Birth control pills are not a boon to cardiovascular health contrary to the findings of WSU researchers.

Earlier this month Procter & Gamble put forth Intrinsa, a testosterone patch designed to raise the libidos of women whose natural hormone levels are low. \'\'Women want ways to improve their sex relationships,\'\' says Dr. Michael Diamond, a Wayne State University obstetrician/gynecologist. "Thirty years ago they wouldn\'t even talk about it. Now they\'ll discuss it at the dinner table.\'\'

The U of M and Wayne State will continue to grant employee benefits to same-sex partners despite Governor Granholm's announcement that state government contracts will not grant benefits to same-sex partners of state employees in the wake of the passage of Proposal 2, which banned gay marriage in Michigan.

Nick Bunkley, of the News, and Mike Wendland, of the Free press, write that the public will have virtual access to seven million books in the U of M library through a new service being offered by U-M alumnus Larry Page, who plans to announce the deal today. It will make virtually everything in the university's extensive collections searchable online. U-M had started the task, but on their own it would have taken 1,600 years to complete, with the help of Google employees the task will be done in an estimated six years. The project, which also includes the New York Public Library and libraries at Harvard, Stanford and Oxford universities, will let Google users see the entire text of works in the public domain and those that the publisher has agreed to show online. The process will make more books available to more people, and it will help preserve books as well. The U-M library is the sixth largest in the country.

Debra Osuch has been awarded an Industry Achievement Award from Wayne State University's College of Engineering.

Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS), a non-invasive procedure of sending tightly focused magnetic pulses into the brain, is touted as a revolutionary technique that may help stroke victims in the control of tremors and language impairment. \"A lot of us believe that this is really going to be a turning point in intervention in neuroscience,\" said Dr. Randall Benson of Wayne State University and the Detroit Medical Center.

Women's Health Initiative officials rejected the findings of a study presented last October by Dr. Rahi Victory at a meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine and published with colleagues from WSU.

Numerous media around the country, particularly television stations, reported a story out of Texas about a state trooper who has been placed on probation and reprimanded for telling two gay men, one of whom is now teaching at Wayne State University, who were kissing at the Texas state Capitol that "homosexual conduct" was illegal in the state. "I'm very pleased (about the disciplinary action)," said John Corvino, a former University of Texas graduate student who was one of the men involved.

Entering the final six months of Kenneth Burnley's contract as CEO of the Detroit Public Schools, it is unclear who might follow him, or even who will choose his successor and when they might do it. But experts point out that steady leadership is crucial to rescuing the district from its financial crisis. The story mentions that David Adamany, former Wayne State president, took over the reigns of the district after the 1999 state takeover and jump-started a $1.5 billion construction program.

A profile on Vernice Davis Anthony mentions that she came to Michigan in the 1960s from Pennsylvania to attend Wayne State University's College of Nursing. Anthony, who chairs the Wayne County Airport Authority, is currently leading a coalition of businesses, unions and health care systems that are trying to find the most efficient and affordable way to offer health care. She is a former member of the WSU Board of Governors.

Dan Gilbert, chairman of Michigan-based Quicken Loans, parent company of Rock Financial, is bidding to purchase the Cleveland Cavaliers NBA team. The article mentions that Gilbert started the business when he was 23 and a first-year law student at Wayne State University.

Having persuaded t he Supreme Court to strike down race-conscious undergraduate admission policies at the University of Michigan, lawyers for the plaintiffs are now asking a lower court to force the university to pay damages to thousands of white and Asian-American applicants who were rejected. The motion, filed in U.S. District Court, asks, in part, that the university refund the $40 application fee paid by the approximately 30,000 applicants turned away from 1995-2003. If granted, the request would cost the university about $1.2 million.

A recent study reported by a Wayne State University research team that touted unexpected health benefits for the birth-control pill was wrong and should be discounted, say scientists with the Women's Health Initiative, whose data base was used for the study. An epidemiologist at Seattle's Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, which collected the data on which the WSU study was based, said the association between the pill and a lower incidence of disease was mainly a factor of age. The older the women, the more health problems they were likely to have, and the less likely they were to have used oral contraceptives. Dr. Rahi Victory and his co-authors at Wayne State did take age into consideration, but they didn't control for it adequately, according to Ross Prentice, who headed the team that gathered the original data. John Oliver, vice president for research at WSU, said the findings presented by Rahi and his team at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine in October were preliminary. "I suspect it made a bigger splash than they anticipated," he said.

Colleges from around the country are creating more professional training programs in order to prepare undergraduate students for the workplace. Colgate University, for example, brings in alumni business executives to offer advice and to engage in networking; students meet for up to two hours a week, for six to eight weeks during the semester. Colleges say they aren't abandoning the liberal arts education but rather brining the ideal slightly more in line with the job-market reality.

Daniel Levin and state Rep. Aldo Vagnozzi will receive honors from Wayne State University during the winter commencement ceremonies Thursday at Cobo Arena. Levin, a Wayne State senior, and fellow senior Alexandria Conley of Detroit will receive the David D. Henry Award for distinguishing themselves through leadership, service and academic achievement. Vagnozzi will receive a Distinguished Alumni award, along with cultural historian Dennis Barrie of Ohio.

The Wayne State men\'s hockey team rallied with two third period goals for a 4-3 win over visiting Union Saturday afternoon at Compuware Sports Arena in Plymouth. The Warriors are idle for exams and the holidays before starting 2005 with a College Hockey America league series at Alabama-Huntsville on January 7-8.

Ron Brown, Wayne State political science professor, comments about a petition drive to recall Detroit City Councilwoman Sheila Cockrel and the recent support of the move by religious leaders. Brown finds the support of local pastors not surprising given the school board issue, same-sex marriage and how pastors campaigned on those issues, he said. "Pastors in this city have on occasions seen themselves as the voice of the people and grassroots lobbyists," Brown said. "They see their role as both spiritual and political. He added that Detroit is a progressive city and perhaps the only place in the country where Black clergy is actively involved in politics.

Chuck D of the seminal rap group Public Enemy offered the keynote address during the Nov. 19 Third Annual State of the Black Youth in the New Millennium convention, held at Wayne State University's General Lectures auditorium. The convention, sponsored in part by the National Black Operations Business Association, drew hundreds of high school and college youth.

A story about the increasing use of multicultural marketing notes that Wayne County Community College ran a recruitment ad in the general market in Spanish with English subtitles and another in English with Arabic subtitles. "It's not enough now to just talk to one audience," said a marketing expert for Ketchum Inc. "Our world is becoming more and more diverse every day."

A photo ran in the entertainment section of Wayne State senior acting major Danielle Cochrane, who plays the red-headed orphan Anne Shirley in \"Anne of Green Gables\" at the Bonstelle Theatre in Detroit through Dec. 19.