The story of Aladdin is one of the most well-known works in One Thousand and One Nights (Alf Layla wa Layla) or Arabian Nights, the famous collection of folk stories compiled over hundreds of years, largely pulled from Middle Eastern and Indian literary traditions. Genies, or Jinn, make appearances throughout the stories in different forms. A rich tradition in Middle Eastern and Islamic lore, Jinn appear in the Qur’an, where they are described as the Jánn, “created of a smokeless fire,” but they can even be found in stories that date back before the time of Muhammad in the 7th century. The pop culture genie of Nights we recognize today, however, was shaped by European illustrators, beginning with the frontpieces done for 18th-century translator Antoine Galland’s Les Mille et Une Nuits. At the time, French writers often used what was then referred to as the Orient—a term indiscriminately used to refer to North Africa, the Middle East, and the Far East more generally—to allude to its own society and monarchy, explains Anne E. Duggan, professor of French at Wayne State University, who’s studied the visual evolution of the genie. “

Constitutional law expert Robert A. Sedler wrote an op-ed about President Donald Trump’s executive declaration. Sedler wrote: “In the months ahead, there will be a plethora of commentary about the President’s declaration of a national emergency to obtain funding for his long-promised border wall. Ultimately, the questions we examined here will be resolved within the framework of the American constitutional and judicial system.”

Wayne State University is set to offer a new experimental school library certificate to address student demand and a general shortage of certified school librarians in the state. The university plans to offer a 15-credit program through its School of Information Sciences, said Matt Fredericks, academic services officer for the school. The course load is designed to equip students with the necessary media specialist skills without requiring the typical 36-credit master's program.

As you're reading this, 114,000 men, women and children await lifesaving transplants. You can help make a dent in that staggering statistic with the Wayne State University's Gift of Life Campus Challenge. Wayne State is once again leading the way when it comes to getting people to sign up for the organ donor registry. Alyssa Krieger and Erin Coburn from Wayne State were in-studio guests along with organ recipient Nicholas Giannamore.

“People moved to other neighborhoods and the suburbs to escape the increased crime in the area,” said Krysta Ryzewski, an associate professor of anthropology at Wayne State University. Chinese Detroiters lived all over downtown but their cultural base was the On Leong Association building at 162 Randolph. In 1917, the association bought surrounding land for stores and apartments, unintentionally creating the city's first Chinatown at Third and Porter. The intersection no longer exists, Ryzewski said. There, Chinese Americans came together from 1920 to the 1950s, creating a vibrant community when the Detroit Housing Commission condemned the neighborhood as part of their "slum clearance" program to make room for the Lodge freeway. Local merchants hoped to relocate Chinatown to the nearby planned International Village, an initiative by the city in the 1960s featuring different ethnic restaurants, shops and a destination for tourists and convention-goers. "The city actively recruited different ethnic groups to move into that area, but only the Chinese-Americans wound up gravitating there, mainly because their downtown neighborhood was destroyed around that time," Ryzewski said. "The plans for International Village fell through in the late 1960s around the time of the riots." Ryzewski created a video during her research of Detroit's Chinatown in 2016. It serves as a time capsule of the recent past. 

Theresa A. Hastert, assistant professor in the Department of Oncology at Wayne State University School of Medicine, wrote an op-ed about the need to make healthcare more affordable. Hastert points out: “While Medicare, Medicaid and the ACA have expanded Americans’ access to health insurance coverage, it is no secret that our system has serious problems, and many still have trouble accessing care.” “The most fitting tribute to the late John Dingell, is to continue his decades-long legacy of improving Americans’ health and access to health care. His 60-year career in the House of Representatives included involvement in the most significant health care legislation in our nation’s history, including presiding over the House of Representatives in 1965 when it passed Medicare and sitting next to President Barack Obama when he signed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010. 

In 2012, researchers published the results of a retrospective study looking at which candidates admitted to a otolaryngology residency program turned into the most successful clinicians as ranked by faculty. What they found was that those who got the highest faculty ratings were those with an “established excellence in a team sport.” While the researchers cautioned that not all residency program directors should rush to look for student-athletes, the study did isolate two traits of student-athletes that might translate into success in medicine: time management skills and teamwork. Indeed, it’s not specific athletic skills that matter, says M. Roy Wilson, M.D., president of Wayne State University and former chair of the AAMC Board of Directors, but the ability to juggle sport and academic responsibilities and excel at both. “Learning how to manage time efficiently is critical, and the main complaint that medical students have is just the volume of material they have to digest. So much of medicine is really about personality, or the ability to deal with people effectively and the ability to lead people. Those are characteristics we see in student-athletes who have been successful in team or individual sports.” 

