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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss version="2.0" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/" xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/" > <channel> <title>Michigan Today</title> <atom:link href="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" /> <link>https://michigantoday.umich.edu</link> <description></description> <lastBuildDate>Mon, 27 Oct 2025 15:32:48 +0000</lastBuildDate> <language>en-US</language> <sy:updatePeriod> hourly </sy:updatePeriod> <sy:updateFrequency> 1 </sy:updateFrequency> <item> <title>Won’t you be my neighbor</title> <link>https://michigantoday.umich.edu/2025/10/25/wont-you-be-my-neighbor/</link> <comments>https://michigantoday.umich.edu/2025/10/25/wont-you-be-my-neighbor/#comments</comments> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Deborah Holdship]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Sat, 25 Oct 2025 13:33:29 +0000</pubDate> <category><![CDATA[Columns]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Editor's Blog]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Arthur Miller]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Hopwood awards]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Raoul Wallenberg]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://michigantoday.umichsites.org/?p=49477</guid> <description><![CDATA[Moving house takes on a whole new meaning as the student homes of Raoul Wallenberg and Arthur Miller become neighbors.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<h2>Wolverine to Wolverine</h2><p>World War II hero Raoul Wallenberg and iconic American playwright Arthur Miller are two extraordinary exemplars among Michigan alumni. And now they will be neighbors. Sort of.</p><p>Nearly a century after they left Ann Arbor, the homes where they lived as students will soon stand side by side. <a href="https://record.umich.edu/articles/regents-approve-site-prep-for-student-housing-historic-home-relocation/">In May, the U-M Regents approved an action request</a> to move Wallenberg’s one-time home from its original location at 308 E. Madison to the spot next to Miller’s student abode at 439 S. Division.</p><p>The move was motivated by construction of the Central Campus Residential Development, a footprint that included Wallenberg’s college house. Once the move to the corner of Jefferson and Division streets is completed, a renovation project will update both properties to create a combined space for administrative and research purposes.</p><p>Notably, Wallenberg and Miller could have been real neighbors at U-M. Wallenberg graduated in 1935; Miller in 1938. Both pursued the arts: Wallenberg studied architecture; Miller excelled in creative writing. Each pursued entry to the University with passionate fervor and expressed how much they enjoyed their time on campus. And upon graduation, each transformed the world with an unmatched lust for life.</p><h2>Here comes the neighborhood</h2><div id="attachment_955" style="width: 317px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2013/11/2miller_newsletter.jpg"><img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-955" class=" wp-image-955" src="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2013/11/2miller_newsletter.jpg" alt="Arthur Miller" width="307" height="437" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-955" class="wp-caption-text">Arthur Miller (Image courtesy of U-M’s Bentley Historical Library.)</p></div><p>It’s hard to know if Wallenberg and Miller ever crossed paths. But one can imagine they would have found common ground, even though they came from wildly different backgrounds. As with most Michigan alumni, they would have connected on their undying passion for the University.</p><p>New Yorker Miller, who would go on to write such classic American plays as <em>Death of a Salesman</em> (1949) and <em>The Crucible</em> (1953), arrived on campus in 1934. A <a href="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/2013/11/25/arthur-millers-ode-to-u-m/"> 2013 story for Michigan Today</a> by Frederic Alan Maxwell noted Miller was born into a prosperous family whose fortune was destroyed by the Great Depression. The determined teenager delivered bread on his bike and worked in an auto parts warehouse for two years to make tuition. In a December 1953 essay for <em>Holiday</em> magazine, Miller published an ode to his alma mater.</p><p>“I loved it because of the surprises,” he wrote. “Elmo Hamm, the son of a potato farmer in Upper Michigan, turned out to be as sharp as any of the myopic drudges who got the best grades in New York. I loved it because Harmon Rammel, the son of an Arkansas banker, lived in the room next to mine and from him I got a first glimpse what the South meant to a Southerner, a Southerner who kept five rifles racked on the wall, and two .38s in his valise, and poured himself bullets in a little mold he kept on his desk.”</p><p>Imagine how he would have described Wallenberg, born into one of Sweden’s most prominent families — often referred to as the “Rockefellers of Scandinavia.” Would he have seen the qualities in Wallenberg that would take this young man to Budapest during World War II, where he led a courageous effort to save some 70,000 Hungarian Jews from the Nazis before disappearing at the hands of the Russian military? <a href="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/2012/07/26/a8424/">A 2012 Michigan Today story</a> by Sheryl James reveals a former classmate later said Wallenberg declined to join a fraternity, though he could have afforded it, because it would isolate him from other, less prosperous students. “There was just no snobbery about him,” the classmate recalled.</p><h2>Your friends and neighbors</h2><div id="attachment_3737" style="width: 314px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2014/01/wallenberg-friends.gif"><img decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-3737" class=" wp-image-3737" src="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2014/01/wallenberg-friends-219x300.gif" alt="Wallenberg with friends" width="304" height="416" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-3737" class="wp-caption-text">Wallenberg (left) with college buddies. (Image courtesy of the Wallenberg family.)</p></div><p>Like Miller, the idealistic and adventurous young Wallenberg immersed in college life, biking and hitchhiking to get around. In his letters home, he emerges as fun-loving and adventurous, but also humble and hardworking; easy going, yet dedicated to his work.</p><p>“I feel so at home in my little Ann Arbor that I’m beginning to sink down roots here and have a hard time imagining leaving it,” he wrote soon after arriving. Miller also was content on campus and seemed to enjoy “anatomy lessons” in the Arb as he told the readers of <em>Holiday.</em> Wallenberg participated in a debating society in the then-College of Engineering and Architecture; Miller achieved his goal of winning the Hopwood Award in creative writing.</p><h2>Move it or lose it</h2><p>Charming and just a little bit shabby, these temporary student residences have been home to hundreds of students long after Wallenberg and Miller graduated. Each life has left an impression on the creaky floorboards and sagging porches. We are blessed these places are still standing, physical reminders of the vast, life-changing potential that exists on a university campus.</p><aside class="callout right"><a href="https://lsa.umich.edu/wallenberg">The Raoul Wallenberg Institute</a> at U-M fosters the values embodied by Raoul Wallenberg — empathy, tolerance, courage, and leadership — by studying hatred directed against religious and ethnic communities, fostering cross-cultural understanding, and elevating civic discourse.</aside><p>Construction crews are digging the foundation for Wallenberg’s house as I write this. The move is set for late November. When the time comes, signage will offer tour guides and trivia fans some fascinating new talking points.</p><p>For now, most passersby likely have no idea what the chain link fence around the empty lot symbolizes. As I took some pictures to document the move, I approached some students waiting for the bus. I was busting with information I wanted to share about the history burbling around them. The ones without earpods did not appreciate the unsolicited dissertation about two ghosts they’d never heard of. I could almost see the “911” in one poor girl’s eyes, and can only imagine the story she told her roommate later about the unhinged lady at the bus stop.</p><p>One day they’ll get it. I simply hoped to plant the seed, the one that both Wallenberg and Miller planted, to nurture curiosity, fellowship, and wonder about our “little Ann Arbor.”<br /> <br /> <br /><em>(Lead image: In October 2025, crews prepare the foundation to set the house formerly occupied by World War II hero Raoul Wallenberg. Image credit: D. Holdship.)</em></p>]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>https://michigantoday.umich.edu/2025/10/25/wont-you-be-my-neighbor/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>2</slash:comments> </item> <item> <title>The year a-flied physics lit up the MLB</title> <link>https://michigantoday.umich.edu/2025/10/24/the-year-a-flied-physics-arrived-in-the-mlb/</link> <comments>https://michigantoday.umich.edu/2025/10/24/the-year-a-flied-physics-arrived-in-the-mlb/#comments</comments> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Charles Rousseaux]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Sat, 25 Oct 2025 03:13:14 +0000</pubDate> <category><![CDATA[Athletics]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Baseball]]></category> <category><![CDATA[MLB]]></category> <category><![CDATA[physics]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Saturday Morning Physics]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Torpedo bat]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://michigantoday.umichsites.org/?p=49768</guid> <description><![CDATA[As the 2025 baseball season comes to a close, Aaron Leanhardt, BSE '99, reflects on the buzz he created with his version of the Torpedo bat. Only time -- and the stats -- will tell what the impact of the technology will be.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<h2>Bat man</h2><p>Speak to a former physics professor about baseball and the conversation is likely to include technical terms like “moment of inertia,” “average exit velocity,” and “vibrational modes.” But speak to the former physics professor who masterminded this season’s popular version of the Torpedo bat, and you’ll also hear the more relatable term “sweet spot.”</p><div id="attachment_49767" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/ScreenFromSatMornPhysics.png"><img decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-49767" class="size-medium wp-image-49767" src="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/ScreenFromSatMornPhysics-300x220.png" alt="Some physics of the Torpedo bat are expressed in a graphic." width="300" height="220" srcset="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/ScreenFromSatMornPhysics-300x220.png 300w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/ScreenFromSatMornPhysics-1024x752.png 1024w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/ScreenFromSatMornPhysics-768x564.png 768w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/mc-image-cache/2025/10/ScreenFromSatMornPhysics.png 1154w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-49767" class="wp-caption-text">(Image: Saturday Morning Physics.)</p></div><p>Aaron Leanhardt, BSE ’99, field coordinator for the Miami Marlins, is watching the 2025 World Series like any scientist evaluating the progress of an ongoing experiment. His pet project has been about three years in the making: a small, but critical change in bats that could shape the future of the game. And once the Los Angeles Dodgers or Toronto Blue Jays claim the league’s ultimate title, this academic-turned-MLB analyst will be there to assess and utilize a valuable new set of data.</p><p>“It’s going to be hard to attribute any credit or penalty to the bat, per se, but I do think over the course of a season, you’re going to see contact rates go up and the quality of play go up a little bit,” he told an audience during a recent presentation of <a href="https://lsa.umich.edu/physics/news-events/saturday-morning-physics.html">U-M’s Saturday Morning Physics,</a> hosted by Timothy Chupp, professor of physics and biomedical engineering. “I think this will be a big offseason for guys to try to see if they can get a benefit to their liking.”</p><p>The appearance of Leanhardt’s version of the Torpedo bat – thinner at the tip than a traditional bat, as its name would suggest – generated headlines, home runs, and debate at the top of the 2025 baseball season. He estimates about 15-20% of the players in the league used the bat regularly.</p><p><iframe loading="lazy" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bDOrUaTJg30?start=4365&wmode=transparent&rel=0&feature=oembed&rel=0" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen title="Saturday Morning Physics - 10/04/25"></iframe></p><p> </p><h2>From the Diag to the dugout</h2><div id="attachment_49763" style="width: 272px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Leanhardt-TorpedoBat.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-49763" class=" wp-image-49763" src="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Leanhardt-TorpedoBat-300x265.jpg" alt="Torpedo bats for sale via Amazon.com." width="262" height="231" srcset="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Leanhardt-TorpedoBat-300x265.jpg 300w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Leanhardt-TorpedoBat-1024x903.jpg 1024w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Leanhardt-TorpedoBat-768x678.jpg 768w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/mc-image-cache/2025/10/Leanhardt-TorpedoBat.jpg 1418w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 262px) 100vw, 262px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-49763" class="wp-caption-text">The torpedo-shaped barrel shifts weight closer to the center for a more balanced swing feel and enhanced barrel control. (Image: amazon.com.)</p></div><p>Leanhardt graduated with a degree in electrical engineering from U-M and his PhD in physics from MIT – where he was also a standout shortstop for a local amateur baseball league. He returned to U-M as an assistant professor from 2007-14, but baseball always called.</p><p>He exited academics for athletics, first as an assistant coach in New Jersey’s Atlantic Collegiate Baseball League, then as a coach at Montana’s Dawson Community College. From there he joined the New York Yankees where he served as a Major League analyst. That’s where he also came up with the idea for the bats, before joining the Marlins.</p><p>The problem he addressed seemed simple: Pitchers had gotten much better, making solid contact at the plate much more complicated.</p><p><span style="font-weight: 400">Leanhardt attacked the challenge with a physicist’s eye and an athlete’s competitive drive. </span>How could contact be increased – how could batters launch more balls from the sweet spot of the bat – while hewing to the constraints of physics and MLB guidelines?</p><p>“There were tradeoffs with each step,” he said.</p><aside class="callout right">In their first three games of 2025, the New York Yankees scored 36 runs, including nine in one game. Four of five hit off the starting pitcher using Torpedo bats.</aside>The challenge of a long rod, with vibrations at the end, comes straight out of physics textbooks. However, weight couldn’t simply be added, nor could the bat tips be significantly shortened without deleterious effects.</p><p>It was a challenge of constrained optimization and stringent creativity, for maximizing the distribution of the wood where the players wanted to hit the ball while providing them with bats and weight distributions with which they were already comfortable.</p><p>Like the challenge, the solution Leanhardt discovered was also deceptively simple. Instead of the standard taper of a bat that widens toward the tip, he ideated one with more of the material nearer to the hands. Leanhardt said the idea came from his time as a hitting coach, and ultimately from the players themselves.</p><div id="attachment_49765" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Leanhardt-ChuppDemosTorpedoBat.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-49765" class="size-medium wp-image-49765" src="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Leanhardt-ChuppDemosTorpedoBat-300x204.jpg" alt="Physics professor demos the Torpedo bat." width="300" height="204" srcset="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Leanhardt-ChuppDemosTorpedoBat-300x204.jpg 300w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Leanhardt-ChuppDemosTorpedoBat-1024x698.jpg 1024w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Leanhardt-ChuppDemosTorpedoBat-768x523.jpg 768w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/mc-image-cache/2025/10/Leanhardt-ChuppDemosTorpedoBat.jpg 1080w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-49765" class="wp-caption-text">Saturday Morning Physics presenter Timothy Chupp, professor of physics and biomedical engineering, swings a Torpedo bat. (Image via Saturday Morning Physics.)</p></div><p>In theory, the torpedo shape could increase the size of the bat’s sweet spot – somewhere between four and nine inches from the tip – as well as possibly the hitter’s swinging speed. But as with other physics challenges, once the idea was discovered, the theoretical had to match up with the reality.</p><p>Leanhardt connected with bat makers, plowing through lathe upon lathe, and joining with regulators to ensure the innovations would be legal for gameplay. And while he wasn’t the first to iterate a torpedo design in bats, he certainly created a significant buzz in early 2025.</p><p>As the 2025 season comes to a close, the refinement process continues. It remains to be seen which batters will benefit the most from Leanhardt’s adjustment.</p><p>“I think over the course of the offseason a lot of players are going to get fitted in a way they can get a bat tailored to their swings, similar to what happens in golf,” he said. “And a lot of guys are probably going into next season with something that’s better designed from a physics standpoint [regarding] the sweet spot, and also from a personal standpoint where the bat has been tailored to their swing a little bit better. And we’ll probably have a little more information to answer the question this time next year.”</p><p><em>(Lead image: At the top of the 2025 season, reporters interview Aaron Leanhardt about his Torpedo bat. Image: Fish on First via YouTube. Saturday Morning Physics is presented by the Department of Physics.)</em></p>]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>https://michigantoday.umich.edu/2025/10/24/the-year-a-flied-physics-arrived-in-the-mlb/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>3</slash:comments> </item> <item> <title>From public investment to public impact</title> <link>https://michigantoday.umich.edu/2025/10/24/from-public-investment-to-public-impact/</link> <comments>https://michigantoday.umich.edu/2025/10/24/from-public-investment-to-public-impact/#respond</comments> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Domenico Grasso]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Fri, 24 Oct 2025 22:08:14 +0000</pubDate> <category><![CDATA[Columns]]></category> <category><![CDATA[President's Message]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Detroit Observatory]]></category> <category><![CDATA[HistoSonics]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Histotripsy]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Look to Michigan]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://michigantoday.umichsites.org/?p=49724</guid> <description><![CDATA[A robust economy that draws upon U-M talent translates to well-paying jobs, good neighborhoods, and strong schools.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<h2>Oct. 24, 2025</h2><p>Dear Alumni, Students, and Colleagues:</p><p>At the University of Michigan, we have a rich legacy of supporting the economy.</p><div id="attachment_48228" style="width: 414px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/05/detroit-observatory.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-48228" class=" wp-image-48228" src="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/05/detroit-observatory-300x150.jpg" alt="Detroit Observatory, black and white." width="404" height="202" srcset="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/05/detroit-observatory-300x150.jpg 300w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/05/detroit-observatory-768x384.jpg 768w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/mc-image-cache/2025/05/detroit-observatory.jpg 1000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 404px) 100vw, 404px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-48228" class="wp-caption-text">The Detroit Observatory. (Image courtesy of U-M’s Bentley Historical Library.)</p></div><p>More than 170 years ago, business leaders in Detroit needed help. Specifically, they needed more accurate timekeeping for railroads, which were the lifeblood of many industries.</p><p>At the same time, the University’s president asked business leaders to support the mission of research and science.</p><p>The result was that the business community stepped forward to fund a new observatory on the Ann Arbor campus. Astronomical science enabled accurate timekeeping, which improved shipping arrivals and departures. And the University of Michigan had a cutting-edge laboratory to create new knowledge.</p><p>The building with its magnificent telescopes still stands today. It is called the Detroit Observatory, in honor of its benefactors, and is the oldest research facility on our campus. It embodies collaboration for the improvement of society.</p><h2>Ripple effect</h2><p>When our scientists and researchers receive federal funding, those dollars have a tremendous ripple effect on the economy. This past year, our University spent over $332 million on goods and services to support federally funded projects. That meant hiring services, purchasing materials and equipment, and renting space in cities and towns throughout our state — and it happens every year.</p><aside class="callout left">This past year, our University spent over $332 million on goods and services to support federally funded projects. That meant hiring services, purchasing materials and equipment, and renting space in cities and towns throughout our state.</aside>This type of impact is amplified when considering that our state has four R1 research universities, whose collective economic impact from federal R&D funding exceeds $8.3 billion.</p><p>I strongly encourage business, community, and alumni leaders to join us in advocating for the contributions and impact of research universities, as well as the partnerships we build with businesses, industry, and nonprofits.</p><p>We all benefit from a robust higher education ecosystem.</p><h2>Return on investment</h2><p>Higher education in this country is currently under attack. I believe it is an assault grounded in misinformation and misunderstanding. Our universities transform a public investment into a public good. This includes supporting communities and economies through our discoveries and the talents of our graduates. Every year, employers can tap into thousands of the world’s top students who graduate from our three campuses.</p><p>Here’s something else to remember about partnering with higher education: Universities don’t move. We don’t pull up stakes and relocate to other countries. At the University of Michigan, we are firmly committed to our three home communities, the state of Michigan, and the nation. We are dedicated to the common good.</p><div id="attachment_39503" style="width: 414px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2023/02/How-sound-waves-trigger-immune-response-in-mice-1996318497_064e29a492_k-1536x1024-1.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-39503" class=" wp-image-39503" src="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2023/02/How-sound-waves-trigger-immune-response-in-mice-1996318497_064e29a492_k-1536x1024-1-300x200.jpg" alt="The 700kHz, 260-element histotripsy ultrasound array transducer used in Prof. Xu’s lab. Image credit: Marcin Szczepanski/Lead Multimedia Storyteller, Michigan Engineering" width="404" height="269" srcset="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2023/02/How-sound-waves-trigger-immune-response-in-mice-1996318497_064e29a492_k-1536x1024-1-300x200.jpg 300w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2023/02/How-sound-waves-trigger-immune-response-in-mice-1996318497_064e29a492_k-1536x1024-1-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2023/02/How-sound-waves-trigger-immune-response-in-mice-1996318497_064e29a492_k-1536x1024-1-768x512.jpg 768w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/mc-image-cache/2023/02/How-sound-waves-trigger-immune-response-in-mice-1996318497_064e29a492_k-1536x1024-1.jpg 1536w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 404px) 100vw, 404px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-39503" class="wp-caption-text">The 700kHz, 260-element histotripsy ultrasound array transducer. (Image credit: Marcin Szczepanski, Michigan Engineering.)</p></div><p>I’d like to share one of the most inspiring stories of recent economic impact and success.</p><p>Twenty years ago, several researchers at U-M developed a radical method for noninvasive surgery. They used focused ultrasound waves to target and destroy tissue like cancerous tumors.</p><p>The researchers called this new method histotripsy. A U-M startup company, HistoSonics, is commercializing histotripsy and this completely non-invasive form of surgery.</p><p>Two years ago, they obtained FDA approval to use histotripsy to eradicate liver tumors. Today, they have clinical trials underway to expand the use of this technology to tumors of the pancreas and kidney.</p><p>Last year the company celebrated the opening of its advanced R&D facility in Ann Arbor where they anticipate adding 40 high-growth jobs.</p><p>Then, just last month, a group of public and private investors acquired HistoSonics for an astounding $2.25 billion. An idea launched in a University of Michigan laboratory sold for more than $2 billion.</p><h2>Investment to impact</h2><aside class="callout right">We are here to serve society. Over 200 years ago, we were founded in the public interest, and this mission has been our core ever since.</aside><p>Patients are receiving highly effective treatment that is relatively painless and requires less time in the hospital.</p><p>Ann Arbor has an R&D company that continues to thrive, as HistoSonics now plans to apply its technology to kidney, pancreas, and prostate cancers with more disease areas in the future.</p><p>And the University of Michigan has yet another proof point of how it energizes the local and state economy.</p><p>A robust economy — one that draws upon university resources and talent — translates to well-paying jobs, good neighborhoods, and strong schools. That is genuine impact.</p><p>We are here to serve society. Over 200 years ago, we were founded in the public interest, and this mission has been our core ever since.</p><p>Look to Michigan for discovery and collaboration.</p><p>Look to Michigan for talent and technology.</p><p>And look to Michigan, and all of higher education, as a valued partner in building and sustaining vibrant economies.</p><p>Thank you, and Forever Go Blue.</p><p>Domenico Grasso, PhD<br />President<br /> <br /> <br /><em>(These remarks have been edited and are culled from a <a href="https://president.umich.edu/news-communications/speeches/keynote-address-international-economic-development-council/">September 2025 keynote presentation at the International Economic Development Council in Detroit.</a> The lead image shows the site of the future U-M Center for Innovation, set on two acres of this parking lot, a donation of land from Olympia Development. Image credit: Eric Bronson, Michigan Photography.)</em></p>]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>https://michigantoday.umich.edu/2025/10/24/from-public-investment-to-public-impact/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> <item> <title>Beyond being there</title> <link>https://michigantoday.umich.edu/2025/10/24/beyond-being-there/</link> <comments>https://michigantoday.umich.edu/2025/10/24/beyond-being-there/#comments</comments> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Ricky Rood]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Fri, 24 Oct 2025 21:16:41 +0000</pubDate> <category><![CDATA[Climate Blue]]></category> <category><![CDATA[climate]]></category> <category><![CDATA[due process]]></category> <category><![CDATA[free press]]></category> <category><![CDATA[propaganda]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://michigantoday.umichsites.org/?p=49706</guid> <description><![CDATA[To protect the scientific enterprise, we have to rise above the outrage and get organized.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<h2>Not present, not accounted for</h2><p>In my recent columns, I have analyzed the federal government’s alarming demolition of the U.S. scientific research enterprise. Public health, social justice, climate science, and environmental science have been notable targets of the Trump administration; however, virtually all federal, civilian research has been impacted since January 2025.</p><p>These actions are diminishing scientific capacity and deconstructing the infrastructure created after World War II and during the Cold War. During that time, we got serious about water and air pollution and formed the Environmental Protection Agency during the Nixon Administration.</p><p>Since early 2025, scientists, professors, research labs, and universities have been cast by the administration as an enemy, and what we are experiencing now is the government’s attempt to disarm and disperse that enemy. To diminish their agency and power.</p><p>My analyses have focused on fundamental motivations and consequences, and I have tried to encourage thinking about next steps. However, the federal layoffs, the withholding and elimination of research funding, the closing of institutions, the evictions of organizations, and the decisions of political appointees are so far outside the norm that it’s difficult to know what to do.