Wayne State University Professor of History Aaron Retish, an expert on Modern Russian History, talked with Craig Fahle about Chechnya and the surrounding region's complex history. Saeed Kahn, Wayne State University lecturer and expert on Middle Eastern and Muslim studies, discussed the potential Chechnya connection to the Boston bombing suspects.

Wayne State University athletes collected donated items for the area's homeless youth and adults for a third consecutive year as part of "W" Week Community Service Initiative, in partnership with Wayne Cares and Covenant House. The Basic Needs Drive, a campus-wide drive, is expected to amass thousands of items - from toothpaste and toilet paper to shampoo and shaving cream. Marriott International, a dedicated sponsor since the drive's inception in 2011, has rallied nine of its Detroit-area hotels to donate over 1,000 items. The drive culminated on Friday, April 19, when WSU athletes and volunteers sorted, assembled and distributed personal care kits directly to homeless individuals in and around Cass Park.

With a full-time job and two young daughters, Mary Miodowski found herself constantly searching for ways to optimize her time while designing creative solutions to everyday tasks. As her discoveries gradually helped simplify her life, she decided to share her ideas. As a result, her Web site, http://dashingelements.com/, is devoted to moms and their families. "I wanted to create a space that would be helpful to other moms like me," said Miodowski, who holds a bachelor's in business from Wayne State University and who works full time as an accounts payable administrator. Funded by the Blackstone Charitable Foundation, and in partnership with New Economy Initiative for Southeast Michigan, Automation Alley, University of Miami, Walsh College and Wayne State University - this program helps aspiring entrepreneurs develop and launch their businesses.

Dr. Omar Khan, Wayne State University School of Medicine professor of Neurology, has been appointed chair of the Department of Neurology, effective April 22. "His devotion to education and the clinical treatment of patients, combined with his passion for collaborative research, make Dr. Khan the ideal person to lead the department into its next chapter," Valerie M. Parisi, M.D. said. "A widely published and internationally respected neurologist and clinical researcher, Dr. Khan is the ideal leader to maintain the high quality research and sought-after patient care for which the department has become known." Khan has served as interim chair of the department for the last year while the school conducted an extensive national search and interviewed candidates. "I am honored and humbled by the opportunity to lead a prestigious department nationally known for its excellence in teaching, clinical care and research," said Khan, director of the Wayne State University Multiple Sclerosis Center and the Sastry Foundation Advanced Imaging Laboratory. "I am looking forward to working with my colleagues and leading the department."

University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman announced Thursday she is retiring when her contract ends next year, giving the university enough time to find a successor. Coleman, 69, who made the announcement at the Board of Regents meeting, has led U-M for more than a decade. Wayne State University President Allan Gilmour collaborated closely with Coleman over the years as they worked to improve the state's economy through innovations that emerged from the University Research Corridor. "She's been an outstanding leader, exceptional in every way," said Gilmour, who met Coleman when she asked him to join a presidential advisory group years ago. "It was clear when she came to Ann Arbor she was a star and we were very lucky to have her."

Wayne State University will bestow an honorary degree next month on Sixto Rodriguez, the Detroit folk musician who finally found fame after he was profiled in the Oscar-winning documentary "Searching for Sugarman." "A lot of people at Wayne are inspired by his story, his work ethic and humbleness, not to mention the songwriting," said Matt Lockwood, WSU spokesman. "He graduated from Wayne and lives not too far from campus. We know he is a proud alumni and Detroiter. It made a lot of sense to give him this honor." In the 1970s, he was an iconic rock star in South Africa but never knew it. His albums flopped in the United States but evolved into the soundtrack of many South Africans' lives during apartheid because of his anti-establishment lyrics. The 2012 documentary chronicles the search for Rodriguez, who was thought to be dead, but was found living in Detroit. He has since appeared on "60 Minutes," performed on "The "Late Show with David Letterman" and is touring in places such as Wales, Australia, Spain, France and many U.S. cities, including Detroit next month. Rodriguez graduated from WSU in 1981 with a philosophy degree. He will receive a Doctor of Humane Letters from WSU on May 9 at the 10 a.m. commencement ceremony. At a second ceremony at 4 p.m. that day, WSU will give an honorary degree to Walter Douglas Sr., who has been involved in many entrepreneurial activities in Detroit and sits on boards throughout the community.