OnlineMasters.com announced the release of their Best Online MBA in Human Resources Programs for 2019. The research identifies the top programs in the nation based on curriculum quality, program flexibility, affordability, and graduate outcomes. In addition to insights gained from industry professionals, OnlineMasters.com leveraged an exclusive data set comprised of interviews and surveys from current students and alumni. Each online degree program was analyzed with only 50 making it to the final list. The methodology incorporates the most recent data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) and statistical data from the National Center for Education Statistics. Only programs from accredited nonprofit institutions were eligible. Wayne State University is included among the 2019 Best Master's in MBA in Human Resources Degree Programs.

Professor of Criminal Justice Steven Stack wrote an article for The Conversation on the rising number of suicides in the U.S., which now ranks among the top 10 leading causes of death. Stack wrote: “There is evidence that rising suicide rates are associated with a weakening of the social norms regarding mutual aid and support. In one study on suicide in the U.S., the rising rates were closely linked with reductions in social welfare spending between 1960 and 1995. Social welfare expenditures include Medicaid, a medical assistance program for low income persons; Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children; the Supplemental Security Income program for the blind, disabled and elderly; children’s services including adoption, foster care and day care; shelters; and funding of public hospitals for medical assistance other than Medicaid.”

Chris Pratt, the star of "The Lego Movie," "Guardians of the Galaxy" and "Jurassic World" movie franchises, just happened to send some online love to Wayne State University on Tuesday. In a video posted on Twitter and Facebook, the actor stands next to Wayne State psychology major Rachel Zelenak and says, "Hi, I'm Chris Pratt. I love Wayne State University." Pratt then pretends to be interrupted by a Sigmund Freud doll that he's holding next to his ear. Dubbed Siggy, it's the Wayne State psychology department's unofficial mascot. "Thank you, Rachel Zelenak and Chris Pratt for making everyone's day!" raved a tweet from Wayne State's official account. 

Arash Javanbakht, assistant professor of psychiatry, wrote an article about dealing with life’s challenges that may instill fear and uncertainty in people. Javanbakht wrote: “As a psychiatrist specialized in anxiety and trauma, I often tell my patients and students that to understand how fear works in us, we have to see it in the context where it evolved. Ten thousand years ago, if another human frowned at us, chances were high one of us would be dead in a couple minutes. In the tribal life of our ancestors, if other tribe members did not like you, you would be dead, or exiled and dead. Biological evolution is very slow, but civilization, culture, society and technology evolve relatively fast. It takes around a million years for evolutionary change to happen in a species, and people have been around for about 200,000 years. 

Dr. David R. Rosenberg, professor and chair, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences, psychiatrist in chief at Wayne State University and the Detroit Medical Center, wrote a letter to the editor. Our team at Wayne State University has developed innovative programs targeted at our most vulnerable and high-risk populations that both improve outcome and reduce cost. We have published these results in prestigious peer-reviewed journals demonstrating significant reductions in lengths of stays and repeat visits of behavioral patients in the ED, and a 94 percent reduction in inpatient psychiatric hospitalization from the ED.

As the historian Liette Gidlow, associate professor at Wayne State University shows in her revelatory study of the period, the files of the Justice Department, the N.A.A.C.P. and African-American newspapers were soon bursting with letters, investigations and affidavits documenting the disenfranchisement of black women, especially in but not limited to former Confederate states. In Virginia, Gidlow writes, a college-educated mother of four named Susie W. Fountain was required to take “a “literacy test” that consisted of a blank sheet of paper; the registrar subsequently determined that she had failed. She later told an N.A.A.C.P. investigator she was “too humiliated and angry to try again.” A Birmingham, Ala., teacher, Indiana Little, was arrested and sexually assaulted after leading a large crowd to the registrar’s office. As Little said in a sworn affidavit, she was “beat over the head unmercifully and … forced upon the officer’s demand to yield to him in an unbecoming manner.”

Dr. David R. Rosenberg, professor and chair, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences, psychiatrist in chief at Wayne State University and the Detroit Medical Center, wrote a letter to the editor. “As chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences at Wayne State University, I read and applaud the recent focus of Crain's on the growing behavioral health care crisis in our nation's emergency departments. Patients with serious emotional and behavioral problems in the emergency department remain the diagnostic and therapeutic orphans of the American health system. Sadly, in a system dominated by politics, posturing and "paying the bills," these patients are often short-changed. 

