The Sci-Files on Impact 89FM

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Chad Hall, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Linguistics. Chad is investigating the speech of Lebanese Americans in Dearborn, Michigan. There is reason to believe that in Dearborn which is unique in the strength of its Arabic community, that an Arabic American English dialect has developed. Typically immigrants to a new country display language features from their heritage language but only if they are first or second-generation immigrants. Chad believes that in Dearborn, unique Arabic features can be seen in the English of the third and fourth generations (and beyond) who are monolingual English speakers. This is evidence that a truly crystalized ethnic variety has emerged in the community which is quite rare in the United States. Unlike other well-known crystalized U.S. ethnic varieties like African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) and varieties of Latinx English, Arabic Americans have very little coverage in this area. Chad will be providing the first documentation of this unique dialect.
If you’re interested in talking about your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, please email Chelsie and Danny at [email protected]. Check The Sci-Files out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube!

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Alec Bailey, Anna Graffeo, Robert Gustke, Nic Weller from the Department of Mechanical Engineering.  McLaren Greater Lansing, an acute care hospital split between two campuses in Lansing, is in the process of building a new hospital facility adjacent to Michigan State University. This new facility will feature a rehabilitation gym used for occupational therapy services to help patients achieve the highest level of independence possible with everyday tasks. Ideally, this is done in a way that accurately and realistically represents tasks patients will face outside of a hospital setting. An aspect of the rehabilitation gym that McLaren would like to improve is the simulation of entering and exiting a vehicle to better prepare patients for this action with their own vehicle, regardless of height. A height-adjustable simulator would assist patients in gaining the necessary skills and knowledge in their practice sessions for a successful transfer upon discharge.
The goal of this project was to design and assemble a car transfer simulator that could be raised or lowered to different standard car heights. The project team accomplished this by designing a mounting mechanism for a truck cab that was donated to the hospital for attachment to a hydraulic lift. The team researched and purchased a lift that would properly support the donated truck cab, mounting mechanism, and patient according to the listed weight capacity. To account for other safety concerns, emergency supports were made in the case of lift failure, and pinch points were reduced across the simulator. The cab was mounted with these safety considerations and delivered to the hospital for installation.
If you’re interested in talking about your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, please email Chelsie and Danny at [email protected]. Check The Sci-Files out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube! 

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Selin Akgun. Selin is working as a research assistant in the Multiple Literacies in Project-Based Learning (ML-PBL) project at CREATE for STEM Institute. As a part of the ML-PBL team, she works with 3rd-grade elementary school teachers. She supports their teaching practices through professional learning sessions and virtual curriculum materials for 3rd-grade science units. Selin’s research focuses on promoting students’ science sense-making, achievement, and social and emotional learning. One aspect of her research also raises the question of what counts as learning, and the role of culture, social context, and identity on students’ learning process.  Recently, she enjoys reading about the applications of artificial intelligence (AI) in educational settings considering their societal and ethical implications for teachers and students.
If you’re interested in talking about your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, please email Chelsie and Danny at [email protected]. Check The Sci-Files out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube! 

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Maria Berry. In her undergraduate research, Maria studies the effectiveness of a high school biology curriculum in fostering students' ability to understand complex biological processes. The ConnectedBiology curriculum uses a multi-level simulation of deer mice to study the process of evolution. It's divided into five units, each covering vast biological topics and phenomena, from those on the population level to those on the molecular level. Maria is currently examining how frequently and how well students can make connections between these vast topics- for example, can students explain why variations of a protein in deer mice might eventually cause predators to prey on certain colors of mice more than others, and what causes these protein variations in the first place? She hopes to determine if this way of teaching high school biology- as a handful of larger topics, all interconnected- is more impactful to student learning than teaching all of these topics as separate entities.
If you’re interested in talking about your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, please email Chelsie and Danny at [email protected]. Check The Sci-Files out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube! 

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Jake Sawecki. Jake is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife and is a member of the Predator Ecology and Astacology lab. Jake joined the lab last year and has adopted the primary research role on the Huron-Michigan Predator Diet Study that began in 2017. His research focuses on the dietary behaviors of salmon and trout species within lakes Huron and Michigan. Over the last several decades the Great Lakes' food webs have undergone several changes. The introduction of invasive species, such as the round goby, zebra mussels, alewife, and rainbow smelt (to name a few), have altered the ecosystem significantly. Competition between native prey fish and these new invasive fish have drastically changed the food web and forced fisheries scientists to make difficult decisions about the management of the Great Lakes. One of the most successful invasive fish species, the alewife, exploded in population size in the Great Lakes several decades ago. As a result, pacific salmon were introduced to consume these prey fish as a method of biological control and created a multibillion-dollar sport fishery in doing so. However, prey fish availability in the lakes has continued to change throughout the years and directly impact the feeding behavior of top predators within these lakes. Understanding the diet of these top predators is vital to the sustainability of the sport fishery. Put simply, if there isn't enough food for the top predators, they will starve and there will be no more fish to catch. Jake's research focuses on identifying and quantifying the diet of the major predator fish within lakes Huron and Michigan (rainbow trout, salmon, lake trout, walleye). This information will help inform the folks involved in managing these fish populations about how many of a particular species the lakes may be able to support based on prey availability so that we can avoid putting more fish in the lakes than there is food to support them. Since 2017, with the help of several collaborators (MI DNR, United States Fisheries and Wildlife Service, United States Geological Survey, etc) and volunteer anglers, the project team has processed over 12,000 fish stomachs. With one more year of stomach collections on the calendar, Jake expects the total number of fish stomachs processed to reach nearly 20,000.
If you’re interested in talking about your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, please email Chelsie and Danny at [email protected]. Check The Sci-Files out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube! 

