Anna Raschke about PFAS in the Watershed

On this week's episode of The Sci-Files, your hosts Mari and Dimitri interview Kiyotaka Suga, a PhD candidate in Second Language Studies.

One of the engaging questions for second language (L2) teachers is how to introduce grammar instruction to help adult L2 learners develop their well-balanced communicative abilities. Most L2 teachers may believe intuitively that engaging in output (speaking and writing) practice in L2 classrooms is crucial for adult L2 learners to develop their productive skills. Despite such common beliefs about output practice, the roles of output in L2 grammar acquisition have not been fully explained with empirical evidence. Previous studies that investigated the roles of output practice for L2 grammar learning have reported mixed results, which were limited due to their primary reliance on indirect measures of grammar learning processes (e.g., note-taking, underlining, and retrospective interviews). Since these indirect measures may not have fully captured learners’ learning processes (i.e., how output practice in L2 classrooms can allow learners to pay more attention to the target grammatical feature that they are learning), it is valuable to employ a more sensitive online objective measure (i.e., eye-tracking) to further examine the roles of output in L2 grammar acquisition. 

In his dissertation study, Kiyo is using eye-tracking to examine how engaging in L2 output practice can push adult L2 learners to pay more attention to grammar features that they are learning and then eventually facilitate their grammar learning. The findings of this study will clarify the roles of output practice in L2 classroom instruction with empirical evidence. Pedagogically, the findings will allow L2 teachers to incorporate empirically-based output practice into their daily teaching practices.

If you’re interested in discussing your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, please email Mari and Dimitri at thescifileswdbm@gmail.com.  Check The Sci-Files out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube!

Bryan Stanley is a PhD student in the Physics Department. He does Physics Education Research (PER), where he primarily studies informal physics programs. Informal physics programs create physics learning spaces outside of the traditional classroom settings. Examples of these types of programs include, but are not limited to, summer camps, planetarium shows, public lectures, student groups, science festivals, and open houses. The events that these programs host are sometimes called public engagement or outreach. These types of programs can impact and support youth and adult audiences and university student volunteers in building their science identity, sense of belonging, and sense of community. Bryan studies the structures of informal physics program to better understand the fundamental aspects of these spaces and to help support informal physics practitioners. He also studies how these programs impact their university student volunteers, finding that volunteering can influence students' career paths.

If you’re interested in discussing your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, please email Mari and Dimitri at thescifileswdbm@gmail.com.  Check The Sci-Files out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube! 

When you get a scrape or cut, you might reach for a tube of Neosporin, but have you ever wondered what exactly this antimicrobial ointment does to bacteria, or how bacteria might avoid being killed? Bacteria possess a dizzying variety of specialized protein machinery that help them resist our medicines, complicating treatment of infection. Natasha, a graduate student in the department of microbiology and molecular genetics, studies these antibiotic resistance machines with the help of cryo-electron microscopy, a technique that uses high-powered microscopes and frozen samples to capture snapshots of protein molecules in action and build 3D models that reveal their intricate structures. This visual approach can help us make sense of microbial behavior, understand why certain antibiotics are not effective on some types of bacteria, and hopefully help us develop more effective medications to treat infections.

If you’re interested in discussing your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, please email Mari and Dimitri at thescifileswdbm@gmail.com.  Check The Sci-Files out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube! 

Blood transfusions can be life-saving procedures for patients in need. However, they can also impart much more devastating complications, leading to poorer outcomes than prior to transfusion, such as infection, inflammation, and even death. This is in part due to the red blood cell “storage lesion”, which refers to the irreversible metabolic and physiological damages that occur to red blood cells (RBCs) during their storage period, such as membrane damage, protein/lipid oxidation, glycation, cell lysis, and many other detrimental changes vital to proper RBC function. Logan Soule is a 5th year PhD candidate in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Logan’s work focuses on attempts to alleviate the development of the storage lesion. His lab believes that a culprit behind these damages is the significantly high sugar content in RBC preservatives, which is 8x higher than diabetic patients. His work highlights the benefits of storing RBCs at physiological glucose levels, leading to exceptionally better RBC functionality than traditional hyperglycemic storage. However, normoglycemic storage requires “feeding” the cells with a concentrated glucose solution as the RBCs metabolize the glucose, limiting this technique’s application, until now. Logan has designed and implemented an automated glucose feeding device to successfully maintain normoglycemic conditions of stored RBCs. These findings implicate exciting changes in transfusion medicine that are more feasible than ever before. Storing blood under normoglycemic conditions is now not only possible but has significant potential to lead to better patient outcomes.

If you’re interested in discussing your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, please email Mari and Dimitri at thescifileswdbm@gmail.com.  Check The Sci-Files out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube! 

Period poverty is an important, yet often ignored, public health crisis. The social shame and steep cost of menstrual products often push low-income people to adopt unhygienic practices during menstruation, negatively impacting their health, education, and dignity.
 
Specifically, period poverty significantly impacts young menstruators in universities. The lack of access to menstrual hygiene products forces many students to resort to rags, paper towels, toilet paper, and other substitutes, increasing the risk of several reproductive health issues. According to a study conducted by Days for Girls, about 25% of menstruating students struggle to afford menstrual products. The emotional toll from the deep-rooted stigma surrounding menstruation along with the inaccessibility of menstrual products negatively impacts the self-perception and mental health of students. BMC Women’s Health estimated that 68% of college students who experience period poverty also experience moderate to severe depression.

