Tensions between Iran and the United States have taken a turn, with retaliation on military bases in Iraq housing U.S. troops and a statement from President Trump about the conflict. Trump says there were no U.S. casualties in the attacks, and announced a new round of sanctions on Iran. He also called on NATO to become more involved “in the Middle East process.” The president struck a tone that suggested Iran is standing down after its retaliation on Tuesday night. But this is just another development in the long-running story of the U.S. relationship with Iran — tracing back to the birth of the Islamic Republic. Saeed Khan, Wayne State University Near and Middle East expert, discussed what these events mean in this context. 

Wayne State University has launched a teaching residency project for the Detroit and Dearborn public school districts that aims to address the state's shortage of STEM teachers and support workforce development. The $2.5 million program, Metro Detroit Teaching Residency for Urban Excellence (TRUE) Project, will seek recent college graduates and mid-career professionals with STEM expertise in the metro Detroit region, especially those in the automotive and technology industries who may be impacted by plant closures. Program officials said the project will prepare 36 professionals as K-12 STEM teachers over an 18-month period, during which they will complete a master’s degree and receive their teaching certification, followed by a two-year induction period of mentoring and professional development. Keith Whitfield, provost and senior vice president of academic affairs and professor at Wayne State University, said he applauds the project’s innovative approach toward building pillars of sustainability in the region. “Having highly qualified science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) educators in the classroom is vital to the development of our nation’s and region’s workforce," Whitfield said. "Through our investment in the Metro Detroit TRUE Project, coupled with other efforts at the university, it is our aim to provide students in Detroit Public Schools Community District and Dearborn Public Schools with the STEM educators and experiences that spark learners’ curiosity to explore STEM related concepts that they can apply in the classroom, community and the world of work so they can thrive in the new knowledge economy.” 

We’re getting a clearer picture of what’s causing the green ooze toxic contamination that is flowing from the closed Electro-Plating Services site in Madison Heights and onto I-696. State and federal officials have said rainwater and groundwater flowing through a vat in the basement caused Hexavalent Chromium to leak out. Bill Shuster takes it a step further telling 7 Action News, “This water is picking up the contaminants that are still in the soil there.” Shuster is the Chair of the Wayne State University Civil and Environmental Engineering Department. The EPA spent $1.4 million to do a massive cleanup inside the facility after the state shut it down in 2016. How much contamination was left behind? Shuster speculated, “We would have to look at the data and analyze what’s in the affluent. Well, the gut instinct there was quite a bit left in there.” Shuster says the green ooze is colored by a marker added to the cancer causing Hexavalent Chromium. And he says options to prevent trouble after the cleanup included excavating the vat, making sure it is not coming in contact with groundwater and he says, “I probably would have capped it, ensured that water wouldn’t be getting in from the top. Into the pit. I can’t criticize EPA or MEDQ EGLE but if I was in charge, these are the things I would be looking at.”

The Wayne State University's Word Warriors are parsing through the mullock to help you become more luculent this new year. The university's Word Warriors series aims to bring back words that have fallen out of style to help us commoners embellish our everyday vocabulary. “Too often we limit ourselves to words that are momentarily popular or broadly applicable, and so rob ourselves of English’s inherent beauty and agility,” the group’s website states. “Alarmed by this tendency, the Word Warriors of Wayne State University propose to help rejuvenate the language we love by advocating for words of substance that see far too little use.” “Each year, I’m curious to see how many old words — which are often new to me — will be recommended to us by our Word Warriors around the globe,” said Chris Williams, head of the Word Warriors program. “Once again, they did not disappoint. The English language is so versatile and unique, and we’ve ended up with a list of 10 great words.” The program, now in its 11th year, relies on submissions from the public and group administrators. Weekly entries can be found at wordwarriors.wayne.edu and on Facebook. 

