Residents of Wayne County are the unhealthiest of Michigan's 83 counties, according to a ranking by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Bridging that disparity was the target of a Wednesday summit at Wayne State University. Participants suggested ways to promote healthy eating, behaviors and environments. But the focus was on disparities affecting Detroit’s population, including asthma, heart disease, diabetes and obesity. The university brought together leaders of corporations, health care systems,  community organizations, foundations, policymakers and academics.

General Motors is a technology company that makes cars, and the skills its employees had yesterday are continuously becoming outdated. Experts say that is the underlying message of GM CEO Mary Barra's move on Oct. 31 to offer voluntary buyouts to GM's North American salaried workers with 12 or more years of experience with the company. On the surface, it's typical cost-cutting ahead of a potential dip in new-car sales and rising raw material costs. But look closer. Consider that Barra hails from a human resources background, so targeting employees with long seniority and high pay grades is strategic when a company is moving toward the development of more electric cars, fuel cells and autonomous vehicles, experts say. It means redeploying the workforce and freeing up significant capital, said Marick Masters, professor of business at Wayne State University.

The first 1,000 days of life, from conception until the age of two, help build a strong foundation for a child’s growth and development. The good news is that the simple choices moms-to-be make every day can have a big impact on their child. In fact, a newly developed scanning technique allowed a team of researchers from Wayne State University to examine the neural activity of 47 fetuses, between 30 and 37 weeks of gestation. 

Mildred Gaddis sat down with Darrell Dawsey, associate director, community communications for Wayne State University, and Henry L. Robinson, senior director of the Office of Federal TRIO at Wayne State. The three discussed how the Federal TRIO program provides academic assistance and support services to promising youth, adult learners and Wayne State University students who have been historically underrepresented in higher education due to economic deprivation, poor academic preparation and/or first generation college status. While student financial aid programs help students overcome financial barriers to higher education, TRIO helps students overcome class, social and cultural barriers to higher education.

U.S. midterm elections are taking place across the country Tuesday. Other than voting for candidates, voters will also be saying 'yay' or 'nay' to three proposals on the ballots. One of them is the legalization of recreational marijuana in the state. "It seems as though many in the state want to follow the example of Canada and be up to speed with that," said Saeed​ Khan, senior lecturer at Wayne State University. However, even if it becomes legal in Michigan, crossing the Canada-U.S. border with marijuana will continue to be a criminal offence under the U.S. federal law.

Flint is a majority African-American city and Democratic stronghold. But to turn out new urban voters in Flint, candidates will have to do more than hearken back to missed opportunities and old scandals, said Ronald Brown, an associate professor of political science at Wayne State University. Candidates must also speak about what they plan to accomplish in terms of improving schools and delivering clean water and safe streets, he said. "If it's just the Flint water issue, that’s not going to move those voters," Brown said. "I think it’s very difficult for any party to get out new voters, especially to get urban voters to vote, when you’ve not been able to solve your problems that have been around for a very long time," he said. 

Before his death nearly a year ago, Arbor Drugs founder Eugene Applebaum sat with his family, creating a strategy to ensure his philanthropy would continue. He didn't direct a huge infusion from his estate to the Eugene Applebaum Family Foundation. The Foundation is funding internships for University of Michigan and Wayne State University students at Detroit arts and culture organizations and nonprofits to help build a talent pipeline. And it's bringing its philanthropic relationships to bear to help forge collaborations between organizations like the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Wayne State University. The centerpiece of the family's giving is a $1 million commitment to the Applebaum Fellows program, providing opportunities for young people in their communities that inspire leadership, entrepreneurship and independence.

Mitovation has licensed three patents from Wayne State University and has built a prototype device designed to stop cell damage that occurs because of a lack of blood flow after heart attacks, something called post ischemia brain injury. The device looks like a small bike helmet, and it shoots infrared light through the skull and into the brain. Most of the damage occurs after a patient is resuscitated and the blood begins flowing again, a process known as reperfusion. The goal is to improve clinical outcomes of hospital patients who suffer heart attacks during their stay, shorten the length of their stay in intensive-care units and reduce long-term disability of those affected by brain injury in the wake of a cardiac arrest.

Turning a university research project into a for-profit company typically takes a veteran of the startup ecosystem, someone familiar with defining market opportunity and figuring out how to find customers in that market and make them pay for what you have. That was true for Cardiosound LLC, which formally launched in August. The company grew from efforts by Gaurav Kapur, a physician and associate professor of pediatrics at Wayne State, to find a better way to measure blood pressure, particularly in infants, where current methods are notoriously inaccurate. Kapur reached out to some colleagues at WSU — Sean Wu, a professor of mechanical engineering; Yong Xu, a professor of electrical and computer engineering; and William Lyman, a professor of pediatrics.

M. Roy Wilson, M.D., president of Wayne State University and chair of the AAMC board of directors, called his presence in academic medicine “a statistical anomaly.” “My younger sister and I basically raised ourselves as our parents were never around,” he said. “Our mother was addicted to gambling and our father to alcohol. Left to ourselves, we were subjected to experiences that no child should ever have to endure.” While speaking about “The Most Important Lesson I Learned in Medical School,” Wilson echoed the words he heard from a clinical faculty member during his surgery clerkship: “Be good to medicine, and medicine will be good to you.”

Wayne State University unveiled its new float, “Warrior Strong,” this morning during the 19th Annual Parade Pancake Breakfast. In celebration of the university’s 150th anniversary, the “Warrior Strong” float will make its debut at the 92nd America’s Thanksgiving Parade® with a national broadcast reaching 185 major cities across the country. “For 150 years, Wayne State University has been committed to the city of Detroit and we are proud to celebrate our anniversary with our students, supporters and community with a new float on Thanksgiving morning,” said Dr. M. Roy Wilson, president of Wayne State University. “Our float, ‘Warrior Strong’, embodies a motto that Wayne State students and alumni live out each day in classrooms, boardrooms, labs, medical centers and on stage.” 

