The Sci-Files on Impact 89FM

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Ryley Mancine and Donald Gusfa, students in the MSU College of Human Medicine and Osteopathic Medicine.
Disordered eating, a subclinical spectrum of abnormal eating behaviors that can lead to eating disorders, is a significant problem among athletes. During adolescence, athletes experience a rapid change in body shape and composition. Following these changes, demands to meet sport-specific body ideals may lead to the development of disordered eating. Additionally, not all athletes have a body that fits the sport-specific ideal and may experience pressure to achieve this ideal body type. A common belief in many endurance sports is that performance will improve with weight loss, as some athletes are initially able to perform well following weight loss and use of pathogenic weight control behaviors. However, this behavior frequently leads to eating disorders. Early identification to prevent the devastating consequences of eating disorders is essential. This research is designed to develop and validate the Disordered Eating Screen for Athletes (DESA-6). The DESA- 6 is a six-question screening tool meant to identify athletes at risk for disordered eating, which may progress to clinical health complications as mentioned above. The Disordered Eating Screen for Athletes (DESA-6) would permit clinicians, dietitians, coaches, and athletic trainers to quickly and easily screen athletes of all levels who may be at risk for disordered eating behaviors.
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 Kaelyn Sanders. Kaelyn is a recent graduate of The Ohio State University, where she received her Bachelor’s in Criminal Justice Studies & Criminology and Sociology with a minor in Security and Intelligence.
She is now an incoming Ph.D. student at Michigan State University’s School of Criminal Justice Program. Her research interests are mainly in corrections, prisoner reentry, and school shootings as well as mass shootings. Kaelyn is interested in examining how we can better understand the experiences of people who are incarcerated and find ways to better prepare them for re-entry into the community while incarcerated as well as improving reentry services. In terms of school shootings and mass shootings, Kaelyn is interested in examining the culture of these events and measures we can take to prevent these instances or at least lower the number of injuries and fatalities.  

As a member of the 2019 SROP Cohort last summer, Kaelyn researched how different perpetrator characteristics and school characteristics influenced the likelihood of a shooting being fatal versus nonfatal. Her hope is that the findings from her research can be used to better threat assessments for potential shooters and identity what practical steps schools can take to protect their students and staff. 

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! 

Resources:

https://everytownresearch.org

https://www.sandyhookpromise.org/get_educated

https://caps.msu.edu

https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/find-help/index.shtml

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Lauren Jernstadt. When Lauren is not working as an undergraduate research assistant in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, where she studies single molecule biology using fluorescent laser tweezers, Lauren is discussing with her former Bioethics Capstone instructor Kathleen Lowenstein a very different topic: the ethical implications of telehealth, specifically services that provide contraception.
Telecontraceptive services work to provide users with a more affordable and convenient means of procuring prescriptions for birth control. Instead of waiting months for an in-person doctor's visit that can cost hundreds of dollars without insurance, telecontraceptive services immediately provide users with a medical questionnaire to screen for potential contra indicators (medical conditions that can counteract or mitigate the effects of certain hormonal treatments such as heart conditions of recent pregnancy) and summarize their health history. Within days, a virtual patient care team contacts the user to overview their medical history and prescribe the user with a method suitable for their health and needs, and for users who do not utilize insurance, telecontraceptive services provide a wide array of competitively priced methods. Users do not even leave their houses to pick up their prescriptions as these services mail it to their front door. Due to their combined convenience and affordability, telecontraception was a popular form of telehealth service even before their rise due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Lauren's research on telecontraception focuses more specifically on the trade-offs between telecontraception's benefits against the drawbacks that come with a lack of physical patient-physician interactions, looking more closely at the impact on screening procedures and long-term health outcomes. It is recommended that women visit their OB/GYN on a regular basis for screening procedures such as breast exams and Pap smear tests, screenings that should be performed by a trained medical professional rather than at home. Telecontraceptive services sometimes offer at-home screening options for STDs and HPV, but the accuracy of at-home tests can vary. Lauren's work seeks to find the balance between the convenience of telecontraceptive services and the continued need for physical patient-doctor interactions, a balance that is critical in a world where it is necessary to understand when in-person interactions are needed for maintaining proper health. 
Here is a list containing all the different telecontraceptive services in the world and their availability. 

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 Abdulrahman Alharthi, Erin Sawyer, and Kaylie Williams.

Abdulrahman, Erin, and Kaylie are all undergraduates at MSU and work as research assistants in Dr. Kimberly Fenn’s Sleep and Learning Lab. Abdulrahman Alharthi is a 4th-year undergraduate student majoring in Biomedical Laboratory Science with a concentration in Clinical Chemistry and minor in Leadership in Integrated Learning. Erin Sawyer is a 2nd-year undergraduate student and Alumni Distinguished scholar in the Honors College studying Psychology and Data Science, with minors in Social Science Quantitative Data Analysis and Japanese. Kaylie Williams is a 4th-year undergraduate student pursuing a major in Psychology with minors in Health Promotion and Cognitive Science. This work was conducted under the direction of Elle Wernette, a 4th-year graduate student.

In this episode, the three undergraduates discuss a line of research that focuses on the relationship between sleep and memory. After memories are first formed, or encoded, they remain in a vulnerable state, subject to decay or distortion. Consolidation processes help strengthen memories against these vulnerabilities, and some of these processes take place during sleep. Prior research has shown that sleep, specifically slow-wave sleep, consolidates memory for information that is actively studied, or intentionally encoded. They recently found that sleep also consolidates some memories that are incidentally encoded, which are memories that are formed when an individual works with but does not actively try to remember information. Their data suggested that the extent to which memory is consolidated during sleep may be based on the strength of the memory traces. To further explore this, they investigated the hypothesis that sleep consolidates strong, but not weak, memories after incidental encoding. They also sought to determine which components of sleep contribute to this mnemonic benefit. 

