For 30 hours, hundreds of researchers from countries around the globe will gather at the Innovation Forum: Bridging Technologies and Market Needs to share ideas on how to sustain all aspects of health (humans, animals, plants, and the environment) through rapid diagnostics. Lead by the Global Alliance for Rapid Diagnostics (GARD), this unique event will focus on topics like the prevention of future pandemics, antimicrobial resistance and antimicrobial stewardship, nano/micro/bulk plastic and the circular economy, food safety and security, and other cross-cutting issues. “[The] GARD symposium ..read more

Supporting the STEMinist in your Life By Brittany Ladson Have you heard the word “STEMinism” before? I actually didn’t come across it until recently when I was scrolling through the social media pages of some of my favorite physicians and scientists online. Women in the STEMinism movement brilliantly combines feminism and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and have an influential impact on young women pursuing careers in healthcare and research. Through the power of social media, STEMinists can reach young girls across the country through a screen in the case they don’t h ..read more

It is our pleasure to announce that Jonathan Stone, Science Notes, Elena Gonzalez Garcia, Josh Urban Davis, and Jacob Steenwyk are the first place winners in their respective categories! Jonathan’s works Phase and Transition won him first place in the photography category. Deniz’s and Alya’s work as part of Science Notes won them first place in the physical and 3D category. Elena Gonzalez Garcia’s bookmarks were a huge hit, winning her first place in the paintings category. Josh Urban Davis and his algorithm-generated art stole the show in the drawing category. In the anything goes categor ..read more

By Dr. Laura Schmitt Olabisi My multi-racial family lives in East Lansing, Michigan. The neighborhood is peaceful, tree-lined, and conveniently close to Michigan State University, where we work. It’s a place where we bring our neighbors baked goods, and where our kids ride bikes together with the neighboring kids, up and down the streets. In the 1960’s my family couldn’t have lived in our current neighborhood. At that time, property deeds and court orders explicitly prohibited non-white people from moving into the city. Local activism and civil rights legislation changed the policies, but the ..read more

By: Ravi Ranjan Every morning I get up, make coffee, log in to my computer, and pull up the daily news digest of the New York Times. This routine now includes a consistent COVID-19 update of total new cases, the daily death count, and glum future projections of how much worse it could get. Often, specific mathematical models are cited as the source for these numbers. But one might wonder what these mathematical models are and what do they do? After all, how do we know that there will be between 207,000 to 218,000 deaths due to COVID-19 by October 10, as the 40 models used by the Centers for D ..read more

By Hongli Feng, Yuyuan Che, and David A. Hennessy If someone views a technology as both profit increasing and environment friendly, will they adopt the technology? For many ranchers, the apparent answer seems to be no in the context of grazing management. Grazing management practices have important economic and environmental consequences. Large portions of the United States are grazed. As shown in figure 1, rangelands and pasturelands cover 625 million acres (or 27%) of the U.S. surface area. Different grazing strategies have evolved or been developed, each with distinctive grass productivity ..read more

Like many events this year, Spartans are opening their computer screens and tuning in virtually. No exception to this is the Annual Sci Art Exhibition hosted by MSU Sci Comm. This year includes pieces from many MSU students, as well as artists throughout the US, Canada, Puerto Rico, the UK, India, and China. The subject matters of the art pieces are equally as diverse and range from climate change, environmental preservation, medical illustration, and even COVID-19. There will surely be an interesting topic for everyone! The planning committee has selected this year’s theme as “Catalyst.” It ..read more

Guest post by TANYA IRETSKAYA MSU SciComm blog contest winner The author (right) and friend on a road trip to previously hardly accessible Bryce Canyon National Park (photo taken by Lia JYY) Imagine waking up to the ,sounds of birds, who, one by one, greet the day and their neighbors. It is still very early (first birds start singing at 3:30AM!), and you decide to grant yourself several more hours of sleep. You are cozy, your evening ended with a campfire and a conversation about the starry skies above, your day ahead is filled with exciting adventures. Several hours later you smell the coffe ..read more

By Brittany Ladson I have high-functioning depression. When I become upset or down, I distract myself by picking up a new writing project, by starting a new volunteer activity, or by taking on more shifts at the hospital. Each is an attempt to distract myself from feeling depressed. If you stay busy, there’s no time to feel depressed, right? These feelings, however, have become amplified during the pandemic and quarantine due to a lack of social interaction and the cancellation of events I was excited to attend. It has been challenging dealing with my long-standing clinical depression in addi ..read more

Guest post by MARZIEH GHIASI MSU SciComm blog contest winner I’ve always loved detective stories—mostly the classical figures operating out of London: Hercule Poirot, Sherlock Holmes etc. But detectives aren’t only in fiction. John Snow, a founder of epidemiology, was a real-life disease detective. Notably not the one with dragons, Snow trawled through the streets of mid-19th century London trying to trace the origins of a deadly cholera pandemic that was killing hundreds. Using clever methods, including interviews, mapping and even an early epidemiologic experiment, he isolated the outbreak ..read more