</p><h2>Lessons learned</h2><aside class="callout right">Since early 2025, scientists, professors, research labs, and universities have been cast by the administration as an enemy, and what we are experiencing now is the government’s attempt to disarm and disperse that enemy. To diminish their agency and power.</aside> In this column, I am going to reflect on my experiences leading and managing scientific organizations.</p><p>Though the government’s current efforts are extraordinary in terms of intent and effectiveness, we need to remember that science has been through tough times in the past. The science “recession” of the late 1960s, early 1970s, and the 2016 Trump administration are key examples.</p><p>My personal experience, however, dates to the 1990s when the Mission to Planet Earth, a centerpiece of NASA’s research, was reduced from a $30-billion program to a $7-billion program.</p><p>This descoping of NASA Earth Science was accompanied by congressional attacks on climate and environmental science. Even so, effective science advocates still existed in the U.S. Congress of the 1990s. Those advocates assured that scientists had a voice. There were people in power who listened to and trusted scientists.</p><h2>What can we control?</h2><div id="attachment_49711" style="width: 411px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Climate-Blue-angry-dude-keyboard-Stock-676714472.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-49711" class=" wp-image-49711" src="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Climate-Blue-angry-dude-keyboard-Stock-676714472-300x200.jpg" alt="Angry caucasian guy wearing a tie rages at his keyboard." width="401" height="267" srcset="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Climate-Blue-angry-dude-keyboard-Stock-676714472-300x200.jpg 300w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Climate-Blue-angry-dude-keyboard-Stock-676714472-768x512.jpg 768w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/mc-image-cache/2025/10/Climate-Blue-angry-dude-keyboard-Stock-676714472.jpg 1000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 401px) 100vw, 401px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-49711" class="wp-caption-text">If all one can do is react and proclaim, there is little foundation for a productive path forward, says Ricky Rood. (iStock.)</p></div><p>When faced with difficult situations, one of the first things to do is identify what you can and cannot control. For example, you may be fearful and outraged by certain events, but you still have control over how you respond.</p><p>In managing people through crisis or complexity, I knew some people in my organization would respond with anxiety, others with sarcasm, and still others with indifference.</p><p>Some were immediately ready to solve the problem. They might have thought, “This is bad. This is challenging. But we need to figure out how to go on.” We ask: What does our experience tell us about what we should do? If we don’t have that experience, where can we find those who do?</p><p>I used to advise people in my organization to limit their exposure to their anxious and sarcastic colleagues, whose response did not reflect a useful reality. I would tell them to be careful about what they said and did; that there is no requirement to state every thought in your head. Such discretion limits self-inflected anxiety that can make the situation worse.</p><p>I’d remind them it’s important to evaluate a situation from different perspectives: How do I manage this crisis as an individual and as an organization or institution?</p><div id="attachment_49717" style="width: 409px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Climate-Blue-scientist-testitifies-iStock-1867506056.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-49717" class=" wp-image-49717" src="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Climate-Blue-scientist-testitifies-iStock-1867506056-300x200.jpg" alt="Scientist speaks into a microphone as he testifies before Congress." width="399" height="266" srcset="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Climate-Blue-scientist-testitifies-iStock-1867506056-300x200.jpg 300w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Climate-Blue-scientist-testitifies-iStock-1867506056-768x512.jpg 768w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/mc-image-cache/2025/10/Climate-Blue-scientist-testitifies-iStock-1867506056.jpg 1000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 399px) 100vw, 399px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-49717" class="wp-caption-text">A first line of action is adjudication and litigation: appeals to ethics, norms, and reason, says Ricky Rood. (Image: iStock.)</p></div><p>As efforts persisted to discredit both individuals and institutions, I would counsel people not to interpret every decision as a personal attack, to put some distance between events and oneself.</p><p>These questions of reflection and efforts at self-control are characteristics of leadership.</p><p>Active and passive resistance to management is normal in any organization. Anxiety and fear were always present in mine, but I could manage my staff up and down the hallway.</p><p>Now that hallway includes social media, and it is daunting to manage the impact of online discourse.</p><p>If all one can do is react and proclaim, there is little foundation for a productive path forward.</p><h2>Presence</h2><p>Once you can manage the reactive state, it becomes possible to strategize, prepare, and achieve longer-term outcomes. You can adapt and adjust by asking: What are the potential resources? How do I collect things together? Who are my allies? What power do my allies and I have? Before long, you are building a foundation to respond to the crises.</p><p>To build a foundation for response, you need to be present in the public and political process.</p><p>You may dislike what is happening, but it’s crucial to present the alternative you prefer.</p><p>If we only say that we want what we no longer have, we remain trapped in the reactive state, limited to expressions of outrage.</p><p>You must be able to articulate specific, achievable goals. Presence without goals has limited potential.</p><h2>Exercise Due Process</h2><p>Due process at times seems futile, but it is a mistake to give up and walk away.</p><p>A first line of action is adjudication and litigation: appeals to ethics, norms, and reason. In many cases, you will lose, but presence, persistence, and continuity are essential.</p><p>If you walk away from due process, you walk away from rules and law and the checks and balances that are integral to the American system. If you walk away, you are saying that laws are not worth preserving.</p><p>Due process includes writing to your elected officials, saying what you want, and reminding them that you vote.</p><h2>Support an independent, objective press</h2><aside class="callout right">As the mainstream press has consolidated under fewer owners and smaller newsrooms, journalists have organized at local, state, and national levels. Many are focused on integrity in journalism and objective news. But funding is perilous.</aside>The free press has been a pillar of American democracy from its inception. A strong, independent press fosters accountability. It is essential to being present and bearing witness.</p><p>The press is a source of influence and power.</p><p>Large news organizations are increasingly owned by a handful of individuals and corporations that align with political agendas or social goals. An emphasis on profits and ratings distorts priorities and erodes journalistic integrity.</p><p>As the mainstream press has consolidated under fewer owners and smaller newsrooms, journalists have organized at local, state, and national levels. Many are focused on integrity in journalism and objective news. But funding is perilous.</p><p>Such self-organizing leaves us with a fragmented landscape, with news outlets finding hundreds or thousands of customers, not millions.</p><p>And with the rise of social media, many would-be citizen journalists identify as independent alternatives to legacy media. Though “free,” they often eschew the ethical and professional protocols that define a fair press. Influencers and supposed experts abound, and many are sympathetic to political goals. But these are advocates, not journalists. Many are wildly popular and quite effective with their messaging.</p><h2>A crisis of truth</h2><p>Misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda have always been part of the political process. They are methods people use to steer resources toward personal and collective goals.</p><p>Social media platforms are open to all points of view. Unfortunately it is easier to gain a following by poking at human foibles and the uncertainties of knowledge than it is to methodically present a legitimate, evidence-based point of view.</p><aside class="callout left">We are faced with George Orwell’s chilling proclamation: “Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth.”</aside>When the Department of Energy published <a href="https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2025-07/DOE_Critical_Review_of_Impacts_of_GHG_Emissions_on_the_US_Climate_July_2025.pdf">A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S.</a>, it presented a platter of propaganda.</p><p>Misinformation, manipulative media – even pranks – stand next to established knowledge, actual events, proven facts, and science-based knowledge as legitimate points worthy of discussion. Opposing points of view regarding the same sets of knowledge, events, and facts are distorted into tribal truths and lies. One’s self-identified truth becomes a set of beliefs, independent of evidence, facts, or reality.</p><p>We erroneously maintain that fairness requires equal representation of the correct and the incorrect.</p><p>Speaking lies is equated with freedom of speech.</p><p>We are faced with George Orwell’s chilling proclamation: “Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth.”</p><h2>Where we are now</h2><div id="attachment_49712" style="width: 407px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Climate-Blue-Scientist-megaphone-iStock-2237340737.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-49712" class=" wp-image-49712" src="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Climate-Blue-Scientist-megaphone-iStock-2237340737-300x158.jpg" alt="Scientist in lab speaks into megaphone. iStock." width="397" height="209" srcset="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Climate-Blue-Scientist-megaphone-iStock-2237340737-300x158.jpg 300w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Climate-Blue-Scientist-megaphone-iStock-2237340737-768x405.jpg 768w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/mc-image-cache/2025/10/Climate-Blue-Scientist-megaphone-iStock-2237340737.jpg 1000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 397px) 100vw, 397px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-49712" class="wp-caption-text">Voices in science need to be heard. Experts need to be present and to speak, says Ricky Rood. (Image: iStock.)</p></div><p>With the deconstruction of institutions in today’s political environment, an individual’s response tends to focus on their own well-being. And that’s a rational response.</p><p>But we are at a moment in history that requires us to envision how the overall scientific enterprise will look in four, eight, 12 years. We must think of something new.</p><p>This requires organization on a large scale.</p><p>Decisions by government leaders are eliminating or corrupting the resources that support research to discover, advance, and innovate. To cure, help, and solve.</p><p>The dispersal and defunding of this skill base will, at least in the short term, diminish rather than enhance our nation’s presence and competitiveness.</p><p>Voices in science need to be heard. We need to be present and to speak.</p><p>It is important to support organizations that present science to our elected representatives and that represent the case for science in the courts.</p><h2>People have the power</h2><p>We need to vote.</p><p>We need to build and support credible and legitimate journalism.</p><aside class="callout right">In our federal laboratories these past six months, we have seen the deterioration of what many consider the most secure scientific capacity in the world. How do we insure the preservation and growth of future knowledge? What is government’s role?</aside>We need to press our institutional allies to support organization, nurture leadership skills, and develop the next generation of leaders.</p><p>As we organize, act, and build new capacity, we must consider the long term. How do we support data gathering, analysis, and interpretation? How do we organize and provide knowledge in ways that are trusted and durable?</p><p>In our federal laboratories these past six months, we have seen the deterioration of what many consider the most secure scientific capacity in the world. How do we insure the preservation and growth of future knowledge? What is government’s role?</p><p>As a start, we must get past reaction and dismay. We need to rise above the emotional convulsions that take us from one outrage to the next. We need to understand, and put into practice, the elements of leadership that lift us above the chaos. We must find our power.</p>]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>https://michigantoday.umich.edu/2025/10/24/beyond-being-there/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>4</slash:comments> </item> <item> <title>Black Friday, 1908</title> <link>https://michigantoday.umich.edu/2025/10/24/black-friday-1908/</link> <comments>https://michigantoday.umich.edu/2025/10/24/black-friday-1908/#comments</comments> <dc:creator><![CDATA[James Tobin]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Fri, 24 Oct 2025 19:55:25 +0000</pubDate> <category><![CDATA[Campus Life]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Heritage/Tradition]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Harry Burns Hutchins]]></category> <category><![CDATA[James Burrill Angell]]></category> <category><![CDATA[prohibition]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Rush]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://michigantoday.umichsites.org/?p=49692</guid> <description><![CDATA[Ritual warfare between freshman and sophomore men had erupted every autumn at Michigan since at least the Civil War. But Black Friday 1908 turned especially nasty. The administration declared the annual rush 'an abomination, a disgrace to an American university.']]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<h2>Rush or riot?</h2><p>Ritual warfare between freshman and sophomore men had erupted every autumn at Michigan since at least the Civil War. But Black Friday, Oct. 9, 1908 — the appointed day for that year’s battle — looked like it was going to be especially nasty.</p><p>The annual event universally known simply as “the rush” was barely tolerated by faculty and administrators. They had tried to channel freshman-sophomore mayhem into a single event — a pole rush, where each side tried to get one of their number up a pole to capture a flag — with hostilities in the weeks beforehand strictly forbidden.