In urban development circles, strategies that leverage the staying power and scale of anchor institutions -- universities, hospitals and other place-based powerhouses -- are on the rise. But anchor institutions will only succeed in transforming communities and revolutionizing the way cities approach their developmental futures if they adopt high-road practices. In Detroit, for example, city leaders and foundations have identified Midtown, anchored by Wayne State University and Henry Ford Hospital, as the focal point for an integrated set of investments in housing, commercial development and medical research.

GO-GIRL (Gaining Options-Girls Investigate Real Life), a program run through the College of Education at Wayne State University, is aimed at encouraging seventh-grade girls to build science, technology, engineering and math skills, especially minority students who are traditionally underrepresented in those fields. Girls have to apply to get into GO-GIRLS, although they don't necessarily have to be top math or science students so much as solid, hardworking kids, says Sally Kay Roberts, director of the GO-GIRLS program. The program connects students with female researchers, allows them to tour university research laboratories and access university library resources. The program also recruits females working in STEM disciplines to talk to the girls about what their career is really like and how they prepared for it.

Wayne State University will host its annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Tribute Luncheon at the Max M. Fisher Music Center at 10 a.m. Friday, Jan. 17. The keynote speaker is Mae Jemison, a physician, engineer, educator, entrepreneur and NASA astronaut. Jemison was the first African American woman in space and now leads the 100 Year Starship initiative to enable innovations for human travel to the stars. "Dr. Jemison's admiration for Dr. King, coupled with her extraordinary achievements in science and technology, made her a great choice as our 2014 keynote speaker," said WSU Vice President of Government and Community Affairs Patrick O. Lindsey. "Each year, we celebrate King's legacy with those who personify his dream. We hope that those attending will be motivated to pursue their dreams so that they will be an inspiration for future generations." Net proceeds from the luncheon will support Adopt-A-Classroom, a nationally recognized organization that invites the community into classrooms to increase opportunities for student success by empowering teachers with community partnerships and funds to purchase resources. Last fall, Wayne State adopted Detroit's Burton International Academy. Since 2008, nearly 40 classrooms in the Detroit area have been sponsored.

Rather than ban words that are overused like some institutions, a team of Word Warriors at Wayne State is trying to revive words that have fallen out of everyday use. Jerry Herron is the dean of the Irvin D. Reid Honors College at Wayne State and a stout Word Warrior. He tells WDET's Pat Batcheller where some of this year's words come from and what they mean--such as "fug."

Wayne State University will host its annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Tribute Luncheon at the Max M. Fisher Music Center on Friday, Jan. 17, 2014. The keynote speaker is Mae Jemison, a physician, engineer, educator, entrepreneur and NASA astronaut. Jemison was the first African American woman in space and now leads the 100 Year Starship initiative to enable innovations for human travel to the stars. Net proceeds from the luncheon will support Adopt-A-Classroom, a nationally recognized organization that invites the community into classrooms to increase opportunities for student success by empowering teachers with community partnerships and funds to purchase resources.

A new agreement between Wayne County Community College District (WCCCD) and Wayne State University will allow students to combine credits earned at WCCCD with those earned at WSU toward the rewarding of an associate's degree. The agreement expands upon the WayneDirect program, which offers dual-enrollment for WCCCD students at the university. "Reverse transfer agreements have grown significantly across the nation," said WCCCD Chancellor Curtis L. Ivery. "The ability for students who attend Wayne State University to transfer back credits they earn in satisfaction of our degree requirements gives them an important credential." Both institutions agree students should be able to apply credits from both WSU and WCCCD to earn both an associate's and a bachelor's degree. WCCCD representatives say the agreement strengthens their commitment to a "completion agenda," which strives to increase the numbers of students earning one-year college certificates and associate degrees.

