Craig Fahle talked with Wayne State University Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus Melvin Small about Vietnam veterans Chuck Hagel, nominated Secretary of Defense; John Kerry, newly appointed Secretary of State; and John McCain, senior Senator of Arizona. Small discussed what these veterans may have experienced during their service and upon their return. Small taught at WSU for over 45 years and has written and edited over 15 books, including "The Presidency of Richard Nixon and Antiwarriors."

The Michigan Area Health Education Center (MI-AHEC), a Wayne State University program, announced Jan. 18 it had selected the Greater Detroit Area Health Council (GDAHC) to manage its Southeast Regional Center. The GDAHC replaces the Detroit Wayne County Health Authority, which hosted the Southeast Regional Center since the MI-AHEC was established through a federal grant in 2010. Barbara K. Redman, dean of the WSU College of Nursing and co-principal investigator of the MI-AHEC grant, said in a statement the Greater Detroit Area Health Council has a strong commitment and understanding of the MI-AHEC's vision and goals. The center was formed in 2010 by the Wayne State University School of Medicine and Wayne State's College of Nursing with funding from a federal grant. The Michigan Area Health Education Center has offices based at Wayne State.

The Michigan University Research Corridor (URC) helped create $2.6 billion in added economic impact in Michigan compared to similar figures released in 2007, according to a report released by the non-profit earlier this month. The URC is a consortium of the state's three research universities (Wayne State University, University of Michigan and Michigan State University) focused on helping creating synergies between Michigan's universities and increasing research that comes from them. Its more recent report shows the URC contributed $15.5 billion to the state's economy. One of the factors in that growth is the increase of spin-out companies from technology developed at Michigan's three research universities. In 2011, the three universities spun out 18 companies, which ranked it third against other similar innovation clusters. px

Whether you're an inventor or a business thinking about getting a patent or a student interested in patent law, the Wayne State University Law School's Patent Procurement Law Clinic's open house set from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Feb. 21 is for you. Learn about what the clinic can do for you with free legal services, and speak to students to learn about their experiences with the clinic. The event, which is open to all free of charge, will take place at the Law School. WSU's Law School developed the patent clinic last year, and it's the only school in Michigan - and among only 25 law schools nationwide - chosen by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a participating clinic certified for the office's pilot program.

Jack Lessenberry, journalism lecturer at Wayne State University, describes an era in which Detroit became a modern industrial city with an increasingly complex society - even before Ford started tinkering with the automobile. This presentation is part of a series of programs, The Gilded Age to the Great War: America at the Turn of the Century, at the Lorenzo Cultural Center on Macomb Community College's Center Campus, 2 p.m., Sunday, Feb. 24.

An article examining the campaigns of the various candidates seeking to be Detroit's next mayor notes that State Rep. Fred Durhal has been garnering support from Wayne State University Board of Governor's member Gary Pollard. Pollard, a community advocate with a broad knowledge of issues, has been pounding the pavement for Durhal, who brands himself as a turnaround guy because of his work in Highland Park as economic development planner and other urban projects he handled before going to Lansing.

Trying to find just the right balance of time spent in meetings and time performing tasks is a tough problem for managers, but a Wayne State University researcher believes the behavior of ants may provide a useful lesson on how to do it. Using computer simulations derived from the characteristics of ants seeking food, Kai Yang, professor of industrial and systems engineering in the College of Engineering, has developed a mathematical model-based methodology to estimate the optimal amount of time spent to develop a product, as well as the cost, in overlapped product development. Researchers believe their simulation model could reduce product definition time by as much as 50 percent, and lead to best practices that improve critical thinking and remove communication barriers. Such practices can be applied to large-sector manufacturing, health care and service companies, Yang said.

The first Anthony Bass baseball camp at Wayne State University was a "huge success," according to wsuathletics.com. About 70 pitchers grades three to 12 attended the camp on Saturday to learn pitching specific lessons from Bass, a former Trenton High School Trojan and current San Diego Padres pitcher. Bass has a 3.72 ERA and 104 strike outs through 145 innings pitched at the big league level, according to Wayne State Athletics.

The Hilberry Theatre opened the new year with the Michigan premiere of "Detroit," a Pulitzer Prize finalist play by Lisa D'Amour. In this review, the show's production values are reported to be top-notch, "from the superb acting to the strong technical design and execution. It mirrors our times and city, and if it makes audiences uncomfortable or makes them think, then it has achieved its goal."

