News

MSU researchers have helped catch particles called muons behaving in a way that’s not predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics — the best theory that scientists have for explaining the universe’s fundamental particles and forces.The results from this experiment, called the Muon g-2 experiment, confirm a discrepancy that has been gnawing at researchers for decades. The team published its landmark result in the journal Physical Review Letters on April 7.

The network of nerves connecting our eyes to our brains is sophisticated and researchers have now shown that it evolved much earlier than previously thought, thanks to an unexpected source: the gar fish. MSU’s Ingo Braasch helped an international research team show that this connection scheme was already present in ancient fish at least 450 million years ago, making it about 100 million years older than previously believed. The work was published in the journal Science on April 8.

Three stellar early-career scholars bringing multi-disciplinary scientific exploration, collaboration and community engagement have been selected as MSU Presidential Postdoctoral Fellows in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior. Cinnamon Mittan, Daniela Palmer and Olivia Smith will be the first cohort of the fellowship, created to increase the breadth and potential of research embracing ecology, evolution and behavior at MSU. They will begin their work in the 2021-2022 academic year.

Should humans use technology to cool Earth? How would organisms and ecosystems respond? Every month since September 2019, a team of internationally recognized experts in climate science and ecology, the Climate Intervention Biology Working Group, has gathered remotely to bring science to bear on the important question of climate intervention. The pioneering group, co-led by the MSU community ecologist Phoebe Zarnetske, published their seminal paper in the most recent Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States.

MSU’s Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) site, located at the W.K. Kellogg Biological Station, was founded in 1988 to employ and understand the ecology of Midwest cropping systems and agricultural landscapes. When KBS passed the 30-year mark in 2018, three former KBS researchers, Sarah Cusser, Jackson Helms and Christie Bahlai, decided the 30th anniversary was not only a significant milestone, but a good time to ask questions about LTER’s database. Thanks to their efforts, which were recently published in Ecology Letters, they now know that ecological investigations of at least nine years are needed to achieve significant, consistent results related to accelerated climate and land use change. 

Gemma Reguera, Michigan State University environmental microbiologist, was named editor-in-chief of Applied and Environmental Microbiology (AEM), one of two new editors for two of the 16 peer-reviewed journals published by the American Society of Microbiology (ASM).Reguera will begin her term on July 1.  

Michigan State University’s College of Natural Science has promoted three staff members in its Academic and Student Affairs Office—Heidi Purdy, Janae Lawler and Danielle Flores Lopez—to acknowledge their outstanding leadership and contributions, and to expand and strengthen the college’s student success efforts.

Two undergraduate students in the MSU College of Natural Science are recipients of the nationally competitive Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship. Charles Hultquist, a junior majoring in physics and advanced mathematics and Andrew McDonald, a junior majoring in statistics and advanced mathematics and computer science in the College of Engineering, represent MSU’s 48th and 49th Goldwater Scholars. Both are Honors College students.