Wayne State University has been awarded a $684,000 grant from the Department of Defense to research why black men have a much higher risk of developing prostate cancer than white men. Dr. Cathryn Bock, associate professor of oncology at Wayne State University and one of the researchers for this project, said, "Identifying risk factors and survivorship factors in a higher risk group such as African American allows for greater impact on the disease overall when these factors are addressed through interventions including screening and treatment." http://www.educationviews.org/university-funding-racial-disparities-prostate-cancer/

Most Detroiters have a clear vision of what they want in their neighborhoods. Ask them…and they'll tell you. One of the ideals city residents value is a sense of community. As part of WDET's special project called "The Detroit Agenda", News Director Jerome Vaughn spoke with Avis Vidal, professor of urban planning at Wayne State University. Vidal begins by defining the idea of "sense of community".

Wayne State University President M. Roy Wilson was interviewed on "The Frank Beckmann Show" by guest host Mark Hackel, Macomb County executive. President Wilson offered an overview of his first six months at the helm and discussed budget challenges facing the university and higher education as state appropriations continue to decline.

Selfie was the 2013 word of the year for the Oxford University Press, publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary. Meanwhile, Lake Superior State University came out at the New Year with its annual list of words proposed for banishment from the English language. At Wayne State University, they prefer to take a positive approach. Now in its sixth year, Wayne State University has released its annual list of the year's top 10 words that its logophiles believe deserve to be used more often in conversation and prose. The Word Warriors' extensive list is composed of submissions from both administrators of the website as well as the public. New entries are posted at wordwarriors.wayne.edu, as well as on Twitter and Facebook, each week. "The English language has more words in its lexicon than any other," says Jerry Herron, dean of WSU's Irvin D. Reid Honors College and a member of the website's editorial board. "By making use of the repertoire available to us, we expand our ability to communicate clearly and help make our world a more interesting place. Bringing these words back into everyday conversation is just another way of broadening our horizons." http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2014/01/08/a-fug-of-mephitic-weltschmerz-wayne-states-word-warriors-list-words-worth-reviving/

The Southeast Michigan Purchasing Managers Index took a big dip in December, falling from 58.3 in November to 50.6. A level above 50 indicates economic growth. The average over the past three months is 57.3. "The PMI dropped in December primarily due to a decrease in new orders and production at year's end," Timothy Butler, an associate professor of supply chain management at Wayne State University's School of Business Administration, said in a news release. "It is important to realize that even though the PMI index declined, it still remains near 50, indicating that the economy maintained relative stability compared to the prior month." Among components that make up the overall index, the finished-goods inventory index rose sharply, from 52.1 to 63.0, and the employment index went from 54.3 to 56.8. The index is a research partnership between the School of Business Administration and the Institute for Supply Management - Southeast Michigan.

A story examines Street Medicine Detroit's efforts to ensure access to quality medical care for Detroit's unreached and service resistant homeless population. Through direct and regular outreach, Street Medicine Detroit, founded by Wayne State University medical school students, bridges the gaps between the homeless and medical communities by building relationships and offering companionship and respect. In doing so, they hope to also address their unique psychosocial and health care needs.

Energy drinks may provide a bit too much of a boost to your heart, creating additional strain on the organ and causing it to contract more rapidly than usual, German researchers report. Healthy people who drank energy drinks high in caffeine and taurine experienced significantly increased heart contraction rates an hour later, according to research. The study raises concerns that energy drinks might be bad for the heart, particularly for people who already have heart disease, said Dr. Kim Williams, vice president of the American College of Cardiology. "We know there are drugs that can improve the function of the heart, but in the long term they have a detrimental effect on the heart," said Williams, a cardiology professor at Wayne State University School of Medicine. For example, adrenaline can make the heart race, but such overexertion can wear the heart muscle down, he said. There's also the possibility that a person could develop an irregular heartbeat.

Amanda Levitt, Wayne State University graduate student and founder of www.fatbodypolitics.com, takes to Twitter and Tumblr and other social media to defend anyone who doesn't fit into the narrow margins society has prescribed for femininity and health. And she defends beauty in any shape and size. If America is really getting fatter as research suggests, she said, it's most likely that an obsession with being thin and a culture of fat-shaming leads to yo-yo dieting and destructive self-hate, she said. Genetics and lifestyles are different, Levitt said: "Why can't we be allowed to be happy with ourselves?"

