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July 22, 2026 misciwriterseditors blog

Understanding Type 2 Diabetes: From Disease Mechanisms to Modern Treatments

Written by: Faith Connors

Edited by: Charukesi Sivakumar, Mithcell Witt, Jeremy Chen, Ryan Schildcrout

Illustrated by: Courtney Myers

Diabetes is one of the most prevalent chronic diseases in the U.S. and is ranked as the 7^th leading cause of death. The National Diabetes Statistics Report from the CDC estimates that 12% of the U.S. population has diabetes, with the majority of these cases being type 2 diabetes. This disease is often a lifelong illness that can be a huge financial burden for patients and can negatively affect their quality of life. For example, in 2017, the CDC found that the average annual out-of-pocket cost for diabetes-related expenses was $4,600, and it was the most common cause of non-traumatic limb amputation. Diabetes is characterized by chronic high blood glucose levels. In 2005, a new class of drugs called glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RAs) was approved by the FDA for treating diabetes. GLP-1 RAs have gotten a lot of attention in the media as being a new standout treatment for diabetes. They are not only more effective at controlling blood sugar than previous drugs on the market, but they also have wide-ranging benefits for metabolic health that have made them a new cornerstone treatment for patients. Here we will focus on the underlying pathological mechanisms of type 2 diabetes, and what GLP-1 RAs do differently than other diabetes drugs that have made them standout.

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July 22, 2026 misciwriterseditors blog

Metal Organic Frameworks: How simple curiosity became a Nobel Prize

Written by: Valkyrie Gibson

Edited by: Brenna Saladin, Camila Gonzalez, Kaitrin Freeland, Ryan Schildcrout

Illustrated By: Caroline Harms

My brother loved playing with Legos as a kid. He followed instructions to build the Millenium Falcon, Hogwarts castle, or the Statue of Liberty. But after completing a set, he’d take it apart and mix all the pieces up in bins, leaving them until he was ready to build something new; maybe the Millenium Falcon could be turned into a house, a tree, or a fantastical new city. He could build anything with a bit of interest and imagination. This natural curiosity I saw in my brother, and that many of us experience as kids, lives on in the minds of scientists.

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July 22, 2026 misciwriterseditors blog

Watch Out for Deer: The Rise of Chronic Wasting Disease and the Potential Risk to Humans

Written by: Emily Lecea

Edited by: Claire Shudde, Colter Giem, Hannah Kim, Ryan Schildcrout

Illustrated by: Jessica Li

Watch out for deer! It’s a common enough saying, one that’s a half-joking, half-serious warning for a legitimate danger on the road. Deer are overpopulated in many areas in North America, largely driven by a lack of predators, increasing the danger of an encounter on the road, causing the majority of the 1.8 million vehicle collisions each year attributed to wildlife. Venison is a common American meat, and hunting is popular, often seen as a method for population control, but not all meat is safe for consumption, thanks to the rise of a prion disease. Prions are essentially infectious misfolded proteins that can cause disease by accumulating in the brain, leading to cell death. In recent decades, a prion disease known as Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) has become increasingly prevalent in deer populations – and could, potentially, cause disease in humans as well.

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June 28, 2026 misciwriterseditors blog, ComSciConMI2025

Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus: A Treatable Dementia

Written by: Jessica Moser

Edited by: Courtney Myers

This piece was written in collaboration with the 2025 ComSciCon-MI Write-A-Thon.

Dementia is seen as a chronic and eventually fatal condition of the mind, but what if some patients have a related condition that, when treated, can give them their independence back? Danny Bonaduce from The Partridge Family was diagnosed with a “mystery illness” in 2023 that left him wheelchair-bound with dementia-like symptoms. A couple years following that, singer Billy Joel fell onstage and subsequently cancelled his concerts in 2025 due to what he mentioned as a “brain disorder” that caused him to feel like he was “walking on a boat.” What do these two people have in common? They were diagnosed with a condition called Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus. So, what is Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus and why is it known as “Treatable Dementia”?

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May 25, 2026 misciwriterseditors blog, ComSciConMI2025

Posterity, Perseverance, and You

Written by: Eileen Johnson

Edited by: Caroline Harms

This piece was written in collaboration with the 2025 ComSciCon-MI Write-A-Thon.

