An article examining the causes of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, a liver disease commonly called "NASH" that can turn into cirrhosis, includes medical opinions and analysis from Detroit-area doctors. Dr. Kezhong Zhang, a Wayne State University molecular medicine researcher who received a $1.7-million grant to further study a fat-controlling protein, suspects that abnormal fat metabolization may be the culprit. Zhang believes the protein, CREBH, is closely associated with fat building up in the liver, and with fatty liver's progression to NASH. He's trying to figure out how that happens and learn how to control the protein, possibly leading to a medication to treat NASH.

Nicole Blaszczyk, who won the Miss Michigan title in 2009, is profiled in a story highlighting the life of winners after taking off the crown. Blaszczyk is in her third week as the assistant athletic director for marketing and promotions at Wayne State University, where she received a degree in business administration in 2009. She credits the Miss Michigan competition with helping her get to where she is today. "Miss Michigan kind of gave me that courage and the tools to go up to people and start communicating and just talk to people," she said, calling that ability an "important skill for business." A photo of Blaszczyk is included.

A lot more people are visiting and living in Midtown these days, but places for them to gather are few. The Detroit Institute of Arts hopes to change that by creating what it calls a cultural living room. The DIA is considering how its Kresge Court inner courtyard and front lawn could serve as gathering spots, with enhancements such as new seating, live musical performances, free Wi-Fi and lecturers. The DIA last week secured a $268,500 grant for the project from Chicago-based ArtPlace, a collaboration of 11 private foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts and seven federal agencies. Over the next several months, the DIA plans to work with Midtown Detroit on public forums to gauge what nearby residents and employees would like to see in the museum's cultural living room. Bradford Frost, a fellow in Wayne State University's Detroit Revitalization Fellows Program, is helping to shape the effort as special assistant for community and economic development at the DIA. "The goal is to enhance and transform the Kresge Court and front lawn from (places) people visit occasionally to places they frequent much as they do different restaurants, coffee houses and parks," he said.

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) members recently supported a resolution that calls on the AAUP to give its own employees the same fair treatment that it expects colleges to give their faculty members. Drafted by a committee of the AAUP Field Staff Association, a professional organization representing the staff members employed by the AAUP's larger chapters and state conferences, the resolution holds that the national organization and its affiliates "shall embody the same policies and principles as employer that it espouses are the benchmark for fairness and equity in its advocacy for faculty," and "shall not relate to staff in a way that conflicts with basic principles of fairness and equity." Charles J. Parrish, professor of political science at Wayne State University who was about to take the at-large seat on the association's national council that he won in last spring's AAUP elections, said, "I don't see how anyone can vote against this," considering how it reiterates the association's basic principles.

A fighter pilot, a pastor, a biologist and a sea kayak instructor are among the latest round of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation's Woodrow Wilson Michigan Teaching Fellows being sent to teach in high-need urban and rural schools across Michigan, including Detroit. Each member of the 2012 class of fellows, announced in Lansing on Wednesday, is making a three-year commitment to teach in the areas of science, technology, engineering and math - known as STEM - across Michigan. Each of the 74 recipients will receive $30,000 to complete a specially designed master's degree program preparing them to teach in Michigan's high-need urban and rural secondary schools. The fellows will attend Wayne State University, Eastern Michigan University, Grand Valley State University, University of Michigan, Michigan State University and Western Michigan University. The universities partner with local school districts where fellows learn to teach in real classrooms from the beginning of their master's work, foundation officials said.

This fall, Wayne State University plans to launch a card involving a partnership with Higher One, a financial firm with card agreements at 520 campuses nationwide. Jim Barbret, controller and associate vice president for fiscal operations at Wayne State, said Wayne State's students still can have a check sent to them to receive what money is left from student loans and financial aid after tuition. Or the money can be directly deposited to the bank or credit union. Or the money would be deposited via a Higher One debit card. "One of our driving principles is we give them the options, they make the call," Barbret said. Barbret noted that the new card can make disbursing student loan money more efficient if checks do not have to be directly mailed, and perhaps lost or returned because of an incorrect address.

