine if the prolongation of the QT interval could be prevented by compensating for the change in current that induces the Long QT Syndrome by enhancing IKs. They identified a site on the voltage-sensing domain of the IKs potassium ion channel that could be accessed by small molecules. Zou and colleagues used the atomic structure of the KCNQ1 unit of the IKs channel protein to computationally screen a library of a quarter of a million small compounds that targeted this voltage-sensing domain of the KCNQ1 protein unit. To do this, they developed software called MDock to test the interaction of small compounds with a specific protein in silico, or computationally. One by one, Zou and her lab docked the potential compounds with the protein KCNQ1 and compared the binding energy of each one. They selected about 50 candidates with very negative, or tight, binding energies. Cui and his lab then identified C28 using experiments out of the 50 candidates identified in silico by Zou’s lab. Dr. Cohen and colleagues tested the C28 compound in ventricular myocytes from a small mammal model that expresses the same IKs channel as humans. They found that C28 could prevent or reverse the drug-induced prolongation of the electrical signals across the cardiac cell membrane and minimally affected the normal action potentials at the same dosage. They also determined that there were no significant effects on atrial muscle cells, an important control for the drug’s potential use. While the researchers emphasize that C28 needs additional verification and testing, there is tremendous potential for this compound or others like it to help change cancer therapeutics as well as turn second line drugs into first-line drugs and return others previously taken off the market because of Q-T prolongation back onto the market. Click here to read the original article

May 12, 2021 Scientists at Stony Brook University, the University of Vermont and Dartmouth College have been studying mercury uptake into the food chain during the winter, and how mercury uptake may change in the future, as climate conditions change. The study, which was awarded $149,930 over two years by the Lake Champlain Sea Grant, began in May 2020 and will continue through February 2022, according to Roxanne Karimi, an adjunct assistant professor at Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS). Scientists worked through the pandemic to find out what happens to mercury, a common contaminant found in fish, as the fish food chain continues to operate during the winter. They have been collecting samples from Lake Champlain near the U.S.-Canadian border — at St. Albans Bay and Mississquoi Bay — attempting to find out whether mercury changes in chemical form and concentration in the water, lake sediments, and organisms that are in low in food chain, such as mussels. The information will indicate whether mercury is readily taken up into the food chain, including fish, during the winter compared to other seasons. “So far, we have found that methylmercury, the more toxic and biologically available form of mercury, occurs in the water — in dissolved form — in concentrations that are similar to those in other seasons,” Karimi said. “At this point, it is too early to tell whether there is a consistent pattern, or whether winter concentrations are consistently higher or lower than in other times of year.” Karimi noted that the predominant assumption was that mercury bioavailability decreases in winter due to lower temperatures, but this has not been adequately studied. “So far, our preliminary results counter that assumption, and our project will see how it ultimately holds up,” she said. “We will also examine how changes in winter climate conditions, such as changes in temperature and ice cover, might enhance or diminish mercury availability and uptake into the food chain in the future.” The scientists will also use data from the field to predict how fish mercury levels will change with climate. Key to answering this question is the ice cover during the winter, which is expected to decrease in thickness and duration as the climate warms. These factors influence how mercury and lake food chains function, and whether future climate conditions will enhance or diminish mercury buildup in fish in the future. The results from this project will provide the information necessary to predict changes in fish mercury levels, overall health value for human consumption, and inform fish monitoring and advisory policies. Karimi is the lead and sole investigator at Stony Brook, while SoMAS colleague Maureen Murphy provides outreach on the human health risks of mercury in fish to the public. The co-investigator is Andrew Schroth from Vermont, while Vivien Taylor at Dartmouth provides research support.   Click here to read the original article

May 7, 2021 Last Fall, the Office of the Vice President for Research, (OVPR) in partnership with the Institute for Engineering-Driven Medicine (IEDM) and the Clinical and Translational Science Center (CTSC) at Stony Brook University (SBU) launched the COVID-19 Research Collaboration Series. Each session focused on developing collaborations between researchers and included two talks about active COVID-19 research projects at Stony Brook University with an opportunity for discussion following the presentations. The series was announced and managed by the Office of Proposal Development (OPD) after confirming faculty interest in a series focused on collaborations for COVID-19 research projects. For each session, OPD paired two researchers around a common thematic discussion topic. The first session was held on November 5, 2020, and was followed by eight additional sessions, scheduled once every 2-4 