The Yoga Journal's 2012 Yoga in America study found the number of people practicing yoga has increased by nearly 30 percent in the last four years. The initial 2008 survey accounted for 15.8 million adult yoga practitioners, but the latest figure has increased to more than 20 million who practice - about 8.7 percent of adults. More than 78 percent surveyed said the main reason for beginning yoga was to increase flexibility. Others surveyed said they began yoga for overall conditioning, stress relief and improvement of general health. Anita Vasudevan is a Wayne State University sophomore and yoga instructor at the University's Mort Harris Recreation & Fitness Center. She's working toward a bachelor's degree in kinesiology and plans on attending medical school. Eventually she wants to incorporate yoga in her practice. "I would use complementary and alternative therapies (namely yoga) in conjunction with traditional allopathic medicine in order to treat my patients with the best of both worlds," Vasudevan says.

SoftVue, the whole breast ultrasound imaging device created by two scientists from the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute and Wayne State University School of Medicine, is currently undergoing review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for market clearance. It's anticipated that this first application clearance could come this spring, with several other FDA submissions to follow over the next couple of years. This promising imaging tool has the potential to aid in detecting breast cancer earlier, especially in women with dense breasts. Peter Littrup , M.D., and Neb Duric, Ph.D., of the Karmanos Cancer Institute and Wayne State University School of Medicine, and their team have been working to perfect the SoftVue technology for more than a decade.

Howard N. Shapiro, a retired professor of Mechanical Engineering at Wayne State University, opined about electric cars writing that all-electric cars just don't make sense. "I also know that no matter what we try to do through public policy, the laws of thermodynamics cannot be repealed. Objective analysis shows that gasoline hybrids fare much better than electric cars." Shapiro concludes: "In the future, electric cars will indeed be green and a good choice for society. But in the meantime, let's not jump on the electric car bandwagon."

Community stakeholders and small and big businesses are fighting crime in some innovative ways -- especially in Midtown and parts of downtown -- with data-driven approaches to crime investigations and preventative measures. One tactic is having detailed -- and frequent -- crime analysis, down to the city block level. Every two weeks, a group of about 25 law enforcement officials, ranging from undercover detectives from the Wayne State University Police Department to state troopers, the Wayne County Sheriff's Office, urban planners and the heads of security for leading Midtown employers, gather for a detailed meeting - called CompStat. The group reviews every reported crime that took place at Wayne State and in Midtown over the previous two weeks. Anthony Holt, chief of police for the WSU Police Department, said he began the meetings four years ago as a way to rein in crime at Wayne State. "We look at every single crime that happened in Midtown and downtown and look for patterns and devise a plan off of that pattern," Holt said. "Two weeks later, we revisit it and look at the stats. And we had better show a decrease." David Martin, research director for the Urban Safety Program and Center for Urban Studies at WSU, said a similar meeting to the Midtown program takes place monthly to drill down on crime stats in Detroit's Central Business District. And he said there are plans to roll out the program more frequently in downtown and more widely across the city. Lyke Thompson, director of the Center for Urban Studies at Wayne State University, said companies like Quicken Loans/Rock Ventures and the Ilitch family of companies are also expanding their security presence in the city and sharing that information with the Detroit Police Department. Response times for WSU's police unit hovers around 90 seconds. Overall, crime has dropped by 45 percent in Midtown and Wayne State since CompStat began. "If you divide the 60 police officers (that) Wayne State has by the four square miles they patrol, we have about 13 officers per square mile," Holt said.

A Wayne State program called Street Medicine Detroit is part of a growing international movement known as street medicine, where doctors take medical care to homeless people who need it but who aren't likely to turn up in a clinic. The new venture between about 100 Wayne State medical students and the Neighborhood Service Organization takes doctors-to-be out of the clinic and into the city, treating homeless people in the shelters, parks and underpasses where they often live.