Wayne State University is ranked 8th by U.S. News & World Report in the number of freshman students who commute to campus with 68 percent living off campus. The U.S. News "Short List," separate from their overall rankings, is a regular series that magnifies individual data points. U.S. News surveyed more than 1,800 colleges and universities for their 2011 survey of undergraduate programs.

Scant research exists on the effectiveness of full-time online learning, but 30 states allow K-12 students to learn entirely online. Across the country, more than two million K-12 students participate in some form of online education, and nearly 300,000 do so full time, according to John Watson, founder of the Evergreen Education Group, a consulting firm in Durango, Colo. Michael Barbour, professor of education technology at Wayne State University, notes one of the biggest challenges for teachers who offer courses online. "Teachers need to figure out how to deliver lessons when they don't have that real-time interaction with students," says Barbour. "It's just something that is new to them."

The awards keep coming in for Wayne State University swimmer Catherine Leix after her spectacular senior season with the Warriors. In addition to being placed on the First Team Academic All-American team for the second year in a row, Leix was recently awarded the College Sports Information Directors of America Capital One All-American of the Year for Division II women's sports. She was the first Wayne State student athlete to win the award in its 60 years of existence. "Out of the 80 people on the final ballot she was the one that got the most votes, which is pretty spectacular," said Jeff Weiss, the associate athletic director for media relations at Wayne State. "That's what makes it all the more impressive because people that are SIDs from across the country that are on the voting committee picked her as the one. When you look down the list of the kids that made the ballot, it's a pretty impressive group of student athletes."

Following a rigorous evaluation process, Wayne State University's research program involving human participants has been renewed for full accreditation by the Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs Inc. (AAHRPP). The accreditation is the "gold seal" for human participant research, requiring its member institutions to reach performance standards that surpass the threshold of state and federal requirements. "AAHRPP accreditation indicates Wayne's commitment to the most comprehensive protection for human research participants and to the highest quality research. This is a great achievement for Wayne State University," said Hilary Ratner, Ph.D., WSU's vice president for research.

A feature story highlights father and daughter James and Stephanie Boileau, who share a love for engineering and passion for being involved. They received their engineering educations at the Wayne State University College of Engineering with the help of prestigious scholarships. Both undoubtedly understand the importance of making the most of their time. "Engineering is about getting involved," Stephanie, a presidential scholar, said. "My involvement in student activities, competitions and organizations has given me real experience in analyzing and overcoming challenges. I believe that will help me immensely down the road in my career." A photo of James and Stephanie is included.

Research suggests that certain types of mental exercises -- whether they are memory games on your mobile device or jotting down letters backward -- might help our brain maintain concentration, memory and visual and spatial skills over the years. At a recent "Brain Neurobics" session at the Waltonwood Senior Living center in Novi, Cheryl Deep of Wayne State's Institute of Gerontology, encouraged several dozen senior citizens to flip the pictures in their homes upside-down. It might baffle houseguests, but the exercise crowbars the brain out of familiar grooves cut deep by years of mindless habit. "Every time you walk past and look, your brain has to rotate that image," Deep said. "Brain neurobics is about getting us out of those ruts, those pathways, and shaking things up." Assistant professor of pediatrics Moriah Thomason, a scientific adviser to www.Lumosity.com, one of the fastest-growing brain game websites, is a proponent of mental workouts. "We used to think that what you're born with is what you have through life. But now we understand that the brain is a lot more plastic and flexible than we ever appreciated," she said. Photos from the event are included.

Wayne State University offers a state-of-the-art language program through the Foreign Language Technology Center where students get the most use of technology while learning a chosen language. The University offers courses in several languages including Latin, German and East Asian languages. Center hours and costs are included in the story which singles out the best language programs in Detroit.