</p><p>But in 1908, skirmishes flared early in flat defiance of the rules.</p><p>As usual, both sides paid for the printing of gruesome posters — called “procs,” short for proclamations — to advertise the affair and offend the other side. On Saturday afternoon before Black Friday, sophomores got a tip that stacks of frosh posters were due to arrive late that night from a print shop in Ypsilanti. So lookouts were posted at the “Ypsi-Ann” streetcar station and the Michigan Central depot. They spotted the arriving packages and passed the word: Freshman “procs” would likely be posted overnight.</p><h2>Ambushed</h2><div id="attachment_49694" style="width: 236px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Black-Friday-02-1908-rush-poster-cropped.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-49694" class=" wp-image-49694" src="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Black-Friday-02-1908-rush-poster-cropped-127x300.jpg" alt="Vintage poster from U-M freshmen, circa 1911, depicts sophomores' heads on spikes." width="226" height="534" srcset="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Black-Friday-02-1908-rush-poster-cropped-127x300.jpg 127w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/mc-image-cache/2025/10/Black-Friday-02-1908-rush-poster-cropped.jpg 212w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 226px) 100vw, 226px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-49694" class="wp-caption-text">The frosh “proc” for 1908 showed sophomores’ heads on pikes. (Image courtesy of U-M’s Bentley Historical Library.)</p></div><p>Meanwhile, some 500 freshmen had gathered that evening on Medic Green, the open field at the northeast corner of the Diag. They marched around the campus 12 abreast, shouting and singing, then paraded downtown in a long single file — and laid plans to plaster the town with copies of their “proc.”</p><p>The poster was especially provocative that year, with an image of sophomore heads on pikes and a snarly warning to “all ye abject, sordid, grovelling pests…ye egregious asses…,” the “second-year, secondary, second-class, second-rate opposition.”</p><p>Sophomores had made a plan of their own. They split up into squads and deployed in the streets at 1 a.m. Frosh bearing posters were caught by surprise, roped together, shoved around, face-painted, and corralled to be photographed en masse. Others were dragged out of fraternities and rooming houses.</p><h2>Rotten-egg shampoos</h2><p>President James Burrill Angell had issued warnings against any pre-rush outbreaks that might turn violent. So did the upperclassmen of the Student Council and the editors of <em>The Michigan Daily</em>, who smelled something ugly in the wind. The officially sanctioned events of Black Friday itself were one thing, the editors said. But a spontaneous rush could become a riot, “and a disgraceful one at that.”</p><p>And so things went on Wednesday and Thursday. “Premature hostilities” did turn a little ugly. Sophomores grabbed freshmen and administered sour-milk-and-rotten-egg shampoos. Passing women were propositioned. A freshman was dragged from his bed in his pale blue pajamas and thrust into the popular Granger’s Dance Academy on Maynard Street. “I think it’s a shame to have them act like this after we do our best to please them,” Mrs. Granger said. “There are some awful cads.”</p><p>Meanwhile, the Student Council set new rules for Black Friday’s main event. A flag would be nailed to the top of a 30-foot pole — 10 feet taller than in past years, and covered with grease this time — then raised on Medic Green. The freshmen would defend the pole for 30 minutes. If a sophomore could grab the flag in that time, the sophs would win. If not, the victory would go to the frosh.</p><h2>No ladders or ‘sharp instruments’</h2><div id="attachment_49740" style="width: 414px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Black-Friday-boys-1908.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-49740" class=" wp-image-49740" src="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Black-Friday-boys-1908-300x170.jpg" alt="Black and image, circa 1908, advertise the graduation year 1911." width="404" height="229" srcset="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Black-Friday-boys-1908-300x170.jpg 300w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Black-Friday-boys-1908-768x435.jpg 768w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/mc-image-cache/2025/10/Black-Friday-boys-1908.jpg 1000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 404px) 100vw, 404px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-49740" class="wp-caption-text">Leading up to Black Friday, 1908, sophomores advertised their graduation year of 1911. (Image courtesy of U-M’s Bentley Historical Library).</p></div><p>No ladders would be permitted, nor “sharp instruments of any kind.” With just one referee looking on, hand-to-hand combat between 2,000 young men would decide the result. Upperclassmen would attempt to hold back freelance brawlers among the spectators.</p><p>No wonder onlookers worried.</p><p><em>The Daily</em> remarked on Michigan’s fine reputation for “the clean, true, sportsmanlike attitude of her athletes” — yet the rush in recent years had seen students treat each other in ways “that can only be characterized as foul.”</p><p>Harry Burns Hutchins, dean of the Law School and soon to succeed Angell as president, declared the rush “an abomination, a disgrace to an American university!</p><p>“I am sick of this whole rushing business. The peace is broken and property is destroyed. After an affair of this kind, how can we go to Lansing and ask the legislature to make us appropriations? The first thing they do is to throw the rush up into our faces. They say this rush business is unworthy of a state institution, and they are right.”</p><h2>The pole rush</h2><p>Black Friday arrived. Five thousand spectators milled on Medic Green. At 7:35 p.m., the referee, A.G. Schulz, fired his pistol to start the pole rush.</p><aside class="callout right">“I am sick of this whole rushing business. The peace is broken and property is destroyed. After an affair of this kind, how can we go to Lansing and ask the legislature to make us appropriations?” — Harry Burns Hutchins</aside>One phalanx of sophomores smacked into the freshmen defenders from the north. A second came bruising in from the south. They heaved one man above the frosh defenders’ heads, then another and another. The referee stepped in more than once to let an injured man leave the fray. Then the battle resumed.</p><p>But at 30 feet, the new pole was just too tall. No sophomore could get more than halfway up. The sophs produced a ladder and sent a man up for the flag. But the ladder violated the rules, so Schulz declared the freshmen winners by a technicality.</p><p>By that point, clots of sophomores had begun to turn on individual freshmen, muscling them over to nearby elms and chasing them into the branches with flailing belts and switches.</p><div id="attachment_49696" style="width: 410px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Black-Friday-03-Captured-freshman-bill-posters-branded-1911-1.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-49696" class=" wp-image-49696" src="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Black-Friday-03-Captured-freshman-bill-posters-branded-1911-1-300x174.jpg" alt="Black and white image, dated 1911, of a group of University of Michigan sophomores surrounding face-painted freshman captured while putting up posters in the 1908 "rush" hostilities." width="400" height="232" srcset="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Black-Friday-03-Captured-freshman-bill-posters-branded-1911-1-300x174.jpg 300w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Black-Friday-03-Captured-freshman-bill-posters-branded-1911-1-768x445.jpg 768w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/mc-image-cache/2025/10/Black-Friday-03-Captured-freshman-bill-posters-branded-1911-1.jpg 1000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-49696" class="wp-caption-text">Sophomores surround face-painted freshman captured while putting up posters in the 1908 rush hostilities. (Image courtesy of U-M’s Bentley Historical Library.)</p></div><p>Then, according to witnesses, 30 or 40 sophomores seized two freshmen, stripped them of all their clothes except shoes and socks, and chased them through the crowd — in full view of women and children. Upperclassmen stepped in, got the naked first-year men into clothes and bundled them away. But more freshmen were chased and half-stripped. Several were taken to University Hospital.</p><p>Or so it was reported at length in the next day’s editions of <em>The Detroit News</em> — precisely the sort of awful attention that Dean Hutchins had warned about.</p><p>Some cried foul, saying the out-of-town journalists had exaggerated. But <em>The Daily</em> backed up the <em>News’</em> reporting, even expanded on it, and said that faculty, upperclassmen, and townspeople had all been “disgusted by the hideous performances of the past week.”</p><h2>A case for prohibition?</h2><div id="attachment_49697" style="width: 408px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Black-Friday-04-Pushball-rush1.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-49697" class=" wp-image-49697" src="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Black-Friday-04-Pushball-rush1-300x200.jpg" alt="Black & white image dated 1911 shows rowdy University of Michigan men attempting to push a giant ball across a line while the opposing team defends their territory." width="398" height="266" srcset="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Black-Friday-04-Pushball-rush1-300x200.jpg 300w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Black-Friday-04-Pushball-rush1-768x512.jpg 768w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/mc-image-cache/2025/10/Black-Friday-04-Pushball-rush1.jpg 1000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 398px) 100vw, 398px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-49697" class="wp-caption-text">On other Black Fridays, the aim was to push a giant ball across a line. (Image courtesy of U-M’s Bentley Historical Library.)</p></div><p>In the following days, outrage ensued. Some said even this year’s rush was no more than “dangerous fun.” But others were quick to cite the incident as <em>prima facie</em> evidence for the rising cause of Prohibition.</p><p>A professor in the Medical Department went public with a fact that had been obvious to onlookers — many Black Friday brawlers had been drunk. “Alcohol is the cause of most of the disgraceful acts committed by collegians,” Dr. James F. Breakey remarked. “Not only is this true of Michigan but of every university in the country.”</p><p>Victor Vaughan, dean of medicine, agreed. He had never been a prohibitionist, he said. But Black Friday — an “obscenity” — had changed his mind. If given the chance, he would vote to make Washtenaw County “dry.”</p><p>President Angell had been trying to curb the rush since his arrival on campus nearly 40 years earlier. Now he said: “If anyone can inform us how to do away with it, we will listen to their advice very gratefully.”</p><p>Nobody could. The rush went on, year after year, until the 1930s, when the Great Depression shocked a new generation of students out of the long tradition of “dangerous fun.”<br /> <br /> <br /><em>Sources included the Michigan Daily and the Detroit News. Lead image, courtesy of U-M’s Bentley Historical Library, features freshmen and sophomores in a pole rush on Black Friday 1915.</em></p>]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>https://michigantoday.umich.edu/2025/10/24/black-friday-1908/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>3</slash:comments> </item> <item> <title>Episode 61: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald, featuring John U. Bacon, BA ’86/MA ’94</title> <link>https://michigantoday.umich.edu/2025/10/23/episode-61-the-untold-story-of-the-edmund-fitzgerald-featuring-john-u-bacon-ba-86-ma-94/</link> <comments>https://michigantoday.umich.edu/2025/10/23/episode-61-the-untold-story-of-the-edmund-fitzgerald-featuring-john-u-bacon-ba-86-ma-94/#comments</comments> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Deborah Holdship]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 18:17:55 +0000</pubDate> <category><![CDATA[Podcast: "Listen in, Michigan"]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Alumni]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Authors]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Edmund Fitzgerald]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Great Lakes]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sault Ste. Marie]]></category> <category><![CDATA[shipping]]></category> <category><![CDATA[shipwrecks]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Whitefish Bay]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://michigantoday.umichsites.org/?p=49602</guid> <description><![CDATA[When author John U. Bacon, BA ’86/MA ’94, decided to write a book about the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, he thought he knew the story. He soon learned otherwise. Enjoy this excerpt of his new book: 'The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald' and hear from the author as he shares some of the most profound revelations he discovered on the tumultuous journey.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[ <div class="wp-block-michigan-framework-accordion mfw-accordion " id="mfw-accordion-1"> <input id="mfw-accordion-action-1" type="checkbox" > <label for="mfw-accordion-action-1" role="heading" aria-level="6"> <span class="mfw-accordion-title" id="mfw-accordion-action-button-1" role="button" aria-controls="mfw-accordion-content-1" aria-expanded="true">Podcast transcript</span> </label> <div class="mfw-accordion-content-wrap transition" id="mfw-accordion-content-1" role="region" aria-labelledby="mfw-accordion-action-button-1" style=""> <div class="mfw-accordion-content"><strong>Episode 61: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald, featuring John U. Bacon, BA ’86/MA ’94</strong></p><p>Hi, I’m Deborah Holdship, Editor of Michigan Today.</p><p>It’s been a while since we’ve talked! I retired the Listen in Michigan podcast after 60 episodes, but I’m resurrecting it for this special episode with author John U. Bacon, two-time Michigan graduate, and best-selling author. His new book: The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald, is on shelves now, in advance of the 50th anniversary of the tragedy on Lake Superior that virtually every child of the Great Lakes has heard at some point.</p><p>Especially those of us of a certain age who may have been fans of CKLW. Mostly because the disaster, which claimed the lives of 29 men on Nov,. 10, 1975, inspired one of the eeriest popular songs in modern history. If you’ve never heard it – or if it’s been decades, since you have — I dare you to search YouTube and listen to Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” as soon as you are done listening to this episode.</p><p>As kids we were always quick to change the station. The folky dirge is like a ghost story or a horror film. You know the ending. You don’t want to know the ending.. But you DO know it and it never changes, and it’s scary and sad and SO evocative. When Lightfoot, evoking the ship’s old cook sings, “fellas it’s been good to know ya” I LOSE my mind. Just reading the lyrics will bring tears to your eyes.