Research has shown auto accidents are no longer the leading cause of death by injury in the U.S. Suicide is now the top cause. Dr. Herbert Smitherman Jr., assistant dean of community and urban health at Wayne State University's School of Medicine, talks about the problem in an extensive interview.

John Taylor, chair of Wayne State University's marketing and supply-chain management department, participated in a panel discussion on The Craig Fahle Show examining how Michigan companies can compete with China in creating business models to succeed, grow and add jobs in Michigan.

Wayne State University says it's getting a $2.8 million federal grant from the U.S. Administration for Children and Families to continue operating the Developmental Disabilities Institute for five years. The institute provides services to people with disabilities, their families and those who work with them throughout Michigan. It opened in the 1960s at the University of Michigan and moved to Wayne State in 1983. The program comes up for review every five years. The university says the program has trained 60,000 teachers and 18,000 direct care workers.

A Wayne State University researcher is part of a national project to find accessible sources of natural gas. Jaewon Jang, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering in the College of Engineering, recently received a two-year, $178,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to aid in the search for methane hydrates in oceans and permafrost, such as the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska's North Slope. Jang said many in the industry might not be inclined to pursue methane hydrates as an energy source right now because of the large quantities of shale gas currently available and its resultant low prices. But because those quantities are the result of research money invested by the DOE in the 1970s and 1980s to develop production methods, he believes that bodes well for the future of the current effort.

Representatives from Wayne State's Blackstone LaunchPad discussed their entrepreneurial activities during an hour-long radio broadcast of "Your Voice with Angelo Henderson." The Blackstone LaunchPad at Wayne State University is starting to gain more traction this fall as more and more student-led businesses spin out of the entrepreneurial training program. Aubrey Agee, senior program administrator for Blackstone LaunchPad at Wayne State University, participated in the interview along with entrepreneurs Timothy Hooker and Robby Amin.

Eight major corporate and education leaders wrote the state Legislature's top two Republicans urging them to quickly pass legislation establishing a regional transit authority in Metro Detroit. Allan Gilmour, president of Wayne State University, and Gary Russi, president of Oakland University, were among the letter's signers. The letter comes a day ahead of a state legislative hearing on the issue. The system is critical, the leaders said. Winning approval for the regional transit authority may also clear the way for $25 million for the M-1 Woodward Avenue street car plan.

A large-scale bike-sharing program, a service that allows people who don't own bikes to borrow or rent them, could be coming to Detroit. A coalition of local business and nonprofit groups is now pursuing a study to see if this type of program, which already exists in places like Denver and Minneapolis, has a future in Motown. Wayne State University is spearheading the research effort with a long list of business and nonprofit partners. Lisa Nuszkowski of Wayne State's Office of Economic Development said the idea had been bounced around among the groups she works with before, so her office chose to run with it. "We decided to pull a bunch of people together and decided to commit some money to [researching] the idea and go forward with it for the city," she said. Nuszkowski believes the program would encourage alternative modes of transportation, help connect different parts of the city and increase the appeal of Detroit as a place to visit and live.

John Corvino, Wayne State University associate philosophy and Philosophy Department Chair, and Maggie Gallagher, National Organization for Marriage Co-Founder, are set to debate same-sex marriage in a forum at Wayne State on Sept. 27. Corvino and Gallagher joined Craig Fahle on-air to talk about the shift in the national conversation on this controversial social issue.

They are often on different sides of the election reform battle, but Secretary of State Ruth Johnson and Toine Murphy of the NAACP joined together Tuesday to encourage students to register to vote. At Wayne State University, the pair sported "Rock the Vote" buttons and urged students to do their civic duty. Johnson said WSU was the secretary of state's 16th stop on a 20-city tour of public universities and community colleges, resulting in 1,000 students being registered to vote. "You're discovering your own voice," she told a dozen or so students gathered on a sunny morning in the Fountain Courtyard at the university. "Make a difference, make a decision and be a part of our democracy." Photos of the event on campus are featured with both stories.

An article examines the effects of lead exposure in children. Research has tied high levels of lead in the blood to such serious problems as criminal activity and low IQ. Lead has been linked to negative trends in school performance, especially among poor and African-American students, in Chicago, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Texas, among other places, but there is little research on how schools can help affected children. Dr. Teresa Holtrop, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Wayne State University School of Medicine, worked with a team of Wayne State researchers who examined whether Cogmed, a Swedish computer program focused on improving working memory, could help approximately 20 lead-poisoned students. After an eight-week intervention, students' IQ test scores, academic test scores, and visual motor integration all improved. The students' IQ scores jumped from 89 to 95, said Lisa Chiodo, an assistant professor of nursing at Wayne State who participated in the research.

Carpe Diem Collegiate High School and Middle School is trying to upend the way students are taught. In just four days of instruction a week - there's no school on Fridays - Carpe Diem's five teachers and four teachers' aides supplement the concepts their 226 students have learned through a computer program. The school is at the forefront of a movement called "blended learning," where students receive some of their instruction online and some of it face to face. But not all experts agree with the method. Professor Michael Barbour of Wayne State University says Carpe Diem's online curriculum is specifically designed to get kids to do well on standardized tests and graduate from high school, which it does well, but that it falls short on fostering critical thinking skills. "The nature of the curriculum and the way in which they try and provide support to the student, it's designed to get these students through the system," says Barbour. "It's designed to achieve that false belief that no child should be left behind." The story is one in a 10-part series on education solutions featured at the 2012 Education Nation summit in New York on Sept. 23-25.

