Robert Sedler, Wayne State University distinguished professor of law and constitutional law expert talked about the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling on same-sex marriage and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) during the Warren Pierce Show. Sedler explained that the Justice Kennedy opinion found the ban on marriage for same-sex persons unconstitutional, because the fundamental right of marriage included same-sex couples and the ban on marriage for same-sex couples violated equal protection. Sedler added that the sharp disagreement between the majority and the dissent is over the role of the Court in interpreting constitutional guarantees in light of changes in American society. The majority favors a strong judicial role in deciding when there is a constitutional violation of individual rights while the dissent maintains that the judicial role is very limited. The Affordable Care Act decision, according to Sedler, involves interpretation of the provisions of the ACA dealing with subsidies on the individual insurance market. While a provision in the ACA refers to subsidies on exchanges established by a state, the intent of Congress looking to the law as a whole in context, is that subsidies should be available for all persons using the exchanges to purchase insurance on the individual insurance market. Therefore, the ACA is interpreted as including insurance purchases on the federal exchange as well as on state exchange.

We've all heard of it - the cloud. But what is it, how does it work and who controls our private information? Wayne State University C&IT Information Security Officer Kevin Hayes gives his expertise, clearing up those questions and more for Channel 4 viewers.

Ford Motor Co. Fund and Lear Corp. have donated $50,000 to the Wayne State University School of Business to help the school establish a new student finance lab. "This enables our finance students to compete on a level playing field with their counterparts in other schools in the area and around the world," says Sudip Datta, chair of the Department of Finance at Wayne State. Funds received from Lear and Ford along with Fifth Third Bank, which donated $100,000 earlier this year to form a student managed investment fund, are part of Wayne State University's $750 million Pivotal Moments fundraising campaign. "While these new resources will allow us to enhance our coursework and experiential learning opportunities in finance, in particular, these types of contributions from our major corporate partners and employers also enhance the value of all Wayne State business degrees," says Robert Forsythe, dean of the Wayne State University School of Business.

When 18-year-old Limi Sharif thinks about biology, she sees a tool she can one day use to make her community a healthier place. This fall, Sharif will explore her passion for biology as a Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity, or BUILD, scholar at Wayne State University. She will be among an inaugural group of students taking part in a newly funded effort by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) aimed at increasing diversity in the biomedical research workforce. REBUILD Detroit will expand its efforts by reaching out to high school students and offering them support through graduate school and beyond, said Ambika Mathur, PhD, dean of the WSU Graduate School, principal investigator of REBUILD Detroit, and a member of the AAMC Group on Graduate Research, Education, and Training (GREAT) Steering Committee. The consortium partners are redesigning their curricula with an emphasis on peer mentoring, early introduction to laboratory research, and dedicated faculty advising, she said. The first 45 students are expected to start this summer. "We simply haven't had mentoring at the level we should have had," said Mathur. "We need a more robust understanding of the needs of different populations because this is an issue that starts early and just persists."

Ned Staebler, president of TechTown Detroit and Wayne State University's vice president for economic development, participated in a Q&A talking about TechTown's vision, its focus on neighborhood revitalization and its role with local police in focusing on public safety.

You drift off at night like a newborn baby, yet can't recall the last time you woke up truly refreshed. There are a handful of problems that can cheat you out of quality slumber, leaving you more tired in the morning than you were when you went to bed. Those snuffle-snorts mean that your slack tongue and throat muscles are narrowing your airway, possibly due to the shape of your soft palate or any extra weight you're carrying. Although you're likely to wake up if you get short of breath, it may not be for long enough to remember. Some people wake dozens or even hundreds of times a night - a disorder known as sleep apnea that increases the risk of heart disease, stroke and possibly osteoporosis, according to a new study in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research. "Those repeated awakenings are as disruptive as someone pinching you every two minutes all night long," says Safwan Badr, MD, chief of the division of pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine at Wayne State University School of Medicine.

Some academics, librarians and history students have been rallying around the hashtag Charleston Syllabus, suggesting readings that might help inform the public of some of the city's history. Kidada Williams, associate professor of history at Wayne State University, was featured in an interview about her part in generating discussions through social media.

Wayne State University President M. Roy Wilson offered comments during CBS 62's "Eye on The Future" special titled "Michigan: Our Water, our Future," hosted by Carol Cain. President Wilson was joined by the presidents of the other two University Research Corridor institutions in a discussion about the role of water to research and education, and its economic impact on Michigan.

