The Sci-Files on Impact 89FM

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Lexi Singstock. One of the Robison Lab's primary focuses is on how mice react to certain behavioral scenarios and how this affects their brain chemistry and behaviors. Lexi's research coincides with this by specifically looking at mast cells and if they play a role in controlling mice's behavior. Mast cells are specific immune cells that are distributed throughout the body and act to regulate the immune system that can also interact with glial cells and neurons within the brain. Because of this, it was hypothesized if mast cells have any role in modulating behavior as well as the immune system. The data is promising, however, this is preliminary and further testing with more mice needs to be performed to solidify the initial findings. If this data is correct, then it may be possible to control behaviors such as anxiety and motivation in mice with mast cell manipulation. 
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! 

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Quercus Hamlin. Quercus is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences working under Drs. David Hyndman, Anthony Kendall, and Sherry Martin in the Michigan State University Hydrogeology Lab. He is entering his 6th year with the group after working as an undergraduate researcher and earning his Master’s degree this past spring. Quercus works on water quality issues from nutrient loading in the Great Lakes region. “Nutrients” refer to the chemical elements nitrogen and phosphorus, which are both essential to plant growth. However, excess nutrients in water can lead to a suite of problems affecting human and biological health, as well as economic industries like tourism and fish. Nutrient water quality problems are present throughout the Great Lakes and have been particularly alarming in Lake Erie, where massive harmful algal blooms have led to drinking water bans in Toledo, Ohio. Quercus’s work primarily includes mapping nutrient inputs in time and space across the Great Lakes Region. His maps answer the question: If we went to any spot in the Great Lakes Region, approximately how much nitrogen is your septic tank discharging? Approximately how much fertilizer was applied to that cornfield? These maps, called SENSEmap, or the Spatially Explicit Nutrient Source Estimate map, are provided to watershed managers and planners through the Tipping Point Planner. He is currently leading a team of undergraduates to expand SENSEmap to the full extent of the Great Lakes states and Ontario, Canada for increased management and scientific use. Quercus also studies nitrate in groundwater across Michigan, a form of nitrogen that is associated with blue baby syndrome and cancer when ingested routinely from drinking water.
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! 

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Marissa Cortright and Emily Castillo. Emily and Marissa investigate the views of psychiatrists, patients with depression, and the general public on Psychiatric Electroceutical Interventions (PEIs), or technologies that use electrical or magnetic stimulation in the treatment of depression. These PEIs include electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), deep brain stimulation (DBS), and adaptive brain implants (ABI). They study various neuroethical themes, including perceived invasiveness and the effect on personality/sense of self. Their research is part of an NIH BRAIN grant and will be used to inform a national survey. Understanding these perceptions about invasiveness and sense of self is important because it will help improve clinician’s conversations with patients, inform policies surrounding their use, and contribute to public understanding of these interventions. 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, and YouTube!

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny are joined by Cameron McClarren from Impact 89FM Sports Team to interview Derek Lasker and Brad Behan. Sports analytics is a rapidly growing industry across the world, and many pro sports teams have begun to utilize them in an attempt to gain a competitive advantage above their rivals. Statistical methods can be used to evaluate players, teams, contracts, draft prospects, and trades, as well as to optimize team strategies in different situations. The area of hockey analytics that is persistently trying to evolve is player success prediction. If a team can predict how good any given player can be in the future, they can use that to build their team and acquire players that will help them succeed for years to come. Derek and Brad's research attempts to predict how well a prospective NHL player will perform once he makes the league, based on his performance in the Canadian Hockey League (CHL), a conglomerate of 3 junior leagues across Canada and the United States. The ultimate goal of the research is to develop a model that can predict how well any player can perform when he enters the NHL, based on his performance in whichever league he previously played in. You can learn more about this project on their research group's website. 
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, and YouTube! 