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Shelby Dechow. Shelby is a 5th year Ph.D. student in Dr. Robert Abramovitch's lab. Her research focuses on how Mycobacterium tuberculosis senses and adapts to its host environment. M. tuberculosis (Mtb) is responsible for around 10 million new tuberculosis (TB) infections annually and causes respiratory disease in humans. Shelby's primary focus is understanding how Mtb uses environmental pH as a cue to modulate its physiology for survival in macrophages - an acidic environment. During infection, Mtb will arrest its growth and can remain in a quiescent state for decades. Acidic pH stress of the macrophage has been shown to be one of the initial cues Mtb encounters during infection. Using genetic screening techniques, mutants that resist arresting their growth at acidic pH were identified. Furthermore, all identified mutations occurred within a single gene. Shelby's research is focused on understanding how this particular gene controls Mtb physiology under acidic conditions, particularly during infection.
If you’re interested in talking about your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, please email Chelsie and Danny at [email protected]. Check The Sci-Files out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube! 

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Brijen Miyani, Liang Zhao, and Maddie Spooner. Wastewater-based Epidemiology used to predict waves of SARS-CoV-2 in the Detroit region (Macomb, Wayne, and Oakland county). The increment/decrement in the number of SARS-CoV-2 cases could be predicted at least 14 days in advance by monitoring wastewater. This could help the public health officials prepare for the surge in hospitalization as well as the safe opening of the economy. This model could be replicated to other viral diseases as well.
If you’re interested in talking about your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, please email Chelsie and Danny at [email protected]. Check The Sci-Files out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube! 

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Kelsey Merreck Wagner. Wagner is a printmaker/painter/textile artist, environmental activist, and second-year Ph.D. Anthropology student with certifications/specializations in Gender, Justice and Environmental Change, Human-Animal Studies, and Community Engagement. Wagner has her B.A. in Studio Arts from Western Michigan University (2013) and her M.A in Appalachian Studies: Sustainability (2017). Her research focuses on human-elephant conflict and elephant ecotourism in Southeast Asia and incorporates community-based art to raise awareness, spark discussion, build capacity, and reimagine a more socially and environmentally just future for all species on the planet. Wagner’s research is insistent upon participatory processes that include community members and marginalized voices, respect for humans, animals, and the environment, and radical creativity to solve problems. She has worked around the world in various community arts and education contexts, most recently in Siem Reap, Cambodia at Fauna in Focus’ Nature Discovery Center, where she worked as the exhibitions coordinator, designing and creating exhibits, activities, and text for their natural history museum. She also makes her own environmental art that draws on anthropological theory on capitalism, species extinction, and human-environment relationships, and has exhibits about human-elephant relationships, bats, and plastic consumption/reduction. Wagner looks forward to getting back to Southeast Asia to see more elephants and engage in further community-based arts and environmental work.

If you’re interested in talking about your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, please email Chelsie and Danny at [email protected]. Check The Sci-Files out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube!

Kelsey's website

Current art project with plastic

Upside Down/Downside Up

Plastic Project

Tree of Life

Elephantine in the Anthropocene

From Bangkok to Boone

Collective Vigilance: Speaking for the New River

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Sam Evalt. What does creativity look like in practice? Sam's dissertation study focused on creativity in practice through the use of resources. He conducted a comparative study between the education and culinary fields. Resources across the fields mean people such as mentors or colleagues, books, the internet, etc. Sam views the culinary field's view of creativity as an entry point for education, and in particular teachers and education researchers. Since chefs use recipes as a resource to create or even recreate, and teachers use other teacher's recipes, also known as lesson plans, to teach. So he wondered, what does creativity mean? How does creativity look in practice? And what is the role of a resource in shaping creativity?
If you’re interested in talking about your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, please email Chelsie and Danny at [email protected]. You can ask questions about future episodes here. Check The Sci-Files out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube! 

“We are all made of star-stuff”, is aptly quoted by Carl Sagan, a famous astronomer. Everything including the oxygen that we breathe, the carbon in our body, iron in our blood, etc. were cooked in the stars by fusing lighter elements into heavier ones, starting with basic hydrogen. Even heavier elements like gold and uranium are formed in more explosive events like supernovae and neutron star mergers. On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Rahul Jain. Rahul's research focuses on understanding the process of the formation of these elements, in an attempt to decode the mystery of our existence. One aspect of his research includes building computer models of stars using our current knowledge to find out what is missing in the bigger picture. But the more interesting aspect is to literally create the star-like conditions in the laboratory and measure different properties of the exotic nuclei created to fill in the current gaps in our knowledge. He then updates his computer models and matches those to astronomical observations.
If you’re interested in talking about your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, please email Chelsie and Danny at [email protected]. You can ask questions about future episodes here. Check The Sci-Files out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube!