In 2012, Dunbar joined WSU’s Division of Research as interim associate vice president of technology commercialization. In just a year, Dunbar nearly doubled faculty invention disclosures, facilitated the pipeline of nine start-up opportunities with the anticipation of several companies launching in the near future, initiated a mentors-in-residence program, created an innovation fellows program, began the Technology Development Incubator, and strengthened partnerships with WSU’s TechTown. These significant achievements were powered by grant funds, projected to be $2.5 million over a three-year period that Dunbar secured from the New Economy Initiative (NEI).

“The grant from the NEI has allowed Wayne State to re-invent technology commercialization on our campus,” said Ratner. “With the help of the NEI, Dr. Dunbar is re-energizing our faculty and students to translate their research in even more productive ways that benefit not only the university but the region, state and nation as well. Dr. Dunbar’s deep knowledge and experience will serve Wayne State and our faculty well as we advance the mission of the Wayne State’s Technology Commercialization Office.”

Dunbar brings energy and vision to the Technology Commercialization Office built on an impressive foundation of accomplishments. Dunbar received her Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Sydney, and undertook postdoctoral studies at the Carlsberg Laboratory in Copenhagen, Denmark and subsequently at the University of California, Irvine.

She was appointed assistant professor in WSU’s Department of Molecular Biology and Center for Molecular Biology and Genetics in 1987.  She has served as principal investigator and co-investigator on many grants funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, and collaborated extensively with industry on these projects. She published numerous papers on protein–DNA recognition and transcriptional regulation.  In 1997, Dunbar became consultant director of research and biotechnology development in the Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics where she developed key academic and industry partnerships, created the Biotechnology Core Lab, and provided faculty support in securing SBIR and STTR grants.

In 2000, Dunbar became the founding director of biotechnology development and biomedical innovation in Wayne State’s School of Medicine. In this role, Dunbar established a new enterprise and infrastructure to promote and facilitate commercial translation of academic research by providing critical outreach and counseling to faculty on invention disclosures, intellectual property and technology commercialization. She created one of the first “Business of Biotech” curriculum programs in the nation that focused on engaging graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in biomedical sciences in entrepreneurship.

“Dr. Dunbar has played a key role in Wayne State’s School of Medicine to develop technology commercialization strategies for biomedical technologies stemming from research,” said Bonnie Stanton, M.D., vice dean of research in WSU’s School of Medicine.  “In conjunction with Wayne’s main technology commercialization team, Dr. Dunbar was instrumental in launching a new technology commercialization culture in the School of Medicine to prepare faculty to take their research discoveries to the next level.”

“I look forward to continuing to build the infrastructure to support technology commercialization and to effectively capitalize on the research enterprise at WSU” said Dunbar. “I am pleased to be chosen to lead the university’s efforts and work with our faculty and local and state wide resources to bring innovative products and services to the clinic and to the marketplace.”

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research institutions in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Detroit

A  Wayne State University study recently funded by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) aims to change these statistics. According to Maria Pontes Ferreira, Ph.D., R.D. assistant professor of Nutrition and Food Science in WSU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and principal investigator of the study, targeting underrepresented minorities will help increase trainee numbers in STEM programs and change the face of STEM.

While attracting and retaining Native Americans has remained elusive due to a perceived lack of cultural relevance and/or support for STEM, Ferreira believes there is a way to break down this barrier.

“Native youth are taught to respect elders, and many elders are ‘keepers of traditional knowledge’ which interfaces with science,” said Ferreira. “Linking elders to postsecondary STEM education for Natives will improve perceptions of STEM as culturally relevant and culturally supportive of Natives, and impact Native student interest, pursuit and endurance in STEM careers.”

With $20,000 grant support from AAAS, Ferreira and her collaborators, Fidji Gendron, Ph.D. from the First Nations University of Canada, and Tanya Dahms, Ph.D. from the University of Regina, will embark on a research study that aims to determine if the presence of elders in a course make STEM more accessible and beneficial to Native/Aboriginal students. 

Two courses on Evidence-Based Ethnomedicine: Plants & Culture will be offered to students; one will include elders as traditional knowledge instructors alongside STEM Ph.D.’s and the other will not include elders.

“We expect to see higher learning outcomes and student interest in STEM, along with improved student perception of cultural relevance and supportiveness in those Native students taking the course with elders present,” said Ferreira. “In addition, this study may lead to a revitalization of the traditional role of elders in the education of Native students, specifically at the postsecondary level.”

Even broader impacts are expected from this study, according to the research team. They hope to discover STEM talent through teaching underrepresented minorities and training women, while promoting STEM education. They also hope their project will integrate and advance science, education, policy and technology across cultures, particularly with the Native community.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

DETROIT

In a paper recently published in the journal IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, Weisong Shi, Ph.D., associate professor of computer science in the College of Engineering, describes his development of a technique called LOBOT that provides accurate, real-time, 3-D positions in both indoor and outdoor environments. The project was supported in part by the Wayne State Career Development Chair award, which gives Shi an opportunity to explore other areas after receiving tenure at WSU.

Scientists believe small ground robotic vehicles have great potential for use in situations that are either uncomfortable or too tedious for humans. For example, a robot may become part of industrial operations, assist senior citizens or serve as a tour guide for an exhibition center. Keeping a robot as small as possible enables it to move through narrow passageways, such as tunnels.

To complete such missions, a robotic vehicle often must obtain accurate localization in real time. But because frequent calibration or management of external facilities is difficult or impossible, a completely integrated self-positioning system is ideal. In addition, that system should work indoors or outdoors without human calibration or management and cost as little as possible.

In the paper titled “LOBOT: Low-Cost, Self-Contained Localization of Small-Sized Ground Robotic Vehicles,” Shi and lead author Guoxing Zhan, one of his former graduate students, describe their technique, which combines a GPS receiver, local relative positioning based on a 3-D accelerometer, a magnetic field sensor and several motor rotation sensors.

The researchers noted that IEEE Transactions, the leading journal in the field, prominently featured their paper in its April 2013 issue. They are proud that their work was in progress before President Barack Obama’s June 2011 announcement of the National Robotics Initiative, which seeks to accelerate the development and use of robots in the United States that work beside, or cooperatively with, people.

Shi’s technique combines elements of common localization schemes for ground robotic vehicles, noting that each of those schemes has limitations. One scheme, using GPS alone, requires a lot of power. Another, radio-based positioning, requires proper calibration, a friendly environment and a set of external devices to generate or receive radio signals.

A third scheme, the use of vision techniques, relies heavily on recognition of objects or shapes and often has restricted spatial and visual requirements. Additionally, those objects and shapes must be captured and loaded into a computer which, like GPS, requires a lot of power.

A fourth scheme, inertial sensors, is part of the LOBOT design. Inertial sensors often are used to detect movement, but unlike radio- or vision-based techniques, operate independently of external environmental features and need no external reference. However, previous methods of maintaining their accuracy have resulted in high cost and calibration difficulty.

LOBOT uses a hybrid approach that localizes robotic vehicles with infrequent GPS use, a 3-D version of the accelerometer used in other inertial sensor systems and several motor rotation sensors — all installed on the robotic vehicle. All of the components are commercially available, with some costing as little as $20.

“Our goal has been to solve a problem by building a robot that leverages a number of existing technologies that can be used to address the problem of location, which is the key to many possible applications” Shi said. “Because of the increasing number of things robots will be needed to do in the next five to 10 years, it is very important to develop a cheaper, low-powered approach that can address that problem as accurately as possible.”

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Joshua Reineke, Ph.D., assistant professor of pharmaceutical sciences in the Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, examined how a biodegradable polymer particle called polylactic-co-glycolic acid (PLGA) breaks down in live tissue.

He believes the potential impact of his work is broad, as nanoparticles increasingly have been developed as carriers of drug treatments for numerous diseases and as imaging agents; they also are used in numerous consumer products. The kinetics of nanoparticle biodegradation is an important factor that can control how and where a drug is released, impacting treatment efficacy as well as potential toxicity to nontarget tissues from nanoparticle exposure.

“If nanoparticles given to a patient release a drug before particles can ever get to target tissue, then we get high toxicity and low effect,” Reineke said. “Conversely, if particles are drawn to a tissue but don’t release the drug until long afterward, then we also don’t get the therapeutic effect.”

Much previous research has studied nanoparticle biodegradation in vitro, but Reineke and the study’s lead author, Abdul Khader Mohammad, Ph.D., a recent WSU graduate, believe they are the first to quantify biodegradation rates after systemic administration.

Their study, “Quantitative Detection of PLGA Nanoparticle Degradation in Tissues following Intravenous Administration,” was published recently in the journal Molecular Pharmaceutics. It was supported by funds from the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences and the Office for the Vice President of Research at Wayne State.

Keeping concentration levels the same, Reineke and Mohammad administered PLGA as particles in sizes of 200 and 500 nanometers (nm) intravenously in mice, an important administration route of nanomedicines for cancer applications, for example, and measured the quantity of the nanoparticles in all tissues and the rates at which it degraded. They then compared those rates to those predicted by in vitro measurements.

Reineke said the 200 nm particles degraded much faster in the body than in vitro, while the 500 nm particles degraded similarly to in vitro analyses. The liver and spleen had the highest concentration of polymers and therefore were easiest to analyze.

Researchers found that 500 nm particles degraded faster in the liver than the spleen, but for the 200 nm size the degradation rate in the liver and the spleen were similar.

“It’s known that larger particles degrade differently, and we verified that,” Reineke said, “but they didn’t quite degrade in vivo the way we would expect. We found that among tissue types there are differences in how they degrade.”

“That tells us that in vitro degradation doesn’t predict in vivo degradation very well, because we see so many differences.”

Reineke said that by in vivo testing of other types of nanoparticles, a mathematical model can be developed to help determine which are most effective and have the lowest toxicity for a given application.

“Optimizing a therapeutic system that utilizes nanoparticles is really about getting that timing correct. In order to do that, we have to know how and when the particles are going to release the drug.”

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Detroit

The six-year appointment recognizes Luborsky for his many scientific achievements and long-standing research focus on life reorganization and continuity of meaning and function.  "Mark is not only an exceptional scholar but a phenomenal colleague to all Institute of Gerontology faculty and students," said Peter Lichtenberg, Ph.D., director of the IOG.

Luborsky is the editor of Medical Anthropology Quarterly: International Journal for the Analysis of Health  (2006-2013). He co-directed Wayne State’s IOG's National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded Post-Doctoral Training Program. Currently, he serves as a member of the National Institute of Arthritis Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases on the Data and Safety Monitoring Board for a multi-site surgery trial, and is a member of the NIH/Community Influences on Health Behavior study section review panel. This June, he will conduct invited research training on environment and health at Yunnan University, China. 

Luborsky, who has been a faculty member at WSU for over 15 years, has made significant research contributions in the areas of reintegrating injured people into meaningful and active lives. In particular, his NIH-funded study, Hip Fracture: Cultural Loss and Long-term Reintegration assessed ways to reduce health disparities among male and female survivors of hip fracture, which has a 45 percent fatality rate within one year. His current research aims to discover, assess and evaluate the key factors in shaping long-term, post-rehabilitation outcomes in active duty and veteran service members who have suffered spinal cord and mild brain injury.

“Dr. Luborsky is most deserving of this recognition from the prestigious Karolinska Institute,” said Hilary Ratner, Ph.D., vice president for Research at Wayne State University. “His research targets ways to help people in the United States and all over the world.  This collaboration with the Karolinska Institute will allow his research to have an even greater impact around the globe.”

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The Institute of Gerontology researches the aging process, educates students in gerontology, and presents programs on aging issues relevant to professionals, caregivers and older adults in the community (www.iog.wayne.edu). The Institute is part of the Division of Research at Wayne State University, one of the nation’s preeminent public research institutions in an urban setting. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit research.wayne.edu.

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Bengt Arnetz

Hikmet Jamil

Robert Sokol

DETROIT - Data collected and analyzed at the Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit has resulted in what could be the first published work to examine the relationship between wartime environmental exposures and birth outcomes for children of men and women living in Iraq before and after the 1991 Gulf War.

“The key finding is that exposures to that war seem to be associated with an increase in adverse pregnancy outcomes,” said reproductive health expert Robert Sokol, M.D., the WSU distinguished professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the John M. Malone Jr., M.D., Endowed chair and director of the C.S. Mott Center for Human Growth and Development in Detroit.

The study also revealed a dose-response relationship between war-related environmental exposures and total number of adverse birth outcomes, especially for certain chemical exposures, and suggests primary care doctors in particular consider reproductive risks in pregnant mothers with a history of exposure to war.

“There’s very little data like this in the whole world. Most of the work involves veterans, not civilian populations,” Sokol added.

Adverse birth outcomes were defined as congenital anomalies, stillbirth, low birth weight and preterm delivery.

The study stresses the need to design better studies of reproductive health risks from war and conflicts, including those that consider the interaction between chemical and psychosocial stressors.

“You’ll collect, hopefully, better data the next time,” Sokol said. “It will be very helpful to know these kinds of things.”

Using data from interviews with 307 Iraqi families who immigrated to the United States, the WSU team compared mothers giving birth in Iraq before and after being exposed to the Gulf War, to those giving birth in the U.S. before or after the first Gulf War.

“1991 Gulf War Exposures and Adverse Birth Outcomes” is published in the April-June issue of the United States Army Medical Department Journal. While previous studies about the 1991 Gulf War implied potential exposure to psychological trauma and environmental stressors such as smoke from oil-burning fires, diesel or gas fumes and skin contact, burning trash, burning feces, nerve gas, mustard gas, contaminated water, depleted uranium and pesticides on clothing or bedding, little was known about how the war might affect an unborn child.

“There is generally a lack of good studies of the reproductive hazards of war in which there are both data on exposures as well as outcomes,” said Bengt Arnetz, M.D., Ph.D., WSU professor of Family Medicine and Public Health Sciences and the study’s principal investigator.

After adjusting for other risk factors, psychosocial stress/trauma did not relate significantly to adverse birth outcomes, Arnetz said.

Co-author Hikmet Jamil, M.D., Ph.D., WSU professor of Occupational and Environmental Health, lived in Iraq from 1991 to 1997, and in 1998 began voluntarily collecting the self-reported data from Iraqi immigrants living in Michigan. The Detroit area’s Iraqi population is estimated at more than 46,000, per the U.S. Census, making it the largest concentration in the country.

“In the literature review, we don’t see, until now, such type of impact of the environment on health,” Jamil said.

“We were surprised to see the high levels of adverse birth outcomes following the Gulf War. However, there are independent and smaller local studies in Iraq, and a few from Kuwait, suggesting adverse effects on the fetus from the war,” Arnetz said.

The study does not lend support to the popular, but so far unproved notion, that psychosocial stress per se induces adverse birth outcomes, he added.

Study participants lived both in and away from the war zone, and were also asked about socioeconomics and lifestyle. “We found that the mean number of adverse birth outcome per women increased from a pre-Gulf War prevalence of 3.43 to 4.63 in those that had experienced the Gulf War. There were no differences before the Gulf War in adverse birth outcome whether the birth had occurred in Iraq or the United States. This supports the notion that something associated with the Gulf War contributed to the findings,” Arnetz said.

The mean stress exposure increased by 2,300 percent from before to after the Gulf War, on the study scale. The mean environmental exposure increased by 1,900 percent.

“It might be that there are residual effects from the Gulf War exposures that affect reproductive health many years later. A weakness in our study is that we do not know the timing of birth, only whether they gave birth before or after the 1991 Gulf War,” Dr. Arnetz said. “We also need to develop better exposure measures of civilians’ exposures during war and conflict and how it might affect reproductive health.”

Study co-authors include statistician Michael Kruger and School of Medicine graduate Alexis Drutchas, M.D., Class of 2012.

Drs. Arnetz and Jamil’s work was funded by R01MH085793 from the National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health. The study was also funded by an unrestricted grant from Pfizer Inc.
 

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Wayne State University is one of the nation's pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

DETROIT - Vaibhav Diwadkar, Ph.D., associate professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences for the Wayne State University School of Medicine, has been selected to receive a Wayne State University 2013-2014 Career Development Chair Award.

The president of the university awards no more than seven Career Development Chairs annually, to support outstanding tenured faculty members in the early stages of their careers. Nominees must be faculty members who have earned tenure and been promoted to the rank of associate professor within the last four years.

Award winners receive a $2,500 honorarium, $10,000 in unrestricted research support and $6,500 for use in engaging part-time faculty to cover up to half of the award winner’s normal annual teaching assignment.

The Selection Advisory Committee that forwarded candidates to the provost and president consists of former Career Development Chair Award winners.

“This award is possible because of our collaborative efforts. Though I am the named recipient, it reflects the collective efforts of many of my colleagues, collaborators (in the United States and overseas) and our students,” said Dr. Diwadkar, who also serves as co-director of the Division of Brain Research and Imaging Neuroscience for the School of Medicine. “Therefore, I am very pleased that these efforts have been implicitly acknowledged, and that we can continue to foster them.”

Dr. Diwadkar said the award funding will be applied to his work involving advanced image analyses through functional magnetic resonance imaging to discover brain network function and dysfunction in psychiatric disorders. He plans to use approaches in computational neuroscience and complex systems analyses to understand brain network dysfunction in disorders including schizophrenia, and mood- and emotion-related disorders like borderline personality and bipolar disorder.

The research, he noted, is served by collaborations between the Forschungszentrum Juelich (Germany), the InterUniversity Center of Behavioral Neuroscience (Universities of Verona and Udine, Italy), the University of Pittsburgh, and the Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences at Florida Atlantic University.

“There is tremendous distributed clinical and computational expertise across these sites, providing a strong collaborative element to progress our aims,” he said. “I am excited that we are adopting a framework for fMRI analyses that is highly complex, and may uncover brain mechanisms underlying disorders.  In that sense, we are attempting to advance beyond simply characterizing statistical relationships between fMRI signals.”

Dr. Diwadkar and his fellow award recipients will receive the award during an Academic Recognition Ceremony April 25 at WSU’s McGregor Memorial Conference Center.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation's pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Gerald Feldman

DETROIT - Gerald Feldman, M.D., Ph.D., F.A.C.M.G., Wayne State University School of Medicine professor of Molecular Medicine and Genetics, has been elected president-elect of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics.

Dr. Feldman, who also is a professor of Pediatrics and of Pathology, as well as director of Clinical Genetic Services, will serve as president-elect through March 2015, when he will become president of the college and hold that position through 2017.

The ACMG works to advance the practice of medical genetics and genomics by providing education, resources and a voice for more than 1,600 biochemical, clinical, medical and molecular geneticists, genetic counselors and other health care professionals. The organization advocates for quality genetic services in health care and in public health, and promotes the development of methods to diagnose, treat and prevent genetic disease.

“Medicine is undergoing an evolution in the diagnosis, management and treatment of disease using genetic and genomic information,” said Dr. Feldman, who lives in West Bloomfield, Mich., and also serves as medical director of the Division of Laboratory Genetics and Molecular Pathology at the Detroit Medical Center-University Laboratories. “It is both a challenge and a privilege to be the incoming president of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics, an organization dedicated to the practice of medical genetics and whose mission is to define and promote excellence in the practice of medical genetics and genomics.”

Dr. Feldman, who joined the WSU School of Medicine faculty1999, is program director for the Newborn Screening Metabolic Management Program at Children's Hospital of Michigan, and program director for the Medical Genetics Residency and the Medical Biochemical Genetics Fellowship programs at the Detroit Medical Center/Wayne State University School of Medicine.

He divides his time between the clinical practice of medical genetics and inborn errors of metabolism, molecular diagnostics, and medical genetics education and training.

The author of more than 80 peer-reviewed publications, book chapters and reviews, his research interests include fragile X syndrome and cystic fibrosis. More recently, his interests have focused on newborn screening, specifically in the area of long-term follow-up and management.

Dr. Feldman has a special interest in medical genetics education. In 2004, he was a co-organizer of the first Banbury Summit on the future of medical genetics training. He served as president of the Association of Professors of Human and Medical Genetics from 2006 to 2008. He has been chair and a member of Michigan's Genetic Advisory, Newborn Screening and Metabolic Quality Improvement committees, and has served on a number of ACMG committees, including as program chair of the 2007 annual Clinical Genetics Meeting and as director of Clinical Genetics from 2005 to 2011.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation's pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu. 

Financial exploitation of the elderly is on the rise according to the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging, and the numbers are expected to continue to grow as Baby Boomers age. This exploitation, which includes telemarketing scams, fake home repairs, fake check scams, identity theft and more, costs approximately $3 billion each year.

The study, “Is Psychological Vulnerability Related to the Experience of Fraud in Older Adults?” published in the recent issue of Clinical Gerontologist, is the first study to include prospective predictors of reported financial fraud victimization of older adults, and is the first to review financial exploitation of any kind with the same population from a psychological-vulnerability perspective.

“This study illustrates how we can enhance our understanding of this major issue by performing a clinical analysis instead of one that stops at epidemiological or broad population-based reviews,” said Peter Lichtenberg, Ph.D., director of WSU’s Institute of Gerontology and lead author of the paper. “Those in the clinical study showed characteristics of extreme depression symptoms and perceived low social-status fulfillment, thus showing they were more vulnerable to the experience of theft of scams. “

The study included 4,440 participants. Those participants that were the most psychologically vulnerable with the highest levels of depression and lowest levels of social-needs fulfillment, experienced higher levels of fraud compared to those that were not vulnerable psychologically.

“One of the most significant findings of our study was with the most psychologically vulnerable population,” said Lichtenberg. “The combination of high depression and low social-status fulfillment was associated with a 226 percent increase in fraud prevalence in this population. This supports our theory that depressive symptoms and lack of social-needs fulfillment have an effect on fraud prediction, and serves as a reminder to clinical gerontologists how psychological vulnerability can affect older adults’ lives in a variety of ways.

The research team recommends that this population be assessed for the potential of financial exploitation, and this assessment should be a regular part of clinicians’ toolkits when working with highly vulnerable individuals.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s preeminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

DETROIT

Michigan I-Corps is a statewide program designed to foster, grow and nurture a statewide innovation ecosystem. Through partnerships between the National Science Foundation (NSF), Michigan universities – Wayne State University, the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, Michigan Tech, Grand Valley State University, Western Michigan University, Central Michigan University, Northern Michigan University and Oakland University, – Michigan SmartZones, and venture capital and entrepreneurial communities, Michigan I-Corps will create an opportunity for businesses throughout the state to turn technology into commercial opportunities.

“This opportunity will allow us to hone the finer skills of cultivating and retaining customers, as well as learn real-time methods to make our scientific innovation more marketable,” said Andrew Olson, vice president of business development for Advaita. 

The primary goal of Michigan I-Corps is to foster entrepreneurship that will lead to the commercialization of technology. The I-Corps program is designed to help scientists find practical applications for their research. Throughout the six-week program, customer discovery and business plan creation are emphasized.

Advaita was founded in 2005 by Sorin Draghici, Ph.D. a computer science professor in Wayne State University’s College of Engineering. Advaita is the exclusive licensee of a patented technology developed at Wayne State and has developed a software application called “Pathway-Guide” that helps researchers and pharmaceutical companies understand the data resulting from gene expression experiments.

Pathway-Guide provides researchers with what Olson characterizes as the most sophisticated gene pathway analysis available. “We offer the only pathway analysis software that looks at each type of gene and its position and role on the pathway. The advantage to Advaita’s software is that it eliminates the false positive results that are common with current methods of gene-expression analysis.”

According to Draghici, the traditional method of measuring mRNA transcripts—analyzing the differences in the levels that genes are expressed—is not a comprehensive way to understand disease. “Our software takes those differences and tells us where along a pathway those genes went wrong,” he explains.

Advaita’s software has already garnered a Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I and Phase II grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) worth $2.4M; and $125K from the Michigan Emerging Technologies Fund. In addition, Advaita was selected this year to participate in the prestigious NIH CAP (Commercialization Assistance Program).

While knowledge gained from grant-supported basic research frequently advances a particular field of science or engineering, clinically-relevant results show immediate potential for broader applicability and improved patient care. Such results may be translated through I-Corps into technologies with near-term benefits for the economy and society. With these goals in mind, Advaita plans to address the need for more streamlined drug-discovery methods that will save time and money for the academic and pharmaceutical industries. By leveraging Pathway-Guide’s unique ability to more efficiently target specific genes implicated in a disease or disease treatment, the company will commercialize a technology benefitting both the Michigan economy and our society as a whole.
For more information about Advaita, visit www.AdvaitaBio.com.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

DETROIT — Two Wayne State University researchers are working on a technique that could lead to easier, faster identification of cancer tumors that can be effectively treated by calcium channel-based therapies.

Rod Braun, Ph.D., associate professor of anatomy and cell biology in the School of Medicine, recently received a two-year, $322,000 grant from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health to use manganese-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MEMRI) to noninvasively determine the activity of different calcium channels in tumors. He and co-principal investigator Bruce Berkowitz, Ph.D., professor of anatomy and cell biology and ophthalmology, and director of the School of Medicine’s Small Animal MRI Facility, are hoping the technique can be used to guide and individualize calcium channel-based treatment of cancer.

Previous research has shown that different types of cancer cells highly express a number of plasma membrane calcium channels, making them important potential therapeutic targets in tumors. Drugs that target specific calcium channels already exist, and several are currently in Phase I clinical trials as anti-cancer agents.

“Unfortunately, it is difficult to determine whether a specifically targeted calcium channel is present in an individual patient’s tumor,” Braun said.

In their project, “Guiding Ca2+ Channel-Based Cancer Treatment Using Mn2+-Enhanced MRI,” he and Berkowitz will use MEMRI to measure tumors’ uptake of manganese ion, an MRI contrast agent that largely enters cells via calcium channels. They believe tumor uptake of manganese in the presence of antagonist compounds, which block calcium channels, and agonist compounds, which stimulate them, can be measured using MEMRI, thereby proving useful in predicting potential tumor response to calcium-channel based therapies.

The project has two components. The first will test manganese uptake of prostate, breast and colorectal cancer tumor cells in tissue culture; the second will test it in solid human tumors growing in mice.

“We have an innovative technique that offers promise for identifying which tumors can be effectively treated with drugs that currently are in clinical trials,” Braun said. “If it turns out we can use MEMRI in this way, we could see if a patient’s tumor expresses specific calcium channels and then select the best treatment for targeting these particular channels. That would allow us to determine which patients would benefit from these drugs and which drugs will be most therapeutic.

“Not every therapy works against every tumor, and MEMRI may allow us to select the best treatment for a given patient. This technique’s major benefits are that it is noninvasive and can quickly lead to individualized therapy.”

(Note to editors: Braun is a resident of Ferndale, Mich.)

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

DETROIT — A technique for calculating criminal incidence rates significantly underestimates the number of crimes — especially the violent kinds — that occur in Canada, two Wayne State University researchers believe.

In a study published recently in the Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice, WSU Ph.D. student Zavin Nazaretian and David M. Merolla, Ph.D., assistant professor of sociology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, found that a method called “capping” — which only allows survey respondents to represent a maximum of three incidents per crime type regardless of how many incidents they report — undercounted violent crime by 87 percent and household crime by 36 percent.

Capping is a common methodological practice used in most victimization surveys. The researchers don’t believe it is a deliberate attempt by governments to mislead, but rather a once-useful practice that must be rethought in order to yield more accurate crime reporting. Capping has been used to try to correct response bias by limiting the number of individual victimization incidents that one person can represent in official rates.

The study, “Questioning Canadian Criminal Incidence Rates: A Re-analysis of the 2004 Canadian Victimization Survey,” examined seven of the eight personal or property crime categories from that survey, which sampled 23,700 households. Nazaretian and Merolla found substantial differences in how household and violent crimes are affected by capping, with results indicating that violent crime is much more sensitive to capping techniques than household victimization.

That pattern is consistent with research on repeat victimization, and indicates that individuals reporting more than three victimizations likely are providing accurate responses.

“By capping the numbers, some crime types increase more than others, possibly making the distribution between property crime and violent crime seem more comparable,” Nazaretian said. “Perhaps that translates into spending more money on protecting vehicles that could instead be used to support things like homes for battered women.”

“We argue that the increase is so much more for violent crimes, it’s likely that at least some of these high numbers are real criminal events,” Merolla said. “Rather than limiting it to three, we should be working toward developing some sort of methods to better understand when a report is likely to not be verifiable, or when it’s likely to be a real crime.”

In the study, the researchers came up with new figures by including all incidences actually reported, leading to much different conclusions for some crimes. For example, Nazaretian and Merolla said the rates barely changed for vehicle theft, but increased for assault by 90 percent, from 51 incidents per 1,000 adults to 96.

“This shows, even when using its own numbers, that crime, particularly the most egregious types, is possibly much higher than the government reports,” Nazaretian said.
The researchers believe the higher numbers also provide insight into the number of unreported crimes when compared with arrest rates reported by police agencies, and that the cost of crime likely is more than is being reported.

The researchers said their report is not intended as a criticism of Statistics Canada, the agency that conducted the survey, but rather as evidence of the need to update a statistical technique for policy reasons and better resource allocation.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

In an effort to determine whether servers based their service levels on perceived tipping differences across customer demographics, Zachary Brewster, Ph.D., assistant professor of sociology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, analyzed data derived from a survey of 200 servers in 18 restaurants in a southeastern U.S. metropolitan area.

In “The Effects of Restaurant Servers’ Perceptions of Customers’ Tipping Behaviors on Service Discrimination,” published recently in the International Journal of Hospitality Management, servers reported their perceptions of the tipping behaviors of 18 different table scenarios involving a number of demographic characteristics including race, sexual orientation and age, with combinations featuring small and adult children.

Brewster found that sensitivity to demographic differences predicted whether servers reported giving excellent service at the prospect of receiving excellent tips. While other research has shown race to be a factor in service levels, his study initially was not about racial discrimination in restaurant service.

Brewster was surprised, however, that a customer’s race became such a salient variable in the study.

“Though not the focus of this study, race became a salient issue, in that the findings suggest that African-Americans, in particular, may be at risk for not only having excellent service withheld from them, but for receiving poor service in some cases,” Brewster said.

Researchers also found that servers who had performed other restaurant duties, such as hosting or bartending, tended to be more sensitive to demographic differences, which predicted their propensities to differentially allocate excellent service.

Brewster said another factor that may exacerbate the problem of poor service to African-Americans, although not one addressed in the study, is an ongoing amount of racialized talk in the restaurant industry that functions to exaggerate servers’ perceptions of African-Americans’ tipping behaviors.

He pointed out that while the tipping difference between white and black customers has been shown to be significant enough to raise some important issues, the actual amounts are not intrinsically remarkable.

“We’re talking cents, not dollars, controlling for other factors,” he said.
But despite the study’s limitations, Brewster believes it opens possibilities for future research in other parts of the country, using larger, more ethnically diverse survey samples (61 percent of respondents were female and 86 percent were white). Future research also could target other customer attributes for their effects on servers’ decisions to exceed formal service expectations, as well as additional service industries.

“What we learned is that tipping motivates servers to provide excellent service, but more so for people perceived to be good tippers,” Brewster said. “The latent consequence of that, however, is discrimination against some customers.”

He believes that armed with that knowledge, restaurant operators can address the situation.

“If restaurants promoted tipping norms for specific levels of service quality for their own establishment, over time people would learn those norms and become familiar with different conceptions of service quality across restaurants,” Brewster said. “Servers could come to expect to be rewarded for the service level provided, irrespective of customer demographics.”

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

A Wayne State University researcher believes the condition affects some patients much more than others and is trying to determine the nature of that difference.

Horng-Shiuann Wu, Ph.D., assistant professor of nursing in the College of Nursing, has made an effort to chronicle the parameters of what she calls sudden exhaustion syndrome. Her study, “Definition, Prevalence and Characteristics of Sudden Exhaustion: A Possible Syndrome of Fatigue in Cancer,” recently published in the journal Supportive Care in Cancer, is an effort to differentiate between types of cancer-related fatigue (CRF), a condition that affects upwards of 90 percent of patients who undergo major treatments and 30 to 67 percent of cancer survivors.

“CRF is something that goes far beyond just being tired,” Wu said. “It’s more draining, more intense, lasts longer than typical fatigue and is often unexpected.”

As a graduate student, Wu became interested in a subset of patients who reported fatigue as a “hit-the-wall” moment that came on suddenly, left them barely able to move and often forced them to lie down immediately until the episode passed.

CRF has been well documented, but while many clinicians and researchers have heard anecdotally from patients about suddenly “hitting the wall,” such reports have not been addressed directly by studies.

Wu’s team studied 114 breast cancer chemotherapy patients aged 31 to 67 from a Midwestern clinic and an urban teaching hospital. Participants were screened for sudden fatigue and completed a questionnaire on the day of their chemotherapy treatment. Descriptive statistics were used to examine the prevalence and clinical characteristics of sudden fatigue episodes, including an intensity rating system from one to 10, the latter level being the highest.

Just under half (46 percent) of participants experienced sudden fatigue. Of those, 81 percent reported more than one episode per day, with 77 percent of episodes taking place during activities between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. Ninety percent of patients described the intensity as severe.

Most episodes lasted an hour or less, but some lasted up to eight hours. Some patients had to sleep; others did not. Many reported concurrent symptoms including weakness, dizziness, pain, sweating, nausea and shortness of breath.

“We learned that this is something that’s really happening and most patients’ lives are affected by it,” Wu said.

Because the sudden onset of such episodes distinguishes them from what’s normally thought of as CRF, she believes “sudden exhaustion syndrome” is a better description.

“Patients can suddenly become so exhausted they cannot move at all,” Wu said. One participant experienced an onset while being surveyed, causing her eyelids to droop and rendering her unable to form words.

She said the study shows that patients undergoing treatment endure a lot, and she is interested in looking at which syndrome characteristics particular patients experience, along with degrees of intensity and concurrence.

Wu also would like to know why some patients feel compelled to sleep and others do not, and what symptom changes signal to each person that an episode is ending. She is especially curious about patients who seem to experience little or no CRF.

The condition may even continue for many cancer survivors even after they’ve finished treatment. Wu believes, however, that in the absence of empirical evidence of that continuation, further research is needed.

For now, Wu said oncology professionals need to recognize the syndrome and educate patients to enhance a sense of control and prevent harm.

“Cancer is not going away anytime soon,” she said. “Most people experience their illness through the symptoms, not the illness per se. But we can manage a symptom, even if we can’t cure the illness yet.”

Wu’s study was funded by an Oncology Nursing Foundation/Novartis Nursing Research Grant.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

The application includes claims covering methods of restoring visual responses by delivery to retinal neurons any of a number of channelrhodopsin variants, as well as halorhodopsin. The two molecules have been studied extensively and published on as means of vision restoration in retinal degenerative conditions such as retinitis pigmentosa and dry age-related macular degeneration.

The approved patent application is part of the “Pan” patent family, which stems from the novel research of Pan and others at Wayne State University and Salus University, designed to restore vision in retinal degenerative conditions. Several Pan patent applications are part of RetroSense’s intellectual property estate, which focuses on optogenetic gene therapies and complementary devices for vision restoration.

“We are pleased that the U.S. Patent Office has allowed this patent application, which will substantively expand the coverage of RetroSense’s intellectual property estate,” said Sean Ainsworth, chief executive officer of RetroSense. “Our IP position provides broad protection. RetroSense continues to develop novel intellectual property in the area of optogenetics. Accordingly, we plan to continue to extend our basic patent protections on our technologies. We have also maintained an ongoing strategy to consolidate key intellectual property required to develop and commercialize optogenetics to restore visual responses.”

The newly allowed U.S. patent application covers methods of increasing visually evoked potentials by delivering to retinal neurons one or more of the following molecules:

• Channelrhodopsin-2 (and a multitude of variants thereof)
• Halorhodopsin

Claims also explicitly cover targeting these molecules with cell-type specific promoters, including mGluR6 (Grm6).

Following a Notice of Allowance, the process resulting in final issuance of a patent involves several administrative steps that are typically completed within a year.

Pan has received funding to support his research from the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health (EY004068 and EY017130), The Foundation for Fighting Blindness, and Hope for Vision.

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About Wayne State University
Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

About RetroSense Therapeutics
RetroSense Therapeutics is a biotechnology company developing game-changing gene therapies designed to restore vision in patients suffering from blindness due to retinitis pigmentosa (RP) and advanced dry age-related macular degeneration (advanced dry-AMD). There are currently no FDA approved drugs to improve or restore vision in patients with these retinal degenerative conditions. RetroSense is led by a team of seasoned veterans with deep experience in taking products from the discovery stage through to the clinic. For more information about RetroSense, visit http://www.retro-sense.com/.

The study, published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology was based on nine years of data on more than 367,000 children in Detroit. The team of scientists stated the results support the critical need for controls for lead exposure in children.

“The study aimed to address a critical gap in understanding why child blood lead levels vary seasonally,” said McElmurry. “What we have done is demonstrate that increased blood lead levels in the summer are connected to increased amounts of soil and dust contaminated with lead. This soil is resuspended into the air to a greater extent during the summer than during the winter, hence showing decreased lead levels in children during the winter months.”

According to McElmurry, the results of this study place a greater importance on soil contaminated with lead and the need to come up with better remediation to improve children's health.

“Our findings suggest that more attention should be focused on the resuspension of soil contaminated with lead,” said McElmurry. “Current efforts focused on lead-based paint have generally been ineffective in reducing the average child’s exposure to lead, and our research team recommends primary attention be given to preventing lead exposure from lead-contaminated soil.”

This study was part of an international collaboration that included Sammy Zahran, Colorado State University; Mark Laidlaw and Mark Taylor, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia; and Gabriel Filippelli, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. The research was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholars program.

The full report can be found at http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es303854c.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.
 

Li’s research focuses on the most exquisite details of chemical reactions. “Many things in everyday life come down to chemical reactions,” said Li. “In my lab, we study the motion of nuclei and electrons during such reactions. While people have been studying the nuclear motion of chemical reactions for a while, we are focusing on electrons, which for a long time people considered too fast to study. To date, no technique has been developed to track down their motions in real time, and this is what my research program aims to do in the next few years. This ultimately could help control chemical reactions.”

“The Sloan Research Fellows are among the best of the best of young scientists,” said Hilary Ratner, vice president for research at Wayne State University. “Dr. Li is most deserving of this award along with the many other accolades he has received in his young career.”

In late 2012, Li received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), which is the highest honor bestowed by the United States government to science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers. Li will receive a $1 million grant for that achievement, which will aid his Department of Defense research in providing a dynamic picture of how lasers interact with matter.

For more information about the Sloan Research Fellowship, visit http://www.sloan.org/fileadmin/media/files/press_releases/2013_SRF_Press_Release_vf.pdf

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.
 

• Connections between the right and left sides of the brain became stronger as fetuses matured.
• Short distance connections were more strongly connected than long-range connections in brain networks.

“By studying communication signals of the brain in healthy human fetuses, we are able, for the first time, to observe and measure the formation of these networks at the beginning of life,” Dr. Thomason said. While network connections in adults are well-established, in children, the networks are still developing.

Dr. Thomason’s team pioneered several techniques to overcome the challenges of scanning fetuses without compromising the health and safety of the mother or her child. Researchers obtained functional MRI connectivity diagrams for more than 80 regions in the fetal brain.

“When we began (in November 2012), we did not even know if these communication signals could be measured in the human fetus,” Dr. Thomason said.

The study reveals fetuses are forming connections before they’re born, and that these span shorter distances before they expand to connect widely distributed brain areas.

The team will now work to further define the order and timing of how brain networks are formed in utero, and compare the development of these brain networks in fetuses with disease, illness or unwanted exposures during pregnancy to determine how neural connection development is disrupted.

“A major motivation for this study was to understand the reasons why premature babies are at risk for cerebral palsy and other neurologic disorders,” said Roberto Romero, M.D., D.Med.Sci., chief of the Perinatology Research Branch, which focuses on the prevention of preterm birth and its long-term consequences. “More than half of preterm children require special assistance in the classroom: 20 percent are in special education and 50 percent repeat at least one grade in high school. We believe that insults (such as “silent” intrauterine infection or fetal oxygen deficiency) can affect the development of brain connectivity in utero, and this accounts for many of these disorders. The study published today is part of ongoing research to determine whether insults during fetal life have an effect on the brain, and how we can prevent long-term consequences.”

The MRI examinations were performed at WSU’s Vainutis Vaitkevicius, M.D. Magnetic Resonance Research Facility, located at Harper University Hospital in Detroit, under the direction of E. Mark Haacke, Ph.D., a WSU professor of Radiology and Biomedical Engineering. The research was supported in part by the Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute for Child and Family Development, the Kellogg Foundation, the WSU Department of Pediatrics and the NICHD.
 

Amar Basu, Ph.D., assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and biomedical engineering in the College of Engineering, recently received the grants, which total $636,000, to support his work on microfluidic technologies in an effort to help scientists rapidly conduct thousands of chemical, genetic and pharmacological tests through a process called high-throughput screening (HTS).

The process is used to identify active compounds, antibodies or genes that modulate biomolecular pathways and can provide the information necessary to design drugs and understand individual biochemical processes. HTS is usually cost-prohibitive because it relies on sophisticated liquid handling robotics, sensitive detectors and, last but not least, the significant recurring cost of expensive biochemical reagents.

Since joining Wayne State in 2008, Basu has been developing techniques for performing biological analysis in microdroplets with nanoliter-picoliter volumes 1,000 to 1 million times smaller than conventional technology.

Analyzing small volumes of a substance, or assays, is a growing trend in the modern biotechnology industry because it dramatically reduces the costs of HTS reagents, improves assay speed and enables new capabilities, such as the ability to culture single cells and control their microenvironment.

“Droplet microreactors have a clear economic benefit in high-throughput biology because the smaller your assay volume, the cheaper it’s going to be,” Basu said. “From a scientific standpoint, microreactors can give us exciting new ways to study biology at really small size scales, comparable to individual cells.

“One of the challenges, though, is how we physically handle these tiny droplets, and monitor what is happening inside them. They’re so small you can’t use conventional tools, so you need some new technology.”

The first project, supported by a $335,000 grant through the NSF’s Electronics, Photonics and Magnetic Devices program, will investigate what Basu calls a novel approach for controlling the motion of droplets using lasers. Titled “Optofluidic Tweezers” (OFT), the project focuses on a technique that can generate forces 100,000 times larger than traditional optical tweezers. The technology, recently patented by Wayne State’s Technology Commercialization Office, enables novel applications in microscale liquid control, particle manipulation and light-directed assembly.

OFT uses Marangoni flow, a surface tension-driven phenomenon that becomes more powerful at a small scale.

Basu uses the Marangoni effect to grab a droplet on the axis of a focused laser, resulting in a class of optical tweezers that can trap and manipulate liquid droplets with large force. By scanning the laser in two dimensions, he can move droplets as needed for liquid handling.

The second project, “Tensiophoresis: Label Free Droplet Sorting in Surfactant Microgradients,” funded by a $301,000 grant, is jointly supported by NSF programs in Particulate and Multiphase Processes and Chemical and Biological Separations.

A key operation in droplet assays is the ability to detect chemicals in droplets. Tensiophoresis uses the phenomenon of capillary migration to sort droplets based on their chemical composition, without the fluorescent labels typically required in such assays.

In tensiophoresis, a droplet is placed in a small channel between two liquid streams with different interfacial tensions (IFT). Capillary migration causes the droplet to swim into one of the two streams, enabling researchers to sense and sort proteins within droplets for proteomic applications.

“The ability to sort droplets by their IFT is particularly interesting, because it is closely linked to the droplets’ chemical composition,” Basu said. “To our knowledge, this is the first label-free approach for sorting these tiny microreactors based on their biochemical contents. Some of our preliminary data suggests it may be able to detect less than a picomole (10-12 moles) of protein inside the drop.”

Together, the two grants will help Basu’s lab expand its development of biotechnologies for medical research, clinical diagnostics and environmental screening. More information on the Microfluidic and Bioinstrumentation Lab can be found at http://www.microfluidics.wayne.edu.

“Tensiophoresis: Label Free Droplet Sorting in Surfactant Microgradients” is funded by NSF grant No. CBET-1236764; “Optofluidic Tweezers” is funded by NSF grant No. ECCCS-1232226.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Technology can be very useful in maintaining romantic relationships despite temporal or geographic separation, said Katheryn Maguire, Ph.D., associate professor of communication in Wayne State University’s College of Fine, Performing and Communication Arts, but traditional means of communication still are critical for handling the more complex issues that arise between partners.

“The idea of maintaining a romantic relationship at a distance coincides with the notion of face-to-face contact as being essential; without that physical contact, some would even question if it is a real relationship. But with the help of communication technologies, these relationships can survive and even thrive,” Maguire said.

She has studied the use of technologically mediated communication (TMC) and believes that while there are similarities between distanced and proximal relationships when it comes to achieving mutual goals and tasks, sometimes communicating through technology can lead to unforeseen complications. Maguire’s recent work has focused on using TMC to maintain relationships, including those of wives whose husbands are serving overseas in the armed services.

Such long-distance relationships can lead to stress and coping issues, another focus of her research. Maguire’s best advice to couples trying to maintain such relationships is to “hang in there.”

“When you know you’re only going to be apart for a set amount of time (like a year), that knowledge alone makes people more satisfied and enables them to say, ‘I can do this,’” she said.

Maguire suggests that those in long-distance relationships find fun and creative ways to use technology, such as both parties reading the same book and then discussing chapters along the way online.

“There are ways to use the technologies available to you,” she said. “Take the channel that works for what it is you want to talk about. For just a quick ‘hi’ or ‘I love you,’ a text is great.”

Maguire is quick to add, however, that old-school methods still work to enhance the sense of connection.

“Letters, particularly handwritten, have more weight than TMC,” she said. “They are gifts. You’re touching something the other person touched. And for something more serious, you probably need to have that phone conversation.”

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Michele Cote, Ph.D., associate professor of oncology in the School of Medicine and the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, recently reviewed data from about 1,400 20- to 84-year-old African-American women who underwent breast biopsies between 1997 and 2000. Researchers identified biopsies that showed benign breast disease (BBD) and also tracked subsequent breast cancers.

BBD is an established risk factor for breast cancer among Caucasian women, Cote said, but less is known about it in African-American women, who tend to get breast cancer earlier, in more aggressive forms and die more frequently from it.

In “Benign Breast Disease and the Risk of Subsequent Breast Cancer in African American Women,” published recently in the journal Cancer Prevention Research, she said 68 percent of women studied showed nonproliferative BBD, and 29 percent had the proliferative form of the disease without atypia, a state in which cells are not growing normally but are not cancerous.

The remaining 3 percent showed proliferative BBD with atypia, a percentage similar to a group of Caucasian women studied recently by the Mayo Clinic. Women in Cote’s study with the proliferative form of the disease with atypia were three times as likely to develop breast cancer as women without proliferative disease.

A number of pathological characteristics are associated with BBD and breast cancer. Her group examined several of those, including the presence of cysts, fibrosis and atrophy of breast components, known clinically as lobular involution.

Another characteristic, columnar alteration, a variation in the way cells are structured, was shown to be associated with increased breast cancer risk. Cote said because columnar alterations are highly correlated with proliferative disease, further study of the independent effects of both could be valuable.

Her team wanted to see if characteristics Mayo researchers found in white women increase or decrease risk in the same ways in black women.

“Hopefully, this eventually means the risk models that will be developed will be similar if not identical for white and black women, which simplifies usage,” Cote said. “The question is, what are those pathological features that actually increase risk, because not all benign biopsies are the same.”

She said her study marks a successful collaboration between Wayne State, Karmanos and the Mayo Clinic that helps identify those at greatest risk for breast cancer and lays the groundwork for studying additional pathological characteristics.

“Better characterization of the risk of breast cancer among women with BBD, considering both ethnicity and detailed molecular findings, can lead to better surveillance, earlier diagnosis and, potentially, improved survival,” Cote said.

Cote received funding in 2012 from Susan G. Komen for the Cure to continue her research in the Detroit area on benign breast disease and the risk of breast cancer in African-American women.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Using computer simulations derived from the characteristics of ants seeking food, Kai Yang, Ph.D., professor of industrial and systems engineering in the College of Engineering, has developed a mathematical model-based methodology to estimate the optimal amount of time spent to develop a product, as well as the cost, in overlapped product development. It is the latest in a series of projects he has worked on for Siemens North America.

“Non-discrete Ant Colony Optimisation (NdACO) to Optimise the Development Cycle Time and Cost in Overlapped Product Development,” published recently in the International Journal of Production Research, utilizes the concept of concurrent engineering (CE), a systematic approach to product development based on parallel execution of tasks. The approach integrates several functions to reduce the development time and cost of a product while maintaining its quality. Co-authors include Satish Tyagi, Wayne State research assistant, and Anoop Verma, Ph.D., of the University of Iowa.

In CE, cross-functional teams communicate through several meetings, some before the beginning of project, categorized as precommunication, and some during execution of the project, called communication policy.

Because significant cost is incurred through those meetings, Yang said, it is necessary to investigate the cost-time trade-offs involved in the concurrent product development process to enhance work performance. Otherwise, applying the process can result in a larger number of iterations, or rework, adding to both time and cost.

“Currently, there is a lack of communication flow within organizations due to their large size, time differences, etc.,” Yang said. “Therefore, the amount of precommunication and communication policy and the extent of overlapping stages should be meticulously determined to achieve the desired goals.”

As product development moves forward, lack of communication from upstream decision-makers to downstream workers can leave the latter to operate without the latest available information to complete their task efficiently, he said.

Researchers studying ants’ food-foraging behavior have noticed that changes in the pheromone trails left behind by the insects communicate the best ways for those that come after them to proceed. That led to the development of ant colony optimization (ACO) models, which Yang and his team are using.

Researchers believe their simulation model could reduce product definition time by as much as 50 percent, and lead to best practices that improve critical thinking and remove communication barriers. Such practices can be applied to large-sector manufacturing, health care and service companies, Yang said.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

The study, "Improving the Identification of Women at Increased Risk for Stroke in an Urban Medical Center,” is funded by a $492,800 grant from Pfizer Inc. and will be overseen by Seemant Chaturvedi, M.D., WSU professor of neurology. Others involved in the study include Lavoisier Cardozo, M.D., F.A.C.P., F.R.C.P., professor of internal medicine and chief of the Division of Geriatric Medicine; Diane Levine, M.D., associate professor of internal medicine; Neelima Thati, M.D., professor of internal medicine; Maribeth Mateo, M.D., assistant professor of family medicine and public health sciences; and Ramesh Madhavan, M.D., D.M., associate professor of neurology.

Chaturvedi and the team will study the rate of compliance for following recommended guidelines to identify women at risk for stroke by WSU and Wayne State University Physician Group (WSUPG) doctors in five WSUPG clinics. The findings will lead to a variety of live and online Continuing Medical Education activities designed to educate doctors on how to improve compliance with these guidelines. Later, the rate of patients receiving the appropriate screening and treatments to prevent stroke will be reassessed.

“The study will try to identify areas where stroke risk factor reduction is suboptimal,” said Chaturvedi, who also serves as director of the Wayne State University/Detroit Medical Center Stroke Program. “For example, we will identify patients with hypertension not under control, patients with obesity not exercising, and patients with atrial fibrillation not being treated with anticoagulants. With education and medical alerts, we hope to improve treatment of these risk factors and more.”

The study is part of a new emerging concept. Previously, pharmaceutical companies awarded much smaller grants for didactic CME sessions such as grand rounds or a one-day symposium.

David Pieper, Ph.D., assistant dean for Continuing Medical Education (CME) for the School of Medicine, said there has been a nationwide movement by the CME community to try to integrate CME into clinical quality improvement initiatives. One method for accomplishing this is a new type of CME called “Performance Improvement CME,” in which physicians can receive up to 20 category 1 CME credits for measuring the percentage of their patients meeting treatment guidelines for certain conditions, designing methods to improve, and then re-measuring percent compliance.

Pfizer officials, Pieper explained, recently decided to move in this direction by changing the way the company contributes to CME programs. The company now spends 10 percent of its CME funds on grand rounds or symposiums. The remaining 90 percent is invested in projects in which Pfizer announces requests for proposals and CME providers submit proposals for large projects designed to improve physician performance in certain areas of patient care.

“There are a lot of advantages for us to participate in this kind of project,” Pieper said. “We will attempt to improve the screening and treatments our patients receive. Our physicians receive a lot of CME credits (without leaving their practice site). The projects will facilitate our residency programs in meeting new accreditation standards involving quality improvement, and may enhance our clinics in reaching certain quality benchmarks.”

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

LANSING, Mich. – Michigan’s University Research Corridor (URC) generated $15.5 billion in economic impact statewide, exceeded $2 billion in annual research expenditures and awarded more than 31,600 degrees in one year, placing it at or near the top of seven university innovation clusters in the U.S., according to a new Economic Impact Report released today.

The URC – consisting of Michigan State University, the University of Michigan and Wayne State University -- saw its research and development spending grow by 43 percent from 2007 to 2011, when it topped $2 billion for the first time. Its R&D growth rate topped six other major university research clusters in five states, including well-known hubs such as North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park, California’s Innovation Hubs and Massachusetts’ Route 128 Corridor.

The report, prepared by East Lansing, Mich.-based Anderson Economic Group (AEG), showed that the URC universities conferred 31,683 graduate and undergraduate degrees in 2011, more than any of the university innovation clusters the URC has benchmarked itself against since 2007. The URC also granted the second-highest number of high-demand degrees overall.

“Michigan’s URC is making a real difference in creating talent for Michigan companies, and doing more research and development every year,” said URC executive director Jeff Mason. “The report shows the URC stacks up well against its peers.”

The $15.5 billion in state economic activity the URC contributed in 2011 was up $2.6 billion -- 20 percent -- over the 2007 report. Activity attributable to the URC boosted state tax revenue by $375 million in 2011, an increase of $24 million since the benchmarking series began. The URC was responsible in 2011 for more than 74,000 direct and indirect jobs statewide, with the impact being felt in regions ranging from the Upper Peninsula to Michigan’s southern border with Indiana and Ohio.

“Our graduates are key to strengthening and expanding Michigan’s economy,” said University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman. “Equally powerful are the inventions and technologies developed by faculty from a diverse range of fields.”

For every dollar the state invested in the three URC universities, it saw $17 in economic benefits, according to the report. Michigan State University President Lou Anna K. Simon said the universities are working hard and effectively to assist in accelerating Michigan’s economic growth.

“Michigan’s economic success is vital to our students’ ability to get good jobs when they graduate,” she said. “We’re deeply committed to continuing our efforts to help Michigan’s businesses innovate and grow by providing the research and talent they need.”

Since 2002, the three URC universities have cultivated 149 start-up companies, including 18 in 2011, when the URC ranked behind only university innovation clusters in Southern California and Massachusetts.

“The three URC universities constantly are striving for excellence in their joint goals of educating students, attracting talented workers to Michigan, supporting innovation and encouraging the transfer of technology to the private sector,” said Wayne State University President Allan Gilmour. “Our efforts should encourage even more start-ups in the future.”

Since 2007, the URC has commissioned Anderson Economic Group to provide an annual report that calculates the economic impact of the URC’s activities on Michigan’s economy and compares its performance to peer university innovation clusters nationwide. The report matches up Michigan’s URC against clusters in Northern California, Southern California, Illinois, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

“R&D expenditures by the URC helps bring talented and creative people to the state. The URC’s ability to compete on the national stage helps make Michigan a place where highly productive people want to live and work,” said Patrick Anderson, principal and CEO of AEG, an economic and research consulting firm. “AEG has compared universities across the country, and Michigan’s URC is in the lead on many measures.”

The report also includes a breakdown of the URC’s economic impact in 10 regions statewide, including the effect of the additional money URC alumni living in Michigan earn because of their university degrees and the spending of students attending one of the three URC universities. Nearly a quarter of all of all higher education students in Michigan last year attended one of the three URC universities.

The sixth annual URC Economic Impact Report can be found at http://urcmich.org.

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DETROIT — A Wayne State University researcher has received a combined $36,000 in grants from the Southeastern Michigan Health Association and Greater Cincinnati HealthBridge, Inc. to help determine the success of a Type 2 diabetes intervention program currently being piloted in southeast Michigan, greater Cincinnati and New Orleans.

In “Txt4health: A Program Evaluation,” Lorraine Buis, Ph.D., assistant professor of nursing specializing in adult health, will focus on txt4Health, a 14-week text message-based behavioral intervention targeting Type 2 diabetes and its risks.

Txt4health is a joint venture of the American Diabetes Association; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC); Voxiva, an interactive mobile health services company; and the Southeast Michigan Beacon Community, Greater Cincinnati Beacon Community and Crescent City Beacon Community in New Orleans.

The entities piloting the free program are all part of the Beacon Community Cooperative Agreement Program, which comprises 17 diverse communities nationwide in which an ONC grant initiative is helping to build and strengthen health information technology infrastructure that supports clinical quality improvement and population health goals.

Txt4health delivers tailored messages to users based on their individual risk for developing Type 2 diabetes. It includes several different approaches to promoting lifestyle and behavioral changes, including physical activity self-monitoring, physical activity and weight goal setting, tailored physical activity and nutrition messages, and motivational messaging.

The first part of Buis’s evaluation will involve a retrospective analysis of system data to understand participant usage of txt4health. The second will consist of a participant survey to understand user perceptions and satisfaction with the program.

“This two-phased evaluation will help us understand how a public health text message program focusing on type 2 diabetes is perceived by users within the community,” Buis said. “In addition, this evaluation will shed light on how individuals use an automated text message-based intervention.”

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

DETROIT - Advaita Corporation, a spinout company from Wayne State University, was selected to participate in the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Commercialization Assistance Program (CAP). CAP is a specialized technical-assistance program that helps promising life-science companies accomplish their commercialization goals and transition their SBIR/STTR into the marketplace.

The 18-month program provides individual mentoring and consulting sessions, training workshops, and access to domain experts that enhance the commercialization profile and readiness of participating companies.

Advaita Corporation was founded in 2005 by Sorin Draghici, Ph.D., professor of computer science in Wayne State’s College of Engineering, and is headquartered near Ann Arbor, Mich. With the assistance of a $2.2 million NIH STTR Phase II award, Advaita developed a bioinformatics software solution called Pathway-Guide. Based on intellectual property developed at Wayne State University, the application provides the most advanced gene pathway analysis technology to date.

Andrew Olson

Pathway-Guide delivers meaningful results to researchers trying to understand data generated by high-throughput experiments, including next-generation sequencing. Pathway Guide takes into consideration a number of crucial biological factors, such as the magnitude of the expression change for each gene, the type and position of genes in a given pathway, and more. By considering these important biological aspects, Advaita’s Pathway-Guide is the first tool in a new generation of pathway analysis technologies able to eliminate many false positives, as well as correctly identify biologically meaningful pathways in a given disease.

“We are now entering the commercialization phase of our development plan,” said Andrew Olson, Advaita’s vice president for business development. “Selection for the NIH Commercialization Assistance Program not only lends credibility to the products we are developing, but also provides additional resources for us to reach our goals. This will be an exciting time as we continue to grow our business.”

More information about Advaita can be found at www.AdvaitaBio.com.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Pathological gambling is an impulse control disorder consisting of persistent gambling that the gambler cannot stop and often damages significant relationships of the inflicted. It can lead to severe financial, legal, family, social and psychiatric consequences including increased risk for suicide and illegal activities.

In a recent paper published in the American Journal on Addictions, researchers from Wayne State University compared treatment- and community-recruited pathological gamblers.

According to David M. Ledgerwood, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry & behavioral neurosciences in WSU’s School of Medicine, it is rare for people to seek treatment for gambling problems even though treatments work to reduce the burden of problem gambling.

“Some have suggested that problem gamblers who do not seek treatment have much less severe problems, and that we overestimate the co-occurring difficulties of problem gamblers by studying primarily those who are in treatment, who may have more difficulties overall,” said Ledgerwood. “Those who are enrolled in treatment tend to experience greater distress related to their gambling, and are more likely to have gambling-related legal and depression problems and are more preoccupied with gambling.”

According to the study, the research team found that other than these factors, there were not many factors that distinguished treatment-seeking problem gamblers from non-treatment seeking problem gamblers.

“Our findings suggest that data from treatment-recruited participants may, in many cases, be generalizable to the pathological gamblers from the general population, but some specific differences are important in terms of treatment and prevention,” said Ledgerwood.

According to the study, the two groups were very similar with respect to demographics, and the study showed important characteristics of problem gamblers who seek treatment that should be further explored to increase motivation and treatment compliance.

“By gaining a better understanding of personal distress leading to and resulting from problem gambling, as well as what leads to gamblers enrolling in treatment, we may be able to provide a clearer direction to developing more effective and targeted outreach, prevention and treatment initiatives,” added Ledgerwood.

The study was supported by the Ontario Problem Gambling Research Centre and National Center for Responsible Gaming as provided by the Institute for Research on Pathological Gambling and Related Disorders, and Joe Young Sr. Funds from the State of Michigan.

About Research at Wayne State University

Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

David Cinabro, Ph.D., professor of physics and astronomy in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, is principal investigator for the project, which comprises two major components and will be funded with a two-year, $360,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (No. 1245719).

The first component builds a dedicated, very high-speed network that will enable WSU researchers to transmit and receive large amounts of data quickly, across the campus or around the world. Those researchers may include physicists who collaborate on international projects in particle, nuclear and astrophysics; computer scientists working on high-speed networking; and biomedical researchers sequencing genes.

The dedicated network, or “Science DMZ,” as investigators call it, will be exclusive to scientific research and separate from the standard university network for day-to-day traffic. The new network is scheduled for completion around mid-2013.

Patrick Gossman, Ph.D., deputy chief information officer for Computing and Information Technology and a co-investigator for the grant, likened the Science DMZ to a dedicated lane on the freeway with a 700 mph speed limit.

The upgrade will use specialized monitoring equipment on each end of a connection to identify bottlenecks and help keep data moving. Bottlenecks are a huge problem for researchers, Gossman said, especially when they are moving images from telescopes, particle accelerator data, brain maps or DNA sequences.

“They need to move huge files here, where they have the computing power to analyze them, or send them to collaborators at other institutions,” he said. “This upgrade will greatly speed up our researchers’ ability to work, moving their research forward.”

The second project component will upgrade the local network infrastructure in the physics building. This component will provide the necessary on-off ramps to the new Science DMZ as well as speed up their daily work.

“If you spend three days doing a calculation, you don’t want to spend another three days waiting for it to download,” Cinabro said. “With the new connection, that download could take just minutes.”

In order to receive the grant, for which only 33 other institutions around the country were successful, WSU had to demonstrate a science-based need. The university’s case was bolstered by the work of physicists with national and international research entities like the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), the Large Hadron Collider and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST).

“Without a science underpinning as to why we need a better computer network infrastructure, we wouldn’t have gotten this done,” Cinabro said.

In addition to the science, Gossman said, NSF officials also were interested in Wayne State’s proposal because it includes exploration of software-defined (virtual) networking, which allows a physical network to be split into multiple separate networks, and because of the Science DMZ.

The new dedicated network includes 10-gigabit-per-second links between four buildings on campus: physics, Computing and Information Technology, computer science in the College of Engineering, and the Applied Genomics Technology Center at the School of Medicine, a tenfold improvement over current capacity. The Science DMZ can be extended to other critical research areas on campus for little additional cost, investigators said.

The Science DMZ also includes a 10 Gbps link to StarLight, a Chicago-based switch/router facility for access to high-performance national and global networks.

“It’s very important that we have this fast link to StarLight and other Tier 1 data sites, because they have fast links to other places,” Cinabro said. “We need access to that data to do this science, but we didn’t have very good connections, and that was an impediment.”

The future of science will involve collaborations using big data sets, he said. For example, the LSST, which he is working on, will photograph the entire available sky from northern Chile every few nights and thus produce terabytes of data daily. Additionally, some of his colleagues who collaborate internationally are trying to arrange it so researchers around the world can do things with Wayne State equipment.

“Without a fast, dedicated network, that’s not even possible to contemplate,” Cinabro said. “This is a great way to enable us to do more science — not just more of what we’re already doing, but new kinds of things — and collaborate more directly in data-intensive activities.”

Investigators are pleased the NSF has recognized the value of WSU research and the potential for accelerating it through this grant award. Once the network improvements are in place, future grant proposals can involve more data-intensive research and the possible creation of a WSU data farm, where large amounts of enhanced data drawn from larger hubs could reside for local use.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Christopher Trentacosta, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, recently examined data from 361 linked triads (birth mother, adoptive parents, adopted child) in order to assess externalizing behavioral problems such as aggression and defiance when children were 18, 27 and 54 months of age.

The triads were part of the Early Growth and Development Study (EGDS), a nationwide, prospective study of birth parents and adoptive families that is supported by grants from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute of Mental Health — all part of the National Institutes of Health — to Trentacosta’s colleagues at the Oregon Social Learning Center and the Pennsylvania State University. The EGDS is aimed at investigating how families can help their children develop to their fullest potential.

In “Examining the Interplay of Birth Mothers’ and Adoptive Parents’ Antisocial Behavior in Predicting Growth in Externalizing Problems During Early Childhood,” adoptive parents’ antisocial behavior played an important role in the development of children’s externalizing problems. His study was presented at the 2012 meeting of the Behavior Genetics Association in Edinburgh, Scotland.

That finding may not come as a surprise to researchers who have studied environmental precursors to such behavior. However, Trentacosta said a great deal of other research that examined sets of twins holds that genetic factors play a role as well.

Part of the problem with environmental studies, he said, is that the people providing the parenting are the same ones providing the genes. Using an adoption design, Trentacosta said, allows researchers to disentangle genetics from environmental influences by collecting data from both birth and adoptive parents.

His team found that adoptive parents reporting on their own antisocial behaviors predicted children’s initial level of externalizing at 18 months, suggesting a direct environmental connection.

“That can be tricky, however, because it is those same parents reporting on the child’s behavior,” Trentacosta said, “so we aggregated both parents’ reports to increase confidence somewhat. But even with the reporting limitation, there is something to be said for the environmental piece, at least initially.”

His team’s main finding is that there is an interaction between birth mother characteristics and adoptive parent antisocial behavior that is especially problematic for growth in externalizing behavior problems across early childhood.
“Compared to birth mothers with lower levels of antisocial behavior, children of birth mothers with higher levels of antisocial behavior showed steep growth in externalizing problems when raised by adoptive parents with higher levels of antisocial behavior,” Trentacosta said. “Both genetic characteristics and environment matter, but it’s especially the combination of the two that seems to make a difference over time.”

Trentacosta believes further study of the next age group, 54 to 72 months, may help to better determine the most salient predictors of externalizing behavior levels by the time children reach school age.

Previous research has shown that such behaviors typically decrease across the preschool years and as children transition to elementary school. A logical next step, he said, would be to assess behavior levels from the cohort used in his work as the children get older to obtain a more complete picture of how genetic and environmental considerations play out across development.

“Behaviors that start out at fairly normative levels but still more than most can cause problems for children as they get to school age,” Trentacosta said. “For prevention purposes, it’s helpful if we can identify these children earlier and possibly get extra help for these families.”

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.
 

Contrast agents are injectable “drugs” containing a paramagnetic element that creates temporary magnetic differences between similar tissues, enabling them to appear differently in an MRI scan. Of about 60 million annual MRI scans worldwide, 40 to 50 percent currently use contrast agents; the rest can show tissue differences without them.

Current technology uses a class of contrast agents based on the element gadolinium, but it fails at higher magnetic field strengths. As a result, scientists cannot take advantage of hardware advances that could shorten scan times and produce higher-resolution images using higher field strengths.

Allen pointed to a recent study that found 93 percent of cortical brain lesions in samples from multiple sclerosis patients with a high-field magnet, compared to just 30 percent with a lower-field magnet.

One of his projects, “Evaluation of the Toxicity of New Content Agents for Ultra-High Field Strength Magnetic Resonance Imaging,” focuses on the rare earth element europium as a basis for contrast agents. Like gadolinium, however, europium by itself is toxic to humans and therefore must chemically “caged” before being injected. Allen’s research team will try to do that in laboratory tests during the first portion of the project before testing the new contrast agents.

In a related project, “Interaction of Biphenyl-functionalized EU 2+-Containing Cryptate with Albumin: Implications to Contrast Agents in Magnetic Resonance Imaging,” supported with $530,000 from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering of the National Institutes of Health (grant R00EB007129), Allen’s team is looking at how to make changes in the cages around europium, thereby changing its properties relative to MRI.

The property Allen is most interested in is making those cages tumble more slowly within a solution, allowing more time for magnets to conduct scans.

“One way to do that is to attach the cages to something really big,” he said. “We’re targeting a protein called human serum albumin (HSA), the most abundant protein in the blood.

“Basically we have modified the cage, or cryptand, of the group we thought should interact with albumin. We showed that it does, and that it slows down tumbling.”

Allen’s team is working to address an unintended consequence of adding a biphenyl group to side of HSA — the displacement of a water molecule — which complicates the scanning process.

He expects the contrast agents that eventually result from his work will be very similar to currently marketed gadolinium in toxicity and safety because of their proximity on the periodic table of elements. Allen noted, however, that the unique nature of the europium nucleus allows it to demonstrate significantly better contrast at higher field strengths while being nearly as effective as gadolinium at lower field strengths.

Utilizing those properties, he said, should result in higher-resolution images that can help clinicians spot medical issues sooner than is currently possible.

“This gives us the chance to diagnose diseases at earlier stages, and if you can catch things earlier, treatments are usually more successful,” Allen said.

Allen’s research is supported in part by a grant from the Michigan Initiative for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.
 

Mark Baskaran, Ph.D., professor of geology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, has received a three-year, $190,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for a project that will follow the pathways and cycling of two trace elements in the Pacific Ocean from Peru to Tahiti.

Titled “GEOTRACES-210Po and 210Pb distribution at Eastern Pacific Interface Regimes,” the project will examine levels of polonium (Po) and lead (Pb) isotopes in water samples from Peru to Tahiti to investigate how much carbon is exported from the upper 100 meters of ocean water to deeper waters, and how hydrothermal waters released from the bottom of the ocean affect the removal of polonium and lead. While some of the key trace elements and isotopes (TEIs) to be measured during the sampling expedition have been induced by humans, others are the result of radioactive decay of naturally occurring uranium.

During a two-month cruise beginning in October 2013, Baskaran and WSU student John Niedermiller will collect thousands of liters of water samples from up to 5,000-meter depths for polonium and lead analysis in various types of waters, including those with high biological activity, those with low oxygen, and hydrothermal plumes (areas of warmer water). Such plumes can affect a number of biological processes, including large areas of algae bloom.

Baskaran’s work is part of the GEOTRACES project, which has been funded by the NSF since its official inception in 2008, although the research groups involved started working together in 2004. GEOTRACES brings together scientists from some 30 countries to study how recent environmental changes — especially those resulting from increased industrial and commercial activity in the last 200 years — have affected distribution of key TEIs and chemical processes that take place in the ocean.

“The surface of the earth and the environment are undergoing tremendous changes,” Baskaran said. “Water masses move from one ocean to another. By using key TEIs, we can study the processes that control these chemical species.”

GEOTRACES defines key TEIs as micronutrients essential to life in the ocean; tracers of modern processes in oceans; substances significantly perturbed by human activities; and proxies that are usable to reconstruct the past.

Based on his previous research with polonium and lead isotopes, Baskaran believes samples from the selected area will prove useful in tracking changes that have occurred. His team’s data will be added to that of researchers studying other TEIs in the same samples to provide the best possible assessment of what has occurred and when, especially within the past century.

Findings of all GEOTRACES researchers will be compared and integrated with data gathered from the Geochemical Ocean Section Study (GEOSECS), funded by the NSF and conducted in the 1970s. GEOSECS was designed to collect information on chemical and biological processes taking place in the world’s oceans. Scientists plan to study all major ocean basins over the next decade.

GEOTRACES researchers will combine their findings with those of GEOSECS in order to create a more complete understanding of such processes. One example, Baskaran said, is that by learning more about the role of micronutrients in causing things like large algal blooms, researchers can determine whether the blooms can be minimized.

“Understanding and predicting are the goals of our work and that of other GEOTRACES researchers,” he said. “Once we have a really good handle on what processes are taking place, prediction becomes much easier.”

The National Science Foundation grant number for Baskaran’s study is OCE-1237059.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.
 

DETROIT – Record numbers of soldiers are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with serious spinal cord injuries (SCI). Medical advancements can help heal their physical wounds, but little is known about how these veterans re-engage with their communities and rebuild meaningful lives. “How do they transition back to family and community life? How do they adjust to their physical impairments? And how do they reconfigure their homes, their work and their lives?” asked Cathy Lysack, professor of occupational therapy and gerontology at Wayne State University. Drs. Lysack and Mark Luborsky, professor of anthropology and gerontology at Wayne State University, are co-principal investigators on a new $456,000 grant from the Department of Defense to explore those questions.

The three-year grant, shared between WSU’s Institute of Gerontology and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, will study how service members and veterans with SCI reintegrate into society. Luborsky believes “the time is ripe to discover how military personnel with SCI create a sense of connection.”

“After the medical issues are stabilized, the key to long-term success for patients is how they establish their cultural identities and create meaningful connections to communities,” he said. “This project will move the science and research forward toward interventions to help all people with SCI maintain their independence and ability to function in community life.”

A total of 60 spinal cord injured veterans will be recruited at three levels of recovery: less than 12 months, 12 to 24 months, and 2 to 5 years after discharge from inpatient rehabilitation. The research teams will interview service members in depth about their long-term goals, values and expectations for meaningful community reintegration and social participation.

“Traumatic spinal cord injury is severe and permanent, but it need not be a catastrophic disability,” said Lysack. While researchers have learned a lot about how civilians with SCI reintegrate into family and community life, veterans and service members may approach it much differently.

“These are soldiers — uber males and females — whose role in the military has been to fight and protect,” she said. “We need to learn how they make a successful transition to civilian life.” The goal of this study is to support the development of innovative strategies and systems that will improve the long-term outlook for service members with traumatic injuries and their families. “This is not about managing a disability,” Lysack said. “It’s about rebuilding a life.”

PR Contact: Cheryl Deep - cheryldeep@wayne.edu

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The Institute of Gerontology researches the aging process, educates students in gerontology, and presents programs on aging issues relevant to professionals, caregivers and older adults in the community (www.iog.wayne.edu). The Institute is part of the Division of Research at Wayne State University, one of the nation’s preeminent public research institutions in an urban setting. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.
 

A group of researchers in Wayne State University’s College of Engineering have been working to create advanced materials with high-yield strength, fracture toughness and ductility. Their efforts have led to the development of a new material consisting of bainitic steels and austempered ductile iron that has all these characteristics, ultimately resisting fatigue that can cause fractures in materials often with catastrophic consequences.

The group, led by Susil Putatunda, Ph.D., professor of chemical engineering and materials science in WSU’s College of Engineering, has focused on developing novel materials using a unique processing technique. These materials are processed from existing raw materials used in the steel industry and can be heat treated using currently available industrial austempering processes. According to Putatunda, this third generation advanced high strength steel has a number of advantages over the currently available steels currently being used in industry today.

“Our steel has twice the yield strength, has a very high tensile strength, and is close to three times the fracture toughness over advanced steels currently on the market,” said Putatunda. “In addition, it has improved strength for fatigue and impact, improved durability, lower weight, and the austempering process reduces energy consumption and eliminates the post-treatment process.”

The new steel being developed by Putatunda’s research group is a high bainitic steel with an extremely fine scale microstructure consisting of ferrite and carbon stabilized austenite. It has high carbon and high silicon content, and after the austempering process - an isothermal heat treatment - produced a structure that is stronger and tougher than other types of steel. The austempering process is a more energy efficient heat treatment process that does not require post-heat treatment, therefore leading to additional energy savings.

Putatunda continues to do research on his high-strength steel through the support of the National Science Foundation, the Michigan Initiative for Innovation & Entrepreneurship, and Applied Process, Inc. Independent ballistic tests done in Canada have been conducted and have shown excellent results. As a consequence, the steel may be useful in improvised ballistic explosive attacks.

“The steel has been found to have the strength and durability necessary for armored vehicles to resist improvised explosive devices because of its extremely high fracture toughness,” said Putatunda. “Our steel could potentially save human lives against explosive attacks.”

This technology is ideally suited for cast steel parts and is currently in the manufacturing validation development stage at a steel casting plant.

To learn more about Putatunda’s research, visit http://www.eng.wayne.edu/page.php?id=511.

The National Science Foundation award number for this grant is 0854962.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

DETROIT — Wayne State University announced today that it has been awarded two Grand Challenges Explorations research grants, an initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, totaling nearly $200,000.

The first project, “Linoleic acid as a preventative and/or therapeutic agent for Cholera,” is led by Jeffrey Withey, Ph.D., assistant professor of immunology and microbiology in WSU’s School of Medicine. The second project, “Mobile immunization tracking and management systems,” is a collaborative effort by Paul Kilgore, M.P.H., M.D., associate professor of pharmacy practice in WSU’s Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences and Weisong Shi, Ph.D., associate professor of computer science in WSU’s College of Engineering. Both research teams will pursue innovative global health and development research projects.

“This funding from the Gates Foundation will help support our research that is focused on cholera, a severe and often fatal diarrheal disease that afflicts about five million people each year, and leads to tens of thousands of deaths in developing countries,” said Withey. “This project will test linoleic acid, a widely used dietary supplement, as both a preventative and therapeutic agent for cholera. This is true translational research, as we will be moving our basic research findings from the laboratory to cholera patients.”

“Dr. Shi and I are pleased to receive funding from the Gates Foundation for our project that is a novel approach for creating a unique immunization record system using mobile software applications, cloud computing, bar-coding and wireless information technology,” said Kilgore. “Our proposed system will enable linking immunization information within local and national areas, and will be particularly useful in developing countries that lack real-time information on current vaccine supplies.”

Grand Challenges Explorations (GCE) funds individuals worldwide who are taking innovative approaches to some of the world’s toughest and persistent global health and development challenges. GCE invests in the early stages of bold ideas that have real potential to solve the problems people in the developing world face every day. Wayne State University’s projects are two of over 80 Grand Challenges Explorations Round 9 grants announced today by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

“Investments in innovative global health research are already paying off,” said Chris Wilson, director of Global Health Discovery and Translational Sciences at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “We continue to be impressed by the novelty and innovative spirit of Grand Challenges Explorations projects and are enthusiastic about this exciting research. These investments hold real potential to yield new solutions to improve the health of millions of people in the developing world, and ensure that everyone has the chance to live a healthy productive life.”

To receive funding, Withey, Kilgore and Shi and other Grand Challenges Explorations Round 9 winners demonstrated in a two-page online application a creative idea in one of five critical global health and development topic areas that included agriculture development, immunization and communications. Applications for the current open round, Grand Challenges Explorations Round 10, will be accepted through November 7, 2012.

“Wayne State’s projects seek to help areas of the world where our research ideas can make an impact on lives,” said Hilary Ratner, vice president for research at Wayne State University. “We are pleased to work with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to foster innovative ideas to overcome health challenges through proper treatment and availability of appropriate vaccines and medicines. These projects have significant potential to help others.”

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About Grand Challenges Explorations
Grand Challenges Explorations is a US$100 million initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Launched in 2008, over 700 people in 45 countries have received Grand Challenges Explorations grants. The grant program is open to anyone from any discipline and from any organization. The initiative uses an agile, accelerated grant-making process with short two-page online applications and no preliminary data required. Initial grants of US$100,000 are awarded two times a year. Successful projects have the opportunity to receive a follow-on grant of up to US$1 million.

About Research at Wayne State University
Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Hoffmann explores at the nanoscale how the cells in the human body come to life. At this scale, the energy of the random motions of atoms can move molecules, initiate chemical reactions or create voltages, allowing for the existence of independently moving nanoscale machines. According to Hoffmann, the complex molecules of human cells can be called “molecular machines,” or “nanobots.”

“These machines, unlike any other, work autonomously to create order out of chaos,” said Hoffmann. “Life emerges from the random motions of atoms – molecular storms – filtered through the sophisticated structures of our evolved machinery. As we enter the microscopic world of life’s molecules, we find that chaos, randomness, chance and noise are our allies.”

According to Hoffmann, to make the molecular storm a useful force for life, it needs to be harnessed and tamed by physical laws and sophisticated structures.

“Thanks to nanotechnology, we can now see the smallest parts of life at work: autonomously moving molecules performing specific tasks like tiny robots,” said Hoffmann. “Our cells are cities full of molecular-sized worker bees who built themselves, go where they are needed, do what they need to do and are recycled again.”

Hoffmann, an expert on the latest advances in nanoscience, is the founding director of Wayne State’s biomedical physics program. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Award, the WSU Department of Physics’ Richard J. Barber Faculty Award and many others.

For additional information about “Life’s Ratchet,” visit http://clasweb.clas.wayne.edu/hoffmann/Book.

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About Research at Wayne State University
Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.
 

DETROIT - Advaita Corporation, a startup company based on technology developed at Wayne State University by Sorin Draghici, Ph.D., professor of computer science in the College of Engineering, received the final installment of a $125,000 award from the Michigan Emerging Technologies Fund program. This comes on the heels of a $2.2 million Phase II Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grant, “Pathway-Guide: A Novel Tool for the Analysis of Signaling and Metabolic Pathways,” awarded to Advaita in 2011 by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health.

Advaita Corporation has developed a bioinformatics software solution called Pathway-Guide that provides the most advanced gene pathway analysis technology to date, based on intellectual property developed at Wayne State University. Pathway-Guide delivers meaningful results to researchers trying to understand the data generated by high-throughput experiments, including next-generation sequencing. This technology takes into consideration a number of crucial biological factors, such as the magnitude of the expression change for each gene, the type and position of genes in the given pathway, and more. By considering these important biological aspects, Advaita’s Pathway-Guide is the first tool in a new generation of pathway analysis technologies able to eliminate many false positives, as well as correctly identify biologically meaningful pathways in a given disease.

Additionally, Advaita provides the only analysis technique that is able to identify gene signaling cascades that are presumed causal (putative mechanistic) explanations for all observed gene expression changes. Because of this unique capability, Advaita’s approach can be used to help researchers identify optimal points of therapeutic intervention that can be considered new drug targets.

“With these funds, Advaita will have the ability to pursue marketing and develop its customer base,” said Draghici. “We firmly believe our solution to gene pathway analysis is the most advanced and comprehensive solution available today. As the world of bioinformatics and personalized medicine continues to grow, we believe our solutions will play an ever increasing role.”

The grant number for funding from the National Institute on General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health is GM087013.

More information about Advaita can be found at www.AdvaitaBio.com.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

The field is more critical than ever, she said, with the increasing number of diagnoses of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, which remain largely untreatable, and with a surge in reports of mood disorders and substance abuse.

The brain comprises many different types of cells with different roles, and all of those cells communicate through synapses, where chemicals interact.

“For us to really understand the brain, we have to understand its chemistry, and to understand the chemistry, we have to understand how these chemicals move around in the synapse,” Hashemi said. “We need to know what different molecules are there so we can assign specific roles to specific molecules.”

CFMs have proven a good tool for analyzing brain chemicals, which Hashemi said requires adhering to four criteria: size, speed, selectivity and sensitivity — what her group calls the four S’s.

Selectivity is needed to distinguished between types of chemicals; sensitivity because chemicals often are present in low levels. Speed is important because chemicals fluctuate dynamically — as in processing of conversation, for example — and small size is necessary to fit in gaps between areas of tissue the electrode is intended to sample.

CFMs now can be made very small — 1/100 the thickness of a human hair — and are uniquely biocompatible. Because other molecules don’t stick to CFMs, Hashemi said, the fibers induce little inflammation or rejection response from tissue.

Their small size enables CFMs to be combined in microarrays to measure reactions in multiple synapses simultaneously, giving researchers greater insight into how various parts of the brain work together. Amperometry is one technique for using CFMs, and works well in a highly controlled system, she said.

“If you have a bunch of cells and you know what’s in them already, you can put electrodes right next to a cell and essentially hold it at constant voltage value and oxidize everything that comes out,” Hashemi said. “If you know what’s in there, you can get really fast, really sensitive responses.”

Amperometry enables researchers to expose cells to materials in consumer goods, such as bisphenol A, commonly known as BPA, to see how cell function is impaired, she said, adding, “It’s a very effective, neat preparation.”

Fast-scan cyclic voltammetry (FSCV) is another analysis technique using CFMs to identify specific reactions based on voltages at which molecules give up electrons (a process known as oxidation) or receive them (reduction). Hashemi uses it in her laboratory to scan quickly between certain potential limits of such electron transfers, because voltage is unique to each molecule. Though a little slower than amperometry, she said, FSCV fulfills all four S’s.

“Whether it’s 100 scans a second or 10 scans a second, one of the biggest challenges has been making hardware that can cope with something so fast as measuring the currents that we need, but that has been done,” Hashemi said. “Because of that, FSCV can tell you not only how much of chemical there was, but whether it was dopamine, serotonin or something else. Each chemical gives a unique signature that is quite different in different species.”

Hashemi’s team has honed in on serotonin, a molecule involved in depression and anxiety that often is present in very low concentrations or in combination with other chemicals. While some drug treatments for those conditions raise serotonin levels, she said, not much is known about what they’re actually doing or how they interact with brain.

Hashemi said her team has begun to fill that void, however. In work with antidepressants, which typically must be taken for three to four weeks to have effects in humans, members have found a tenfold increase in the serotonin levels of mice within five minutes.

Most exciting for Hashemi, however, is what CFMs can do when placed into human brains.

Doctors currently must wait for Parkinson’s disease patients, for example, to begin having tremors before controlling dopamine levels to make them subside. Patients must be awake for doctors to visually assess the tremor.

Researchers are taking the first step toward a closed-loop system by putting CFMs into a patient’s brain and measuring the dopamine. The next step is to construct a system where that information is acted upon by a device that signals the CFM to initiate a dopamine level increase.

“We’re almost there,” Hashemi said. “It’s really only a matter of time before it can mean that the patient has total independence and that the surgeon no longer has to decide, because the decision will be made chemically, which is as it should be.”

Such technology could be applied to a wealth of conditions, she said, even depression, which currently is not routinely treated by brain surgery.

“But if we could show that this was the best therapy for it, you could imagine there would be a stimulating electrode in the part of the brain that controls serotonin, and it would be fed back with a device that measures serotonin,” Hashemi said. “It could be as easy as that.”

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

This year’s keynote speaker is Ronnie Bachman, who will tell his inspiring story of survival and success. Ron was born with legs so badly deformed they hindered his ability to crawl. At age 4, his parents made the difficult decision to have both legs amputated at the hip. Today he scoots through audiences sharing his message about being “unique and different” and enlightening thousands of teens throughout Michigan and across the country.

Teens attend the free Giant Step conference from an array of schools throughout southeast Michigan: urban, suburban, public, private, charter, parochial, magnet and specialty high schools, and even home schools. Facilitators guide student discussions on topics like bullying, friendship, disabilities, parents, self-image, career plans and conflict.

“It was a great learning and growing experience,” a 15-year-old charter school student wrote in her evaluation. “If people did more things like this, there would be less judgment and racism in the world.” Trudy Shiemke, who has coordinated the conference since its inception, said the event is an excellent fit with the mission of its host organization, Wayne State’s Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute. “We are committed to helping children at all stages, from birth through early adulthood,” she said. “Young teens have excellent potential for attitude change and learning how to keep an open mind about others.”