Stress is part of everyday life, and while some stress is healthy for growth and safety, an overstimulated stress response can cause mental and physical harm. Understanding the evolutionary pathways that organize this stress response and how to manage them can help us find a healthy balance between stress and rest.

Instincts are the summary of inherited survival knowledge an animal depends on to survive. Information is accumulated and distilled over generations until it is embedded in every member of the species. Automatic and potent, the brain responds to both internal and external stressors by flooding the body with chemicals called stress hormones. The sympathetic nervous system is responsible for producing these hormones and inducing one of three main reactions: fight, flight, and freeze. How hormones turn into instincts depends on the shared experiences of long-lost ancestors, guiding the functional changes in mind and body to improve survival chances.

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May 12, 2026 misciwriterseditors blog, ComSciConMI2025

Towards understanding the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the universe

Written by: Antara Paul

Edited by: Courtney Myers

This piece was written in collaboration with the 2025 ComSciCon-MI Write-A-Thon.

The Big Bang created matter and antimatter in equal amounts at the beginning of the universe. Why then, after billions of years, do we see only matter around us? Physicists have been trying to find clues to this question for centuries.

The universe we live in is composed of atoms, which in turn contain tinier particles called protons, neutrons, and electrons. These particles were individually discovered by scientists during the early twentieth century. For the next few decades, it was believed that protons and neutrons were fundamental particles. However, in the 1960s, it was discovered that they were composed of groups of even smaller particles called quarks. At the time, only three types of quarks were discovered.

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May 12, 2026 misciwriterseditors blog, ComSciConMI2025

Listen Up, Your Cells Are Talking!

Written by: Nina Aitas

Edited by: Lauren Heinzinger

This piece was written in collaboration with the 2025 ComSciCon-MI Write-A-Thon.

What is your body made of? You could say it is made up of different organs like your heart, lungs, and muscles. But what if you were to zoom in on your organs? What are they made of?

Your organs are made up of millions of cells!

Cells are too small to see without a microscope. They make up every single part of your body and hold the tools needed to carry out everything your body does. Your muscle cells contract so you can pick up a book. Your brain cells form your thoughts about how you want to become a lawyer one day. Your skin cells come together to heal your paper cut.

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May 5, 2026 misciwriterseditors blog, ComSciConMI2025

The Skinny on Staph in the US

Written by: Jessica Lysne

Edited by: Lauren Heinzinger

This piece was written in collaboration with the 2025 ComSciCon-MI Write-A-Thon.

“I’m working in a staph lab,” I tell a friend from college when we see each other for the first time in a while.

“Ugh! Staph! I hate staph!” She says with a full-body shudder. As a fully licensed pharmacist these days, she works in the Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital on our old university campus. She adds, after the shudder, “Oh, but I’m glad you like it!”

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April 10, 2026 misciwriterseditors blog, ComSciConMI2025

Intelligence without a backbone

Written by: Lacey Bishop-Schouster

Edited by: Courtney Myers

This piece was written in collaboration with the 2025 ComSciCon-MI Write-A-Thon.

When we think about intelligence in the animal kingdom, our minds often go straight to ourselves. Then maybe to apes cracking nuts with tools, dolphins playing games, or elephants who “never forget.”

However, there’s another group of animals that is often overlooked and should be included with these examples: the cephalopods. Cephalopods—octopuses, squids, cuttlefish, and nautiluses—are a class of mollusks distinguished by their soft bodies, tentacles, and ability to move by jet propulsion. Although they are invertebrates, they show some of the most complex behaviors on the planet. In fact, they have the largest brains of any invertebrates, and their path to intelligence looks nothing like ours.

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April 9, 2026 misciwriterseditors blog, ComSciConMI2025

How Tiny Particles Shape Climate

Written by: Hasnaa H. Abo Shosha

Edited by: Jessica Li

This piece was written in collaboration with the 2025 ComSciCon-MI Write-A-Thon.

I was amazed when I first learned that something as small as a particle of soot could shift the Earth’s climate. These particles are so tiny that you could line thousands of them across a single strand of hair. And yet, they have the power to change how much of the Sun’s energy warms our planet. I like to often think of them as invisible sun catchers floating in the sky.

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