For Michiganders hoping to expand their vocabularies in 2020, Wayne State University has some suggestions. The Oxford English Dictionary estimates there are about 170 thousand words in current use in the English language. But there are more than a million words in the language overall. Wayne State’s Word Warriors have come up with a list of 10 words to reclaim from the linguistic cellar. The list is composed of submissions from both WSU administrators and from people around the world. Though you may wish they left the cellar door closed. For example, you may struggle to add cachinnate to a casual conversation. Cachinnate means to ‘to laugh loudly.’ Somnambulant describes a person who resembles a sleepwalker, which is a common sight on a Monday morning in any office. You might consider this list to be rubbish (or mullock) but understand, the reason behind the list is simply to show the versatility of the English language. To see all the words WSU administrators hope to bring back from the brink of obsolescence in years past, go to wordwarriors.wayne.edu.

The world we’re living in today is faster and more connected than ever before. An estimated 4.1 billion people worldwide use the internet, and that number is rapidly growing. No aspect of our lives and our society is untouched by connectivity. In 2018, 95 percent of Americans spent an average 5 hours per week shopping online; last year 81 percent of mobile phone users in the U.S. accessed the internet via their phones. Fulfilling the potential of connected technology requires public officials to consider and address complex matters such as equity, security, privacy, governance and investment. Comcast Business partnered with Crain’s Content Studio to bring together Michigan technology executives and leaders from Michigan’s state, county and local governments for a discussion of diverse communities’ experiences, best practices and possibilities related to smart technology-enabled infrastructure and public services. Rural communities face unique challenges when it comes to implementing Smart City technology. Across Michigan, an estimated 381,000 households lack access to broadband internet; 368,000 of those households are in rural areas. Ned Staebler, president and CEO of TechTown and vice president for economic development at Wayne State University, points out that similar issues present challenges in urban communities. “We’ve found that urban and rural problems often aren’t very different. They may differ in scale, maybe in density issues, but they’re very similar,” said Staebler, who helped launch the Detroit Urban Solutions program between TechTown, Wayne State University and NextEnergy. That initiative has united practitioners to innovate solutions to a broad range of urban issues using IoT technology. “We really feel that what smart cities are about is leveraging technology to find solutions to citizens’ problems,” he added. Staebler pointed out that disenfranchised populations in both urban and rural communities may simply not know the importance of and opportunities inherent in robust connectivity. “They don’t think it’s for them. They don’t know why this would be beneficial. They don’t know why they need it,” said Staebler. “We need to bring them in and include them in this economy. If we’re designing new solutions to help folks in our communities, we also have to make sure that they know it exists, what the benefits are and how to access them, and that they have the devices and connectedness to do it.”

If you need Medicaid in Michigan, you’ll have to work…or get a waiver. New regulations pushed through by the State’s Republican Legislature and signed by then-governor Rick Snyder in 2018 went into effect on Jan. 1. The Trump administration is also pushing work requirements for those who receive federal food assistance and has tightened work requirements for those receiving food stamps or SNAP benefits. The move will kick 688,000 underprivileged people out of the program. Judith Wineman is a full-time faculty member in the Wayne State School of Social Work and the director of CHAMPS. The program helps young adults who have aged out of the foster care and the juvenile justice system get to – and stay in college. She says work requirements are a moral crisis. Marla Garmo is a Campus Coach for Wayne State’s CHAMPS program. “We have to think about what it really says about us as a country that we will allow people to go hungry, to lose out on their food stamps benefits and enforce a work requirement that really can be unattainable for some individuals.” Garmo says the system is set up to make the application process more difficult. “People have to apply online instead of a paper application and they might not have access to a computer, or don’t know how to use a computer. There’s a lot of barriers. So once you’ve been deemed eligible and given these benefits, now you’re being told there are additional requirements. None of that gets to why people can’t find a job.” These requirements often disproportionately affect underprivileged communities. “Poor people, immigrants, people that don’t speak the language, elderly people can’t advocate for themselves,” says Wineman. “To me, it’s a political smokescreen to say, ‘We’re doing this great thing by saving all this money by forcing people to work.’ To me and other social workers, that is not the answer.”

