Inspired by a documentary he watched as a college student and the patients he now treats as a physician, John Goudreau is researching a protein called Parkin that might help prevent Parkinson’s disease. There is no cure for the disease, which kills brain cells and can cause tremors, loss of movement and psychological impairment.
MSU’s Dean of the College of Nursing, Mary Mundt, was appointed co-chair of the new Michigan Nursing Education Council with the goal of upgrading the state’s nursing curriculum to a national level.
The Lansing Model Railroad Club was joined by the Capital Area Railway Society and the Grand Rapids Model Railroad Historical Society to host the inaugural Train Day at the Michigan 4-H Children’s Garden at MSU, and the garden plans to expand the clubs involved for next year.
the 13th annual Great Dairy Adventure on Wednesday at the MSU Pavilion for Agriculture and Livestock Education offered a way of better understanding Michigan’s largest agricultural industry. The consumer education dairy event is organized by MSU and the United Dairy Industry of Michigan, or UDIM, and is part of the Michigan Dairy Expo — the largest dairy event in the state — which squeezes in activities throughout four days.
In 2002, the emerald ash borer killed tens of millions of trees in the state of Michigan. Now, a new website created by an MSU professor identifies areas vulnerable to invasive species, such as the emerald ash borer, in an attempt to prevent outbreaks and damage to the environment. The site, metroinvasive.info, contains maps showing “hot” areas for exotic species, information useful to researchers who are interested in the human mediated dispersion of pests.
The MSU Anaerobic Digestion Research and Education Center — completed in April from a private grant — studies optimal ways to convert waste into energy by harvesting naturally occurring methane gas. Using methane — a greenhouse gas — also will reduce the negative effect it would have on the environment if left untreated.
MSU medical students and faculty will be able to study and complete research at Chogoria Hospital in Kenya as part of a new agreement through the MSU College of Osteopathic Medicine and Institute of International Health, or IIH. The partnership was announced Monday and sets up a program for fourth-year medical students in the College of Osteopathic Medicine to study in Chogoria, Kenya for six weeks as part of an international elective program.
With dozens of sheep, goats, hogs and cattle, the second annual Michigan Livestock Expo was in full swing this weekend at the MSU Pavilion for Agriculture and Livestock Education. Featuring exhibitions, sales and contests, the expo will conclude Tuesday with an auction of the award-winning animals from the 8- to 20-year-old exhibitors. The expo is the largest in the state.
MSU students living in residence halls will split the cost of switching the Brody Complex’s water supply to East Lansing’s water system. The switch, which occurred during the spring semester, has doubled the amount MSU typically pays to supply water to campus buildings. MSU’s Hospitality Services and all students who reside on campus will pay for the switch through room and board rates in lieu of students living in Brody’s residence halls picking up the entire cost.
The 31st annual Michigan Agriculture Expo will be held from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday and from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday. Held at the corner of Farm Lane and Mount Hope Road, the event is sponsored by MSU’s College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, or CANR. The expo will include a variety of exhibits, more than 235 vendors and events such as livestock handling and a toy tractor show.
MSU Extension is offering a program to help sheep and goat producers manage the internal parasites of their animals. The workshop, Integrated Parasite Management Program for Sheep and Goat Producers, will be held Saturday in Manchester, Mich.; July 31 in Union City, Mich.; and Sept.
Although the confidence for women to pursue careers has improved in recent years, they still face the issues of the everyday world. The Girls to Women Conference was started by the Women’s Center of Greater Lansing three years ago, after a junior high student confessed that she was tired of seeing her friends succumb to the pressures of school, the media and bad influences from their peers without a way to work through their issues successfully.
An MSU researcher will study links between arsenic exposure and lung cancer to determine new treatments using a recently secured $1.7 million grant. The National Institutes of Health awarded Chengfeng Yang, a physiology assistant professor with the College of Veterinary Medicine and MSU’s Center for Integrative Toxicology, a five-year general grant to study the roles of small ribonucleic acids called microRNAs in cell transformation caused by direct exposure to arsenic.
Paul Roose lead the group participants through the gardens and shared facts about the surrounding nature mixed with stories as part of the Strolling with the Storyteller event. Each month during the summer, there is a event featuring a different garden where a guide tells educational stories as they walk through the gardens.
Driven by the absence of future research projects and budgetary pressure, MSU will sell one of its three dairy cow herds from the Upper Peninsula Experiment Station, or UPES, this fall. The UPES — located in Chatham, Mich. — is one of 15 field stations in the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station, or MAES, which is restructuring after $400,000 was cut by MSU’s Board of Trustees last month and state appropriations still are uncertain.
Plant growth in a student-maintained garden in the middle of North and South Kedzie halls has grown uncontrolled since the students who started the garden have gone home for the summer. Signs have been broken, garbage has not been removed and the plant life has grown without maintenance.
Planting trees across the world, MSU’s Carbon2Markets, or C2M, program has gained praise from the Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research for attempting to raise the standard of living in developing countries, while slowing down global warming. C2M was unanimously deemed “outstanding” by the organization’s board in recognition of the program’s five years of efforts in sustainability and third-world economics.
Ethical issues are being neglected when researching and teaching sustainability, according to a research paper co-authored by an MSU professor, published in this month’s journal, “Bioscience” and entitled “Sustainability: Virtuous or Vulgar?” Michael Nelson, an MSU associate professor of environmental ethics and John Vucetich, an assistant professor of wildlife biology at Michigan Technological University, collaborated to create the argument and asked what the authors call a vitally important question regarding ethics in sustainability.
Banging a variety of drums and singing a range of notes, participants at the MSU Community Music School’s, or CMS, Rock Camp rocked out Monday afternoon at the beginning of the week-long camp that will conclude with performances at Common Ground Music Festival. The camp features workshops for musically experienced participants ages 12-18, where participants learn how to perform in front of groups, how to form a band, how to market and promote a band and how to work together to form a final project.
An undiagnosed case of pertussis, or whooping cough, might have been exposed to the 900 people who attended Grandparents University at MSU from June 29 to July 1. The Michigan Department of Community Health, or MDCH, identified 20 individuals Friday who attended the event who are at a high risk for contracting pertussis.