Like roughly 40 percent of students who enter college, life got in the way of Shawnte’ Cain completing her degree. Cain, 39, began her college career in 1997 at Wayne State University. She successfully made it through three years at the school, but just as she could see her degree on the horizon, her grandmother fell ill. School fell by the wayside as Cain cared for her and her own financial obligations rose. For years, Cain, who works as a casino host at the MGM Grand Detroit, toyed with returning to college, but work and family obligations kept getting in the way. “I was finding barriers to stop me from finishing,” she said recently. But in 2018, Cain finally re-enrolled at Wayne State thanks in part to a new program at the school called Warrior Way Back, which forgives up to $1,500 in debt former students owed to the school if they return.

Three Wayne State University nursing students are now serving at the Oakland County Health Division as part of a four-year partnership program. The four-year program focuses on recruiting and training nursing students and current registered nurses to practice at the full scope of their license in community-based primary care teams. “For many years, the health division has provided learning opportunities for several nursing programs that includes serving as a clinical site for WSU CoN students and faculty. Partnering with them for this program is a natural extension of our current partnership and is a first to offer such an in-depth experience with us,” said Shane Bies, Oakland County Health Division administrator of public health nursing.  According to Wayne State University, the Oakland County Health Division will take six students in a 1:1 preceptorship over the next four years. There are no faculty, but at least 10 health division registered nurses will be involved in the program. The partnership began in October 2018, according to Dr. Ramona Benkert, associate dean for academic and clinical affairs and associate professor at Wayne State University. Three WSU students are currently working at the health division; one in the children with special needs department, one in the maternal child and nurse partnership program and one in the STI communicable diseases clinic.

It has been more than a decade since a report by the Institute for Higher Ed Policy first noted a worldwide shift away from public funding sources and toward private capital to finance higher education projects. The report appeared just months before the eruption of the global financial crisis that left an indelible scar on state and local public finances still seen today. The long-term effects of that crisis have only reinforced the logic that made private capital an attractive financing option in the first place. The cold, hard fact is that available public funds for higher education have been shrinking. Wayne State University sought out private partners for a project to demolish an existing 407-bed apartment building and replace it with new and renovated residential space. It went from issuing a request for proposals to obtaining financing in relatively record time and began leasing new beds in August 2018. To expedite construction, the private partner secured bridge financing as part of the overall capital stack, enabling the project to tap into generally favorable financing for the larger private placement of debt. The university not only locked in favorable financing terms and paid off existing debt, but it also moved much of the worry and risk from operations onto the private partner by engaging in a full P3 (public-private partnership) approach. That includes design, construction, financing, operations and maintenance of the project over a 40-year life cycle, freeing up university resources to focus on academic and other needs.

 Right now, the United States is facing the second longest period of economic expansion since the end of World War II, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. That means business has been surging with increasing economic output. If this continues a few more months, it will surpass the longest boom from 1991 to 2001. Other measures suggest the economy has never been better. The unemployment rate hit a 49-year low of 3.7 percent late last year. The stock market, measured by the Dow Jones Industrial Average, has been hitting record highs, above 26,000. And the inflation rate, is low, at about 2 percent. "All those things together should suggest that people should be pretty content," said Marick Masters, a business professor at Wayne State University. "But, at the same time, there are structural problems in the economy which remain."

Marick F. Masters, professor of business, wrote an op-ed about the fallout from the government shutdown. “Although the country finally gets a three-week break from its longest government shutdown, an increasing number of Americans had felt some of the pain immediately inflicted on the 800,000 federal employees, 420,000 of whom were working without pay. The funding gap forced many governmental offices to close, delayed important services, idled federal contractors and their employees, and inconveniences many who awaited approvals for loans, patents, tariff exceptions, and civil litigation. The shutdown cost billions in disrupted economic activity and expensive make-shift arrangements made to adjust to massive furloughs. But the real costs are much deeper and corrosive.” Masters notes that lost wages of furloughed employees reduce consumer spending, which is a key driver of economic activity; literally thousands of routine government operations are interrupted, delaying important transactions which await government approval; slowdowns in food inspections, environmental regulation enforcement and the provision of health care put many at risk, threatening public health and safety; and there is a further erosion in the already low level of confidence in government and democratic institutions.

When your child imagines his or her ideal college, does it feature a sports arena packed with thousands of cheering student fans – or a small classroom where every professor knows your name? The big college vs. small college decision can be as important to some students as choosing a major. The size of the school can affect a student’s entire experience. Many of the biggest colleges in Michigan are in populated city centers, like Wayne State University in Detroit. “There is lots of culture – museums, pubs, craft beer places – near campus, and we’re just a few miles down from Comerica Park, Little Caesars Arena and Ford Field,” says, “Having roughly 27,000 students here is part of the reason why the university is such a hub of activity and fun.”