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MSU

Delectable design

Angela Bianchi
February 2, 2006

Ice cream, chocolate and Spartan spirit sound more like football game fun than an engineering project. But biosystems engineering seniors Matthew Kloes, Kim Lewis, Marc Sawyers and Shelley Vecchio have found a way to incorporate flavor and fun into their senior design project, while still focusing on developing skills necessary for future careers. The four students are working to produce chocolate-covered ice cream bars formed into a Spartan block "S" shape. "It's a pretty interesting project," Kloes said.

MSU

Study: Half of college grads can't balance checkbooks, read newspaper

Kristen Daum
February 2, 2006

More than half the students who graduate from four-year universities lack the skills to be considered proficient in literacy, according to a recent study from a national institute. The survey, released last month by the American Institutes for Research — a Washington, D.C.-based social science research organization — tested the literacy of 1,827 students graduating from 80 randomly selected two- and four-year universities. It covered three core areas — prose literacy, document literacy and quantitative literacy — and found that many students could not do basic tasks such as figuring out the cost-per-ounce of various food products in supermarkets. "I would never have expected that because I'm getting a good education here," said MSU psychology sophomore Julia Degreg.

MSU

Awards recognize grad students, late MSU prof

Josh Jarman
February 1, 2006

Three students from separate universities each were announced winners of $10,000 fellowships Tuesday at Kellogg Center. The students were honored with the TIAA-CREF Ruth Simms Hamilton Research Fellowship, which was established through a $500,000 endowment by the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association-College Retirement Equities Fund, or TIAA-CREF, an insurance and retirement savings provider for workers in the academic, medical, cultural and research fields. Hamilton, who died in 2003, was an MSU professor of social science and a pioneer in the field of African Diaspora, a study of the displacement and migration of African people across the globe. Hamilton's son, Bramlett Hamilton, was charged with her murder, but was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

MSU

Innovations: Stellar searching

Kristen Daum
February 1, 2006

Name: Professor Stephen Zepf Department: Physics and Astronomy Type of research: How galaxies are formed Date of research: Zepf has been studying the origin of galaxies for about 20 years, but his current projects using the Southern Astrophysical Research, or SOAR, Telescope began about a year ago. Basics of the project: "We look at star clusters and galaxies to learn about how the whole galaxy formed," Zepf said. Zepf looks at the different wavelengths of the light emitted from star clusters. In this way, he can determine how old the clusters are and what elements are included in their compositions, which helps him determine the galaxy's age. Using Internet connections and computer programming, Zepf is able to study images of the galaxies from the Hubble Space Telescope and the SOAR Telescope. The SOAR Telescope — located at an altitude of 9,000 feet on a mountain in Chile — is an MSU project in conjunction with The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the National Optical Astronomy Observatory and Brazil. Two postdoctoral fellows, one graduate student and one undergraduate student assist Zepf in his research. Social impact of research: "It answers the basic questions of the universe on a big scale," Zepf said. Grants and funding: The National Science Foundation and NASA fund the project, which costs several thousand dollars per year.

MSU

A growing game

Laura Leebove
January 31, 2006

Kevin Corrigan looked up and smiled after an hour of the Hospitality Association's Vegas Night Texas Hold'em tournament on Saturday night.

MSU

Fellowship honors slain MSU professor

Josh Jarman
January 31, 2006

The first winners of a $10,000 research fellowship will be announced at noon today in the Kellogg Center's Big Ten room. The TIAA-CREF Ruth Simms Hamilton Research Fellowship was established through an endowment by the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association-College Retirement Equities Fund, or TIAA-CREF, an insurance and retirement savings provider for workers in the academic, medical, cultural and research fields. An expert in the field of African diaspora, Hamilton was a distinguished MSU professor of social science and a TIAA-CREF board member who died in 2003.

MSU

ASMSU to put out student survey about IM addition

Kristi Jourdan
January 31, 2006

Student government officials are taking initial steps toward creating a survey to determine student demand for additional student recreational space on campus. ASMSU, MSU's undergraduate student government, allocated $7,000 earlier this month to fund a survey of student opinions on the project, which calls for the construction of a combined IM facility and student events center.

MSU

Online forensic course appeals to professionals

Kristen Daum
January 30, 2006

Chris Osborne jumped at the chance to enroll in MSU's new seven-week online course in forensic entomology when she first heard about it. "It is one of the bigger and more important pieces of the pie in forensic science," said Osborne, a lifelong education student who has studied forensic science for 11 years. The three-credit online course, which is new this semester, is titled "Forensic Entomology: The Role of Insects in Crime Scene Investigations." The course focuses on a specific branch of forensic entomology known as medico-legal entomology, in which insect growth can help estimate the time of a person's death, said Richard Merritt, chairperson for the Department of Entomology and teacher of the online course. Although Merritt has a similar course on campus in the fall semester, he said he created the online class so that a wider range of people could have access to the information. Forensic entomology is the study of how insects are used in the legal system. "It's become a lot more important in crime scene investigation in the last 10 to 15 years," Merritt said. "People are very interested in insects, and how they can be used in this way is fascinating." After a person dies, insects will colonize the body within minutes to hours after death.

MSU

Remembering the past

Abraham Pasternak, of Southfield, lost his father, mother and brother upon their arrival at the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland. West Bloomfield resident George Vine was taken to a concentration camp at 13 years old. Edith Berman, a Troy resident, would be dead today if the gas chamber she was taken into did not malfunction. In honor of the first International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust, the three Holocaust survivors lit candles Friday at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills. The United Nations General Assembly marked Jan.

MSU

WEB EXTRA: Investigation underway into MSU professor's role in falsified research

Kristen Daum
January 27, 2006

The university has started investigating an animal biotechnology professor's involvement with falsified research, MSU officials said. Jose Cibelli reviewed a manuscript in 2003 for a research paper led by Woo-Suk Hwang, a former professor at Seoul National University in South Korea. Hwang claimed he had cloned human stem cells, and his paper was published in the journal Science in 2004.

MSU

E.L. area not recognizing honored day

Today marks the first International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust, and for the most part, area communities have not planned any events in honor of the day. East Lansing Deputy City Manager Jean Golden said the city must pass a resolution to pay homage to a particular day or week, but in this case, the city wasn't informed that the international commemoration day was happening. "Typically, we get information about a remembrance day or a special event that needs to be acknowledged, and typically, we pass a resolution acknowledging it," she said. The United Nations General Assembly, which designated the day of commemoration, chose today in recognition of when the Polish concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated — Jan.

MSU

WEB EXTRA: Bricks on the block: Spartan statue memorabilia for sale

Melissa Domsic
January 27, 2006

Some of the MSU Surplus Store's most recent acquisitions are bricks from the base that the original Spartan statue stood on for more than 60 years. The bricks have been available at the store for a week and about seven have already been sold — one of which went for $200, store manager Ruth Daoust said. The statue, which is the largest free-standing ceramic sculpture in the world, was moved inside the new stadium expansion this past summer to protect it from the elements.

MSU

Committee preps for tournament

Melissa Domsic
January 26, 2006

By the time March Madness comes, students and community members will know exactly what to do and expect if a disturbance occurs — if all goes according to the Celebrations Committee's plan. About 30 university, city, student and community leaders met Wednesday as the newly revamped Celebrations Committee to discuss how they could implement recommendations made by an independent commission that reviewed the April 2-3 disturbances.