Wednesday marks the first time that President Joe Biden  met with Russian President Vladimir Putin since taking office. The summit happened in Geneva, and the discussions could set the course between the two adversaries as tensions continue to escalate between U.S. and Russia. Since Biden took office, he has significantly ramped up his rhetoric against Putin. His administration has twice imposed sanctions on Russia. In March, they sanctioned seven senior officials over the poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and in April, they imposed economic sanctions because of various cyberattacks. Aaron Retish is a professor of history at Wayne State University, with a specialization in Russian and Soviet history. He says while these meetings between world leaders are important, they are mostly “grand theater.” “What you want is to have two heads of state, shaking hands and speaking, that itself is important,” Retish says. “It’s actually essential in diplomatic relations to kind of show that the two are willing to be in the same room. It’s what happens behind the scenes, what happens on the sidelines that is really the most important.” 

Numerous Metro Detroit employers have announced or are currently considering plans to preserve at least some remote work post-COVID-19, and that shift is likely to have significant and varied effects on the area. More than just increasing the likelihood that you'll continue taking Zoom meetings from your kitchen table, the change will affect everything from traffic to real estate to housing. However, less commuting may not mean fewer overall trips or fewer vehicles on the road. Carolyn Loh, associate professor of urban studies and planning at Wayne State University, says people who have flexible or remote work models may choose to make more trips in the middle of the day. "It might not reduce trips overall, but it might spread them out over a distance of time so they're not concentrated at rush hour," she says. Loh predicts that reduced commuting will also prompt some workers to choose to live farther from work. If they only have to commute three days a week, for example, many will be willing to accept a longer commute in exchange for cheaper or more spacious housing. Loh notes that this is all likely to make public transit planning more complicated. housing along bus lines and train lines, if we ever build train lines. I think it's just really, really hard to adequately serve that spread-out of a population with buses."  

The U.S. Department of Energy recently announced the awardees for its Early Career Research Program. The program will support 83 scientists, who will receive a total of $100 million in funding that will support critical research to cement America as a global leader in science and innovation. Chun Shen, Ph.D., assistant professor of physics and astronomy in Wayne State University’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, was awarded a five-year, $750,000 award for his project, “Quantitative Characterization of Emerging Quark-Gluon Plasma Properties with Dynamical Fluctuations and Small Systems.” The project will focus on elucidating Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) properties — a novel state of matter that existed at the infant phase of our universe — by understanding the dynamical evolution of stochastic fluctuations in relativistic heavy-ion collisions from large to small systems. “My research will provide a quantitative characterization of the QGP properties, how it ripples and flows, and its phase structure by interweaving theoretical many-body nuclear physics, high-performance computing and advanced machine learning techniques,” said Shen. “My work aims to develop a new open-source theoretical framework to decode hot nuclear matter properties from the measured multi-particle correlations.”

Kirsten Carlson, associate professor of law and adjunct associate professor of political science, wrote an article for The Conversation on police authority over non-Indians. “The Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the sovereign power of American Indian tribes on June 1, 2021, ruling that tribal police officers have the power to temporarily detain and search non-Indians on public rights-of-way through American Indian lands. In most communities in the United States, the local government has the authority to investigate and prosecute both misdemeanor and felony crimes. And local police can detain and search individuals suspected of state and federal crimes, at least until handing them off to the appropriate authorities. Tribal governments – the local governments in Indian country – have the power to prosecute tribal citizens on tribal lands. When it comes to non-Indians, though, the situation is different. In 1978, the Supreme Court ruled that tribal governments could not prosecute non-Indians for any crimes in Indian country. Tribal governments have to rely on state and federal governments to prosecute non-Indians – which doesn’t happen often. Effectively, non-Indians have been able to commit crimes in Indian country with impunity.

