The Iowa Caucus debacle is raising new questions about how the political parties should structure their elections to nominate a presidential candidate. So we're asking: Should Michigan's primary election be held before Super Tuesday? Not everyone thinks that by taking part earlier in the process a state has more influence on who will win. “The conventional thinking is that you are better off if you have your primary earlier, but that depends on the number of candidates in a race at a given time,” said Wayne State University Professor Marick Masters. Masters says even with our primary happening March 10, Michigan is important because it has 16 electoral votes and only 7 other states have more.

Wayne State University has established a polling location to serve Detroit's Precinct 149, a little over a month before the presidential primary election March 10. All voters of Precinct 149 will now cast ballots at the university's polling location inside the Wayne State Law School, 471 West Palmer. Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson joined university officials and Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey for the announcement Wednesday afternoon at the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights. In November, Wayne State University was recognized for student voting engagement, with a student rate of over 50 percent, earning the university a platinum seal — one of 61 institutions in the country to do so. Student voting at Wayne State increased to 53 percent in 2018 following the midterm elections, up from 27 percent in 2013, while the national average institutional voting rate was 39 percent in 2018, according to the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement. The university Board of Governors also declared Election Day in November a campus holiday, canceling classes and making it easier for students, staff, and faculty to hit the polls. “The university has gone to considerable measures to ensure every student’s voice is heard,” Wayne State University President M. Roy Wilson said. “This student-led initiative celebrates the life and legacy of Judge Damon Keith by making voting and civic engagement more accessible to campus residents. I believe (Keith) would be delighted with today’s announcement.”

President Donald Trump has been acquitted of two impeachment charges. The hearings have been endowed with an air of inevitability. But the predictable partisan conclusion of this process was upset by Sen. Mitt Romney’s (R-Utah) surprising break from party lines. Romney made history with his vote to remove the president from office on the charge of abuse of power, making him the first senator to vote in favor of impeaching a president from his own party. “There are areas of agreement between Democrats and Republicans. It’s hard to imagine that happening during a presidential election year,” says Marc Kruman, founding director of the Center for the Study of Citizenship and professor of history. Ultimately the Utah senator’s vote didn’t impact President Trump’s swift acquittal, but it did raise questions regarding the state of American politics and the role of congress moving forward. He says this impeachment process has, not surprisingly, been viewed through the lens of partisan politics. The unwillingness of elected officials to see beyond party has left American democracy in a fragile state, says Kruman. In order to restore some type of order he says there has to be a move toward compromise and consensus. “There are, in fact, areas of agreement between Democrats and Republicans that they should work on. It’s hard to imagine that happening during a presidential election year.”

Frederic S. Pearson, professor of political science and director of the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies, wrote an op-ed tracing the U.S.-Iran relations. “The up-and-down U.S.-Iranian relationship, at times teetering on the brink of war, is highly complicated and fraught with historical memories; it cannot be characterized simply as black and white/good and evil. Recent developments indicate that with the crackdown on Iran and its militias, as well as Washington’s blow to Kurdish forces in Syria with the green light to Turkish occupation of their zones, the U.S. has essentially weakened the two most effective anti-ISIS forces, while stirring up massive anti-American popular responses in Iran, Iraq and Yemen.”

By 2050 there will be an estimated 10 billion humans living on this planet. That's not just a lot of mouths to feed, those folks will be, on average, wealthier than today's population with a taste for the foods found in regions like the U.S. and Western Europe. We simply don't have the capability, the land or production resources to ensure that many people can eat a cheeseburger whenever the mood strikes. Luckily, researchers from around the globe are working on alternative protein sources to supplement our existing beef, pork and chicken. Julie Lesnik, a biological anthropologist at Wayne State University, advocates that we look to get our meat from smaller, more resource-efficient animals than cattle -- specifically, crickets. She points out that, per kilogram, crickets offer roughly the same amount of protein as beef as well as significantly more micronutrients since you're consuming the exoskeleton as well. She also notes that given their diminutive stature and affinity for cramped dark places, crickets require far less arable land than cattle do, citing a 2013 report by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization. "When we're thinking about why we don't eat insects, it's really a story of Europe, and that Europe being in high latitudes, insects aren't available year-round," Lesnick continued. "Eating insects in the summer can give a reprieve from hunting, but it's nutritionally redundant, so it's not an important resource."

