Researchers at Wayne State and NYU have found a molecule that reveals the early stages of pleural mesothelioma, a chest cancer caused by asbestos.

Among the awardees are Peter Hoffman, an assistant professor at WSU's physics department, who was awarded $275,000 in funding from the university for his research project "Single Nanoparticle Control and Spectroscopy;" and Claudio Veranit, assistant professor in chemistry, who was awarded $100,000 for his project, "Design, Surface Deposition and Ordering Characterization of Organic and Metallorganic Molecular Electronics."

Oakland Community College 's Royal Oak campus project creates 'one-stop' concept for students. The redesigned campus will group common departments to make services more efficient.

Three weeks left and a load of charges and countercharges to go in what is Detroit \'s hottest mayoral race in 12 years. This week kicks off crunch time as the city heads toward the Nov. 8 election. The final two debates are tonight and Thursday -- both televised. Also on television, the campaigns of Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and challenger Freman Hendrix are in overdrive. The article mentions that Wayne State University is a co-sponsor of the debate being held tonight on campus at the Community Arts Auditorium. It also mentions that Wayne State Law School Dean Frank Wu will be one of the panelists.

Wayne State University plans to hire an external lobbyist following the resignation of staff members at its Washington office. The university's two lobbyists and an assistant in its federal affairs office resigned in recent weeks, citing frustration with how they were being asked to do their jobs. The office has been vacant since Sept. 30. WSU is speaking to several Washington lobbying firms and hopes to sign a six-month contract with one of them by Nov. 1, said Harvey Hollins III, vice president of government and community affairs. "Our federal affairs operations are important to the university. We have no intent of ceasing those," he said. After finding a temporary, external lobbying firm to represent WSU in Washington , Hollins plans to hire a new director and associate for its federal affairs office, he said. The third staff position will move back to WSU's Detroit campus to foster better communication between the Washington lobbyists and the academic departments about grant opportunities and funding needs, Hollins said. "Using a permanent external lobbyist is a new experience for Wayne State ," he said. "Is it the way to continue? I'll ask the deans, academic senate, the folks who've come in contact with this firm."

Not all colleges and universities see online classes as the Holy Grail. Academic philosophies about the need for face-to-face instruction and the perceived quality of Web-based courses play into schools' decisions about whether or not to offer them. Student satisfaction has been overwhelming with Wayne State University 's online MBA, said Barbara Price, associate vice president for academic personnel in the provost's office. "They love the flexibility to go onsite or online for the class," she said. Wayne State also is tracking the academic performance of online students very carefully, Price said. The school compared the performance of MBA students taking on-site courses versus those taking its online MBA degree program. The courses are taught by the same instructor and follow the same format, Price said. The comparison showed that the academic performance of the students was on average, identical, she said. "It hardly ever deviated." But the study showed that were more high-performing or A students online, as well as more students earning Cs, Price said. "But the averages came out the same," she said. "The performance does not go down in the online."

A downturn in the economy traditionally has been a time to beef up the résumé with some new training. Tough times don't last, but tough people can come out of them with an MBA and be ready to make a good career move. Not this downturn, though. Southeast Michigan 's hunkered-down job market is not necessarily good news for the area's business schools. Anxious workers still are looking for graduate degrees, but are not as willing to quit their jobs or take leaves to do so. The consequence is a downturn in applications for full-time programs and a greater demand for part-time or executive programs, forcing business schools to become more adaptable and competitive. At Wayne State University , the biggest factor pulling enrollment down is the diminishment of tuition reimbursement in the area, said Linda Zaddach, assistant dean of the School of Business Administration . "As companies cut costs, that's usually one of the first (benefits) to go," Zaddach said. "Our program is designed for the working professional, and they're balancing work, school and family obligations. Only a small number of our students can go full-time, and many of them really rely on getting help with tuition from their employers." Wayne's program is flexible. Students have up to six years to complete their MBA course work, and have online, evening, weekend and other options.

An increasing number of computer mice are running round the clock at home, in the park or abroad as the number of online courses and degrees offered by colleges and universities rises in corresponding fashion. Not every college and university chooses to offer courses online at this point. And not all of those that do offer the courses track online enrollment. But for nine metro Detroit colleges and universities that do track those numbers, the trend is clear: Online enrollment at Southeast Michigan colleges and universities has spiked the past few years. Wayne State University , conversely, is seeing the most demand for online courses from its graduate students. About 75 percent of the 542 students who enrolled in Web classes for the fall of 2004 were graduate students. "The MBA was probably 90 percent of that," said Barbara Price, associate vice president for academic personnel in the provost's office. The Detroit-based university offers only one online degree, an MBA, but it offers numerous online courses throughout in other high-demand areas such as nursing, pharmaceutical and engineering, she said. Demand from undergraduates rises as the students get further along in their programs, Price said.