The schizophrenic brain is hobbled by three problems -- delusions, hallucinations and thinking difficulties. And even though most people associate the disease with hearing voices and being afflicted with paranoid thoughts, many researchers believe the most important symptom to tackle is the cognitive challenges people with schizophrenia face. Vaibhav Diwadkar, a neuroscientist at Wayne State University, is trying to see if there are ways to detect who's at greatest risk for the disease so doctors can intervene early, before symptoms strike. To do that, he is studying the children of parents who have schizophrenia. While the risk in the general population of getting the disease is 1-2 percent, children of parents with the disease have a 30-50 percent risk of getting a major psychiatric illness during their lifetimes. Using brain imaging, Diwadkar looked at how these children reacted to pictures of happy faces vs. angry or sad faces. Compared to a matched group of typical young people, the children of schizophrenic parents reacted less strongly to the positive faces, and showed more signs of trying to suppress their reactions to the negative faces. Those findings fit with symptoms of the disease, in which patients often have trouble enjoying life and perceive threats in the world around them. The children will need to be tracked to see which of them develop schizophrenia symptoms in later years, but ultimately, Diwadkar would like to develop tests that might allow early treatment.

Merit Network Inc. announced today that they have completed a scheduled equipment upgrade on the MiLR (Michigan LambdaRail) fiber ring. The upgrade took place Jan. 3-5, and included installation of equipment, cut-over and migration of existing service to the new equipment. The equipment deployed in the upgrade was ADVA Optical Networking. MiLR is a high-speed, special purpose, data network created jointly by the University of Michigan, Michigan State University and Wayne State University. It provides low-cost fiber-optic connections between the three campuses and to national and international research and education connection points.

For doctoral student Kapil Patki, the opportunity to work with structural engineering expert and professor Christopher Eamon was enough to make him want to pursue his passion at Wayne State University. The College of Engineering's current research, facilities, and innovative lab equipment and technologies were just icing on the cake. Patki, an Indian native, earned an undergraduate degree in civil engineering from Pune University in India and a master's degree in structural engineering from Lawrence Technological University, where he was first introduced to Eamon. "Dr. Eamon was working as a civil engineering professor there, and I had taken number of courses under his guidance," Patki said. "I had a great deal of respect for him due to his excellent teaching style and expertise in structural engineering." A couple of years later, Patki discovered that Eamon had joined the Wayne State faculty. Patki was employed in the civil engineering industry but expressed his desire to pursue a doctoral degree under Eamon's guidance at Wayne State. "I was so pleased when he accepted me as a Ph.D. candidate," Patki said. "I am so thankful for the opportunity, help and encouragement I have received from the civil and environmental engineering department, its professors and, especially, Dr. Eamon."

This month, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the United States Department of Health and Human Services awarded a more than $389,000 grant to Wayne State University to research lung disease. "Specifically, this grant to Wayne State University from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, will help academic researchers explore the role and regulation of MKP-1, an enzyme, in Sarcoidosis, an inflammatory lung disease," said U.S. Representative John Conyers, (D-MI). "Vital medical research grants like this are a reminder that the budget sequester, set to take effect in March, would have a devastating impact on life-saving studies. Rather than seeking short-sighted patches to our budget deficit, Congress must consider the long-term benefits that medical research grants offer our country."

A team of Wayne State University School of Medicine physicians will seek to develop methods to better identify women at increased risk for stroke using a new type of professional education grant. The study, "Improving the Identification of Women at Increased Risk for Stroke in an Urban Medical Center," is funded by a $492,800 grant from Pfizer Inc. It will be overseen by Seemant Chaturvedi, M.D., WSU professor of neurology. Others involved in the study include Lavoisier Cardozo, M.D., professor of internal medicine and chief of the Division of Geriatric Medicine; Diane Levine, M.D., associate professor of internal medicine; Neelima Thati, M.D., professor of internal medicine; Maribeth Mateo, M.D., assistant professor of family medicine and public health sciences; and Ramesh Madhavan, M.D., assistant professor of neurology. Chaturvedi and the team will study the rate of compliance for following recommended guidelines to identify women at risk for stroke by WSU and Wayne State University Physician Group doctors in five WSUPG clinics.

Alzheimer's organizations have worked diligently to raise public awareness of the disease. The downside of this awareness, however, is that even doctors can jump to possibly faulty conclusions when they see an elderly person showing signs of memory loss or significant confusion. A recent article in the Detroit Free Press features Peter Lichtenberg, head of Wayne State University's Institute of Gerontology. In a paper for the journal Clinical Gerontology, Lichtenberg, according to the article, "highlighted two case studies: in one, a man's bouts of confusion and agitation in his late 70s were caused by illness and painful cellulitis, not Alzheimer's; in the other, an 87-year-old woman, who seemed suddenly confused, was suffering from depression."