Last year, 266 teens from 46 different schools attended Giant Step. Ninety-four percent said Giant Step was a positive experience and recommended their school continue to participate; 93 percent said talking with teens from different backgrounds was interesting and educational; 79 percent planned to stay in touch with the people they met at the conference. A majority of last year’s students said Giant Step helped them:

• Find it easier to get to know people who are different from them
• Talk more frequently with their parents
• Prefer to live in a community of people different from them
• Accept responsibility for their actions

The Giant Step Teen Conference takes place Tuesday, Oct. 30, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Student Center Ballroom at Wayne State University. For details, visit http://mpsi.wayne.edu/outreach/step-conference.php

The event is funded by the Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute, the DTE Foundation and the Junior League of Detroit.

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The Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute for Child and Family Development promotes and improves the development, health and well-being of infants, children, youth and their families through research, education and outreach. The institute is part of Wayne State University, a premier urban research institution offering more than 370 academic programs through 13 schools and colleges to nearly 29,000 students.

Dr. Ondersma is a National Institute on Drug Abuse-funded researcher. He is currently in the midst of an N = 500 randomized trial examining whether an indirect, computer-delivered brief intervention that is intended to reduce drug use without implying or presuming drug use on the part of the participant, can lead to reduced drug use among post-partum women.

Dr. Ondersma has made numerous presentations in the past year that focuses on his research. These include:

• January 10, 2012: Dr. Ondersma interviewed for the Craig Fahle Show on WDET, an NPR station in Detroit, regarding his research with post-partum women. Visit http://www.wdetfm.org/shows/craig-fahle-show/episode/steven-ondersma-curbing-drug-abuse-new-mothers/ for the full interview.
• January 30-31, 2012: Dr. Ondersma was an invited presenter and panelist for the Institute of Medicine workshop, “Child Maltreatment Research, Practice, and Policy for the Next Decade.“ (Summary available at http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2012/Child-Maltreatment-Research-Policy-and-Practice-for-the-Next-Decade.aspx.) He discussed maltreatment in multi-problem families, especially those in which drug and alcohol abuse are present.
• August 2, 2012: Dr. Ondersma was an invited presenter and panelist for NIH-sponsored symposium, at the APA Convention in Orlando, on “Increasing Implementation via Technology. “
• August 30, 2012: Dr. Ondersma was an invited presenter and panelist for Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP, part of the Executive Office of the President) meeting, “Leadership Meeting on Maternal Addiction, Opioid Exposed Infants and Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome.” In attendance were representatives from many sectors of the government, including House and Senate offices, NIH, CDC, SAMHSA, Justice, etc. See links below for more information. Dr. Ondersma spoke in Parts 2 and 4.
  • Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3sJTbJOWBU
  • Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCIp6skzv9I
  • Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZMDBVQJ8u0
  • Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WNQVkzOyq8

• September 12-14, 2012: Dr. Ondersma was an invited participant in the CDC meeting, “Expert meeting on perinatal illicit drug abuse.” The meeting included leaders in the area of perinatal drug use identification and treatment.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Subjects who fled Iraq after Gulf War were 43 times more likely to suffer from obstructive sleep apnea

DETROIT – Wayne State University School of Medicine researchers may have discovered why people exposed to war are at increased risk to develop chronic problems like heart disease years later. And the culprit that links the two is surprising.

Beginning in the mid-2000s, WSU researchers interviewed a random sample of 145 American immigrants who left Iraq before the 1991 Gulf War, and 205 who fled Iraq after the Gulf War began. All were residing in metropolitan Detroit at the time of the study. Study subjects were asked about socio-demographics, pre-migration trauma, how they rated their current health, physician-diagnosed and physician-treated obstructive sleep apnea, somatic disorders and psychosomatic disorders. Those who left Iraq after the war began and suffered from mental disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression, and self-rated their physical health as worse than their actual health, were 43 times more likely than pre-Gulf War immigrants to report obstructive sleep apnea (30.2 percent versus 0.7 percent) and later develop major chronic health issues such as cardiovascular disease.

“I was surprised, but we had a specific theory we wanted to test. Changes in the stress system would contribute to sleep apnea. What happens? Maybe it’s the stress that leads to this fractured sleep,” said Bengt Arnetz, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., School of Medicine professor of occupational and environmental health, deputy director of the Institute of Environmental Health Sciences at Wayne State, and the study’s principal investigator and first author. “No one had explored this possible link before, although basic research suggests it as plausible.”

The results are featured in the October 2012 issue of Psychosomatic Medicine, the peer-reviewed journal of the American Psychosomatic Society.

According to the article, “Obstructive Sleep Apnea, Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, and Health in Immigrants,” obstructive sleep apnea occurs when the muscles supporting the soft palate at the back of the throat relax, but less is known about the reasons behind this neuromuscular malfunctioning.

“It’s a known fact that the more exposure to violence you have, the more likely you are to report PTSD and depression, and the worse your self-rated health is, the more likely your actual health will suffer in five to 10 years,” Arnetz said.

Hikmet Jamil, M.D., Ph.D., professor of occupational and environmental health in WSU’s School of Medicine, and Thomas Templin, Ph.D., research professor in WSU’s College of Nursing, also contributed to the article.

The obstructive sleep apnea and chronic disase link has been observed among many trauma-exposed populations, including refugees, Arnetz said.

“Iraqis were exposed to harsh conditions during the entirety of Saddam Hussein’s more than 20 years of reign. However, trauma and environmental exposures increased measurably and dramatically after the initiation of the 1991 Gulf War,” the article states.

The study can now be used as a model for other populations, including U.S. soldiers returning home from battle.

The multidisciplinary study brought together mental health research, sleep research and chronic disease research, Arnetz said.

He and Jamil were partially supported by the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health (award number R01MH085793).

To further test their ideas, the researchers plan to apply for funding from the National Institutes of Health to collaborate with Safwan Badr, M.D., professor and chief of the School of Medicine’s Division of Pulmonary, Allergy, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, and Thomas Roth, Ph.D., director of the Henry Ford Sleep Disorders and Research Center.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Founded in 1868, the Wayne State University School of Medicine is the largest single-campus medical school in the nation, with more than 1,000 medical students. In addition to undergraduate medical education, the school offers master’s degree, Ph.D. and M.D.-Ph.D. programs in 14 areas of basic science to about 400 students annually.

Jackson was nominated by Peter Lichtenberg, director of the Institute of Gerontology, who cited her radiant attitude, deep respect for others, energy and high quality work as traits that make her a special employee. She is an active volunteer in her community and especially at Green Grove Baptist Church, where she has been a member of the Usher’s Ministry and now serves as second vice president and state convention chair of the United Church Ushers Association of Michigan.

Jackson received the award alongside Lichtenberg. In her speech to the crowd of more than 100, Jackson thanked her daughter Yvonne and her “family” at the Institute of Gerontology. “I congratulate all the nominees of the award,” she said. “You are all so deserving. And I am especially grateful to Operation ABLE for their mature worker training programs and their philosophy that ability is ageless.”

Jackson’s nomination described her as “a morning cup of sunshine for all. Odessa represents the Institute of Gerontology with warmth and fidelity. Her social skills and work abilities are more than ‘ageless,’ they are ‘age-enhanced.’”

At the same event, WSU President Allan Gilmour received Operation ABLE’s Neal Shine Lifetime Achievement Award for his decision to “un-retire” a second time and guide the university through the difficult post-recession period.

Operation ABLE is a nonprofit organization founded in 1986 to help train and employ workers 40 and older through its Center for Working Families. It is affiliated with Spectrum Human Services and works with the AARP Foundation to expand services for adults 50 and older who have been hard hit by the economic downturn.

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The Institute of Gerontology researches the aging process, educates students in gerontology, and presents programs on aging issues relevant to professionals, caregivers and older adults in the community (www.iog.wayne.edu). The institute is part of the Division of Research at Wayne State University, one of the nation’s preeminent public research institutions in an urban setting. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Three studies conducted as part of Wayne State University’s Systems Biology of Epilepsy Project (SBEP) could result in new types of treatment for the disease and, as a bonus, for behavioral disorders as well.

The SBEP started out with funds from the President’s Research Enhancement Fund and spanned neurology, neuroscience, genetics and computational biology. It since has been supported by multiple National Institutes of Health-funded grants aimed at identifying the underlying causes of epilepsy, and it is uniquely integrated within the Comprehensive Epilepsy Program at the Wayne State School of Medicine and the Detroit Medical Center.

Under the guidance of Jeffrey Loeb, M.D., Ph.D., associate director of the Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics (CMMG) and professor of neurology, the project brings together researchers from different fields to create an interdisciplinary research program that targets the complex disease. The multifaceted program at Wayne State is like no other in the world, officials say, with two primary goals: improving clinical care and creating novel strategies for diagnosis and treatment of patients with epilepsy.

The three studies were published in high-impact journals and use human brain tissue research to identify new targets for drug development, generate a new animal model and identify a new class of drugs to treat the disease.
In the first study, “Layer-Specific CREB Target Gene Induction in Human Neocortical Epilepsy,” published recently in the Journal of Neuroscience, donated human brain samples were probed to identify 137 genes strongly associated with epileptic seizures.

Researchers then showed that the most common pathway is activated in very specific layers of the cortex, and that it’s associated with increased numbers of synapses in those areas. Because epilepsy is a disease of abnormal neuronal synchrony, the finding could explain why some brain regions produce clinical seizures.

“Higher density of synapses may explain how abnormal epileptic discharges, or spikes, are formed, and in what layer,” Loeb said, adding that localizing the exact layer of the brain in which that process occurs is useful both for understanding the mechanism and for developing therapeutics.

The first study, which identified a new drug target for epilepsy, precipitated a second study that has found such a drug.

In the second study, “Electrical, Molecular and Behavioral Effects of Interictal Spiking in the Rat,” published recently in Neurobiology of Disease, SBEP researchers found that the same brain layers in the rat are activated as in the human tissues and searched for a drug to target those layers. In fact, the first drug they tried, a compound called SL327 that has been used in nonhuman subjects to understand how memory works, “worked like a dream,” Loeb said.
“SL327 prevented spiking in rat brains,” he said, “which not only prevented seizures, but led to more normal behaviors as well.”

That finding led to collaborations between Loeb’s lab and Nash Boutros, M.D., professor of psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences, and the Belgian drug company UCB.

“Whereas animals that developed epileptic spiking became hyperactive, those treated with the drug and had less spiking in their brains were more like normal animals,” Loeb said. “Now whenever we screen for drugs for epilepsy, we look at behavior as well as epileptic activity.”

Noting that many seizure medicines currently are used to treat various psychiatric disorders, Loeb said the SBEP team’s latest round of work marks a “nice crossover” between psychiatry and neurology in the field of drugs related to epilepsy.

In the third study, just published in Genetics, researchers say they have found “fascinating interrelationships” between “junk” long noncoding RNA and normal RNA that are regulated by human brain activity. That work has the potential to be translated into new genetic treatments for epilepsy.

“This study shows how the human brain deals with half of the human genome in its most important function, electrical activity, using human brain tissue from patients with epilepsy to understand the basic molecular processes of how the brain works, and what’s unique about human brains compared to the brains of less-developed species,” Loeb said.

The third study, titled “Activity-Dependent Human Brain Coding/Noncoding Gene Regulatory Networks,” is a collaborative effort between Loeb’s lab and Leonard Lipovich, Ph.D., assistant professor of neurology and molecular medicine and genetics. It found that certain genes and their noncoding counterparts (which some researchers have called “junk”) are co-regulated, or turned on at the same time, with brain activity.

“This tells us that some of these noncoding genes may actually have functions in brain activity,” Loeb said. “In some, turning one on turns another one off. Some are regulatory and can be used to control plasticity genes — which are involved in memory, learning and behavior — with one of these novel, noncoding RNA genes.”

The synergy exhibited by the three studies, Loeb said, is testimony to the multidisciplinary nature of Wayne State’s systems biology platform, partly developed with a remarkable three-dimensional database created in cooperation with Farshad Fotouhi, Ph.D., dean of the College of Engineering, and Jing Hua, Ph.D., associate professor of computer science.

“SBEP is a cross-campus endeavor,” Loeb said. “These studies are the fruits of the labor of this consortium and only exist at WSU. The next steps will be translating these exciting findings into new treatments to prevent or even cure patients with epilepsy and other psychiatric disorders.”

The above studies were funded by the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), grant Nos. R01NS045207, R01Ns05058802, F30NS049776; by the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the NIH, grant No. 1R03DA0262-01; and by the State of Michigan Joe Young Funds to the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences, and were started with help from the WSU President’s Research Enhancement Fund.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

DETROIT — The patient-centered medical home (PCMH) model is an emerging team-based approach for primary health care. PCMH is aimed at improving timely access to care, providing continuity of care by a health care team and lowering health care costs. PCMH aims to alleviate future health problems through tailored health care that focuses on patient wellness and prevention.

Kai Yang, Ph.D., professor of industrial and systems engineering in the College of Engineering at Wayne State University, has received a collaborative research grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the project, “An Allocation Model with Dynamic Updates for Balanced Workload Distribution on Patient-Centered Medical Homes.” The project, funded collectively at $552,009 of which $220,009 has been allocated to Wayne State, is a collaboration with researchers from the University of Michigan and the University of Georgia. Yang is leading the project, which will focus on the Veterans Health Administration, the largest health care system in the U.S.

According to Yang, the project aims to develop a comprehensive health information technology data preparation strategy that will provide health care demand and supply portfolio data. In addition, the team will develop an adaptive discrete cluster-based statistical estimation model that can predict health care workload based on key patient attributes, such as diagnosis and treatment. The project will also create stochastic optimization models to aid in managing patient panels — the set of all patients assigned to a primary care physician — and staffing levels for PCMH teams.

“These models will provide dynamic updating rules for patient and staffing allocation with a random and migrating patient population in medical facilities,” said Yang. “We also aim to provide a real-time appointment scheduling system to improve daily operations through optimal patient allocation and staffing under random and changing patient demands for service.”

By developing a health care workload portfolio estimation model, a patient allocation model and a dynamic scheduling strategy, the research team will improve PCMH practices by assigning patients to provider team members so that providers’ time can be fully utilized and patients receive prompt, adequate and economical health care.

“We expect the results of this research will be implemented in hundreds of medical facilities across the U.S.,” said Yang. “In addition, the research will give undergraduate and graduate students, particularly underrepresented groups, the chance to participate in the research and various conferences stemming from this project. This additional learning opportunity for our students gives them real-world experience that will ultimately benefit their future careers.”

The National Science Foundation grant number for this award is 1233504.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

“This new partnership will train our veterinary technician students in the essential services they need to learn for their future career roles,” said Lisa Brossia, D.V.M., senior director and attending veterinarian of WSU’s Division of Laboratory Animal Resources. “In addition, we are providing dogs with critical care such as sterilization and vaccination, and other care they may need, including behavioral training. It is a win-win opportunity for our students, the shelters and the animals that we will be taking care of.”

According to Brossia, the goal is to prepare all animals for adoption. “Some of the animals may be in our care for just a few days, while others may need a bit more intense care for various health issues or behavioral training,” said Brossia. “This is an important element of educating our students, and also allows us give back to the community through the care we are providing these animals.”

Since 1973, the Veterinary Technology Program has prepared graduates to become an integral part of veterinary medical teams in private veterinary hospitals, as well as nature centers, zoos and more. WCCCD teaches all of the non-animal courses, handles course registrations and confers graduates with their degrees. WSU teaches all animal-related courses, and provides direction of the program and a major portion of the faculty, facilities and supplies.

Stephanie Bulger, WCCCD’s vice chancellor of educational affairs and distance learning, said the district supports the new initiative because community engagement and service learning are an integral part of the educational experience for students.

“For many years, Wayne County Community College District has partnered with Wayne State University to offer the high-quality Veterinary Technology Program,” said Bulger. “Our graduates consistently achieve high pass rates due to the rigor of the program, well-equipped facilities and excellent faculty.”

To learn more about the Veterinary Technology Program, visit http://www.dlar.wayne.edu/vtp/.

For animal adoption information from the four partner animal shelters, visit http://detroitdogrescue.com, http://brownstown-mi.org/adopt_a_pet.html, http://www.southgatemi.org/index.php?idpage=60 and http://www.adoptapet.com/shelter81630-pets.html.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research institutions in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, the state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

DETROIT — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has awarded Wayne State University’s School of Social Work a three-year, $1,049,223 grant for researching the factors that facilitate and discourage intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetration among middle school and high school youth.

Led by Poco Kernsmith, Ph.D., associate professor of social work, and Joanne Smith-Darden, Ph.D., assistant professor of social work at WSU, in collaboration with Roger Kernsmith, Ph.D., professor of sociology, anthropology and criminology at Eastern Michigan University, the study will follow two cohorts of students from Detroit metropolitan area middle schools and high schools. Participating students will be surveyed in each of three years, starting with their sixth and tenth grade of school, respectively. Researchers will explore modifiable risk and protective factors — including the complex interrelationships of individual, relational, school, community and societal processes — that lead to healthy and as well as violent behaviors, such as stalking and physical, sexual and emotional abuse.

Research has shown that between 9 and 30 percent of high school students experience IPV. According to Poco Kernsmith, the three-year research project is innovative in several ways. First, it will examine IPV through a “gender-sensitive” lens that is largely absent from similar studies on IPV, and which considers differences in the context and precursors to IPV perpetration by males and females. Next, the study is responsive to the changing nature of relationships, in which lines between friendships, dating and committed relationships are blurred. Finally, given reports that one in four teens has been the victim of technologically facilitated abuse, the research will consider how technology and social media provide both opportunities and challenges for the development of healthy relationships.

Poco Kernsmith said the study should help inform IPV prevention and intervention protocols as well as school policies.

“Youth are forming attitudes and developing behaviors that they will carry into adulthood,” Poco Kernsmith said. “By learning about the supports in the family, school and community that reduce the risk for violent and abusive behaviors at a young age, we can prevent violence across the life span.”

The CDC grant number for this award is 1 U01 CE002115-01.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

In describing the design, Oupicky said, “Published reports suggest that certain drugs, called CXCR4 antagonists, can limit tumor growth and metastasis in various cancers. This makes the CXCR4 receptor a suitable target for the development of combination nanocarriers that control cancer metastasis and can deliver a second knock-out punch.”

To better treat metastatic cancer, Oupicky and his team propose to use the novel CXCR4 inhibiting nanocarriers, which show promise limiting cancer cell invasion, to deliver small interfering RNA (siRNA) molecules to the interior of the targeted cancer cells. “The siRNA molecules can disable specific genes that cancer needs for its growth,” said Jing Li, Ph.D., a senior member of Oupicky’s laboratory and the lead author of the research article. “This simultaneous therapeutic effect and siRNA delivery combined in a single nanocarrier will enhance the anticancer and anti-metastatic effect in different types of cancer.”

The proposed combination nanocarriers are intended ultimately to benefit patients with metastatic cancer as well as patients with early stages of the disease.

“We anticipate that the interim outcomes of our study will confirm activity and safety of the nanocarriers in a preclinical model of metastatic breast cancer,” said Oupicky. “We anticipate several years of additional development and preclinical evaluation before achieving first patient-related outcomes.”

The study is supported in part by a research enhancement grant from WSU’s Office of the Vice President for Research and a grant from the National Institutes of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering of the National Institutes of Health (R21-EB014570). This technology is protected by the WSU Tech ID: 11-1068. For additional information, please visit the WSU Innovation Catalogue at http://wayne.technologypublisher.com/.

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The Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, a founding college of Wayne State University, is committed to advancing the health and well-being of society through the preparation of highly skilled health care practitioners, and through research to improve health care practices and treatment from the urban to global levels. Learn more at http://cphs.wayne.edu.

Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Yong Xu, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering in the College of Engineering, has developed a simple technology compatible with silicon-on-insulator (SOI) complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) processes for making flexible electronics. “A Silicon-On-Insulator Complementary-Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Compatible Flexible Electronics Technology,” published recently in Applied Physics Letters, describes the project, which was part of a National Science Foundation effort.

Flexible electronics have attracted a lot of attention for their enormous potential in many important applications, such as wearable health monitoring devices and medical implants. While a number of approaches to making flexible sensors or electronics have been developed over the last two decades, Xu said those technologies cannot take full advantage of mainstream CMOS processes.

Xu’s technology has an advantage over existing methods, such as direct fabrication on flexible substrate and transfer printing, in that it is SOI-CMOS compatible. It fabricates high-performance and high-density CMOS circuits onto SOI wafers, and then uses two layers of Parylene C (a polymer), one of which is perforated, to bond them to flexible substrates.

The lamination of the electronics between those parylene layers offers the additional benefit of protection from environmental moisture. Xu said Parylene C, which creates a flexible skin, already has been used in other medical applications and is well tolerated by human tissue.
His process allows more high-performance electronic devices to be attached to the flexible surface by eliminating the transfer printing step, in which electronics are removed from a harder surface and integrated into a softer one. Additionally, the process allows various sensors and microfluidic devices to be integrated into the flexible substrate.

Xu said his technology could result in retinal prostheses that cause less tissue irritation and therefore work better and longer, as well as more comfortable wearable health monitoring devices. Other possible applications include balloon catheters and stents.

“The ultimate goal is to develop flexible and stretchable systems integrated with electronics, sensors, microfluidics, and power sources, which will have a profound impact on personalized medicine, telemedicine and health care delivery,” Xu said.

Xu’s project was supported by National Science Foundation Grant No. 0747620.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Detroit

Upon completion in 2003, the HGP produced an almost complete list of the 3 billion pairs of chemical letters in the DNA that embodies the human genetic code, but revealed nothing on how this blueprint works. Five years of concerted effort by more than 440 researchers in 32 labs around the world has changed that.

The group, working collaboratively in the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) Project, has produced the first view of how the human genome actually does its job. Researchers across the United States, United Kingdom, Spain, Singapore and Japan performed more than 1,600 sets of experiments on 147 types of tissue with technologies standardized across the consortium.

Among them are WSU Assistant Professor of Molecular Medicine and Genetics and of Neurology Leonard Lipovich, Ph.D., and his team at WSU’s Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics.

Two groundbreaking articles highlighting results from his lab are included in a coordinated publication released Sept. 5. It includes one main integrative paper and five other papers in the journal Nature, 18 papers in Genome Research and six papers in Genome Biology.

The experiments relied on innovative uses of next-generation sequencing technologies, which had only become available around the start of the ENCODE production effort five years ago. ENCODE generated more than 15 trillion bytes of raw data and consumed the equivalent of more than 300 years of computer time to analyze.

Lipovich’s contributions, on long non-coding ribonucleic acids, or lncRNAs, could lead to new therapeutics for cancer and other diseases.

“Long non-coding RNA genes comprise half of human genes. Most medical, therapeutic work so far has focused on normal, protein-coding genes. So, we – working as part of a multinational team of scientists - have just expanded, twofold, the set of genes that can be therapeutic targets,” he said.

During the ENCODE study, researchers found that more than 80 percent of the human genome sequence is linked to biological function. They mapped more than 4 million regulatory regions where proteins specifically interact with DNA with exquisite specificity. These findings represent a significant advance in understanding the precise and complex controls over the expression of genetic information within a cell.

The findings bring into much sharper focus the continually active genome in which proteins routinely turn genes on and off using sites that are sometimes at great distances from the genes they regulate; where sites on a chromosome interact with each other, also sometimes at great distances; where chemical modifications of DNA influence gene expression; and where various functional forms of RNA, a form of nucleic acid related to DNA, help regulate the whole system.

“For many years people pooh-poohed our field, saying that our long non-coding RNAs are either junk or conventional protein-coding messenger RNAs that we failed to properly understand. We now demonstrate, using an experimental approach, that they are really non-protein-coding (never translated into protein) RNAs in human cells,” Lipovich said.

Lipovich, together with his colleague James B. Brown at the University of California, Berkeley, is a joint last author on a paper on whole-genome translation testing of human lncRNAs included in the September 2012 issue of Genome Research, the genetics and genomics field’s leading peer-reviewed journal. The paper places Wayne State on the international genomics radar, amidst an elite group of institutions – including the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University – whose pioneering collaborative work is defining the current phase of ENCODE. The September issue is dedicated to the latest phase of results from the ENCODE consortium.

The research project is supported by the National Human Genome Research Institute. In 2003, ENCODE’s goal of identifying all functional elements contained in the human genome seemed just as daunting as sequencing the human genome was in 1990. ENCODE was launched as a pilot project. By 2007, NHGRI concluded that the technology had sufficiently evolved for a full-scale project, in which the institute invested approximately $123 million during five years. In addition, NHGRI has devoted about $40 million to the ENCODE pilot project, plus approximately $125 million in ENCODE-related technology development and model organism research since 2003.

Lipovich’s paper sets a new standard for how to integrate RNA data with protein data in a way that has never been done. “My lab, through its computational work here at Wayne, did a vital part of the integration, developing a method that can be used in any future studies that intersect protein and RNA data genome-wide,” he said. “Unusual, rare lncRNA-encoded proteins, such as those we found, could be the results of incorrect lncRNA processing by cells in diseased tissues, and hence a huge resource of biomarkers for diagnostics.”

Data can be accessed through the ENCODE project portal (www.encodeproject.org), the University of California at Santa Cruz genome browser (http://genome.ucsc.edu/ENCODE/), the National Center for Biotechnology Information (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/info/ENCODE.html/) and the European Bioinformatics Institute (http://useast.ensembl.org/Homo_sapiens/encode.html?redirect=mirror;source=www.ensembl.org).

“The ENCODE catalog is like Google Maps for the human genome,” said Elise Feingold, Ph.D., an NHGRI program director who helped start the ENCODE Project. “Simply by selecting the magnification in Google Maps, you can see countries, states, cities, streets, even individual intersections, and by selecting different features, you can get directions, see street names and photos, and get information about traffic and even weather. The ENCODE maps allow researchers to inspect the chromosomes, genes, functional elements and individual nucleotides in the human genome in much the same way.”

Since the same topics were addressed in different ways in different papers, the new website, http://www.nature.com/encode/, will allow anyone to follow a topic through all of the papers in the ENCODE publication set in which it appears by clicking on the relevant “thread” at the Nature ENCODE explorer page.

The ENCODE data are rapidly becoming a fundamental resource for researchers to help understand human biology and disease. More than 100 papers using ENCODE data have already been published by investigators who were not part of the ENCODE Project. For example, researchers studying the genetic basis of human diseases are using ENCODE to sort through the many disease-associated variants, or markers, that map not only to protein-coding regions of the genome, but also to the non-coding regions of the genome, the vast tracts of sequence between genes where ENCODE has identified many regulatory sites, in an effort to determine which specific variants contribute to disease.

“As much as nine out of 10 times, disease-linked genetic variants are not in protein-coding regions,” said Mike Pazin, Ph.D., an ENCODE program director at NHGRI. “So what does that mean? The answer is going to turn out to be that some of the time, the genetic changes causing the disorder are in fact within regulatory regions, or switches, that affect how much protein is produced or when the protein is produced, rather than affecting the structure of the protein itself. The medical condition will occur because the gene is aberrantly turned on or turned off or abnormal amounts of the protein are made. Far from being ‘junk’ DNA, this regulatory DNA clearly makes important contributions to human disease.”

An additional paper in September’s Genome Research co-written by Lipovich, “The GENCODE catalogue of human long non-coding RNAs: Analysis of their gene structure, evolution and expression,” presents the most authoritative reference catalog of noncoding-RNA genes ever constructed. Noncoding-RNA genes exemplify a huge category of sequence that was, until recently, thought of as ‘junk’ DNA.

“It will be used by the entire international ENCODE consortium as a foundation for functional studies linking this exciting new class of RNAs to human health and disease,” said Dr. Lipovich.

Along with Dr. Brown at Berkeley, Lipovich is a middle author on this large, international effort from ENCODE’s Analysis Working Group.

The ENCODE AWG is open to all academic, government and private sector scientists interested in participating in an open process to facilitate the comprehensive identification of the functional elements in the human genome sequence and who agree to a variety of criteria.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Founded in 1868, the Wayne State University School of Medicine is the largest single-campus medical school in the nation, with more than 1,000 medical students. In addition to undergraduate medical education, the school offers master’s degree, Ph.D. and M.D.-Ph.D. programs in 14 areas of basic science to about 400 students annually.

The 15-member board advises the governor and legislature on the coordination and administration of state programs and changes to federal and state programs related to aging. Gov. Snyder expressed confidence that, “The varied backgrounds and years of extensive experiences these outstanding individuals bring will effectively support the continued mission and service of the commission.”

Rencher was vice president of programs for the Detroit Urban League, and director of Detroit’s Youth Initiative and Matrix Human Services. She is president of the Boulevard Temple Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center’s Family Council, and a member of the National Council on Aging and the Aging Services Consortium of Detroit. She sits on the community advisory boards of the Detroit Area Agency on Aging and the Henry Ford Health System Center for Senior Independence.

Rencher has clear goals for her three-year appointment, including substantive policy changes at the state level to make it easier for older adults to access services. “I had to find and navigate numerous systems to help my parents,” she said. “I want older adults and caregivers to know they can rely on our network to provide them with significant services in an easy and timely manner.”

She will make research from the Institute of Gerontology available to the commission as appropriate, especially data from the Seniors Count! project that identifies trends among older adults in Southeast Michigan. “I am honored to be on the leading edge of identifying the major issues that affect successful aging,” she said.

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The Institute of Gerontology researches the aging process, educates students in gerontology, and presents programs on aging issues relevant to professionals, caregivers and older adults in the community (www.iog.wayne.edu). The Institute is part of the Division of Research at Wayne State University, one of the nation’s preeminent public research institutions in an urban setting. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Xinguang Chen, M.D., Ph.D., professor of pediatrics in the School of Medicine, and Feng Lin, Ph.D., professor of electrical and computer engineering in the College of Engineering, have found a way to provide policymakers with some hard evidence.

Most adult smokers in the United States report trying their first cigarette before age 18, according to government statistics, with more than 80 percent of established smokers starting before high school graduation. Earlier initiation has been shown to be associated with greater smoking frequency and number of cigarettes smoked per day.

Only about 5 percent of established smokers ever quit completely, Chen said, making prevention in adolescence a critical and strategic priority for tobacco control.

“The number of smokers year to year at any given time is an accumulation of past experience,” he said. “Our methodology has the power to glean that information from one cross-sectional survey, overcoming the limit to track people over time.”

School-, community- and family-based prevention programs have been effective, he said, but evaluating their success at the national level has been a challenge because of the high cost associated with longitudinal data collection and blank groups for comparison.

“We get so much national survey data every year, but we cannot see the real impact of these programs, or get a feeling for the accumulation and meaning of smoking prevention knowledge they pass along,” Chen said.

In “Exposure to School and Community Based Prevention Programs and Reductions in Cigarette Smoking Among Adolescents in the United States 2000-08,” supported by funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health (grant No. R01 DA022730) and published recently in the journal Evaluation and Program Planning, Chen and Lin describe a methodology and an analytical approach capable of extracting longitudinal information from cross-sectional survey data.

Based on a probabilistic discrete event system, the method requires just one wave of data to assess behavior progression. It treats individuals in multiyear cross-sectional surveys as a series of snapshots of a stable system, overcoming the challenges to previous methods.

Chen and Lin’s team examined data on youths age 12 to 17 from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. They found that fewer of those exposed to prevention programs started smoking, more of them quit if they did start and fewer ex-smokers resumed the habit.

WSU researchers also found that funding cuts made by states to smoking prevention programs from 2003 to 2005 affected those numbers adversely, Chen said, possibly because less money meant that fewer new school and community personnel were trained in how to conduct smoking prevention programs.

Researchers noted a time lag of one to two years between the funding cuts and behavior reversals.

The latter point takes on renewed importance with the beginning of an economic recovery, Chen said. Because state spending on prevention has increased slowly since the time of the cuts, he expects smoking startup, quit and relapse numbers to reverse course.

Chen realizes that policymakers have a number of health-related issues to consider in the funding allocation process, but he said that given the demonstrated, widespread ill effects of smoking on rates of cancer and heart disease, smoking prevention should remain at the top of the priority list because of the health care costs that can be avoided.

“It’s an investment,” he said. “Given the financial difficulties the nation is facing, policymakers should consider the potentially powerful impact offered by relatively low-cost nationwide substance use prevention campaigns.”

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Supported by a two-year, $418,000 exploratory/developmental grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health, the researchers will capture human fetal cells for genetic study within the first two months of pregnancy using a newly developed, safe, noninvasive retrieval technique similar to a Pap test.

D. Randall Armant, Ph.D., and Michael P. Diamond, M.D., professors of obstetrics and gynecology in Wayne State’s School of Medicine, are the principal investigators of the study. Susan Land, Ph.D., associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology, is a co-investigator.

Titled “Genetic Analysis of Human First Trimester Trophoblast in Ongoing Pregnancies,” the project targets cells called trophoblasts, which surround the blastocyst, a cluster of cells that results from successful fertilization. Researchers are particularly interested in “invasive” trophoblasts, which attach the blastocyst to the uterine wall; the cells become the placenta and the membranes that nourish and protect the developing organism.

Such cells carry genetic material from the fetus. Armant’s team will gather them through transcervical sampling, a method that uses a cytobrush inserted into the cervix. Researchers believe the technique is less intrusive than previously used methods, yields intact fetal cells and can be done as early as six to 12 weeks; doctors typically must wait 10 to 14 weeks to use other methods, which can carry more risk to mothers and fetuses.

“The earlier you get the information, the more time the doctor has to manage whatever problems are coming up during or after the mother’s pregnancy,” Armant said. “It also gives the parents more time to make decisions about the pregnancy.”

Researchers will isolate trophoblasts using immunomagnetic nanotechnology, taking advantage of unique proteins on the surface of fetal cells. Highly sensitive genetic tools capable of analyzing single cells will verify the fetal origin of captured cells before their DNA is analyzed for chromosome number.

Armant said that tests based on fetal cells obtained from the cervix eventually could alert doctors to things like ectopic pregnancy, miscarriage, preterm labor, poor fetal growth, preeclampsia, fetal Rh incompatibility and chromosome number disorders, like Down syndrome. It also could help detect inherited genetic diseases, such as muscular dystrophy, sickle cell anemia and hemophilia.

The goal is to determine if placental cells obtained from the cervix accurately represent the chromosomal status of the fetus.

“Development of this diagnostic platform for the detection of chromosome number disorders could establish an innovative approach for prenatal genetic testing that would provide immense opportunities for improving the health of mothers and their babies,” Armant said.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.
 

Announced Aug. 1, the plan promotes the adoption of universal cervical length screening by ultrasound and the use of progesterone in women identified as high risk for premature birth. The use of progesterone in women with a short cervix can reduce the rate of preterm birth — the leading factor in infant mortality — by as much as 45 percent, according to research findings published by the PRB. The study, released last year, was conducted at more than 40 centers worldwide. Roberto Romero, M.D., branch chief of the PRB, was the principal investigator on behalf of NICHD/NIH. Wayne State was the lead center in the trial, led by Sonia Hassan, M.D., associate dean for maternal, perinatal and child health at WSU.

The ultrasound examination is simple to perform, painless and can be performed between the 19th and 24th weeks of pregnancy. Pregnant women with a cervix less than 20 millimeters are at very high risk for preterm delivery. If a woman is found to have a short cervix, she can be treated with vaginal progesterone. Treatment with vaginal progesterone reduced the rate of preterm birth, neonatal morbidity and respiratory distress syndrome. Women can self-administer a once-daily dose.

The recommendation that the state adopt the progesterone protocol was first introduced by Valerie M. Parisi, M.D., M.P.H., M.B.A., dean of the WSU School of Medicine, during the state’s Call to Action to Reduce and Prevent Infant Mortality Summit in October 2011. The summit, convened by Gov. Rick Snyder to address the state’s high rate of infant mortality, brought together hundreds of health care providers and stakeholders to develop recommendations to combat the problem.

“The strategies introduced by the state today will go a long way in dramatically reducing the state’s infant mortality rate, which remains too high,” Parisi said. “The key recommendations were developed through medical research conducted at the Perinatology Research Branch at Wayne State University, which demonstrates the branch’s significant importance to the people of Michigan and the Detroit region.”

The MDCH, headed by Director Olga Dazzo, said the strategies were selected because they reflect evidence-based practices that will reduce and prevent infant deaths.

While the 2010 state infant mortality rate set a new record low at 7.1 deaths per 1,000 live births, Michigan’s rate remains higher than the national average of 6.1 deaths per 1,000 live births, according to the MDCH.

Premature birth is the leading cause of infant mortality in Michigan. The rate of premature birth increased more than 10 percent between 1998 and 2008. One of every eight babies born in Michigan — 295 in an average week — is born prematurely. And Michigan’s rate of preterm birth (12.7 percent) exceeds the national average of 12.3 percent.

The new practices call for the state to partner with Wayne State University and the Detroit Medical Center to share progesterone therapy practices and develop protocol and implementation statewide. The state also will coordinate with the Medical Services Administration to assure benefit coverage for universal ultrasound screening of pregnant women and progesterone administration for Medicaid covered pregnancies.

“The implementation of universal cervical ultrasound screening for all pregnant women to identify women at risk for premature birth, and the use of vaginal progesterone, will be critical in the plan to reduce the rate of preterm birth and infant mortality,” said Hassan.

Statewide universal ultrasound screening, Parisi said, would be cost effective if the scan costs no more than $186. With Michigan’s 110,000 births annually, the potential cost savings would be $19,603,380 (in 2010 dollars) for every 100,000 women screened.

Premature births are costly. Nationally, preterm birth is a $26 billion annual problem. The CDC reports that preterm births topped the list of the most expensive hospitalizations in Michigan in 2007. Each premature birth in the state costs an average of $102,103 at the time of discharge from the hospital. That is 14 times the cost of a normal birth.

The state’s other strategies include promoting the adoption of policies to eliminate medically unnecessary deliveries before the 39th week, promoting safe infant sleep practices to prevent suffocation, expanding home-visiting programs to support vulnerable women and infants, programs to reduce unintended pregnancies, and weaving social determinants of health into all its strategies to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in infant mortality.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research institutions in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

B cells, said Robert Lisak, M.D., professor of neurology at Wayne State and lead author of the study, are a subset of lymphocytes (a type of circulating white blood cell) that mature to become plasma cells and produce immunoglobulins, proteins that serve as antibodies. The B cells appear to have other functions, including helping to regulate other lymphocytes, particularly T cells, and helping maintain normal immune function when healthy.

In patients with MS, the B cells appear to attack the brain and spinal cord, possibly because there are substances produced in the nervous system and the meninges — the covering of the brain and spinal cord — that attract them. Once within the meninges or central nervous system, Lisak said, the activated B cells secrete one or more substances that do not seem to be immunoglobulins but that damage oligodendrocytes, the cells that produce a protective substance called myelin.

The B cells appear to be more active in patients with MS, which may explain why they produce these toxic substances and, in part, why they are attracted to the meninges and the nervous system.

The brain, for the most part, can be divided into gray and white areas. Neurons are located in the gray area, and the white parts are where neurons send their axons — similar to electrical cables carrying messages — to communicate with other neurons and bring messages from the brain to the muscles. The white parts of the brain are white because oligodendrocytes make myelin, a cholesterol-rich membrane that coats the axons. The myelin’s function is to insulate the axons, akin to the plastic coating on an electrical cable. In addition, the myelin speeds communication along axons and makes that communication more reliable. When the myelin coating is attacked and degraded, impulses — messages from the brain to other parts of the body — can “leak” and be derailed from their target. Oligodendrocytes also seem to engage in other activities important to nerve cells and their axons.

The researchers took B cells from the blood of seven patients with relapsing-remitting MS and from four healthy patients. They grew the cells in a medium, and after removing the cells from the culture collected material produced by the cells. After adding the material produced by the B cells, including the cells that produce myelin, to the brain cells of animal models, the scientists found significantly more oligodendrocytes from the MS group died when compared to material produced by the B cells from the healthy control group. The team also found differences in other brain cells that interact with oligodendrocytes in the brain.

“We think this is a very significant finding, particularly for the damage to the cerebral cortex seen in patients with MS, because those areas seem to be damaged by material spreading into the brain from the meninges, which are rich in B cells adjacent to the areas of brain damage,” Lisak said.

The team is now applying for grants from several sources to conduct further studies to identify the toxic factor or factors produced by B cells responsible for killing oligodendrocytes. Identification of the substance could lead to new therapeutic methods that could switch off the oligodendrocyte-killing capabilities of B cells, which, in turn, would help protect myelin from attacks.

The study, “Secretory products of multiple sclerosis B cells are cytotoxic to oligodendroglia in vitro,” was published in the May 2012 edition of the Journal of Neuroimmunology and was recently featured in a National Multiple Sclerosis Society bulletin. Other WSU researchers involved in the study include Joyce Benjamins, Ph.D., professor and associate chair of neurology; Samia Ragheba, Ph.D., assistant professor of neurology and immunology & microbiology; Liljana Nedelkoskaa, research assistant in neurology; and Jennifer Barger, research assistant in neurology; as well as researchers at the Montreal Neurological Institute and McGill University in Montreal. The research was supported by a National Multiple Sclerosis Society Collaborative MS Research Center Award, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research institutions in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.
 

DETROIT

“Trust builds commitment and involvement in the job,” said Eric Lambert, Ph.D., professor and chair of criminal justice in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, “but lack of trust leads to burnout and stresses people out.”

A correctional facility employee himself before becoming an academic, Lambert developed his study of staff members at a private Midwestern juvenile detention facility after learning that only two other researchers have tried to address the effects of trust in such a setting. Titled “Examining the Relationship Between Supervisor and Management Trust and Job Burnout Among Correctional Staff,” the results were published recently in the journal Criminal Justice and Behavior.

Lambert’s team defined burnout as consisting of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and feelings of being ineffective at work. They surveyed 200 respondents, who ranged in age from 19 to 68 years old and had been on the job from one to 53 months, to find out if trust in supervisors and in higher management had any effect on each of those characteristics.

Researchers indeed found that higher trust levels almost across the board resulted in lower reported burnout characteristics in employees. The only exception was the effect of trust in management, which seemed to have no bearing on how employees perceived their effectiveness on the job. Lambert said that might be because higher level managers are too far removed from day-to-day operations to have much interaction with employees.

Employees who trusted their supervisors, however, saw themselves as more effective at work. But the disparity in trust and perceived work effectiveness doesn’t mean management should be ignored in the workplace, as it still is associated with dimensions of burnout, Lambert said.

“This suggests the need to increase both forms of trust in the correctional workplace, and not to ignore one or both,” he said.

While trust is important in any work setting, Lambert said it’s especially so in corrections because of the high level of personal contact.

“Prisons need human beings to operate,” he said. “You cannot use machines; it’s not like an assembly line. Everything you deal with involves interaction with inmates, co-workers and supervisors.”

Lambert said his study opens the door for trust research at other types of correctional facilities, but believes the findings will translate and affirm the role of trust levels as a key factor in burnout. The next step — which can be taken without costing a lot of money or resources — is for correctional facilities to develop ways to build trust.

Responsibility for that process, he said, lies with supervisors and higher level administrators, who can accomplish it by holding themselves to high ethical standards and being genuinely considerate and concerned for employees’ welfare. Listening and allowing staff input into their jobs and organization is another way to build positive relationships.

Trust also can be built by focusing on organizational justice, which researchers say comprises two aspects, distributive justice and procedural justice. The first refers to perceptions of fair and just organizational outcomes, such as pay, promotions, evaluations, assignments, workload, rewards and punishments. The second refers to perceptions that processes and procedures used to reach those outcomes are fair, just and transparent.

If that sounds similar to other situations, Lambert said, it’s because the principles are the same.

“Trust is a basic human need,” he said. “It’s part of the foundation of any good relationship, whether it’s work, romantic or social.”

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

DETROIT

In the study, “The Development of Brain Systems Associated with Successful Memory Retrieval of Scenes,” Ofen and her collaborative team tested the development of neural underpinnings of memory from childhood to young adulthood. The team of researchers exposed participants to pictures of scenes and then showed them the same scenes mixed with new ones and asked them to judge whether each picture was presented earlier. Participants made retrieval judgments while researchers collected images of their brains with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Using this method, the researchers were able to see how the brain remembers. “Our results suggest that cortical regions related to attentional or strategic control show the greatest developmental changes for memory retrieval,” said Ofen.