Online classes are shortening the time it takes students to earn undergraduate and graduate degrees, some colleges and universities say. Data collected by one of the schools indicates students taking online classes could graduate nearly a year and half before their peers taking only face-to-face courses. Earning a degree faster is what students want, said Barbara Price, associate vice president for academic personnel in the provost's office at Wayne State University . It's not just entering freshmen who want to earn their degrees more quickly, but also students who transfer from nearby community colleges, she said. "Some of them have bounced around among career choices, and all of a sudden, they feel the pressure to graduate and get their degree because they want it on their résumé," Price said.

Two final mayoral debates are set for this week: Today at 8 p.m. on WDIV-Channel 4, co-sponsored by Wayne State University and Clear Channel Communications;

More than $2.7 billion has been appropriated for Michigan-based companies for fiscal 2006 as part of the U.S. Senate-passed defense appropriations bill. The Senate passed the bill 97-0 on Oct. 7. The Senate version included $1.4 billion in funding for research and development at several state universities including the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, Wayne State University , Oakland University , Eastern Michigan University and the University of Detroit-Mercy .

Wayne State University's school of business consolidated its five separate departments into two: accounting and the department of business on Sept. 1. The new department of business includes the formerly separate areas of management, marketing, finance, and information systems/ manufacturing. The cost-saving move cut three chair positions and helped the university prepare for the possible addition of a doctoral program in business, said Thomas Naughton, associate chair of the Detroit-based university's department of business and director of its MBA program.

Baltimore Business Journal Defense costs in the case of former Baltimore investment banker Nathan A. Chapman Jr. have reached at least $5.3 million, even with some aspects of the case unresolved. Chapman, founder of now-defunct eChapman Inc., was sentenced in November to seven and a half years in prison. Prosecutors said Chapman, a former state pension system investment manager, fraudulently invested millions of dollars in state pension money into eChapman\'s initial public offering. With legal bills for Chapman and other eChapman employees multiplying, National Union Fire Insurance Co. of Pittsburgh, Pa. , has asked Baltimore \'s federal court for help sorting them out. National Union provided directors and officers\' liability coverage to eChapman. D&O policies protect corporate brass from lawsuits and regulatory actions for \"wrongful acts.\" Defense costs in the $5 million range \"would not strike me as being outside the norm in these types of cases,\" said Peter Henning, a law professor at Wayne State University in Detroit who co-edits a Web log on white-collar crime. \"The lawyers come from the best firms. This is not the public defender\'s office.\"

John Oliver, vice president for research, is quoted in a story about nanoscience research at WSU. " Wayne State has great strengths in the area of nanoscience, and I felt it was critical to build on the excellent research and training we are carrying out in this field," he said. Professors Peter Hoffman of the Physics Department and Claudio Verani of the Chemistry Department are pictured in their respective laboratories with equipment used in their research. Hoffman was awarded $275,000 in funding from the university for his research project on nanoparticle control and spectroscopy. Verani was awarded $100,000 for his project involving organic and metallorganic molecular electronics.

A story about the job market for college graduates and tips on how to land a job mentions Wayne State . Georgette St. Amant, a market director for Meijer Thrifty Acres in the south Detroit area, recruits at the WSU School of Business Administration. She points out that employers look not only at education but at other criteria, such as experience, attitude and social skills.

This article provides information about the play " Independence ," which opens the new season at Wayne State 's Studio Theatre on Oct. 3. A photo of three student actresses accompanies the write-up.

Wayne State 's Center for Peace and Conflict Studies will host a discussion on the Jewish experience in Cuba with historian Maritza Corrales Oct. 20 at the Undergraduate Library.

Amyre Makupson was interviewed on WCHB's midday program "Upfront With Karen Dumas" about her new book titled So...What\'s Next, and her appearance that evening to kick off the Book and Author Series at the David Adamany Undergraduate Library, sponsored jointly by Wayne State 's College of Nursing and the University Library System.

A Nov. 4 forum sponsored by Wayne State 's Center for the Study of Citizenship included John Graham, former director of employee benefits for Comerica and author of that company's domestic partner benefits policy. He told the audience that Detroit lags the rest of the country in providing partner benefits. "Folks on the coast would find us very backward, very out of touch," he said, adding that "there hasn't been a discussion about this on the West Coast for seven or eight years, but we're still slugging it out here." He said two-thirds of employees who signed up for benefits under Comerica's program were unmarried, partnered heterosexuals.

In her weekly column, publisher Mary Kramer calls for more investment in education in Michigan as well as strategic tax policies and targeted job development. She says business and civic leaders should demand more from elected officials and that there should be less partisan bickering about how to stimulate the Michigan economy. Kramer cites an innovative program in Kalamazoo , where a group of anonymous donors have guaranteed four-year college scholarships to any public high school graduate, with the percentage of aid based on the number of years the student has attended Kalamazoo public schools. She quotes Eli Broad, a major benefactor of Michigan State , who told the New York Times: "A number of us have come to believe that the biggest problem America has is the state of our schools."