American history is riddled with interesting facts. The earliest Memorial Day celebration is one of them. Waterloo, New York is officially credited with starting our nation's most solemn holiday on May 5, 1866. But in 1966, one hundred years later, Yale University and Pulitzer Prize-winner historian David W. Blight stumbled across a then little known narrative inside boxes of Union veteran archives at Harvard University's Houghton Library. On May 1, 1865, less than a month after the Confederacy surrendered, a crowd of about 10,000, mostly freed slaves, staged a parade around a Charleston, SC race track to honor Union soldier prisoners who had fallen in the brutal Civil War. In a recent interview with Marc Kruman, the Distinguished Service Professor of History at Wayne State University, also educated at Yale University, he recalled the story that reportedly happened in the city where the Civil War began. Special services at Arlington National Cemetery on May 30, 1868, marked the official beginning of Decoration Day, the forerunner to Memorial Day. And, in 1971, Memorial Day became a Federal holiday which is observed every year on the 4th Monday of May.

Howard Lupovitch is an associate professor of history at Wayne State University and director of the Cohn-Haddow Center for Judaic Studies. He says Israelis were trying to form a coalition government before the current conflict. ”We need to differentiate between the current Israeli government’s policies and what most Israelis actually think and feel.” He says he believes the state of Israel is necessary, but says it also created this conflict. ”Looking at both sides is very important … Zionism and the state of Israel solved a European problem and created an Asian or a Middle East problem … it was created to be not only a Jewish state but also a democratic state … both of those things are necessary.” Lupovitch says Hamas does not represent all Palestinians, and the same goes for the current Israeli leadership and citizens of Israel. ”If we could remove the Israeli right-wing extremists from this equation, the conflict could resolve itself very easily.” Saeed Khan is a lecturer of near east and Asian studies at Wayne State University. He says Palestinians are disenfranchised in multiple ways under Israeli occupation. ”Part of the way to understand what’s happening currently … is that Israel is moving farther and farther to the right.” He says with extremism from Hamas and the state of Israel, it’s becoming more difficult to resolve the conflict. ”We are finding that the space for some kind of return to negotiation is looking precarious because the [political] center is in jeopardy of no longer holding,” Khan says.

For many in metro Detroit with ties to Israel or Gaza, videos and images of the recent violence have been hard to bear. Wayne State University Associate Professor of History Howard Lupovitch and Saeed Khan, Senior Lecturer of near East Studies, agree that it is not all about religion. They have together tried to help people understand the politics. "The Israeli government was on the cusp of taking a really remarkable step forward. They were in the process of starting a new government sans Netanyahu which was going to bring together left wing and right wing. And also more importantly was going to include and Israeli Arab party," said Lupovitch. Khan says there are three things that contributed to this current crisis: tensions over the expected forced evictions of families in East Jerusalem, an Israeli Police incident that turned violent at one of Islam's holiest mosques. And then the bombings and rocket attacks in Tel Aviv and Gaza by Hamas and Israel. Israel has said it is working to destroy the militant group Hamas, but these professors said in the end Hamas and extremist parties in Israel could become stronger. "One has to wonder then was this partially orchestrated," said Lupovitch. They said this conflict is about the potential future of democracies when there is extreme political divide exacerbated by social media. It comes after for the first time there were representatives elected in Israel who want to expel Arabs. "It became a couple notches less marginalized in Israeli society even though most Israelis find it appalling," said Lupovitch. Khan added, "I think these kind of issues hold up a mirror to America, and America has to decide what is reflective of its own values."