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Emily Mensch. Emily is a 2nd-year master's student in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife in the Applied Behavioral Ecology Lab. She studies chemical and behavioral ecology in the invasive sea lamprey and how this can be applied to management and conservation efforts in the Great Lakes and beyond. The invasive sea lamprey has been historically detrimental to the Great Lakes- decimating both economic and ecological resources. While current control techniques (such as dams and pesticides) are successful in controlling this species, there is societal pressure to remove barriers and reduce pesticide use, and climate change will likely create more management challenges. This means that alternative or supplementary control mechanisms are necessary. Emily’s research focuses on one such alternative control technique- using smell to manipulate fish movement. Many aquatic organisms, sea lamprey included, are able to smell when a member of the same species is injured or dead. This scent, called an alarm cue, elicits a “fear” reaction in the fish, resulting in behavior patterns such as avoidance. Emily is working to understand the chemical identification of this alarm cue so that it can be used as a repellent in invasive sea lamprey management, with implications for use in the conservation of imperiled species such as the pacific lamprey. Scientifically, this would also be the first full description of a fish alarm cue. 
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, and YouTube! 

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Samantha Finkbeiner. Samantha is a Senior Neuroscience major in the Lyman Briggs College at Michigan State University. Currently, she's leading a project in Dr. Rebecca Knickmeyer's Lab centered around infant fear reactivity and measuring this reactivity using a program called DeepLabCut (DLC). Samantha has been developing a methodology on how to accurately use and train DLC in order to automatically label body parts of infants with minimal training. The goal overall for the project is to be able to train a neural network to accurately track the movement of the infants in order to determine the fear reactivity level of the infant.  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, and YouTube! 

About 30 - 60 classical novae occur in the Milky Way each year. These luminous events can appear in the night sky like "new stars" and are often observed by amateur astronomers.  Classical nova explosions occur in stellar binaries involving a compact white dwarf and a hydrogen-rich donor star.  On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Tamas Budner. Tamas is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Physics and Astronomy who conducts research at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory. Tamas is an experimental nuclear astrophysicist studying radioactive isotopes to better understand the underlying thermonuclear reactions in these events and how they affect the properties of novae.  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, and YouTube! 

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Justin Scott.  Justin is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Justin's work has focused on universal medical device design, in particular with regards to wheelchair users. His research has included collecting the properties of wheelchair users' tissues and modeling how pressures experienced while seated affect them. Michigan State is one of the few universities in the United States with an adaptive sports clubs on campus and Justin collaborates with them.  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, and YouTube! 

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Chris Gottschalk. Chris is in the final year of his Ph.D. candidacy in the joint Plant Breeding, Genetics, and Biotechnology and Horticulture program. His dissertation research is focused on deciphering the genetic mechanisms that cause biennial bearing in apple trees under the mentorship of Dr. Steve van Nocker, a developmental geneticist in the Horticulture Department. Biennial bearing is a phenomenon that is characterized as a cyclic pattern between high- and low-production seasons that affects some high-value apple cultivars, such as Honeycrisp. Chris also studies the diversity of floral initiation in apple cultivars and wild species, evaluates management practices and plant growth regulators used in manipulating floral initiation, and is breeding new apple cultivars that have red-flesh! Aside from his research on flowering, Chris is a co-principle investigator of the Great Lakes Cider Apple Collection. The collection is a large-scale apple variety trial - consisting of nearly 100 varieties - being used to identify which hard cider apple varieties are best suited for production in Michigan. 
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, and YouTube! 

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Kathryn (Kati) Ford. There is an increased interest in using Microbial Electrosynthesis to generate carbon-neutral biofuels to replace fossil fuels. This is a technique that uses microorganisms capable of using an electrode to gain energy. Kati is a graduate student in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at MSU, who works to engineer an electroautotrophic microorganism. This is an organism that can grow using only an electrode and carbon dioxide. This engineered organism can then be fed carbon dioxide pollution and electricity to make biofuels.
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, and YouTube!