Nupur and Harsna worked with the Department of Epidemiology and MSU College of Human Medicine Public Health professors to create and roll-out a survey identifying demographic factors, accessibility factors, and perceptions on menstruation of Michigan State menstruators. Their results confirmed the need and benefit for an increased accessibility to free menstrual products at Michigan State University. Mission Menstruation X MSU successfully communicated these findings to MSU Administration, securing over 200 university-funded free menstrual dispensers across campus in women’s and gender-neutral restrooms.

If you’re interested in discussing your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, please email Mari and Dimitri at thescifileswdbm@gmail.com.  Check The Sci-Files out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube! 

Alyssa studies the reproductive biology of African electric fish, called mormyrids, with a focus on their sperm and eggs. These freshwater fishes are found throughout lakes and river throughout the African continent and are used by research laboratories across the globe to study questions in evolution, neuroscience, behavior, and other biological disciplines. Besides their amazing ability to produce electricity, these fishes are also unique in that their sperm cells lack tails. Almost all animal sperm cells have a tail that allows them to swim to eggs to achieve fertilization, but the sperm of these fish do not! This is the only known case of tailless sperm evolving within a vertebrate lineage (it has evolved within 35 other lineages, but all of them are invertebrates). It is unknown what caused mormyrid sperm to lose its tail and how their sperm is still able to travel to and fertilize eggs. Furthermore, the morphology of mormyrid sperm has been known since the 1970s, but very little is known about mormyrid eggs. Alyssa's work aims to understand how mormyrid sperm lost its tail, how their sperm is still able to fertilize eggs, and to characterize the morphology of the previously ignored female gametes.

If you’re interested in discussing your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, please email Mari and Dimitri at thescifileswdbm@gmail.com.  Check The Sci-Files out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube! 

Ben is a graduate student in the Departments of Integrative Biology and Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior at Michigan State University. His research interests include understanding how species adapt to changing environments, especially thermal stress and conservation of coldwater fishes. Ben uses genomic tools to improve our understanding of species conservation by examining adaptive potential and genetic health in wild trout populations.

If you’re interested in discussing your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, please email Mari and Dimitri at thescifileswdbm@gmail.com.  Check The Sci-Files out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube! 

On the first episode with the new hosts of The Sci-Files, Mari Dowling and Dimitri Joseph interview Megan McGrath. 

Interacting with the world relies on our ability to take in information and stimuli from our environment and integrate it into a cohesive explanation of what it happening around us. But the world is full of constant, unending stimuli...so how do we know what to pay attention to? If we were consciously aware of everything that was happening in the world, we would never be able to function, so our brains have a built in "gain function", aka the thalamus. This brain structure allows us to fine tune what sensory information actually makes it up to our cortex for conscious processing so that we can get an accurate picture of the world without becoming overwhelmed. But what happens when this goes wrong? And what can that teach us about how to utilize this system to our advantage? That is Megan's main interest in her research. An aspiring anesthesiologist and consciousness researcher, Megan is interested in the networks necessary for arousal and attention and how sensory input is essential to the conscious experience. Her research focuses on the physiologic underpinnings of thalamic disruption and understanding how small differences in these networks lead to large changes in behavior, pushing to the extreme end of disruption; unconsciousness and anesthesia. She hopes that by gaining a more complete picture of thalamic networks and the spectrum of sensory processing disorders, she can begin to develop a more complete picture of consciousness.

If you’re interested in discussing your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, please email Mari and Dimitri at thescifileswdbm@gmail.com.  Check The Sci-Files out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube! 

On this episode of The Sci-Files, Mari Dowling and Dimitri Joseph interviewed Chelsie Boodoo and Daniel Puentes about their research. Daniel Puentes graduated from Michigan State University with a Ph.D. in Physics. His work focused on using experimental information to inform nuclear astrophysical simulations describing the creation of elements in space. Daniel also developed a first-generation beam stopper dedicated to dissociating molecules to improve low-energy rare isotope measurements. Daniel co-founded and co-hosted The Sci-Files with Chelsie Boodoo in 2019. Chelsie Boodoo is a Ph.D. Candidate in Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering. She creates biosensors using gold and magnetic nanoparticles to detect African Swine Fever Virus. She also uses this technology to detect foodborne pathogens such as Staphylococcus aureus. 
If you want to discuss your MSU research on the radio or nominate a student, please email scifiles@impact89fm.org. You can ask questions about future episodes here. Check The Sci-Files out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube!

Chelsie and Daniel visited the COGS Graduate Academic Conference (GAC) for the last time. For their final interview, they spoke with Dimitri Joseph and Mari Dowling, the new hosts of The Sci-Files. Dimitri Joseph is a 4th-year DO-PhD student in the Pharmacology and Toxicology department. He uses bioinformatics to study disparities in cancer. Mari Dowling is a 4th-year DO-PhD student in the College of Osteopathic Medicine and Department of Anthropology. Her graduate work is in medical anthropology, and her research interests are in exploring how drug policy in the United States impacts peoples’ healthcare decision-making.
If you want to discuss your MSU research on the radio or nominate a student, please email scifiles@impact89fm.org. You can ask questions about future episodes here. Check The Sci-Files out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube!