Friday August 15

LANSING, Mich. – The State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) has awarded $250,000 in grants to six Michigan communities, the Michigan Strategic Fund announced today. The grants represent awards from the federal Historic Preservation Fund (HPF)—Certified Local Government (CLG) program administered by the SHPO and will benefit local preservation and community planning goals in Battle Creek, East Lansing, Kalamazoo, Mason, Saginaw and Detroit.

“The Certified Local Government program continues to be one of the strongest tools for supporting historic preservation projects at the local level,” said State Historic Preservation Officer Ryan M. Schumaker. “We are pleased to support this year’s awardees as they build on ongoing initiatives to document, preserve and tell the story of important historic places in their communities.”

The CLG program is a partnership among local, state and national governments focused on promoting historic preservation at the local level. The National Park Service administers the program in coordination with the SHPO. Participation in the program, which is open to any community willing to meet basic program requirements, makes a community eligible for specialized technical assistance and programming from the SHPO.

Participation in the CLG program also makes a community eligible for annual grants provided by the U.S. Department of the Interior and administered by the SHPO. These grants may be used for a variety of preservation activities, such as historic resource surveys, National Register of Historic Places nominations, educational and heritage tourism initiatives, pre-development plans and studies and rehabilitation of certain historic properties.

This year’s grant recipients include:

City of Battle Creek

• The City of Battle Creek is receiving a grant to hire a qualified preservation consultant to create a set of comprehensive historic preservation design guidelines for the City’s local historic districts. The guidelines will equip the City’s Historic District Commission with the tools necessary to help guide historic preservation activities into the future and provide current and future property owners with a better understanding of preservation best practices.

City of East Lansing

• The City of East Lansing is receiving a grant to create a resource guide for the City’s local historic districts. Targeted toward current and prospective property owners, contractors, and other community stakeholders, the guide will enhance understanding of preservation best practices and seek to encourage responsible stewardship of the City’s irreplaceable heritage assets.

City of Kalamazoo

• The City of Kalamazoo is receiving a grant to hire a qualified contractor to prepare a condition assessment report for the Kalamazoo City Hall. Built in 1931, the city hall building is a fine example of Art Deco architecture and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places as part of the Bronson Park Historic District. This document will provide the City with the necessary information to make informed decisions regarding future preservation treatments at the property.

City of Mason

• The City of Mason is receiving a grant to hire a qualified contractor to complete rehabilitation of historic windows at the Mason Public Library. The building has served as a community library since its construction in 1939 and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places as part of Mason’s downtown historic district. The project is part of an ongoing, multi-phase rehabilitation program for the building, intended to ensure that the building remains a viable community resource for future generations.

City of Saginaw

• The City of Saginaw is receiving a grant to complete masonry repair and rehabilitation at the Saginaw County Fairgrounds Main Gate. Completed in 1929 and exhibiting Craftsman architectural influences, the gate house served as the main entry to the fairgrounds for more than 70 years. This grant will contribute to ongoing rehabilitation efforts by the City to protect and reinvest in the property, which is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Motor City Theatre Organ Society/City of Detroit

• The Motor City Theatre Organ Society, through the City of Detroit, is receiving a grant to hire a qualified contractor to complete rehabilitation of historic steel windows at the Redford Theatre, an atmospheric theatre completed in 1928 and listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The window project complements ongoing rehabilitation efforts at the theatre and the project will have a wider benefit through the inclusion of a hands-on window repair workshop for volunteers and community members.

CLG grants are awarded annually on a competitive basis. Eligible applicants include Michigan's 42 CLG communities, which may partner with a non-profit organization or other public entity. The State Historic Preservation Office welcomes innovative proposals that promote historic preservation.  For more information on the CLG program and funding opportunities, visit http://www.michigan.gov/CLGgrants.

Federal Credit
This material was produced with assistance from the Historic Preservation Fund, administered by the National Park Service, Department of the Interior under Grant Number P25AF01198. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of the Interior.

This program receives Federal financial assistance for identification and protection of historic properties.  Under Title VI of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the Age Discrimination Act of 1975, as amended, the U.S. Department of the Interior prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, disability, or age in its federally assisted programs. Michigan law prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion, race, color, national origin, age, sex, marital status, or disability.  If you believe you have been discriminated against in any program, activity, or facility as described above, or if you desire further information, please write to:

Chief, Office of Equal Opportunity Programs

United States Department of the Interior

National Park Service

1849 C Street, NW, MS-2740

Washington, DC 20240

-courtesy story

EAST LANSING, Mich. - Warming ocean temperatures are causing a phenomenon called coral bleaching, putting corals at a greater risk of starvation, disease and death. This study shows that rice coral, an important reef-building species, passes on thermal resistance to their offspring and avoids coral bleaching. Understanding this is important to building healthier coral reefs and protecting their future.

Coral reefs are habitats for nearly a quarter of all marine life, protect coasts from erosion and support the livelihoods of millions. Protecting coral reefs is crucial to preserving the future of our oceans.

Plunge into the shallows off the Florida Keys, Hawaiʻi or the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and you are likely to meet a startling sight. Where there were once acres of dazzling coral — an underwater world of dayglo greens, brassy yellows and midnight blues — is now a ghostly landscape, with many reefs seemingly drained of their pigment.

Caused by stressful conditions like warming ocean temperatures, coral bleaching is a leading threat to some of our planet’s most diverse and vital ecosystems. Now, a team of researchers has found that some corals survive warming ocean temperatures by passing heat-resisting abilities on to their offspring.

The findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, are the result of a collaboration between Michigan State University, Duke University and the Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology, or HIMB, at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. This work, funded by the National Science Foundation and a Michigan State University Climate Change Research grant, is crucial in the race to better conserve and restore threatened reefs across the globe.

Coral reefs are habitats for nearly a quarter of all marine life, protecting coastlines from storms and erosion and supporting the livelihoods of millions of people around the world. Though still alive, bleached corals are at a much higher risk of disease, starvation and eventual mortality.

In their latest study, the team explored how resistance to thermal stress is passed down from parent to offspring in an important reef-building species known as rice coral. These findings are helping researchers breed stronger, heat-tolerant generations to better face environmental stress.

“The Coral Resilience Lab in Hawaiʻi has developed amazing methods to breed and rear corals during natural summer spawning,” said Spartan biochemist and study co-author Rob Quinn, whose lab takes samples of these corals and generates massive datasets on their biochemistry with instruments at MSU.

“This is a true scientific collaboration that can support coral breeding and reproduction to cultivate more resilient corals for the warming oceans of the future.”

A colorful crowd

The kaleidoscopic of shades we associate with healthy coral is the product of a bustling exchange of resources between a coral animal and its algae partners. When all is well, you might think of this relationship as that of tenants living in a home and paying a bit of rent. In exchange for cozy, sheltered spaces found within the coral tissue as well as nutrients, algae use photosynthesis to produce sugars. These sugars can provide up to 95% of the energy that coral needs to grow and form the sprawling, breathtaking reefs we know.

In tropical waters often lacking nutrients, disruptions in this exchange — like those that occur during bleaching events — can be disastrous. When looking at a specimen of coral that’s suffered bleaching, you’re glimpsing a coral that’s “kicked out” its algae, leaving behind a pale skeleton.

“Corals are like the trees in an old growth forest; they build the ecosystems we know as reefs on the energetic foundation between the animal and algae,” explained Crawford Drury, an assistant researcher at the Coral Resilience Lab at HIMB and co-author of the study. In the waters of Kāneʻohe Bay, the Coral Resilience Lab is spearheading research to best understand this coral reef ecology and the molecular mechanisms driving thermal stress.

The lab is likewise pioneering the breeding of thermally resistant coral for experiments and the restoration of reefs, a highly specialized process few labs in the world can achieve. So, while you’d usually be hard pressed to find fresh coral for study in East Lansing, MSU’s partnership with the Coral Resilience Lab has led to a globe-spanning collaboration that closes the gap between field and laboratory.

“HIMB and MSU have developed a really amazing partnership. I’m just happy they’ve let me be a part of it. I can’t wait to see what comes out of it next,” said Ty Roach, a visiting faculty at Duke University and lead author of the new study.

Heat-resistant hand-me-downs

In the wild, rice coral takes on a dizzying array of shapes, from jutting, spiky protrusions to flat, tiered terraces — all identifiable by the tiny grain-like projections that lend the species its name. When samples arrive at MSU, Quinn applies an analytical approach known as metabolomics to understand the complex biochemistry of the organisms. Like a snapshot of life in motion, metabolomics allows researchers to get an idea of what’s occurring within a cell or tissue sample at a precise moment in time.

Leveraging advanced instrumentation found in MSU’s Mass Spectrometry and Metabolomics Core, the team searched for biochemical signatures associated with bleaching resistance in their samples. This included analyzing coral sperm, eggs, embryos and larvae, as well as their algal “collaborators.”

Through their analyses, the researchers discovered that both coral and algae pass along the biochemical signature of thermal tolerance, and that this tolerance was successfully maintained from parent coral into the next generation. Given rice coral’s method of reproduction and the numerous stages of the coral life cycle, this was an impressive feat. “Corals usually spawn based on the lunar cycle; for our experiment, this means late nights around the summer new moons and months of work rearing coral larvae and juveniles,” said Drury.

This summer, Quinn group graduate student Sarah VanDiepenbos had the chance to join Coral Resilience Lab researchers to witness one such nighttime coral spawning and breeding event. “It was such a serene, beautiful experience. The timing is impeccable, as the process only lasts 20 to 30 minutes total,” VanDiepenbos explained. "The coral bundles slowly float upward, trying to find another gamete to combine with once they get to the surface. This release is gradual, so they can have a maximum chance of finding spawn from a different coral,” she added.

Tougher genes for warmer seas

While many species of corals uptake symbionts from the surrounding seawater, rice coral provide their eggs with algae, handing this relationship down from parent to child. “To have this algae’s thermal tolerance remain through an entire generation and all the stages of coral development, that’s surprising, and promising for the future of coral reefs,” Quinn said, who’s also an associate professor in MSU’s Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Especially compelling was the fact that the earliest stages of the coral lifecycle, like embryos and larva, showed chemical signatures linked to whether parent organisms were thermally tolerant or not.

This means that not only do offspring receive heat-resistant genes, but also beneficial molecules to give them a head start against heat stress. “Some of the most interesting findings from this work is that coral lipid biochemistry is maintained through all stages of development during reproduction,” Quinn said.

“Importantly, these lipids come from both the host coral and its algal symbiont, indicating there is crosstalk between them to prepare the next generation to resist bleaching,” he added. In showing how inherited thermal resistance originates from both coral and algae, this research provides deeper insight into the finely tuned, symbiotic microcosm found in corals across the world’s oceans.

Most exciting for the team is how these findings are contributing to the science behind the restoration of reefs and the breeding of stronger, more heat-tolerant coral generations. “Our metabolomics research at MSU could support reef restoration efforts at places like the Kāneʻohe Bay by identifying corals that are resistant to bleaching,” Quinn said.

-courtesy story/photo

LANSING, Mich. – This is a Lansing Fact: Carter Graham homered in the first inning – and then the Dayton Dragons (13-29, 34-73) were shut out for the next 13 innings, dropping a doubleheader to the Lansing Olive Burgers (20-25, 56-55), 3-2 and 4-0, on Thursday night at Jackson® Field™.

Lansing has won the first three games of the series, guaranteeing a series split at minimum.

In Game 1, solo tallies in the first (a Pedro Pineda RBI single), second (Ryan Lasko sacrifice fly) and third innings (Davis Diaz RBI single) overcame the eary Graham home run and lifted Lansing to victory.

Former Dragon Kenya Huggins tossed the first 2 2/3 innings, with Yehizon Sanchez recording the final out of the third, and then Tzu-Chen Sha finished things off with four scoreless innings of three-hit relief.

Diaz went 2-for-3 with a pair of singles to lead the offense.

In the nightcap, completed in a brisk 92 minutes, Mario Gómez blasted Lansing’s first home run since July 26th, a two-run shot in the second inning, and T.J. Schofield-Sam added a two-run single in the third.

That was more than enough for Kyle Robinson, who scattered four singles and two walks while striking out four across six scoreless innings, his fifth quality start of the season. Wander Guante wrapped things up with a perfect seventh.

Catcher Gómez finished the night 2-for-2 with a single, a home run and a walk.

Friday night is a full-on celebration of baseball: Gates open at 4:45 p.m., a vintage baseball game will be played from 5-6 p.m., the plaques for the Michigan Baseball Hall of Fame Class of 2025 will be revealed at 6:20-6:25, the Lugnuts play the fourth game of the six-game series against Dayton at 7:05 p.m. wearing Sandlot-themed uniforms – with a special appearance from Chauncey “Squints” Leopardi – and LAFCU Fireworks will follow the game.

For tickets, visit the stadium box office at 505 E. Michigan Ave. in downtown Lansing, call (517) 485-4500 during office hours, or visit lansinglugnuts.com.

-courtesy story