weeks. The series concluded on April 29, 2021 with a special talk by guest speaker Dr. Jason McLellan from The University of Texas at Austin. “We launched this series as a follow up to a special initiative COVID-19 seed grant program to draw attention to the critical research that is addressing urgent healthcare challenges and the far-reaching social impacts of the pandemic in real time. Stony Brook University researchers are making incredible scientific advances in this space, and increasing collaborations are key to the continued progress of their research,” said Dr. Richard Reeder, Vice President for Research. The program received a terrific response from the Stony Brook University research community, with faculty participants from the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Business, the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the School of Dental Medicine, the School of Health Technology and Management, the School of Nursing, the School of Medicine, and the School of Social Welfare. Seventy-two SBU faculty members registered for at least one session in the fall semester, and 80 SBU faculty members registered for the spring semester sessions. A few of the sessions were open to faculty from other State University of New York (SUNY) institutions and about 50 external faculty participated throughout the series. “Modern science is often done at the interfaces between traditional fields, especially for challenging problems like COVID-19. This series made it much easier to navigate the impressive breadth of research at Stony Brook and find collaborators with similar goals but complementary skills,” said Dr. Carlos Simmerling, Marsha Laufer Professor of Physical & Quantitative Biology. Recordings of select presentations are available for viewing on OPD’s Stony Brook Research Youtube Channel. Below is the full list of COVID-19 Research Collaboration Series sessions: Breaking Down COVID-19Thursday, November 5, 2020Talk 1: Computational models of the SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein suggest possible routes to viral inactivation, Dr. Carlos SimmerlingTalk 2: Accelerating nanobody discovery to target SARS-CoV2, Dr. Ed LukVIDEO The Impact of COVID-19 on CommunitiesThursday, November 19, 2020Talk 1: The COVID-19 Pregnancy Experiences (COPE) Study: a prospective program of research on pandemic stress, perinatal stress, and their impacts on women and children, Dr. Heidi PreisTalk 2: Disability in the Time of COVID-19, Dr. Brooke EllisonVIDEO Predicting Disease Spread and SeverityThursday, December 10, 2020Talk 1: Classification and Severity Progression Measure of COVID-19 Patients Using Proteomic and Metabolomic Sera, Dr. Pawel PolakTalk 2: Monitoring novel coronavirus in sewage as an early warning system to detect hidden outbreaks and track disease prevalence in communities, Dr. Arjun VenkatesanVIDEO Developing COVID-19 TechnologiesMonday, December 14, 2020Talk 1: AI-enabled lung analyzer for Detection and Characterization of COVID-19, Dr. Jerome Liang VIDEOTalk 2: Personal smart phone-integrated virus sensors and mobile app for rapid and accurate saliva screening and option to share results with businesses before entering common space, Dr. Matthew Jacobs VIDEO Computational Approaches to Study COVID-19Thursday, January 28, 2021Talk 1: Meta Analysis of COVID-19 Combining Multiple Omics Data Sets, Dr. Wei Zhu VIDEOTalk 2: The Analysis of Binding SARS-CoV-2 to Various Substrates, Dr. Peng Zhang VIDEO Psychosocial Impact of COVID-19 and Implications for Well-BeingMonday, February 8, 2021Talk 1: Behavioral Underpinnings of Vaccine Hesitancy and Implications for Vaccine Acceptance, Dr. Stacey Finkelstein VIDEOTalk 2: Effect of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic on the Academic, Career, Mental, Psychosocial, and Physical Functioning of the SBU Community, Dr. Brady D. Nelson VIDEO Models to Predict and Control COVID-19Thursday, February 25, 2021Talk 1: Using Demographic Pattern Analysis to Predict COVID-19 Fatalities on the US County Level, Dr. Klaus Mueller  VIDEOTalk 2: Pandemic Control in ECON-EPI Networks, Dr. Marina Azzimonti VIDEO Impacts of Social DistancingThursday, March 11, 2021Talk 1: The Impact of Social Distancing During the COVID-19 Outbreak on Mental Health and Substance Use Outcomes: Examining Risk and Protective Factors in Young Adult Populations in New York, Dr. Sana Malik & Dr. Ijeoma Opara VIDEOTalk 2: Psychosocial Impact of COVID-19-Induced Social Isolation (PICSI) on Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Longitudinal Study, Dr. Matthew Lerner & Alan H. Gerber VIDEO COVID-19 Life Cycle: From Viral Infection to Novel TherapeuticsMonday, March 22, 2021Talk 1: Viral Infection and Initiation of Thrombosis, Dr. Miriam RafailovichTalk 2: Targeted Degradation of SARS-CoV-2 Proteins, Dr. Peter TongeVIDEO Structure-based Design of Coronavirus Vaccine AntigensThursday, April 29, 2021Structure-based Design of Coronavirus Vaccine Antigens, Special guest speaker Dr. Jason S. McLellan, The University of Texas at AustinVIDEO Click here to read the original article