Wayne State University's EcoCAR 2 team, made up of 40 students, is re-engineering a Chevy Malibu into a vehicle that achieves 40 miles of all-electric range. The team members joined students from across the country who were challenged to reduce greenhouse gases through a General Motors and U.S. Department of Energy-sponsored competition, EcoCAR 2: Plugging into the Future. Wayne State is one of 15 universities competing in the three-year engineering competition. The competition is designed to replicate GM's three-year design process it challenges engineering students to simulate a hybrid vehicle design and then implement it into the team's GM-donated 2014 Chevrolet Malibu. Additionally, business and communications students on the team secure sponsorship and plan outreach events. (subscriber access only)

Protons and neutrons, the particles in an atomic nucleus, are made of smaller pieces called quarks. And some types of quarks can form particles that exhibit surprising behaviors - and a new surprise has been found by researchers at Wayne State University. Mark Mattson, assistant professor-research, and Paul Karchin, professor, from Wayne State's Department of Physics and Astronomy in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, led a large collaborative effort of physicists at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois reporting a bizarre "social" behavior of particles containing "charm" quarks: an observation of "charm mixing." The result was published in the scholarly journal Physical Review Letters. Since the discovery of the charm quark in 1974, physicists have postulated a rare process in which a charm particle spontaneously changes into its antiparticle. Evidence for this unique behavior was uncovered more than three decades later by experiments in the United States and Japan. However, conclusive observation did not emerge until this year from the CERN laboratory in Switzerland and Fermilab in the U.S. Mattson and Karchin worked closely with team co-leaders from Fermilab and the University of Siena in Italy. Robert Harr and Alexey Petrov, professors of physics and astronomy at Wayne State, served as team advisors.

WJR reported that residents of states bordering a Great Lake pay in-state tuition - plus a 10 percent fee - each semester with Wayne State University's Great Lakes Tuition Award. Students taking 15-credit hours per semester will save an average of $11,633 per each year.

Two books published by Wayne State University Press have been named to the Library of Michigan's 2014 list. "The Colored Car," by Jean Alicia Elster illustrates the personal impact of segregation and discrimination and reveals powerful glimpses of everyday life in 1930s Detroit. "The Way North: Collected Upper Peninsula Works," edited by Ron Riekki, consists of 49 poems and 20 stories introducing the readers to the unmistakable terrain and characters of the Upper Peninsula.

A Wayne State University program designed to keep seventh-grade girls focused on a successful career path is available to all school districts in the tri-county area, but it only accepts a limited number of students each year. The free program, Gaining Options-Girls Investigate Real Life (GO-GIRL), was created to help girls build confidence, capacity and awareness of the STEM subjects: science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Developed more than a decade ago via a collaboration between Wayne State's College of Education and the University of Michigan's Institute for Research on Women and Gender, GO-GIRL was a response to the decline in mathematics interest and achievement among girls and minority youth at the middle school level. "Seventh grade is a time when students start deciding which track of math they're going to pursue in high school and college," said Sally K. Roberts, director of GO-GIRL and an assistant professor at Wayne State. "The gap also starts to widen between girls and boys, so we're trying to get more girls onto the advanced track. In college, math tends to be a gatekeeper for a lot of students - it's the barrier that holds them back from pursuing STEM careers." More than 800 seventh-grade girls from across metro Detroit have participated in GO-GIRL on the Wayne State campus since the program's inception in 2002.

The University of Southern Indiana women's basketball team got beat by the other team's best player on Saturday. Wayne State's Shareta Brown scored 22 points and pulled down 13 rebounds. But the 6-foot-1 junior's biggest contribution was her scoring 13 of her team's final 19 points to help beat USI 82-74 in the Bellarmine Classic on Saturday.