Detroit poet and playwright, professor Bill Harris joined Craig Fahle to chat about his newly-published book "Booker T and Them: A Blues." Wayne State University Press is publishing the book.

Wayne State University Distinguished Professor Melba Boyd is noted as serving on a panel of local and national artists for this year's Kresge Arts in Detroit program. This marks the fourth round of fellow awards in a schedule that focuses in alternate years on visual arts and literary-performance arts. Next April, Kresge plans a second installment of its Art X Detroit event, showcasing new works by the fellows of 2011 and 2012 as well as works by the separately chosen eminent artists from those years.

StoryCorps, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to recording, sharing, and preserving the stories of Americans, kicked off in Detroit on Monday. Wayne State University President Allan Gilmour was the first to tell his story inside the MobileBooth at the Virgil H. Carr Cultural Arts Center. "Think of all the kinds of levels of work and interest (in Detroit). That's one of the things that's so fascinating," said Gilmour, who was interviewed by his chief of staff Michael Wright. StoryCorps' MobileBooth will be in Detroit through August 8 as part of its cross-country tour.

An article profiles Kids Kicking Cancer, a Michigan-based nonprofit that uses martial arts techniques to help children with cancer ease their physical and emotional pain, and its founder Rabbi Elimelech Goldberg, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Wayne State University School of Medicine. Goldberg, who is a first-degree black belt in the Korean art of Choi Kwon Do, lost his 2-year-old daughter to leukemia 32 years ago. Her death led him to dedicate the rest of his life helping children with cancer manage their pain.

Arizona State University School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences founding director and professor Wayne Raskind has been appointed dean of the Wayne State's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, according to a university press release. The new position will be effective Aug. 15. A graduate from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Cambridge, Raskind has more than 12 years of experience in university administration and spent a year at the Universite de Paris-Sud in France as a visiting researcher. "Wayne State is a perfect combination of a high-level research university that serves a wide spectrum of students in an urban environment," Raskind said in a press release. "These missions are not only compatible, but can serve to strengthen each other. The college is the core of the university and must reach out to and play well with all other academic units. It will be my pleasure to spearhead this effort as dean." A photo of Raskind is included.

Algae extract could be used as a key to regulate cardiac disease. Scientists from Wayne State University have found that ProAlgaZyme (algae extracts) increases the good cholesterol levels, which in turn helps cure cardiac disease. They discovered this while studying a group of Hypercholesterolemic hamsters. The study found that ProAlgaZyme increases good cholesterol or high-density lipoprotein (HDL). The HDL lowers the bad cholesterol and it carries the harmful cholesterol out of the arterial wall, which in turn helps cure cardiac disease. "The cholesterol mechanism is crucial to heart disease," said Smiti Gupta, assistant professor in the department of nutrition and food science at the Wayne State University, in a statement. "Very few agents increase good cholesterol, but we found that this algae extract does. The ratio of total to HDL cholesterol improved significantly. This result, if replicated in humans, would be consistent with a decreased risk of heart disease."

An article examining Iowa schools that shifted to a continuous, year-round education model notes that the percentage of children at three of the schools who were proficient readers in 2010-11 was higher than the Des Moines Public Schools average which may signal that this is good for some students. However, a continuous calendar is not necessary for all children, said Carolyn Shields, dean of the College of Education at Wayne State University. On the other hand, Shields - who has spent the better part of two decades studying year-round education in the U.S. and abroad - is convinced many American students are struggling, in part, because they lack access to 12-month academic supports. "In my mind, this is a socially just way to think about education," she said. "If people take community needs into consideration, it's something that can really make sense."

John Brender, director of the Confucius Institute at Wayne State University, was a guest on Michigan Matters with host Carol Cain to discuss the Chinese language learning and cultural exchange programs offered by the institute. Brender spoke about the Michigan China Quiz Bowl, upcoming summer camps in Macomb and Oakland counties and custom programs offered to corporations and community organizations.

Wayne State University President and Harvard University graduate Allan Gilmour will emcee a celebration honoring Nancy Schlichting, CEO of Henry Ford Health System, who has been selected as the Harvard Business School Club of Michigan's annual Business Leader of the Year. The club, comprised of local graduates of the Harvard Business School, will host the event on August 22 at the Atheneum in Detroit. Proceeds will be used to fund scholarships for Michigan non-profit leaders to participate in the 2013 Strategic Perspectives for Non-Profit Management course.

After years of research and theorizing, yesterday marked a groundbreaking advancement for physicists with the first physical evidence of the Higgs boson particle. Paul Karchin, professor of physics and astronomy at Wayne State University and a member of the team that discovered the new subatomic particle, joined Craig Fahle to discuss the implications of this monumental discovery.

The 313 Project, a Detroit-focused nonprofit started by Wayne State University Law School students, is leading the effort to transform Romanowski Park, a 26-acre park in Southwest Detroit. Co-founder Aisa Villarosa Berg says they are looking for volunteers to come together on July 12 from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. to assist in the green space transformation. A promotional video and photo highlighting the 313 Project are included.

Several researchers from Wayne State University had good cause to celebrate Wednesday after scientists at the CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland announced they had data supporting the existence of the most elusive particle in physics. The Higgs boson is a particle thought to give matter mass that is predicted by the standard model of particle physics. Using an accelerator, CERN scientists in two separate experiments created a particle that holds many of the properties theorized for the Higgs boson. Their discovery is based on complementary research conducted at the recently closed Collider outside of Batavia, Ill., which had Wayne State University faculty on its team. "I feel fantastic," said Dr. Robert Harr, a professor in WSU's Department of Physics and Astronomy. "To finally convince ourselves that this is the Higgs boson will take more work, but the results themselves are just fantastic. This particle has been hunted for the last 45 years." The WSU group has been involved in the project for over 10 years and has played a leading role in the research there. They were responsible for precise calibration of the calorimeter electronics, which play an important role in getting accurate measurements.