A Wayne State University School of Medicine study has found that an overwhelming majority of African-American patients with hypertension also suffered hidden heart disease caused by high blood pressure even though they displayed no symptoms. The study - "Subclinical Hypertensive Heart Disease in African-American Patients with Elevated Blood Pressure in an Inner-City Emergency Department" - was conducted by Phillip Levy, M.D., associate professor of emergency medicine, and was recently published online in Annals of Emergency Medicine. Nine of every 10 patients tested suffered hidden heart damage caused by high blood pressure, the study found. "These results present a tremendous opportunity to screen for heart disease before it becomes symptomatic, especially in a population with high rates of hypertension," Levy said. "If we can detect incipient heart disease early, we have a better shot at treating it before it turns into a full-blown health emergency. Our study is also a strong reminder that emergency patients with chronic disease - in this case, hypertension - are generally a high-risk group."

Wayne State University professor of law Robert Sedler spoke on "The Craig Fahle Show" about the emergency manager referendum decision by the Michigan Court of Appeals.

A Wayne State University researcher believes a protein that fails to reach the nucleus of retinal cells may play a role in causing eye disease in people with diabetes. Renu A. Kowluru, professor of ophthalmology, anatomy, cell biology and endocrinology at Wayne State University and the Kresge Eye Institute, recently received a one-year, $110,000 Innovative Grant from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation to help gain new insight into the development of diabetic retinopathy and identify targets for future therapeutic interventions. Her hypothesis is that NF-E2-related factor 2 (Nrf2), a protein that regulates antioxidant response, fails to reach to the nucleus of cells in the retina to neutralize free radicals, which are volatile. As a result, Kowluru said, KEAP1 - the protein that serves as an anchor for Nrf2 and represses its activation - increases, damaging the mitochondria, the cells' power source. That damage, she believes, in turn accelerates the death of cells in tiny blood vessels (capillaries), ultimately resulting in the development of retinopathy.

High blood pressure is strongly associated with heart disease in black Americans, new research shows. In the study, published online May 31 in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, researchers looked at 161 people who came to a single emergency department. More than 93 percent of the patients were black. None had symptoms or a history of heart disease but 94 percent had a history of high blood pressure, or "hypertension." "These results present a tremendous opportunity to screen for heart disease before it becomes symptomatic, especially in a population with high rates of hypertension," lead author Dr. Phillip Levy, of the department of emergency medicine at Wayne State University, said in a journal news release. "If we can detect incipient [early] heart disease early, we have a better shot at treating it before it turns into a full-blown health emergency.

With much of the Arab world in a do-or-die stampede toward greater democracy, Saudi Arabia is looking to consolidate the old way of doing things. Riyadh is pushing an agenda to strengthen the long-standing union between its fellow Gulf monarchies, apparently to prevent the Arab world's revolutionary fervor from spreading. The move was met with skepticism and outright hostility from neighboring states, which are reluctant to cede their growing autonomy. "The call for unification within GCC countries signals a resumption of a bipolar region, featuring the rise of post-authoritarian states on the one hand, and the solidification of conservative regimes on the other," said Abdullah Al-Arian, an assistant professor at Wayne State University.

Activists with the conservative Tea Party movement say they owe a lot to their schooling in left-wing community organizing tactics for the historic Republican victory over the Democrats and their union allies in the Wisconsin recall election. While the Democrats said huge campaign spending by conservatives supporters of Republican Scott Walker allowed him on Tuesday to become the first governor in U.S. history to survive a recall election, the Republicans point to their grassroots, get-out-the-vote work as more important. "If they are going to recall a governor, it hardly makes sense to try to challenge him with a candidate who lost against him last time," said Marick Masters, a professor of business and director of labor studies at Wayne State University.

Two Metro Detroit companies have jumped into international soccer sponsorships, hoping to cash in on a sport that is bigger worldwide than pro football, which is the king of U.S. sports. The deals by General Motors Co.'s Chevrolet brand and Warren-based Warrior Sports - a sporting goods maker - represent a possible shift in sponsorship dollars as companies feel the need to broaden their reach by targeting new consumers, said Attila Yaprak, professor of marketing and international business at Wayne State University. "For many of these companies," he said, "the future of their business is in other markets and not as much in the United States."