Welcome to the shortage economy. After four decades where optimized and increasingly global supply chains made goods available at rock-bottom prices – where even scarce energy suddenly became cheap and abundant because of new drilling technologies – America has suddenly run smack into scarcities for everything from lumber to copper, computer chips to rental cars, truckers to restaurant workers, ammunition for guns to chlorine tablets for swimming pools. Americans can expect more such shortages and price increases, economists say, as eager-to-spend consumers contemplate a post-pandemic economy and as record government stimulus boosts demand. The silver lining in this is that most of these shortages are expected to be temporary. Another bottleneck is a decades-old shortage of truck drivers. The problem is magnified when goods are in such big demand. But the problem isn’t really the supply of potential drivers, but the extremely poor pay for long-haul work, says Michael Belzer, a former truck driver and now professor of economics at Wayne State University. Adjusting for inflation, “we’re probably at about 50% on average today of the overall annual compensation of where we were back then [in the 1970s]. So it shouldn’t be a big shock that we have a hard time getting drivers.”

As Americans live longer and healthier, as today's youth may take longer to launch, as couples have fewer children, if they choose to have any at all – what are these demographic realizations portending for land use and urban planning? If people can live anywhere, how do city leaders permit housing options to retain and grow the population while maintaining values and encourage diversity? “Single family zoning was designed to protect single family property values from uses that were less desirable – and they explicitly called out 'less desirable' uses, including apartments, and oftentimes the underlying motivation was trying to keep white neighborhoods white,” said Carolyn Loh, associate professor, urban studies and planning, Wayne State University. “Today, some people are saying that is the reason single family zoning shouldn't exist – but it shouldn't be the only housing choice. For example, in order to live in a town with a good school district, renting or owning, that's your ticket to the community. Higher density (than single family) allows you to split the cost of the ticket. It doesn't mean low income – it means a lower income. A duplex can provide that.”

Michigan’s slow population growth over the past decade will cost the state a U.S. House seat, continuing a decades-long trend as job-seekers and retirees have fled to other states. The U.S. Census Bureau listed the state’s 2020 apportionment population at 10,084,442, leaving Michigan with 13 congressional seats. Michigan’s population grew for decades, from 7.8 million in 1960 to more than 9.9 million in 2000. It recorded a slight decline in the census 10 years ago, to 9.8 million. Over time, its congressional seats have been peeled off little by little by faster-growing states, mostly in the Sunbelt. “Those congressional districts are equal to political power in Washington,” said Timothy Bledsoe, professor of political science at Wayne State University in Detroit. “When it leaves Michigan and goes to Texas, it is a reflection of the loss of political power in Michigan and gain of political power that goes to Texas.” Dropping from 14 House seats to 13 also will mean the boundaries of some districts will have to change. But the job of drawing those districts will no longer be in the hands of the Legislature, which is controlled by Republicans.

The death of George Floyd and the conviction of Derek Chauvin have prompted serious discussions about racism and relations between the African American community and police. We're talking about it in tonight's 7 UpFront segment with Wayne State University Political Science Professor Ron Brown. "I was happy because I thought about myself, my two sons, and my one grandson who've all been stopped by the police," Brown says. "I'm hoping all Americans realize that we should have a fair procedural structure of justice so that no one feels like a stranger. So I was very, very happy with the outcome."

It’s not every day that physicists are completely baffled. But some recent tests show that the decades-old standard model, which is the playbook for physics, may not perfectly explain everything in the universe. “People for the last 70 years have tried to find measurements that are not explained by the standard model. Nothing,” said Alexy Petrov, a Wayne State University particle physicist. “Everything was perfectly explained by the standard model. This might be the first one that’s not explained.” Petrov wasn’t involved with this particular study, but he does very similar work. He said they sent a strange particle called a muon, that only lasts for two microseconds, around a track in order to get a better look at it. “It’s a very difficult measurement to do,” Petrov said. “They put them in something called the storage ring, they move them very fast and before they decay they have to measure how the magnetic field effects them.” The early results were 0.1 percent off what the standard model predicts, and that little difference could expand the physics universe as we know it. “If this holds up, the new physics, this thing that we don’t know, is just around the corner. It might tell us the nature of dark matter,” Petrov said.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court will hear arguments Monday in two environmental protection cases with widespread ramifications for state government powers. The court has been asked to resolve disputes over the state’s authority to protect public waters from pollution and overuse, but the decision could influence nearly every aspect of state government and the balance of power between politicians who make laws and the state agencies tasked with carrying them out. One case involves regulation of water pollution; the other, large-scale withdrawals of water for irrigation. In both cases, environmental groups sued the DNR seeking stricter enforcement. On one side are conservation groups, which argue the Department of Natural Resources has the authority to protect public waters and enforce clean water standards. Industry groups and Republican lawmakers argue that power belongs to the Legislature. Marjorie Sarbaugh-Thompson, a professor of political science at Wayne State University and co-author of a study on state legislative oversight, said the process works best when it’s done in a bipartisan manner, as it is in 13 states. “The cover story I guess is accountability … but really it’s interest group pressure,” she said. “Unless you figure out some way to get the party politics and interest group money and all the pressure out of it it’s just one more way to have political games of gotcha.”