</p><p>I listened to it once – and only once — after speaking with John and reading the book. I had chills the entire time. And one reason is that in John’s book he introduces you to those 29 men and you get very attached. He interviewed family members and loved ones and uncovered the most poignant personal gems that humanize this tragedy in a way the melds beautifully with Lightfoot’s musical eulogy.</p><p>And there was a method to his madness, John told me. Since we already know the ending of the tale he needs the reader to suspend disbelief, get on board this doomed ship, and invest in these sailors. And pretty soon you’re locked in, and you almost forget the destiny that awaits. Until it happens. Powerful stuff.</p><p>OK, I’ll stop talking. Here’s John, ever enthusiastic, reflecting on some of the wild stuff he learned about one of his main characters: the Great Lakes.</p><p>John Bacon: I had no idea and would never have guessed that the experienced sailors who’ve done both the Atlantic and the Great Lakes say the Great Lakes are more dangerous. That it’s not even close. And that was just stunning to me. And also the mere fact that between 1875 and 1975, 6,000-10,000 Great Lakes shipwrecks occurred taking down 30,000 men. These are all low estimates. That’s a shipwreck a week for a century. That’s a casualty a day for a century. So yes these Great Lakes are no joke.</p><p>Deborah Holdship: Who chooses this as their career like and these people are obviously such interesting characters unto themselves, you know?</p><p>JB: And you’re right about that. Who gets on is a guy like Captains McSorley and these other guys born in the 1910s and 1920s. You’ve survived the Great Depression and these are blue-collar families. All of them. Until you get to the deckhands. Young deckhands in the 70s, they grew up grateful for any work they could get, and of course they most of them served in World War II, often with great distinction.</p><p>These are guys who are trying to get off the farm or avoid the mines or the factories. And compared to those jobs, being in a freighter after World War II is a very good job, especially with the unions kicking in the 1940s and 50s. The lowest ranking guy on the ship Edmund Fitzgerald, that guy’s making $180,000 in today’s dollars and you’re 20 years old. And you also eat like a king. I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m not saying it’s always fun. It’s dangerous, but compared to the options, it’s pretty good.</p><p>And the really hard part, I think. these guys you are gone… I wondered how come I don’t know any sailors, any commercial sailors? Here’s why. Because there’s only 30 per ship and even at the heyday only 300 ships in 1975. That’s 9000 people spread out over eight Great Lakes states: a lot in Duluth, a lot in Toledo, a lot in Cleveland, some in Michigan, of course. But that’s not great ratios. And even if the guy’s living next to you, you wouldn’t meet him because he’s on a ship nine months out of the year. No vacations, no breaks, no weddings, no birthdays. And one of the guys, John Hayes, a proud graduate of the Great Lakes Maritime Academy, he said, “I’ve got three kids. I’m very close to all three. I didn’t teach any of them how to ride a bike.” And that’s got to break your heart.</p><p>DH: The thing about these stories is you just wanted to end a different way. It’s compelling and it’s such an adventure story and it’s these guys are so great.</p><p>JB: And then you have to care about, you have to know these guys and care about them before that last trip. It can’t just be the end and we tell the story right? In what we call the Tick Tock section, no relation to the website, we have 11 chapters on the last run. All the other sections are four or five chapters. Once you get into the last run, you shouldn’t want to stop. And the details of it, hopefully you keep moving.</p><p>The model here is James Cameron’s Titanic, the great movie. I know the ship goes down. I’m pretty sure of that. But you suspend disbelief to think that maybe this time it turns out differently because you care about the people.</p><p>DH: Well, and it’s so interesting to hear from the grandchildren or the children of these guys. And their memories of them, there were 29 of them.</p><p>JB: These guys are just genuinely good guys and they aren’t on all ships. They’re an unusually happy ship due to an unusually in enlightened Captain.</p><p>DH: So talk to me a little bit about McSorley.</p><p>JB: He was not a tyrant. Unlike a lot of them at that time, he didn’t yell and scream. Didn’t throw coffee at people, which others did. And there was not the usual division between the engine – it’s like offense and defense on a football team. You got the engine group and the below deck. Of course they handle the engine, all the other mechanics and you got the pilot house group, that’s the captain, first mates and so on. But usually they’re above deck, they’re at the bow in this case. And they almost never get along. These guys got along famously. And that was very good.</p><p>There was a generational gap. You had three quarters basically were World War II vets and one quarter were trying to avoid Vietnam. So that’s two very different groups there. And you can see that the haircuts are the brush cuts versus the long hair and the lamb chops. I mean it’s very stereotypical and on most ships that was a problem and on this ship it wasn’t. And the answer to all those things was McSorley. He was very good to everybody on the ship. They all loved him. He had very high standards, but they all said he was utterly fair. If you did your job, he’s got no problem with you. Also, these guys were so loyal to him that they moved from ship to ship whenever he got promoted. One guy, Craig Alquist, who’s on the ship a few months earlier, he had a great line, which I will not use here, this is family programming, but he said, “I’m pretty sure McSorleyy had very strict ‘no jerks’ policy.” He used another word that I will not use here but you get the idea. Patrick Devine, son of a judge in Toledo, a Marquette student, said, “I’ve been on 10 ships, and seen plenty of weirdos.” And this is the 70s, so more weirdos than usual perhaps during that stretch. And he said, “We didn’t have that in the on the Fitz.” These are just generally good guys you wanted to work with. And he said, “It’s very simple. This is the greatest ship in the Great Lakes. This is the greatest captain on the Great Lakes.” And everyone said the same thing. You fight to stay on that ship. And that was that.</p><p>The ship when it was built, Edmund Fitzgerald was the CEO of Northwestern Mutual Insurance in Milwaukee. Right now, it’s like a $30-billion company, but his grandfather and six brothers were all Great Lakes captains and that’s a large percentage of what was out there. Just a crazy family. And his Dad was the best shipbuilder in Milwaukee. So he wanted to build one specification: “We’re going to build the greatest ship the Great Lakes has ever seen.” And they did it.</p><p>It was the longest and 729 feet. It carried the most cargo. It was one of the fastest. It very quickly broke every record in the Great Lakes and started breaking its own for 13 years nonstop for cargo loads, cargo speed, seasonal hauls, all this stuff. But here’s the catch. It’s 729 feet long. And you, Michiganders, should get this one. That’s one foot shorter than the tallest building in the Renaissance Center. So that’s how long these things are. Yeah, they’re crazy long, but it’s only 75 feet wide. That’s less than the distance from home plate to first base by 15 feet. Like a giraffe’s neck.</p><p>Why does this exist? Two reasons: They’re trying to maximize the cargo that they can get through on each trip and you got to squeeze through the Soo locks. The Soo Locks are the bottleneck of the operation. They are very crucial – a 20-foot drop from Lake Superior to Lake Huron. And this ship was within specifications to one foot on both sides so you can maximize that. And there are no ships like this built anywhere else in the world. You don’t make anything that absurdly long, which means, all right, with the waves we’re talking about in the Great Lakes — which are worse in many ways due to lack of salt on the on the ocean. The salt in the waves squeezes down the top of the waves – the top gets shaved off because the salt water packs it down and then it spreads them out. Also the weight of this water on the Great Lakes the waves are pointing like this. So instead of 10 to 16 seconds apart they’re 4 to 8 seconds apart. You can have the bow of this ship on one 30-foot wave and nothing in the middle and your sterns is on top of another 30-foot wave. You’ve got 26,000 tons of taconite in the middle. 26,000 tons of taconite is equivalent to 4200 adult elephants, right? Put your bow on that end and your stern at that end. What’s gonna happen the middle with 4200 hundred adult elephants? The equivalent of enough taconite to build 7000 cars per shipload?</p><p>Well, it’s gonna crack. It’s gonna bend back and forth. It’s called sagging like this. And then the next wave, it goes over the wave. It hogs, sags, hogs, sags, hogs. Do that 10,000 times in a day. That’s how many waves you get. You bend a paper clip back and forth like that 10,000 times… What’s going to happen eventually? And again, I had no idea.</p><p>So I love it when online before the book came out, you see all these comments: What “new” can we possibly know about this, All of it?</p><p>DH: Just with any one story, when you start digging, you start learning stuff. I mean, you got the guy that had the diamond ring that he didn’t take with him on the ship. You got the guy whose girlfriend is pregnant and now the mother has a descendant that she can, you know, substitute for her lost boy. Just the stories are so beautiful.</p><p>JB: Working on so many fronts, I got lucky to find six crewmen who were still alive. They’re not making more of those. There might be a few others out there, but boy, I bet not more than two or three because this is 50 years ago. I got families, of course, willing to talk to me. Also this: The stories that I discovered through the families were just incredible. And when you pitch a book proposal in New York to the publishers, you;re basically a geologist promising them, “look, there’s oil down there, I promise.” Then you get a contract and they call your bluff and, “Ohh, crap. I gotta go find the oil.”</p><p>But it kept coming, as you can see in the book. It just kept on springing up stories that I never expected. We talked about McSorley. McSorley was going to retire after this run and pay for his wife’s medical care. One more trip for a bonus. He’s gonna retire after this run. And that was because she’s in a healthcare already. We think cancer, but I’m not quite sure. That’s a good guy. He’s not being greedy, he’s not pushing it. He’s a good guy. T</p><p>Then you’ve got Bruce Hudson, 23 year old, went to Ohio State, took a year off to get on the ship. Can’t blame him. It’s $180,000 in today’s dollars. And while he’s doing it, he’s got one weakness and that’s his muscle car parked. He and a buddy, Mark Thomas, also from suburban Cleveland, are going to hop in this car in three days. A Burgundy, 1973 Dodge Challenger 72, I think. Sorry. They’re gonna hop in this thing and go West. Back then getting Coors beer in Colorado is exotic.</p><p>DH: Oh yeah. Remember that.</p><p>JB: And then go to LA and then go back on Route 66. They had it all mapped out. And then he finds out from his girlfriend, Bruce Hudson does, while he’s in a bar in Silver Bay, MN, and his girlfriend in Toledo, Cindy Reynolds is pregnant. So that will change your plans. He says, “don’t worry, we’ll move in together, we’ll waves the child ourselves, we’ll be OK.” She was very relieved about that, as you might imagine. And then she says, ”you know what, go on that trip anyway, because that’s November and the baby’s not due till June. We’ll be OK.” So then he thinks he might be marrying her, so he got the right girl. Of course, this ship goes down and Bruce Hudson’s mother thinks she’s lost her only child. She has. But the she was surprised to learn six months later that she’s going to be a grandmother. She has no idea about this. So heartbreaking in many ways, but also she doted on that kid, Heather, like you can’t believe — took her shopping all the time. And then Heather has four children. One of them, Austin, looks just like. Bruce Hudson, the son that she lost. So guess what? She played favorites with Austin. So that was a bittersweet story.</p><p>Then you’ve got Eddie Benton, who you mentioned. He’s 47 years old. He’s about to retire after 25 years on the Great Lakes. He’s had got a Navy pension. Also, he’s got no kids, but a wife of 25 years. There’s a picture of them in the book. The day before they leave on this trip, he gets to port from Superior, WI, which is a port city right next to Duluth. He goes across the border to buy a fancy diamond ring for their 25th anniversary and for reasons, Deb, I have no idea and no one does except for him, he gives it to a friend to mail to his wife instead of just putting in his duffel bag. You’re gonna see her in three days. She’s gonna be at the dock in Toledo’s, gonna pick you up, drive you a couple hours to where they live. And we have no idea why he did this, but a week after the ship went down, she gets a package in the mail and it’s her 25th anniversary ring.</p><p>DH: Oh my God. And even just the the irony that Edmund Fitzgerald really did not want them to name this ship after him.</p><p>JB: He did not have a great ego. He was really a quite beloved, humble guy. A very successful CEO. They named it after him. He did not want it. So they arranged for him to get out of the room for something, and they named it for him against his back.</p><p>DH: They think they’re doing him some honor. And he’s like, no, no.</p><p>JB: I mean, he’s in the era where these ships were going down on a regular basis. He e knows the risks. If it goes down, you’re attached to it. Yeah. So his son, also Edmond Bacon Fitzgerald, no relation that I know of, but he’s the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers. He’s the one who brought the Brewers to town. He said the day “the ship was launched on June 23rd, 1958, it was the best day of my dad’s life. The day it went down was the worst.”</p><p>DH: Cannot even fathom it. All right, Well, Speaking of the day it went down, the reporting, I loved the excerpt you gave me and the stuff about the reporting and just how just effective and efficient and amazing and accurate this was.