Your daily coffee fix may help you fend off skin cancer. For each cup of caffeinated java that you drink every day, there's a 5 percent drop in your odds of developing non-melanoma skin cancer later in life, researchers recently reported. Down a couple of Starbucks' venti coffees at 20 ounces apiece, and you may score a 30 percent drop in risk (or more - researchers didn't ask study participants about more than six cups a day). "It's possible coffee's antioxidant effect helps to protect against skin cancer," says Ernest L. Abel, Ph.D., professor of OB-GYN at Wayne State University School of Medicine. "But part of it may be that people who drink a lot of coffee tend to stay indoors more."

Two medical researchers from the Children's Hospital of Michigan and Wayne State University School of Medicine have identified a gene mutation that can trigger acute lymphoblastic leukemia, one of the most common types of cancer in children, along with other types of cancer. "Because of this finding, families will eventually be counseled regarding their risk for some kinds of cancer and targeted interventions will be devised and tested," says Dr. Steven Lipshultz, pediatrician-in-chief of the Children's Hospital and the chair of the WSU School of Medicine department of pediatrics. The study began about 10 years ago when Dr. Madhvi Rajpurkar treated a child for low blood platelets. The child and an aunt later developed acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a type of cancer that can be found in blood and bone marrow. She suspected there might be a genetic mutation in the family. Rajpurkar and others worked to isolate and identify the mutation in a gene that regulates growth rates in bone marrow.

Wayne State University President M. Roy Wilson has named Jack Sobel, M.D., dean of the School of Medicine for two years and David Hefner to a new position of vice president for health affairs for an 18-month term. Last November, Sobel, an infectious-disease specialist, was appointed interim dean. "Jack is trusted and respected by the faculty and our hospital partners, and his intimate knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of the School of Medicine will benefit us greatly during his tenure. I anticipate beginning a search for a long-term dean in about two years," Wilson wrote in an email this morning to colleagues at the university. Wilson said Hefner will concentrate on aligning the goals of the medical school with the University Physician Group, the Detroit Medical Center and Henry Ford Health System. "I am convinced we urgently need expert, concentrated attention on the strategic alignment of the School of Medicine with the University Physician Group and our hospital partners," Wilson wrote. "Further, I believe that this need for focused attention is both critical and urgent." Wilson said a university task force and a health care consulting group recommended that WSU add the new position. Hefner's assignment is to begin July 1.

A team of scientists from the National Institutes of Health, the Wayne State University School of Medicine and the Detroit Medical Center have developed what they call a placenta-on-a-chip to study the inner workings of the human placenta and its role in pregnancy. The device mimics the structure and function of the human placenta and the transfer of nutrients from mother to fetus. A study about the chip, "Placenta-on-a-Chip: A novel platform to study the biology of the human placenta," was published this morning in the Journal of Maternal-Fetal & Neonatal Medicine. "We believe that this system may be used to address questions that are difficult to answer with the current placenta model systems and serve to enable research in pregnancy and its complications," Roberto Romero, M.D., chief of perinatology research and a professor at the Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics at Wayne State and an attending physician at the DMC, said in a release. The prototype is the latest in a series of "organ-on-a-chip" technologies developed to accelerate biomedical advances. "The placenta-on-a-chip platform represents a remarkable new methodology and model to study the role and biology of the human placenta," said Jack Sobel, M.D., dean of the Wayne State University School of Medicine.

At the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, Executive Administrator Kassem Allie said diabetes has become a growing concern in the local community. Those who have a medical issue such as diabetes or pregnancy are allowed to break the fast for their health, but Allie said some try to adhere to the rituals anyway. Diabetes has been steadily rising in the Middle East and North Africa -- areas with a high population of Muslims, according to the Associated Press. In the U.S., about 9.3 percent of the population have diabetes. Linda Jaber, a professor of pharmacology at Wayne State University, has studied diabetes in the Muslim community for years and explained that aside from the daytime effects, diabetics can face problems as they break their fast at night. "The traditional meal where you break your fast is rich in carbs and low in fat. It's calorie intense and people tend to overeat," she said. "A high blood sugar level after you break fast is also a complication."

A recent Wayne State University graduate is launching a new business based on his invention, a new-and-improved version of the crossbow. Adam Skornia graduated from WSU in December with a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering, but he never played video games until he went to college. Those hours spent in front of a screen playing first-person shooter games inspired him to invent a patent-pending design for a new crossbow. After a couple of years fiddling with the design, the idea started to become real. The crossbow design allows the bowstrings to run internally, prohibiting fingers from coming across the path of the strings. The design is safer, more efficient, and compact. It is just shy of 3 pounds, about half the weight of the typical crossbows. Skornia launched Skore LLC to commercialize his invention. He has a prototype after working with Wayne State's Blackstone LaunchPad program. The company recently won $5,000 in seed capital from Wayne State's Blackstone LaunchPad Warrior Fund Competition.

