016 - NatSci News Rewind October 2020 Transcript

You're listening to NatSci News Rewind a podcast that looks back at the monthly news headlines in the world of NatSci. Let's take a look back at the news for the month of October 2020.

Pre-election message from NatSci Dean Duxbury
As the pandemic continues to pose significant challenges to our health and well-being, and we head into one of the most emotionally charged elections in many, many years, we want to make sure that we remain grounded in our values of inclusiveness, openness, professionalism and respect.

Study finds small streams have big impacts on Great Lakes
Excessive nutrient inputs from tributary streams and rivers contribute to harmful algal blooms and coastal ecosystem degradation worldwide. However, the role that small tributaries play in this nutrient loading remains unknown because little attention has been paid to them despite their ubiquity and potential local importance.To help address this issue, MSU landscape hydrologist Anthony Kendall joined University of Wisconsin-Madison colleagues to conduct a study on Lake Michigan tributaries. The findings were recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Angela Wilson named president-elect of American Chemical Society
MSU chemist Angela K. Wilson has been named president-elect of the American Chemical Society. She will serve a three-year term (2021-2023) in the presidential succession. Wilson is the first female physical chemist—and one of only a few theoretical chemists—to serve in this role across the history of the organization.

Machine learning helps hunt for COVID-19 therapies
MSU Foundation Professor Guowei Wei wasn’t preparing machine learning techniques for a global health crisis. Still, when one broke out, he and his team were ready to help.The group already has one machine learning model at work in the pandemic, predicting consequences of mutations to SARS-CoV-2. Now, Wei’s team has deployed another to help drug developers on their most promising leads for attacking one of the virus’ most compelling targets. The researchers shared their intel Oct. 21 in the peer-reviewed journal Chemical Science.

Celebrating an MSU milestone in nuclear science
MSU not only has the nation’s top nuclear physics program, it’s also home to one of the field’s most prolific authors, B. Alex Brown. The professor of physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, who also works at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, has published more than 800 papers during his career. But it’s not just the quantity of his work that’s remarkable. In fact, he published a paper 30 years ago that still shapes the way people talk about nuclear science today.

Putting MSU on the "GeoPAth" to diversity in the Earth Sciences
With support from a two-year, $250,000 NSF GeoPAths grant, MSU earth and environmental scientists Matt Schrenk and Julie Libarkin are embarking on a collective effort to change the geoscience landscape with GeoCaFES (Communities and Future Earth Scientists), a bridge program that connects Latinx undergraduates with geoscientist mentors, graduate school opportunities and future Earth Science jobs.

MSU's Connected Math Program awarded NSF grant to develop online learning platform
COVID-19 closed K-12 schools across Michigan this March, disconnecting students and teachers from face-to-face instruction and forcing an unprecedented move to online learning. But researchers from MSU’s Program in Mathematics Education and the Concord Consortium were uniquely poised to re-connect and engage middle school math students and their teachers virtually. Beginning in August, NSF awarded the team a four-year, nearly $2 million grant to develop a digital math education platform.

Two NatSci seniors nominated for prestigious scholarships
Two MSU College of Natural Science students, Virginia Lindberg and Brent Strong, stand among the ten MSU undergraduates nominated for Marshall and Rhodes scholarships beginning in 2021 to attend graduate school in Great Britain. Strong has also been nominated for the Churchill Scholarship.

Scientists focus on fundamental virology and therapeutics in COVID-19 fight
Two Michigan State University scientists—Yong-Hui Zheng and Dohun Pi-Un Pyeon—are leading COVID-19 research at MSU. Zheng's lab is working on the fundamental biology of the virus, and Pyeon is investigating how SARS-CoV-2 interacts with and hijacks the host cellular mechanism for entry, replication, and pathogenesis, with a goal of developing a neutralizing antibody that can be used almost immediately to develop therapeutics.

Bringing the promise of quantum computing to nuclear physics
A new $750,000 U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science grant awarded to MSU researchers and led by physicists at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, or FRIB in collaboration with Los Alamos National Laboratory, is developing algorithms – essentially programming instructions – for quantum computers to help these machines address problems that are difficult for conventional computers.

New understanding of ecosystem conditions in Arctic uncovered
One of the most well-studied areas in the Artic is the Upper Kuparuk watershed in Alaska. Many researchers flock to Northern Alaska to conduct studies on the Kuparuk River and surrounding areas during June and July. Despite all this research, however, MSU researchers Arial Shogren and Jay Zarnetske found themselves wondering what ecological information scientists might be missing by focusing their efforts almost exclusively in the summer months. In a paper published in Environmental Research Letters, Shogren and Zarnetske examine what falls through the gap during the less-studied months.

Mapping a greener future on farms
MSU researchers have garnered a nearly $2.6 million USDA Natural Resources Conservation Services grant to work with farmers across the country to make their fields eco-friendlier while boosting their farms’ bottom lines. Led by MSU Foundation Professor Bruno Basso, the team is developing conservation practices that cut losses on unproductive plots and make the most out of more fruitful fields.

For the long haul: New study reveals persistence in learner-centered teaching approach
Teaching professional development (PD) programs have proliferated during the past few decades, with the goal of facilitating measurable change in STEM higher education. However, it is currently not known if such outcomes are achieved and ultimately persist. To address this knowledge gap, MSU plant biology research associate Nate Emery and colleagues recently published a study in the journal Science Advances to determine how successful these learner-centered practices were.

MSU leads $1 million NSF grant to study diversity in classroom instruction materials
Researchers from Michigan State and Auburn University, led by MSU evolutionary ecologist Marjorie Weber, are using a $1 million NSF grant to study how inclusion of diverse scientist role models in science instruction affects student attitudes toward quantitative learning exercises in STEM courses and careers. MSU’s portion of the grant, which began Oct.1, is $480,255.

And that will wrap up the rewind for the month of October 2020. To read more about these stories, head on over to our website at natsci.msu.edu/news. You can also stay up to date by following us on social. You can find us on Twitter @msu_natsci, on Facebook @MSUCNS, and on Instagram @msunatsci. Thanks for tuning in and be sure to check us out next month.