</p><p>JB: For the time being, as far as the reporting goes, how many guys from ‘75 were at all involved in the story are still around? It turns out that Harry Atkins, the guy who did the Associated Press story at the time, he’s in his 80s. He’s a friend of mine from the press box at University of Michigan. He was the AP reporter for sports for the state of Michigan for decades. They gave that job to Larry Lage, also a friend of mine, Pioneer grad here in town, and we’re working out one day in Ann Arbor and he said, “Hey, Harry Atkins wrote that story.” I couldn’t believe it. Harry Atkins is still alive and based in Harbor Springs. He still had the original and he did a great job. He drove up that night. But in that story that went out to 6500 outlets via the AP there’s a detail – the director, the pastor of Mariners Church in Detroit, went out and rang the bell 29 times. The next day Harry Atkins said “I didn’t report that. I’m in Saulte St. Marie.” We have no idea to this day who went out there. We interviewed the people who made the assignments and one guy said “I’m the guy would have assigned it, but somebody did it.” And the pastor talked about that later on. He did do it. It’s not made up. We have no idea who the reporter was, who found the person, who found the pastor ringing the bell. But here, Atkins includes this. He does a beautiful job of the story.</p><p>And all on 24 hours notice, no cell phone, no Internet. There were a lot of ways to screw that story up. He did a wonderful job because he cared about it. Cared about it more than he had to. We know how that works. Of course, from there, Newsweek picks it up two weeks later. And who picks it up? James Gaines is the byline. Jim Gaines, a proud Michigan graduate who was at the Michigan Daily. We talked about that, how that’s where he lived his life. You know, that goes, that’s where most of those guys lived their lives.</p><p>Gaines only had about 500 some words to do it. And he did such a beautiful job. He said, “look, this is basically an obituary and it’s breaking news kind of in two weeks.” But it’s more of a poem and and he took such care with it and there are so many beautiful lines in such a small space. Gordon Lightfoot reads his story. Too, four or five lines from that piece – It truly was lyrical and those became lyrics.</p><p>So look, without Harry Atkins doing his job better than he had to, Jim Gaines doing better than he did. And he’s still alive too, by the way, and very sharp. Then Gordon Lightfoot does his job better than he has to. Without all that, I’m not writing a book, so those guys matter a great deal.</p><p>It’s so amazing. And then you had assistance, some insight from some of our faculty in engineering. Shipbuilding is, you know, a big thing again. And we have a pretty robust program here in engineering and they’re trying to answer the call to build more ships for United States. It’s probably nice to know you’re getting your expertise from your alma mater.</p><p>JB: And in this case, it was Matthew Collette. Apparently, he’s a legend at the Naval Architecture school. One of his graduate students, Brendan Falkowski, was also very helpful. These guys are great.</p><p>And it’s, it’s Collette who told me how the water works, told me how these ships work in general. He also had the theory too, and I quoted him on this as well, is that when a ship like this goes down, it’s rarely just one thing. It’s a series of events: It’s nature, it’s mechanics, and it’s human decisions. He also says, “I am reluctant to judge those in that moment because you only have so many cards to play. Most of them aren’t very good and you have to make a decision right now without consulting and no hindsight.” So he pointed out just what the options really were. So I thought Matthew Collette was as good as advertised. Brendan Falkowski, he made the point that usually in the Great Lakes we’re slow to adapt to new innovations, you know, new technology, new innovations and so on. In this case, they weren’t.</p><p>They went with modular construction of the Fitzgerald: Three sections were shipped to Great Lakes Engineering Works in Detroit, right there in Zug Island, where the ship was built. And I talked to some of the sons of the people who built it. Kind of cool. So that’s unusual. And then it’s also unusual that they swapped out thousands if not hundreds of thousands of rivets for welds. Welds are cheaper to do: they’re faster and they’re lighter, all things that appeal to a shipping company. Lighter –1.2 million pounds lighter — which means you can carry 1.2 pounds more of steel, iron, sorry, every time you get on the ship you do that 50 times a year. It ships are made to be, you know, live 100 years. So that 1.2 million pounds – it adds up dramatically. But these two things both come with a catch. Welds are not quite as strong as rivets. And the modular construction makes it even more flexible. These things are designed to be flexible the way a skyscraper is in the wind. But everyone said this was the most flexible ship on the Great Lakes, which, again, we’re back to the paper clip. You can’t [bend] it forever.</p><p>Long story short about all this, Deborah, without the long arm of the University of Michigan, it’s not going to work. I can’t do what I do. I’m sitting down to write a book about college football… I already know half the story, basically. But this case, I meanspecif. So thank you to all your helpful alums and professors and. All that good stuff and fans it, it works, so thank you.</p><p>DH: I just love all the Michigan connections that arise in John’s book — just another example of the vast Michigan network of expertise, experience, and reach. Never forget your U-M connections, people. They will take you far. OK, on that note, enjoy the excerpt John provided and as always, Go Blue!</div> </div> </div> <h2>All that remains</h2><p>If truth is stranger than fiction, it is often more tragic as well.</p><p>That’s one lesson author John U. Bacon, BA ’86/MA ’94, took from his deep dive into one of the most fascinating and poignant tragedies in maritime history. <em>The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald </em> (Liveright Publishing, 2025) took the author, who is best known for writing about sports, into uncharted territory.</p><div id="attachment_49644" style="width: 327px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Legend-lives-on-John-Bacon-Edmund-Fitzgerald.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-49644" class=" wp-image-49644" src="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Legend-lives-on-John-Bacon-Edmund-Fitzgerald-300x180.jpg" alt="The Edmund Fitzgerald riding the Great Lakes. Black and white." width="317" height="190" srcset="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Legend-lives-on-John-Bacon-Edmund-Fitzgerald-300x180.jpg 300w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Legend-lives-on-John-Bacon-Edmund-Fitzgerald-768x461.jpg 768w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/mc-image-cache/2025/10/Legend-lives-on-John-Bacon-Edmund-Fitzgerald.jpg 1000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 317px) 100vw, 317px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-49644" class="wp-caption-text">By most accounts, the Edmund Fitzgerald was the greatest ship on the Great Lakes. (Image credit: Encyclopedia Britannica.)</p></div><p>Like most children of the Great Lakes, Bacon thought he knew the story of the Fitz: On Nov. 10, 1975, a massive storm on Lake Superior — complete with hurricane-force winds — claimed all 29 souls aboard what he describes as “the greatest ship on the Great Lakes.” Ironically, the ship was mere miles from relatively calm waters when it disappeared.</p><p>It’s been five decades, so what about this tale could possibly be new?</p><p>Bacon’s answer: “All of it.”</p><p>In the podcast interview here, the animated storyteller shares little-known details and mind-boggling facts about the fury of fresh water lakes, the nature of flexible ships, and the downright terror that came for these seasoned sailors that fateful night. While researching and connecting with their loved ones, Bacon came to revere the ship’s extraordinary crew and their leader, Captain Ernest M. McSorely.</p><p>“If you’re going to spend four years writing a book, you better like the people you’re writing about,” he says. “And these were genuinely good guys.”</p><p>For a raconteur like Bacon, the tale hits virtually every bittersweet beat: The beloved captain taking one last trip before retirement, the deckhand whose mother had no idea her only son was expecting a child; and the veteran sailor who entrusted his pal to mail a diamond ring to his wife of 25 years, even though he was scheduled to dock in three days. And there’s so much more.</p><p>The <em>New York Times</em> bestseller features a number of U-M experts, including naval architects Matthew Collette and Brendan Falkowski in the College of Engineering. Bacon also features <em>Michigan Daily</em> alumnus James Gaines, who wrote the lyrical “obituary” for <em>Newsweek</em> that inspired Gordon Lightfoot’s eerie musical eulogy “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”</p><p>In the following excerpt Bacon recounts how the initial news reporting, shaped by one of our own, evolved in the wake of the disaster.</p><h2>The first draft of history</h2><h3>By John U. Bacon</h3><div id="attachment_49643" style="width: 207px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/81kfMGiLweL._SY522_.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-49643" class="size-medium wp-image-49643" src="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/81kfMGiLweL._SY522_-197x300.jpg" alt="Cover of John U. Bacon book titled "The Gales of November, the Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald."" width="197" height="300" srcset="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/81kfMGiLweL._SY522_-197x300.jpg 197w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/mc-image-cache/2025/10/81kfMGiLweL._SY522_.jpg 342w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 197px) 100vw, 197px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-49643" class="wp-caption-text">(Liveright, 2025.)</p></div><p>On Monday evening, Nov. 10, 1975, Harry Atkins, an Associated Press reporter based in the Detroit bureau, was working at the downtown office.</p><p>Meanwhile, up in Whitefish Bay, an “old hermit” Atkins knew about was listening to his radio.</p><p>“His one joy in life was listening to the ship-to-shore stations,” Atkins says, “eavesdropping on the captains talking to one another.”</p><p>When the hermit heard the Edmund Fitzgerald’s skipper Ernest McSorley radioing back and forth with Captain Bernie Cooper of the S.S. Arthur M. Anderson during the horrible storm, he tipped off Sault Ste. Marie’s WSOO radio station, which contacted the Sault Ste. Marie <em>Evening News</em>, one of Michigan’s 53 daily papers. Since they were all members of the AP, it made sense for an <em>Evening News </em>reporter to call the Detroit bureau, which employed 26 staffers at the time.</p><p>There, on the spot, the Detroit bureau chief made the decision to send a reporter and photographer on a rare overnight trip, all the way to Sault Ste. Marie. He picked Atkins because he’d already written some good stories about the Upper Peninsula, a region he loved, and then told Atkins to pick a photographer.</p><p>“When it comes to photographers, you must know they’re all nuts,” Atkins says. “John Hillery was no exception, but that’s what you need. I knew I could count on him to come through with the goods.”</p><p>At 8 a.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 11, Atkins and Hillery arrived at the Sault Ste. Marie<em> Evening News,</em> where the editor-in-chief was nice enough to set up workspaces for the two. Atkins figured he should observe the search effort from above, and Hillery needed shots of it, so Atkins started calling around to rent a plane. But when he kept striking out, he feared the whole trip would be a wash.</p><aside class="callout right">“Lake Superior seldom coughs up her victims unless they’re wearing life jackets. As of this time, we have no reason to believe the men of the Fitzgerald had time to get into life jackets.” — Captain Charles Milradt, commander of Group Soo</aside>Help came from across the desk, where one of the local reporters had been overhearing his calls. He told Atkins he had a friend with a plane, and would Atkins want him to ask? That’s how Atkins and Hillery found themselves in a four-seat Cessna at the mercy of a retired Navy pilot with steel gray hair, combed straight back, and his 40-something girlfriend with a beehive hairdo. When they flew over the search ships, Atkins says, “Hillery — who, like I said, was nuts — keeps telling the pilot, ‘If you could just get over there … If you could just go back that way,’ and then, ‘If you could just tilt the plane a bit this way’ — so he could take his shot beyond the wings.</p><p>“Every time it was ‘No problem!’ <em>Rrrrawr</em>. He’d do it just like Hillery asked.”</p><p>They weren’t up too long when the Coast Guard ordered, “All aircraft out of the area!” The pilot turned his radio off, kept flying, and added a tour of the Soo Locks for color. Atkins and Hillery got everything they needed to file their story, a Xerox copy of which Atkins saved.</p><h2>16:12 11/11/75; Sault St. Marie, Mich. (AP)—</h2><div id="attachment_49640" style="width: 203px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Bacon-Untold-Story-of-the-Edmund-Fitzgerald.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-49640" class="size-medium wp-image-49640" src="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Bacon-Untold-Story-of-the-Edmund-Fitzgerald-193x300.jpg" alt="Black and white image of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald shows the dimensions -- "absurdly long," says University of Michigan author John U. Bacon." width="193" height="300" srcset="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Bacon-Untold-Story-of-the-Edmund-Fitzgerald-193x300.jpg 193w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/mc-image-cache/2025/10/Bacon-Untold-Story-of-the-Edmund-Fitzgerald.jpg 514w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 193px) 100vw, 193px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-49640" class="wp-caption-text">Bacon likens the “absurdly long” ship to a giraffe’s neck. (Source: Encyclopedia Britannica.)</p></div><p>Atkins opened his AP story with a quote from Captain Charles Milradt, commander of Group Soo: “Lake Superior seldom coughs up her victims unless they’re wearing life jackets. As of this time, we have no reason to believe the men of the Fitzgerald had time to get into life jackets.”</p><p>It’s striking how many difficult facts Atkins reported accurately in a few hours using only a notebook and an office phone. From his research and his writing, it’s clear Atkins cared about this story more than the job required.</p><p>But perhaps the most interesting thing about the piece Atkins sent to Detroit is what it <em>didn’t </em>include: any mention of the Mariners’ Church or its pastor ringing the bell 29 times, especially since those scenes appeared in the final draft of Atkins’ story that went out on the AP wires worldwide, facts that would leave a lasting impression.</p><p>“I never wrote about the bell ringing 29 times,” Atkins says, with disarming honesty. “It wasn’t me! I was in the Sault at the time, and had no idea what was happening at Mariners’ in Detroit.”</p><p>Atkins suspects that someone in the Detroit AP office read his story as it came in. When they heard the bell chiming at Mariners’ Church, just a few blocks away, they must have walked down to witness Father Richard Ingalls Sr. — who had taken his son on a private tour of the Fitzgerald when it was being built 18 years earlier — ringing the bell.