May 5, 2021 STONY BROOK, NY, May 5, 2021 – Stony Brook University has been ranked No. 39 among all U.S. universities in the QS US University Rankings 2021, moving up from No. 45 last year and placing in the top 5.5% nationwide. The University is also ranked as No. 5 among all colleges and universities in New York State. In addition to improving from #45 in 2020 to #39 in 2021, Stony Brook: Ranks #6 in the country on the diversity and internationalisation index Ranks #13 in the country among public universities Ranks as the #1 public university in New York The rankings are based on weighted scores in the categories of Employability, Diversity and Internationalization, Learning Experience and Research. Stony Brook’s strong showing is due in part to its high score in the category of Diversity and Internationalization, in which it ranks No. 6 nationally. This category includes the following indicators: gender pay gap, faculty gender diversity, ratio of undergraduates receiving Pell grants, students’ ethnicity, number of Fulbright students and ratio of international students. The QS World University Rankings: USA, is part of a subset of the QS World University Rankings, last published in June 2020, in which Stony Brook was ranked #373 globally and #68 in the U.S. The annual QS World University Rankings: USA is designed to assess how well universities are responding to the social, intellectual and economic challenges of our time. Universities are ranked according to research performance and career outcomes as well as a range of indicators assessing each institution’s social impact and attempts to foster equitability. Such indicators include gender pay gap, faculty gender diversity, ratio of undergraduate students receiving Pell Grants, and retention rate. The methodology also evaluates universities based on the efforts they are making to support the 17 UN Sustainable Development goals. Click here to read the original article

April 28, 2021 STONY BROOK, NY, April 28, 2021 – Scientists from Stony Brook University and the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior have pieced together a timeline of how brain and body size evolved in mammals over the last 150 million years. The findings, published in Science Advances, show that brain size relative to body size—long considered an indicator of animal intelligence—has not followed a stable scale over evolutionary time. The international team of 22 scientists, including biologists, evolutionary statisticians, and anthropologists, compared the brain mass of 1400 living and extinct mammals. For the 107 fossils examined—among them ancient whales and the most ancient Old World monkey skull ever found—they used endocranial volume data from skulls instead of brain mass data. The brain measurements were then analyzed along with body size to compare the scale of brain size to body size over deep evolutionary time. “A big surprise was that much of the variation in relative brain size of mammals that live today can be explained by changes that their ancestral lineages underwent following the mass extinction and other cataclysmic events,” says Jeroen Smaers, an evolutionary biologist, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Stony Brook University, and first author on the study. “This includes evolution of the biggest mammalian brains, such as the dolphins, elephants, and great apes, which all evolved their extreme proportions after the climate change event 23-33 million years ago.” According to the study, “big-brained” humans, dolphins, and elephants, for example, attained their proportions in different ways. Elephants increased in body size, but surprisingly, even more in brain size. Dolphins, on the other hand, generally decreased their body size while increasing brain size. Great apes showed a wide variety of body sizes, with a general trend towards increases in brain and body size. In comparison, ancestral hominins, which represent the human line, showed a relative decrease in body size and increase in brain size compared to great apes. The authors say that these complex patterns urge a re-evaluation of the deeply rooted paradigm that comparing brain size to body size for any species provides a measure of the species’ intelligence. Smaers points out: “At first sight, the importance of taking the evolutionary trajectory of body size into account may seem unimportant. After all, many of the big-brained mammals such as elephants, dolphins, and great apes also have a high brain-to-body size. But this is not always the case. The California sea lion, for example, has a low relative brain size, which lies in contrast to their remarkable intelligence.” By taking into account evolutionary history, the current study reveals that the California sea lion attained a low brain-to-body size because of the strong selective pressures on body size, most likely because aquatic carnivorans diversified into a semi-aquatic niche. In other words, they have a low relative brain size because of selection on increased body size, not because of selection on decreased brain size. “We’ve overturned a long-standing dogma that relative brain size can be equivocated with intelligence,” says Kamran Safi, a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and senior author on the study. “Sometimes, relatively big brains can be the end result of a gradual decrease in body size to suit a new habitat or way of moving—in other words, nothing to do with intelligence at all. Using relative brain size as a proxy for cognitive capacity must be set against an animal’s evolutionary history and the nuances in the way brain and body have changed over the tree of life.” The study further showed that most changes in brain size occurred after two cataclysmic events in Earth’s history: the mass extinction 66 million years ago and a climatic transition 23-33 million years ago. The authors conclude that efforts to truly capture the evolution of intelligence will require increased effort toward examining neuroanatomical features, such as brain regions known for higher cognitive processes. “Brain-to-body size is of course not independent of the evolution of intelligence,” emphasizes Smaers. “But it may actually be more indicative of more general adaptions to large scale environmental pressures that go beyond intelligence.” Click here to read the original article