More middle- and upper-middle-class parents are willing to pass more of the burden of tuition costs on to their children, financial aid officers say. Many are worried about retirement and say their fixed costs eat up their income. Others have not saved enough or are helping pay for care for their aging parents. \"What I\'ve really seen in the last 10 years is a generational shifting of the responsibility\" to pay for college, said Ellen Frishberg, director of student financial services at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Some parents may ask their children to borrow for their higher education but then assist them in the repayment, but that is difficult to discern. Christine W. McGuire, director of financial assistance at Boston University, said changing attitudes about debt were behind the trend. \"We\'re so comfortable with debt burden now as a society, and the parents already have a significant debt burden of their own, they may not see it as a big deal if students are also taking on large amounts of debt.\"

The Wayne State University School of Medicine has appointed Douglas Czajkowski as executive director of development and alumni affairs. He was formerly senior director of development and alumni affairs for the Schools of Law, Nursing and Pharmacy at WSU.

Barry Rosen of the WSU Biochemistry Department is mentioned as one the authors of a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences regarding use of arsenic-eating plants that could be planted on polluted sites to help clean them up.

Michael Addonizio, professor in the College of Education , is quoted in a story about Pontiac 's $51 million budget deficit. The financial crunch is also affecting schools. Addonizio notes that when a city's finances fall into disarray, "certainly you're going to get families leaving, which adds to school districts' problems." He adds that safety can be another concern of parents, who may seek out charters schools in the suburbs or some safe neighborhood in the city for their child.

A brief mentions the 3rd Annual Fun Run/Walk for Women's Athletics and Health Expo scheduled at the Matthaei building April 22. Sponsored by Wayne State's Department of Athletics and Henry Ford Health System, the expo portion of the event will feature vendors performing health screenings and promoting wellness products. Contact information is provided.

A brief calendar item notes that Wayne State University will be hosting an Undergraduate Exhibition, through May 5, at the Community Arts Gallery. A reception is scheduled Friday from 5-8 p.m.

Channel 4 reported on the DaimlerChrysler-built fuel cell vehicle that will be used by the Wayne State University Police Department. The report aired on the late evening news Tuesday night and the morning news Wednesday. Engineering students from WSU's Alternative Energy Technology program also will use the car as a learning laboratory.

Lou Anna K. Simon, President of Michigan State University, was the featured guest on \"Leaders on Leadership\", the weekly television series co-produced by WSU School of Business Administration and Detroit Public Television. During the interview portion of the program, she spoke about leading re-invention of the original land grant college concept to remain relevant into the 21st century. WSU students in the studio audience asked her about leadership of a university compared to a comparable sized corporation. The program also aired on 4/9.

A memo to Michigan 's House Appropriations Subcommittee on Higher Education indicates that students at Michigan 's public universities are graduating at a rate higher than the national rate. Students at the University of Michigan had the highest rate in the state, at 67.2 percent. Michigan State and Michigan Tech had the second and third best rates, respectively. Wayne State came in last place, with four-, five- and six-year rankings of 7 percent, 21.4 percent and 31.7 percent, respectively.

An article written to commemorate the 45th anniversary of man's first flight in space includes facts about astronauts from Michigan . Among those mentioned is Wayne State graduate Jerry Linengar, who spent 132 days on the Mir space station.

The station's "Weekend Report" by Rachel Nevada included a mention of "Inspector General," playing at Wayne State 's Hilberry Theatre.

The National Science Foundation has awarded a $426,000 grant to Wayne State University for a three-year \"Digital Diffusion Dashboard Project.\" The project will study and develop a new methodology for accelerating the diffusion of innovation in global, networked businesses. The research will be conducted by an interdisciplinary research team of faculty and students from Wayne State University\'s Institute for Information Technology and Culture, the Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering Department, and from the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois, Chicago. \"Global business has a central problem -- how to accelerate the adoption of new ideas, processes and technologies -- because organizations depend on the speed of implementation to be competitive,\" said Allen W. Batteau, director of Wayne State\'s Institute for Information Technology and Culture. \"Digital Diffusion will create a dashboard to manage and accelerate the diffusion of innovations within a global enterprise -- by harnessing information that already flows through a company\'s IT infrastructure.\"