Gay rights advocate Chai Feldblum, the first openly lesbian commissioner of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, will deliver the 28th annual I. Goodman Cohen Lecture in Trial Advocacy at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 2 at Wayne State University Law School. "She has been a strong and effective advocate for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights," said Wayne Law Distinguished Professor Robert Sedler, event organizer of the Cohen Lecture Series. "Disability rights and LGBT rights are among the major areas of civil rights litigation today." The lecture, "Achieving Social Change: Lessons from Disability and LGBT Rights," will take place in the Law School's Spencer M. Partrich Auditorium. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Jerome P. Horwitz, a scientific researcher who created AZT in 1964 in the hope that it would cure cancer but who entered the medical pantheon decades later when AZT became the first successful drug treatment for people with AIDS, died on Sept. 6. He was 93. Dr. Horwitz never achieved much fame and did not earn a penny for making the AZT compound. The riches - billions of dollars eventually - went to the drug company that tested it, patented it and, in 1986, won federal approval for it as the first treatment proven to prolong AIDS patients' lives. Dr. Horwitz told interviewers that when AZT (short for azidothymidine) had failed as a cancer drug, he literally put it away on a shelf in disappointment and moved on to explore other ideas, never bothering to patent it. To console himself, he half-kiddingly told colleagues at Wayne State University's cancer research center in Detroit that AZT and several similar drugs he had developed were "a very interesting set of compounds that were waiting for the right disease." Dr. Horwitz became a cancer researcher in the mid-1950s at the Michigan Cancer Foundation and a professor at the Wayne State University Medical School. (The Cancer Foundation was renamed the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute in 1995.) He remained with those institutions until retiring in 2005. One of his last projects involved developing drugs for treating solid tumors. The research led Wayne State to obtain a patent, which it licensed in 2003 to a pharmaceutical company.

When Karen L. King, a historian of early Christianity, announced this week that she had identified a fragment of ancient Coptic text in which Jesus utters the words "my wife," she said she was making the finding public - despite many unresolved questions - so that her academic colleagues could weigh in. A few said that the papyrus must be a forgery. Others have questioned King's interpretation of its meaning. Several scholars said that King should not have agreed to study the fragment without verifying that it was not obtained illegally. Jennifer Sheridan Moss, president of the American Society of Papyrologists and an associate professor of classics at Wayne State University, said that the society would probably not publish a paper on a piece of papyrus without knowing its provenance. "But if something this interesting came up, I suspect we would pursue more information on its provenance," she said.

Wayne State University welcomed 25 Royal Oak residents to the university's 145th academic year. "We're proud to welcome this newest class to the university's 145th academic year," said Ronald T. Brown, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. "We're confident that this group of Warriors will carry on our rich legacy."

The auto industry is back on campus and hiring a different breed of engineer -- those who can help invent the next generation of complex software that pushes the envelope on m.p.g., clean emissions and crash avoidance technologies. To be sure, Michigan universities have long been a key source of talent for the auto industry. Nearly 13,000 graduates of Wayne State University, University of Michigan and Michigan State University already work for the Detroit Three, according to an Anderson Economic Group report. Many Michigan educational institutions and nonprofits provide training for the specialized technological needs of the auto industry such as Wayne State University's electric-drive vehicle engineering labs. Formed with a U.S. government grant, this program offers curriculum specially designed to meet the evolving alternative propulsion needs of the auto industry.

Governor Rick Snyder recently proposed that Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) lose its tax-exempt status in the state in exchange for a faster regulatory process. This comes in anticipation of changes that will come with the institution of the Affordable Care Act in 2014. Craig Fahle spoke with Lance Gable, health care law expert and professor of law at Wayne State University, about the proposed changes to BCBS and what it could mean for health care in Michigan.

Today, top law enforcement officials will meet with citizens at Wayne State University in a two-day summit on how to solve the city's crime problem. Citizens join police and city officials in struggling to find solutions to the city's crime problem, said former Wayne State President Irvin D. Reid, who is spearheading a two-day symposium: "City Under Siege: A University Forum on the Crime Crisis in Detroit" at Wayne's Community Arts Auditorium. "Public safety appears to be the number one concern for people in the city," said Reid, director of Wayne State's Forum on Contemporary Issues in Society. Detroit Police Chief Ralph Godbee, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy, Wayne State University Police Chief Anthony Holt, U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade and others are scheduled to answer questions from citizens who are concerned about crime. Details about the forum are provided in a sidebar.

Wayne State University held its annual Drive Safely to Wayne State event yesterday featuring speakers and exhibits highlighting the dangers of distracted driving such as texting while driving. Fox 2 provided video of the various exhibits, and WWJ's Sandra McNeil interviewed participants.

In Detroit today, businesses are the good guys, bringing investment and new jobs to the city. But a persistent crime problem threatens to snuff out that recovery before it even takes root. "Detroit's future hinges in large part on whether or not we can solve our crime problem," said Irvin D. Reid, director of the Forum on Contemporary Issues in Society at Wayne State University, which is sponsoring a two-day conference on the epidemic this week. Campus police at Wayne State University recently widened their jurisdiction at the request of major hospitals. "In the last two weeks, there were probably 155 arrests made in the area. Out of those, Wayne State police made 95 of them, and none of them were on campus," said Wayne State police chief Anthony Holt. Holt meets biweekly with Detroit Police, the Michigan Department of Corrections, and local companies' private security forces to identify crime hot spots using Comstat, a data resource developed in 2008. Armed with such information, they can adjust patrols accordingly to increase visibility and head off crime before it occurs.