COLUMBUS, Ohio – Two moms pushing strollers watch as a woman named Beth has a full body scan done just a few feet away at an unlikely venue: the Center of Science and Industry, a downtown museum known as a hands-on discovery mecca for kids.

There’s more to see behind the glass walls of a lab at the museum: a machine that assesses body mass and composition and an assembly of fitness equipment including a treadmill, stationary bike and a Nintendo Wii.

In what’s believed to be the country’s first working research lab inside a science museum, researchers at Ohio State University seek to teach the public about nutrition and exercise and expose both adults and youngsters to work typically done behind university walls.

The newly opened “Labs in Life” brings that Ohio State research into the open at COSI.

Beth’s identity is kept confidential as part of a study on the effects of recreational running on bone mass. She has agreed to allow museum visitors to see her step on a scale, sit down to have blood drawn and lie in a machine to have her skeleton, spine, arm and hip scanned.

“There is some momentum in involving the public more in this kind of research, but they are the first doing it in this way,” said Maria Zacharias, spokeswoman for the National Science Foundation.

It’s the type of venture, connecting research with people and health, that should be happening more, said Sean Smith, spokesman for the Association of Science-Technology Centers.

The project could be replicated at other science centers to expose more people to university research, said Jonathan Scott, an Ohio State doctoral student helping with the bone density research.

“A lot of it’s published in scholarly journals people might not have access to, or if they do, it’s written in such a way that it’s not necessarily in layman’s terms,” Scott said.

The project was about eight years in the making and took an initial investment of about $700,000, excluding medical equipment, which was secured at a discount by researchers, said Dr. David Chesebrough, president and chief executive of COSI.

Nutrition and physical activity were chosen as topics in the hopes the research would help people understand their bodies and make positive lifestyle changes. Chesebrough says the lab’s community involvement could open researchers up to more grant money.

“We’re starting to see what we’d hoped we would see, which is a positive effect on the public pointing the way for how science centers and universities can work together for their mutual benefit, and more importantly the mutual benefit of the community,” he said.

Joan Daly, 27, of Delaware in suburban Columbus, visited “Labs in Life” on a recent weekday with her 1-year-old daughter and a friend, another mom with a 1-year-old son.

“It’s my favorite exhibit now,” Daly said. “I told her, ‘We have to go in here when somebody’s doing something. I’m a stay-at-home mom. … I can go here and I can learn something.”