A team of researchers from Wayne State University was recently issued a U.S. patent on a technology that will offer anesthesiologists better methods for monitoring and managing patients in the operating room. The technology, System for Identifying Patient Response to Anesthesia Infusion, developed by a collaborative team at Wayne State, uses smart, real-time monitoring of patients under anesthesia to provide individualized and dynamic prediction of a patient's anesthesia depth and vital signs, give physicians an early warning if vital signs are predicted to go above the standard threshold, and help anesthesiologists make decisions for targeted anesthesia depths during surgery. "Our smart anesthesia monitoring system allows physicians to look into the near-future prediction of a patient's vitals and make decisions that are more objective, timely and accurate," said Le Yi Wang, Ph.D., professor of electrical and computer engineering in WSU's College of Engineering. "The core of our technology is a novel information-processing methodology that uses measured drug rates, physiological signals and real-time data analysis to establish and update individual patient models." The WSU team consisting of L.Y. Wang, Hong Wang, M.D., professor of anesthesiology in the School of Medicine, and Gang George Yin, Ph.D., professor of mathematics in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, have blended their unique mathematical, engineering and medical backgrounds to develop this system.

Judge Damon Keith's life and legal career reverberates from the landmark cases he has ruled on and in the people, both well-known and little-known, who he has touched and inspired. "It's unbelievable," said Peter J. Hammer, co-author of the Keith biography "Crusader for Justice." "Most federal judges sit their entire life and not have a single leading case. Judge Keith has had landmark case after landmark case after landmark case. I think it's because he approaches every case with courage, and he's willing to take on the hard cases ... if justice requires action. He's a model of humanity and civic leadership." His roster of former clerks reads like a who's who in the nation's legal and civic registry. Among them, former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Wayne State University Law School dean Jocelyn Benson, legal scholar Lani Guinier and federal and local judges. Among the places named for the judge are a school in Detroit, a dormitory at West Virginia State University and, most recently, the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights. The center at the Wayne State University Law School opened in 2011. It serves as a hub for civil rights research, teaching and learning and houses the Damon J. Keith Collection of African-American Legal History.

President M. Roy Wilson joined MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon and U-M President Mark Schlissel in a discussion with WWJ reporter Jackie Paige during the Mackinac Policy Conference. The discussion focused on Michigan's three research universities' contributions to the state's economic growth.

Wayne State University President M. Roy Wilson and the presidents of Michigan State University and the University of Michigan joined "Michigan Matters" host Carol Cain for a discussion on education during the Mackinac Policy Conference. President Wilson stressed the need to find a sustainable higher education funding model that will keep universities affordable to the students, and keep up the quality. (cue to 3:00)

Eranda Nikolla, Ph.D., assistant professor of chemical engineering in Wayne State University's College of Engineering, was selected out of 620 submissions to receive a five-year, $750,000 award for her proposal, Nanostructured, Targeted Layered Metal Oxides as Active and Selective Heterogeneous Electrocatalysts for Oxygen Evolution. Nikolla will pursue work that will lead to development of efficient catalysts for energy generation and storage. She aims to combine computational tools with nanoscience and catalysis to design nanostructured, nonprecious metal oxide electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution - a key reaction in electrochemical energy conversion systems, such as generation of H2 from water. The proposed work will have a significant impact on the development of efficient energy conversion systems. "It is a great honor that our research was recognized by the U.S. Department of Energy with a 2015 Early Career Research Award," said Nikolla. "The funded work will have a significant impact in the field by providing fundamental insights that can guide the design of nonprecious metal oxide systems for electrocatalysis."

After being immersed in national higher education policy for nearly a decade, Dan Hurley can cite all kinds of statistics about the benefits of a college education. Two things Hurley knows already about Michigan: 7 out of 10 jobs will require some type of postsecondary education within five years. But right now only 37 percent of the state's citizens have a two-year degree or higher, he said, citing research from Business Leaders for Michigan, a business group that advocates for state investment in higher education. That's why Hurley, who this month becomes the state's chief lobbyist for higher education, thinks Michigan must act quickly to develop more college graduates. After being away from Michigan for eight years, Hurley is coming home and transitioning into his post as the CEO of the Presidents Council, State Universities of Michigan. He will lobby state policy makers on behalf of the state's 15 public universities, taking over for Mike Boulus, who is retiring from the position after 14 years.