“Lead is still in all these older homes in Michigan, and until it is substantially abated or these homes are removed from the housing stock, there is still a hazard to kids,” said Lyke Thompson, director of Wayne State University’s Center for Urban Housing. In Detroit, at least 10 percent of kids in eight of 27 city ZIP Codes tested positive for elevated lead levels. Many are in some of the city’s oldest and most blighted neighborhoods, such as the Virginia Park neighborhood in the city’s 48206 ZIP Code, where 19 percent of tested children had elevated levels last year. Thompson has led efforts to test children in that Detroit ZIP Code and another, 48214, where 16 percent of children had elevated lead levels last year. He said 85 percent of the 1,000 homes he’s tested in that neighborhood were positive for lead. It’s one of several initiatives in cities like Detroit and Grand Rapids, but remediation efforts are expensive.

In the next decade or two, the blood of people will very likely be full of tiny nanobots that will assist in preventing them from falling ill. When injected into our bodies, the nanobots will protect the physiological system on a molecular level to ensure a healthy and long life. Is this science fiction? No, not at all. The future is much closer than we may think. In the nanomedicine age different kinds of nanobots will increasingly be used as very accurate drug-delivery systems, cancer treatment tools or miniscule surgeons. A research team from Wayne State University has developed a nanobot that works in combination with chemo­therapeutic drugs that may reverse drug-resistance in renal cell carcinoma by releasing the payload selectively to the tissue and core of the tumor resulting in its inhibition. Successful trials with mice found their life expectancy more than doubled.

Thomas Killion, associate professor of anthropology at Wayne State, said he and his students worked for three years on the archaeological dig at the row house, one of Detroit's oldest surviving structures. The dig revealed more than 6,000 fragments and pieces of different household objects that helped paint a picture of how these workers lived in the mid-1800s. Killion said archaeologists don’t expect to find one huge item that reveals everything, but rather a lot of little things that add up to a story. “It was an interesting icon for this fairly mythical Irish neighborhood of Detroit. It had the trifecta there: (the beverages you drink in) early life, middle life and later life," he said. Krysta Ryzewski, associate professor in anthropology at Wayne State, has led the Roosevelt Park digs every other year since 2012. When plans to build the train station were announced in the early 1900s, the city wanted to forcibly remove those who lived around the station, Ryzewski said. 

Wayne State University athletes will be helping to make and distribute lunches in Detroit for those in need. The students are set to participate in the annual #Lunchbag event on Friday. The program began in 2015 in conjunction with Hartford Memorial Baptist Church’s “Feed the Hungry” program. School officials say roughly 5,500 lunches have been distributed by the athletes in past years at the Neighborhood Service Organization, Coalition on Temporary Shelter and Rosa Parks Transit Center.

Several students at Wayne State University hosted a public memorial service Oct. 30 on Gullen Mall for the 11 victims who lost their lives in the attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue Oct. 27. The event, organized by Hillel of Metro Detroit, featured speakers from several Wayne State University religious and cultural groups. “University communities should never be passive in the face of something so horrific as intolerance and hate,” said WSU President M. Roy Wilson. “We have a very diverse community, and we have a responsibility to respond. I am so proud of our students for putting this program together.”

Wayne State University business students will head to Detroit’s iconic Guardian Building on Nov. 2 to vie for $1,750 in scholarship money as they compete in the fourth annual Mike Ilitch School of Business Elevator Pitch Competition. The students have a roughly 80-second ride on an actual elevator to summarize who they are, what they know and what they want to do. Executives from Ally Financial, Enterprise, GM, PlanteMoran and Quicken Loans will evaluate the students on their ability to sell themselves and present a positive, professional first impression. 

Halloween marks the 92nd death anniversary of one of the most famous magicians ever. Harry Houdini performed his last show in downtown Detroit before dying at a Detroit hospital in 1926. Days before his show in Detroit, he was performing in Montreal when someone asked to punch him in the stomach. Houdini was known to be a strong man with powerful abs. "Legend has it, he wasn't ready for the punch and they hit him pretty good," Jeff Horner, a senior lecturer at Wayne State said. Horner, who is an urban planner and calls himself an amateur historian, said Houdini wasn't feeling well on the train ride down to Detroit. Houdini gave his last performance at the Garrick Theater, which stood near the corner of Griswold and Michigan Ave. in downtown Detroit.

In an effort to keep people from shopping online, brick and mortar stores are now offering some new technologies to make the shopping experience quicker and easier than ever before. Walmart, Home Depot or Target of apps that help a shopper find exactly where a product is located within the store, down to the isle. Home Depot’s app will tell you exactly how many of that product are left in stock so you can know before you go. “They can use the technology to expedite the movement through the store, to be able to look up items that may not be in the store at a size or color or print that the shopper’s looking for,” said Jeff Stoltman, Wayne State University associate professor of marketing.

Brianna Sohl, 23, is among a group of Wayne State University Medical School students involved with furthering health care for LBGT patients. Sohl volunteers at the Detroit-based Corktown Health Center, the first clinic of its kind in Metro Detroit to offer a safe, affirming space for people in the lesbian, bisexual, gay, transsexual community. “Many patients who self-identify as members of this community have not found physicians or clinics where they feel comfortable,” says Laytona Riddle-Jones, M.D., the medical director at Corktown and an assistant professor of internal medicine and pediatrics at Wayne State.