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 ce...

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 h...

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 ther...

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, t...

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 ha...

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 met...

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. Can...

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 seate...

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...

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,...

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Osama Alian. Osama studies how a community of microbes survives in a hydrothermal vent system deep in the Atlantic Ocean in an environment that's funky, unique, and probably present everywhere in the universe where there are water and rock interacting with each other. It's a cool location to study because it challenges our ideas...

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Katie Mitchell. Katie is a doctoral student in the Information and Media program at MSU . She is interested in how media and technology influence interpersonal relationships and health. She is currently studying telemedicine and its impacts on patients as well as providers. Katie received both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees...

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Aalayna Green. Aalayna is a senior undergraduate student in the Department of Integrative Biology / Zoology studying the gendered implications of urban wildmeat trafficking in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Her work draws from conservation criminology as well as women's and gender studies. She seeks to give voice and a narrati...

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Matthew Swiatnicki. Matt is a Ph. D. Candidate in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics . The Andrechek lab studies primarily breast and lung cancer, with Matt’s thesis work having potential implications for lung cancer patients. Work from the Andrechek lab has uncovered a gene mutation within certain lung cancer...

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Carolyn Kroger. Carolyn is a Ph. D. student in the Department of Psychology - Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience . The coordination of movements in space and time is required for successful action in a dynamic world. Behavioral and neurological disorders such as Parkinson's disease, stuttering, and Cerebellar dysfunction can ma...

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Josh Lensmire. Josh is a Ph. D. Candidate in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics . Josh's research focuses on the pathogen methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus, MRSA. MRSA is capable of growing in various human organs and it needs to gather nutrients from our bodies to grow and cause disease. One specific...

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Anna Raschke. Anna is a master's student in the MSU Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering department. Anna's lab is called 'Computational-Ecology', meaning they simulate ecology! She is specifically working on modeling the movement of polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) through the Huron River Watershed. PFAS embodies over 4000 d...

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview John Tison Williams. John is a PhD-candidate in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics through the College of Natural Sciences . John is in his 5th year and completing his dissertation, which focuses on understanding how small molecules inhibit the growth of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in Dr. Robert B. Abramovitch '...

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Lin Liu. By 2050, the population in the Africa continent will double and food demand will triple. How can we sustainably produce staple food to feed the future population in the backdrop of climate change? Lin Liu’s dissertation research focuses on using agricultural technologies, including smart devices, crop modeling and remote...

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 compos...

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Garrett Weidig. As a lab researching biomechanics, it is the goal of Dr. Bush's lab to study how the body functions. They extend their research to create models and devices that can assist people in everyday life. In the past, they have worked closely with many interdisciplinary professions, ranging from Michigan State University...

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...

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 imp...

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 Che...

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 be...