The researchers said that older participants used the cortical regions more than younger participants when correctly retrieving past experiences.

“We were interested to see whether there are changes in the connectivity of regions in the brain that support memory retrieval,” Ofen added. “We found changes in connectivity of memory-related regions. In particular, the developmental change in connectivity between regions was profound even without a developmental change in the recruitment of those regions, suggesting that functional brain connectivity is an important aspect of developmental changes in the brain.”

This study marks the first time that the development of connectivity within memory systems in the brain has been tested, and the results suggest that the brain continues to rearrange connections to achieve adult-like performance during development.

Ofen and her research team plan to continue research in this area, focused on modeling brain network connectivity, and applying these methods to study abnormal brain development.

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This research was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health; grant number R01-MH-080344.

Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research institutions in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.
 

DETROIT

Donna Kashian, Ph.D., assistant professor of biological sciences in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS), said the problem is especially significant in distressed urban environments, where efforts to change behaviors often confront deep-seated cultural preferences and people's own interpretation of risk.

To meet those challenges, she and fellow WSU researchers Andrea Sankar, professor of anthropology, CLAS, and Mark Luborsky, director of aging and health disparities research at the Institute of Gerontology and professor of anthropology and gerontology, have undertaken what they call “Improving Community Awareness for Detroit River Fish Consumption Advisories.” This health intervention program is supported by a $95,000 grant from the Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation. The program has funded the hiring of River Walkers, partners from the local community who explain to anglers and others the importance of choosing less-contaminated fish.

Detroit River fish have been shown to be contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dioxin and mercury, but Kashian said a high percentage of the first two chemicals can be removed by cutting off the fat before eating the fish. Mercury is stored in the meat, she said, and cannot be removed from the filet.

Many local anglers learned to fish from their parents, relatives and friends, Kashian said, and while some are at least partially aware of that information, it still is news to others. Compounding the issue is the fact that many river anglers often share their catches with neighbors, friends or relatives.

The Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH) has used River Walker intervention successfully along the Saginaw and Tittabawassee rivers. For more than 40 years, MDCH officials have been overseeing the Michigan Fish Advisory program; since 2009 they have been working with WSU researchers to provide fish advisory education and outreach in the Detroit area with funding from small federal grants. The use of community members has been well documented by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as particularly successful in changing risk behaviors related to chronic illnesses and infectious diseases.

Based on that success, Kashian hopes the project will provide direct health benefits to some 5,000 Detroit River anglers and their families over the next two years. An advisory group has identified popular fishing spots where River Walkers will talk to anglers and provide information on eating safe fish. They will visit two to three fishing sites per day over 16 weeks to discuss types of fish caught and eaten, as well as tell anglers about fish advisories and how to prepare fish safely.

River Walkers will participate in community events such as Detroit Metro Youth Day, where information will be provided to Detroit’s young people and their families.

Kashian’s team also will determine the effectiveness of direct communication of health information compared to sign-posted health advisories to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. They will use the results of their evaluation to develop effective methods of achieving behavior change related to eating contaminated fish.

“Our message is, ‘Enjoy fishing on the river. It’s a great sport, but choose fish that are safer to eat,’” Kashian said.

She is particularly excited about another portion of the study in which interviewers will get to know a small group of anglers to learn more about their fishing habits and observe firsthand their fish distribution network and preparation techniques.

“Our objective is to provide anglers with information they need to make informed, health-protective choices about eating fish,” Kashian said. “Our vision is to use these insights to guide behavior changes that promote healthier Detroit residents.

“This will help protect the health of urban anglers who depend upon local fish as a food source. We’re just trying to give them information to help them choose fish that are healthier to eat.”

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Detroit

In a study funded by Health Enhancement Products of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., Smiti Gupta, Ph.D., assistant professor in the department of nutrition and food science in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, has found that dietary intake of ProAlgaZyme increased the level of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) in an animal model.

While medications for the control of high plasma cholesterol levels such as statins and numerous dietary supplements primarily function by lowering levels of low-density lipoproteins (LDL), or “bad cholesterol,” Gupta’s research explores the effects of raising levels of HDL, or “good cholesterol,” which work in part by carrying cholesterol out of the arterial wall.

Results of her study, titled “ProAlgaZyme and its Sub-fractions Increase Plasma HDL-Cholesterol via Up Regulation of ApoA1, ABCA1 and SRB1 and Inhibition of CETP in Hypercholesterolemic Hamsters,” were published recently in the Journal of Nutrition and Dietary Supplements.

“The cholesterol mechanism is crucial to heart disease,” Gupta said. “Very few agents increase good cholesterol, but we found that this algae extract does. The ratio of total to HDL cholesterol improved significantly. This result, if replicated in humans, would be consistent with a decreased risk of heart disease.”

ProAlgaZyme, a clear liquid, was administered as part of the drinking fluid over four weeks. In addition to increasing HDL levels, the group found that it also changed the expression of genes involved in the reverse cholesterol transport mechanism. And while they don’t know exactly how it will function in humans, Gupta said other research suggests a similar outcome.

“Its biological effect over time and toxic effects, if any, need to be further investigated in a long-term study in an animal model before testing its effects in humans,” she said. “But this is a step in the right direction, since increased HDL is considered an important therapeutic target for improvement of the lipid profile and thus reduction of the risk for cardiovascular disease.”

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

A team of physicists from Wayne State made important contributions to the CMS experiment. The WSU team is led by Paul Karchin, Ph.D. and Robert Harr, Ph.D., professors in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Team members include Caroline Milstene,Ph.D., adjunct professor of physics, Mark Mattson, Ph.D., assistant professor research, Alexandre Sakharov, Ph.D., research associate, Alfredo Gutierrez, research engineer and Ph.D. students Christopher Clarke, Sowjanya Gollapinni, Chamath Kottachchi, Pramod Lamichhane and Kevin Siehl.

WSU team members are located at three key locations around the world: the CERN laboratory in Geneva, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois and at Wayne State’s campus. The WSU team contributed to the 24/7 operation of the experiment and analysis of the data. Team members became experts with different parts of the experimental apparatus including the endcap muon detector, the hadron calorimeter and the high-level trigger computing system.

"The results are preliminary but the 5 sigma signal at around 125 GeV we’re seeing is dramatic,” said Joe Incandela, CMS experiment spokesperson. “This is indeed a new particle. We know it must be a boson and it’s the heaviest boson ever found. The implications are very significant and it is precisely for this reason that we must be extremely diligent in all of our studies and cross-checks."

The results presented today are preliminary. They are based on data collected in 2011 and 2012, with the 2012 data still under analysis. Publication of the analyses shown today is expected around the end of July. A more complete picture of today’s observations will emerge later this year after the LHC provides the experiments with more data.

“WSU team members are thrilled to be a part of the historic accomplishment announced today,” said Karchin. “We are excited to embark on new studies exploring the properties of the new phenomenon and the search for new particles that likely accompany it.”

The next step will be to determine the precise nature of the particle and its significance for understanding the universe. “

"The Higgs boson is the last piece of a theory established nearly a half century ago,” said Harr. “It plays a unique role in the theory and therefore we must see if what is found is the Higgs boson or something else.”

This includes seeing if its properties are as expected for the long-sought Higgs boson or learning if it is something more exotic. The Standard Model describes the fundamental particles from which humans, and every visible thing in the universe, are made, and the forces acting between them. All the matter that can be seen, however, appears to be no more than about 4 percent of the total. A more exotic version of the Higgs particle could be a bridge to understanding the 96 percent of the universe that remains obscure.

Positive identification of the new particle’s characteristics will take considerable time and data. But whatever form the Higgs particle takes, Wayne State researchers can say for sure that our knowledge of the fundamental structure of matter is about to take a major step forward.

Drs. Harr and Karchin from Wayne State University are available to discuss these discoveries with reporters on July 4th.

Dr. Harr can be reached at 313-702-1804.
Dr. Karchin can be reached at 313-671-7871.

For additional assistance on July 4th, contact Julie O’Connor, director of Research Communications at Wayne State University at 734-748-4207.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research institutions in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Emily Martin, Ph.D., assistant professor of pharmacy practice in the Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, has begun interviewing people hospitalized with influenza to study how weight impacts their illness, response to treatment, and recovery.

“The H1N1 was an unusual flu in that it affected middle-aged adults at higher rates than normal,” Martin said. “Among that group, people with really high weight were more likely to die or have severe outcomes if they got the flu.”

Obesity accounted for five of the six deaths from influenza at Detroit Medical Center (DMC) facilities in the 2010-11 season.

Martin’s project, “Influenza and Obesity: A Prospective Study of Patient Outcomes and Antiviral Resistance,” is supported by a one-year, $10,000 grant from the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy. She plans to meet with 120 DMC patients 18 years of age and older at all weights who have suffered flu symptoms severe enough to require hospitalization.

The study will monitor progression of their illness, especially pulmonary manifestations, which can land patients on ventilators or in intensive care.

Researchers will take nasal samples to determine specific characteristics of the virus and how it evolves in subjects’ bodies over the first three days in the hospital. Among the characteristics to be examined is the virus’s resistance to oseltamivir, a drug more commonly known as Tamiflu, which is used to treat the flu.

Martin’s team will check the RNA sequence of the flu virus, as well as genetic components of an array other undiagnosed respiratory viruses patients may have.

“Depending on the population being examined, about one-third of the time other viruses are lurking in the background in these patients,” she said. “We still don’t know what kind of impact that has, and we will be looking for correlations among virus types.”

Researchers also will follow up with patients about 30 days after their hospital discharges to assess the number of readmissions or additional medical care visits, duration of symptoms and changes in lifestyle factors.

“We’re trying to see what specifically it is about people with high weight who get the flu that might be leading them to a really bad outcome from the disease,” Martin said. “We’re also surveying patients to see if there are lifestyle factors that might be influencing this.”

Because hers is a pilot study, Martin doesn’t expect definitive answers.

“It should give us some inklings of where the right path is,” she said. “Ideally, if we get a really good clinical picture of why weight increases the number of more drastic outcomes from the flu, then we can start to build treatment pathways especially for this group of patients to counteract that.”

Researchers then can determine whether types of flu treatment drugs or kinds of supportive care need to be modified. On the flip side, Martin said, health care providers can identify if patients with high body mass indexes should be given vaccination priority or can make lifestyle modifications that directly impact their health if infected with the flu.

“The more we understand the virus and the clinical course of people who are severely ill, the more effectively we can guide them when they show up at the hospital,” she said.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Anjan Kowluru, Ph. D., professor of pharmaceutical sciences, associate dean for external scientific affairs in the Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and professor of internal medicine in the WSU School of Medicine, will use an animal model to test the effect of NSC23766, a compound more commonly called Rac inhibitor, to see if it will prevent or delay the onset of diabetes.

According to the American Diabetes Association, 25.8 million Americans — about 8.3 percent — have the disease, with about 7 million of those undiagnosed; another 79 million are prediabetic.

Kowluru’s study, “Tiam 1-Rac1 Signaling Axis Mediates Beta-Cell Dysfunction in Type 1 Diabetes,” is supported by a one-year, $110,000 grant from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

“It appears that the Rac1 G protein is activated to initiate a series of signaling steps in beta cells to cause oxidative stress,” he said, “so if we can prevent activation of that protein with this inhibitor, in essence we are preventing the generation of oxidative stress and damage to the beta cell.”

Rac inhibitor already has been shown to have such an effect in the test tube; Kowluru hypothesizes a similar result in an animal model.

“We are excited to take this to the next step,” he said. “Success using an animal model would be a major breakthrough. We’re trying to better understand this process so that we are better able to prevent it.”

Although Kowluru’s study targets type 1 diabetes, it also may have implications for type 2 patients, whose disease onset comes later in life but often can be controlled through exercise and diet. While many tissues seem to be involved in generating oxidative stress, Kowluru said his team may be able to show that type 1 and 2 diabetes have a common signaling pathway involving Rac1 and oxidative stress.

“If we get a reasonably good clue from this study, then we will undertake long-term studies with different drug analogs,” he said. “We will synthesize compounds with better efficacy — biologically active with greater specificity — to see if they are tolerated, and then we could go into clinical trials. This study is the first step in that direction.”

Kowluru’s work in the area of diabetes also is supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which has named him a senior research career scientist.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

“Because it’s so face valid, a lot of people believe it’s common sense that these things work,” said Annmarie Cano, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. “But there are a lot of things common sense tells you that don’t pan out when tested scientifically.”

She recently received a $152,000 grant from two sources to study if instructing incarcerated teens to train animal shelter dogs in basic obedience skills will improve the teens’ social skills and quality of life. The funding comes from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health and Mars Inc.’s Waltham Centre for Pet Nutrition.

“Randomized Controlled Trials of an Animal-Assisted Intervention for Adjudicated Youth” will involve 128 subjects from the Macomb County Juvenile Justice Center. Facilitators from Teacher’s Pet: Dogs and Kids Learning Together, a nonprofit organization, will meet twice a week for 10 weeks with youths ages 14 to 17. Using dogs with minor behavioral issues from local animal shelters, participants will be taught in one-hour sessions how to approach a dog, how to tell if the animal is afraid, why animal cruelty is wrong and the benefits of treating animals well.

A control group will receive the classroom training and will walk the dogs two hours per week; the rest also will attend the classes and will be assigned to train a dog two hours per week to get them ready for adoption. All participants will talk about their own experiences with dogs in a nonjudgmental fashion.

In the training group, person-dog pairings will be the same for each session. Training will begin with basic commands and progress to higher-level tasks.

Teacher’s Pet founder and study co-investigator Amy Johnson said 98 percent of animals the group has trained have been adopted in the past two years.

Cano said Johnson was anxious to see if the program worked for incarcerated youths.

“As an animal lover, that intrigued me too,” Cano said. Her team, which also includes Rita Casey, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology, searched the literature and realized that although small case studies exist, no tests had been done to determine whether these kinds of programs work with such a population.

“There are a lot of TV shows where they show prisoners — adults and teens — working with dogs,” Cano said. “It’s very heartwarming and exciting, but no controlled studies have been run to see if this works for everyone involved or only for certain people.”

Despite the relatively small age range, she believes her group includes a wide variety of developmental factors, including home background and type of offense.

To measure the effects of interaction with the dogs, Cano’s study will use standard measures for depression, sadness, anxiety and anger, as well as how participants’ empathy skills for dogs and people change over time. Her team also will measure individual attachments to the dogs.

Because many at-risk youths come from homes where attachments to others are problematic, Cano hypothesizes that developing attachments to dogs will help participants feel better about their own skills and about themselves as human beings, while giving them a different perspective and perhaps making them more likely to consider someone else’s perspective before acting out again.

“Many of the crimes that got them there in the first place involved not taking someone else’s perspective, either from not knowing how, not wanting to or some other reason,” Cano said. “We’re hoping that attachment to and constant work with the dogs will drive improvements in social skills and quality of life.”

The study also seeks to uncover why such interactions work.

“We want to know if it’s just because people feel good, or if perhaps something important is being changed in the relationship or social skills of those inmates or incarcerated youths,” Cano said. “We’d like to add some legitimacy to this kind of intervention, so that more agencies that work with at-risk youths can use this type of program to help them.”

Cano said, however, that her study is merely a first step in that process, as it involves just one site and one group of teens, and may not be generalizable elsewhere. Future studies, she said, could test other groups and individuals, including adults with attachment problems, such as veterans who have suffered combat trauma, or drug addicts.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu

AAHRPP is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the protection of the rights and welfare of research participants and the promotion of scientifically meritorious and ethically sound research. AAHRPP 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.

Seeking accreditation by AAHRPP is voluntary. “By maintaining full accreditation, the university has demonstrated the highest ethical standards in protecting human research participants,” said Hilary Ratner, Ph.D., WSU’s vice president for research. “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.”

WSU has more than 3,300 active research studies involving thousands of human research participants. Research volunteers participate in studies in myriad areas, including diagnostic, social and therapeutic programs.

“There are nearly 200 faculty, staff and community members who invest considerable time every month to ensure the well-being of research participants by serving on our institutional review boards and safety committees,” said Phil Cunningham, Ph.D., assistant vice president for research compliance. “Their commitment to protecting the rights and welfare of research participants in first-rate research studies, along with smoothing the path to success for our researchers, demonstrates WSU’s high ethical standards in research.”

A nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., AAHRPP works with organizations that conduct human research to raise the level of protection for research participants. Since AAHRPP’s founding in 2001, 243 organizations have received accreditation.

To learn more about AAHRPP, visit www.aahrpp.org. For more information about WSU’s human research integrity programs, visit www.irb.wayne.edu.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research institutions in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

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., M.P.H., 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. While slightly more than 93 percent of 161 patients in the study had a history of hypertension, 90.7 percent tested positive for hidden hypertensive heart disease. None of them knew their high blood pressure was affecting their hearts and did not show any symptomatic signs of heart disease.

“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.”

The patients were enrolled in the study after appearing at the emergency room of Detroit Receiving Hospital. They did not come to the hospital for heart disease symptoms. Once enrolled in the study, they underwent echocardiograms, which revealed the hypertensive heart disease. Of the total 161 patients, 93.8 percent were inner-city African-Americans; 51.6 percent were male. The mean age of the patients enrolled was 49.8 years.

Most of the patients (93.8 percent) had a history of high blood pressure and were aware that they had the condition, but only 68.3 percent were receiving treatment.

Of those found to have hidden heart disease, the majority were diagnosed with diastolic dysfunction, defined as the heart’s inability to adequately pump blood. Levy said the echocardiograms found the presence of subclinical hypertensive heart disease “ubiquitous.”

He noted that hypertension is commonplace in the United States, and affects more than 76 million adults. The prevalence of the condition is higher in African-Americans, who are at “tremendous risk” for pressure-related consequences of hypertension, especially the premature onset of damage to and impairment of heart function.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 228.3 in every 100,000 Michigan residents 35 and older died of hypertension-related causes in 2009. In African-Americans, the rate was 381.9 deaths for every 100,000, and in whites it was 211. All Michigan rates were higher than national statistics. In rates of hypertension hospitalizations of Michigan residents 65 and older who are Medicare beneficiaries, African-Americans had higher rates (14 hospitalizations per 1,000 Medicare beneficiaries) than whites (3.6 per 1,000). Again, both rates were higher than national numbers.

Since subclinical heart disease is unlikely to be detected in such hypertensive patients until the damage manifests in visibly recognized symptoms, the early identification of the condition “has emerged as an important aspect of secondary cardiovascular disease prevention,” Levy said.

Emergency room physicians may underestimate the prevalence of hidden hypertensive heart disease in inner-city African-Americans, who are considered an especially high-risk group and who rely on emergency rooms for treatment because of lack of access to primary care physicians.

“Emergency physicians are uniquely positioned to lessen the overall impact of chronic high blood pressure in at-risk communities,” Levy said. “Blood pressure readings are taken for every patient in the ER. By not just taking in new information but also acting on it, we can substantively contribute to much-needed secondary disease prevention efforts.”

In 2010, the CDC reported the financial burden of hypertension in the U.S. was $76.6 billion in health care, medication and missed days of work.

Recognizing the likelihood of previously unrecognized subclinical hypertensive heart disease prevalence in African-Americans holds therapeutic promise that could reduce the adverse outcomes, Levy said. Blacks progress from hidden to symptomatic stages of left-ventricular dysfunction more rapidly than other population groups, and the mean age of blacks admitted to hospitals with heart failure is much lower than that of whites (63.6 years versus 75.2 years).

“While we must recognize the risk that exists for these patients, we should not expect emergency departments to perform the further studies needed to identify subclinical end-organ damage,” Levy said. “Emergency departments should focus on identification of poorly controlled hypertension – whether or not it was the primary reason for the emergency visit – and hospital systems, especially those where high disease prevalence exists, should have some coordinated mechanism where patients can be referred for follow-up. Moreover, at that follow-up, a mechanism should exist to perform effective intervention, including risk stratification, even if patients lack insurance.”

The study was funded by the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Foundation.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research institutions in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Renu A. Kowluru, Ph.D., 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.

Diabetes is a leading cause of acquired blindness in young adults. Almost 50 percent of diabetes patients have some form of retinopathy — not necessarily blindness — after nine years, and that figure increases to 95 percent after 20 years of the disease.

“Basically it doesn’t leave any diabetic patient,” Kowluru said.

Titled “Role of Nrf2-KEAP1 in Diabetic Retinopathy,” her project will look at the oxidative stress, an imbalance between the production and utilization of free radicals, in an effort to determine how a disease state — diabetes in this case — causes that imbalance.

“We have shown that in diabetes, mitochondria are damaged, and when they are damaged they initiate cell death,” Kowluru said. “We want to see what the role of Nrf2 is in initiating this signal.”

Beginning in October, her team will genetically regulate Nrf2 to examine the temporal relationship between the failure of the protein to reach cells’ nuclei and the signal sent by damaged mitochondria that triggers cell death. She hopes to determine if the former event precedes the latter, or if they occur at the same time.

Additionally, Kowluru will examine the point on the gene where Nrf2 and KEAP1 interact to determine whether diabetes induces epigenetic changes in Nrf2, impairing its binding with KEAP1.

Because epigenetic changes, which are functionally relevant modifications to the genome that do not involve a change in the DNA sequence, can be passed along to future generations, prevention becomes an even more important goal, she said. Drugs now in the clinical trial stage for other chronic diseases (e.g., cancer) may be able to prevent epigenetic changes in the retina.

“Once we understand the problem, we can administer supplements and prevent the downstream pathway for retinopathy,” Kowluru said.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

In “Remote Decision Support for Wheeled Mobility and Seating Devices,” recently published online and set to appear in the June edition of Expert Systems with Applications, Kyoung-Yun Kim, Ph.D., associate professor of industrial and systems engineering in WSU’s College of Engineering, introduces a Web-based decision support system for remotely selecting wheelchairs.

According to the 2010 U.S. Census, 3.3 million people age 15 and older use wheelchairs; 10 million use walking aids, such as canes, crutches or walkers. Eleven million people age 6 and older need personal assistance with everyday activities, including such tasks as getting around inside the home, taking a bath or shower, preparing meals and performing light housework.

Many people with disabilities live outside large metropolitan areas and lack access to experienced clinicians who can help them decide what kind of device is best for them. Such help has become more necessary with changes implemented by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in the Healthcare Common Procedures Coding System (HCPCS) for wheeled mobility devices. Those changes included expanding the number of device identification codes from four to 64, making it difficult to understand where a product falls within the new structure.

“Disabled patients almost always have a unique situation, so for something that looks like a simple device, making an optimal decision is not that simple,” Kim said. “It requires doctors’ and clinicians’ assessments, as well as those of patients and their families. Combined with testing time, these are significant factors that lead to an increasingly expensive selection process.”

In a study supported by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research of the U.S. Department of Education, Kim’s team reviewed current research in telerehabilitation, an emerging field that aims to deliver rehabilitation services over telecommunication networks and the Internet, and complements in-person clinical assessment and therapy in underserved areas.

His system improves the selection and evaluation processes by enabling remote assessment of appropriate wheelchair alternatives with advanced queries and selection criteria. It also provides a reusable information repository and enables systematic evaluation.

HCPCS coding changes have increased the gap in decision-making abilities of less experienced clinicians in underserved areas and their more experienced peers in larger population centers, Kim said. In an effort to minimize that gap, the teleconsultation model gives the former group access to the latter, ultimately allowing clinicians to make better selections.

A study based on the Technology Acceptance Model was conducted with three groups of clinicians: just graduated, moderately experienced and senior level, via the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center. The model is a formal research tool for evaluating technological support of a given task.

As a control, Kim’s team tested face-to-face patient-clinician interactions. It also set up remote assessments using webcams so that patients and less experienced clinicians in one location could consult with more expert clinicians in another location.

Subjects said the remote wheelchair selection system generally was very user friendly and made it easy to find quality information, but they were neutral on whether they wanted to use it in their clinical decision making. Kim and his team plan to work with other medical facilities, such as U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals, to encourage wider use of the teleconsultation model with this remote wheelchair selection system.

“The goal of this study is to create a portal that gives clinicians easy and timely access to the information they need to make the best decisions for their patients,” Kim said. “We also aim to reduce the gaps in knowledge and human bias between experienced and inexperienced clinicians.

“We believe these improvements can also reduce the time needed to select a wheeled mobility device and eventually reduce the cost of the process as well.”

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

The study is the first to show that an anti-inflammatory drug delivered with a nanodevice can dramatically improve CP symptoms in an animal model.

The report, “Dendrimer-Based Postnatal Therapy for Neuroinflammation and Cerebral Palsy in a Rabbit Model,” was published April 18 in the prestigious journal Science Translational Medicine, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

“The key finding of this work is that early identification of neuroinflammation allows postnatal treatment,” said Roberto Romero, M.D., D.Med.Sci., chief of the Perinatology Research Branch and an author of the study. “This suggests that there is a window of opportunity to prevent cerebral palsy.”

Cerebral palsy is a disorder of the developing brain that affects motor skills and muscle coordination, often not diagnosed until the age of two or three years in children. The United Cerebral Palsy Foundation, a national advocacy and support group, estimates that 764,000 children and adults in the United States have CP. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 100,000 babies born in the U.S. develop CP annually. A 2009 report by the CDC indicated the prevalence of the condition at 3.3 per 1,000 births. Worldwide, the CDC estimates the prevalence of CP births to range from 1.5 to 4 for every 1,000 births.

Risk factors for the condition include low birth weight and premature birth. Children born before the 32nd week of pregnancy are at high risk for developing CP. Intrauterine infection and/or inflammation is a major risk factor for CP.

Microglia - immune cells in the brain - play an important role in remodeling and growth during fetal and postnatal periods. Activation of these cells can cause an exaggerated inflammatory response, leading to brain injury and CP. Treatment is problematic because inflammation and the resulting injury can be spread throughout the brain’s white matter. Transporting drugs across the blood-brain barrier also represents a challenge.

The PRB team hypothesized that it was possible to deliver a drug using a tiny device (or nanodevice) that would cross the blood-brain barrier and target the activated cells (microglia and astrocytes) in the brain involved in neuroinflammation.

The researchers used a rabbit model of congenital CP because it replicates the type of neuroinflammation found in human brains and the resulting motor deficits observed in children with the condition. The method consisted of exposing fetal rabbits to endotoxin (a component of bacteria). Endotoxin induced inflammation of the fetal brain but did not induce the onset of labor. When the rabbits were born, they had great difficulties walking or hopping. The experiment consisted of treating affected rabbits intravenously with either a saline solution, a drug known as NAC (N-acetyl-L-cysteine) or a dendrímer coupled with NAC, also known as a D-NAC conjugate. Rabbits with CP treated with D-NAC on the first day of life showed a dramatic improvement and, within five days, were able to walk and hop. Rabbits treated with the NAC conjugate also showed a higher neuron count and lower evidence of inflammation compared to untreated animals.

NAC is an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory agent. It is being explored in several ongoing clinical trials to test its potential in autism spectrum disorders, pregnant women for the treatment of maternal and fetal inflammation, and Alzheimer’s disease. Dendrimers are synthetic biomimics of globular polymers of the amino acid alanine. Researchers are exploring their use as a vehicle to target drug delivery, a science known as nanotechnology.

The authors believe that conjugating NAC with dendrimers allows delivery of the drug directly to the cells involved, providing greater effectiveness.

“One of the challenges of the 21st century is to rebuild brains injured during fetal or neonatal life, and to prevent not only cerebral palsy, but also other brain disorders,” Dr. Romero said.

The CDC estimates that the lifetime cost to care for a person with CP amounts to nearly $1 million (in 2003 dollars). The estimated combined lifetime cost for all Americans born with CP in 2000 is expected to total $11.5 billion in direct and indirect costs.

While still in preclinical testing in animals, the dendrimer-drug conjugate shows promise for postnatal treatment of babies suspected of having CP.

The therapy described by the PRB researchers also holds promise for possible future treatments of some neurological disorders, including multiple sclerosis. The brain, for the most part, can be divided into gray and white areas. Neurons are located in the gray area, and the white parts are where the neurons send their axons -- similar to electrical cables carrying messages -- to communicate with other neurons or muscles. Oligodendrocyte cells manufacture a cholesterol-rich membrane called myelin that coats the axons. The myelin’s function is to insulate the axons, much like the plastic coating on an electrical cable. In addition, the myelin speeds communication along axons and makes that communication much more reliable. Patients with multiple sclerosis display neuronal loss and myelin abnormalities that reduce the myelin coating.

The PRB team found that D-NAC therapy also improved the production of myelin and reduced the neuroinflammation associated with the loss of myelin. In fact, by the fifth day after treatment with D-NAC, the CP rabbits demonstrated a significant increase in myelin that nearly matched healthy control animals.

“This is certainly an exciting breakthrough and it certainly points toward new hope for those affected by cerebral palsy,” said Rangaramanujam M. Kannan, Ph.D., a chemical engineer and a member of the PRB research team and an author of the study. “We found that the administration of the anti-inflammatory agent coupled with the dendrimers allowed the drug to not only cross the blood-brain barrier but also to target the cells that cause the neuroinflammation in CP. Of course, this approach and these compounds are not yet approved for testing in humans, and further studies are required to find the optimal dose, duration of treatment and establish safety. More questions need to be answered, but the potential is immense.”

“The use of a rabbit model is a unique aspect of the work, since this model mimics the phenotype of CP as seen in humans. This also illustrates the potential of research collaborations across disciplines in advancing and translating novel technologies for the treatment of debilitating childhood disorders,” said Dr. Sujatha Kannan, a pediatrician and first author of the study.

Dr. Kannan said the work was made possible by the development of an animal model of cerebral palsy, the implementation of molecular imaging to detect neuroinflammation at the time of birth and the coupling of the nanodevices (dendrimers) with NAC. The significance of the work is that it opens avenues for the treatment of neuroinflammation, a mechanism of disease not only for cerebral palsy, but for other conditions such as meningitis, encephalitis and multiple sclerosis.

“This is tremendous recognition of the research breakthroughs and the power of the partnership between Wayne State University, the Detroit Medical Center and the Perinatology Research Branch,” said Valerie M. Parisi, M.D., M.P.H., dean of the Wayne State University School of Medicine. “This study has the potential to pull back a curtain that has shrouded a medical challenge not just in relation to cerebral palsy, but with other conditions that affect millions around the world.”

DMC President and CEO Michael Duggan said that the publication of the PRB study marked “a hugely important step forward in the decades-old struggle to protect infants and their parents from the immense suffering caused by cerebral palsy.

“As a healing institution with a passionate commitment to medical research, having Dr. Romero’s PRB team working on our campus daily for the past 12 years has been extraordinarily gratifying,” Duggan said. “For all of us at the DMC, this is a deeply rewarding moment.”

The Perinatology Research Branch of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health at Wayne State University is located in the Detroit Medical Center’s Hutzel Women’s Hospital and in basic science laboratories in the WSU C.S. Mott Center. The PRB is strategically located to serve a high-risk population that requires the full spectrum of services the branch offers. The branch has produced groundbreaking research and cared for more than 20,000 mothers in Detroit.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

For more information about training requirements in Responsible Conduct of Research, please visit click here.

Monica W. Tracey, Ph.D., associate professor of instructional technology and administrative and organizational studies in WSU’s College of Education and resident of Farmington Hills, Mich., was published in the inaugural issue of The International Journal of Designs for Learning, a multidisciplinary, peer-reviewed online journal dedicated to publishing descriptions of artifacts, environments and experiences that promote and support learning in all contexts by designers in any field. The paper outlines the development and implementation of an instructional process that trained more than 300 people from Bangladesh, Nepal, India, the Philippines and many other surrounding countries to perform custodial duties at the Dubai Mall, the largest mall in the world. The work serves as a model for efficient, cross-cultural instructional design with potential use in a wide variety of work processes involving learners of different languages and cultures.

“It was a very enriching experience for me,” Tracey said. “This region of the world has the utmost respect for education and they fully embraced the expertise that WSU brought to the table. Given the three-month window we had for the entire project, their support was critical.”

The project entailed a rapid prototyping process of designing instruction materials for both workers and supervisors of the mall housekeeping staff. With a multicultural, multilanguage learner in mind, she designed a series of processes utilizing colors, symbols and pictures, which were then adapted to the different cleaning programs. The words that accompanied the illustrations were in English and Hindi — the two most common languages among the trainees.

The prototype was put into effect immediately, training the mall’s first group of employees for its official opening. Of these, 82 percent passed the required instructional assessment. With the same instructions still being used to train new employees at the Dubai Mall today, the project has been recognized as a resounding success as well as a model that can be duplicated in virtually any instruction materials for multilingual, multicultural learners.

“Here in the U.S. and abroad, our workforce is changing,” Tracey said. “More than ever, we need to be able to design and deliver effective instruction for numerous cultures working together. The Dubai project was a starting point for applying the elements of instructional design, including effectiveness, efficiency and appeal for the benefit of the culturally diverse workforce around the world.”

To view the full interactive paper in The International Journal of Designs for Learning, visit http://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/ijdl/article/view/845.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information on research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

One such marsh was the mouth of the Huron River, near the Wyandot Indian village of Brownstown, located south of Detroit. The “Hull's Trace North Huron River Corduroy Segment,” as it is now designated, caught the eye of Harrison, a master’s candidate focusing on historical archaeology. Harrison surveyed the mostly submerged logs while doing coursework with WSU archaeologists Thomas Killion and Tamara Bray. His research indicated that the 380-meter wooden roadway, now part of the embankment supporting southern Jefferson Avenue, represented the only known surviving portion of the original 200-mile road.

“This unique structure demanded to be preserved,” said Harrison. “It’s associated with our frontier past, with historic figures like Chief Tecumseh and William Henry Harrison, and with a civil engineering technique that is virtually absent from the archaeological record.”

Harrison nominated the roadway to the National Register of Historic Places; it was accepted recently and is now listed as a significant national treasure of the greater Detroit metropolitan area. He presently is working with the Michigan Commission on the Commemoration of the Bicentennial of the War of 1812, and hopes to unveil a historic marker at the site on the auspicious date of its 200th anniversary, July 4, 2012.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

SAB, established in 1978, assists the IJC as scientific advisor to restore and maintain the chemical, physical and biological integrity of the waters of the Great Lakes Basin Ecosystem. The SAB is developing recommendations on matters related to research and the development of scientific knowledge pertinent to the identification, evaluation and resolution of current and anticipated problems related to water quality in the Great Lakes. The board comprises eight members from the U.S. and eight from Canada.

Miller is an active water resources researcher focusing on both surface and subsurface water quality and quantity, and has more recently investigated the water/energy interface. She is especially active in urban environmental issues, and helped to launch the Urban Watershed Environmental Research Group (UWERG) which is geared to save, protect and improve what’s left of the urban pockets of fresh water throughout the Great Lake region.

Miller and colleagues are developing a system control environment that will optimize the energy consumption of large water utilities such as the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department while improving the health of the Great Lakes. The software has the potential to reduce the energy required to run large water utilities by 15 percent while improving the health of the Great Lakes through reduced polluting emissions.

“With WSU's presence near the banks of the Huron to Erie Corridor, it’s especially important that we play a major role in the protection of the Great Lakes resource,” Miller said. “Being named to the Great Lakes Science Advisory Board is certainly an honor and a challenge I'm looking forward to.”

“Dr. Miller’s appointment to the Great Lakes Science Advisory Board by the International Joint Commission is another example of the incredible researchers at Wayne State University that are working to make great changes and improvements in the world which we live,” said Hilary Ratner, vice president for Research at WSU. “Dr. Miller is a perfect choice for the board, and she will do an excellent job representing not only Wayne State University, but everyone who is impacted by the Great Lakes water systems.”

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

“Nationally, we spend billions to treat childhood conditions such as cerebral palsy, birth defects, autism and asthma. Until now, we have never supported large scale research across the nation that examines the conditions and factors that influence a child’s health before, during and after birth,” said Nigel Paneth, MD, MPH , Michigan State University, a pediatrician and perinatal epidemiologist and principal investigator of MANCS. “The National Children’s Study has the potential to discover ways to improve the overall health and well-being of children and to prevent disease, helping to guide health practice, clinical interventions and health policy for future generations.”

“We are at the forefront of this effort. As a community, we have the opportunity to embrace the study,” said Christine LM Joseph, PhD, senior staff epidemiologist, Henry Ford Health System. “We have much to gain in terms of the future health of our children, and Wayne County is a key player as one of the first locations nationally to launch.”

Women who are or will soon be pregnant are eligible for the Study if they reside in statistically selected neighborhoods. The study sample will accurately reflect the diversity of Wayne County. Those who join the study will be asked to stay involved from before the child is born until he or she reaches their 21st birthday. Participating mothers will be asked a series of questions about their and their child’s health and environment. Study staff will collect samples from participants and the environment. No medications or drugs will be administered. Participants will be compensated at various intervals during the Study.

Wayne County is asking obstetricians, gynecologists, pediatricians, nurses and members of the health community to provide Study information to patients. Study recruitment includes community outreach and information. Potential participants can ask their health care provider for information, or check eligibility by calling 888-99-MI-NCS (888-996-4627). MANCS will enroll the first participants this month.

“Whether you participate personally in this Study or encourage someone to do so, you are doing a great service for our community,” says Paneth. “You truly have the ability to impact the health of future generations.”

The NCS is funded by the National Institutes of Health. In 2007, MANCS received an $18.5 million, 5-year contract to conduct the Study in Wayne County. In 2008, MANCS received an additional $57 million in funding to conduct the NCS in Genesee, Grand Traverse, Lenawee and Macomb Counties; these counties will launch over the next few years as results of the vanguard study become available. In addition to the health benefits of the study, these contracts are bringing quality jobs to Michigan.

The Michigan Alliance for the National Children’s Study, which is conducting the study in Michigan, is a collaborative partnership of scientists and health care providers representing Henry Ford Health System, Michigan Department of Community Health, Michigan State University, University of Michigan, Wayne State University and its affiliate, Children’s Hospital of Michigan. In Wayne County, MANCS is collaborating with the Detroit Department of Health & Wellness Promotion and Wayne County Health and Human Services.

• MSU coordinates the overall work of the study and houses the main study office at its East Lansing campus. MSU is also responsible for the retention of study participants. MSU Extension plays a major role in developing community engagement in each of the five counties.
• U-M is responsible for enrolling and interviewing study participants and assessing postnatal child development.
• WSU oversees the assessment and care of pregnant women. Children’s Hospital of Michigan manages the repository for biological samples.
• Henry Ford Health System works with MSU Extension to develop community support, manage environmental samples, and oversee medical examinations of children.
• MDCH provides information related to live birth characteristics and locations in each of the five participating counties.

For further information on the study, call 1-877-40-MANCS (877-406-2627) or visit www.mancs.us and www.nationalchildrensstudy.gov. For eligibility information, call 1-888-99-MI–NCS (888-996-4627).

Founded in 2009, NextCAT is commercializing a class of catalysts that enable producers to use a wide variety of inexpensive feedstock such as waste vegetable oil, animal fats and residual corn oil, and convert them into biodiesel. NextCAT offers a unique solution for an industry that has been mostly idled in the United States since 2008 when rising feedstock prices and the price drop of petroleum diesel made the production of biodiesel uneconomical. With a cost savings of at least $1 per gallon, the NextCAT solution greatly changes the economics of a biodiesel plant.

“We have a technology that has been proven in the lab by the science team at Wayne State University’s National Biofuels Energy Lab,” said Charles Salley, CEO of NextCAT Inc. “This seed funding from Automation Alley allows us to begin to design, build and install a reactor in an idle biodiesel plant in Michigan. This investment of $250,000 in NextCAT from Automation Alley brings the total amount of investment funding to date to $600,000. Additionally, we have been awarded $205,000 in grant funding.”

“The science team of Dr. Steven Salley, associate professor of chemical engineering, College of Engineering, Dr. Shuli Yan, research director at NextCAT, and I are excited to see our technology progressing toward usage by the biodiesel producers, and we look forward to a successful production demonstration later this year,” said Simon Ng, Ph.D., chief technology officer at NextCAT, interim associate dean for research in Wayne State’s College of Engineering and the technology’s co-inventor.

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NextCAT is a startup company located at TechTown, the Wayne State University research and technology park in Detroit. It was founded in 2009 by inventors Dr. Simon Ng, Dr. Steven Salley, Dr, Shuli Yan and CEO Charles Salley. NextCAT offers a class of heterogeneous catalysts for biodiesel production that allow biodiesel producers to use less refined and less expensive feedstock in their production process. For more information, visit http://nextcatinc.com/.

Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Media Contacts:
Julie O’Connor, Wayne State University, ag2712@wayne.edu or (313) 577-8845
Lisa Stief, NextCAT Inc., media@nextcatinc.com or (248) 797-2617
 

DETROIT—Wayne State University researchers have found that when patients and providers speak the same language, patients report less confusion and better health care quality. The findings were based on data from the Pew Hispanic Center/Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Latino Health Survey.

Understanding the relationship between language and health care quality has important public health implications for providing services in an increasingly diverse U.S. population, according to Hector M. González, Ph.D., assistant professor of family medicine and public health at WSU’s Institute of Gerontology and School of Medicine. “So often we see that health care providers and researchers blame patients not fluent in English for not adhering to medical prescriptions and treatments when the problem may be that patients simply don’t understand the clinician,” González said. “Today, there are over 60 million Americans who speak languages other than English and that will rapidly grow in coming years. That’s a big market that savvy health care providers should not ignore,” he said. The study, led by González, appears in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine.

With Latinos expected to comprise more than a third of the U.S. population in the coming decades, practitioners and medical schools need to think about how they want to best serve this changing patient population.

Eliminating disparities in health care is a major priority in the United States, and the Agency for HealthCare Research and Quality has emphasized the importance of removing language barriers to shrink such disparities. “We have the most sophisticated health care system in the world, however, it does little good if patients and providers fail to communicate,” González said. “There may be low-tech, perhaps even low-cost ways to improve health care quality that should not be overlooked as health care is transformed to meet the coming health care needs of the nation.”

The study was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Network for Multicultural Research on Health and Healthcare. To view the full article, visit http://www.jabfm.org/cgi/content/full/23/6/745?maxtoshow=&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&author1=gonzalez&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=HWCIT.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

DETROIT— The combined results of a genetic blood test and a five-minute functional MRI successfully classified more than three-quarters of healthy older adults, many of whom were destined to develop cognitive decline within 18 months of testing.

John Woodard, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Institute of Gerontology at Wayne State University, is lead author of “Predicting Cognitive Decline in Healthy Older Adults Using fMRI” published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease (vol. 21, no. 3).

“No one had studied these combinations of tests in such a large sample,” Woodard said. The results have strong implications for determining who is most likely to benefit from preventive Alzheimer’s disease treatments.

Woodard and his colleagues performed five tests on 78 healthy elders: a structural MRI (sMRI) that measures the size of the hippocampal region of the brain; a functional MRI (fMRI) that shows how the brain is activated during mental tasks; a blood test that identifies the APOE ε4 allele (a known genetic marker for Alzheimer’s disease); and two standard neuropsychological tests that measure mood and ability.

The most effective combination of tests to predict near-term cognitive decline was the fMRI and the APOE ε4 test. The APOE ε4 allele alone correctly classified 61.5 percent of participants, but the combination of the ε4 allele and low activity on the fMRI test correctly classified 78.9 percent of participants, including 35 percent who showed significant cognitive decline 18 months post-testing.

Age, years of education, gender and family history of dementia were not accurate predictors of future cognitive decline. Dr. Woodard and his colleagues also found that persons with larger hippocampal volume, greater functional brain activity and no APOE ε4 allele were less likely to demonstrate cognitive decline over the following 18 months.

The APOE and fMRI tests that combined as the best predictors are readily available, not time-consuming, and don’t require special skills or effort on the part of the participant.

“Use of these tests could play a major role in development of medications for prevention of Alzheimer’s and other dementias,” Woodard said. “If we can intervene before people become symptomatic, we might be able to slow the progression of the disease or eliminate it altogether.”

Alzheimer’s is age-correlated; the older the person, the greater the likelihood the person will display symptoms.

“If we could delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease by five years, we could cut the number of new cases in half,” Dr. Woodard said. “If we could delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease by 10 years, we could potentially eliminate the disease completely.”

The complete study is available at http://www.j-alz.com/issues/21/vol21-3.html.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

 

Andrian Marcus, Ph.D.

Wayne State University

Modern technologies, including the Internet, e-mail, text messages and an array of social media options, have grown in recent years to offer an infinite amount of information to consume. A Wayne State University researcher has teamed up with West Virginia University (WVU) to make life’s daily data load more manageable and less distracting.

Andrian Marcus, Ph.D., associate professor of computer science in WSU's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, is collaborating with Tim Menzies, Ph.D., associate professor of computer science and electrical engineering in the College of Engineering and Mineral Resources at WVU, in hopes to ease the distractions and stress of information overload faced by programmers during software development. Marcus and Menzies recently received a $500,000 National Science Foundation award - with $256,000 directed to WSU – for their project “Better Comprehension of Software Engineering Data,” which aims to make software developers work more efficiently.

“Software systems today are larger and more complex. They are built over many years by hundreds of developers. The amount of data in software systems that a developer has to deal with is staggering,” Marcus said. “We aim to produce tools and techniques that will allow software developers and managers to easily customize data mining techniques to help software development work.”

Already widely used by scientists in many fields, data mining techniques are in need of adaptation to work with software data. “Data mining methods first blew up in the early 1990s with successes such as Google,” said Marcus. “For the mainstream software developer, however, the methods are difficult to understand. We will put the task of prioritizing and processing information into simpler, easily utilized terms.”

Marcus and Menzies are looking at ways to customize search results, so that individuals can more precisely set the boundaries of the information they want and receive the most pertinent results. The researchers plan to test the results of their efforts among students and industrial partners.

“Our goal is to make a calmer, more streamlined flow of incoming information, with unneeded information filtered out and important information emphasized,” Marcus said. “In doing this, we hope people encounter less unneeded information, will be more focused and reap the greatest benefits out of the technologies that have become ubiquitous in our daily lives.”

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information on research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Christine Chow, Ph.D., professor of chemistry in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and resident of Detroit, was selected for distinguished research on the structure and function of modified nucleic acids, and for excellence in the teaching of chemistry.

Chow is leading a research team in developing a novel strategy to get an edge over bacteria’s relentlessly evolving defense mechanisms. With strains of some bacteria being completely resistant to every known drug, her team is working to create something new that isn’t easy for bacteria to resist.

Chow is focusing on ribonucleic acid, or RNA, a nucleic acid that consists of a long chain of nucleotide units chemically similar to DNA. Organisms from bacteria to humans and beyond depend on RNA’s functions, which makes RNA an incredibly useful target for antibiotics.

“RNA is more chemically and structurally diverse than other target areas and has an abundance of unique structures for an antibiotic to “latch on to,” Chow explained. “It is also more accessible than DNA and doesn’t have the defense enzymes that protect DNA, and comprises the physical structure of the ribosome, RNA-protein complexes found in all living organisms.”

By targeting the bacteria cell’s ribosome with compounds the bacteria has never seen before, Chow hopes to come up with ways to fight bacteria where resistance mechanisms take longer to develop.

Chow and her team are hard at work looking for a drug to combat bacteria. “Our hope is to find a lead compound, something that could potentially lead to an antibiotic or the design of other new drugs,” said Chow.

“Christine has always been a first-rate researcher, a great teacher and a very active departmental citizen,” said James Rigby, chair, WSU’s Department of Chemistry. “I am pleased that her efforts have resulted in this well-deserved honor. I speak for the entire chemistry department in extending to her our heartiest congratulations.”

Chow joined the faculty of Wayne State University in 1994. She received an A.B. in environmental studies and chemistry from Bowdoin College and an M.A. in organic chemistry from Columbia University, and earned a Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry at the California Institute of Technology. She was a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology prior to coming to WSU.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.
 

DETROIT—Four months after Michigan researchers conducted interviews in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, the infamous magnitude 7.0 earthquake shocked the island nation, killing thousands and leaving millions homeless.

With pre-disaster data, Royce Hutson, Ph.D., assistant professor of social work at Wayne State University, and Athena Kolbe, M.S.W., WSU School of Social Work alumna, principal investigator of the study and joint doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan, conducted follow-up interviews with 93 percent of the 1,800 initial respondents to comprehensively study the earthquake’s impact on mortality, crime and access to basic needs in the greater Port-au-Prince area. Their findings were used to create the UN Development Program’s Post-Disaster Needs Assessment, and were also published in the October-December 2010 issue of Medicine, Conflict and Survival.

“We were able to estimate the number of injuries that resulted in death in the greater Port-au-Prince area as a result of having a representative sample in 2009 just prior to the earthquake,” said Hutson. Their data on mortality indicated that nearly 160,000 people died, mostly children under 12, from injuries or illness in Port-au-Prince during or six weeks after the quake. Some of the most commonly reported illnesses after the earthquake were diarrhea, headaches and fever, and in some cases these treatable illnesses resulted in death.

Hutson and Kolbe also studied the prevalence of crime, particularly sexual and physical assault. Sexual assault, which was more common than physical assault, affected females almost exclusively during the six-week period after the earthquake.

Homelessness in Port-au-Prince increased drastically, with 24.4 percent of respondents’ homes having been completely destroyed. More than half the Port-au-Prince population was living under conditions of moderate to severe food insecurity after the earthquake. It was also found that monetary donations were a stronger determinant of residents’ food security than employment.

To conduct the surveys, the researchers used GPS technology to randomize the sample of respondents. “We believe this is an advance on current methods and we will be publishing on this method shortly,” said Hutson.

Other collaborators on the study include Eileen Trzcinski, Ph.D., professor of social work at WSU; Bart Miles, Ph.D., assistant professor of social work at WSU; Naomi Levitz, M.S.W., research assistant at WSU’s School of Medicine’s Addiction Research Institute; Robert Muggah, Ph.D., research director of the Small Arms Survey at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland; Harry Shannon, Ph.D., professor of clinical epidemiology and biostatistics at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada; Leah James, M.S.W., doctoral candidate at University of Michigan’s School of Social Work; Marie Puccio, doctoral candidate at University of Michigan’s Department of Political Science; and Jean Roger Noel, director of MABO, a child care center based in Port-au-Prince.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Lorraine Buis, Ph.D., assistant professor of nursing in the College of Nursing and resident of Ann Arbor, Mich., received a $297,224 grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to develop and test a text messaging system that will remind Detroit-area African Americans with uncontrolled hypertension to take their blood pressure medication.

“In medication management studies, we often focus on introducing patients to new devices such as wrist watches or pill bottles with alarms,” Buis said. “One of the things I find most exciting about this project is that we are leveraging a communication device that is already thoroughly integrated into people’s daily lives.”

High blood pressure is a major public health concern and the leading cause of cardiovascular disease worldwide. The problem is particularly onerous for African Americans, who are disproportionately more susceptible to high blood pressure than non-Hispanic white Americans. Poor adherence to prescribed medication regimens contribute to the difficulty in managing the condition.

“Across the board, medication adherence is dismal, with an estimated 50 percent of individuals with hypertension not taking their medicine as prescribed,” Buis said. “Our hope is to find a simple system that can help patients remember to take their blood pressure medicine. By improving medication adherence, we hope to see improvements in hypertension-related outcomes.”

Buis and collaborators will conduct focus groups with the study’s target population, obtaining feedback that will guide the development of a mobile phone text messaging system. The efficacy of the system will be assessed in a pilot test. The primary goal of the study is to determine whether participants have had a change in their medication adherence after one month. Secondary goals are to improve medication self-efficacy and both systolic and diastolic blood pressure, as well as achieve patient satisfaction with the system.

“The reasons behind poor medication adherence are complex and text message reminders are just one of many solutions,” Buis said. “Our hope is that for at least some patients, utilizing this familiar technology will be just what is needed to get their condition under control.”

Other WSU collaborators include Nancy Artinian, Ph.D., associate dean in the College of Nursing, Farshad Fotouhi, Ph.D., chair of computer science in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Loren Schwiebert, Ph.D., associate professor of computer science in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and Hossein Yarandi, Ph.D., professor of nursing in the College of Nursing.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information on research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, childhood obesity in this country has more than tripled in the past 30 years.

Moss, in collaboration with William H. Yeaton from the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, published their analysis, “Young Children's Weight Trajectories and Associated Risk Factors: Results from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (ECLS-B),” in the January/February 2011 issue of the American Journal of Health Promotion.

The ECLS-B draws from a representative sample of American children born in 2001 with diverse socioeconomic and racial/ethnic backgrounds. It is one of the first studies to monitor weight status changes of a nationally representative sample of very young children.

For their study, Moss and Yeaton used results from ECLS-B to follow the trajectory of the infants’ weight status at 9 months and 2 years, then performed statistical analyses to examine whether weight persistence, loss or gain was linked to demographic characteristics such as sex, race/ethnicity, geographic region or socioeconomic status. Children with weight-for-height above the 95th percentile on standard growth charts were considered obese; children in the 85th to 95th percentile were considered at risk for obesity.

Some of their results show that:
• 31.9 percent of 9-month-olds were at risk or obese;
• 34.3 percent of 2-year-olds were obese or at risk for obesity;
• 17 percent of the infants were obese at 9 months, rising to 20 percent at 2 years;
• 44 percent of the infants who were obese at 9 months remained obese at 2 years;
• Hispanic and low-income children were at greater risk for weight status gain;
• Females and Asian/Pacific Islanders were at lower risk for undesirable weight changes;
• 40 percent of 2-year-olds from the lowest income homes were at risk or obese compared to 27 percent of those from the highest income homes.

“This study shows that a significant proportion of very young children in the United States is at risk or is obese,” said Moss. The team notes a consistent pattern of obesity starting early in life.

“As obesity becomes an increasing public health concern, these findings will help guide health practitioners by targeting high risk populations and foster culturally sensitive interventions aimed at prevention and treatment of obesity,” Moss said.

"We are not saying that overweight babies are doomed to be obese adults. However, we have found evidence that being overweight at 9 months puts you on track for being overweight or obese later in childhood.”

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Built in 1957-58, the McGregor Memorial Conference Center at 495 Ferry Mall on Wayne State University’s main campus was financed by the McGregor Foundation as a gift to WSU for use as a community conference center. It was dedicated to the memory of philanthropists and foundation founders Tracy W. and Katherine Whitney McGregor.

The building marks the beginning of Yamasaki’s international reputation as an architect and designer of a new type of modernism that strove for beauty and embraced the goals of richness of texture and form and a sense of peace and serenity through interior spatial arrangement and sensitive landscaping. Yamasaki is perhaps best known for designing the World Trade Center. The McGregor Memorial Conference Center was the first component of his substantial body of work for Wayne State University between 1956 and 1964, which included a master plan and three other campus buildings.

The Michigan State Historic Preservation Review Board nominated the seven properties to the National Register of Historic Places in September 2010. In addition to the McGregor Memorial Conference Center, the others are:

• The Lansing Artillery Michigan National Guard Armory, 330 Marshall St., Lansing
• The John C. and Augusta (Covell) Lewis House, 324 S. Mears Ave., Whitehall
• Griggs Brothers/Rochester Elevator Company Grain Elevator, 303 East University Drive, Rochester
• The Pleasant Ridge Historic District (boundary increase), west of Ridge Road in Pleasant Ridge to the city limits of Royal Oak, Huntington Woods, Oak Park and Ferndale
• Saint Mary’s School, 400 Congdon St., Chelsea
• Hull’s Trace North Huron River Corduroy Segment, west of Jefferson Avenue just north of Huron River, Brownstown Township

There are more than 1,800 Michigan listings in the National Register of Historic Places. In Michigan the national register is administered by the State Historic Preservation Office, which assists property owners with the nomination process. Properties are nominated by the State Historic Preservation Review Board, which meets three times a year. A national register designation makes the owners of income-producing properties eligible to apply for federal historic preservation tax credits for the rehabilitation of those properties. For information about the National Register of Historic Places in Michigan, visit www.michigan.gov/nrhp.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about Wayne State University, visit http://www.wayne.edu.

Researchers at the Wayne State University School of Medicine have captured 25 percent of the U.S. Department of Defense’s 2010 Concept Award grants to fund multiple sclerosis studies.

Alexander Gow, Ph.D., professor and Charles H. Gershenson Distinguished Fellow of the Wayne State University Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics, the Department of Pediatrics and the Department of Neurology, received one of the grants. Jeffrey Loeb, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of the Department of Neurology and associate director of the Center of Molecular Medicine and Genetics, and Fei Song, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of Neurology and the Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics, received the other.

The one-year grants are each for $114,000, and come through the U.S. Army Medical Research and Material Command, Office of the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs.

Of 120 research project submissions, only eight received such grants.

The project overseen by Dr. Loeb and Dr. Song will test a new drug -- HBD-S-H4, or GlyB4 – in mice with the symptoms of multiple sclerosis to determine its effects in disrupting neuregulin1. NRG1 is a brain-produced protein that regulates many normal functions in the brain, but may also have effects on immune system activation. The protein could serve as a potential therapeutic target for disorders such as multiple sclerosis.

“The drug was entirely developed by our group at Wayne State University, and the core technology behind the drug is protected by patents worldwide,” said Dr. Loeb, who also serves with the WSU Hiller Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Center. “It is a novel, targeted antagonist to the growth factor neuregulin that has potential uses in diseases that vary from chronic pain to cancer. It is unique because it uses the same targeting system developed by nature to get drugs where they are needed in the body and not harm other areas.”

Dr. Loeb will serve as the principal investigator of “Therapeutic Value or Harm of Neuregulin 1 in Demyelinating Disorders” and Dr. Song will serve as co-investigator.

In multiple sclerosis, the body’s immune system attacks the brain and gradually destroys it, typically over many years. The brain, for the most part, can be divided into gray and white areas. Neurons are located in the gray area, and the white parts are where the neurons send their axons -- similar to electrical cables carrying messages -- to communicate with other neurons or muscles. The white parts of the brain are white because oligodendrocyte cells manufacture a cholesterol-rich membrane called myelin that coats the axons. The myelin’s function is to insulate the axons, much like the plastic coating on an electrical cable. In addition, the myelin speeds communication along axons and makes communication more reliable. That myelin sheathing is attacked and broken down by the immune system of a patient with MS.

The National Multiple Sclerosis Society estimates that there are 400,000 Americans living with MS, and 200 more diagnosed each week. Worldwide, the estimate of people diagnosed with MS is 2.1 million.

Dr. Gow’s study will involve developing a mouse model of sensory and cognitive deficits for multiple sclerosis. While the physical disabilities associated with relapsing/remitting and chronic phases of MS have been characterized in detail, medical researchers don’t yet know as much about the other effects of the condition that affect the day-to-day quality of life of patients, including the inability of patients to remember lists of items and problems with simple arithmetic. Patients, Dr. Gow said, also develop problems with vision or engaging in conversations in noisy rooms. The animal model will facilitate the study of these issues, particularly hearing-associated tasks.

More than half of all MS patients experience cognitive and learning deficits, memory loss, and vision and hearing difficulties, Dr. Gow said. Studies to date suggest the symptoms stem from demyelinating-remyelinating lesions in the brain, which may block or slow signals. In effect, the thinning of the myelin sheaths may cause signals from the brain to “leak” from their conduit while being transmitted.

Dr. Gow will develop a “knockout” mouse model that will contain abnormalities in central nervous system myelin sheaths that mimic MS conditions. He will then utilize a number of electrophysiological tests to determine the effects of the dysfunctional myelin in hearing difficulties and cognitive deficits. Positively identifying any myelin-related causes contributing to such problems could lead to a list of new drugs to reduce their severity in MS patients.
 

Fifty years ago, it was proposed that the genetic information within cells flows from DNA to RNA to protein. This concept was dubbed the central dogma of molecular biology. Transmission of genetic information from DNA to RNA is called transcription, the primary step at which gene expression is regulated. The process of transcription is regulated in a number of ways in different cell types.

In 2005, Ansari was one of the first researchers to show that genes exist in a looped conformation and gene looping could be an important transcription regulatory mechanism in eukaryotic cells.

During transcription, RNA blueprints are made using DNA strands as templates. RNA polymerase II is the molecular tool that carries out the transcription, from template to blueprint, in eukaryotic cells.

Ansari found that RNA polymerase II transcribes a looped, rather than a linear, DNA template in certain eukaryotic cells. Using the Chromosome Conformation Capture approach developed at Harvard and uniquely modified by Ansari for his experiments, he observed that during transcription DNA elements located at the two ends of a gene – called the promoter and terminator – physically interact to form a loop. When a loop forms, transcription efficiency increases exponentially.

“After publicizing these findings, others found that the HIV gene forms a gene loop, and the gene loop is important for its transcription,” said Ansari. Gene looping was also observed during transcriptional of BRCA1, the gene that’s often mutated in breast cancer cell lines.

But Ansari’s most recent and unexpected finding is that an initiation factor called TFIIB, which facilitates gene looping, occurs in a complex with a number of termination factors, called a holo-TFIIB complex. "No one was expecting that, so we had to do a lot of experiments and use different approaches, and all gave us the same result," said Ansari.

This finding has shaped the focus of Ansari's current round of research, in which he's looking to reveal the role of other factors that are either unidentified or whose role in transcription is unknown. More specifically, he and his team will use mass spectrometry to identify the proteins that are present in holo-TFIIB complexes and study how they facilitate gene looping.

Ansari will also work to determine the scope of gene looping on a genome-wide scale. He intends to ascertain what types of genes are looping, “if a certain gene is looping or not, and if it’s looping, whether there’s any correlation with transcription efficiency,” said Ansari.

“Right now we’re studying the significance of gene looping in yeast cells, and later on we can extend these findings in understanding the role of gene looping in cell differentiation in higher eukaryotes, which is important in terms of development and disease,” said Ansari. “That will be very interesting.”

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

As business continues to globalize, proficiency in creating and managing systems that can adjust to society’s economic, social, technological and political-legal evolutions is essential. Today’s business managers and executives can gain a competitive edge through a doctorate program based in Detroit, the heart of the U.S. auto industry, that’s designed specifically for their experience level.

The first doctorate program of its kind in the United States, the Global Executive Track (GET) Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering complements students’ managerial positions by providing them with skills necessary to thrive in today’s global marketplace. Comprehensive research and coursework allows GET program students to foster their integrative thinking skills, global awareness and ability to produce sustainable value for organizations worldwide.

The program consists of two and a half years of coursework and two years of research. Courses address and explore topics such as product development and operations research. They are taught by a cohort of experts from such areas as business, industrial engineering and anthropology, as well as senior executives from industry.

Upon completion of the program, students will have gained a holistic understanding of both quantitative and qualitative research methodology and tools, and become better prepared to write scholarly research papers. To put learned research skills to practice before graduation, students complete two research studies and submit each to a publication.

“Wayne State’s industrial and systems engineering department is a world-class source for students to gain skills to compete in this rapidly growing field,” said Gloria Heppner, associate vice president for research at WSU. “The GET program is an excellent doctorate program.”

The program seeks candidates with a minimum of 10 years’ managerial experience, a bachelor of science in engineering and relevant master’s degree or MBA.

Co-directors of the GET program are Ratna Babu Chinnam, Ph.D, associate professor of industrial engineering in WSU’s College of Engineering, and Julia Gluesing, Ph.D., business and organizational anthropologist and research professor of industrial engineering at WSU’s College of Engineering.

For further information, visit http://www.ime.wayne.edu/execphd/index.php or send inquiries to get_info@wayne.edu.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Tapan K. Datta, Ph.D., P.E., professor of civil and environmental engineering in the College of Engineering and resident of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., and co-PI’s Timothy Gates, Ph.D., P.E. P.T.O.E., assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering and resident of Northville, Mich., and Peter T. Savolainen, Ph.D., P.E., assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering and resident of Huntington Woods, Mich., received $190,000 through the Michigan Fitness Foundation as part of a broader initiative sponsored by the Michigan Department of Transportation.

The funding will go toward the development of traffic infrastructure improvements and safety education programs in various Michigan K-8 schools as a part of the Safe Route to School (SR2S) program.

“I am passionate about this program because it is so heavily geared toward children’s safety,” Datta said. “The infrastructure improvements that our group will develop, along with the accompanying educational programs, have the potential to improve the safety of children walking and bicycling to school anywhere in Michigan for many years to come.”

The national Safe Routes to School program was created in 2005 with the objective of making it safe, convenient and fun for children to bicycle and walk to school. Safe routes initiatives also help ease traffic jams and air pollution, unite neighborhoods and contribute to students’ readiness to learn in school.

In fall 2010, the National Safe Routes to School program allocated $11 million for statewide and local SR2S program activities, bringing the total funding to date to $559 million. At least 10,204 schools across the U.S. have benefitted or will benefit from these funds.

The Michigan Department of Transportation announced in August that 14 Michigan elementary and middle schools in eight counties will receive more than $1.8 million in federal Safe Routes to School funding for safety improvements and education programs. Funding will be used for infrastructure improvements such as new sidewalks and traffic calming projects and non-infrastructure activities that encourage and enable students to walk and bicycle to school.

“Many schools in Michigan were built decades ago, when student travel patterns and vehicle traffic volumes were much different,” Gates said. “Infrastructure improvements are necessary to facilitate and encourage safe travel for children going to and from school. We are excited to assist the SR2S-chosen schools in identifying problems and implementing improvements.”

The WSU-TRG will assess site-specific factors at schools throughout the state and recommend potential improvements including the construction of sidewalks, pedestrian warning signs and raised crosswalks, as well as traffic-calming techniques such as road narrowing. In order to assess the needs of each community, members of the WSU-TRG will conduct walking audits at selected elementary and middle schools assessing the different paths that children take to school. The audits will identify locations with a high risk for pedestrian crashes or near-crashes.

Some schools will also receive a K-8 pedestrian safety training software program customized to the layout of the area surrounding their schools. Datta expects to conduct audits at roughly one dozen schools in the next year, but the program template will be available to any school for its own use. The grant will also fund the development and prioritization of future SR2S programs.

The K-8 pedestrian safety training program, which was initially developed by the WSU-TRG as part of a project sponsored by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, has already been introduced to 10,000 elementary school children in Detroit. The SR2S funding will enable statewide implementation of the program. “Our research has shown that targeted training, coupled with appropriate infrastructure improvements, have the potential to markedly improve pedestrian behavior,” Savolainen said. We look forward to making a contribution toward these positive changes at Michigan schools.”

For more information on the WSU-TRG, visit http://www.eng.wayne.edu/page.php?id=4677.
For more information on the SR2S program, visit http://saferoutesmichigan.org/.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information on research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.
 

“The university recognized that we need to be providing centralized clinical research services for our investigators,” said Michael Diamond, MD, director of MACTS, who helped spearhead the search for a clinical trials management system to support the new institute.

When looking for a system, Dr. Diamond’s team knew that the system had to be easy to use, be able to create subject calendars, include functionality for billing and financial management capabilities, and have appropriate privacy and HIPAA controls.

Dr. Diamond points out that, while the OnCore system does have all the required functionality they were looking for, there were also some synergies with the clinical research operations at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, which is also affiliated with WSU.

“We thought there might be some opportunity for efficiencies of scale in the future since Karmanos was already utilizing the OnCore system, although not exactly the same way that we have set it up,” said Dr. Diamond.

“It’s an amazing opportunity to be helping support such an ambitious project. It’s always a pleasure to see an organization streamline their operations and bring diverse research groups and multiple investigators together, in part through the use of a unified informatics system,” said Srini Kalluri, President and CEO of Forte Research Systems.

The group at WSU MACTS began implementing the system early last year and went live on October 22nd, 2010.

“So far, we’ve been very impressed with Forte Research’s staff and their responsiveness,” said Dr. Diamond.

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About the WSU Michigan Alliance for Clinical and Translational Science
The Wayne State University Michigan Alliance for Clinical and Translational Science consortium is founded on the vision to become the national model for the conduct of clinical and translational research in an inner-city setting, by creating a comprehensive, coordinated and integrated model for researching aspects of urban health. Their three core goals are to:

1) Increase the volume and quality of clinical and translational research studies.
2) Develop the next generation of clinical and translational researchers, with particular emphasis on inclusion of those from historically underrepresented minority groups.
3) Achieve wider participation of diverse populations in clinical trials.

The emphasis on urban health reflects the uniquely diverse community within the Detroit metropolitan region served by WSU MACTS. The consortium focuses on engaging minority groups in clinical research efforts with particular emphasis on reducing barriers to access to participation by expanding outreach, increasing trust between community members and academic health care providers, improving cultural competency of health care providers, and expanding the numbers of minority clinical and translational scientists, so that, among other goals, research questions are motivated by a broad range of perspectives, mirroring the face of America.

The MACTS program has research strengths in the areas of cancer, neurosciences, and women and children’s health. An urban focus leads to prioritization of research efforts within each of these strength areas, resulting in special implications for the surrounding urban population.

For more information about MACTS, visit http://macts.urcmich.org.

About OnCore
The OnCore platform is the flagship product from Forte Research Systems, Inc., a software development company specializing in clinical and translational research informatics for midsized to large organizations. As the nation's most widely adopted clinical research platform among academic research organizations and cancer centers, OnCore is the result of over a decade of experience working closely with large research organizations, including many world-class NCI designated cancer centers and institutes funded by the National Institute of Health's Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) program.

OnCore-CRM offers a comprehensive set of modules for managing all aspects of clinical research:

• Protocol & Subject Life Cycle Management
• Subject Safety Management
• Protocol & Subject Calendar Management
• Study Financials Management
• Electronic Data Capture and Data Management
• Paperless Committee Management with ePRMS
• Study Information Portal
• Custom Reporting Technology

In addition to the clinical research management system, two other systems complete the OnCore product portfolio. These are OnCore for Biospecimen Management (OnCore-BSM) and OnCore for Unified Registries Management (OnCore-URM).

For information about the OnCore clinical research informatics platform, contact Forte Research Systems at (608) 826-6000 or visit the company online at www.ForteResearch.com.
 

A partnering between a protein-editing enzyme and its protein cousin helps shape the mechanism underlying infections such as Hepatitis C and diseases such as Alzheimer’s, according to a paper by Wayne State University researcher David Rueda, Ph.D.

Rueda is assistant professor of chemistry in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; the study was published in the October 13 issue of Nature. Its co-authors included graduate research assistant Krishanthi Karunatilaka and postdoctoral fellow Amanda Solem, both in WSU’s Department of Chemistry, and a team from Yale led by Professor of Chemistry Anna Marie Pyle. The study uncovered an important step in the structure of the group II intron, an RNA gene-editing mechanism. The study found that the yeast protein Mss116 plays a key role in helping group II introns and other RNAs adopt their proper shape.

“The interaction between group II intron RNA and Mss116 is particularly interesting when considering how ancient RNA is and how relatively young the protein is in comparison,” Rueda said. “It’s an excellent example of how the tireless problem-solving drive of evolution is always at work, even if at first it does not appear to be.”

“A lot of diseases are associated with RNA machines not working properly. RNA performs many fundamental functions within the cell, and if they don't happen correctly, serious diseases can result -- Alzheimer's, cancer and Huntington's disease, as well as viruses such as West Nile. By understanding the steps by which RNA folds into their functional structure, we may discover how to cure some very devastating diseases.”

Group II introns are a type of RNA, a nucleic acid similar in composition to DNA that is sometimes referred to as DNA's "chemical cousin." Contrary to previous scientific consensus, which held that proteins govern most cellular activities, the past two decades of research have revealed RNA’s important roles in the maintenance, transfer and processing of genetic information, as well as the control of gene expression in living cells. As its significance has become more apparent, RNA has become an increasingly important target for understanding disease prevention and treatment.

“The results break new ground in the effort to understand an integral part of many of the world’s most deadly diseases, Rueda said. “This discovery fuels further research on RNA’s structure and dynamics, and how we can use this knowledge to stop disease.”

To view the study abstract, visit: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v467/n7318/full/nature09422.html

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information on research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Nabanita Datta, M.S., Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Internal Medicine’s Division of Endocrinology and a resident of Ann Arbor, Mich., received the grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, a branch of the National Institutes of Health, to investigate the mechanism of MAP kinase phosphatase-1 and the role of parathyroid hormone in the treatment of bone disease.

“We hope to facilitate new and novel therapeutic targets for the prevention and reversal of osteoporosis and bone-related diseases,” Datta said. “Osteoporosis is a major health concern in the United States and globally.”

According to the National Osteoporosis Foundation (NOF), 10 million Americans have the disease and another 34 million are at risk. Sixty-eight percent of those are women. About one in two women and one in four men over age 50 in the United States will break a bone due to osteoporosis. Though most persons with osteoporosis are women, each year 80,000 American men suffer hip fractures, and one-third of them die within a year of the injury.

Data from NOF indicates osteoporosis is the cause of 1.5 million bone fractures annually in the United States. The estimated cost for those fractures is $14 billion. Both the number of osteoporosis fractures and their costs are expected to escalate as the baby boomer generation continues to swell the ranks of the nation’s elderly.

Human bone is a dynamic tissue that is continuously destroyed by osteoclasts (bone-resorbing cells) and renewed by osteoblasts (bone-forming cells). A new therapeutic approach for the treatment of osteoporosis includes anabolic agents that promote “osteoblastic differentiation” that leads to increased bone formation. Parathyroid hormone, or PTH, and PTH-related peptide play crucial roles during skeletal development and remodeling.

“So far, human PTH(1-34), or teriparatide, is the only bone anabolic agent approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of osteoporosis,” Datta said. “The effects of this agent on bone formation plateau after two years of therapy and there are limits to its safe use. Among these are hypercalcemia, which means elevated calcium levels in the bloodstream, and hypercalcemia, or elevated calcium levels in urine. Hypercalcemia can lead to a number of symptoms including muscle weakness, joint aches and fatigue. Hypercalciurea can impair kidney function.”

Datta is leading research to better understand the molecular mechanism of MAP kinase phosphatase-1 and ERK-MAP kinase in the PTH and PTHrP anabolic action in bone. Her studies, published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, and recently in Cellular Signaling, demonstrate the involvement of MAP kinases and osteoblast cell cycle regulatory proteins in PTH and PTHrP anabolic action in bone.

“Dissecting the molecular mechanisms of this peptide hormone is essential to understanding bone diseases and minimizing adverse effects,” said Datta, who also is advisor of education in the Endocrinology Post-Doctoral Training Program. “The intent of our research is to contribute to the goal of developing more effective therapeutic strategies and to design new curative targets for patients with bone defects, including osteoporosis.”

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information on research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

DETROIT— With its many pressures, the workplace can be a stress hub. Studies have shown that work stress can creep into everyday family life and negatively impact the mood at home, and the high unemployment rate is causing increased feelings of stress and worry among the employed. But what exactly happens when workplace stress diffuses at home?

Richard B. Slatcher, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology in WSU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and resident of Birmingham, Mich., specializes in social and health psychology. He has found novel answers to this question and others in his study of the relationship between stress and human physiology, published in the November/December 2010 issue of Psychosomatic Medicine.

Slatcher assessed the effects that work stress had on the stress hormone cortisol for working parents of young children and their spouses. The 37 married couples in the study completed six questionnaires per day from a Saturday morning to a Monday night and provided saliva samples to measure their cortisol levels. The questionnaires were used to measure individual feelings of worry and tenseness about work, and to examine their links with daily cortisol levels.

“This is the first study to demonstrate that one person’s momentary feelings of stress are related to another person’s stress hormones in daily life,” said Slatcher, who investigates the effects that close relationships have on human health in his Close Relationships Laboratory at WSU.

His study showed that for both husbands and wives, work worries are linked to higher levels of one’s own cortisol levels. But Slatcher found that the husband’s work stress spreads to the wife, increasing her cortisol levels, too.

“Wives seem to be picking up on their husbands’ worries about work and, as a result, react biologically,” said Slatcher. “We found that the more worried husbands were about work when they were at home with their families, the more their wives’ cortisol levels increased.”

But the opposite was not observed – husbands’ cortisol levels were unchanged when their wives’ work worries increased. This could be due either to husbands not picking up on their wives’ stress, or their not being physiologically reactive to it, Slatcher said.

STRESS BUFFER
The study suggested that the links between work worries and wives’ cortisol levels are buffered by higher-quality marriages.

“Wives reporting both low marital satisfaction and low self-disclosure (less open) to their husbands showed a stronger association between work worries and cortisol compared to wives reporting high marital satisfaction and/or high self-disclosure,” said Slatcher.

“Disclosure in the context of close relationships – the context that affords the greatest opportunities for self-disclosure – is beneficial.”

But, again, husbands did not exhibit the same reactions. “For husbands, neither marital disclosure nor marital satisfaction buffered the association between work worries and cortisol,” Slatcher said.

“The results of this study represent an important step toward understanding how everyday feelings of stress influence one’s own physiology and the physiology of others close to us,” said Slatcher.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Physical inactivity is considered a major risk factor of cardiovascular disease, the world’s leading cause of death. But how and why physical inactivity contributes to cardiovascular disease is not fully understood. Mueller’s study attempts to shed light on this increasingly common problem. “This is an important clinical, economic and public health care problem,” said Mueller.

“This study may improve the lives of individuals who are unable or unwilling to exercise by advancing the possibility of developing new treatment options for cardiovascular disease, increasing public awareness of the sedentary lifestyle’s adverse effects and indirectly reducing the rising health care costs associated with physical inactivity,” said Mueller.

The study will focus on RVLM neurons, so called because they are located in a brain region known as the rostral ventrolateral medulla (RVLM). This brain region is critical to normal blood pressure regulation but also has been implicated in disease states such as hypertension. “Our grant will determine the extent to which cells in the brain that control our heart and blood vessels are altered whether an individual exercises regularly or remains sedentary,” said Mueller.

Mueller and his team believe that during physical inactivity NMDA (N-methyl D-aspartate) receptors are increased on RVLM neurons and enhance the responsiveness of the sympathetic nervous system. When the sympathetic nervous system is stimulated, blood vessels contract and the heart rate accelerates. If this happens over a prolonged period of time, an individual will be more likely to develop hypertension, arrhythmias and other forms of cardiovascular disease.

“We are very fortunate to have a highly collaborative team on this project including members within the Department of Physiology, the School Of Medicine and at other institutions,” Mueller said. Co-investigators involved in the project, all from Wayne State University, are Tadeusz J. Scislo, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of research and physiology, School of Medicine; Harry G. Goshgarian, Ph.D., professor of anatomy and cell biology, School of Medicine; and Yun Wang, M.S., research assistant, Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Science, Department of Pharmacy Practice.

Consultants on the project include: Ida Llewellyn-Smith, Ph.D., associate professor at Flinders University in Australia; Genene Holt, Ph.D., assistant professor of anatomy and cell biology, WSU’s School of Medicine; Robert MacKenzie, Ph.D., associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience, WSU’s School of Medicine; and Michael Chopp, Ph.D., distinguished professor of neurology, Oakland University.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

A new study by researchers at Wayne State University released in the February 2011 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, which is currently available at Early View, has researched this problem and discovered that by using classical conditioning methods, a consistent FASD deficit has been identified.

The study, “Impaired delay and trace eyeblink conditioning in school-age children with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome,” led by Sandra Jacobson, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences at Wayne State University’s School of Medicine, and honorary professor at University of Cape Town Faculty of Health Sciences, examined whether heavy prenatal alcohol exposure has an impact on both delay and trace learning in school-age children.

The research team tested 63 school-age children on delay conditioning, and then returned to test 32 of the same children on trace conditioning 1.5 years later in Cape Town, South Africa, an area that suffers from high rates of heavy drinking during pregnancy by women.

The study involved pairing a tone with a puff of air to the child’s eye, causing the child to blink. The goal was to determine if heavy alcohol exposure affected the child’s ability to associate the tone with the puff, causing them to blink when the tone was heard. Delay conditioning involves an overlap between the tone and the puff of air, while trace conditioning involves the more difficult task of introducing a stimulus-free interval between the tone and air puff.

“Although trace conditioning is more complex, we found that the impact of prenatal alcohol exposure on both forms of conditioning was similar in magnitude,” said Jacobson. “This suggests that the alcohol effect on the cerebellar neural circuits that mediate both forms of conditioning may be responsible for the deficits seen in both tasks.”

This study suggests that eyeblink conditioning could provide a good model for assessing and identifying alcohol-affected children.

Co-authors of the paper included Mark E. Stanton, University of Delaware; Joseph L. Jacobson, Wayne State University; Christopher D. Molteno, University of Cape Town Faculty of Health Sciences.

To view the full paper, visit http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1530-0277.2010.01341.x/full.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

“With over a half million URC alumni contributing to Michigan’s economy and quality of life, your work in the student sector ensuring that we keep talent in the state and your leadership in both innovation and collaboration, you epitomize what this award was created for,’’ said Michigan Emerging Executive Director Kelli Baird.

“Making university resources accessible to entrepreneurs and businesses, large and small also supports the strong small business and entrepreneurial ecosystem here in our great state.’’

The URC was organized by the presidents of Michigan State University, the University of Michigan and Wayne State University in 2006 to transform, strengthen and diversify the state’s economy. It goals include aligning the three institutions’ collective resources toward accelerating economic growth and innovation and encouraging a greater level of collaboration involving the universities, communities and business.

URC Executive Director Jeff Mason, accepting the award on behalf of the universities, said “We are honored to be recognized by our colleagues knowing a great deal of Michigan’s future success will involve the innovators gathered here today and our partners in business, academia and communities across the state as well as our friends and trading partners around the world.’’

The Michigan Emerging conference, a featured event of Global Entrepreneurship Week/USA, was designed to promote and connect innovators and entrepreneurs and the support system that exists only in Michigan. The day began with a keynote message from Ann Arbor SPARK President and CEO Mike Finney and was followed by breakout sessions focusing on the top emerging sectors for 2010, what is coming, what needs to happen, how you can become involved. The curriculum was designed to inform and enable those involved in this evolution.

A recent report showed the URC invested more than $1.5 billion in research, educated 137,152 students and had an economic impact of more than $14.8 billion on the state. The universities have more than a million alumni with more than 55 percent living in Michigan.
For more on Michigan Emerging, visit: http://www.michiganemerging.com/

For more on the URC, visit: http://urcmich.org/
 

Mutations that are detrimental to the heart when occurring alone restore heart health and lower incidence of heart disease and heart failure when occurring together, a new study by a Wayne State University researcher finds.

J.P. Jin, M.D., Ph.D., professor and chair of physiology in Wayne State University’s School of Medicine, was published in the Sept. 3, 2010 issue of The Journal of Biological Chemistry. The study revealed that mutations occurring in troponin I (TnI) and troponin T (TnT), two evolutionary and functionally linked proteins in the regulatory system of the cardiac muscle, mutually cancel out each other’s negative effects and restore the heart to a normal condition. The mutations, which frequently co-occur in wild turkeys, offer a novel target for new treatments in human heart diseases such as congestive heart failure and cardiomyopathy – diseases associated with the deterioration of the function of the heart muscle.

The current work builds off a previous study, published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry in 2004, in which Jin and his students discovered that a mutation in cardiac TnI in wild turkey hearts may provide a fitness advantage by “rescuing” the effects of a heart failure mutation in cardiac TnT. In the current study, Jin’s research group duplicated the mutations using transgenic mice to examine the extent to which the two mutations influence the function of the cardiac muscle.

The study found that abnormally spliced myopathic cardiac TnT impairs systolic function, weakening the heart muscle and causing heart failure. The second mutation, a single amino acid substitution in cardiac TnI, was found to cause inadequate relaxation of the heart muscle, decreasing the diastolic function to cause heart failure.

Jin’s study also found, however, that when occurring together, the mutations mutually “rescued” the heart from the damaging effects in the transgenic mice.

TnI and TnT make up two of the three subunits of the Troponin Complex, a protein complex that plays a central role in the regulation of the contraction and relaxation of skeletal and cardiac muscle in vertebrates all the way to humans. Because humans have the same protein, the findings indicate a novel submolecular target for developing new treatments for cardiomyopathies and heart failure.

“It was very intriguing that dominantly negative mutations could mutually rescue each other and restore normal cardiac function when existing in the same heart,” Jin said. “Our future studies will delve into how this restoration occurs – findings that may greatly benefit the millions of people with heart diseases who are in danger of heart failure.”

To view the study abstract, visit http://www.jbc.org/content/285/36/27806.full.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information on research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

DETROIT—Identifying water’s behavior when confined at the molecular level has been, in the field of nanofluidics, a source of controversy – one that a Wayne State University researcher and his colleagues may have put to an end.

Peter M. Hoffmann, Ph.D., associate professor of physics and materials science at WSU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, has found that at the nanoscale, liquid water transforms into a rubber-like solid when squeezed at a certain rate. The study is featured in the Oct. 15, 2010 issue of Nature India and the Sept. 2010 issue of Physical Review Letters with a special Viewpoint written by well-known researchers from University of Illinois. Only 100 out of 18,000 papers in this prestigious journal are selected for a Viewpoint review each year. The study has shed new light on the nanofluidics debate over the nature of confined water’s mechanical properties.

Water, which makes up nearly 70 percent of the human body, is nanoconfined between proteins that make up the cell’s organelles.

“Usually the water in our cells is considered as a rather static bystander,” said Hoffmann. “But water is the most important liquid in the universe because it is the one essential ingredient we need to support life. Knowing how water behaves in tiny channels and tiny spaces is important for the design of future devices that would, for example, probe arterial blood and continually measure blood sugar or other markers.”

Hoffmann explored how water reacts when its molecules are gently squeezed at speeds “so slow it would take a few months to just cover a distance of one foot,” he said. Yet the impact of this speed, as Hoffmann and his colleagues have proved, alters water’s behavior drastically.

“When we squeezed water at a speed of 0.8 nanometers per second and beyond until the tip reached the surface, the water suddenly changed from a viscous honey-like liquid to an almost solid-like material that reacted elastically, like rubber,” said Hoffmann. A sensitive atomic force microscope (AFM) that was built by his team made these precise nanoscale measurements possible.

Hoffmann and his team also saw that water spontaneously orders into layers, each as thin as a single water molecule, when confined. To reach this conclusion, Hoffmann constricted water against a flat surface with the tiny AFM tip until the space between the two shrank to a width of only a few nanometers.

Although the research is fundamental, Hoffmann said, “the discoveries may play a role in how cellular components move and transmit forces, as well as aid in the design of nanomechanical devices.”

Others who participated in the study are Shah Khan, graduate student in WSU’s physics department who performed the measurements; and George Matei, Ph.D., former WSU graduate student who built the AFM used in the study along with Shivprasad Patil, Ph.D., former postdoctoral fellow at WSU and current professor of physics at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) in Pune, India.

To view the Physical Review Letters Viewpoint, visit http://physics.aps.org/articles/v3/73. To view the Nature India feature, visit http://www.nature.com/nindia/2010/101015/full/nindia.2010.143.html.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

DETROIT – Three institutions dedicated to health, innovative science and quality cancer care announced today the creation of the Southeast Michigan Partners Against Cancer (SEMPAC) to help close the gap on racial disparities related to cancer care in southeast Michigan. SEMPAC is made possible by a more than $4 million, five-year grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI). It’s one of 23 NCI-supported projects in the nation, one of six dedicated to addressing cancer health disparities among African Americans, and the only one focused on older, underserved African Americans from urban areas.

The Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, the Josephine Ford Cancer Center at Henry Ford Health System, and Wayne State University School of Medicine (SOM) have committed to work together to improve access to cancer screenings and treatment for older, underserved African Americans throughout the tri-county area.

Co-principal investigators for SEPAC are Terrance Albrecht, Ph.D., associate center director and professor, Population Sciences, Karmanos Cancer Institute and Wayne State University SOM; and Robert Chapman, M.D., director, Josephine Ford Cancer Center, Henry Ford Health System.