Jorge L. Chinea, professor of history and director of the Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies, wrote a piece for The Conversation examining the indigenous heritage of Puerto Rico and the major challenges facing the island. “Tremors and aftershocks are still rocking Puerto Rico, weeks after a magnitude 6.4 earthquake toppled buildings, killed at least one person and injured another eight on Jan. 7. Families have begun leaving the island because it won’t stop shaking. For many on the island, the devastation is a reminder of September 2017 when Hurricane Maria killed 3,000 people and as many as 200,000 Puerto Ricans were forced to hastily relocate to the mainland United States. These major disasters have ravaged the island’s cultural heritage, too. Numerous historic landmarks – including a 2,000-year-old archaeological site containing priceless evidence of the island’s earliest dwellers, the Taíno people – have been destroyed. As a historian of colonial Latin America born in Puerto Rico, I recognize that between the 15th-century Spanish colonization and the 1898 U.S. annexation of the island, the Taíno’s story has been all but erased from the historic record.”

Heather E. Mooney, Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology at Wayne State University, wrote an article for The Conversation regarding the effectiveness of private programs designed for troubled teens. “The troubled teen industry is a mostly unregulated collection of for-profit programs that claim to rehabilitate out-of-control youth. Between 50,000 and 100,000 adolescents currently spend at least part of the year in these facilities. Their enrollment – or confinement, depending on the arrangement or their perspective – can prevent these relatively privileged kids from joining the 48,000 youth caught in the U.S. juvenile justice system. With little academic research about these private programs serving troubled teens, the conversation around them strikes me as either overly positive or negative. I’m skeptical about the positive research because most of it has been conducted and funded by the schools themselves or the organizations representing them. These studies also tend to look at limited time frames, such as two years or less after participants have left a “troubled teens” program.”

Tracie Baker wasn’t sure what tools she would need for the dissection. Baker, an environmental toxicologist at Wayne State University, studies the presence and effects of toxins and endocrine-disrupting compounds in water. She’d cut up fish before, but never anything quite like the tangled mess of fats, oils, grease, and trash that had arrived in her lab. It was two 10-pound chunks of fatberg, taken from a massive sewer-clogging bolus. Baker figured she’d need gloves, probably the thick rubber kind people use for washing dishes, and elbow-length seemed safest. Beyond that, she says, “We weren’t exactly sure what was going to work.” Baker and her colleagues were trying to learn as much as they could about the fatberg, which had been hauled from a sewer in Clinton Township, a suburban Michigan community about 25 miles northeast of Detroit in Macomb County, while it was still fetid and fairly fresh. When they were done, it would be enshrined in a new exhibit at the Michigan Science Center. Pieces of the fatberg were worth keeping around for analysis because “so few fatbergs have been characterized,” Baker says. With the exception of a handful extracted in London, studied with gas chromatography or forensically prodded in front of television cameras, the usual approach to them is, “Let’s get this out of here, throw it in the trash, and move on,” Baker says. Along with her Wayne State colleague Carol Miller, a civil and environmental engineer, Baker applied for National Science Foundation funding to take a closer look at the Macomb County fatberg. The team wanted to know exactly what the mess was made of and how it might affect the ecosystem both inside and outside of the sewer.