David Bonior, professor of labor studies at Wayne State University, commented about Walmart's bid to establish an industrial-bank charter to handle payment processing. Labor and consumer groups said Tuesday that Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s frequent regulatory violations and failure to provide fair pay make it unfit to operate a bank. Opponents said past regulatory violations and such lawsuits as the largest-ever sex-discrimination case demonstrate Wal-Mart can't be trusted to restrict its bank to merely processing payments. The company has a history of shirking protections for workers, said David Bonior, professor of labor studies at Wayne State University. "Wal-Mart's illegal behavior had profound consequences for its employees," he said.

Fred Reinhart, director of technology at Wayne State University, is noted as an attendee of the BIO 2006 annual convention of the Biotechnology Industry Association. Reinhart said he was attending sessions and networking.

Dr. Michael Simon, a member of the Breast Multidisciplinary Team, Karmanos Cancer Institute and professor, department of internal medicine at Wayne State, was appointed to the African American National Advisory Council by the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

Universities and local governments that offer health insurance to the partners of gay workers are violating a 2004 amendment to the Michigan Constitution concerning marriage, the state attorney general's office argued Tuesday in court. Eric Restuccia, a lawyer for Attorney General Mick Cox, said giving the same benefits to same-sex partners that now go to spouses and children puts domestic partnerships on a similar footing as marriage, even though the constitutional amendment limited marriage to a man and a woman. Restuccia added that nothing would stop public employers from offering benefits to same-sex partners, as long as they also are given to workers' relatives or possibly others they designate. An attorney for the University of Michigan and Wayne State University told the court that the cost of covering health care for those who aren't spouses, children or domestic partners would be "astronomical."

Gloria Hage, representing U-M and Wayne State University on the issue of same-sex benefits to Michigan couples, said requiring employers to offer benefits beyond domestic partners would drive up the cost of insurance premiums and throw other benefits, such as rights to married housing, in question. "To interpret this to go beyond the legal definition of marriage - will leave universities to guess how to design our benefits packages…How wide do we have to cast the net?" she asked.

New research looking at the brains of women during hot flashes has begun to answer some of the questions about what causes them and how to treat the symptoms. The research also supports the notion that simple methods -- like wearing light clothing, drinking cold drinks and turning up the air conditioning -- are a lot more helpful than most women think. Researchers at Wayne State University recently studied 12 menopausal women prone to hot flashes using magnetic resonance imaging technology that allowed the scientists to track for the first time the brain functions of the women during a hot flash. According to the results, \"this seems to be a temperature-related event, so it almost certainly originates somewhere in the brain,\" says Wayne State psychiatry professor Robert Freedman, who has led much of the recent hot-flash research. \"And we likely experience the discomfort of it in the brain.\" In other studies, Wayne State researchers have found that women who experience the most difficult hot flashes are different in how their bodies regulate temperature, sweating and cooling down.

Jerry Herron, professor of contemporary American culture, commented about the popularity of student Web sites such as www.ratemyteachers.com. The Web site, which allows students and parents to anonymously sound off about teachers and administrators, has gained a huge following -- and as many detractors. School districts across the country and around the world -- about 750 of them in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom -- have barred students from using the site while on school grounds, including many in metro Detroit, including Novi, St. Clair Shores, Troy, Wayne-Westland and Chippewa Valley. Such sites feed the American obsession with ratings and contests, Herron said. He doesn\'t consider that a negative. \"These are signs of a healthy democratic impulse that doesn\'t get expressed in the usual way -- voting and running for office,\" Herron said. \"And they tend not to be forums for the cranky and disaffected looking for commiseration.\"

Theatre reviewer Lawrence B. Johnson gave an A- to the Hilberry Theatre's "The Inspector General." Johnson says the production is a "robust, earthy, riotous rendering by the young troupe at Wayne State University's Hilberry Theatre."