M. Roy Wilson, M.D., is entering his seventh year as president of Wayne State University with a portfolio of accomplishments. Wilson, an ophthalmologist and researcher who has published papers on glaucoma and blindness in populations from the Caribbean to West Africa, previously has served as deputy director for strategic scientific planning and program coordination at the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities of National Institutes of Health. He also was dean of  the medical school at Creighton University in Omaha. Of all his achievements during his tenure, Wilson has said he is most proud of how Wayne State has increased graduation rates. Since he took office, Wayne State has nearly doubled its graduation rate to 47 percent from 26 percent. Wilson has said the school has more work to do to reach its goal of a 50 percent graduation rate before 2021. In 2020, Wayne State expects to complete several construction projects , including the STEM Innovation Learning Center, which will bring all of WSU’s science, technology, engineering and math programs into one building. He also has pointed to moving the historic McKenzie house on Cass Avenue to the other side of the block on 2nd Avenue, allowing the expansion of the Hilberry Theater, which will allow the complex to house a new jazz center. Last year, Wayne State established a partnership with the Detroit Pistons that will allow for the construction of a new $25 million arena for the men’s and women’s basketball teams. The arena also will serve as the home of the Piston’s G League team. Wilson also oversaw a turnaround of the Wayne State University School of Medicine.

As a college degree became more critical to economic well-being, you might have expected to see a doubling down on efforts to ensure that Americans of all backgrounds would be able to earn one. That’s not what happened. Instead, there’s been a shift at the federal, state, and even institutional level away from programs and policies that helped make college more affordable, especially for the neediest students. The average undergraduate from the bottom quintile of income must find a way to finance an amount equivalent to 157 percent of his or her family income to pay for college, while it costs a wealthy family just 14 percent of its income to send a student to college. Keith E. Whitfield, provost at Wayne State University, says the high price of college can deter low-income students from applying because they think it’s out of reach. “They see the sticker price, and they get discouraged,” he says. Along the way, even small financial setbacks can cause students to drop out. To combat that, Wayne State has begun offering small completion grants — $750 or $1,000 — to keep students on track.

The estate of prominent Judge Damon J. Keith, who was the grandson of slaves and a figure in the civil rights movement, made a $100,000 bequest to a scholarship fund in his name, West Virginia State University announced Wednesday. Keith, who was sued by President Richard Nixon over a ruling against warrantless wiretaps, died in April in Detroit at 96. He spent more than 50 years on the federal bench. Before his death, he still heard cases about four times a year at the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. He was a 1943 graduate of what was then West Virginia State College and went on to graduate from Howard University Law School in 1949 and Wayne State University Law School in 1956.

The estate of prominent Judge Damon J. Keith, who was the grandson of slaves and a figure in the civil rights movement, made a $100,000 bequest to a scholarship fund in his name, West Virginia State University announced Wednesday. Keith, who was sued by President Richard Nixon over a ruling against warrantless wiretaps, died in April in Detroit at 96. He spent more than 50 years on the federal bench. Before his death, he still heard cases about four times a year at the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. He was a 1943 graduate of what was then West Virginia State College and went on to graduate from Howard University Law School in 1949 and Wayne State University Law School in 1956.

Investing in higher education meets the needs of employers for growth and positions students for successful and rewarding lives. But Wayne State University is Michigan's only public, urban research university not to have its state funding level restored to 2011 levels and is still down $1.8 million, said WSU President M. Roy Wilson, M.D. Adjusted for inflation, WSU is down $1 billion a year in funding based on fiscal year 2002, he said. "Our students" and the university are negatively affected, said Wilson. "The reality is, if we are going to meet the needs of employers, we need more four-year college graduates." Wilson said he is optimistic that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer understands the importance of long-term support of higher education. She announced a statewide goal of 60 percent of Michiganders earning a postsecondary degree or certificate by 2030. Wilson said students have stepped up in various ways to help inner-city residents. For example, medical students volunteer at Street Medicine Detroit, a free health clinic for the city's homeless. This year Wayne State expects to complete several construction projects, including the STEM Innovation Learning Center, which will bring all of WSU's science, technology, engineering and math programs into one building. "The state will benefit as these students graduate and meet future talent demands that will keep Michigan competitive and growing," Wilson said. "The project also offers opportunities to expose K-12 students from the Detroit area to hands-on learning situations that can ignite their interest in science and technology and inspire them to pursue STEM-related careers." Since Wilson took office in 2013, Wayne State has nearly doubled its graduation rate to 47 percent from 26 percent. The achievement was recognized in 2018 by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities' prestigious Degree Completion Award. "I am extremely proud of this accomplishment ... (but) we are not resting on our laurels. We are working hard to further reduce educational disparities and improve graduation rates. I am confident that we will reach a 50 percent graduation rate before 2021."

According to the Diabetes Research Institute Foundation, the disease is increasing at an alarming rate in the United States, with an estimated 30.3 million people currently with diabetes. Oral insulin is potentially prescribed to patients diagnosed with diabetes to improve their quality of life. However, current oral protein formulations of insulin face multiple obstacles during their gastrointestinal transport and absorption, resulting in lower therapeutic benefits. This includes difficulty penetrating the intestinal mucus layer and the epithelial cell layer to reach the blood. While scientists have made improvements in mucus-penetrating and absorption-enhancing technologies, current oral doses of protein drugs to treat diabetes remains low in absorption and bioavailability, and can increase the risk of leaky gut, autoimmune disease, bacterial infections and inflammatory bowel diseases. Therefore, there is an urgent need for a safe and efficient oral delivery technology that will enhance protein transport, and to increase oral insulin with high bioavailability. With the help of a $1.7 million grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases of the National Institutes of Health, a team of researchers in Wayne State's College of Engineering will explore ways to address these issues. "The goal of our project is to develop a highly promising oral insulin that will be a life-changing treatment for diabetes patients," said Zhiqiang Cao, Ph.D., associate professor of chemical engineering and materials science, and graduate program director in the College of Engineering at Wayne State University. "We also hope to develop knowledge of how our delivery platform can address multiple barriers for oral protein delivery above and beyond insulin. This will have the potential to impact and enhance a broad range of oral protein drugs." Cao and his collaborators will aim to develop a mechanism for a novel insulin delivery system that effectively address the above issues.

Wayne State University launched its new Office of Women’s Health, a comprehensive approach to improve the health of women overall, through a deep dive into medical research affecting more than half the population of Michigan and the nation, a segment often unintentionally overlooked in research. The Office of Women’s Health marked its official debut with an inaugural symposium Dec. 3 at the university’s McGregor Conference Center that brought together more than 130 researchers from across the university, community and grassroots partnering organizations, and a keynote address from Janine Clayton, M.D. Clayton, the National Institutes of Health’s associate director for Research on Women’s Health and director of the NIH Office of Research on Women’s Health, delivered the address, “Putting Women at Center Stage in Biomedical Research,” the very purpose of the new WSU office. “We have the resources and a wonderful research culture at the university,” WSU President M. Roy Wilson told the attendees. “That, coupled with our concentration on health equity, means we can come together with a focused effort on women’s health.

It's game day for the Wayne State University Football team, and number 42 kicker Luke Bevilacqua. While some try to be a hero on the field, Luke is a hero off the field. How far would you go to save a stranger's life? Luke didn't think twice about his sacrifice for a stranger. It is very rare when someone becomes a match for donating bone marrow. Which is why when a Wayne State student athlete got the call he was one after joining the Be The Match registry, he couldn't pass it up. "For me, I just did it because everyone else was doing it, and then like I said I didn't think much of it. My stuff got sent in and I didn't hear anything for a few months," he says. Luke was a busy student-athlete at WSU when he suddenly got a call he'll never forget about a woman he's never met. "They want you to know that you are someone who can save someone's life and there's sometimes not another option." Luke was told a 61-year-old woman in Texas needed his bone marrow to survive. Luke says the sacrifice was well worth it and that he'd do it again if he ever got the call again. Luke has been honored by the Allstate American Football Coaches Associaton Good Works Team. 

Kirsten Carlson, associate professor of law and adjunct associate professor of political science, wrote an article for The Conversation about President Trump’s refusal to hand over records to Congress and allow executive branch employees to provide information and testimony to Congress during the impeachment battle. Carlson calls these actions “the strongest test yet of legal principles that over the past 200 years have not yet been fully defined by U.S. courts.”

