Columnist Rochelle Riley writes about a study of youths who are too old for foster care homes. Conducted by WSU's Research Group on Homelessness and Poverty, the survey found that almost half the youths from the tri-county area who "aged out" in 2002 and 2003 were homeless at some point during the first three years on their own. In Michigan , most foster care youths stop receiving state aid at age 18. A state task force is studying how to improve transitions to life after the foster-home experience.

One area where the city of Detroit , in spite of struggling with its public image, has had great success in recent years, is hosting major sporting events. These include the NFL Super Bowl, the Major League Baseball All-Star Game, a major golf tournament and numerous basketball and hockey championship series playoff games. Jerry Herron, identified as "an American studies professor" at Wayne State , refers to the challenge faced by the Motor City : " Detroit 's the city everybody likes to look at as a place that's dangerous, abandoned and economically no longer viable. It's the most famous failed city in the United States ." But he adds that today the city "feels like a place that has a promise; it has a future. I'd love to see the city market its car culture, our automotive heritage. We invented the modern industrial world. We're still the Motor City ."

A story about a fuel-cell test car provided by DaimlerChrysler to the city of Farmington Hills , mentions that Wayne State University is also part of the fuel-cell test car project.

In his television column, Jim McFarlin writes about Tim Kiska's new book, "From Soupy to Nuts!" about Detroit television personalities. McFarlin writes that Kiska is a friend and former newspaper colleague who recently received a 2006 Journalist of the Year Award from Wayne State University .

Law School Dean Frank Wu is quoted in Jack Lessenberry's column on the topic of affirmative action considerations in admissions policies at the University of Michigan . "If we want to talk seriously about race, we should have an accurate picture of the world," Wu said. "We need to talk about what affirmative action is intended to address. What sort of society do we want to have? What do we want our institutions to look like, who do we want to belong there, and then, how do we get there?"

A listing of events taking place at churches mentions that the Wayne State University Jazz Big Band will perform at First Baptist Church of Birmingham at 6 p.m. Sunday. The performance will be a tribute to Stan Kenton, featuring drummer Jerry McKenzie. Freewill offerings will go to the musicians.

Wayne State 's Law School announced that U.S. District Court Judge Nancy G. Edmunds, Eastern District of Michigan, will deliver the address at the commencement ceremony on May 15, at the Detroit Opera House. Edmunds graduated from Wayne State's Law School in 1976, and served as editor-in-chief of the Wayne Law Review.

David Auburn's "Proof," the current production running at Wayne State's Hilberry Theatre, is about a brilliant mathematician on the faculty of The University of Chicago whose later years were marred by mental illness and dementia. Under the direction of Lisa Hodge Kander, undergraduate actors Lauren Shafer, Whitney Green, Mike Targus and Jeremy Kucharek give excellent performances. Performance dates and times were provided, as well as ticket and contact information.

The 19th annual Holocaust and Genocide Commemoration will be held at Wayne State's McGregor Memorial Conference Center from 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Friday, April 28. This year's guest speaker will be Lawrence Baron, professor, San Diego State University. A free luncheon will be served to pre-registrants. Registration and contact information was provided.

The Board of Directors of TechTown has selected four new members: Kwame Kenyatta, Michael Klass, Doug Rothwell and Mitchell Wonboy. Klass and Wonboy are the first board members based outside Michigan. Klass is an entrepreneur and co-founder of MD Synergy, a California-based health care IT company. He is also an investment manager with Second Southern Corporation and Ginarra Partners in Los Angeles. Wonboy is executive director of Global Fixed Income Derivatives for Union Bank of Switzerland. Kenyatta is a Detroit City Council member and former Wayne County Commissioner and Detroit Board of Education member. Rothwell is president of Detroit Renaissance. Previously he was executive director of worldwide real estate for General Motors Corp. and CEO of the Michigan Economic Development Corp.