Tamara Hew-Butler, associate professor of exercise and sports science, wrote a piece about exercise-associated collapse – the mechanical and chemical disruptions to muscle cell membranes which trigger the muscle cells to burst. “I am seeing and hearing of more incidents of skeletal muscle ruptures that are causing harm in other parts of the body. This information is not designed to scare people back onto the couch. The key take-away from highlighting these cases is to remind athletes, coaches and mere mortals that the desired physiological response to a training stimulus requires both a gradual buildup period and period of recovery in between training sessions. Although symptomatic rhabdomyolysis is uncommon, this emergent complication of exercise should be on everyone’s radar since cases are on the rise. We coaches, trainers, scientists, practitioners and others encourage everyone to reap the joys and benefits of regular exercise training. However, we caution against exercising too much too soon. Self- (or coach-) inflicted skeletal muscle cell explosions are fully preventable with adherence to smart, physiologically sound approaches to training.

Kirsten Carlson, associate professor of law and adjunct associate professor of political science, wrote an article for The Conversation on the rules of impeachment. “Unlike a court of law, prior impeachment trials serve as precedent only in the nonlegal, nonbinding sense. The Senate can look to the procedures it has used in past impeachment proceedings, but those procedures do not have to be followed. The Constitution gives very little guidance on how an impeachment trial should proceed. Article I, Section 3, Clause 6 states, “The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments.” After requiring that Senators be “on oath,” that the chief justice preside and that a two-thirds vote is required to convict, the Constitution leaves it to the Senate to make its own rules about how to conduct the trial. So the fight over procedures and precedents may not be over yet, especially since the Senate can change the rules by majority vote whenever it wants.

Susan P. Fino, professor of political science, wrote a piece for The Conversation about the senators’ impeachment oath. “The 100 United States senators who are jurors in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump have taken a special oath in order to take part in that proceeding. As they enter the active phase of the trial on Tuesday, this oath is supposed to govern their behavior. It’s not the first oath that the lawmakers have taken in their Senate careers. Members of Congress, as well as federal judicial officers and members of state legislatures, must swear to “support the Constitution.” But the Constitution does not specify the form of the oath. So the very first Congress crafted an oath of office and – with minor modifications – that is the oath each member of Congress swears when he or she takes her seat in the House or the Senate. There is a second oath that members of the Senate must take when conducting an impeachment trial. The specific text for this oath was developed in 1868 for the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson.

Arash Javanbakht, assistant professor of psychiatry, wrote a piece for the Conversation on the vulnerability of veterans, refugees and victims of war crimes to PTSD. “Mental health is often used in political discourse and arguments. Post-traumatic stress disorder was the subject Jan. 8, when Rep. Ilhan Omar (D.-Minn.), herself a Somalian refugee who had spent years in a refugee camp in Kenya, said: “Every time I hear conversations around war, I find myself being stricken with PTSD.” Rep. Jim Banks (R.-Ind.), a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, found these comments “offensive to our nation’s veterans who really do have PTSD.” As an expert in research and treatment of PTSD, and a psychiatrist working with refugees and victims of torture, I hope to provide insight into this illness and its presentations in different populations.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is a day to reflect not only on the man, but the movement that he came to represent. That reflection has some people thinking about all of the civil rights icons we’ve lost recently. Judge Damon Keith, Rep. John Conyers, Rep. Elijah Cummings, Aretha Franklin, Toni Morrison, Harris Wofford, and many more. As we move further into this decade we’ll lose more. What does the loss of the Civil Rights generation mean for the fight for equal rights moving forward? “They wanted to change laws, they wanted to improve legislation, they wanted to improve America,” says Ollie Johnson, chair and professor of the Department of African American Studies at Wayne State University. “I think we have unfinished business. And it really pains me to talk about it,” 