A potential chink in physicists’ understanding of fundamental particles and forces now looks more real. New measurements confirm a fleeting subatomic particle called the muon may be ever so slightly more magnetic than theory predicts, a team of more than 200 physicists reported this week. That small anomaly—just 2.5 parts in 1 billion—is a welcome threat to particle physicists’ prevailing theory, the standard model, which has long explained pretty much everything they’ve seen at atom smashers and left them pining for something new to puzzle over. “Since the 1970s we’ve been looking for a crack in the standard model,” says Alexey Petrov, a theorist at Wayne State University. “This may be it.” 

Brandi Pritchett-Johnson is a lot of things - mom to Joseph and Carter - a wife - a psychology professor at Wayne State University. She is also the lead researcher and clinician for a group therapy called Invincible Black Women. Invincible Black Women is a therapy group that focuses on mental health. "It's kind of this idea that you gotta be bigger than life, you've got to carry it all, hold it all, do it all," said Johnson. But nobody is invincible. Johnson says so many Black women are juggling so many responsibilities - and so many have experienced grief and loss in the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and racial inequity. The groups are facilitated by doctoral and master's therapists from Wayne State who are determined to make mental health a priority - and to assure women of color - their voices matter and are being heard.

In 2019, according to a CDC study, almost 19 percent of students reported having seriously considered suicide. “The age group 14 to 24 years are particularly vulnerable,” noted professor Douglas Barnett, director of Wayne State University Psychology Training Clinic. “There are a lot of theories, notably that at that age biologically, socially and psychologically, they're seeing the world in new ways, their bodies are changing and the way they're interacting with the world, and the way the world is interacting with them, is changing. But they're still kids. All of the stresses add up. They can't always imagine improvements that in their world can change, that their parents can change – that it can all be temporary. However, the numbers are indicating they are more suicidal in the last several years. It's a very serious problem for all walks of life – not just the poor, inner city kid. It's the wealthy suburban kids too. It's an international problem from communities around the world.” Barnett said there have always been suicides among teenagers, but often it was something people hid from others. Today, there is a greater awareness of mental illness and the need, and availability, of help. “Thirty years ago if a teen made a suicide attempt, they were brought to a hospital for several days or weeks. That was in the '80s or '90s, and they were getting thorough assessments of what they needed,” Barnett said. “Now, they are often released within 24 hours, with the hospital pretending nothing happened, or depending upon the parents to find the resources. One of the challenges of this age group is the need for parental support as well as the teen has to want to get help. You need both to have cooperation. Good therapists know how to work with that.”

A lot has changed in how we relate to the public spaces around us this year. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, some main streets have closed to cars and opened to pedestrians, to give passersby more room. Restaurants — those that survived — got creative with outdoor seating. And people stuck at home suddenly found themselves seeking local outdoor spaces — where they're available — for recreation and physically distanced socializing. All these shifts in how we use our spaces got us thinking: What does a “return to normal” look like for cities? Robert Boyle, a professor emeritus of urban planning at Wayne State University, says the pandemic has given people the chance to consider alternative forms of infrastructure. “There could be, quote, a ‘return to normal,’ but there is an opportunity for more of a change,” Boyle said. “There is a chance that instead of just reverting to what we've been used to doing, there could be an opportunity to see things differently.”