Lyke Thompson, director of the Center for Urban Studies at Wayne State University and project coordinator of the Detroit/Wayne County Green and Healthy Homes Initiative, wrote a guest column about progress made in halting lead poisoning and the reductions in funding. Since 1998 Detroit has experienced an 89 percent decrease in lead poisoning in young children (4,846 children in 1998 to 545 in 2011) while the State of Michigan has experienced a 87 percent decrease (7,144 children in 1998 to 950 in 2011). Thompson attributes the success in part to the strategic collaboration by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), HUD, the EPA, Michigan Department of Community Health, the City of Detroit, CLEARCorps Detroit, Center for Urban Studies at Wayne State University, the Kresge and Skillman foundations, the Wayne County prosecutor, and others. Thompson wrote: "Despite these achievements, earlier this year the CDC's administration decided to walk away from its success, and cut off its grants to states and localities, leaving a program it built to wither on the vine." He concludes: "We must continue to protect the health of the most vulnerable among us. The CDC, Michigan Department of Community Health, City of Detroit and others need to provide continued support to help guard children from the ravages of lead poisoning."

Data collected and analyzed at the Wayne State University School of Medicine has produced what could be the first published work to examine the relationship between wartime environmental exposures and birth outcomes for children of men and women living in Iraq before and after the 1991 Gulf War. "The key finding is that exposures to that war seem to be associated with an increase in adverse pregnancy outcomes," said reproductive health expert Robert Sokol, M.D., the WSU distinguished professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the John M. Malone Jr., M.D., Endowed chair and director of the C.S. Mott Center for Human Growth and Development in Detroit. Using data from interviews with 307 Iraqi families who immigrated to the United States, the team compared mothers giving birth in Iraq before and after being exposed to the Gulf War to those giving birth in the U.S. before or after the first Gulf War. "There is generally a lack of good studies of the reproductive hazards of war in which there are both data on exposures as well as outcomes," said Bengt Arnetz, M.D., Ph.D., WSU professor of Family Medicine and Public Health Sciences and the study's principal investigator.

Wayne State University has received a $225,000 commitment from the Arab American Pharmacists Association to support a new fellowship in the Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. The WSU-AAPA fellowship will provide a pathway to developing research expertise in community health outcomes and prepare the fellow for a future career in higher education. Additionally, the research will assist in serving the health needs of the Arab American community in southeast Michigan and advancing the delivery of care from pharmacists to the community. The fellowship will operate under the direction of Linda Jaber, professor of Pharmacy Practice. "The Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences is grateful to the Arab American Pharmacists Association for its generosity," said Dean Lloyd Young. "Research fellowships are critical to preparing the next generation of practitioners, academic leaders and researchers, and this particular fellowship will enable us to learn more about the health needs in our community and to support those needs through training for advanced pharmacy practice."

How do you make sure kids get an education if they don't even have a place to call home? Medical students from Wayne State University provide tutoring to young people at Covenant House, a place which offers food, shelter and education for homeless teens. Wayne State Student Nabil Al-Kourainy is one of the coordinators of the tutoring program. He says some of the kids need help with the basics to learn reading and math. "It's really an amazing program, which is why I'm so excited to play a small part in it," said Al-Kourainy.

After she graduated from the Wayne State University Law School in 2011, Kathy Smolinski was awarded a fellowship to open a program that provides legal advice to outpatients at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute. The two-year fellowship made sense to Smolinksi in that she had spent 16 years as an oncology social worker. She decided to become a lawyer to continue advocacy for low-income cancer patients. "It is a medical-legal project, but it really is a health care delivery model because legal services are integrated right into the other (health care) services provided" at Karmanos, she said. Through the Legal Advocacy for People with Cancer project, Smolinksi has helped more than 120 Karmanos patients. "We focus on patients in the outpatient setting because those inpatients are too sick to do anything," she said. "We focus on helping patients with insurance, housing, employment, legal or long-term planning (wills and advanced directives) and public benefits" such as Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security, Smolinski said.