Jackson College students wishing to pursue a business management degree from Wayne State University soon can do so without the commute. Starting May 4, business tools and applications and advanced organizational behavior classes from Wayne State’s Mike Ilitch School of Business will be available for enrollment for the summer semester at Jackson College. “We hope to expand our schedule in the future to include additional majors within the Ilitch School,” said Carol Baldwin, WSU’s manager of marketing and communications of educational outreach. “Students also have the option of enrolling in online courses.” The Mike Ilitch School of Business faculty will teach all courses, including Prity Patel, who is available to meet with Jackson College students from Monday to Wednesday and by appointment. “Jackson students can transfer up to 82 credits to Wayne State by following an articulation agreement that is in place between our two institutions,” Baldwin said. WSU Provost Keith Whitfield believes the partnership is equally beneficial for them. “As a public institution, we are thrilled about this new partnership with Jackson College because it will allow us to serve a new group of students that we haven’t previously reached directly,” Whitfield said in a news release. “Most of our partnerships are in the tri-county area, so this is a big and exciting step west for us. We’ve had great conversations with President Phelan and Jackson’s leadership team, and the idea of bringing a four-year business degree to this campus is exciting. We are proud of what we do in Detroit and we believe this partnership will be an asset in Jackson as well.”

Who is in Michigan jails, for how long and why, largely remains unknown following months of investigation. The Michigan Joint Task Force on Jail and Pretrial Incarceration released its final report this week, leaving many questions. What is known is that even a short stay in jail is destabilizing, said Sheryl Kubiak, dean of Wayne State University’s School of Social Work, and a task force member. “If you had a job, you may lose it, and if you lose your job, then you might lose your housing. These unintended consequences have a big effect, which is why we want to work with the legislature now, while the momentum is still going.” Task force members will now work with the legislature in an effort to have at least some of their recommendations enacted through passage of new laws and/or statues, Kubiak said. “I’m optimistic. I think many of the legislators have had experience in the criminal justice system, as attorneys or in other ways, and I think they understand some of these issues very well,” Kubiak said. “We’ve made a good start here with smart and committed people.”

The fish populations of the Great Lakes have changed dramatically in the years since invasive species first arrived. Bloodsucking sea lampreys have decimated native lake trout, and tiny alewives have feasted on the eggs and young of trout and other native species. But there’s good news too, as researchers roll out solutions to help manage invasive fish populations and maintain the diversity of species. Donna Kashian, SciFri Book Club reader and biology professor at Wayne State University said, “I have so many wonderful memories of the Great Lakes, both as a child whose parents had a cabin near Lake Michigan and as an adult doing research on the lakes. But one in particular stands out. I was doing research on Lake Huron, I don’t even remember what we were looking at on that particular day. It was late in the season, maybe August. We were in the middle of the lake—flat water, clear blue skies—and monarch butterflies were just flying everywhere. We’re in the middle of their migration south. It was so surreal and beautiful. I knew birds use the lake as a flyway in their migration, but I never knew monarchs did.

Michigan’s three research universities presidents, M. Roy Wilson, Wayne State, Mark S. Schlissel, University of Michigan, and Samuel L. Stanley Jr., Michigan State, co-wrote an opinion piece about efforts among the University Research Corridor (URC) institutions to address the opioid crisis. The National Institute on Drug Abuse reports that 2,033 people in Michigan died of overdose deaths involving opioids in 2017, a rate of 21.2 deaths per 100,000 persons, higher than the national rate of 14.6 deaths per 100,000. Michigan now ranks in the top third nationally for drug-related deaths, with over half due to synthetic opioids, mainly fentanyl. If Michigan is to reduce those numbers and save lives, it must continue to look for innovative and research-driven ways to take action. That’s why the three major state universities that make up Michigan’s URC have won millions of dollars in competitive federal funds and other grants to train more physicians and counselors statewide to become addiction medicine specialists who can treat patients. Researchers at the three universities also are investigating new ways to keep opioid users who have kicked the habit from taking up the drug again; addressing opioid addiction in jails; finding better ways to treat chronic back pain to lessen reliance on opioids; working with the administration of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to develop a medical provider toolkit to help doctors follow safer opioid prescribing practices; and launching a free online course for health and social services professionals and graduate students examining ways to deal with the opioid epidemic through prevention, intervention, education and policy. As medical doctors and researchers, this is a cause we must win. We are pledging our three URC universities to the fight. 