Despite popular belief, there's no widely agreed upon benchmark for daily water consumption. That "drink eight 8-ounce glasses a day" thing likely derives from a 1945 recommendation by the U.S. Food and Nutrition Board. The recommendation stated people should ingest 1 milliliter of water for every calorie they consume. The recommendation was apparently not based on any known research, and the sentence immediately following it, which was that "most of this quantity is contained in prepared foods," was soon forgotten. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration began using 2,000 calories a day as an "average" reference point, which translates to 2,000 milliliters of water a day (or about 67 fluid ounces) per the 1945 recommendation. "The origins of that weren't based on any specific series (of studies) or one specific scientific study," says Tamara Hew-Butler, associate professor of Exercise and Sports Science at Wayne State University whose expertise is in exercise-associated hyponatremia. "And that number actually included other beverages, not just water, and it also included the moisture content in food. But from those origins, it caught on." Hew-Butler refers to our level of thirst as a natural "app" hooked up to our brain designed to protect us from drinking too much or too little water. "Everyone's looking for a perfect guideline that works for every individual in every situation. But thirst is governed in your brain. And it's not just the amount of water that's important to your body—your body doesn't really care about the absolute amount of water. The body cares about the balance between the water and sodium," Hew-Butler says. "There are osmoreceptors in our brain that actually, in realtime, every second, sample the combination between water and salt going through the circulation of our brain. So if the water content goes down and it increases the concentration of sodium, then that triggers thirst, so you can actually replace the water back to the amount that you need."

The Detroit Regional Chamber founded the “Excellence in Education Leadership Award” to recognize educators who demonstrate outstanding public service and leadership on behalf of the region. The award was inspired by the legacy of the outgoing University of Michigan-Dearborn Chancellor, Daniel Little, who was the first recipient in 2018. This year, the Chamber’s Greg Handel, vice president of Education and Talent Initiatives will award Wayne State University President M. Roy Wilson as the second inaugural recipient of the Excellence in Education Leadership Award. Wilson has demonstrated exceptional commitment to better serving his students – Detroit’s future talent base – and fulfilling the important role his institution has in catalyzing regional economic development. Under his leadership, Wayne State has garnered national attention for their new approaches that has lifted the university up as one of the most innovative universities in the country.

Bridget B. Baker, clinical veterinarian and deputy director of the Warrior Aquatic, Translational, and Environmental Research (WATER) Lab at Wayne State, wrote a piece earlier this year for The Conversation regarding how wildlife adapt to winter weather. Wildlife can succumb to frostbite and hypothermia, just like people and pets. In the northern United States, the unfurred tails of opossums are a common casualty of cold exposure. Every so often an unusual cold snap in Florida results in iguanas falling from trees and manatees dying from cold stress. Avoiding the cold is important for preserving life or limb (or, in the opossum’s case, tail) and the opportunity to reproduce. These biological imperatives mean that wildlife must be able to feel cold, in order to try to avoid the damaging effects of its extremes. Animal species have their own equivalent to what human beings experience as that unpleasant biting mixed with pins-and-needles sensation that urges us to warm up soon or suffer the consequences.

Volunteers at Wayne State University had been braving the elements for hours on an October morning. The wind chapped cheeks and numbed fingers as volunteers wrangled giant blue tarps with the names, symbols, and atomic numbers of chemical elements painted on them. When gusts kicked up, the workers would joke that they were building the world’s largest kite. They were actually attempting to build the world’s largest periodic table. And they had competition. Four days earlier, on the opposite side of Michigan, at Grand Valley State University, another group of crafty science enthusiasts had assembled what it believed was the world’s largest periodic table. Michigan became the proud birthplace of two gigantic periodic tables within a week. The timing wasn’t an accident, either. It was National Chemistry Week during the International Year of the Periodic Table. Although the groups hatched their schemes independently of each other, they shared the same drive to do something huge to get lots of people—and not just chemists—talking about chemistry and the iconic table. By the end of the day, drones and news helicopters had circled the periodic table at Wayne State, which covered an area larger than three American football fields. CBS News shared a photo of the table on Twitter with its 7 million followers, as did ABC’s World News Tonight with its 1.4 million followers.