</p><p>The final version of Atkins’ story, including the Mariners’ Church pastor tolling the bell 29 times, went out on the wire to the AP’s 6,500 member papers around the world, including <em>The Los Angeles Times.</em></p><h2>Cue James Gaines, Michigan Daily alumnus</h2><div id="attachment_49642" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Screenshot-2025-10-22-at-2.22.35-PM.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-49642" class="size-medium wp-image-49642" src="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Screenshot-2025-10-22-at-2.22.35-PM-300x261.png" alt="A page out of Newseek, dated Nov. 24, 1975, regarding the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." width="300" height="261" srcset="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Screenshot-2025-10-22-at-2.22.35-PM-300x261.png 300w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/mc-image-cache/2025/10/Screenshot-2025-10-22-at-2.22.35-PM.png 660w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-49642" class="wp-caption-text">Michigan Daily alumnus James Gaines contributed to this story in Newseek, dated Nov. 24, 1975, regarding the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. (Click the image to enlarge.)</p></div><p>Due to the reports from Dennis Anderson at Duluth, Minn.’s, Channel 10, Harry Reasoner on “The ABC Evening News,” and Harry Atkins at the AP, the Edmund Fitzgerald’s disappearance was soon picked up by all the media available in 1975. The interest in the wreck prompted <em>Newsweek</em> to assign a half-page story for its Nov. 24, 1975, issue, exactly two weeks after the ship sank, that was replete with phrases that still resonate today.</p><p>Almost buried among that issue’s 44 stories, eight department dispatches, and various columns — including the debut of a 34-year-old columnist named George Will — was a story on page 48 titled “Great Lakes: The Cruelest Month.” At the end of the piece it credits James R. Gaines with Jon Lowell in Detroit.</p><p>Looking back, Gaines is surprised he got a byline on the piece, because <em>Newsweek</em> reporters typically didn’t get one if an article wasn’t longer than a page. But this story was exceptional in several ways, which his editors probably recognized in giving it the space they did.</p><p>Gaines had attended U-M, where he spent more time working for the acclaimed student paper, <em>The Michigan Daily,</em> than he did on his English major. Still, soon after he arrived at <em>Newsweek</em> in late 1972, he realized he had a lot to learn.</p><p>“Look, I just wasn’t very good,” he says. “I’m close to saying I learned everything I know at <em>Newsweek</em>, especially about writing short, cogent pieces with a little style. I probably couldn’t have written that story even one year beforehand. I credit the guys who were there much, much longer than I had been, who were extremely friendly and helpful. There was no competition, just a spirit of ‘let’s band together and get it done.'”</p><p>Gaines quickly got up to speed by “being edited and torn up by two great editors, Peter Goldman and David Alpern — and being humbled, twice a week. Go through enough of that, you learn how to crunch it all down, right to the story’s essential nuggets.”</p><h2>A lyrical obituary</h2><p>The Fitzgerald assignment started with Detroit bureau chief Jon Lowell conducting most of the reporting, then sending his file to New York, where Gaines began sorting through the pieces.</p><p>“Between Jon and me, who wrote it?” Gaines asks. “I don’t know, but generally the lines from the reporters’ file didn’t get into the story. Jon was really good, though, and I may have used a line or two of his. When I read it now, I’m glad I was able to write it as I did.</p><p>“The Edmund Fitzgerald was national news — but only sort of,” he continues. “It was more poetry than news, like an obituary. It’s a really sad story. It was not hard to make it sing.”</p><div id="attachment_49641" style="width: 308px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/GordonLightfootAlbumCover-Edmund-Fizgerald.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-49641" class="size-medium wp-image-49641" src="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/GordonLightfootAlbumCover-Edmund-Fizgerald-298x300.png" alt="Album cover, Summertime Dream, features the face of Gordon Lightfoot. The album includes the song "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."" width="298" height="300" srcset="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/GordonLightfootAlbumCover-Edmund-Fizgerald-298x300.png 298w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/GordonLightfootAlbumCover-Edmund-Fizgerald-150x150.png 150w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/GordonLightfootAlbumCover-Edmund-Fizgerald-768x773.png 768w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/mc-image-cache/2025/10/GordonLightfootAlbumCover-Edmund-Fizgerald.png 974w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 298px) 100vw, 298px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-49641" class="wp-caption-text">Gordon Lightfoot’s album “Summertime Dream” included the song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”</p></div><p>And sing it does, from the very first words: “According to a legend of the Chippewa tribe, the lake they once called Gitche Gumee ‘never gives up her dead.'”</p><p>The story continued, “Modern-day mariners of Lake Superior know the legend has some basis in fact: The largest and most treacherous of all the Great Lakes, Superior, is also the coldest — deadly not only to man but also to the organisms that infest drowned bodies and bring them to the surface.</p><p>“During the gales of November,” the <em>Newsweek</em> authors added, “the lakes can become especially forbidding.”</p><p>They then listed other Great Lakes tragedies that occurred on the same deadly day, November 10: the storm of 1913, which killed 254 people; another in 1930, when 67 drowned; and finally the Edmund Fitzgerald, whose 29-man crew “vanished without a trace in a nighttime torrent of slashing winds and waves on Lake Superior,” Gaines writes. “When the Edmund Fitzgerald steamed from port at Superior, Wis., on a sunny Sunday afternoon, [it was] one of the largest ships on the Great Lakes, and its skipper, Ernest McSorley, was a veteran of 44 years on the lakes.</p><p>“But the next day,” the story continued, “the storm hit Lake Superior and the Fitzgerald; by evening the ship was rocking through 30-foot waves, and fighting hurricane force winds. Only 15 miles from the relative calm of Whitefish Bay, McSorley radioed the ore ship Arthur M. Anderson, which was a few miles behind, that he was taking on some water . . .”</p><p>Gaines closed the piece by writing, “And in the stone, 126-year-old Mariners’ Church in downtown Detroit, a minister offered prayers for the lost seamen and tolled the church bell 29 times in grim tribute to the unslaked furies of Lake Superior.”</p><p>Gaines and Lowell got a lot done in just 534 words. They didn’t merely deliver the news but the lore behind it, capturing the heart of the story so well that their lines took root in the mind of at least one reader, a songwriter in Toronto, who read their piece more carefully than most.</p>]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>https://michigantoday.umich.edu/2025/10/23/episode-61-the-untold-story-of-the-edmund-fitzgerald-featuring-john-u-bacon-ba-86-ma-94/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>13</slash:comments> </item> <item> <title>Three Borges alumni, one fight song</title> <link>https://michigantoday.umich.edu/2025/10/20/three-borges-generations-one-fight-song/</link> <comments>https://michigantoday.umich.edu/2025/10/20/three-borges-generations-one-fight-song/#comments</comments> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Fernanda Pires]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Mon, 20 Oct 2025 22:35:34 +0000</pubDate> <category><![CDATA[Athletics]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Education & Society]]></category> <category><![CDATA[International]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Alumni]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Brazil]]></category> <category><![CDATA[entrepreneurship]]></category> <category><![CDATA[life-changing education]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Swimming]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://michigantoday.umichsites.org/?p=49548</guid> <description><![CDATA[International swimming superstar Gustavo Borges was determined to explore the world beyond São Paulo, Brazil, when he became a Michigan Wolverine in the '90s. In the decades that followed, his children upheld his legacy at U-M, excelling in athletics and academics. Today they bring their love for the University to their alumni family in Brazil.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<h2>Tradition, sweat, and ‘The Victors’</h2><p>SÃO PAULO—Some legacies go beyond talent; they cross generations, continents, and hearts.</p><p>In the Borges family, the love for the University of Michigan is combined with focus, discipline, and sportsmanship — a heritage that begins with four-time Brazilian Olympic medalist swimmer Gustavo Borges and continues with his son, Luiz Gustavo, and his daughter, Gabriella, also former U-M athletes.</p><aside class="callout left">Read <a href="https://news.umich.edu/pt-br/tres-geracoes-borges-um-hino-de-luta/">Três gerações Borges, um hino de luta</a> in Portuguese</aside>“I grew up in São Paulo knowing the Michigan fight song before the Brazilian national anthem,” Gabriella Franco Borges says. “Since I was a child, we watched Michigan games on television, and I learned the song that best represents the Wolverines’ spirit early on.”</p><p>Luiz Gustavo Borges remembers his father singing “The Victors” at the dinner table when he was a boy; he didn’t quite memorize the lyrics.</p><p>“But when I arrived at Michigan, it was part of our swim team’s culture to sing the fight song every Saturday at the end of practice,” he says. “This went on for four years. It was hundreds of times.”</p><h2>The first choice</h2><div id="attachment_49556" style="width: 412px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/BorgesSign-2-IMG_1602-scaled.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-49556" class=" wp-image-49556" src="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/BorgesSign-2-IMG_1602-300x200.jpg" alt="U-M graduate Gustavo Borges stands in front of an eponymous sign at his company in Sao Paulo, Brazil. His name is in black type with a light blue wave." width="402" height="268" srcset="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/BorgesSign-2-IMG_1602-300x200.jpg 300w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/BorgesSign-2-IMG_1602-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/BorgesSign-2-IMG_1602-768x512.jpg 768w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/BorgesSign-2-IMG_1602-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/BorgesSign-2-IMG_1602-2048x1365.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 402px) 100vw, 402px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-49556" class="wp-caption-text">In 2004, Gustavo Borges retired from professional competition to establish a swimming school that has since expanded to include 400 academies, impacting more than 250,000 students annually. (Image credit: Fernanda Pires.)</p></div><p>In the 1990s, Gustavo Borges was a young athlete himself, chasing big dreams far beyond Brazil. The talented swimmer turned down four other college offers and followed his heart to the United States.</p><p>“I always wanted to live in a different place,” he says. “I remember on one of my visits, a few flurries fell. I had never seen snow before. ”</p><p>Borges soon overcame the uncertainties of adapting to college life in a climate, and a country, so far from home.</p><p>“I chose Michigan because I had a good feeling about it, you know?” he said. “I felt a strong connection with the team and the coach, Jon Urbanchek, and the academic tradition heavily influenced me.”</p><p>Between 1991 and 1995, Borges balanced intense training with the demands of his economics degree at the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. Soon, fear gave way to achievements — and not just medals.</p><div id="attachment_49560" style="width: 413px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/LGB-SwimCap-IMG_2025.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-49560" class=" wp-image-49560" src="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/LGB-SwimCap-IMG_2025-300x225.jpg" alt="Luiz Gustavo Borges, dressed in a shirt for University of Michigan swimming and diving, points to his father's Olympic swim cap displayed at Canham Natatorium." width="403" height="302" srcset="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/LGB-SwimCap-IMG_2025-300x225.jpg 300w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/LGB-SwimCap-IMG_2025-768x576.jpg 768w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/mc-image-cache/2025/10/LGB-SwimCap-IMG_2025.jpg 1000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 403px) 100vw, 403px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-49560" class="wp-caption-text">When Borges’ son, Luiz Gustavo, arrived at Michigan, he found a familiar name at U-M’s Canham Natatorium. (Image credit: Fernanda Pires.)</p></div><p>“I got a home away from home and grew a lot,” he says. “Academic learning doesn’t compare to the experience you have within a university. It’s what you learn in a general way, as a human being. I had an extremely difficult calculus class, which taught me much more than any other subject. When you put a lot of effort into something and then break through that barrier, it’s valuable in the long run. True learning is overcoming.”</p><p>Known for his explosive speed, Borges accumulated 10 NCAA national titles, with eight wins in individual events and two in relays. Other results were impressive: 24 All-American awards, consecutive wins in the 100-yard freestyle, becoming the only athlete in Michigan history to win the title four consecutive years — and the 1995 National Championship. In 2013, he was inducted into the U-M Hall of Fame.</p><p>While at Michigan, Borges swam in the 1992 Olympics, winning a silver medal in the 100-meter freestyle. He also won silver and bronze medals at the 1996 Olympic games and a bronze at the 2000 Olympics. He also participated in the 2004 games.</p><h2>The legacy continues</h2><div id="attachment_49592" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/LuisGustavoWithBlockM-Crop.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-49592" class="size-medium wp-image-49592" src="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/LuisGustavoWithBlockM-Crop-300x218.jpg" alt="Profile image of a swimmer with Block M tattoo on his side to represent the University of Michigan." width="300" height="218" srcset="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/LuisGustavoWithBlockM-Crop-300x218.jpg 300w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/LuisGustavoWithBlockM-Crop-768x557.jpg 768w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/mc-image-cache/2025/10/LuisGustavoWithBlockM-Crop.jpg 1000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-49592" class="wp-caption-text">While studying at the Ross School of Business, Luiz Gustavo excelled in swimming, earning three-time Big Ten champion honors in relays, 12 All-American awards, and individual standout status at the NCAA level. (Image courtesy of Luis Gustavo Borges.)