The Ilitch family, who founded the Little Caesars pizzeria chain, gave $40 million in property and cash to build a new home in downtown Detroit for Wayne State university's business school. Of the total, $35 million will support construction costs and $5 million will go toward endowment. The business school is being renamed the Mike Ilitch School of Business. Ilitch, a former minor-league baseball player in the 1950s, and his wife, Marian, started the restaurant chain in 1959. Ilitch owns the Detroit Tigers baseball team and Red Wings, a professional hockey team. The family has been involved in the revival of downtown Detroit in recent years.

Michelle Hunt Bruner, director of Wayne State's Academic Success Center, offered a tip in achieving college success - schedule your study sessions. "Most students begin the new school year with the best intentions and with plans to study more effectively than they may have the previous semester. Unless students set aside dedicated time to review their notes, to read a chapter of their textbook or to begin writing a paper, it's easy to let other things steal those minutes or hours. We encourage students to schedule time on their phones or some other calendar to study at a particular time each day."

Five years after the launch of an incentive program to encourage people to move into areas in and around Detroit's Midtown, organizers of the effort say it has been a success at bringing a diverse mix of people into the neighborhood - so much that the incentives will likely keep going even after the pilot project comes to an end. The Live Midtown program was designed as a five-year deal to offer rental assistance and help employees of businesses in the area purchase homes, condos and lofts as Detroit and the nation emerged from the worst of the recession. It's funded by three major employers - Wayne State University, the Detroit Medical Center and Henry Ford Health System - that, along with the Hudson-Webber and Kresge foundations, have spent about $1 million a year on the incentives. The goal: to encourage workers to move in and stay in the neighborhood - and in their jobs. To date, it's credited with bringing nearly 1,000 new residents to Midtown, part of a rush to an area that has raised rents and encouraged new developments, according to new data from Midtown Detroit Inc., the development agency that manages the program. Live Midtown and a companion Live Downtown incentive program are credited with bringing more than 2,500 new residents to downtown and Midtown neighborhoods since 2011. In Live Midtown, employees of the Wayne State University, the Detroit Medical Center and the Henry Ford Health System were eligible; in Live Downtown, the incentives went to employees of Quicken Loans, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, Compuware, DTE Energy, Strategic Staffing Solutions and Marketing Associates.

A new Wayne State University business school named after Mike Ilitch was approved by its governing board Friday, a feat the billionaire says he regards as "the biggest deal of my life." The state-of-the-art facility will be constructed in the heart of the new Detroit Red Wings arena and its surrounding 45-block entertainment district. A $40 million gift from the Ilitch family, approved by the Wayne State University Board of Governors, is the largest in the university's history and one of the top 10 gifts in the country ever given to a public business school. It will fund the bulk of a $50 million project to construct the new school. "It's really the thrill of my life. I really do love the city so much. To see my name on that building, I feel like life is starting all over again," Ilitch told reporters in a rare interview on Friday. "It's a big deal. It's probably the biggest deal in my life."

The Ilitch family will donate $40 million to build a new downtown home for Wayne State University's business school, the Detroit Free Press reports, citing a person familiar with the plan. The gift of property and cash from the Ilitch family will reportedly include $35 million for construction and a $5-million endowment for what would be renamed the Mike Ilitch School of Business, after the Little Caesars co-founder and owner of the Detroit Tigers and Red Wings. An official announcement of the donation could come this week, sources told the Free Press. The Wayne State project would be part of a major redevelopment of the northern edge of Detroit's downtown in which the Ilitches are heavily involved. The $650-million revitalization plan includes a new arena for the Red Wings hockey team and an expanded entertainment district.

Wayne State University was a prime spot for zombie sightings today. Zombified students, staff and faculty danced, crawled and groaned their way through campus during the university's zombie parade. The special event was sponsored by Theatre and Dance and Music at Wayne. Video and photos of the ghoulish gathering were shared on social media. Take a look at the "Thriller" dance moves and creepy makeup.

Broadband connectivity as the "backbone" of modern health care was the focal point of a symposium held in Detroit. The FCC's Connect2Health Task Force made its first visit to Detroit in a nationwide push to discuss the future of health care, an initiative dubbed "Beyond the Beltway." Wayne State University, TechTown Detroit and Henry Ford Innovation Institute co-sponsored the event which was open to the public. In urban centers like Detroit 38 percent of households do not have high-speed internet service. Wayne State University President M. Roy Wilson said broadband technology can transform access to services despite time and distance and other factors that pose barriers to patients needing care.