Wayne State University announced Wednesday that its scientists and technicians played an important role in the apparent discovery by Europe's Large Hadron Collider of the long-sought Higgs boson, the so-called 'God particle.' A seminar presentation at the CERN physics research center in Geneva, Switzerland disclosed two experiments that observe a new particle in the mass region around 125-126 GeV. And Wayne State said a team of its physicists "made important contributions to the CMS experiment." The WSU team is led by Paul Karchin and Robert Harr, professors in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Team members include Caroline Milstene, adjunct professor of physics, Mark Mattson, assistant research professor, Alexandre Sakharov, research associate, Alfredo Gutierrez, research engineer and Ph.D. students Christopher Clarke, Sowjanya Gollapinni, Chamath Kottachchi, Pramod Lamichhane and Kevin Siehl. WSU team members are located at three key locations around the world: the CERN laboratory in Geneva, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois and at Wayne State's campus. The WSU team contributed to the around-the-clock operation of the experiment and analysis of the data. Team members became experts with different parts of the experimental apparatus including the endcap muon detector, the hadron calorimeter and the high-level trigger computing system.

Technology gurus and entrepreneurs from Twitter, AOL, LinkedIn and numerous other companies will download to Detroit later this year. The Detroit Economic Club will host "Techonomy Detroit," a unique one-day multidisciplinary gathering of national and local leaders focused on reigniting U.S. competitiveness, creating jobs, and revitalizing our cities in an age of technology. The event is scheduled from 8:30 a.m. to 6:15 p.m. Sept. 12 at Wayne State University.

Leslie Smith, president & CEO of TechTown, appeared on Comcast Newsmakers during the 2012 Mackinac Policy Conference with host Laurel Hess. Smith talked about the impact of TechTown in the region.

If a public health emergency strikes and medical resources are scarce, health officials must make the tough choice of deciding whose medical care should be a top priority. To guide those decisions, the Michigan Department of Community Health has proposed ethical guidelines. The Wayne State University Law School led the effort to create the guidelines, which were crafted by a committee that included experts from health care, public health and academia. "The purpose of the guidelines is to minimize the harm caused by public health emergencies, while also allowing fair processes to protect all individuals," said Professor Lance Gable, a public health law attorney and Wayne State assistant law professor. "We hope to provide guidance to health care providers and other decision-makers in making ethical decisions about access to scarce medical resources in the most effective way possible."

A model of collaborative policing in Detroit's Midtown has resulted in a dramatic drop in crime during the last four years. Led by Wayne State University police, a group of academics and law enforcement officials, the group has been meeting every two weeks for more than two years to pinpoint where crime is happening, who might be committing it, and how best to deploy officers to keep offenders at bay. Since 2008, officers say crime in the Midtown area has fallen by more than one-third. Wayne State officers work with Detroit Police on car theft issues and with the Sheriff's Office on drug issues, among other things. At the helm are WSU Police Chief Anthony Holt and David Martin of the Center for Urban Studies, who prepares crime data and maps outlining the last two weeks of activity in Midtown. Holt roughly outlines the strategy for the next two weeks before the meeting breaks. As Detroit continues to change, Holt said there is no reason similar programs that put multiple law enforcement agencies in the same room with needle-sharp data can't change crime in other areas. A photo of the WSUPD dispatch center is included.

People in Detroit age faster and die sooner than their counterparts elsewhere in Michigan, according to a study that draws the conclusion that the city's new "elderly" are as young as 50. Residents in the study area, which included eight smaller communities, who are 50-59 years old are 60-74 in terms of their health and die at a rate 131 percent higher than their peers around the state, according to "Dying Before Their Time," a report to be released next week by the Detroit Area Agency on Aging. The higher mortality rate is driven mainly by Detroit residents who have more chronic illnesses, require more hospitalizations and have less access to health care than people of the same age in the rest of Michigan, the study found. Dr. Herb Smitherman, assistant dean of Community and Urban Health at Wayne State University, and coauthor of the report, noted two challenges Detroit faces in helping the elderly. First, opening up health insurance to hundreds of thousands of new patients requires enough doctors to see them; but over the last decade there has been a 25 percent decline in medical students going into primary care. Second, as residents in the agency's study area get sicker at a younger age, the number who need care grows faster than expected.

A Wayne State University researcher is seeking to better understand what triggers the death of a type of cell that contributes to the onset of type 1 diabetes. Beta cells in the pancreas make and release insulin, a hormone that controls blood glucose levels following a meal. Early in life, sometimes beginning at birth, the autoimmune system begins initiating destruction of islet beta cells, leading to the onset of type 1 diabetes. The precise mechanics of how that happens, however, still are unclear. Anjan Kowluru, professor of pharmaceutical sciences, associate dean for external scientific affairs in the Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and professor of internal medicine in the WSU School of Medicine, will use an animal model to test the effect of NSC23766, a compound more commonly called Rac inhibitor, to see if it will prevent or delay the onset of diabetes. Kowluru's study, "Tiam 1-Rac1 Signaling Axis Mediates Beta-Cell Dysfunction in Type 1 Diabetes," is supported by a one-year, $110,000 grant from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

The Southeast Michigan Purchasing Managers Index came in at 60.3 in June, a marked drop from 66.3 in May. However, PMI index values above 50 generally suggest an expanding economy. "The Employment Index continues to indicate that employment conditions in Southeast Michigan are favorable," said Timothy Butler, associate professor of supply chain management at Wayne State's business school. "The three-month average is at a very strong level of 75.5, and at 76.1 this month, the index is close to a five-year high."