The tri-county urban areas, including residents of Detroit, Inkster, Southfield and Pontiac, account for more than 71 percent of Michigan’s African American population and 42 percent of the state’s below poverty population (2008 U.S. Census estimate). According to the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) Program of the National Cancer Institute, older African Americans in southeast Michigan have disproportionately higher rates of cancer and have significantly higher mortality rates compared to Caucasians in this region, as well as African Americans nationally.

“We’re fortunate to have so many excellent health care facilities in our region, yet there are many in our community who are not aware of the services available to them, may not understand how to access services, and therefore don’t have the greatest chance of survival. That is just not acceptable,” said Gerold Bepler, M.D., Ph.D., president and CEO, Karmanos Cancer Institute. “As cancer physicians and researchers our focus is to find the best treatment options and cures to save lives. We believe everyone deserves that right. This partnership will magnify our outreach and help save the lives of some of our most vulnerable citizens.”

Background

Both Dr. Albrecht and Dr. Chapman have worked extensively to help close the gap on racial disparities in the metropolitan Detroit area. Since May 2005, Dr. Albrecht and her team at Karmanos have engaged several community partners to participate in the Detroit Community Network Program (CNP), receiving a $2 million grant over a five-year period from the NCI, one of 25 such programs nationally. The Detroit CNP served as a community-based participatory education, training and research collaboration to address the disparities of older African Americans in the city of Detroit.

Dr. Chapman from the Josephine Ford Cancer Center (JFCC) realized that even with great programming, older African Americans still tended to be diagnosed with late stage cancer. As he put it,” We had a real problem right under our noses and needed to do something about it.”

In 2006, Dr. Chapman’s program was selected as one of six sites nationally for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Demonstration Project for community-based patient navigation to enroll Medicaid-eligible African American seniors in cancer screening. The program resulted in thousands of older African Americans being screened and they were empowered to see their primary care physician for additional care.

Dr. Albrecht and Dr. Chapman have collaborated informally since 2006, recognizing that their work complements each others rather than competes. With the help of Karmanos’ CNP-partner organizations and the JFCC CMS screening program, nearly 5,900 African American seniors were enrolled in cancer screenings, more than any other CMS Demonstration Project nationally. Together, these programs impacted nearly 7,000 African American seniors, providing cancer education, screening, and research efforts.

These efforts now serve as the foundation for the Southeast Michigan Partners Against Cancer, an expansion to serve underserved, older African Americans throughout the tri-county area of southeast Michigan.

“The Southeast Michigan Partners Against Cancer is powerful community collaboration that will move the needle forward in reducing racial disparities and cancer deaths among underserved African Americans in our area,” says Nancy Schlichting, president and chief executive officer of Henry Ford Health System. “This partnership is best poised to not only improve cancer screening and early diagnosis for African Americans, but ensure that patients get the best and most advanced cancer care available.”

Southeast Michigan Partners Against Cancer (SEMPAC)

The partnership will collaborate with several community agencies to help carry out practical intervention elements to achieve results. SEMPAC’s goal to reduce cancer disparities of older, underserved African Americans within southeast Michigan, improving early detection, diagnosis, treatment and survivorship, will be achieved by:
• enhancing communication skills, behavioral attitude and information exchange with the help of a patient advocate so that older, underserved African Americans have the best chance of high quality intervention for early diagnosis and treatment, especially related to breast, prostate, colorectal and lung cancers
• enhancing the cultural understanding for those who provide treatment to assure that communication is understood between the patient and the health provider
• building on the growing trust of patients and the community to enhance the collection of biospecimens for research and clinical studies, and
• recruiting and training future researchers and physicians to better work with and for the community to reduce cancer disparities

Valerie M. Parisi, M.D., M.P.H., M.B.A., dean of the Wayne State University School of Medicine, said, “This project not only reaches out to one of our city¹s underserved populations, it will also provide valuable information for our next generation of physicians, which will allow them to better understand the causes of racial disparities and to eventually eliminate them.”

SEMPAC and the ongoing commitment of its partners will work to create tri-county regional partnerships that will build awareness and educate residents of cancer treatment options, provide tools to make better health care decisions related to cancer care, and increase understanding of the importance of biospecimens to advance cancer research.

Dr. Chapman added, “Detroit and southeast Michigan’s ability to create partnerships, even with scarce resources, on behalf of its citizens will be the envy of the nation.”

“No one institution alone can restore the health of our community and region,” said Dr. Albrecht. “We need everyone’s support: health institutions, community leaders, businesses and government, community and religious groups. We can and will make an impact on cancer disparities. We invite everyone to help us in this unprecedented effort to save lives.”

About the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute
Located in mid-town Detroit, Michigan, the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute is one of 40 National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer centers in the United States. Caring for nearly 6,000 new patients annually on a budget of $216 million, conducting more than 700 cancer-specific scientific investigation programs and clinical trials, Karmanos is among the nation’s best cancer centers. Through the commitment of 1,000 staff, including nearly 300 physicians and researchers on faculty at the Wayne State University School of Medicine, and supported by thousands of volunteer and financial donors, Karmanos strives to prevent, detect and eradicate all forms of cancer. Its long-term partnership with the WSU School of Medicine enhances the collaboration of critical research and academics related to cancer care. Karmanos is southeastern Michigan’s most preferred hospital for cancer care according to annual surveys conducted by the National Research Corporation. Gerold Bepler, M.D., Ph.D., is the Institute’s president and chief executive officer. For more information call 1-800-KARMANOS or go to www.karmanos.org.

About the Josephine Ford Cancer Center
The Josephine Ford Cancer Center, part of the Henry Ford Health System, is an international leader in the research, detection and treatment of cancer, featuring advanced gene therapy, the region’s most experienced radiosurgery program, and the world's most experienced robotic surgery program. Each year, more than 5,000 patients are diagnosed and treated at JFCC. Its multidisciplinary approach to cancer management incorporates a team of professionals from 20 specialties to fight a variety of cancers. And its expertise has touched lives beyond Michigan and the Midwest, with patients traveling from as far as Antarctica to receive cancer treatment from Henry Ford physicians. Physicians from around the world also have traveled to JFCC to be trained in cancer diagnostic and treatment methods pioneered at Henry Ford. JFCC is led by Robert Chapman, M.D., a highly respected lung cancer specialist. To learn more about JFCC, visit HenryFord.com.

About Wayne State University School of Medicine
Founded in 1868, the Wayne State University School of Medicine is the largest single-campus medical school in the nation with more than 1,000 medical students. In addition to undergraduate medical education, the school offers master¹s degree, Ph.D. and M.D.-Ph.D. programs in 14 areas of basic science to about 400 students annually. For more information, visit home.med.wayne.edu.

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VandeVord’s nomination came from the Department of Veterans Affairs and recognizes her research expertise in blast-related neurotrauma, including her investigation of blast-induced neurotrauma in U.S troops. In addition to her research, VandeVord is an active member of the Society for Biomaterials, Biomedical Engineering Society and Society of Women Engineers and also is a health scientist at the John D. Dingell Veterans Affairs Medical Center. She has been on the Wayne State faculty since 2002 after receiving her Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Wayne State University.

The Presidential Award embodies the high priority the Obama Administration places on producing outstanding scientists and engineers to advance the nation’s goals, tackle grand challenges and contribute to the American economy. Ten Federal departments and agencies join together annually to nominate the most meritorious scientists and engineers whose early accomplishments show the greatest promise for assuring America’s preeminence in science and engineering and contributing to the awarding agencies' missions.

The awards, established by President Clinton in 1996, are coordinated by the Office of Science and Technology Policy within the Executive Office of the President. Awardees are selected for their pursuit of innovative research at the frontiers of science and technology and their commitment to community service as demonstrated through scientific leadership, public education or community outreach. Winning scientists and engineers have received research grants for up to five years to further their studies in support of critical government missions.

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The College of Engineering, with more than 2,600 undergraduate and graduate students, offers a wide range of fully accredited engineering disciplines. Its well-respected graduates represent a large force in Michigan industry and the engineering field. To learn more about Wayne State University, visit http://wayne.edu.

DETROIT—Jeff Martin, Ph.D., professor of exercise and sport science in Wayne State University’s College of Education, was inducted Oct. 9 as a fellow in the National Academy of Kinesiology along with nine other scholars at the organization’s 80th annual meeting in Williamsburg, Va.

Fellows of the National Academy of Kinesiology are honored for their significant and sustained contributions in the field of kinesiology through scholarship and professional service. Members of the academy are considered the “who’s who” of top individuals in the fields of kinesiology and physical education. To be elected as a member, individuals must be nominated and ratified by the entire academy, must be currently engaged in professional and/or scientific work in the field, and have demonstrated competence in the profession for a minimum of 10 years.

Martin was recently appointed editor of Sport, Exercise and Performance Psychology, a journal of the American Psychological Association. A former professional athlete, he also was recently named associate editor of the Adapted Physical Activity Quarterly and is on the editorial board of the Journal of Applied Sport Psychology. During his 18 years at WSU, he has published more than 85 research articles and book chapters and has concentrated his research on the psychosocial aspects of disability sport and physical activity.

“It is a great honor to have a Wayne State faculty member elected as a fellow of the National Academy of Kinesiology,” said Hilary Ratner, vice president for Research at Wayne State. “His contributions to the field are significant and have truly been a guiding force in the field of exercise and sport science.”

For more information about the National Academy of Kinesiology, visit www.aakpe.org.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.
 

A Wayne State University researcher is investigating whether therapy that focuses on education, symptom management or confronting avoided emotional experiences is the best approach for fibromyalgia, a common and disabling pain condition.

Mark A. Lumley, Ph.D., professor of psychology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, received a five-year, $3,373,000 grant from the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases of the National Institutes of Health for the study “Pain and Stress Management for Fibromyalgia.” The study’s co-investigators are David A. Williams, Ph.D., and Daniel J. Clauw, M.D., of the University of Michigan Medical Center, and Howard Schubiner, M.D., of St. John Providence Health System.

Fibromyalgia (FM) afflicts 2 to 4 percent of U.S. adults, the majority of whom are women. Notoriously difficult to treat, FM is marked by widespread muscular pain and tenderness, fatigue, sleep problems and mood disturbance. FM is a complex condition. Its onset and course involve biological as well as psychological factors including beliefs, emotions and behaviors. Stressful life experiences, which are especially prevalent in patients with FM, likely contribute to the condition.

The five-year grant will test three competing psychological/behavioral interventions for fibromyalgia: patient education, cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) and a novel emotional awareness and exposure therapy.

The CBT approach focuses on teaching patients skills to manage their pain and decrease their disability. Techniques include relaxation, distraction, problem solving and cognitive restructuring. Although CBT is the best supported psychological intervention for FM, research suggests that CBT helps only about a third of FM patients and is not as effective for patients who have unresolved stress or emotional issues.

Lumley and colleagues have developed and pilot-tested Emotional Exposure Therapy, which focuses on reducing stress by helping people confront emotions that they usually avoid. This is done through techniques such as expressive writing, mindfulness exercises and assertiveness training.

Lumley’s team brings together experts in all three of the interventions being tested. Lumley has focused on the relationships between stress, emotion regulation and pain for the past 17 years and has developed and tested various methods to help patients reduce stress and pain. “Research has shown that the brain—and the pain that it generates—are greatly influenced by experiences and how people deal with their thoughts and emotions,” Lumley said. “Our goal is to test the effects of helping patients understand their condition, cope with pain or resolve stress.”

The study will also examine which types of patients respond best to which intervention. Lumley and colleagues will take into account factors such as trauma history, emotion regulation abilities, history of depression and degree of tenderness as predictors of which treatment option will have the most successful outcome for which participants. “Because there are different factors that cause and maintain fibromyalgia, there likely is not a one-size-fits-all therapy,” Lumley said. “The hope for this study is that we may better understand these differences among patients, so that more treatment options are available and higher success rates are achieved by those who suffer with the disorder.”

Recruitment for the study will begin in February 2011. Recruitment will be open to all patients with a diagnosis of FM, but the researchers are especially interested in those patients diagnosed with FM in the past few years, including those meeting the new clinical FM diagnostic criteria. For information about participating in the study, contact the project manager at the Detroit/Southfield location at (313) 577-2258 or the Ann Arbor location at (866) 288-0046.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information on research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

According to Virginia Delaney-Black, M.D., M.P.H., professor of pediatrics at Wayne State University’s School of Medicine and Children’s Hospital of Michigan and lead author of the study, analysis of teen hair specimens were 52 times more likely to identify cocaine use when compared to self-report of use. Parent specimens were 6.5 times more likely to indicate cocaine use when compared to self-report of use.

“These findings confirm prior reports of adult underreporting of their own drug use while extending our understanding of teen self-admitted drug use,” said Delaney-Black. “Health care providers and others who need to know about teen drug use should consider additional methods of ascertainment other than self- or parent-report to verify teen drug use prevalence.”

The study, currently available online and slated to be published in the Nov. 5, 2010, issue of Pediatrics, verified that teen self-reported drug use numbers matched those from national anonymous surveys of black adolescents, suggesting that prior studies drastically underestimated drug use, particularly of cocaine and opiates, in teens.

“Concern about the potential risks of drug-use admission, perceived social acceptability of reporting drug use or anxiety that parents may find out about their drug use may account for teens’ preference to say ‘I don’t,’ added Delaney-Black.

In addition to Delaney-Black, other Wayne State researchers who co-authored the study were: Lisa M. Chiodo, Ph.D; John H. Hannigan, Ph.D.; Mark K. Greenwald, Ph.D.; James Janisse, Ph.D.; Grace Patterson; Joel Ager, Ph.D.; and Robert J. Sokol, M.D. Marilyn A. Huestis, Ph.D., of the Chemistry and Drug Metabolism Section of the Intramural Research Program of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, also was a co-author of the study.

To view the full study funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health, visit http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/peds.2009-3059v1.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.
 

Founded in 2009, NextCAT is commercializing a class of catalysts that enable producers to use a wide variety of inexpensive feedstocks such as waste vegetable oil, animal fats and residual corn oil, and convert them into biodiesel. NextCAT offers a unique solution for an industry that has been mostly idled in the United States since 2008 when rising feedstock prices and the price drop of petroleum diesel made the production of biodiesel uneconomical. With a cost savings of at least $1 per gallon, the NextCAT solution greatly changes the economics of a biodiesel plant.

“We have a technology that has been proven in the lab by the science team at Wayne State University’s National Biofuels Energy Lab,” said Charles Salley, CEO of NextCAT Inc. “This seed funding from the Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund allows us to begin to design, build and install a reactor in an idle biodiesel plant in Michigan. This investment of $250,000 in NextCAT from the Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund brings the total amount of funding to date to $525,000.”

“The science team of Dr. Steven Salley, Dr. Shuli Yan and I are excited to see our technology progressing toward usage by the biodiesel producers, and we look forward to a successful production demonstration later this year,” said Simon Ng, Ph.D., chief technology officer at NextCAT, interim associate dean for research in Wayne State’s College of Engineering and the technology’s co-inventor.

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NextCAT is a startup company located at TechTown, the Wayne State University research and technology park in Detroit. It was founded in 2009 by inventors Dr. Simon Ng, Dr. Steven Salley, Dr, Shuli Yan and CEO Charles Salley. NextCAT offers a class of heterogeneous catalysts for biodiesel production that allow biodiesel producers to use less refined and less expensive feedstocks in their production process. For more information, visit http://nextcatinc.com/

Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Media Contact:
Julie O’Connor, Wayne State University, ag2712@wayne.edu or (313) 577-8845
 

Timothy L. Stemmler, Ph.D., associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology in WSU’s School of Medicine, has studied the causality of Friedriech’s ataxia for more than 10 years and recently had an article published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. In it, he comprehensively reviewed the role that proteins, which produce small iron and sulfur cluster molecules essential for life, play in causing Friedreich’s ataxia. Stemmler hopes to develop a strong biochemical understanding of how these proteins function in the cell and this will lead to new alternative treatment strategies aimed at the source of Friedreich’s ataxia, in contrast to currently available treatments that can only target the disorder’s effects.

“In their early teens, ataxia patients lose motor ability, they lose the ability to walk, and the disorder is often fatal in their early thirties due to complications from heart failure,” said Stemmler. “Because this is all from the inability to make one single protein, I thought it would be an interesting area to look at.”

Stemmler looks at the issue with a biophysical perspective rather than a solely biochemical one, allowing him and his colleagues working with him in his laboratory to apply a wide variety of biophysical techniques.

At the molecular level, it is known that ataxia is caused by a deficiency in a mitochondrial protein called frataxin, but the exact way in which not producing frataxin impairs muscle and neurological function remains unknown. Investigating this is a major focus of Stemmler’s research.

“If one could figure out what this protein is actually doing in the body, then you can go a long way toward developing treatment strategies that would help patients deal with the disorder,” said Stemmler.

Stemmler has studied frataxin proteins present in yeast, bacteria, flies and humans, which together indicate that the protein is necessary for the production of iron-sulfur clusters. These clusters perform essential functions, like transferring electrons for cellular respiration, and are involved in the communication between cells and between proteins.

But when the cell is frataxin-deficient and is unable to produce enough iron-sulfur clusters, the body senses a lack of iron-sulfur clusters and overloads iron into the cell. The accumulation of iron damages the mitochondria and kills the cell.

“It’s this inverted pyramid, where everything hinges on that one point, that one point being not being able to make a single protein,” said Stemmler. “When the cell can’t do that, the whole iron regulation process collapses.”

Stemmler also hopes that his research will apply to other disorders as well, like Parkinson’s disease. In both diseases, iron builds up at the base stem of the brain, which leads to a loss of nerve function.

“I think the potential to solve this problem is great. So that’s why we do it,” said Stemmler.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Published by the American Sociological Association, JHSB examines medical organizations and institutions, and the actions and interactions of health care professionals in the context of society. In honor of the journal’s 50th anniversary, the Robert Wood Foundation provided funding for an extra issue titled “What Do We Know? Key Findings from 50 Years of Medical Sociology.”

Janet Hankin, Ph.D., professor and Department of Sociology interim chair in WSU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and resident of Huntington Woods, Mich., was co-editor of the extra issue along with Eric Wright of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. Hankin and Katherine J. Rosich, a senior policy analyst based in Washington, D.C., wrote the issue’s executive summary.

The 11 articles in the issue, including research from Harvard University, UCLA and Indiana University-Bloomington, highlight the major findings of medical sociology on health and health care along with recommendations for policy reform. “These studies looked at the vastly changed landscape of health care in the United States,” said Hankin. “Our goal was to understand what works, what doesn’t work and what we can do better.”

Several studies in the issue focused on the cost of health care in the United States. Data from 2006 shows that the U.S. spends a substantially greater share of its gross domestic product on health care than comparable Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, without achieving better health outcomes. The issue also highlights an increase in public access to health-related information, a trend yielding mixed results. “In terms of complementary and alternative medicine, patients are more aware than ever of their options,” Hankin said. “However, information is also acquired from direct-to-consumer advertising, a practice that has raised some ethical concerns over the profit-driven nature of pharmaceutical companies.”

Another study, done by Columbia University scholars, investigates one of the oldest and most critical questions in medical sociology – why the poor and other disadvantaged members of society continue to have worse health and die much younger than the more privileged members. One explanation is that on average, people living in poverty have fewer resources and are exposed to more environmental stressors such as dangerous neighborhoods and social isolation. These factors in turn cause people to choose unhealthy behaviors such as smoking and drinking as a means to cope with stress. “It’s hard to eliminate poverty, but we can intervene to help people cope with the stressors in their environment,” Hankin said. “This includes policies that reduce residential segregation, curtail crime, improve education and provide opportunities for recreation and access to fresh food.”

The issue provides evidence of the benefits of universal health care and preventive medicine. “We are the only industrialized country in the world that does not have universal health insurance,” Hankin said. “There is a fear in people that if you provide health care for everyone, the system will go bankrupt, but that’s not the case. If fewer people suffer from chronic health problems, they will be able to work and produce more. And with a system geared toward preventive care, health problems will be caught earlier and will cost less to treat.”

Hankin said the hope behind the extra issue of JHSB is to provide recommendations for policy makers as well as inspire future studies that can further pinpoint problem areas and bring about change. “With the continuing concern over health care in the U.S., there is a need for credible, empirical research that is widely available to the public and policy experts,” she said. “This issue provides a foundation for understanding the incredibly complex issues behind the successes and failures of U.S. health care and what we can do to improve it.”

To view the issue, visit: http://hsb.sagepub.com/content/51/1_suppl.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information on research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Nathan Fisher, Ph.D., assistant professor of computer science in WSU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and resident of Royal Oak, Mich., received the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award totaling $400,000 to develop algorithms, analysis and system design tools for integrating and consolidating multiple subsystems on a shared processing platform. Also, he will design curriculum and an outreach program aimed at increasing recruitment of students to the field of embedded systems programs and research, with a focus on underrepresented groups.

Embedded systems are computer systems designed to perform one or a few functions, often with real-time computing constraints. As seen with the rise of smart phones, MP3 players, and the complex computers built into cars and airplanes, the demand for more applications on a single device has led to an increase in multiple subsystems operating on shared processing platforms. Virtualization execution environments (VEE) technologies enable consolidation and permit embedded systems to be designed with reduced size, weight and power over non-integrated systems.

VEEs still hold many challenges, however, such as allocating a shared processing platform’s computational resources to many subsystems and ensuring all timing requirements are met. “When you’re working with multiple embedded subsystems that have competing computational deadlines, it is essential to isolate the effect of one subsystem against the others, because if one subsystem takes up too much processing time, the other deadlines won’t be met.”

To address the problem, Fisher is developing algorithms for real-time subsystem scheduling that maximize the use of resources with the VEE framework. He also is developing a resource-sharing protocol between subsystems, developing system design tools and designing the first techniques for verifying the timeliness of VEEs.

The project includes a substantial education component aimed at increasing awareness of embedded and real-time system design to students of all academic levels, with a focus on underrepresented groups. The work will provide materials sufficient for at least two Ph.D. dissertations, an undergraduate research project developing a robotics-based educational tool and a K-12 curriculum and outreach program. The curriculum will be integrated into WSU’s Explorations in Robotics Camp, a program that teaches 11- to 16-year-olds to solve challenges by building and programming robots using the LEGO Mindstorms Robotics Invention System.

Fisher hopes that by increasing the exposure of real-time embedded systems, he may begin to appeal to a more diverse group of students. “One of the most interesting things about computer code is that really complex systems can be built using relatively simple algorithms,” he said. “The work that’s done in this field translates directly into cell phones, airplanes, cars and any other device that utilizes embedded systems. I think making that connection is key in recruiting a more diverse group of people into the field.”

Fisher also was the recent recipient of a Best Paper Award for the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics. The paper, “Resource-Sharing Servers for Open Environments,” can be viewed at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=5169980&tag=1.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information on research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.
 

DETROIT—On Oct. 19, 2010, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced four contracts to address antimicrobial resistance, including an award to Wayne State University for the project, “Targeted Clinical Trials to Reduce the Risk of Antimicrobial Resistance.” The first year of funding for this grant is $2.8 million with an anticipated total of $12.8 million over the course of the contract if all project milestones are met.

Keith S. Kaye, M.D., M.P.H., professor of internal medicine and infectious diseases in WSU’s School of Medicine, and corporate director of Infection Prevention, Hospital Epidemiology and Antimicrobial Stewardship at the Detroit Medical Center, will lead this multi-center study that will examine the antimicrobial therapy of multi-drug resistant, Acinetobacter baumannii, a major cause of bloodstream infection and pneumonia in health care settings.

The study involves four health care systems in Southeastern Michigan and the Detroit Medical Center will serve as the central campus for the project. The study will investigate colistin, a relatively old and toxic antimicrobial agent, which clinicians have been forced to use more frequently to treat bacteria that are resistant to all other available antibiotics. Various aspects of colistin therapy, including clinical outcomes, toxicity, pharmacokinetics and emergence of resistance will be analyzed during the study period.

“This contract is part of NIH’s response to the growing threat and spread of antimicrobial resistance,” said Dr. Kaye. “Infections due to health care-associated pathogens, such as Acinetobacter, are becoming increasingly common and difficult to treat. In some cases, colistin is the only active antimicrobial agent available for treatment of these resistant infections. The goal of this project is to improve the medical community’s understanding of colistin and provide clinicians with much needed guidance pertaining to the treatment of infections due to multi-drug resistant pathogens such as Acinetobacter.”

“This study and the others funded by NIAID aim to answer specific questions about how to improve treatment strategies, and look at new regimens of already licensed, off-patent antimicrobial therapies to reduce resistance,” said Gloria Heppner, associate vice president for research at Wayne State University. “It will be key in protecting these therapies usefulness while facilitating new drug development.”

For more information relating to this contract and NIH’s program to fight antimicrobial resistance visit: http://www.niaid.nih.gov/news/newsreleases/2010/Pages/ARtrialsAwards.aspx

Media Contact: Julie O'Connor - 313-577-8845 or julie.oconnor@wayne.edu

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu
 

John Woodard, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Institute of Gerontology at Wayne State University, is lead author of “Predicting Cognitive Decline in Healthy Older Adults Using fMRI” published in the current Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease (vol. 21, no. 3).

“No one had studied these combinations of tests in such a large sample,” Woodard said. The results have strong implications for determining who is most likely to benefit from preventive Alzheimer’s disease treatments.

Woodard and his colleagues performed five tests on 78 healthy elders: a structural MRI (sMRI) that measures the size of the hippocampal region of the brain; a functional MRI (fMRI) that shows how the brain is activated during mental tasks; a blood test that identifies the APOE ε4 allele (a known genetic marker for Alzheimer’s disease); and two standard neuropsychological tests that measure mood and ability.

The most effective combination of tests to predict near-term cognitive decline was the fMRI and the APOE ε4 test. The APOE ε4 allele alone correctly classified 61.5 percent of participants, but the combination of the ε4 allele and low activity on the fMRI test correctly classified 78.9 percent of participants, including 35 percent who showed significant cognitive decline 18 months post-testing.

Age, years of education, gender and family history of dementia were not accurate predictors of future cognitive decline. Dr. Woodard and his colleagues also found that persons with larger hippocampal volume, greater functional brain activity and no APOE ε4 allele were less likely to demonstrate cognitive decline over the following 18 months.

The APOE and fMRI tests that combined as the best predictors are readily available, not time-consuming, and don’t require special skills or effort on the part of the participant. “Use of these tests could play a major role in development of medications for prevention of Alzheimer’s and other dementias,” Woodard said. “If we can intervene before people become symptomatic, we might be able to slow the progression of the disease or eliminate it altogether.”

Alzheimer’s is age-correlated; the older the person, the greater the likelihood the person will display symptoms. “If we could delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease by five years, we could cut it in half,” Dr. Woodard said. “If we could delay it 10 years, we could eliminate the disease altogether.”

The complete study is available at http://www.j-alz.com/issues/21/vol21-3.html.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

 

The Sustainable Product Development Collaboratory will teach sustainability principles of product architectural design, manufacturing, assembly and supply chain decisions across a spectrum of active learners, including high school students, university students and practitioners.

“To date, there has been a significant level of grassroots activities for sustainable design and manufacturing,” said Kim. “However, engineering programs and manufacturing companies continue to struggle with methods to educate engineers in holistic product and process development with a view of life cycle costs and environmental effects.”

Existing educational methods do not capture the interdependencies between product design architecture and life cycle process requirements of product development. The primary goal of this project is to overcome these limitations by incorporating scalable tools as well as flexible, representative models and algorithms in a user-friendly, license-free, Web-based tool.

Secondary and postsecondary educational materials will complement the collaboratory’s online tool by providing users with a hands-on approach to learning. The project will also consist of evaluation tools to calculate the educational impacts of the collaboratory in educating students about cyberinfrastructure.

Kim seeks to engage high school and underrepresented college students to foster diversity in the science and engineering workforce. The use of tangible examples, like three-ring binders and their effects on the environment and supply chain costs, are expected to advance high school students’ multi-step problem-solving skills.

“This project will help to develop, at a modest cost, new pedagogy for academic institutions to integrate sustainability into engineering curricula, and prepare a skilled workforce that meets the needs of modern industry for sustainable product development,” Kim said.

Other researchers involved in the project are Leslie Monplaisir, Ph.D., associate professor of industrial and manufacturing engineering in WSU’s College of Engineering; Ratna Chinnam, Ph.D., associate professor of industrial and manufacturing engineering in WSU’s College of Engineering; Alper Murat, Ph.D., assistant professor of industrial and manufacturing engineering at WSU’s College of Engineering; Karl Haapala, Ph.D., assistant professor of industrial and manufacturing engineering at Oregon State University; and Gul Kremer, Ph.D., associate professor of industrial and manufacturing engineering at Pennsylvania State University.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Assia Shisheva, Ph.D., professor of physiology in the School of Medicine and resident of Royal Oak, Mich., was published in the August 27th issue of The Journal of Biological Chemistry for a study that identified a novel mechanism associated with the regulation of intracellular levels of PtdIns(3,5)P2, a signaling lipid critical in neurodegeneration.

CMT4J is a recessively inherited disorder in which patients slowly lose normal use of their feet, legs, hands and arms as nerves to the extremities degenerate and the muscles in the extremities become weakened due to the loss of stimulation by the affected nerves. Many patients also have some loss of sensory nerve function.

A 2007 University of Michigan study published in Nature found that the enzyme that destroys PtdIns(3,5)P2, known as Sac3, is mutated in patients with peripheral neuropathy, hence the CMT4J disorder. This mutation involves a single amino acid substitution at position 41, i.e., Sac3I41T and results in a variation of the protein Sac3, which is present as a single allele – patients are missing the other allele altogether. “With this study, we set out to discover what happens differently because of this mutation, and if this I-to-T amino acid substitution is related to changes in intracellular PtdIns(3,5)P2 regulatory mechanisms,” Shisheva said.

The study found that the Sac3’s mutant form, Sac3I41T, does not have the ability to sense the presence of ArPIKfyve, a “scaffold” protein that, as Shisheva’s lab discovered and reported in the current accelerated publication, exhibits the property to protect normal Sac3 from rapid degradation. Because Sac3I41T is degraded too quickly, optimal synthesis of PtdIns(3,5)P2 cannot occur. “We don’t yet know why this is, but we believe this rapid degradation of Sac3I41T may be the cause of CMT4J,” Shisheva said.

The current findings are the most recent in a decade-long line of research on the regulation of PtdIns(3,5)P2 metabolism by Shisheva’s lab. In that time, they have identified Sac3, ArPIKfyve and PIKfyve, the principle enzyme that makes PtdIns(3,5)P2, as a triple complex of proteins that work interdependently to both activate and destroy PtdIns(3,5)P2, thereby achieving tight regulation of the PtdIns(3,5)P2 levels at the intracellular membranes.

Shisheva said the next step in this line of research is to use cells from patients with CMT4J to verify that the rapid loss of the Sac3 variant is indeed the mechanism behind the pathogenesis of CMT4J. If it is, the focus could then turn to enabling the mutant form of Sac3 to live longer, or through some other yet-to-be determined mechanism.

“This study has built a foundation for a basic understanding of the regulatory mechanism for PtdIns(3,5)P2,” Shisheva said. “Now, we will move forward to search for remedies of this mechanism specifically in terms of a potential treatment for CMT4J.”

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information on research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

These grants are targeted to primary care work force training, oral health work force training, equipment to enhance training across the health professions, loan repayments for health professionals, health careers opportunities for disadvantaged students, and outreach and chronic disease prevention in health disparity populations.

Linda Lewandowski, Ph.D., R.N., Elizabeth Schotanus associate professor of Pediatric Nursing at WSU and Children’s Hospital of Michigan (CHM), and assistant dean of Family, Community and Mental Health in WSU’s College of Nursing, received $281,633 from this program to incorporate new high fidelity clinical simulation equipment aimed at specialty education in pediatric and neonatal areas. Through a unique partnership, this technology will be used in the nurse residency program at CHM and in WSU’s undergraduate and graduate nursing distance learning and online courses.

With the incorporation of this technology, many students and CHM nurses will receive specialty training in WSU’s College of Nursing simulation lab and onsite at CHM. WSU’s is the only graduate program to prepare nurses as neonatal nurse practitioners or acute care pediatric nurse practitioners in the state of Michigan. This equipment will significantly enhance these programs. The training will focus on topics such as head-to-toe pediatric assessment, blood administration (including simulation of a negative reaction) and managing a pediatric code blue. In addition, the technology also will help educate WSU nursing students in neonatal, maternity and midwifery programs, providing simulated newborn care scenarios and emergency situations.

“This state-of-the-art technology will provide safe ‘real-world’ learning experiences for nursing students and nurses under conditions that are very similar to real clinical settings,” said Lewandowski. “The life-size mannequins will be programmed to exhibit a wide array of biological responses, as well as respond directly to interventions provided by the nurse or student. The simulation scenarios allow us to give students’ and nurses’ experiences that will increase safety and quality of care in increasingly complex health care environments.”

CHM began a new nurse residency program five years ago that has evolved into the CHM RN Transitions program. This 16-week enhanced orientation program for new nurse graduates as well as nurses new to the specialty of pediatric nursing will now benefit from enhanced training, allowing participants to practice in a simulated environment, ultimately raising their confidence and comfort level in their jobs.

“Advances in technology are creating new and exciting methods for teaching and learning in academic and health care settings,” said Hilary Ratner, vice president for research at Wayne State University. “This grant from HHS will prepare our nursing students and Children’s Hospital of Michigan nurses to give the best quality nursing care to this vulnerable population of patients.”

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information on research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Founded more than 120 years ago, Children’s Hospital of Michigan is the first and only hospital in the state dedicated exclusively to the treatment of children. A leader internationally in neurology and neurosurgery, cardiology, oncology, and diagnostic services, it is ranked one of America’s best hospitals for children. More Michigan pediatricians are trained at the Children’s Hospital of Michigan than in any other facility. Children’s Hospital of Michigan is one of nine hospitals operated by the Detroit Medical Center (DMC). The DMC is proud to be the Official Health care Services Provider of the Detroit Tigers, Detroit Red Wings and Detroit Pistons.

For more information, contact Julie O'Connor at julie.oconnor@wayne.edu.

Jeffrey Stanley, Ph.D.

DETROIT— Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) affects 4.5 million children ages 3 to 17 in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The disorder is associated with difficulty focusing and hyperactivity, and it is known that these and other related symptoms persist into adulthood 60 percent of the time.

Although drug and psychotherapy treatments exist, there is no cure for ADHD. The cause and progression of the disorder is poorly understood biochemically, anatomically and functionally, said Jeffrey Stanley, Ph.D., associate professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences at Wayne State University.

Stanley and his team at the Brain Research and Imaging Neuroscience division are seeking participants to take part in a study of the chemistry, function and structure of the brain in 6- to 14-year-olds, both with and without ADHD, to track the development of the disorder and facilitate the improvement of current therapies.

Stanley aims to enhance the current understanding of ADHD’s early stages; more specifically, at what age and where brain networks deviate from normal development.

The five-year neuroimaging analysis will compare the results of children and teens who have been diagnosed with or are suspected of having ADHD with those who have no personal or immediate family history of ADHD or other mental illnesses. Both groups will undergo behavioral and cognitive tests, MRI of the brain, functional MRI and in vivo spectroscopy at the WSU MR Research Facility in Harper University Hospital. Participants will be assessed three times during the study to map the results.

This is part of Stanley’s ongoing research study that recently was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) of the National Institutes of Health with a $2.7 million grant. In addition, Stanley, in collaboration with Vaibhav Diwadkar, assistant professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences at Wayne State University, was awarded a two-year supplement grant of $209,328 from NIMH to support the functional MRI analyses. These studies will create a clearer picture of the emergence of ADHD.

“The early identification of impaired networks and charting temporally impaired networks in ADHD is critical in gaining a greater understanding of the development and progression of ADHD,” Stanley said.

Stanley also is co-director of the Brain Research and Imaging Neuroscience division of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences and is program director and graduate officer of the Ph.D. program in Translational Neuroscience.

To learn more about this study, contact Rachel Dick at rdick@med.wayne.edu or 313-577-6279.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

DETROIT— James Rigby, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Chemistry at Wayne State University and resident of Farmington Hills, was named to the American Chemical Society’s 2010 class of Fellows, an honor bestowed upon distinguished scientists who have demonstrated outstanding accomplishments in chemistry.

Nominated for his exceptional contributions as a scientist and educator, Rigby has had significant scientific accomplishments in organic chemistry. His current research focuses on a variety of problems directed toward the total synthesis of pharmacologically active natural products. Through discoveries made in Rigby’s lab, he and a team of researchers have created new molecules and are developing novel and powerful methods that will one day aid researchers in the pharmaceutical industry to make complex drug candidates more quickly and efficiently than otherwise would be possible.

“Dr. Rigby’s leadership in the field of chemistry has helped build an outstanding chemistry department at Wayne State, and has contributed to the excellence of other scientists and scientific organizations throughout the nation,” said Hilary Ratner, vice president for research at Wayne State. “Because of his accomplishments as a scientist and educator, he is most deserving of this prestigious recognition.”

Rigby has been a professor at Wayne State since 1981. He received his B.S. in chemistry with high honors from Case Western Reserve University and his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

DETROIT— Identifying maternal characteristics that increase the risk of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) is a critical step toward creating targeted pregnancy intervention. A Wayne State University researcher recently discovered that one such characteristic is maternal age.

Lisa M. Chiodo, Ph.D., assistant professor in the College of Nursing, has found that children born to older mothers who binge drink during pregnancy are not as attentive as children whose mothers were younger when exposing them to alcohol prenatally. The longitudinal research study will be published in the October 2010 edition of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research and currently is available online.

Attention problems are understood to be among the more common FASD in children, which can affect physical, mental and behavioral development.

Nearly 40,000 babies are born with FASD each year, and statistics show that women 34 or older are 37 percent more likely to report drinking while pregnant than their younger counterparts.

Chiodo and her colleagues examined 462 children born to inner city African-American women who were recruited from a university antenatal clinic. At the age of 7, each child took the Conners’ Continuous Performance Test (CPT) to measure his or her inattention and impulsivity, and their teachers completed the Achenbach Teacher Report Form to assess attention problems in the classroom.

Overall, the results indicated that children whose mothers were 30 years of age or older when they were born had poorer attention scores than children born to younger mothers when exposed prenatally to higher levels of alcohol. The CPT in particular revealed that children born to older drinking mothers had the most difficulty sustaining attention during the test and made more mistakes compared to children born to younger drinking mothers.

“It is very important that women are warned that with increasing maternal age, fetuses may be more severely affected by alcohol exposure, even when the mother’s alcohol intake during pregnancy has not increased from previous pregnancies, and even if prior pregnancies and older children may appear to have been unaffected,” said Chiodo.

Moreover, Chiodo and her colleagues believe that understanding the influence of maternal age on the relation between prenatal alcohol and neurobehavioral outcome might assist in the development of focused primary care interventions for older drinking mothers.

“Our findings may justify targeting older drinking mothers for particular attention in primary care settings because their fetuses are at greater risk than those of younger drinking mothers for alcohol-related deficits in attention,” said Chiodo. “Health care professionals need to be aware that increased maternal age among their pregnant patients increases the susceptibility of the fetus to effects of alcohol. Physicians need to be able to appropriately tailor their interventions to patients during standard clinical visits about the relative risks of maternal drinking to fetuses when mothers are older.”

To listen to an interview with Dr. Chiodo, visit here.

Chiodo’s collaborating partners from Wayne State University include Virginia Delaney-Black, M.D., professor of Pediatrics, who is the principal investigator on this National Institute of Drug Abuse-funded project. Other collaborators were John H. Hannigan, Ph.D., deputy director of the Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute for Child and Family Development; Robert J. Sokol, M.D., director of the C.S. Mott Center for Human Growth and Development, and distinguished professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology; James Janisse, Ph.D., assistant professor of Family Medicine and Public Health Sciences; Mark Greenwald, Ph.D., associate professor of Psychiatry; and Joel Ager, Ph.D., retired professor in the Department of Family Medicine & Public Health Sciences. Chandice Covington, Ph.D., interim dean at the Anita Thigpen Perry School of Nursing at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center also is a partner.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

DETROIT—Tej K. Mattoo, M.D., professor and chief of Pediatric Nephrology at Wayne State University’s School of Medicine and Children’s Hospital of Michigan, recently received more than $1.7 million from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to continue the project “Primary Vesicoureteral Reflux in Children.” To date, NIH has funded more than $4.7 million toward this research project and a separate study on Focal Segmental Glomerulosclerosis, a disease that attacks the kidneys’ filtering system.

These new funds will allow Mattoo to continue a study started in 2005 that is examining whether long-term antibiotics are necessary in children with vesicoureteral reflux (VUR). Mattoo is leading the study in Detroit with six additional institutions participating at research sites across the country.

VUR is a common congenital abnormality that is associated with recurrent urinary tract infections in children. With normal urination, the bladder contracts and deposits urine through the urethra. In children with VUR, there is an abnormal flow of urine that goes back up into the ureters and sometimes up to the kidneys. This reflux exposes the kidneys to infection, which can cause serious kidney damage. The injury to the kidneys may result in renal scarring, which may cause high blood pressure later in life, or even kidney failure.

“To prevent such damage and long-term effects, patients are currently treated with daily antibiotics for many years depending on the severity of their abnormality,” said Mattoo, of Troy, Mich. “This collaborative study will look at the prolonged use of antibiotic prophylaxis and whether or not it reduces the frequency of urinary tract infections, as well as the impact its use makes on preventing renal scarring in children with VUR.”

Current treatment for VUR may not be necessary and may cause some harm, including resistance to antibiotics, requiring children to have expensive and painful radiology tests and surgical procedures, as well as gastrointestinal symptoms, skin rashes and other complications.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Romero leads a research team that has discovered that genetics plays a significant role in some preterm births and may explain why some women who do everything right still give birth too soon.

According to Romero, inflammation is a major risk factor for preterm birth, the leading cause of infant death worldwide. One out of every three preterm births is associated with inflammation or infection. However, numerous studies have shown that treating bacterial infections in pregnant women doesn’t prevent preterm labor.

Under Romero’s leadership, his team investigated genes that control maternal fetal inflammation that could help explain the process that triggers preterm birth. The research found variations in the DNA of the pregnant woman and the fetus involved in fighting infection are associated with an increased risk of premature birth.

This research gives evidence to the relationship between genetics and preterm birth and is a step toward personalized medicine. It also has the potential to allow doctors to identify women who are at risk for delivering early and provide them with specialized care.

Romero is leading other major research studies through the PRB, including one that discovered a biomarker to identify pregnant women developing preeclampsia. Other studies include developing a nanotechnology-based diagnostic and therapeutic approach for prevention and treatment of maternal infections and fetal brain injury that may one day eliminate or lessen the incidences of cerebral palsy, along with other neuroinflammatory diseases.

“Through the PRB under Romero’s leadership, Detroit is becoming known as a leader in perinatology research,” said Hilary Ratner, vice president for research at WSU. “Detroit has high incidences of premature births and pregnancy-related problems, and this groundbreaking research will lead to healthier outcomes for mothers and infants in Detroit and around the world. He is most deserving of this award from Crain’s Detroit Business.”

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Sergei Voloshin, Ph.D., professor of Physics and Astronomy in WSU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and resident of Farmington Hills, Mich., successfully performed a measurement indicative of violations of mirror symmetry during conditions similar to that of the early universe at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL). The results were published in the December 14, 2009, edition of Physical Review Letters and May 28, 2010, edition of Physical Review C. If verified, the observation may lead to answers to some of the major questions in physics, such as the reason the universe is composed of matter rather than antimatter and the mechanism that generates the masses of protons and neutrons.