The Connect2Health task force, part of the Federal Communications Commission, will attend a Broadband Health Tech Forum Wednesday, Oct. 28 at Wayne State University. The event will feature discussions on health, innovation and entrepreneurship in Detroit and its surrounding cities. FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn and the C2HFCC Task Force will attend, as well as Wayne State University President M. Roy Wilson and industry leaders from the area. The event will be held at Wayne State University's IBIO Integrative Sciences Center.

A new report from Wayne State University says Michigan's schools need to do more to combat bullying. The report finds more than half of Michigan students feel bullying is still a problem in their school. This, despite a four-year-old state law requiring all schools to develop and enforce anti-bullying policies. Jun Sung Hong, assistant professor of social science at WSU and one of the report's authors, says too many policies incorporate a "one size fits all" approach. "[Those policies] may work well with some kids but not with other kids," Hong said. "What we're ignoring is the diversity of our students." The report says schools should also concentrate on anti-bullying programs that provide students with life and social skills, not just information about bullying.

Lead poisoning affects not only a pregnant woman's child, but also her grandchildren decades down the line, new research suggests. It's not clear precisely what effect the DNA changes have on the body and its organs, according to the research by Wayne State University's Douglas Ruden. But previous research has shown that a mother's lead exposure can affect an unborn child's brain and cause developmental problems later in life. "You have to think of a pregnant woman like a Russian doll. She's the outer layer, and her baby is the middle layer, and this next baby is the inner doll," said Ruden, professor at WSU's obstetrics and gynecology department and program leader in the Center for Urban Responses to Environmental Stressors. "When Mom was born in 1985 ... her eggs that won't be fertilized for 20 or 30 years are damaged." The study was published online this month in the peer-reviewed journal Scientific Reports. Ruden's team recruited mothers and children visiting Detroit clinics to receive benefits from a program for low-income families at high risk for lead exposure, in part because many live in older homes with lead paint. They focused on 35 women whose children shared their mothers' telltale DNA changes from lead exposure. Ruden's team analyzed DNA in blood that had been drawn from the 35 women at the time of their birth, finding that the blood already carried the same DNA markers. That means that their own mothers also had been exposed to lead.

Wayne State University baseball coach Ryan Kelley talked with Fox 2 reporter Ron Savage about the upcoming Sixth Annual Baseball Camp Series led by former Detroit Tigers Alan Trammell and Lance Parrish. Two camp sessions will be held on Saturday, Dec. 5, 9:30 a.m.-noon and 12:30-4 p.m. in the Matthaei and Multipurpose Indoor Facility. Trammell and Parrish will conduct Session I (Grades 2-12) from 9:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. and Session II (Grades 2-12) from 1:30-4 p.m. The entire WSU Baseball program including coaching staff, student-athletes and support staff will serve as camp instructors. A new addition for 2015, will be former Tigers' pitcher and 1984 World Series champion Dan Petry, who will be on hand to share his expertise.

The nation's medical schools chalked up another record-setting year of applications and enrollment, while making strides to attract a more-diverse applicant pool, according to figures released on Thursday by the Association of American Medical Colleges. The association, which has been warning of an impending physician shortage as baby boomers age and an earlier generation of physicians retires, reported that enrollment has climbed 25 percent since 2002, reaching an all-time high of 20,630 students this year. The total number of applicants for the class that started this fall rose by 6.2 percent, to 52,550, doubling last year's increase. First-time applicants were up 4.8 percent. Enrollment by Hispanic students was up 6.9 percent this year, and the number of black students increased by 11.6 percent. Still, the small share of black men remains the most troubling demographic figure, association leaders said in a call with reporters. Among the efforts underway to attract more-diverse applicants are holistic admissions reviews that consider personal attributes and life experiences, and programs - like one announced on Thursday at Wayne State University - to provide free university and medical-school education to 10 students per year from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Wayne State University has announced a new program designed to create a pipeline to help poor but high-achieving high school students enter the medical profession. Wayne Med-Direct will enroll 10 students a year who are interested in studying health disparities, starting in summer 2016. Students in the program will get free tuition and room-and-board (in university housing) for their undergraduate studies at Wayne State, guaranteed admission to its School of Medicine, and four years of medical school tuition. Ambika Mathur, dean of Wayne State's Graduate School, described the school's niche as a "hub" for training students from diverse and/or economically challenged backgrounds. Wayne Med-Direct will require a commitment of "millions" of dollars per year, Mathur said, which will be taken from existing scholarship funds. Mathur described Wayne Med-Direct as similar to its BUILD (Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity) program, which started last summer with a similar intent. Wayne State got the funds for the National Institutes of Health-funded BUILD program, $21.8 million over 5 years, in partnership with the University of Detroit-Mercy, Marygrove College and the Wayne County Community College District. Last year, the program took in 17 students with "absolutely stellar records," Mathur said. The average ACT score was a 27, the average GPA was a 3.9. In its first year, Wayne's BUILD program was locally focused; it will be national going forward. Wayne Med-Direct will be national in its entirety.

