The Sci-Files on Impact 89FM

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Qian Bates. Qian is a first-year student at MSU studying mechanical engineering. She recently did a project that analyzed the reasons behind the materials used to make paintbrushes. Oil brushes are made of natural fibers like hog or sable hair while acrylic brushes are all synthetically made from nylon or polyester and watercolor can be made of either but rarely both natural and synthetic. Qian, being an avid painter as well, took notice of these differences and decided to figure out why they were present. She used a scanning electron microscope to take pictures of the bristles from very close up in order to study the texture and size of the individual hairs to see if that affected how they behaved with certain paints. After taking pictures of the brushes, she used them to paint for a couple of weeks and took notes as to how each brush performed with different mediums. As she painted it became increasingly apparent that the synthetic (acrylic and watercolor) and natural hair (oil) brushes were not interchangeable. When the synthetic brushes were used for oil paint, Qian found that, after a couple of hours of use, the bristles would start to drop from the brush and be deposited on the page or canvas with the paint. The same thing happened with the natural oil brush when used for acrylic paint. She found that this came down to the chemicals in the paint and solvents and how they interact with the materials the bristles are made of. With watercolor paint, the story was a bit different. Qian found that the topography of the bristles, the texture, and the diameter of the bristles greatly affected how smoothly the paint was applied and how much control she had while painting.
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 Sukhwindar Ajimal. Heart disease accounts for one of every four deaths in America and heart attacks are a major contributor to this. A heart attack or acute myocardial infarction (AMI) occurs when the blood supply to the heart is cut off. Survivors of a heart attack are usually put on several medications to help improve their heart function, blood pressure, and other metabolic functions. Additionally, they are advised on lifestyle changes they can make (diet, exercise, etc.) to further improve their rehabilitation. Unfortunately, these measures have shown limited effectiveness, especially in urbanized cities such as Detroit. Individuals that suffer from heart attacks in Detroit are more likely to return to the hospital within a 30-day period for a heart-related problem than anywhere else in America.

One aspect in heart attacks that has not been capitalized on therapeutically is focused micronutritional (vitamins, minerals, etc.) management. Previous research in specific vitamins and minerals has shown to be beneficial in promoting the healing of the heart and improving metabolic activity. Sukhwindar's research focuses on breaking down and analyzing the impact micronutrition may have in improving heart recovery after a heart attack. He and his team are attempting to identify relationships between different micronutrients and their role in heart recovery. These relationships can then be used to predict a patient's risk for future heart issues and even provide personalized therapies for them.

After someone has a heart attack, their world is turned upside down. Giving a patient medications to prevent it from happening again is only half of the solution. These patients still need guidance in how to better their lifestyle and diet. Sukhwindar's research is not the end-all-be-all for dietary health. Rather, it is a bridge for patients to improve their nutritional intake with the help of healthcare providers.

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 Jasmine Jordan. One of the projects that Jasmine has worked on was about housing segregation in the dorms at MSU. Basically, Black and Latinx students are hyper concentrated in dorms on the edge of campus. This may contribute to feelings of isolation and alienation among them. While other universities have gone above and beyond to address students of color and housing, MSU has not. Studies show that students can spend up to 70% of their time in their dorms. Below is a paragraph from the introduction of the study:
For a school like Michigan State University, which requires all freshmen to live on campus, this means that experiences inside of them will have a significant impact on students’ welfare and their overall attitudes towards their university. Students do typically see gains from staying in the dorms, including African American students.2 However, the racial composition of these dorms may affect the wellbeing of those who live there, because Black and LatinX students who choose to go to Predominately White Universities/ Institutions (PWIs) routinely face challenges associated with their minority.
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! 

S.A.Harwood, M.B. Huntt,R. Mendenhall and J.A.Lewis, “Racial Microaggressions in the Residence Halls: Experiences of Students of Color at a Predominantly White University,” Journal of Diversity in Higher Education 5 no. 3 (2012): 159–173. 2. L.A. Flowers, “Effects of Living on Campus on African American Students’ Educational Gains in College,” NASPA Journal, 41 (2004): 277–293.

K.M. Foster, “Diet of Disparagement: The Racial Experiences of Black Students in a Predominately White University,” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 18, no. 4 (2005): 498–505; J. McCabe, “Racial and Gender Microaggressions on a Predominately White Campus: Experiences of Black, Latina/o and White Undergraduates,” Race, Gender, Class 16, no 1 (2009):133–115. 4. C.M. Loo and G. Rolison, “Alienation of Ethnic Minority Students at a Predominately White University,” Journal of Higher Education 57, no. 1 (1986): 56–77;J.C. Hernandez and M.A. Lopez, “Leaking Pipeline: Issues Impacting Latino/a College Student Retention,” Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory, and Practice 6, no. 1, (2004): 37–60.

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Megan Carrillo. Megan is a 4th-year medical student at Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine with the goal of pursuing a career in radiology. As someone interested in imaging modalities, she has authored several case reports concerning unique disease states and processes discovered through different imaging studies. One aspect of her research also raises the question of the stigmas surrounding mental illness and drug use, and their impact on the individual, group, community, and society.
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 Emma Dester and Saad Sharief. Emma is a dual-enrolled BS/MD student in the MSU Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering Department (BAE). She has been doing research in the Nano-Biosensors Laboratory for almost four years. Saad is a Ph.D. student, also in BAE, and is currently in his 4th year of the graduate program. His research interests lie in the synthesis and applications of nanomaterials, biosensors for pathogen detection, and anti-counterfeiting technologies to prevent drug trafficking.

