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Evolution is usually far too slow to witness in a single human lifetime — but not in this lab. For over three decades, researchers have watched E. coli transform across more than 75,000 generations. Their Long-Term Evolution Experiment opens a rare window into how life adapts and innovates in real time. What happens inside these 12 unassuming flasks is reshaping how scientists understand evolution in the world’s most complex environments.

Michigan State University has joined the Georgia Institute of Technology in the Earthseed Project, a humanities-centered research initiative that uses Afrofuturist literature to connect horticulture, climate resilience and food sustainability knowledge and practices.

Alex Guo, a third-year undergraduate student in the College of Arts and Letters at Michigan State University, is researching the power of language to build community and advocate for change. Guo represented the College of Arts & Letters at this semester’s Ignite Talks MSU where she presented her undergraduate research project, “Beyond Rhetoric: Building Trans-Affirming Communities.”

In a discovery that could shift labor and delivery practices around the world, researchers at Michigan State University have found that the effectiveness of oxytocin — a common medication used to induce or speed up labor — depends on the time of day it’s administered, especially for patients with gestational diabetes.

Can an AI persona detect when a human is lying – and should we trust it if it can? Artificial intelligence, or AI, has had many recent advances and continues to evolve in scope and capability. A new Michigan State University–led study is diving deeper into how well AI can understand humans by using it to detect human deception.

At Michigan State University, some discoveries take decades — even centuries — to unfold. The university’s roster of long-term projects and experiments range from buried seeds that have sprouted nearly a century and a half later to a decades-old twin registry that is helping researchers make new discoveries about health and psychology. Spartan researchers are committed to examining a wide range of topics that help us better understand the world.

The nerves in our hands and feet allow us to sense touch, pressure, temperature, vibration and pain. If anything interferes with nerve function, we can have trouble with daily tasks like holding objects and even walking. Some people are at higher risk for nerve damage in their extremities. Why? New research from Michigan State University reveals that race/ethnicity and food insecurity are two key factors associated with peripheral neuropathy.

David MacFarlane, a professor of measurements and modeling in the Department of Forestry at Michigan State University, recently completed a six-month sabbatical that took him from the mangrove coasts of Mexico to the alpine forests of Italy. His journey was part of a Fulbright Global Scholar Award aimed at advancing an emerging global approach to forest management known as climate-smart forestry.