Wayne State University will announce today it will pay for the complete education of 10 students each year from undergraduate to medical school. The move is aimed at getting talented students from low-income backgrounds into and through med school and eventually to work on addressing issues around health disparities. "I want Wayne State to be known as the place for training biomedical scientists and MDs," Wayne State President M. Roy Wilson told the Free Press in an exclusive interview. "We want kids who can go anywhere, but choose to go to Wayne." The idea is built, in part, off Wilson's own academic career. Wilson, a doctor who specialized in research on glaucoma and blindness in populations from the Caribbean to West Africa, applied a year early to Harvard's medical school. He got a letter back, placing him on the waiting list. "It wasn't quite a guarantee that I'd get in, but it said I was a really strong student and they wanted me to finish up my undergraduate degree," Wilson said. He did get in and graduated with his MD. "Medical school is so difficult to get into, even for people with good credentials," he said. "Knowing that I was in early meant I didn't have some of the anxiety some of my classmates had. It allowed me to take classes like philosophy and advanced English that really helped me be a better person and a better physician ultimately. Students who are in this program will really be able to emphasize learning and not competition with other students." The program, Wayne Med-Direct, will include four years of paid undergraduate tuition, four years of paid undergraduate room and board costs in university housing and four years of paid medical school tuition, a total savings of $251,000. It will admit 10 new students each year starting next summer. "We expect a large part of each cohort will be underrepresented minorities," Wilson said. "That will also help us in terms of diversity in the medical school over time." Ambika Mathur, dean of Wayne State's Graduate School and one of the architects of Wayne Med-Direct, will help oversee the administration of specialized programming for the cohort to ensure the students are equipped for success once they reach the School of Medicine.

Wayne State University police chief Anthony Holt talked with Detroit News columnist Marney Keenan about safety on campus and the Midtown area and emergency preparedness efforts. Such efforts include regular CompStat meetings where upward of 40 officials attend from the university's anchor institutions - from Henry Ford Hospital and the Detroit Medical Center to the Detroit Institute of Arts and several neighborhood organizations. Together, they pour over crime-mapping statistics, spot trends and target crime hot spots. A SUIT (Student Update Information Team) comprised of students, counselors, housing administrators and general counsel also meet regularly to discuss student behavior issues, especially those involving threatening actions. Students also have access to an online training curriculum designed to help in an active shooter situation. Holt's team has participated in several mock active shooter exercises and professors are trained to be on the lookout for predictive behavior and know where to relay that information to the proper channels so that nothing falls through the cracks. In the wake of recent campus shootings, several states, including Michigan, are considering legislation on whether or not to permit guns on college campuses. While respecting the legislative process, Holt says: "I don't believe allowing people to carry guns in the classroom will improve safety. And it may create unnecessary anxiety. We have well-trained police officers and appropriate programs and policies in place."

Wassim Tarraf, assistant professor at Wayne State University's Institute of Gerontology, is a co-investigator and lead statistician on a $5.67 million five-year study charting how mild cognitive impairment progresses to Alzheimer's in Latinos. The lead principal investigator of this National Institute on Aging grant is Hector González, a colleague of Tarraf's at WSU and now an associate professor at Michigan State University. The project will recruit 6,600 Latinos, age 52 and up, from 16,000 participants in the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos begun in 2011.

Under a new law, if Michigan third graders cannot read on their own, they will be held back. Host Stephen Henderson talked with Jennifer Lewis, assistant professor in the Division of Teacher Education at Wayne State University, about the new reading requirement for Michigan's third graders. Lewis said that while many different education researchers are in disagreement, this is one of the few areas where there is a consensus. Ninety-five percent of children who are held back do not perform better academically. Lewis added that the dropout rate in high school is affected by this number. "Seventy-eight percent of dropouts from high school were children who were [held back] earlier," Lewis said.

Babies born prematurely are much more likely than other children to develop autism, ADHD and emotional disorders. Now researchers think they may have an idea about how that could happen. There's evidence that preemies are born with weak connections in some critical brain networks, including those involved in focus, social interactions, and emotional processing, researchers reported at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Chicago. Another team attending the neuroscience meeting presented evidence that at least some of the brain connection differences found in preemies at birth are also present during pregnancy. The team used new MRI technology that allowed them to study the brains of 36 fetuses during the 30th week of pregnancy. Half the fetuses went on to be delivered prematurely and half went to full term. When the researchers looked at connections between areas of the brain involved in movement and balance, the full-term fetuses had "higher levels of connectivity than the preterm born," says Moriah Thomason, an assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics from Wayne State University School of Medicine. This could explain why premature babies often are late to sit up and stand, she says. The results suggest that it's not necessarily premature birth itself causing brain connection problems, Thomason says. Both premature birth and weak brain connections, she says, may be triggered by factors like stress or illness or exposure to toxins.

Prashant Mahajan, M.D., professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine, chief of the Division of Emergency Medicine in the Department of Pediatrics at Wayne State University and Children's Hospital of Michigan, has been awarded a five-year, $5.76 million grant by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development of the National Institutes of Health. Mahajan and his collaborators will study how febrile infants - babies 2 months or younger who are brought to emergency rooms with invasive bacterial infections - can avoid invasive procedures such as lumbar punctures, overuse of antibiotics and unnecessary hospitalizations through a new, rapid and more accurate testing to be developed by their research team. Mahajan and his collaborators have been researching the evaluation of the febrile infant for 15 years and have been continuously funded in their efforts since 2008. "This award will aid in the development of a potentially paradigm-shifting approach of a new, more precise, efficient and rapid laboratory diagnostic strategies," Mahajan said. "This would allow for a less-invasive, quicker and more accurate cost-effective evaluation of young febrile infants while bringing this exciting technology to patients' bedside. If successful, it will substantially impact the care of thousands of febrile infants across the world."

More than one million people in the United States are afflicted with Parkinson's disease, a progressive disorder of the brain that affects movement and coordination. The cause is typically unknown, and presently there is no cure for the disease. Scientists have discovered that the hallmark sign of Parkinson's disease is the intraneuronal accumulation and progressive spreading of clumps in certain areas of the brain, known as Lewy bodies. These Lewy body inclusions are formed mainly through the accumulation of a protein, called alpha-synuclein. Because of a correlation between the extent of Lewy body clumps and the severity of the Parkinson's clinical symptoms, it has been largely accepted that these inclusions accelerate the disease process. Therefore, identifying molecules and conditions which decrease or halt the formation of alpha-synuclein-containing toxic inclusions may be beneficial for Parkinson's disease patients. A research team led by Assia Shisheva, Ph.D., professor of physiology in Wayne State University's School of Medicine, has made breakthrough advancements on a new molecular mechanism that may provide a means to "melt" these pathological clumps. For nearly 15 years, Shisheva's laboratory has studied the cellular functions of two enzymes, PIKfyve and Sac3, and one accessory protein ArPIKfyve - the three proteins originally discovered by her group from 1999 to 2007 - and the role these proteins play in disease mechanisms. Previous work by Shisheva's team revealed that if the Sac3 enzyme is not bound and protected by ArPIKfyve, it is prone to a quick demise inside the cell. In addition, they found that this double ArPIKfyve-Sac3 protein complex is a part of a bigger, triple assembly incorporating the PIKfyve enzyme as well. The triple complex controls the production and turnover of one rare phospholipid molecule that controls the traffic of membranes towards the digestive system of the cell.