A new study suggests that obstructive sleep apnea severity is higher in African-American men in certain age ranges, even after controlling for body mass index (BMI). "The results show that in certain age groups, after correcting for other demographic factors, the severity of sleep apnea as measured by the apnea-hypopnea index is higher in African-American males than Caucasian males," said James Rowley, the study's senior investigator, professor of medicine at Wayne State University School of Medicine and Medical Director of the Detroit Receiving Hospital Sleep Disorders Center. The study appears in the April 15 issue of the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, the official publication of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

Life Beyond Barriers is an initiative between Wayne State University and downtown Detroit-based tech firm Urban Science. The idea behind it is to combine medicine, science, engineering and entrepreneurship to enhance the quality of life for the injured and disabled. It now will receive an annual donation of up to $15,000 to fund prototype design and development at Wayne State University's biomedical engineering undergraduate design laboratory. "Many times the need is real but the group that has the need doesn't have the money to invest in development of the technology," says Michele Grimm, undergraduate program chair for bio-medical engineering at Wayne State University. Some of that prototyping is already underway. One of the projects will help create a weight-lifting set for people in wheelchairs. That concept is also in the early stages of being developed into a business at the Blackstone LaunchPad program at Wayne State. "It will be easier for a person in a wheelchair to do resistance training," says Grimm.

In light of the tragic bombings in Boston Sunday, Craig Fahle spoke with Wayne State University Chief of Police Anthony Holt. They discussed police protocol for an incident of this type and how police prepare to deal with a public emergency of this magnitude.

Rachel Hom, of Shelby Township, joined her Wayne Law teammates in placing highly in the Phillip C. Jessup International Moot Court competition. Hom, a third-year student, was the chancellor of the team called "the famous ladies of Wayne State," which finished 18th internationally. She also finished in seventh place as best speaker in the competition. A photo of Hom and her team is included.

Gov. Rick Snyder today announced the appointment of Margo Farber, of Grosse Pointe Park, to the Michigan Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee. Housed within the Michigan Department of Community Health, the 11-member board advises the department on issues affecting prescription drug coverage for its various health care programs. Farber is director of the University of Michigan Health System's drug information service. She also serves as adjunct faculty at Wayne State University's College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences and as a clinical assistant professor at Wayne State University's School of Medicine.

With a standing ovation Wayne State University junior Daniel Dumas became the first student to receive the Ben Burns Endowed Scholarship for Excellence in Journalism. "Today I am filled with joy and reverence," said Dumas, a member of the Journalism Institute for Media Diversity. "Joy for this scholarship that I am so graciously able to accept and reverence for the man we're here today to honor." Ben Burns, a longtime fixture in the journalism world and former director of Wayne State's journalism program, died in September. On Saturday, the College of Fine, Performing and Communication Arts held a memorial in his honor and presented the scholarship, made possible by his wife Beverly Burns, an attorney for Miller Canfield, and a number of other donors. More than 50 current and former students, faculty and journalism professionals remembered the man who had an impact on everyone he met. "It's important for us as we move forward to think about the past and the legacy that people like Ben leave," said the college's dean Matt Seeger. "He left very big footprints."

New York Times writer David Segal toured around Detroit with George Galster, a professor in the department of urban studies and planning at Wayne State University and author of "Driving Detroit." Galster is the fifth consecutive George Galster to live in Detroit. "My great-great grandfather came here from Germany in 1851," he said. As they navigated through the streets of the city, Galster pointed out an abandoned building. "This was the church my great-grandfather built," he said. "This is the church where my parents met. It's where I was baptized. "This is what is horrible about Detroit. It takes away your memories."

Wayne State University, a major landowner in Midtown, has released a request for proposals (RFP) to develop a brand-new mixed-use residential and retail apartment building, the second phase of its South University Village District. The RFP calls for designs of a four- to seven-story residential apartment building that would be situated on a current surface parking lot owned by Wayne State on Canfield between Cass and Woodward. "We're basically at full occupancy in Midtown. Our goal is to be increasing the density in the neighborhood. It's good for the developers, because it will fill up, and good for the neighborhood, too, the mix of residential and commercial space." said Ned Staebler, Wayne State's vice president of economic development.

Southfield Public Schools announced wide-ranging changes at the high school level that officials say will help the district improve the way it meets the needs of its increasingly transient population, including gender-specific classes in math, language arts, science and social studies. School leaders received guidance from experts in Wayne State University's College of Education at the start of the redesign process. Those experts will continue to be involved in the implementation of the changes. Carolyn Shields, dean of the College of Education, said the high school redesign work will address "one of the most intractable problems in education." "We are convinced that what will emerge will be a system that truly serves the diverse needs of all students," Shields said in a news release.