Wayne State is now open for business in Jackson. Today people packed into Jackson College to learn about a new partnership between the two schools. The partnership allows students at Jackson College to obtain a degree in Business from Wayne State University without leaving Jackson. The president of Jackson College says this will help change the lives of young people across the Jackson area, and give students new opportunities while keeping tuition costs low. Students will start at Jackson College by taking some of the basic courses then transition in Wayne State classes. Advisers will work with students to make sure they are on the right track, and to make the transition as smooth as possible. “We try not to let students fall between the cracks. Our goal is to make sure that we get students across the finish line. Having a great start at Jackson College, and then being able to finish at Wayne State University is just a perfect pairing,” said Provost, and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at Wayne State University, Keith Whitfield.

Wayne State University President M. Roy Wilson today announced the appointment of Mark Schweitzer, M.D., as dean of the university’s School of Medicine and vice president of Health Affairs for the university. Schweitzer, a preeminent radiologist and chair of the Department of Radiology at the Stony Brook University School of Medicine in New York, will join the university and School of Medicine on April 27. “We conducted in-depth interviews with a number of outstanding candidates during a yearlong national search, and Schweitzer’s experience, enthusiasm and vision made him a perfect fit for Wayne State University,” Wilson said. “Our faculty, our students, and the people of Detroit and the surrounding region will see great advances with Schweitzer’s leadership and energy. He will quickly become a leading contributor to our great city’s ongoing renaissance.” In addition to his leadership role in the School of Medicine, as vice president of Health Affairs, Schweitzer will work with the deans of WSU’s College of Nursing and the Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences on clinical training issues. In this role, he will develop avenues to strengthen collaboration between the three schools to advance interprofessional, team-based approaches to healthcare. “I attended inner-city public universities during my undergraduate and medical school training, and I served at public safety net hospitals,” Schweitzer said. “My passion throughout my career has been education at all levels. The DNA of Wayne State University and the city of Detroit are intertwined, and the university’s national reputation is illustrious. I’m very much looking forward to serving the people of greater Detroit and Michigan.” An outstanding medical scholar and educator, Schweitzer is a talented administrator who has served in many hospital and medical practice roles, including vice chair for clinical practice and chair of the Information Management Group for Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. Extensively published and a lecturer for Harvard University Medical School, he holds a number of medical patents. “The Board of Governors is extremely pleased to be hiring someone the caliber of Dr. Mark Schweitzer to assume what is a critically important leadership position,” said Marilyn Kelly, chair of the board. “Wayne State’s health-related education and community programs are a vital part of the university’s identity and mission, and we think that Mark is the right person to lead us into the future.”

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) fled civil war in Somalia when she was 8 years old, then spent four years in a refugee camp in Kenya. As a result, she says, she has post-traumatic stress disorder as an adult. But when she mentioned the condition publicly this week in the context of conflict between the U.S. and Iran, she got pushback from a Republican member of Congress. But psychology experts as well as some veterans say Rep. Jim Banks’s remarks are based on a misconception about PTSD, a mental health condition that can cause flashbacks, insomnia, nightmares, and other distressing symptoms. Though it was long associated with soldiers coming home from war, PTSD is also common among children and other civilians who live through war, as well as people who experience sexual assault and other forms of violence. Syrian refugees living in the United States, for example, have rates of PTSD comparable with those among Vietnam veterans, Arash Javanbakht, a psychiatrist and trauma specialist who has worked with refugees, told Vox. In addition to nightmares and flashbacks, the disorder can also cause people to avoid anything that reminds them of the trauma, Javanbakht said. People with PTSD also often develop depression as well. PTSD is unfortunately common — around 8 percent of the US population lives with the disorder, Javanbakht said. Rates are much higher among combat veterans, with around 30 percent of soldiers who served in Vietnam developing the condition over the course of their lives. They are also very high among refugees, who “are exposed to a lot of trauma and stress in a cumulative way,” he explained.