The discovery stems from Voloshin’s work as a member of the BNL’s STAR Collaboration, which conducts experiments using the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), a 2.4-mile-circumference “atom smasher” track at the BNL. Since 2000, an international team of physicists has been conducting collisions of heavy gold and copper ions and protons as a means to investigate the basic structure and fundamental forces of matter. Among the goals of RHIC is to understand conditions that occurred in the first microseconds after the Big Bang, when high-speed, high-temperature collisions determined the nature of the universe as we know it.

At this year’s annual meeting of the American Physical Society in Washington, D.C., the RHIC announced milestones that expand on the 2005 discovery of a “hot soup” of quarks (fundamental elements of matter) and gluons (expressions of quark interactions) present in the universe’s first moments. From an experiment that involved colliding gold ions together at nearly the speed of light, researchers were able to create matter at a temperature of an estimated 4 trillion degrees Celsius, about 250,000 times hotter than the center of the sun. This temperature, based on measurements by the PHENIX collaboration at RHIC, is hot enough to melt protons and neutrons into a soup of their constituent parts – conditions similar to the first microsecond after the Big Bang.

Using a technique he developed at Wayne State, Voloshin successfully obtained the first evidence for the violation of mirror symmetry, which normally characterizes the interactions of quarks and gluons. If confirmed by other experiments, this discovery may help scientists understand a similar violation of symmetry in the early universe that resulted in the predominance of matter over antimatter and other fundamental questions in physics. “Symmetries are the cornerstone of all physics theories,” Voloshin said. “They govern the laws of physics and determine the form of mathematical description. A better understanding of these symmetries – and the degree by which symmetry is broken – would expand our knowledge of how the universe works.”

The team of nuclear physicists at Wayne State who are members of the RHIC’s STAR Collaboration includes Rene Bellwied, Ph.D., Thomas Cormier, Ph.D., and Claude Pruneau, Ph.D., professors of Physics and Astronomy. The team members also are collaborators in ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment), one of the six detector experiments being constructed at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

“Professor Voloshin’s work has opened new possibilities in the international effort to understand how the universe began,” said Ratna Naik, Ph.D., professor and chair of Physics and Astronomy at WSU. “I look forward to his future studies at Wayne State, where he and the other members of the team working in the STAR Collaboration have brought the university to the forefront of RHIC physics research.”

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information on research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

According to Frederick A. Lubich, president of the society, Stern is receiving this award for his years as a prominent scholar and beloved teacher with a variety of scholarly and literary texts that draw from his vast knowledge and many experiences, mixed with “wit and wisdom uniquely (his) own.”

Stern retired from Wayne State in 2003 and became director of the Harry and Wanda Zekelman International Institute of the Righteous at the Holocaust Memorial Center Zekelman Family Campus in Farmington Hills, Mich. The institute pays tribute to the men and women who, throughout history, have supported and rescued others, even at great risk to themselves and their families.

Guy Stern is the sole surviving member of a Jewish family from Hildesheim, Germany, that was lost in the Holocaust. As the oldest child and only son, his parents sent him to America, where he joined his uncle’s family in St. Louis and resumed his high school education. Like other exiles from Europe in the late 1930s, Stern brought with him a set of skills that would later prove invaluable to him and his new homeland.

Among his most deeply held goals was a desire to return to Europe to fight in World War II against the Nazis. The U.S. Army established a special training base at Camp Ritchie in Maryland to prepare experts on Germany, many of them Jewish exiles, to be spies, interrogators and translators. Stern served as a master sergeant in the military intelligence service of the U.S. Army, taking part in the Normandy invasion. His experiences were commemorated in Christian Bauer’s 2004 documentary film The Ritchie Boys.

Stern won a Bronze Star Medal for his innovative interrogation techniques created and applied from D-Day through the Battle of the Bulge through V-E Day.

Stern is credited with having co-created the academic discipline called Exile Studies, which focuses attention on the contributions of authors, poets, playwrights and others who have been forced to leave the country of their birth. He has received numerous awards, including Distinguished Germanist of the Year, the Grand Order of Merit and the Goethe Medal of the Federal Republic of Germany. He also has received an honorary doctorate from Hofstra University.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.
 

The article, “Mortality after Lumbar Fusion Surgery,” by Sham Maghout Juratli, M.D., assistant professor of Family Medicine and Public Health Sciences and resident of Franklin, Mich., was originally published in the journal Spine last year. Faculty of 1000 Medicine recently selected the article for inclusion as one of the most important articles published in medicine.

Faculty of 1000 Medicine identifies and evaluates what it considers the most important articles published in medicine based on the recommendations of 2,400 peer-nominated leading researchers and clinicians. Selection and inclusion of articles provide recognition from peers of scientific merit and positive contributions to medical literature.

"I am very pleased that our article was recognized as an important ‘must read’ article by the Faculty of 1000 Medicine,” Dr. Juratli said. “It is very important to us as occupational health specialists to evaluate the health and disability outcomes related to commonly performed procedures, and I am honored that our scientific contribution is being recognized in the professional community."

Dr. Juratli’s study found that pain medications are involved in more than 20 percent of deaths that occur in the years after spinal fusion surgery for low back pain. The risk of analgesic-related death is highest among patients with degenerative disc disease -- especially men aged 45 to 54 -- according to the findings.

Of 2,378 workers' compensation patients who underwent spinal fusion surgery in Washington between 1994 and 2001, 103 died by 2004. Dr. Juratli and her team analyzed the cause of death for each. The rate of death within three years after surgery was 1.9 percent. Deaths involving pain medications were the single most common category, accounting for 21 percent of all deaths. Of 22 analgesic-related deaths, 19 were accidental overdoses and three were suicides. In all, nearly 1 percent of workers who underwent spinal fusion died of analgesic poisoning.

Although other diseases like cancer or heart disease combined cause more deaths, analgesic-related deaths were the main cause of potential life-years lost because younger patients were more likely to die of analgesic poisoning, whereas older patients were more likely to die of other causes.

Workers whose back pain was primarily caused by degenerative disc disease were at elevated risk of analgesic-related death -- nearly three times higher than those with other diagnoses. The risk of death due to pain medications was highest among men aged 45 to 54 who had degenerative disc disease, more than seven times higher than for other groups.

The risk of death in the first three months after spinal fusion surgery was 0.29 percent. This risk was highest for patients who were undergoing a second spinal fusion.

The use of spinal fusion (also called lumbar fusion) is growing rapidly, despite a lack of agreement on which patients should undergo the procedure. This is of special concern because spinal fusion carries a higher risk of complications than other less-extensive surgical procedures. Although the initial risk of death is low, few studies have looked at the mortality rate beyond the first few months after spinal fusion.

The new results raise concern about the long-term risk of death after spinal fusion, especially deaths related to pain medications. The deaths reflect the high use of opioid (narcotic) analgesics by patients with back pain, despite the lack of strong evidence for their effectiveness.

"Analgesic-related deaths are responsible for more deaths and more potential life lost among workers who underwent spinal fusion than any other cause," Dr. Juratli and her colleagues said. They believe initial efforts to reduce analgesic-related deaths should focus on patients with degenerative disc disease, especially men.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

DETROIT – Four researchers from Detroit, Michigan’s Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute and Wayne State University (WSU) will receive a total of $1.2 million from Susan G. Komen for the Cure® to help advance research to better detect, prevent and eliminate breast cancer. The $1.2 million awarded to these outstanding scientists is part of the $59 million portfolio of research grants that Susan G. Komen for the Cure® has awarded this year alone to scientists across the globe to help accelerate innovative breast cancer research.

This year’s Komen awardees are Angelika Burger, Ph.D., director of the Translational Research Laboratory at the Karmanos Cancer Institute, and professor of Pharmacology at WSU’s School of Medicine; Neb Duric, Ph.D., director of the Imaging Program at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, and professor of Radiation Oncology, WSU’s School of Medicine; Karin List, Ph.D., assistant professor, WSU’s Department of Pharmacology and the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute; and Peter J. Littrup, M.D., vice chair of Radiology and director of Interventional Radiology, Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, and professor of Radiology, Urology and Radiation Oncology, WSU’s School of Medicine.

“Our research investments in Michigan reflect our tremendous urgency to discover and deliver more effective treatments, and to find better and more accurate ways to screen for breast cancer in the first place,” said Ambassador Nancy G. Brinker, founder and CEO of Susan G. Komen for the Cure®.

“Komen’s infusion of millions of dollars into research projects means that promising research that is designed to treat and ultimately eradicate breast cancer will continue,” said Eric Winer, M.D., Komen’s chief scientific advisor.

Since 1992, Komen for the Cure® has awarded $450 million in research grants worldwide, of which $13.7 million has been awarded to Michigan scientists. Approximately 25 percent of the funds raised by Komen Affiliates, such as the Susan G. Komen Detroit Race for the Cure®, help support the national Susan G. Komen for the Cure Award and Research Grant Program, benefiting scientists from around the world. Much of the funds raised in Michigan comes back to benefit Michigan scientists. In addition, the remaining 75 percent of funds raised by Komen Affiliates stay in those communities to help support local breast health programs.

Maureen Keenan Meldrum, Komen Detroit Race for the Cure® chair and director of Breast Cancer Special Programs at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, has seen first-hand the outpouring of community support for Komen’s work.

“We're thrilled that funds raised here in Detroit support not only local outreach programs but also scientists worldwide – especially our brilliant scientists right here at home, “ said Keenan Meldrum. “Their commitment to cancer research makes an immense impact, not only in our community but also around the world, so that one day we can end breast cancer forever."

Research Being Funded

Angelika Burger, Ph.D.: Evaluation of Aldehyde Dehydrogenase Inhibitors for the Prevention and Treatment of Triple Negative Breast Cancer
Dr. Burger’s research to improve treatment strategies for triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) patients will receive $180,000. Most breast cancers are characterized by the presence of three receptors (proteins found inside or on the surface of breast cells): estrogen, progesterone and HER2. These receptors are not “expressed” in women with TNBC. As most current treatments are aimed at those receptors and not TNBC, it is difficult to treat and the tumors are often more aggressive. TNBC only represents approximately 15 percent of all breast cancer cases but accounts for as many as 25 percent of all breast cancer deaths. TNBC often affects young women in childbearing years, particularly young African American women, and has a high recurrence. Current treatments are not always effective, resulting in a low five-year survival rate. Some TNBC patients can have an increased activity in the enzyme aldehyde dehydrogenase 1 (ALDH1) that can be resistant to cytotoxic chemotherapy, currently the only treatment option for TNBC. The development of novel drugs and better treatment strategies for TNBC is critical to increase survival rates.

Neb Duric, Ph.D. and Peter Littrup, M.D.: Development of a Predictive Model for Improved, Cost-effective Breast Cancer Detection Based on Biomechanical Properties of Tissue
Dr. Duric’s and Dr. Litturp’s research to support the development of an ultrasound tomography (UST) breast cancer screening tool will receive nearly $600,000. Dr. Duric and Dr. Littrup are co-creators of a breast cancer screening device called SoftVue, which uses ultrasound tomography to image acoustic properties of breast tissue. The images produced are high quality, detailed images similar to that of an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging.) Unlike mammography, this process does not involve radiation or compression, takes about one-minute per exam and is very effective in imaging women with dense breasts who have an unusually high risk of developing breast cancer. It is the hope that additional clinical study will validate strong preliminary findings and demonstrate that:
• this technology can detect breast cancer at an earlier stage when it is most curable and is very effective in detecting cancer in women with dense breasts,
• the imaging capability of this technology has the potential to accurately differentiate cancer from normal tissue and benign disease, which could decrease unnecessary biopsies, and
• women may be more likely to participate in a breast cancer screening process that is comfortable, involving no compression or radiation, which could result in more cancers being caught at an earlier stage to improve breast cancer survival rates.

Karin List, Ph.D.: Matriptase-Mediated Signaling in Breast Cancer as a Target for Therapeutic Intervention
Dr. List will receive $450,000 to lead the first ever study that investigates the role of matriptase, a recently discovered enzyme of the protease class located on the surface of the cells that form the ducts of the mammary gland, in breast cancer progression. Elevated levels of proteases help tumors invade tissue and spread to distant sites, and matriptase is found in higher levels in most women with breast cancer which can predict a more aggressive tumor that is more difficult to treat. List and her collaborators will study the consequences of eliminating or inhibiting matriptase for breast cancer within the mammary glands of mice and in cell culture through a new genetic system developed by the group that isolates normal and cancerous mammary cells and induces a deletion of the gene which encodes matriptase. This will allow the researchers to compare the ability of cancer cells that have matriptase with cells that lack matriptase to grow and spread tumors.

“This study will provide important knowledge on the role of matriptase in breast cancer and whether it is a valid target candidate for new therapeutic drug development and other alternative approaches to eliminate or impair the growth of tumors,” said Gloria Heppner, associate vice president for Research at WSU. “This important study is another example of the critical breast cancer research being done at the Karmanos Cancer Institute and Wayne State University, putting us one step closer to a cure for the most common cancer among women in the United States.”

“The Karmanos Cancer Institute is honored to work with the dedicated and persistent team of cancer researchers at Karmanos and WSU,” said Wei-Zen Wei, Ph.D., associate center director, Basic Research, Karmanos Cancer Institute and professor, WSU’s School of Medicine. “We are grateful to have our scientists recognized by Susan G. Komen for the Cure®, an organization whose education and advocacy work is highly respected. Together we are saving lives.”

Other Komen Investments – National and Local:

• Komen also has funded more than $450 million in research globally, starting with Komen’s first grant in 1982 for $28,000. In the past four years alone, Komen has provided $300 million to research programs.

• Additionally, Komen’s four Michigan Affiliates invested $2.1 million in their local communities last year for early detection and treatment of breast cancer, breast health education and outreach. Of that, the Komen Detroit Race for the Cure®, locally presented by the Karmanos Cancer Institute, invested $1.5 million for programs in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties, allowing the uninsured and underinsured to receive lifesaving services. Figures for the 2010 Race will be announced in early fall.

• Nationwide, Komen Affiliates last year invested a total of $130 million in their local communities. During the past 28 years, Komen has invested more than $900 million to community education and support programs worldwide.

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About Susan G. Komen for the Cure®
Nancy G. Brinker promised her dying sister, Susan G. Komen, she would do everything in her power to end breast cancer forever. In 1982, that promise became Susan G. Komen for the Cure and launched the global breast cancer movement. Today, Komen for the Cure is the world’s largest grassroots network of breast cancer survivors and activists fighting to save lives, empower people, ensure quality care for all and energize science to find the cures. Thanks to events like the Komen Race for the Cure®, Komen has invested more than $1.5 billion to fulfill its promise, becoming the largest source of nonprofit funds dedicated to the fight against breast cancer in the world. For more information about Susan G. Komen for the Cure, breast health or breast cancer, visit www.komen.org or call 1-877 GO KOMEN.

About the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute
Located in mid-town Detroit, Michigan, the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute is one of 40 National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer centers in the United States. Caring for nearly 6,000 new patients annually on a budget of $216 million, conducting more than 700 cancer-specific scientific investigation programs and clinical trials, Karmanos is among the nation’s best cancer centers. Through the commitment of 1,000 staff, including nearly 300 physicians and researchers on faculty at the Wayne State University School of Medicine, and supported by thousands of volunteer and financial donors, Karmanos strives to prevent, detect and eradicate all forms of cancer. Its long-term partnership with the WSU School of Medicine enhances the collaboration of critical research and academics related to cancer care. Karmanos is southeastern Michigan’s most preferred hospital for cancer care according to annual surveys conducted by the National Research Corporation. Gerold Bepler, M.D., Ph.D., is the Institute’s president and chief executive officer. For more information call 1-800-KARMANOS or go to www.karmanos.org

About Wayne State University
Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information on research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute
Patricia A. Ellis, 313.576.8629; cell, 313.410.3417

Wayne State University
Julie O’Connor, 313.577.8845; cell, 734.748.4207

DETROIT—A Wayne State University researcher has received an award from the National Institutes of Health to examine the emergence of sexual risk behavior among adolescent female victims of child sexual abuse (CSA).

Valerie Simon, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology in the Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute, was awarded a five-year, $755,121 grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health. She plans to examine trajectories and potential mechanisms of sexual risk behaviors among young adolescent females with CSA histories.

National statistics indicate that sexually abused females are at increased risk of sexual health problems, as they tend to initiate and engage in higher rates of sexual risk behavior at a younger age than their non-abused counterparts. Moreover, traditional sexual risk reduction programs are less effective for sexually abused youth, and the reasons for this are unclear.

“There is a pressing need to understand how CSA affects adolescent females’ sexual behavior,” said Simon. “Little is known about the early sexual development of sexually abused youth, or the mechanisms by which CSA confers heightened risk.”

The goals of Simon’s research are to increase understanding of how early sexual trauma affects sexual health and inform the development of more effectual risk reduction programs for this highly vulnerable population.

Simon’s research plan includes two sequential studies. The first will analyze extant data from a 20-year longitudinal study of CSA to examine the relationships among psychopathology, physiological regulation of trauma-related affect and sexual risk behavior. Simon will work with Jennie Noll, Ph.D., an associate professor at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Medicine and one of the original investigators of the longitudinal study.

The results from this work will inform a second study, for which Simon will gather data about the sexual development of 120 abused and non-abused adolescent females between 11 and 14 years old over an 18-month period.

Traumatic sexualization, the process by which CSA distorts cognitive and affective orientations toward sexuality, and post-traumatic stress disorder are expected to play a unique role in predicting sexual risk behavior for youth with CSA histories. In contrast, only externalizing behavior problems are expected to predict sexual risk among non-abused youth.

“Findings from this study will greatly aid our understanding of the abuse-specific factors associated with sexual health problems among sexually abused youth,” said Simon.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.
 

DETROIT– Margaret L. Campbell, Ph.D., R.N., assistant professor of nursing in the Wayne State University College of Nursing and resident of Detroit, received $73,784 from the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Foundation to determine the benefit of routine oxygen administration to terminally ill patients who are near death.

Oxygen administration can be beneficial for making terminally ill patients who are experiencing shortness of breath – known as dyspnea – more comfortable. As patients approach death, however, changes in cognition and consciousness make it difficult to determine whether dyspnea is occurring. Applying oxygen to patients who are no longer responsive is the current standard; however, it is not clear if this practice is beneficial.

Campbell’s study, which will work to shed light on the usefulness of this practice, stemmed from her own bedside experience with patients. “Nurses are often left guessing as to how to treat patients once they can no longer communicate with us,” she said. “Oxygen administration could prolong natural dying, even making patients uncomfortable – we don’t know.” Campbell said. “For these reasons, there is an urgent need to determine whether oxygen at the end of life serves a beneficial purpose or if it increases suffering.”

Using an observation scale of Campbell’s design, respiratory distress signs will be measured in patients as weighted, objective variables. These signs, which include rapid breathing, increased heart rate and increased use of chest and abdomen muscles, will be recorded when patients breathe room air, medical air or oxygen. Any changes in respiratory distress signs will suggest whether oxygen administration is making a difference in patients’ breathing ability and general comfort level, suggesting whether the effect is positive or negative. Oxygen will not be withheld as part of the study but rather measured according to physicians’ orders.

“Past studies on the benefits of oxygen administration have almost always excluded near-death patients,” Campbell said. “It will be incredibly valuable to have more information indicating whether this practice is really helping patients be more comfortable at the end of their lives.”

“Blue Cross Blue Shield is committed to research that will educate physicians on the best possible patient care,” said Ira Strumwasser, executive director and CEO of the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Foundation. “In determining whether oxygen administration increases patients’ comfort levels or causes unnecessary distress, we will significantly increase our understanding of patient needs and, if necessary, reshape physician practices to meet those needs with the purpose of improving the quality of patient care.”

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information on research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Wayne State was selected for its development of the Researcher’s Dashboard, a Web-based custom software application that seamlessly and intuitively integrates multiple applications, allowing researchers and grant administrators an improved way of monitoring and managing proposals and grants they are assigned to, ultimately providing them with more accurate information in real time.

“Research in higher education is very competitive,” said Hilary Ratner, WSU’s vice president for research. “Faculty engaged in research often spend much time managing and administering the business aspect of their grants, losing valuable time in their labs. Through the development of the Researcher’s Dashboard, we are connecting various systems through one portal, giving our research community easy access to grant information, reducing administrative burden and providing more time to conduct research.”

The Researcher’s Dashboard integrates a number of technologies, including Coeus, a comprehensive electronic research administration system that enables researchers to monitor and track the development of their proposal as well as monitor their funded grants. In addition, three SunGard Banner systems – Banner Unified Digital Campus, Banner Document Management Suite and Banner Operational Data Store – are integrated, providing researchers and administrators real-time access to grant finance and personnel data, as well as easy access for viewing paper documents and compiling and preparing timely reports associated with their research.
 

“With the pervasive use of complex enterprise technology in nearly every aspect of our professional lives, it is imperative for forward-thinking organizations to develop intuitive and elegant technology solutions to simplify processes and drive real 21st century efficiencies,” said Joseph F. Sawasky, WSU’s chief information officer and associate vice president for C&IT. “To reach these goals, it is essential to take a collaborative approach and establish true campus partnerships where customers, administrators and technologists work together to understand needs and develop innovative solutions. Without the collaborative efforts between OVPR, academic units, faculty and C&IT, this strategic software solution and the award itself would not have been possible.”

Wayne State University officials are hoping to make the WSU-developed Researcher’s Dashboard available to other research universities to help them innovate and advance the efficiency of research administration processes. The university is exploring a community source/open source deployment of the Researcher’s Dashboard with SunGard Higher Education.

To learn more about the Researcher’s Dashboard, visit http://thelink.computing.wayne.edu/researchers-dashboard.php

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

The study published today in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association states that current health care policies should be modified to encourage these interventions.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death in the United States. According to American Heart Association statistics, about 81.1 million adults, or one out of every three people in America, have at least one type of CVD. Also, if cardiovascular diseases were completely eradicated, life expectancy could increase by nearly seven years.

“We need to do a better job finding ways to help people not only change their behaviors but maintain them over a lifetime,” said Nancy T. Artinian, Ph.D., R.N., professor, associate dean for research and director of the Center for Health Research at Wayne State University’s College of Nursing.

“As health care providers, we’re pretty good at saying that you are at risk for a disease, you need to lose weight, be more physically active, and eat more fruits and vegetables. While that’s easy to say, it’s not easy for the person to actually translate it into their everyday life,” added Artinian.

After an extensive examination of peer-reviewed scientific studies, Artinian and her co-authors identified several critical parts of effective behavioral change programs, including health care providers using a motivational interviewing technique to encourage patients to make healthier lifestyle choices, counseling patients that occasional setbacks are normal and scheduling recurring follow-up sessions with patients.

The most effective patient-controlled behaviors include setting specific goals for physical activity and dietary improvements and keeping track of progress toward their goals, Artinian said.

Artinian and her co-authors analyzed 74 studies conducted among U.S. adults between January 1997 and May 2007. The studies measured the effects of behavioral change on blood pressure and cholesterol levels; physical activity and aerobic fitness; and diet, including reduced calorie, fat, cholesterol and salt intake, and increased fruit, vegetable and fiber consumption.

“Many people face psychological and cultural challenges when faced with the need to make changes in their daily health habits. This statement shows us what types of programs work – now we need to find ways to make effective lifestyle change programs available to the groups of people at highest risk for cardiovascular diseases – older Americans, African Americans and people of Hispanic origin,” said Ralph Sacco, M.D, president of the American Heart Association.

Although obesity, physical inactivity and poor diet are well recognized as major risk factors for cardiovascular disease, it’s often difficult for doctors and nurses to help patients reduce their risk for an extended period. They encounter numerous obstacles, including time constraints, reimbursement problems and insufficient training in behavioral-change techniques, the authors write.

Despite these difficulties, Artinian said policy changes will eventually make critical interventions more readily available.

Federal health reform legislation includes provisions that would improve access to preventive services and help Americans make healthier food choices to control risk factors for heart disease and stroke. For example, the new law requires calorie information on restaurant menus and vending machines and eliminates co-pays for certain preventive services under Medicare and new private health plans. The legislation also includes funding to support public health interventions at the state and local levels aimed at lowering risk factors for chronic disease.

“I’m looking forward to the future when we will have a health care system that gives more weight to the importance of prevention and changing lifestyle behaviors to help people stay healthy and reduce cardiovascular risk,” Artinian said.

Co-authors are: Gerald Fletcher, M.D., co-chair; Dariush Mozaffarian, M.D., Dr.PH.; Penny Kris-Etherton, Ph.D., R.D.; Linda Van Horn, Ph.D., R.D.; Alice H. Lichtenstein, D.Sc.; Shiriki Kumanyika, Ph.D., M.P.H.; William E. Kraus, M.D.; Jerome L. Fleg, M.D.; Nancy S. Redeker, Ph.D., R.N.; Janet C. Meininger, Ph.D., R.N.; Joanne Banks, R.N., Ph.D.; Eileen M. Stuart-Shor, Ph.D.; Barbara J. Fletcher, R.N., M.N.; Todd D. Miller, M.D.; Suzanne Hughes, M.S.N., R.N.; Lynne T. Braun, Ph.D.; Laurie A. Kopin, M.S., R.N.; Kathy Berra, M.S.N.; Laura L. Hayman, Ph.D., R.N.; Linda J. Ewing, Ph.D., R.N; Philip A. Ades, M.D.; J. Larry Durstine, Ph.D.; Nancy Houston-Miller, B.S.N.; and Lora E. Burke, Ph.D., M.P.H., steering committee co-chair.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu

Wayne State University’s College of Nursing is internationally recognized for preparing students to become nurse leaders, scholars and researchers. The college was the first to create a Center for Health Research to advance nursing research. For more information, visit http://www.nursing.wayne.edu/

A Wayne State University researcher of environmental planning, however, argues that this response is insufficient; he has identified a need for more state-established regulations that can lead to better septic system maintenance by households.

Rayman Mohamed, Ph.D., associate professor in WSU’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning and resident of Detroit, recently published an article in the International Journal of Sustainable Development and Planning. The article outlines the reasons for and consequences of septic tank failure while critiquing the reliance on education as the primary policy response.

“I am interested in this question not only because it is important to understand the proximate reasons why households do not maintain their systems, but also because such an understanding could lead to appropriate policies to address the problem,” said Mohamed.

Governments’ education-led responses are based on the belief that homeowners are unaware of the need to maintain their septic systems. But Mohamed suggests that the reason homeowners don’t maintain their septic system is because doing so is not in their rational self-interest. In some cases, he said, there is even an incentive to neglect maintenance.

Households avoid maintenance partially because the characteristics of septic tanks reduce the likelihood that the consequences of failure can be pinpointed to a particular household. This is because as soon as waste matter leaves a household, it is difficult to trace back to that particular property. The negative consequences of poor maintenance are shared by the public at large, and the costs of remedial actions are frequently subsidized by public dollars.

The factors that contribute to the nonmaintenance of septic tanks among households apply to local governments as well, Mohamed said. It may be difficult to trace pollution back to the jurisdiction from which it came, and jurisdictions share the negative consequences of pollution with larger regions.

In order to reduce the high rate at which septic systems fail, Mohamed said that governments need to complement education programs with regulations that are established and enforced by the state.

“Education needs to be augmented with state-established regulations that contain incentives and sanctions to ensure implementation by local governments,” said Mohamed.

To learn more about the study, visit http://www.clas.wayne.edu/faculty/RaymanMohamed.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

The research study, Aspirin in Reducing Events in the Elderly (ASPREE), aims to assess whether aspirin can not only prolong life but help provide a life free of physical disability and/or dementia for healthy older people.

“ASPREE is the largest study of its kind, and its sheer size and scope will enable investigators and society to learn a great deal about whether aspirin can help older adults 70 years and older live longer, healthier lives,” said John Flack, M.D., M.P.H., professor of Medicine and Physiology, chair of Internal Medicine at Wayne State University, and site investigator for the study.

In addition to Dr. Flack, Peter Lichtenberg, Ph.D., director of the Institute of Gerontology at WSU, will work with the ASPREE study team on community outreach and recruitment efforts.

While it is known that aspirin prevents heart attacks and strokes in people with established heart disease — benefits that clearly outweigh any risks associated with aspirin, such as bleeding — the role of aspirin in people without a history of cardiovascular disease is less certain.

“In the U.S., Australia and elsewhere, people are living longer, so identifying treatments to prolong life free of physical disability and memory problems is increasingly important,” explains ASPREE investigator Dr. Anne Murray, epidemiologist and geriatrician and associate professor of Medicine and Geriatrics at the University of Minnesota. “Aspirin is a potentially useful drug, as it is cheap and widely available.”

To date, very little information is available about the overall effects of aspirin in older adults because most trials focus on middle-aged people. The ASPREE study, for the first time, will determine whether the potential benefits of low-dose aspirin outweigh the risks specifically for people age 70 and over.

“Because of its proven effectiveness in preventing second events, many doctors have also prescribed aspirin to prevent heart attacks and strokes in otherwise healthy people,” explains Professor John McNeil, head of the Monash School of Public Health and Preventative Medicine in Australia and also a principal investigator for ASPREE.

“However, in the last couple of years, serious doubts have been raised about the evidence supporting this practice and, as a result, editorials in major medical journals have called for this question to be settled.”

The ASPREE study will enroll 6,500 healthy individuals age 70 and over in the U.S. and another 12,500 in Australia. Six hundred participants will be sought by Wayne State University. All eligible participants will be randomly assigned to take either low-dose aspirin or a placebo daily for about five years.

Patients will receive initial measurements on specific health markers as well as functional and cognitive ability, and changes in these will be monitored throughout the study.

“What we learn from the ASPREE study extends far beyond the effects of aspirin,” said Dr. Flack. “The scope of the study includes other clinical measurements and assessments that could impact and transform the way clinicians medically treat the elderly in their everyday care.”

ASPREE is being conducted in clinics and universities in select cities in Alabama, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Texas. More information can be found at www.ASPREE.org.

Originally developed as a pilot study by Monash University in Australia, the ASPREE study is being conducted in partnership between Monash University, the Berman Center for Outcomes and Clinical Research in Minneapolis, and the National Institute on Aging.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.
 

Using a five-year, $2,641,244 grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Mental Health, Bengt Arnetz, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., will track Iraqi refugees in metropolitan Detroit who have been exposed to war in their home country to determine the effect of post-migration factors such as employment, language classes, and mental and social health services in mitigating stress and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Dr. Arnetz, a professor in WSU’s Department of Family Medicine and Public Health Sciences and director of the Division of Occupational and Environmental Health, said he believes this will be the largest controlled study to date that investigates stress resiliency and risk factors in Iraqi refugees who have experienced war as noncombatants. It is also the first study ever of refugees in which there will be a mechanism to study a random sample of immigrants at the time they arrive in their host country.

While the study will focus only on refugees from Iraq, the results are expected to yield valuable information for other refugee groups. “The results will be valuable no matter the ethnicity or nationality, especially whether the post-migration social and institutional support attenuates the mental and behavioral effects from wartime exposure,” Dr. Arnetz said. “If that is the case, it would decrease mental suffering and medical-psychiatric and social costs, as well as enhancing refugee contributions to society.”

Refugees, he said, are at an elevated risk of suffering from post-displacement mental disorders, which increases the demand on and costs of mental health and social services. Increasing scientific evidence points to adverse mental health effects related to post-displacement trauma, including violence and marginalization.

“As a result, there is a need to assess the efficacy of post-displacement institutional resources, such as language and vocational training,” Dr. Arnetz said. While resources are devoted to post-displacement programs, there is a lack of controlled studies examining their effectiveness in promoting refugees' mental health.

The study will follow 250 Iraqi refugees and 250 control immigrants who are from countries in the Middle East and who have not been exposed to war. The health and coping skills of both groups will be assessed at the time of their arrival from overseas and then annually for two years. Potential study subjects will be identified in collaboration with two community partners, the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS) and Lutheran Social Services of Michigan. Dr. Arnetz and his team will randomly select from among those Iraqis cleared by the U.S. government for refugee status and ask them whether they wish to participate as they arrive in the country. The control subjects will be identified by the partnering agencies as well as solicited via advertising in targeted media.

The researchers will use standardized measures to assess to what degree a refugee has been exposed to war, including threats to an individual’s life, witnessing death and other exposure to suffering. That data, Dr. Arnetz said, will be related to the mental health of refugees at the point of arrival as well as over time as the refugees settle in their new country.

“We will also measure possible exposure to threats and violence, as well as civil disorders, in the U.S.,” he said. “For example, studies in the inner city of Detroit report a frequency of 11 percent of post-traumatic stress disorder among participating residents.”

The Detroit region is home to one of the largest Arabic populations outside the Middle East. Many Iraqis, including Chaldeans, have settled in the area. Dr. Arnetz said the study will involve both Muslim and Christian refugees.

“We will address whether issues such as social support will mitigate the effects [of exposure to war],” Dr. Arnetz said. “We will also involve both Chaldean and Muslim refugees, although we have no reason to believe religious or ethnic preferences will impact the results.” Moving into existing immigrant communities, he said, might mitigate the stress effects of exposure to war, but “it might slow down the rate at which you learn English or integrate into the mainstream. To what degree such factors act as risk or resiliency for post-migration mental and social health remains to be determined.”

The primary goals of the study include determining the differences in mental health disorders, specifically post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, between newly arrived Iraqi refugees exposed to war and Arab immigrants who have not, and their relationship to pre-displacement trauma. Researchers also will determine the relationship between pre-displacement trauma and post-displacement stressors in terms of mental health, and whether that relationship differs between refugees and immigrants. Finally, the study will examine the effect of post-migration institutional services on mental health.

Launched in 1971, ACCESS assists the Arab immigrant population in adapting to life in America. The organization provides a variety of services, including employment services, youth programs, educational and cultural programs, English language courses, and mental health programs.

In addition to Wayne State University’s Division of Occupational and Environmental Health, Department of Family Medicine and Public Health Sciences, Department of Psychology, and Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences, other research team members include Smith College in Massachusetts. An additional collaborative community partner is the Kurdish Human Rights Watch.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Before winning a spot in the E2 program, biological sciences senior Melissa Hui’s venture, LifeCode Health, already was a two-time finalist in the Imagine Cup finals, the world’s premiere student technology competition hosted by Microsoft Corp. This year, after taking home the Achievement Award in the Mobile category – representing the best solution that utilizes mobile technology – the LifeCode Health team was looking to further develop their idea. “We received a lot of encouragement from Microsoft to pursue LifeCode Health as a full-time venture,” Hui said. “When we learned that the E2 Challenge teaches new entrepreneurs how to commercialize technology, it felt like the natural next step.”

"The goal of the E2 Challenge is to provide some of WSU's most promising young entrepreneurs with the real-world skills needed for turning their business idea into a reality,” said Eric Stief, commercialization principal and the E2 Challenge program administrator. “The skills gained during the summer mentorship provide a solid foundation for a career spent pursuing innovative new ventures, and they have the potential to contribute to the revitalization of the job market and diversification of the economy of Detroit and Michigan. I’ve been very impressed with the diverse set of creative business concepts our students come up with year after year."

The 2010 E2 Challenge winners include:

Bonfire Technology Group
Special education graduate student Sebrina Theon Shields is working to solve one of the biggest threats to students who use technology as an integrated part of the academic experience. According to a recent survey, about 60 percent of teens have experienced some form of online bullying. Yet students must continue using technology in order to be successful in a global economy. Shields’ Bonfire Technologies offers the chance to solve this problem by offering real-time intelligent monitoring and reporting methods to keep children safe when using computers and cell phones. In an age of technologically savvy children who may engage in cyberbullying, “sexting” and videochatting, Bonfire gives parents the opportunity to know what their children are sending and receiving while they continue to utilize the technology necessary for successful academic and professional careers.

Erisnet Technologies
Combining the power of face to face communication and social media, business administration graduate student Kenneth Siegner hopes to radically improve the experience of attending a trade show event with his company, Erisnet Technologies. Working to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of an attendee’s experience, Siegner’s core technology will integrate Web 2.0 technologies with face to face networking using a new and inexpensive medium. The technology will enable people to personalize and take home their trade show experience.

Growtown
Electronic arts junior Marta Marjorie Hrecznyj and industrial design senior Lejdi Malo hope their company, Growtown, will help bring alternative fuel to Detroit. The company aims to educate Detroiters on how vegetable waste oil, which can be collected from restaurants, can be used as an eco-friendly and cost-effective alternative fuel for vehicles. Growtown hopes to streamline this type of fuel collection and explore ways to form a local biofuel infrastructure. These efforts could transform the biofuel conversion industry and bring positive changes to Detroit communities.

LifeCode Health
LifeCode Health, whose members include Hui and economics senior Steve Markovitch, is working to combat cardiovascular disease – the world’s leading killer – and other chronic diseases through biometric monitoring and a data analysis platform designed for mobile phones. With the potential to track vital signs and profiles in urban, remote, rural and developing areas, the system will be able to create a virtual clinical environment anywhere in the world. Wireless monitoring, capturing and assessing patient medical data for diagnostics, data mining, and health analytics will allow for timely and effective medical care.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information on research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

The United States has roughly 176 biodiesel plants, though 80 percent of them are sitting idle because of high raw material costs. Many of the estimated 23,000 jobs in this industry will remain in jeopardy unless producers can install new process technology to process the available lower cost feedstocks.

“This is an important milestone for us,” said Charles Salley, CEO of NextCAT Inc. “We are currently commercializing another high-performance catalyst that we are preparing to put into pilot scale testing in the next 90 days. The support of the NSF of the research for our next catalyst is important to our mission of enabling the next generation of biodiesel production.”

The NextCAT technology funded by the grant will allow producers to use feedstocks that cost as little as 10 cents per pound. “Feedstocks such as brown grease have very high levels of free fatty acids and cannot be economically processed with current technology,” said Steven Salley, Ph.D., COO of NextCAT, associate professor of Chemical Engineering at Wayne State’s College of Engineering and the technology’s co-inventor. “Our technology will help enable many biodiesel producers to process these inexpensive feedstocks cost-effectively."

“My colleagues Dr. Simon Ng, Dr. Manhoe Kim, Dr. Shuli Yan and I have put a lot of effort into the preliminary research that went into this technology and we are all very pleased that the funding from both the National Science Foundation and the Michigan Emerging Technologies Fund will allow us to accelerate our research and get this technology out to the biodiesel producers that really need it," Salley added.

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NextCAT is a startup company located at TechTown, the Wayne State University research and technology park in Detroit. It was founded in 2009 by inventors Dr. Simon Ng, Dr. Steven Salley, Dr, Shuli Yan and CEO Charles Salley. NextCAT offers a class of heterogeneous catalysts for biodiesel production that allow biodiesel producers to use less refined and less expensive feedstocks in their production process. For more information, visit http://nextcatinc.com/

Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.ed

Media Contacts:
Julie O’Connor, Wayne State University, ag2712@wayne.edu or (313) 577-8845
Derrin Leppek, NextCAT Inc., media@nextcatinc.com or (586) 491-4102

The grant aims to address the decrease in academic endocrinologists who have both clinical skill and research expertise, by motivating young endocrinologists to pursue a combined research and academic track that will prepare them to become the future leaders of endocrine research.

“NIH programs promote recruitment and training of the next generation of researchers by defraying some of the cost of the additional training,” said Dr. Arthur Castle, director of NIDDK’s institutional training programs for diabetes, endocrinology and metabolic diseases. “It’s an investment in tomorrow’s cutting-edge researchers and in the advances they will make to improve our understanding of endocrine diseases and our ability to better manage and prevent them.”

Endocrine-related illnesses include diabetes, metabolic syndrome, obesity and osteoporosis, all of which are major public health concerns because of their prevalence and devastating complications, including heart attack, stroke, blindness and kidney failure. These illnesses can have adverse effects on other major diseases of the cardiovascular, renal, nervous, gonadal and digestive systems.

“The management and prevention of these diseases have become the mandate of primary care physicians,” said Dr. Abou-Samra. “Most endocrine fellowship programs produce clinical endocrinologists who are only skilled in a clinical setting and lack much-needed research skills. With this grant from the NIH, we will address the decreasing number of academic endocrinologists with research skills who will transition into the academic setting, ultimately leading our future research programs.”

“This T32 training grant from the National Institutes of Health is a critical component for preparing fellows for academic and laboratory careers,” said Gloria Heppner, associate vice president for research at WSU. “Wayne State is a leader in endocrine and diabetes research, and under Dr. Abou-Samra’s directorship, we can expect to train some of the brightest endocrinologists in the world.”

For more information about the endocrinology program at Wayne State University, visit http://endocrinology.med.wayne.edu.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Julie Thompson Klein, Ph.D., who also is a faculty fellow in WSU’s Office for Teaching and Learning and resident of Ypsilanti, Mich., received the Ramamoorthy & Yeh Transdisciplinary Distinguished Achievement Award and the Joseph Katz Award for Outstanding Leadership in General Education.

The first award was presented to Klein at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, during The Academy of Transdisciplinary Learning & Advanced Studies’ biannual meeting, which addressed global issues on transdisciplinary, transnational and transcultural levels. Klein was a distinguished speaker at the event, presenting “Prospectus for a Shared Conceptual Framework of Transdisciplinarity.”

Next, the Association for General and Liberal Studies (AGLS) executive council announced Klein’s selection as the Joseph Katz Award recipient. The AGLS executive council bases its decision on distinguished contributions to the practice and discourse of general and liberal education, with emphasis on interdisciplinary approaches in Klein’s case.

Klein has previously received local, national and international recognition, including the WSU President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Board of Governor's Distinguished Faculty Award and Distinguished Faculty Fellowship, as well as the final prize in the Eesteren-Fluck & Van Lohuizen Foundation's international competition for new research models for her essay "Applying Interdisciplinary Models to Design, Planning and Policy Making.” She has been invited to numerous symposia on interdisciplinarity in Europe, Latin America, Australia and New Zealand. Klein also received the Boulding Award, conferred by the Association for Integrative Studies in recognition of outstanding scholarship on interdisciplinarity.

Her most recent book, Creating Interdisciplinary Campus Cultures, was co-published by Jossey-Bass and the Association of American Colleges and Universities in early 2010. Klein is working on a new book, Mapping Digital Humanities, and is a lead editor of the University of Michigan series digitalhumanities @ digitalculturebooks.

“With the inherent complexity of society and science, there is an increasing need to explore problems in a way that is not confined to any one discipline,” said Gloria Heppner, associate vice president for research at Wayne State University. “By blurring traditional boundaries, researchers are now collaborating with others outside of their own disciplines to foster new research ideas and approaches to education. Dr. Klein is an international expert in this area, and because of her efforts, she is most deserving of these recognitions.”

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.
 

Henry Heng, Ph.D., associate professor in WSU’s Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics and resident of Detroit, published a study in a recent edition of the Journal of Cellular Biochemistry that represents an important illustration of the evolutionary mechanism of cancer. The paper, which was co-authored by a team from WSU’s Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics, describes the correlation between changes at the genome level and cancer progression.

“Considering cancer as an evolutionary process is vital to both basic research and clinical applications,” Heng said. “Unfortunately, most previous efforts have focused on individual cancer genes, which represent only a small part of the evolutionary story of cancer. A growing body of evidence suggests that no distinguishable pattern can be discerned from single gene studies. Instead, it appears that finding a general mechanism will require us looking to the system as a whole – the genome.”

Despite the impressive amount of data accumulated from studies of gene mutations, epigenetic dysregulation and pathway alterations, an overwhelming amount of diverse molecular information has offered only a limited understanding of the general mechanism. To solve this paradox, Heng’s group applied the newly established genome theory to describe how somatic cells evolve within individual patients. Using cell culture and animal models, they identified three key components of somatic cell evolution that are responsible for cancer formation: increased dynamics induced by stress, elevated genetic and epigenetic heterogeneity, and natural selection mediated by genome alteration. Results of the study showed a correlation between cancer progression events – immortalization, transformation, metastasis and drug resistance – and changes at the genome level. No common pattern of gene mutations was discovered. In fact, cancer risk was found to be associated with higher levels of genetic diversity.