The Nano-Biosensors Laboratory focuses on developing cost-effective and rapid diagnostic methods that require less equipment and labor than traditional approaches. For the past year, both Emma and Saad have been working on nanoparticle-based methods to rapidly identify foodborne pathogens. In the United States alone, these pathogens are responsible for over 3,000 deaths each year. Traditional methods for detecting these common pathogens (Salmonella spp., Listeria monocytogenes, Bacillus cereus, and Escherichia coli ) are a time-consuming process and require at least 24-48 hours. Their research focuses on the rapid identification of these organisms, reducing both the time and cost associated with these traditional methods. First, they use magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) to extract bacteria from contaminated food. After extracting bacterial DNA, they use a simple colorimetric test to detect the presence of target bacteria. This test uses a gold nanoparticle-based assay and has the potential to produce results in under five minutes. Although research is still ongoing, current progress shows this new method to be a promising time-saving and life-saving technique for detecting pathogens in food.

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 Hayden Stoub. Hayden is a graduate student in Kathleen Gallo's lab in the Department of Physiology. He studies lung cancer physiology and potential therapies targeted at both tumor and immune cells. Over the years, many advances have been made in how lung cancer is treated, improving both the effectiveness of the treatments, as well as diminishing the harmful side effects. In certain types of lung cancer, however, it’s been more difficult to develop targeted therapies that are effective, leaving patients with cytotoxic chemotherapy as their only option for treatment. Specifically, lung cancer with a mutated KRAS gene have been difficult to treat because they lack other mutations that are easily targetable. While KRAS itself has been targeted with limited success, Hayden’s work looks at ways to target the proteins that are turned on by KRAS, which are often much easier to drug. While it has been long understood that certain immune cells can detect and eliminate cancer cells that arise in the body, recent effort has been made in the cancer research community to understand how some immune cells can actually promote cancer progression. Again, KRAS mutations play a role, this time in the tumor immune microenvironment by promoting inflammation. Hayden’s research investigates how drugs that target this inflammation can prevent lung cancer progression. If this feedback loop between tumor cell progression and immune cell inflammation can be stopped, the aim is that the drugs used to do so can one day be used as effective cancer treatments.  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 Sarah Jacobson. Sarah examines housing occupations in Italy and West Germany in the 1970s. Although most researchers look at political activists who squatted, she instead looks at southern Italian migrants who occupied out of social need. She views migrants' involvement in occupations as an embodied form of collective action, or how migrants used the right to a home as means to push back on both social and political exclusion. By comparing occupation movements in Turin (Italy) and Frankfurt (former West Germany), she shows how migrants can be marginalized even within their own nation-state and denied some of the benefits of the so-called modern welfare state. As a whole, Sarah borrows from a historian Kathleen Canning's conception of "participatory citizenship" to show how migrant housing occupiers articulated their claims, engaged in contest, and made their own meanings of citizenship by pressuring municipal authorities to extend the purview of social services. This argument has many implications for current immigrants or refugees as it illuminates how groups and individuals can effectively be integrated into existing social security systems even prior to formalized citizenship. 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 Dr. Raisa Glabman.  Dr. Glabman is a veterinarian and fellow in the NIH Comparative Biomedical Research Program (CBSTP) in partnership with MSU. As a veterinary pathology resident and Ph.D. student, she is interested in how disease pathogenesis translates across species, and in assessing the validity of specific animal models of human disease, particularly cancer immunology. Her research at NIH is centered on the stromal component of the tumor microenvironment (TME), which also includes tumor cells, immune cells, vessels, and other signaling components. Tumor stroma is critical in disease, as it forms both a physical and immunological barrier to chemotherapeutics and immunotherapy. The tumor stroma and cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) in particular promote cancer progression and metastasis, leading to resistance to therapy and tumor recurrence. By selectively and locally targeting these tumor-promoting cells in murine models of human breast cancer, Dr. Glabman hopes to find new therapeutic strategies that activate the immune response in cancer patients.
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 Jen Zavalnitskaya. Jen is a second-year master's student in the Department of Entomology in the Vegetable Entomology lab. She studies insect ecology throughout agricultural landscapes and how more sustainable pest management strategies can be created in commercial agriculture. Most commercial vegetable cropping systems rely on chemical insecticides to suppress insect pests which can often be detrimental both economically and environmentally. Jen's research focuses on using habitat management within agriculture to better control insect pests. Her current work is focused on the overwintering biology of a key pest of asparagus, the asparagus beetle. Michigan is the top producer of asparagus in the nation. Thus, control of this pest is incredibly important to Michigan's asparagus farmers and economy. Jen hopes that by understanding more about the overwintering biology of asparagus beetles, Michigan's asparagus farmers can better understand how to manage habitat for more sustainable and effective pest 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 The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Hannah Jeffery. The focus of her project is dry beans, the kind used to make refried beans or Bush's baked beans. When prepared fresh, beans are a very nutritious food (high protein, iron, zinc, and fiber), and consuming beans is linked to a lower risk of malnutrition and diseases like type II diabetes and cancer. However, they have a long cooking time (an average of 90 minutes). This may explain why many home cooks in wealthy nations choose canned beans over-preparing fresh beans, although canned beans have tradeoffs like a higher sodium content. Long cooking times also strain local firewood supplies in nations like Africa and South America, where wood stoves are commonly used.
Not having enough wood to cook beans to completion may eventually lead to a shortage of key nutrients in the most vulnerable communities on Earth. The goal of this project is to identify the genetic mechanisms that control the cooking times of dry beans, and the long-term goal is to use this information to breed fast-cooking varieties of dry beans for public consumption. This will be accomplished by comparing gene expression in fast- and slow-cooking beans using bioinformatics and biochemical techniques. Of note, there is particular interest in introducing the fast cooking trait to yellow Manteca beans, which are reported to have high zinc and iron contents relative to other varieties.
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!