East Lansing residents might notice city officials pedaling through town after a new transportation program put into place for city employees. The East Lansing Green Task Force recently began to place bikes around the city at several facilities for employees to use when going between meetings and buildings.
Lansing Flow Fest, a Christian rap festival, will take place 5:30-10 p.m. Friday at Lansing’s Adado Riverfront Park. The fourth annual event features all ages rap and hip-hop performances by nationally and locally known Christian musicians.
The Sandbox Party will hold the Sandbox Party Convention from 1-4 p.m. Aug. 26 at Breslin Center. A nonpartisan group, the Sandbox Party advocates for a wide range of early childhood issues, including pushing for an increased state investment in child care and preschools, despite Michigan’s poor economic climate and lack of government funding.
The Old US 27 Motor Tour will showcase classic cars from 3:30-6:30 p.m. Aug. 25 at Eastwood Towne Center, 3003 Preyde Blvd., in Lansing. The tour, along the old US-27 highway, starts Aug. 24 in Auburn, Ind., and ends Aug. 29 in Cheboygan, Mich., with nine stops between the two cities.
The Lansing Bless Festival will take place 12:30-10 p.m. Saturday at Lansing’s Adado Riverfront Park. The event features various Christian musicians at two stages for live performances.
Some of MSU’s carilloneurs — the musicians who ring the bells at Beaumont Tower — will play a recital at 3 p.m. Sunday at Beaumont Tower. The recital will be in memory of Milton E. Muelder, a former MSU political science professor and dean of the Graduate School, who died at age 101 in May.
MSU Entrepreneurship Network, or msuENet, will launch Thursday at East Lansing Technology Innovation Center, 325 E. Grand River Ave., and will provide an opportunity for those interested in entrepreneurship to connect with others curious about the same topic.
Throughout the past three years at MSU, bacterial life has been Ben Roller’s 40-hour-a-week obsession. A third year microbiology and molecular genetics graduate student at MSU, Roller has been researching various aspects of the bacterial life cycle since he was an undergraduate student at the University of Minnesota. Thanks to a more than $150,000 fellowship, Roller will have another three years to study bacteria in the laboratory.
With more than 50 different entries flaunting floats down North Capitol Avenue, in Lansing, hundreds of spectators from the community watched the different exhibitions Saturday during the 11th annual African American Parade and Family Heritage Festival. The parade took place in downtown Lansing with a celebration following at Ferris Park in Lansing.
The two-day X-Factor Archery Tournament and Open Shoot, hosted at the MSU Demmer Shooting Sports, Education and Training Center, kicked off Saturday, with contestants trying to strike several moving targets and win various prizes. Arrows flew Saturday and Sunday as children and adults lined up to try shooting at moving, 3-D animal targets. The highest score won a Mathews Mission Bow — a $500 value — and second place took home a Parker Crossbow — a $300 value.
Although MSU e-mail has become one of the most popular forms of electronic communication for many students and professors on campus, it always has been a service susceptible to junk. Each day, MSU’s Academic Technology Services, or ATS, mail system blocks about 400,000 junk mail — or spam — messages from reaching users’ mailboxes.
A warmer than average summer increases the chances of an above average snowfall this upcoming winter, said John Kowaleski, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Grand Rapids. Through the end of July, Lansing recorded temperatures were about 4.3 degrees higher the average of 82, and in June, temperatures were 2.5 degrees above normal — numbers not seen in the past few years, Kowaleski said.
As state funding to public universities is cut and tuition increases, students are leaving college with more debt, according to new released Monday by the Michigan League for Human Services, or MLHS. Titled “Pulling the Plug on Michigan’s Future,” the reported was conducted by the MLHS, which is a nonprofit advocacy group for low-income residents.
Every year, more than 100,000 kittens and puppies are euthanized in Michigan shelters because of overcrowding and limits on how long an animal can stay. To help limit the number of animals without homes, the MSU College of Veterinary Medicine is going to the source of the problem — the dogs and cats who have the litters.
Sixty students from about 25 different countries came to MSU for a three-day orientation to the U.S. culture and its customs called Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant program, or FLTA. MSU is one of eight schools selected to hold an orientation program for FLTA. The program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, and administered by the Institute of International Education, or IIE.
Michigan homes could benefit from a new initiative focusing on retrofitting existing structures using energy efficient insulation, equipment and other strategies to reduce energy consumption by up to 50 percent. MSU’s School of Planning, Design & Construction and Institute for Public Policy and Social Research’s Office for Survey Research will join Dow Building and Construction, Habitat for Humanity International and Ferris State University on a multiyear initiative funded by the U.S.
Finding a possible correlation between race and justice, two MSU law professors statistically found race might play a role in North Carolina convicts being sentenced to the death penalty. MSU law professors Catherine Grosso and Barbara O’Brien began to research capital punishment cases in North Carolina about a year ago after the passing of the Racial Justice Act, which allows death row inmates in the state to appeal their sentences based on racial discrimination.
MSU officials look to pile on the savings once the merging of landscaping materials is complete. About three piles of materials are in the process of being moved into one centralized location at the Beaumont Nursery in an attempt to increase efficiency and reduce costs by officials at the Physical Plant.
Animals in prehistoric Africa might have taken a drastically different evolutionary route than scientists previously thought, according to the results of a recent fossil discovered by an MSU professor in Tanzania. MSU professor and paleontologist Michael Gottfried was part of a research group, led by Ohio University professor Patrick O’Connor, that uncovered a mammal-like crocodile in the country located in southeastern Africa.
Horticulturists, landscapers and other industry professionals wandered throughout MSU’s Trial Gardens inspecting blossoms for their color and durability among the varieties of this year’s plant breeds at the MSU Garden Plant Showcase. About 70 professional landscapers, horticulturists and plant breeders attended the annual showcase event held in the Plant and Soil Sciences Building and Trial Gardens. The day-long event featured presenters from MSU faculty and staff, as well as industry experts.