The findings provide supporting evidence for the genome theory of cancer evolution, which was established by Heng in a paper published in a 2009 edition of BioEssays. According to the theory, most genetic information cannot be defined at the gene level because the function of an individual gene is dependent on the genome context – its position relative to other genes and environmental factors. The theory is supported by previous discoveries that cancer progression requires evolution of the genome as a whole, or macroevolution. Other support includes the lack of common mutations that have been discovered, despite the ever-increasing amount of sequenced cancer genes.

“Decades of cancer research have been conducted by searching for ‘silver bullet’ genes that are common among cancer patients that can be targeted for treatment and prevention, yet no consistent pattern of gene mutations has been found,” Heng said. “Genetic changes at the genome level, however, exist universally in cancer, particularly in the late stages.”

As a result of this and previous findings, Heng said, the field of cancer research should begin to shift its search for evolutionary mechanisms to the genome level. “With the genome theory of cancer evolution, we hope to initiate a new direction in cancer research that focuses on the genome,” he said. “We believe this shift will yield a new platform to fight cancer.”

To view the paper’s abstract, visit http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20213744?otool=waynelib&dopt=Abstract

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information on research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.
 

A URC-supported collaboration between researchers at Michigan State University, the University of Michigan and Wayne State University began with a $523,282 seed grant that helped the researchers win a $12.5 million federal grant less than a year later, leading to scientific progress and several new partnerships and publications, said URC Executive Director Jeff Mason.

“The University Research Corridor support for our work on nanocomposites played an instrumental role in MSU landing a U.S. Department of Energy-funded Energy Frontier Research Center,’’ MSU’s Donald Morelli and colleagues from U-M and WSU said in a report issued by the three-university team.

Mason, who joins business and government leaders this afternoon at a Mackinac Policy Conference panel entitled “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs: Jobs in New Industries, Jobs with New Opportunities,’’ stressed that the state’s research universities are an active partner in developing new industries.

“Research and development often light the spark that make new ideas spread like wild fire,’’ Mason said. “The more we work together, the quicker the progress.’’

New collaborations are being encouraged regularly. The URC announced in January a competitive program to award funding to support the sponsorship from symposia on major research topics with the potential to lead to new research funding opportunities. Researchers from the three universities submitted 36 proposals to the vice presidents of research at the URC universities, who gave their highest rankings to three proposals:

• A three-university partnership to develop “Innovation in Water Science and Technology, Education and Entrepreneurship – Creating Michigan’s WaterHub through Academic-Government-Private Partnerships.’’ Co-chairs: Joan Rose (MSU); Carol Miller (WSU); Nancy Love (U-M).
• Creating, Enhancing, and Sustaining Livable Communities: URC Co-chairs: Laura Reese (MSU) and Robin Boyle (WSU).
• The 2nd Michigan Collaborative Research Symposium on Cerebral Palsy: Developing Collaborative Research with the CP Community: URC Co-chairs: Edward Hurvitz (U-M); Nigel Paneth (MSU); Sujatha Kannan (WSU).

Another URC-supported research project, involving efforts by the three universities to turn biomass such as corn stover and switch grass into fermentable sugars, high quality pulps, high-value added chemicals and other bio-based products has already resulted in several patent applications, publications and scientific presentations and four new collaborations.

For more on the URC, visit: www.urcmich.org

For more on the Morelli team’s efforts, including a recent appearance on “Greening of the Great Lakes,’’ visit: http://www.mlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2010/05/don_morelli_transferring_waste.html
 

Mary Elizabeth Anderson, Ph.D., assistant professor of Theatre in the WSU College of Fine, Performing and Communication Arts, director of WSU’s Performance/Exchange program and resident of Birmingham, Mich., recently was funded by the Kresge Foundation for the Detroit Garden Classroom: A Healthy Kids Advocacy and Media Project. The project will launch a team of about 30 “student health advocates” from Spain Elementary/Middle School in Detroit to create innovative, engaging PSAs about how to eat, live and thrive in Detroit. The PSAs will be distributed to DPS schools and made available on DPS and WSU websites.

Anderson said the project gives 6th- through 8th-grade students the chance to not only be leaders in their own school but ambassadors to other DPS students in solving one of their most urgent problems. “This project is very much a response to what teachers and students name as the most pressing issue of Detroit Public Schools right now,” Anderson said. “In every school I visit, I hear the same question: ‘How can we get our students to eat healthier and lead more active lifestyles?’”

The PSAs will be inspired by the student health advocates’ trips to local gardens, markets and SEED Wayne-administered healthy corner stores. During these visits, students will meet performers from WSU’s Performance/Exchange program, who will give interactive lessons on the food cycle, seasons, local plants, life cycles, and important aspects of good nutrition and digestion. “The pairing of science and drama is designed to engage the student health advocates in the joys of outdoor play and learning at various locations in the city, while providing them with important decision-making skills in nutrition and healthy living,” Anderson said.

The project will involve a partnership between Wayne State’s Performance/Exchange program and visionary Spain drama teacher Beth Dzodin-Fuchs, who has seen firsthand the deleterious effects of poor nutrition on student achievement, and has dedicated the past two academic years to integrating health education into her playwriting classes. “Poor nutrition is immediately noticeable in drama classes, where children are using their bodies and their imaginations and are really learning by doing,” Dzodin-Fuchs said. “If children are getting good nutrition, they are able to focus and achieve a higher order of thinking skills and have a more effective learning experience.”

The Detroit Garden Classroom will take place during the 2010-11 school year. It’s one of several expansions on Anderson’s Performance/Exchange project, which began with Wayne State students performing at DPS schools. Through Anderson’s vision, the program has expanded to be more interactive and responsive to community issues.

“I see community engagement as a responsibility and a privilege for the arts at WSU, especially in terms of carrying out the university’s urban mission,” Anderson said. “To be living in and of your time and to respond – that’s the responsibility of an artist. Hopefully, this project will lead to many more that make people think and engage creatively to solve the problems of our time.”

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information on research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

The Kresge Foundation is a national, private foundation that seeks to influence the quality of life for future generations by creating access and opportunity in underserved communities, improving the health of low-income people, supporting artistic expression, assisting in the revitalization of Detroit, and advancing methods for dealing with global climate change.

In addition to this role, she is professor of internal medicine in the Division of Hematology/Oncology in WSU’s School of Medicine, and professor in the IEHS. She joined the WSU faculty in 1990.

Runge-Morris is a graduate of Kalamazoo College and received her doctor of medicine degree from the University of Michigan. She did residencies in internal medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin and Hennepin County Hospital in Minneapolis, and a fellowship in medical oncology at Northwestern University.

Earlier this year, Runge-Morris received two federal stimulus grants from the National Institutes of Health totaling more than $775,000. These research projects are investigating the potential role of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the progression of breast cancer and delineating the role of a liver enzyme in the development of metabolic diseases such as heart disease, abnormal cholesterol metabolism and insulin-resistant Type 2 diabetes. For more information about these studies, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu/communications/news-release.php?id=92&y=&m.

IEHS faculty and researchers conduct biochemical and cellular research on the short- and long-term effects of environmental agents on human health. An evolving theme of the institute is to address environmental health science problems that are prevalent in the Detroit region, including the toxicological effects of living in an industrial environment, and determining the underlying causes of health disparities in the local population. Through its community outreach and education programs, IEHS aims to reduce disease risk in Detroit and other areas.

“Dr. Runge-Morris served as acting director during the reengineering of IEHS,” said Gloria Heppner, associate vice president for research at WSU. “Because of her leadership, the institute is experiencing a rebirth as a vital part of the research enterprise at Wayne State University and beyond.”

For more information about the Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, visit www.iehs.wayne.edu.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.
 

The report, “Sparking Economic Growth: How federally funded university research creates innovation, new companies and jobs,” released by The Science Coalition, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization of 45 of the nation’s leading public and private research universities, identifies 100 success stories—examples of companies started through university innovations.

The WSU spinoff SenSound is one such story featured in the report. SenSound offers software, systems and services for noise source identification and noise-related quality control testing.

Dr. Sean F. Wu, distinguished professor of mechanical engineering at Wayne State University‘s College of Engineering, developed this technology to help quiet the noise that surrounds our daily lives. He says that seeing sound through science is the perfect solution to noise problems such as squeaky brakes, noisy dishwashers and more.

SenSound’s technology creates a 3-D image of sound in space and time that can pinpoint the exact source of noise in a large number of products with a high degree of resolution and accuracy. It will provide manufacturers of automobiles, airplanes, ships, consumer appliances and industrial machinery with an invaluable tool to quickly and accurately isolate and resolve problems of unwanted sound. It also serves architectural firms that want to reduce the intrusions of external environmental noise or internally generated noise from heating, ventilating and air conditioning equipment and other sources.

“Wayne State University is playing a major part in the revitalization of Detroit and Michigan as we transition from a manufacturing-based market system to a global, knowledge-driven economy,” said Hilary Ratner, vice president for research at Wayne State. “Our research activities provide new opportunities for commercialization as we transfer university-based intellectual property into the marketplace and create startup companies that generate new jobs and product and service innovations. TechTown, Wayne State’s research and technology park, is home to many of these new ventures and brings the resources of Wayne State to high-technology startup companies to diversify and strengthen Michigan’s economy in emerging high-growth industries.”

To view the full report and database of companies created from university research, visit www.sciencecoalition.org/successstories.

For more information about The Science Coalition, visit www.sciencecoalition.org.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Having parents with a low level of education or an absent or deceased father during childhood may raise a person’s risk for being disabled later in life, a recent study by two Wayne State researchers suggests.

Principal investigator Mary Bowen, Ph.D., former National Institute on Aging postdoctoral research fellow at WSU and current resident of Tampa, Fla., and co-author Hector González, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Institute of Gerontology and the Department of Family Medicine and Public Health Sciences in WSU’s School of Medicine and resident of Chelsea, Mich., were published in the American Journal of Public Health for their study examining early childhood economic conditions and risk for disability in older adulthood.

With much of the available literature on disability focused on the role of midlife diseases, Bowen and González took a unique life-course approach to the topic. “This study set out to determine if early life conditions contribute to the risk for developing a disability, and if so, what those risk factors are,” González said.

The study utilized data from the Health and Retirement Study, a nationally representative study that followed more than 18,000 Americans, 51 and older, over the course of eight years. Using generalized linear latent and mixed-model commands for their statistical analysis, they examined the early-life parameters of parental education ranging from zero to 17 years, as well as the father’s occupation when the respondent was 16 years old. They factored in respondents’ social mobility– education, income and wealth – and health behaviors – smoking, drinking, exercising and body weight – throughout their life, examining whether these factors mediated the effect of early life conditions. Analyses adjusted for the predisposition for certain forms of disability caused by characteristics such as age, gender, ethnicity and disease, and tracked the changes from baseline measurements over the course of the study.

The study found that respondents whose fathers had low levels of education and those whose fathers were absent or had died while they were growing up were at an increased risk of disability later in life. Mother’s education was an early influence of disability risk, but disappeared once other social mobility factors came into play. Additionally, respondents whose fathers were either farmers or farm managers had a lower risk for disability.

Bowen and González said the study suggests that early socioeconomic conditions play a role in a person’s risk for disability that persists throughout the course of their life. “Our research strengthens the argument that poor conditions during childhood can put you on a path of heightened risk for health problems,” said Bowen, who is now a patient-safety research fellow at James A. Haley Veterans Hospital in Tampa, Fla. “This isn’t to say that people who grow up with certain socioeconomic risk factors are going to be disabled, but it does provide evidence they will be at a disadvantage. This is most likely due to the lowered access to good nutrition and to important health information characteristic of people living in poverty.”

Bowen and González say their study adds to the growing body of research supporting a shift toward preventative medicine in the U.S., with a particular focus on policies that provide low-income families with vital social resources, including adequate nutrition and access to education. “Caring for those with disabilities places a substantial burden on the health care system, which, as our population continues to age, is only going to get larger,” González said. “Taking steps early on to ensure that at-risk families have access to the resources they need could significantly reduce the number of older adults with disabilities and ultimately reduce the amount of money we spend on health care in the U.S.”

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information on research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

“This grant allows us to optimize our exciting technology and will allow researchers to develop new stem cell lines relevant for a variety of diseases,” MitoStem founder and president Jim Eliason said. “It will also enable the creation of stem cells from patient's own cells for replacement of diseased and damaged tissues.”

MitoStem (also known as TechTown Ventures) is focused on stem cell research and, more broadly, regenerative medicine. Stem cells have the ability to reproduce themselves (self-renewal) and are pluripotent, meaning they differentiate into all the cell types found in the body. Thus, in the future, pluripotent stem cells (PSC) will be able to replace diseased and damaged organs. Until recently, only stem cells derived from embryos were thought to be pluripotent. In addition, these cells can be used to study certain genetic diseases when they come from embryos with the specific genetic mutation. However, there are controversies associated with using cells from embryos and they can only be used for diseases that are diagnosed during assisted reproduction (in vitro fertilization).

Recently, it has been possible to reprogram mature adult cells to create induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which are like embryonic stem cells with respect to their self-renewal and differentiation capacities. The initial methods for reprogramming focused on delivery of four genes using genetic transduction methods that potentially can create mutations, tumors or both. Within the past year, several laboratories have been able to reprogram cells by direct delivery of four proteins to adult cells. However, reprogramming directly with proteins suffers from two major problems: very low efficiency of iPSC generation and extremely high costs of reprogramming proteins, making it impractical for use on a routine basis.

MitoStem has obtained the rights to commercialize this novel technology developed at Wayne State University that will make generation of iPSCs more practical, simple and affordable. This protein transduction technology, which is a highly efficient method to deliver purified reprogramming proteins into the nuclei of cells, will significantly enhance the efficiency of generating iPSC.

The combination of higher transduction efficiency and low-cost proteins will make the direct protein approach to creating iPSCs accessible to many more investigators than the current protein transduction technologies. The increased safety of this method over genetic methods will have a revolutionary effect on iPSC research and regenerative medicine.

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ABOUT TECHTOWN

TechTown is an urban community of entrepreneurs, innovators, investors, mentors and corporate partners creating an internationally influential village in Detroit. TechTown brings the resources of Wayne State University to high-technology startup companies to diversify and strengthen Michigan’s economy in high-growth emerging industries. The SmartStart business accelerator program provides two years of intensive entrepreneurial support for innovative startups including mentoring, coaching, access to funding opportunities and more. For more information, visit www.techtownwsu.org.

ABOUT WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY

Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information on research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:

Nichole Christian, Director of Communications
TechTown
(313) 879-5248
nichole@techtownwsu.org

Allison Lumb, Marketing Coordinator
TechTown
(313) 879-4478
Allison@techtownwsu.org

Julie O’Connor, Director of Research Communications
Wayne State University
(313) 577-8845
julie.oconnor@wayne.edu
 

DETROIT– Large brains are uncommon in the animal kingdom and many of the species in which they appear – primates, elephants, dolphins – are far apart in lineage. A recent Wayne State study, however, suggests that for humans and elephants, the evolutionary path toward a large brain was very similar.

Morris Goodman, Ph.D., distinguished professor of anatomy in WSU’s School of Medicine and resident of Oak Park, Mich., and co-author Derek Wildman, Ph.D., assistant professor of molecular medicine and genetics and of obstetrics and gynecology in WSU’s School of Medicine and resident of Ferndale, Mich., were published in a study in a recent edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study showed that humans and elephants underwent a similar accelerated burst of evolution in a suite of genes responsible for aerobic energy production. Not seen in small-brained relatives of either humans or elephants, these gene adaptations appear to have played an instrumental role in the development of two of the largest brains in the animal kingdom.

The study was made possible by the expanding set of publicly available genomes. “In the genome age that we’re in, there’s a great opportunity to elucidate the evolutionary steps that resulted in the origin of humans,” Goodman said.

“In the case of this study, we were trying to understand what genetic changes made this big brain of ours possible. A good starting point for answering a question like this is to take other species with the same trait and look for genetic adaptations we have in common.”
Goodman’s research group investigated the patterns of adaptive evolution in elephants, humans and a small-brained evolutionary relative of each: tenrecs, a hedgehog-like relative of elephants, and mice, a relative of humans.

The analysis, which encompassed about 6,000 genes from each lineage, investigated the ratio of nonsynonymous mutations – which are indicative of adaptive evolution – to synonymous or “silent” mutations. They found that humans and elephants both have a high ratio of non-synonymous mutations in a set of genes known as aerobic energy metabolism (AEM) genes. AEM genes control the production of aerobic energy, a process that occurs in mitochondria.

One likely hypothesis for these similar adaptations – also known as convergent evolution – is that increased production of aerobic energy would satisfy the huge amount of energy that the large brains of elephants and humans require. “The study strengthens the evidence for the importance of these genes in the development of a large brain,” Goodman said.

The next steps in this line of research will include the investigation of the specific nucleotide and protein replacements that comprised this genetic evolution. It also opens the door for similar genetic studies comparing humans to mammals of other lineages. “It will be very interesting to see if other large-brained, social mammals such as dolphins have the same adaptations in AEM genes,” Goodman said. “These studies, among others, will further elucidate the genetic evolutionary mechanisms that resulted in characteristics that define us as humans and shaped the animal kingdom as we know it.”

Goodman’s research team included participants from Wayne State University, University of Michigan, The George Washington University and Mount Sinai School of Medicine. To view the full paper, visit http://www.pnas.org/content/106/49/20824.long.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information on research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Woster received $1,311,950 from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to identify and develop compounds that inhibit lysine-specific demethylase 1 (LSD1), an enzyme that has been shown to prevent the production of proteins that are important to tumor suppression. Woster and co-principal investigator Robert A. Casero Jr., Ph.D., from John Hopkins University, have discovered novel molecules that inhibit LSD1, enabling the tumor-suppressor proteins to be re-expressed. Preliminary research has shown that when used in animals in combination with traditional antitumor agents, these molecules can prevent tumor growth.

The current study will further test the compounds’ ability to inhibit LSD1, to re-express tumor suppressor proteins and limit tumor growth in an animal model.

“Previous studies have identified the enzyme LSD1 as an exciting new target for inhibiting tumor growth,” Woster said. “Recently, we’ve reported a series of molecules – guanidines and biguanidines – that are potent inhibitors of this enzyme. The goal of our current study is to synthesize additional molecules and develop these compounds further, so that they may be used for the treatment of human cancer.”
Woster and Casero Jr. were the first to demonstrate the antitumor effects of LSD1 inhibitors in vitro and recently demonstrated the antitumor effects in vivo.

For the study, Woster will design and synthesize multiple series of analogues, generating compound libraries of potential small-molecule LSD1 inhibitors. They will also use virtual screening to identify leads from commercial databases and to suggest more potent analogues for synthesis and screening. They will then evaluate the newly synthesized analogues effectiveness as inhibitors in cultured tumor cells and finally, in combination treatments in animal models.

“By evaluating a variety of analogues using several different methods, our study aims to find the most potent inhibitor of LSD1 possible,” Woster said. “Using this approach, there is a high probability that a potent LSD1 inhibitor could become an important new class of antitumor agents.”
 

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information on research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Of these top 50 universities, there are a total of 1,685 chemistry faculty members, with 281 or 17 percent of women holding tenured or tenure-track positions. Wayne State University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology were tied for fourth place with 25 percent of women chemistry professorships, just below University of California - Los Angeles, University of Puerto Rico - Rio Piedras and Purdue University.

WSU’s Department of Chemistry has 28 professors of chemistry, seven of which are women. According to James Rigby, department chair, this is a reflection of the university’s commitment to excellence in teaching and research. “The chemistry department always strives to hire the very best faculty available and, clearly, we have been very successful attracting and retaining a large complement of talented women chemists,” said Rigby. “This is a testament to the environment of collegiality and communication that prevails among our entire faculty.”

Women faculty in the Department of Chemistry are researching important topics that may have a tremendous impact on our lives and health in the future. Two faculty making great strides in their research are Stephanie Brock and Christie Chow. Brock, professor of chemistry, is researching ways to improve oil refining processes that could lead to gasoline that releases lower quantities of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide, critical to lowering emissions. For more information about Brock’s research, visit http://research.wayne.edu/rwnews/article.php?id=450.

Christie Chow, professor of chemistry, is developing a novel strategy for battling antibiotic resistance by targeting a bacteria cell’s ribosomes and attacking it with a compound the bacteria has never seen before. For more information about Chow’s research, see page 26 of New Science: http://research.wayne.edu/newscience/2009/wsu_ns_vol.17.09.pdf.

To view the full Chemical & Engineering News study, visit http://pubs.acs.org/isubscribe/journals/cen/88/i09/html/8809education.html.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

WSU students Melissa Hui, Steve Markovitch, Fahima Amin Bhuyan and Kun Wang of the LifeCode team were selected as finalists in the competition and will showcase their innovation in Washington, D.C. Their project aims to combat diseases through a tele-health data-capture and analysis platform, with the potential to track patient vital signs and profiles in remote, urban, rural and developing areas.
According to the team, this technology is capable of creating a virtual medical clinic environment anywhere in the world by monitoring, capturing and assessing patient medical data for diagnostics, data-mining and trend needs. This low-cost data-capture platform may ensure timely care via basic triage and build a low-cost healthcare infrastructure around their efficient method. More than 14,000 high school and college students throughout the country registered for this year’s Imagine Cup, and only 20 student teams were chosen to participate in the finals. They will vie for a chance to represent the United States at the worldwide finals this July in Warsaw, Poland, among students from more than 100 countries and regions.

The Wayne State LifeCode team includes Fahima Amin Bhuyan of Detroit, a graduate student in computer science; Melissa Hui of Bloomfield Hills, an undergraduate in biological sciences; Stephen Markovitch of Roseville, an undergraduate in economics; and Kun Wang of Detroit, a graduate student in computer engineering.

“It’s really an honor to be among the 10 software design invitational teams to be selected to compete in the U.S. finals next month,” said Hui. “As a veteran team, it’s exciting that Microsoft recognized that our concept and prototype have matured over the past year, and gave us another opportunity to compete and showcase the work we’ve done.”

“Wayne State is pleased to have students represented at the Imagine Cup again this year,” said Hilary Ratner, vice president for research at Wayne State. “The Imagine Cup is an incredible learning opportunity, and gives students a chance to express their creativity by developing unique and innovative solutions – something ultimately desired by their future employers.”

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.
 

The trip, which will mark many of the students’ first time traveling with a large group of their peers, will be a somewhat unorthodox one. Due to a limited amount of flights reserved for the conference, the group will travel by train for approximately 40 hours then catch a three-hour bus ride.

Kevin Rashid, undergraduate research coordinator, said students are everything from excited to overwhelmed at the prospect of traveling together nearly two days straight. “A lot of the students are excited for what they consider old-style travel,” Rashid said. “Others are wondering what they’re going to do for such a long ride. We expect it will build a lot of community, as this trip is known for spurring some interesting, cross-discipline friendships.”

Although only 20 of the 43 students will attend the conference, Rashid said the record numbers reflect the extensive training available to Wayne State undergraduates not just in the basics of research, but in presenting their work to a broad audience. “Undergraduate research is a powerful experience in and of itself, but the importance of effectively communicating the value of your work to people outside of your field cannot be overestimated,” Rashid said. “It’s a skill that’s critical throughout nearly every type of academic or professional career.”

The following are samples of some of the students who will be present their research projects at the conference. Further information about these and the rest of the presenters are available at http://research.wayne.edu/communications/forms/undergraduate_profiles_in_template_v2.pdf.

Danica Maureen Aquino, psychology honors senior, Royal Oak, Mich.
Project title: The Influence of Motivational, Behavioral Inhibition and Behavioral Activation Systems on Smoking Cessation through Contingency Management Treatment
Project description: Aquino is investigating whether certain brain pathways associated with reward and punishment have an influence on a person’s success at quitting smoking.

Ajay Gopalakrishna, biology and economics sophomore,Troy, Mich.
Project title: Exploration of Molecular Interactions among Scutellaria Flavonoids for Anti-Glioma Activity
Project description: Gopalakrishna is investigating the potential anti-tumor activity of the major flavonoids – apigenin, baicalin, baicalein, chrysin, luteolin, and wogonin – found in the extracts of the herbal plant Scutellaria sp.

Pridvi Kandagatla, pre-medicine senior, Canton, Mich.
Project title: Assessing the Effectiveness of CXCR4 Antagonist, CTCE9908, on Prostate Cancer Metastasis
Project description: Kandagatla has tested the effects of the compound, CTCE-9908, on its potential use for preventing the spread of prostate cancer with promising results.

Kandagatla’s 2nd Project title: Long Term Changes in Self-Perception after a Summer Learning Service in China
Project description: Kandagatla has explored the ways in which past WSU students’ perspectives changed as a result of participating in a summer learning experience program in China, and how those changes affected their lives, including changes in students’ perspective on globalization, changes in their career choice and changes in their perception of themselves.

Alexander Marinica, philosophy honors senior with a minor in biological sciences, Canton, Mich.A
Project title: My Head Hurts: Behavioral Outcome following Etra Antagonist Administration after Traumatic Brain Injury
Project description: Marinica studied the use of an Etra antagonist to keep blood flowing to the brain in populations with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) that show positive results in minimizing the effects of the injury.

Eric Tuomey, history and urban studies senior, Huntington Woods, Mich.
Project title: Greenspace Redevelopment: The Limitations and Constraints of Howard’s Greenbelt in Detroit
Project description: Tuomey explored the potential Sir Ebenezer Howard's Garden City ideal as a model for the redevelopment of Detroit's vacant land into green space. Tuomey’s study has the potential to provide valuable strategies for redeveloping Detroit’s vacant land into green space.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information on research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

The United States has roughly 176 biodiesel plants, though 80 percent of them are sitting idle because of heavy losses from high raw material costs. Many of the estimated 23,000 jobs in this industry remain in jeopardy if raw material costs are not resolved.

“This is a big milestone for us,” said Charles Salley, interim CEO of NextCAT Inc. “In February, we received our first round of outside funding from the Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund. Now, with this option agreement on the technology, we can begin pilot-scale testing this spring to demonstrate what our products can do for biodiesel plants that saw a very tough year in 2009. With most producers in the U.S. sitting idle because feedstock prices went through the roof, we can enable them to use much cheaper feedstocks.”

The NextCAT technology developed by researchers at Wayne State allows producers to use feedstocks that cost as little as 10 cents per pound. “Our catalysts can tolerate both high free fatty acid and water, and low-cost feedstocks are typified by both of these characteristics,” said Simon Ng, Ph.D., chief technology officer at NextCAT, interim associate dean for research in Wayne State’s College of Engineering and the technology’s co-inventor. “Many producers experimented with trying to pretreat the feedstocks before they enter the stream, but unless you fix the core of the problem, the catalyst, you have a process that is far from optimal. My colleagues Dr. Shuli Yan, Dr. Steven Salley and I worked hard to make this happen.”

“With funding from the Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund and the option agreement for the technology in place, we know this is just the beginning of a very busy but exciting year as we move forward to help an industry that is in serious need of our assistance,” said Salley. “This industry can help lessen our dependence on foreign oil and, at the same time, improve our environment – a win-win for all of us.”

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NextCAT is a startup company located at TechTown, the Wayne State University research and technology park in Detroit. It was founded in 2009 by inventors Dr. Simon Ng, Dr. Steven Salley, Dr, Shuli Yan and Interim CEO Charles Salley. NextCAT offers a class of heterogeneous catalysts for biodiesel production that allow biodiesel producers to use less refined and cheaper feedstocks in their production process. For more information, visit http://nextcatinc.com/

Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Media Contacts:
Julie O’Connor, Wayne State University, ag2712@wayne.edu or (313) 577-8845
Derrin Leppek, NextCAT Inc., media@nextcatinc.com or (586) 491-4102

The NSF CAREER Award is one of the highest honors granted by the NSF to young faculty members in the area of science and engineering and is intended to support their career-development activities. The $400,000 grant was awarded to Andrian Marcus, Ph.D., associate professor of computer science in WSU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and resident of Troy, Mich. Marcus will use the award to develop tools and methodologies that could improve programmers’ ability to understand, navigate and manage large amounts of code while performing maintenance and update tasks.

“We want to develop techniques that will make the maintenance of many types of software systems faster, less expensive and result in higher quality products,” Marcus said. “This could result in speedier improvements to many different kinds of software systems and growth for the software sector of the United States, which is already a $300-million+ industry.”

The tools and techniques Marcus hopes to develop are increasingly relevant to the needs of today’s software systems, which are larger and more complex than systems in use decades ago. “The software in a 2010 Lincoln Navigator has somewhere along the lines of a few million lines of code, which is comparable with the amount of code that a Boeing 747 Jet has,” Marcus said. “The reason for this is that the software on cars today is handling so many things, such as GPS systems, anti-theft programs, iPod software, driving and powertrain, etc.”

The tools that will result from Marcus’ research have potential applications in maintenance tasks for every kind of software system. “From the thermostat in your house to the cell phone in your pocket, software is an integral part of our lives today,” Marcus said. “This research could greatly improve our abilities to make the improvements that keep these complex systems running smoothly.”

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information on research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

To date, no one has analyzed the use of external pressure on pregnant women who abuse drugs or alcohol. The study, External Pressure, Motivation, and Treatment Outcomes among Pregnant Substance-Using Women, was recently published in Drug and Alcohol Dependence by a Wayne State University researcher in collaboration with the University of Cincinnati. The study has revealed new findings among this group.

“Among pregnant women receiving treatment for substance use, those who report external pressure in the form of threat of legal action, loss of child custody or loss of housing, attend treatment more regularly, and use drugs less often than those who do not,” said Steven Ondersma, Ph.D., lead author of the study and associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences in the School of Medicine, and the Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute for Child & Family Development at WSU.

Ondersma and his collaborators studied 200 pregnant women who were receiving substance abuse treatment. They found that those who said they were formally notified that they would go to jail, have a child removed from custody, or would lose housing if they did not enter a drug treatment program, showed a significantly higher rate of drug treatment compliance than the non-coerced group. All differences were not attributable to other factors such as education, legal history, employment, motivation, or the presence or absence of a substance use disorder.

“Women reporting external pressure attended more scheduled treatment hours, stayed in treatment longer, and used drugs or alcohol less often than similar women who were not coerced,” said Ondersma. While further studies are needed, particularly to address complex ethical issues, these results suggest external pressure to attend treatment can result in significantly greater treatment retention and lower drug use, thereby improving maternal and child outcomes.

In addition to Ondersma, Theresa Winhusen, Ph.D., and Daniel F. Lewis from the University of Cincinnati also participated in this study, which utilized data from a study directed by Dr. Winhusen. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Drug Abuse and the Joe Young, Sr. funds from the State of Michigan.

To view the complete study, visit http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=MImg&_imagekey=B6T63-4XPXT58-4-1&_cdi=5019&_user=147018&_pii=S0376871609003925&_orig=search&_coverDate=03%2F01%2F2010&_sk=998929997&view=c&wchp=dGLzVzz-zSkzk&_valck=1&md5=992320b395f9629a8ed50f33bf90b63d&ie=/sdarticle.pdf.

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu. 

For more information, contact Julie O'Connor at julie.oconnor@wayne.edu or 313-577-8845.
 

The study entitled, “Cryotherapy for a Spectrum of Breast Cancer: US and CT-guidance,” was presented at the Society of Interventional Radiology’s 35th Annual Scientific Meeting in Tampa, Fla. It details how researchers successfully froze breast cancer in patients who refused surgery. The women also did not need surgery to ensure the tumors were destroyed.

“Minimally-invasive cryotherapy opens the door for a potential new treatment for breast cancer and needs to be further tested,” said Peter J. Littrup, M.D., vice chair for radiology research, director of interventional radiology at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute and professor of radiology, urology and radiation oncology at Wayne State University's School of Medicine. “When used for local control and/or potential cure of breast cancer, it provided safe and effective breast conservation with minimal discomfort for a group of women who refused invasive surgery or had a local recurrence and needed additional management."

“This is the first reported study of successfully freezing breast cancer without having to undergo surgery afterward to prove that it was completely treated.”

In the 13-patient study, researchers used several needle-like cryoprobes that were evenly spaced and inserted through the skin to deliver extremely cold gas directly to the tumor to freeze it. This technique has been used for many years by surgeons in the operating room.

In the last few years, however, the needles have become small enough to be used by interventional radiologists through a small nick in the skin, without the need for an operation. The “ice ball” that is created around the needle grows in size and destroys the frozen tumor cells.

Biopsies were done at the margins of the cryotherapy site immediately after the procedure. Follow-up inspections at those cryotherapy sites showed no cancer present. No localized treatment recurrences were seen for up to five years in the study; no significant complications were noted; and women were pleased with the cosmetic outcomes, noted Dr. Littrup.

Major benefits of cryotherapy are its superb visualization of the ice treatment zone during the procedure, its low pain profile in an outpatient setting and its excellent healing with minimal scar, according to Dr. Littrup. Breast imaging has significantly advanced by accurate improvements in breast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), allowing for excellent treatment planning of tumor size and extent within the breast, as well as showing zones of destruction thoroughly covering the tumor after cryotherapy.

This potential treatment method holds widespread promise for the nearly 200,000 women who are diagnosed with breast cancer annually in the United States. For these women, as well as the thousands of men diagnosed each year, breast cancer treatments can be highly effective but often require invasive treatment options such as surgery and chemotherapy.

Surgery offers the best chance for a cure. Until long-term data is available, interventional treatments -- such as cryotherapy, thermal ablation and laser therapy -- are reserved for women who cannot have -- or have refused surgery.

Cryotechnology promises to be more MR-compatible, Dr. Littrup said, and would also allow accurate targeting of more difficult-to-see breast tumors. More importantly, larger studies in multiple centers needs to be done, following these basic cryobiology principles of sufficient lethal temperatures generated by multiple cryoprobes spaced evenly throughout a breast cancer region.

“With recent developments of powerful new cryotechnology, multiple directions for breast cryotherapy can be pursued, including translating the current, somewhat challenging, procedure done with ultrasound and/or CT guidance to a more consistent and reproducible MR-guided approach,” said Dr. Littrup.

The study was authored by Dr. Littrup, M.D.; Monica D’Agostini, an undergraduate student who volunteered with the Department of Radiology at Karmanos Cancer Institute; Barbara Adam, cryotherapy staff nurse at Karmanos Cancer Institute; and David Bouwman, M.D., emeritus director of Karmanos’ Alexander J. Walt Breast Center and professor of surgery at Wayne State University's School of Medicine; along with Bassel Jallad, M.D., and Priti Chandiwala-Mody, D.O., residents in Wayne State University's School of Medicine.

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For further information, contact Julie O’Connor, director of Research Communications, Wayne State University, at 313-577-8845 or via email at ag2712@wayne.edu and Patricia Ellis, Media Relations Manager, Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, at 313-576-8629 or via email at ellisp@karmanos.org.

Wayne State University WSU is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit www.research.wayne.edu.

Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute Located in mid-town Detroit, Michigan, the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute is one of 40 National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer centers in the United States. Caring for nearly 6,000 new patients annually on a budget of $216 million, conducting more than 700 cancer-specific scientific investigation programs and clinical trials, Karmanos is among the nation’s best cancer centers. Through the commitment of 1,000 staff, including nearly 300 physicians and researchers on faculty at the Wayne State University School of Medicine, and supported by thousands of volunteer and financial donors, Karmanos strives to prevent, detect and eradicate all forms of cancer. Its long-term partnership with the WSU School of Medicine enhances the collaboration of critical research and academics related to cancer care. Karmanos is southeastern Michigan’s most preferred hospital for cancer care according to annual surveys conducted by the National Research Corporation. For more information call 1-800-KARMANOS or go to www.karmanos.org.

The two institutions are developing E3 as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) with a $5 million ARRA grant funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) that aims to provide educational programs in support of President Barack Obama’s goal of having one million plug-in hybrid electric vehicles on the road by 2015.

“The objective of this program is to prepare our current and future workforce with the education and skills necessary for the advancement and maintenance of electric drive vehicles,” said Hilary Ratner, vice president for research at Wayne State University and chair of the advisory committee. “It is our intent to ensure we have the most innovative curriculum that can meet the needs of the automotive industry as energy policy evolves over the next few years. This is a key area of growth in the automotive area, and this partnership with Macomb Community College and NextEnergy will provide the next generation of automotive workers with critical skills necessary for engineers and technicians to advance and support electric drive vehicles.”

The program will develop and implement a comprehensive set of advanced educational programs in electric drive vehicles including a master’s degree in electric drive vehicle engineering; a bachelor’s degree in electric transportation technology; an associate degree in automotive technology and electronic engineering technology; and an undergraduate concentration and graduate certificate program in electric drive vehicle engineering.

In addition, the program will host national workshops; education for the general public, K-12 teachers and first responders; and will create a Web site to serve as a main portal of the most comprehensive and up-to-date information in electric drive vehicle technology and educational programs in the nation.

The newly formed electric drive vehicle engineering advisory board includes:
• Ray Boeman, director, Advanced Transportation Systems Program and NTRC User Facility, Oakridge National Laboratory
• Keith Cooley, CEO, NextEnergy
• Hansen Clarke, state senator (D-1)
• Michael Fetcenko, vice president, Ovonic Materials
• Ricardo Espinosa, vice president of engineering, Azure Dynamics, Inc.
• Nancy Gioia, vice president of global electrification, Ford Motor Company
• David Gorsich, chief scientist, U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center
• James Jacobs, president, Macomb Community College
• Steven Kurmas, president and COO, DTE Energy
• Gregory Main, president and CEO, Michigan Economic Development Corp
• Prabhakar Patil, president and CEO, Compact Power, Inc.
• Bob Purcell, Purcell & Associates, LLC
• Hilary Ratner (Chair),vice president for research, Wayne State University

For more information about E3, visit www.eng.wayne.edu/eve.

Media Contact: Cheryl Yurkovich, (313) 577-2150 or cyurkovich@wayne.edu
or Julie O’Connor, (313) 577-8845 or julie.oconnor@wayne.edu

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit www.research.wayne.edu.

Macomb Community College is one of the nation’s leading community colleges, providing learning experiences to more than 59,000 students annually. Macomb nationally ranks in the top two percent in the number of associate degrees awarded and as the largest grantor of associate degrees in Michigan. The college’s comprehensive educational programming includes pre-collegiate experiences, university transfer and career preparation programs, bachelor degree completion and graduate degree programs, workforce training, professional education and certification, and continuing education and enrichment opportunities. For more information about Macomb Community College, visit www.macomb.edu.

The revelation is just one of several findings in the study by a team of WSU political science faculty led by Marjorie Sarbaugh-Thompson, professor of political science in WSU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, which was published in the Feb. 2010 edition of the Legislative Studies Quarterly. The study showed the six-year term limit for state representatives and eight-year term limit for state senators have largely failed to fulfill promises made to Michigan citizens who voted the 1992 proposal into effect.

“Many Michigan citizens do not realize that our term limits are among the shortest in the nation, or that only 15 states have them at all,” Sarbaugh-Thompson said. “These term limits were sold to Michigan voters on the notion that they would sever close ties with lobbyists and cause legislators to be more independent,” Sarbaugh-Thompson said. “In reality, we found them to have the opposite impact.”

Research was conducted through four different rounds of interviews with Michigan legislators between 1998 and 2004. In addition to Dr. Sarbaugh-Thompson, the research team included WSU political science faculty members Charles Elder, Ph.D., John Strate, Ph.D., Richard Elling, Ph.D. and Lyke Thompson, Ph.D., director of WSU’s Center for Urban Studies, as well as Kelly LeRoux, Ph.D., assistant professor at the University of Kansas. Based on more than 400 interviews, the team assessed who or what influenced legislators’ policy-making decisions as well as how conflicts within their committees and between party members are resolved. Campaign finance reports were also reviewed to investigate whether representatives’ financial relationships with special interest groups had changed from before and after term limits were introduced.

The results of the research show that lobbyists’ influence over legislators was not only maintained after term limits were in effect, but may have increased. For instance, special interests’ importance as a source of “information and guidance” on a bill about school choice increased after term limits began. Lobbyists were also cited among the top three actors that determined whether a bill reached the floor of the chamber after term limits were in effect.

The study also found that term limits greatly diminished the amount of time and effort legislators spend monitoring state-run agencies, despite the fact they were supposed to increase legislators’ independence from bureaucratic influence. "Even when the governor and the legislators are of the same party, these checks are important,” Sarbaugh-Thompson said. “But this research shows that many legislators elected after term limits don’t even realize this is part of their job.”

Sarbaugh-Thompson believes the problem stems from the limited time that legislators have to understand their jobs, coupled with a lack of veteran legislators to mentor and train incoming representatives. One possible solution to the problem would be to extend term limits for Michigan legislators. “By extending term limits, freshmen representatives would have experienced legislators to mentor them, committee chairs and party leaders would have enough time to develop skills and relationships, while still preventing them from serving for decades.
“In addition, a longer term means that rather than campaigning for their next position, legislators would have a longer time to focus on their current position of leading the state effectively.”

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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information on research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

The goal is to find ways to transform the regional, state, national and, ultimately, global transportation industries.

Transforming Transportation: Economies & Communities (TTEC) is a new program to promote multidisciplinary, multi-institutional research that supports industry, community and government policymaking and planning. The three URC institutions---Michigan State University, the University of Michigan and Wayne State University---are each holding meetings with their campus researchers to prepare for an inaugural transportation summit to be held in Detroit in October of this year.

“The intent of the initiative is to build research teams composed of university, community, business and government partners in an effort to better understand transport of people and products in ways that also stimulate innovative approaches to economic development,” said Hiram Fitzgerald, associate provost for university outreach and engagement at MSU.

“Michigan is an iconic hub of transportation and innovation, and is situated geographically near the center of the United States and Canada. Our technological assets and strategic geographical position can be combined with the intellectual strengths of Michigan's three great research universities to help make Michigan a major player in fulfilling the world's transportation needs in the future."

While research into transportation has been a long-term interest of all three institutions, this is an opportunity to leverage the collective resources and create a comprehensive program. The rapid change in the transportation environment has profoundly affected the state and regional economy and has created widespread community disruption.

Recent U-M estimates, for example, indicate that between mid-2000 and 2009, the state is expected to have lost almost a million jobs or one-fifth of its workforce with much of that loss related to transportation fields.

Peter Sweatman, director of U-M’s Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI), said the group is taking a wide-ranging approach to the problem of transportation.

“Transportation is a complex system that extends beyond cars, although cars are certainly a critical part of the mix,” Sweatman said. “There are social, economic, policy and security issues and, of course, sustainability and climate change must be part of any effort to transform the system. This is not just a question of technology.”

Susan Zielinski, managing director of UMTRI’s Sustainable Mobility & Accessibility Research & Transformation (SMART) initiative added, “Sitting at the historic epicenter of transportation innovation, Michigan is right now strategically placed to reclaim that role with the benefit of this consortium - to innovate and supply the kind of sophisticated, multi-faceted solutions, as well as the new business, financial, and policy models needed to support and transform economies and communities – not only in Michigan but globally.”

Allen Batteau, an anthropologist who heads Wayne State’s Institute for Information Technology and Culture, explained that the goal of the group is to be forward thinking and seek opportunities for positive change. He noted that while the challenges faced by the auto industry have created severe disruption and economic hardship, they also have created opportunities.

“This is a once in a generation opportunity to rethink fundamental assumptions,” Batteau said. “We can’t let this opportunity pass us by and the research universities have an obligation to help point the way.”

The University Research Corridor presidents aligned in November 2006 to improve understanding of the vital role the three universities play in revitalizing the state’s economy. The collaborative effort is designed to disseminate useful information for key stakeholders, including the business community, researchers and students, policymakers and other partners.

In doing so, the universities hope to enhance their collaborative efforts, accelerate technology transfer and development and demonstrate the advantages of doing business in Michigan.

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The URC, an alliance of Michigan State University, the University of Michigan and Wayne State University, was founded to leverage the power of Michigan’s research universities to transform, strengthen and diversify the state’s economy. A recent study found that the three universities have a combined impact on the state’s economy of $14.5 billion. To learn more, visit http://urcmich.org.