Royal Oak information security provider Intelligent Connections LLC and the Wayne State University spinoff SenSound LLC said Wednesday they had been recognized as one of \"Michigan\'s 50 Companies to Watch,\" an awards program for middle-market companies sponsored by the entrepreneurship-boosting Edward Lowe Foundation. Intelligent Connections and SenSound received the honor at the awards ceremony during the second annual Michigan Celebrates Small Business event, Wednesday in East Lansing. SenSound is commercializing the patented acoustical modeling techniques of Wayne State professor Sean F. Wu that creates three dimensional pictures of sound patterns, useful for audio engineering.

"The Mikado" - Wayne State University Opera Workshop will perform Gilbert and Sullivan's comic operetta, 7 p.m., April 20-21, at the Schaver Music Recital Hall. Ticket information is included.

Running & Walking: The Women's Athletics and Health Expo 5K run and 3K walk will be held April 22, 9 a.m., at Wayne State University. Registration and contact information is provided.

A photo was included of Wayne State Law School Professor Peter Hammer and Andrea D. Lyon at the 22nd Annual I. Goodman Cohen Lecture on Trial Advocacy, held on March 30. Lyon, an expert on the death penalty, was the event's guest speaker.

Theater critic Sue Suchyta gives a 'thumbs-up' to "The Inspector General" now showing at Wayne State's Hilberry Theatre. Suchyta says the talented graduate company manages to make this an entertaining evening. Ticket and contact information is provided in addition to the Web site address.

Several colleges in Michigan have added courses on the topic of suburbs - joining a trend that has spread across the country in higher education. Wayne State University officials are thinking about adding another. \"It\'s an enormously important and rich field,\" said Peter Eisinger, a professor who has taught a political science course on the suburbs at Wayne State. The new college courses on suburbia focus on the demographics and socio-economic features of its populace and how it changed over 40 years. Students who took the Suburban Paradise course at Wayne State said they were surprised to learn their suburban hometowns were more complicated than they thought. \"I learned how big a part of the American landscape they are,\" said Jason Booza, 28, who took the Wayne State class as a graduate student. \"Now it\'s the suburbs that dominate everything.\" Booza, who works at the university's Center for Urban Studies, said he was intrigued by the suburban class because it was so different from all the others in his major, political science.

A brief notes that some of the proceeds from a book titled "Shadow of Death" will benefit Wayne State University's School of Medicine. A Florida-based physician, who lived in Detroit with two sons as a medical student during the 1967 riot, has written a novel about a Detroit medical student with two sons during the riot. The chief character, Laura Nelson, gets involved in harrowing events mostly from author Patricia Gussin's imagination, not her memory. A photo of Gussin is included.

Wayne State University's debate team is ranked eighth in the Top 10 National Debate Tournament Varsity rankings based on total points earned in the 2005-06 season.

The idea of using plants to clean up toxic arsenic has been around a while, but thanks to a team at Wayne State University, it\'s recently seen a major improvement. Several years ago, Barry P. Rosen, professor and chair of the department of biochemistry and molecular biology at Wayne State University's School of Medicine, used genetic techniques to create \"arsenic-eating\" plants that could be planted on polluted sites. There was a problem, however. The arsenic sequestered from soil remained largely in the roots of the plant, making it difficult to harvest for safe disposal. Now, Rosen and his collaborators have discovered a way to move the arsenic from roots to shoots, the next step in their quest for plants that can clean up arsenic. The new strategy is part of what researchers call phytoremediation, the cleaning of polluted soils through the use of plants that sequester poisons, make them less harmful, and which can then be harvested. It has the potential to be of use on millions of acres of arsenic-polluted lands worldwide.

The National Science Foundation has awarded Wayne State University a $426,000 three-year grant to study and develop ways to accelerate the \"diffusion of innovation\" in global businesses with computer networks. The idea is to create new kinds of \"digital dashboards\" that can be used to harness information that already flows through a company\'s network. The team consists of scientists in communication, engineering and business anthropology, in partnership with information technology professionals from DaimlerChrysler, Ford, General Motors and IBM\'s Almaden Research Center.