These results give us insight into the relationship between sleep and memory consolidation, showing that sleep may consolidate more information than was previously thought. Sleep not only helps us remember the information we are intentionally trying to remember, but also seems to help us remember useful information that we encounter in passing.

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 Paige Cordts from the MSU Department of Mechanical Engineering. Currently, she is working to understand the difficulties individuals with disabilities face when accessing and using transportation, whether that be public or private. Individuals with physical disabilities face many challenges in society, with one of the largest being barriers related to transportation. The most common forms of transportation used by physically disabled individuals are personal vehicles, public transport, and paratransit services. However, few studies currently exist that identify specific challenges for these individuals related to transportation. A survey was designed to document some of these challenges, as well as to test the waters for a possible solution – autonomous vehicles. Autonomous vehicles are a promising solution for a multitude of reasons, including safety and accessibility, and especially for issues related to human behavior and availability of transport in given areas. The first version of the survey provided tremendous insight into these transportation issues – with over 450 respondents – and she is currently working towards publishing these data. Additionally, she has worked on and continues to work on the development of devices that support the mobility of those with disabilities.
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 Jenna Walters. Jenna is a M.S. student studying the influence of extreme heat conditions on blueberry pollination and bee nutrition. Her work draws from an applied ecology background as she studies the entire blueberry crop system- pollen physiology and chemistry, fruit yield and quality, and bee health and diet preference. Jenna has broad interests in pollination ecology across natural and managed systems and is particularly interested in understanding the ramifications of climate change on crop and bee health.
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 Lauren Collier-Spruel.
Lauren is a doctoral candidate in the Michigan State Organizational Psychology program whose research focuses on the effectiveness of diversity interventions at work. Specifically, she has completed a variety of projects on ally intervention and ally effectiveness. There are a lot of people who say they are allies for people who have been marginalized by society. But is it enough to be an ally? The research discussed today suggests that it's not. 

Here are some resources for allyship: 

• https://www.dismantlecollective.org/resources/ 
• https://theantioppressionnetwork.com/allyship/ 
• https://sojo.net/articles/our-white-friends-desiring-be-allies   

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 of The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny speak with Kevin Kraef, a Junior at MSU's James Madison College and Eli Broad School of Business majoring in International Relations and Supply Chain Management. Kevin conducted his research on behalf of MSU's Institute for Public Policy and Social Research (IPPSR) directed by Dr. Matthew Grossman. In the past year, he investigated the effects of earned income tax credits (EITC), child tax credits (CTC), and publicly funded programs like Medicare and Medicaid in providing Americans with affordable healthcare. While examining these programs and their implementation in various states, Kevin also compared US programs to those in other countries like Germany, Switzerland, the UK, and South Korea to observe any differences in cost distribution, quality of treatment, accessibility, and patient satisfaction. Finally, Kevin focused on understanding and finding a solution to disadvantaged communities and their lack of access to affordable healthcare in the US by comparing different systems and poverty reduction methods from Michigan, Massachusetts, Texas, and California and other countries, specifically Germany and the UK. The results of the research demonstrate that in order to provide affordable healthcare for the majority of the US, a combination of EITC, CTC, and public programs like Medicare and Medicaid would be most effective alongside current private health insurance providers in our current system. However, in exploring other systems, a total reform towards a more universal system has a more promising outlook on providing equal access to affordable healthcare for all, including disadvantaged minority communities while providing varying degrees of cost burden on the taxpayer base.
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 Jeremy Gingrich from the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology. There are over 300 million tons of plastics produced globally every year. Since plastics break down poorly in the environment, this number compounds yearly and has led to ubiquitous human consumption of plastics through food, water, and airborne dust. One main chemical component of plastics are bisphenols. Bisphenols are endocrine-disrupting chemicals, or EDCs, that can act like promiscuous hormones. For example, the most common bisphenol, bisphenol A (BPA), is both an estrogen-like and a testosterone-like chemical. Since dysfunctional hormone signaling can be particularly harmful during pregnancy and early life, it’s important to understand what happens if you’re exposed gestationally to chemicals like BPA. Jeremy’s work focuses on how BPA and emerging or “replacement” bisphenol chemicals, like bisphenol S (BPS), have on the development and function of the placenta. Although transient, the placenta is the first organ you develop, and functions like the lungs, kidneys, and liver during early life. Often thought of as a barrier to the external environment, the placenta is semi-permeable and allows the transfer of some chemicals, including bisphenols, from the mother into fetal circulation. Using sheep as an animal model, Jeremy has identified a previously unknown defect in placental development following gestational exposure to an emerging bisphenol, BPS, but not BPA. Understanding exposure outcomes like these help drive regulatory decisions regarding the safe use of bisphenols in consumer products.
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 Harnoor Kaur. Harnoor is an undergraduate student at MSU majoring in Criminal Justice with an additional major in Political Science and a minor in Peace and Justice Studies. She is extremely interested in research involving civil liberties and human rights. During her freshman year at MSU, she started undergrad research under Professor DeJong in the Criminal Justice School on the misrepresentation of transgender homicide in the media. 

There were 28 transgender homicide victims in 2019, most of them belonging to the African American race. Her research under Professor DeJong focused on how the Media reports these homicides, and the details of their reporting. Through her research, Harnoor found out that new media outlets still use dead names (names individuals used before they transitioned) and also misgendered (using the wrong pronouns for an individual) victims. Sometimes they also used pre-transition pictures of victims. This research is extremely important because of the recommendations that come out of it, namely just increased sensitivity amongst the media, and the need for more awareness amongst the general population about the issues the trans community, specifically black trans individuals continue to deal with every day.

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!