Municipal master plans set the tone for how communities handle many important issues like land use, transportation, housing, and recreation. But some municipal planners are just beginning to figure out how to use the city master plan work to set meaningful goals for advancing social equity in their communities. That's according to "Are We Planning for Equity?" a study published in November in the Journal of the American Planning Association by Wayne State University researchers Carolyn Loh and Rose Kim. Loh and Kim developed a plan equity evaluation tool and used it to analyze 48 comprehensive plans from communities across Michigan, measuring the degree to which they incorporated practices and recommendations to advance equity. Loh says a master plan can incorporate equity into its goals in many different ways. Housing goals can stipulate a wide range of housing sizes, price points, and types that appeal to people of diverse income levels. Transportation goals can emphasize the importance of public transit, particularly adjacent to new housing developments, for those who can't afford a car. Plans can establish goals for climate resiliency, taking steps to ensure that marginalized residents aren't disproportionately exposed to flooding or heat vulnerability. Economic development goals can seek to ensure that development benefits lower-income neighborhoods instead of just favoring high-rent downtowns. "Are you recommending accessible housing for a variety of folks, that's in a safe place, that's connected to a transportation system that's going to let them access the things they need?" Loh says. "If you had it in one sentence ... that's what you're looking for."  

While physical activity has long been established as having a positive effect on people with depression, studies have found that effect increases significantly in an outdoor rather than indoor setting. Erika Bocknek is an associate professor of educational psychology at Wayne State University who specializes in child mental health and buffering the impact of stress and trauma on children. Bocknek says one commonly discussed component of mental health is the ability to regulate negative emotions, but it's important to "up-regulate" positive emotions like joy as well. "It's become very clear to me that our outdoor spaces play an extremely vital role in how healthy relationships have a place to do their best work for children and their positive mental health outcomes," she says. "And I think that became especially clear to me during the pandemic, when being outdoors was essentially the only and best option for ensuring that human contact and relationships were thriving." Bocknek says many of the conversations she's had with fellow task members have revolved around the importance of joy during the pandemic's challenges and "how to make our outdoor spaces the stage, so to speak, for joy to do its best work."

After traveling nearly 300 million miles for the last 6 months, NASA’s rover ‘Perseverance’ has landed safely on Mars. Shortly after its arrival on the Red Planet last month, it sent back its first images of the Martian atmosphere and landing site, setting off imaginations all over the country. So what does this mission mean in terms of exploring and learning about our solar system? Wayne State astrophysicist Edward Cackett explained that the arrival of the rover on the surface of Mars is reason to celebrate in itself. “There’s a small launch window of about one month every 24 months,” explains Cackett, who says that this means that NASA scientists had to prepare everything during the pandemic summer of 2020. As far as what the hope is for what the rover will uncover, Cackett says there are “a whole of firsts” in the goals of this mission. Some of the goals of the Perseverance mission include sending out a helicopter (that was sent with the rover) to test whether it’s possible for an aircraft to fly in the Martian atmosphere, collecting rock samples and sealing them in test tubes tubes that a future mission will be able to pick up and bring back to earth and an experiment that will test whether it’s possible to produce oxygen from Mars’ atmosphere, which is mostly CO2. On the topic of how far we are from sending a person to Mars, Cackett points to the Artemis program, which is to get humans back on the moon in preparation for eventually getting humans to Mars. Cackett says that the Artemis program is planning to have humans on the moon for a continued amount of time to develop a site to test advancements that would allow humans to get to Mars. Cackett says this initiative is one of the very few things that was supported by former President Donald Trump and continues to receive support under the Biden administration.