The Sci-Files on Impact 89FM

On this week’s SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Alissa Ball. Alissa is an undergraduate researcher in the Plant, Soil and Microbial Science Department looking at using fungi to clean up heavy metals. Current methods of heavy metal removal create toxic byproducts, so her work aims to investigate how effectively fungi can accumulate heavy metals, thus giving an environmentally friendly solution. Besides building an understanding of how fungi process these metals, her research will open up further possibilities for using fungi as eco-friendly tools in our everyday lives. 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 SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Jamie Liebold. This research explores Gap Junctional Intercellular Communication (GJIC) as a bioindicator of cancer. Cells use GJIC for the signaling of proteins and stresses. When a cell is stressed, it will close its gap junctions, signaling uncontrolled cell proliferation. These experiments have specifically focused on using GJIC to determine the carcinogenic effects of PFAS compounds. PFAS compounds are a classification of compounds of particular environmental concern, as they have been found in the water and soil of the Great Lakes region in high abundance.
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 SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Zach Miller. A therapeutic window is a dose range between the minimum effective drug dose (MED) to the minimum toxic drug dose (MTD). Many commonly-used cancer drugs, including chemotherapies such as Doxorubicin, are highly toxic to normal tissues and have narrow therapeutic windows. The drug concentration should constantly remain between the MED and MTD in order to produce risk-free therapeutic effects. In general, critically, administration of too much drug (above the therapeutic window) will cause serious side effects on normal human organs, leading to patient morbidity or even death. On the other hand, too little drug (below the therapeutic window) will result in a lack of treatment efficacy and may induce cancer drug resistance, which is the most important reason for the failure of chemotherapy. Herein, we studied the viability of two cell lines, a dox-sensitive cell line (BT459) and a non-dox-sensitive cell line (4T1), to estimate the therapeutic window of doxorubicin. We studied the cell viability to estimate the therapeutic window of DOX in vitro so as to guide the DOX dose in vivo.
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 SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Andrew Deleruyelle. How can one go about measuring the effects forests have on combatting climate change? As a student of forestry, Andrew has observed changing climates and wondered what can be done to quantify the largescale ecological patterns they’re experiencing. When Andrew finished an ecological data monitoring and analysis course taught by MSU professor Dr. Andrew Finley, he wanted to continue learning about the forest’s impact on these processes. Funded under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Forest Carbon Estimation (ForCE) project, his research under Dr. Finley led him to an existing toolset: The US Forest Service (USFS) National Volume and Biomass Estimator Libraries.  
These libraries proved to be useful for Forest Service employees, but remained inaccessible to the general public and mainly focused on the forests within North America. Andrew’s research has been focused on writing an interface in the R computer language for these libraries, a project he calls TimbuR. Andrew’s current focus, now that his research has concluded, is to bring TimbuR to the public as free-to-use software and expand its ability to serve global audiences.
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 SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Maddy Eischer. 
As a student pursuing a dual degree in Apparel & Textile Design and Genomics & Molecular Genetics, Maddy has long felt the societal pressure to pick one of her passions in school and in a future career. Instead of choosing between these two dichotomous interests, Maddy has managed to use her research to highlight the interconnection between the arts and the sciences by investigating scientific advancements in textiles as well as by designing and creating a collection of five unconventional and fashionable lab coats. This research explores the struggle to pick a career path, the importance of fashion and textiles in all facets of life, and the concept of professionalism and individuality within medical and scientific spaces.
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 SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Charlotte Best. Charlotte works in a lab that studies the influence of the gut microbiome (all the bacteria in our gut) on the brain and behavior. She is in charge of analyzing its effects on individual neurons and she also found that MRI impacts certain neurons in a negative way, which hasn't been documented before.
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 SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Lauren Emerick. Lauren is a junior studying Fisheries and Wildlife at Michigan State University, working for Dr. Roloff in the Applied Forest and Wildlife Ecology Lab. Lauren has been researching the behavioral changes in invasive wild pigs (Sus scrofa) in response to management activities in the state of Michigan. Wild pigs are a newly established invasive species in the state of Michigan, and they pose several threats; they uproot agricultural crops, cause damage to the landscape, and compete with native wildlife species. However, very little is understood about wild pig behavior and movement throughout the state. Lauren's research investigates the impact of wild pig management tactics currently being used by wildlife management officials on the behavior of this species, in hopes of informing managers the best course of action to take against this invasive wildlife species. Lauren used data collected from GPS collared wild pigs to assess the movement and behavior of the animals before and after management actions and analyzed the data to better understand the implications of our current methods of invasive wild pig management.
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 SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Gregory Marchal. Gregory's research investigated influenza vaccine hesitancy. This project uses experimental data from rural Wyoming to analyze how risk preferences and perceptions of uncertainty influence parental influenza vaccine hesitancy. Their key finding is that parents who perceive that there are more "unknowns" in the risks of vaccines, relative to the risks of diseases, tend to vaccinate at a lower rate. This relationship exists after controlling for trust in the healthcare system, so beliefs that vaccine risks are unknown are not just tied to whether someone trusts their doctor or the pharmaceutical industry.
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 SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Grant Bruninga.
Inland lake herring can be found in lakes all around the state of Michigan as well as the Great Lakes. However, recent increases in habitat destruction, chemical runoff, and pollution have caused significant declines in lake herring populations. Since lake herring are important prey species to much notable predatory fish such as salmon and have important ecological and commercial roles in society, their conservation is of particular concern to natural resources managers in Michigan. Grant’s work in the Molecular Ecology Lab at Michigan State looks at the history and diversity of these fish from a genetic perspective. His research, alongside the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, studies differences in lake herring genetic information and determines their origins as well as differences in populations across various lakes in Michigan. The data collected from this study will then be used as part of the Michigan Wildlife Action Plan for lake herring, currently being drafted by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, in the hopes of obtaining federal funding to help conserve these important species for years to come.
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 SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview June Oh. How can an English major help promote critical science literacy for STEM undergraduate students? As a humanities scholar, June has been a part of an IRB-approved interdisciplinary pedagogy project that develops a first-year writing course for STEM undergraduate students. With a team of collaborators in the College of History, Philosophy, and Science, Education, and English, this project leads an effort in designing a college-wide first-year writing course that seeks to foster culturally responsible student (science) identity and critical literacy through five inquiry-based writing projects. This project has been funded by SUTL (Scholarship of Undergraduate Teaching and Learning) at MSU since 2019. With another year of support from MSU, the team is now applying the pilot writing program to fourteen different sections with ~230 students in total. Bringing her expertise in developing student writing and inclusive pedagogy in English classrooms, June is currently coding student writing and further analyzing promising early results on responsible identity formation data. 
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!