</p></div><p>When Luiz Gustavo Borges arrived at U-M’s Canham Natatorium in 2017, his father’s name was already immortalized: Gustavo Borges’ Olympic swim cap was displayed in the hall, alongside those of such icons as Michael Phelps, Connor Jaeger, and Tyler Clary.</p><p>Too much pressure? Far from being a burden, Borges’ legacy served as a trampoline for his son, who is now a professional swimmer.</p><p>“My parents always encouraged me, but they never said I had to go to Michigan,” Luiz Gustavo says. “I was able to compare colleges, talk to athletes and coaches, and decide for myself. I understood that there was a strong tradition there, but also space to build my own story.</p><p>“I took it as an opportunity to be my best self. And I went further. I managed to beat practically all of his marks and break the 100-yard freestyle record.”</p><aside class="callout left"><strong>Related story</strong> about Luiz Gustavo Borges: <a href="https://news.umich.edu/just-keep-swimming/">Just keep swimming</a></aside>While studying at the Ross School of Business, Luiz Gustavo excelled in swimming, earning three-time Big Ten champion honors in relays, 12 All-American awards, and individual standout status at the NCAA level. He also kept a routine of discipline that mirrored his father’s.</p><p>“Only with organization and dedication is it possible to be a high-level athlete and student. I learned to do things with excellence, to do my best every day,” he says.</p><p>Out of the water, he emphasized the team’s spirit of unity.</p><p>“On Saturdays, we had exhausting morning practices for almost four hours,” Luiz Gustavo says. “But when it was over, we would all go eat together, at the pool itself, in the dorms or at a restaurant. Afterward, already dressed in Maize and Blue, we would go to the Big House to cheer on the Wolverines. I loved those days together.”</p><h2>A new path, the same spirit</h2><div id="attachment_49558" style="width: 412px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/GBorges-Parents-IMG_2056.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-49558" class=" wp-image-49558" src="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/GBorges-Parents-IMG_2056-300x254.jpg" alt="Gustavo Borges and wife stand amid green trees with U-M rowing superstar, daughter Gabriela." width="402" height="340" srcset="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/GBorges-Parents-IMG_2056-300x254.jpg 300w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/GBorges-Parents-IMG_2056-768x650.jpg 768w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/mc-image-cache/2025/10/GBorges-Parents-IMG_2056.jpg 1000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 402px) 100vw, 402px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-49558" class="wp-caption-text">Gabriela Franco Borges, flanked by her parents Gustavo and Barbara, continued the family legacy at U-M, but pursued rowing instead of swimming. (Image courtesy of the Borges.)</p></div><p>Gabriella Franco Borges almost broke with family tradition.</p><p>“I wanted to create my legacy somewhere else, but I understood that a legacy only remains if the family returns,” she says. “When I went to a game at the Big House, I simply fell in love. I knew right away: It was Michigan. Besides being one of the best universities in the world, it has the four seasons and Ann Arbor is the most American city you can see in the movies.”</p><p>She chose rowing instead of swimming, but continued the family’s Maize and Blue tradition.</p><p>As an athlete on U-M’s elite rowing team, she helped the crew win second place in the Big Ten, finished in the Top 10 nationally, and graduated with a degree in industrial and operations engineering in 2024, with academic distinction.</p><p>“Several girls on the team were also studying engineering, so they were all very focused on both their studies and the sport,” Gabriella says. “That helped a lot with adaptation and performance in both areas.”</p><p>Today, working at Dow Chemical in Michigan, she applies the lessons from the sport to her life.</p><p>“At U-M, I learned a lot about dealing with people and working in a team,” she says. “We can’t always do something alone, and recognizing each person’s talents can greatly help with projects. In rowing, you need to know each member individually before you can win as a team. I take that with me to work every day.”</p><h2>Values, entrepreneurship, impact</h2><div id="attachment_49572" style="width: 412px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Borges-Inspiring-Others-IMG_1624.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-49572" class=" wp-image-49572" src="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Borges-Inspiring-Others-IMG_1624-300x180.jpg" alt="U-M grad and Brazilian swimming superstar Gustavo Borges speaks to a team of people." width="402" height="241" srcset="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Borges-Inspiring-Others-IMG_1624-300x180.jpg 300w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Borges-Inspiring-Others-IMG_1624-768x461.jpg 768w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/mc-image-cache/2025/10/Borges-Inspiring-Others-IMG_1624.jpg 1000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 402px) 100vw, 402px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-49572" class="wp-caption-text">“I want to continue transforming lives through sport, education, and health,” says Gustavo Borges. (Image credit: Fernanda Pires.)</p></div><p>Back in Brazil, Gustavo Borges dominated the world of professional swimming for decades, gaining an international profile — superstar status in his home country — while breaking world records. Then, he followed his vocation beyond the pools.</p><p>In 2004, he retired from professional competition to establish a swimming school that has since expanded to include 400 academies, impacting more than 250,000 students annually. In 2025, he was recognized on the Forbes 50 Over 50 list and continues to secure his legacy with discipline and consistency.</p><p>Alongside his son, Luiz, he inspires young people through lectures on sports, education, and overcoming challenges. He continues to demonstrate same intensity as when he was chasing a podium finish.</p><div id="attachment_49593" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Borges-Father-And-Son-Crop.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-49593" class="size-medium wp-image-49593" src="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Borges-Father-And-Son-Crop-300x281.jpg" alt="Two University of Michigan graduates representing U-M in Sao Paulo." width="300" height="281" srcset="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Borges-Father-And-Son-Crop-300x281.jpg 300w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/mc-image-cache/2025/10/Borges-Father-And-Son-Crop.jpg 679w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-49593" class="wp-caption-text">As passionate Michigan alumni, this father-son team recently attended a lively meeting of graduates based in São Paulo. (Image credit: Fernanda Pires.)</p></div><p>“I want to continue transforming lives through sport, education, and health,” the elder Borges says. “And it is more than important to emphasize that our greatest teaching comes from family values. The simple things we need to do in life — such as putting effort into what we have to do and committing to what we desire — we learn at home. Michigan was the perfect school to enhance those values that were born there.”</p><p>Thus, for the Borges family, “The Victors” evolved from being just a victory chant — at the dinner table, in the TV room in São Paulo, or at sporting events on Michigan’s campus — to become the soundtrack that will always accompany their family story.</p><p><em>Reporting for this story was made possible by a trip to São Paulo, Brazil, to meet the Borges family. It was sponsored by <a href="https://ii.umich.edu/lacs">U-M’s Brazil Initiative at the Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies.</a></em></p>]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>https://michigantoday.umich.edu/2025/10/20/three-borges-generations-one-fight-song/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>4</slash:comments> </item> <item> <title>Clocking your biological rhythms</title> <link>https://michigantoday.umich.edu/2025/10/20/clocking-your-biological-rhythms/</link> <comments>https://michigantoday.umich.edu/2025/10/20/clocking-your-biological-rhythms/#respond</comments> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Victor Katch]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Mon, 20 Oct 2025 20:58:56 +0000</pubDate> <category><![CDATA[Columns]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Health Yourself]]></category> <category><![CDATA[circadian rhythm]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Health]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sleep]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://michigantoday.umichsites.org/?p=49472</guid> <description><![CDATA[In this first of a two-part series Victor Katch discusses how circadian rhythms affect our physical and mental behaviors.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<h2>Fall back</h2><p>Daylight Savings Time is upon us yet again. For many people, the simple act of turning back their household clock wreaks havoc on their internal biological clock. Thus, it seems an opportune time to explore human circadian rhythms and health.</p><p>In this first part of a two-part series, I will introduce circadian rhythm concepts — the term circadian derives from the Latin circa (“about”) and dies (“day”) — that help explain human health through regulation of such physiological processes as sleep-wake cycles, hormone production, metabolism, and cardiovascular function. These natural biological cycles affect most living things and synchronize primarily by external light–dark cycles. Key processes controlled by circadian clocks include body temperature, hormone secretion, digestive activity, muscle-metabolic functioning, and sleep timing.</p><h2>Circadian rhythms and biological clocks</h2><p>Circadian rhythms represent biological cycles within organisms that adjust physiology and behavior to anticipate and adapt to changes in the physical environment. Circadian rhythms are <a href="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Health-Yourself-Circadian-Brain-Graphic.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-49497" src="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Health-Yourself-Circadian-Brain-Graphic-300x178.jpg" alt="Graphic depicts the brain and its relationship to the circadian rhythm." width="401" height="238" srcset="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Health-Yourself-Circadian-Brain-Graphic-300x178.jpg 300w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Health-Yourself-Circadian-Brain-Graphic-1024x609.jpg 1024w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Health-Yourself-Circadian-Brain-Graphic-768x457.jpg 768w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/mc-image-cache/2025/10/Health-Yourself-Circadian-Brain-Graphic.jpg 1234w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 401px) 100vw, 401px" /></a>maintained with the help of circadian (biological) clocks. The main biological clock, termed the <strong>suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN)</strong>, referred to as the <strong>master clock</strong> in humans, locates in the brain’s hypothalamus and contains about 20,000 nerve cells (neurons).</p><p>Genes within cells produce oscillations in protein levels, which in turn drive rhythmic cycles of molecular and cellular activity. External cues, called zeitgebers — such as light, meals, social interactions, and temperature — help adjust or entrain circadian rhythms to local time.</p><p>When the biological clock is out of alignment with the environment — such as during jet lag or shift work — physiological functions can be impaired, increasing health risks.</p><h2>Biological clocks exist in many tissues</h2><p>Biological clocks are present not only in the brain but in virtually every cell and tissue, coordinating physiological functions at the cellular and organ level. Disruption of these rhythms — due to employment routines, irregular sleep patterns, exposure to artificial light at night, even nutrition and exercise — can significantly increase risks for a wide range of diseases and health problems that will be highlighted in my next <a href="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/category/columns/health-yourself/">Health Yourself</a> column.</p><h2>The study of circadian rhythms</h2><p><a href="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Health-Yourself-Circadian-Graphic.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft wp-image-49498" src="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Health-Yourself-Circadian-Graphic-300x245.jpg" alt="Graphic depicts the phases of the circadian rhythm." width="400" height="327" srcset="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Health-Yourself-Circadian-Graphic-300x245.jpg 300w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Health-Yourself-Circadian-Graphic-1024x835.jpg 1024w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Health-Yourself-Circadian-Graphic-768x626.jpg 768w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Health-Yourself-Circadian-Graphic-1536x1253.jpg 1536w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/mc-image-cache/2025/10/Health-Yourself-Circadian-Graphic.jpg 1550w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px" /></a>Chronobiology is an emerging subdiscipline of biology. It represents the study of circadian rhythms, primarily focusing on the timing of biological events, especially repetitive/cyclical phenomena in individual cells, tissues, and whole organisms.</p><p>The cellular time-keeping system of circadian rhythms acts essentially as a biological clock, allowing an organism to anticipate and prepare for changes in the physical environment, thereby ensuring the organism will “do the right thing” at the right time. Human biological clocks also provide an internal way to ensure that internal changes take place in coordination with one another.</p><h2>Chronobiology history</h2><aside class="callout right"><a href="https://news.umich.edu/new-research-could-help-boost-drug-efficacy-by-getting-dosing-in-rhythm-with-circadian-clocks/">Related news from U-M:</a> <strong>New research could help boost drug efficacy by getting dosing in rhythm with circadian clocks. </strong>Mathematical modeling from U-M could help better optimize dosing regimens for patients with Parkinson’s disease, depression, and more.</aside> The study of biological rhythms traces back to French scientist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_d%27Ortous_de_Mairan">Jean-Jacques d’Ortous de Mairan</a>, who, in 1729, described the daily leaf movements of a plant. de Mairan observed that the daily raising and lowering of leaves continued even when the plant was not exposed to sunlight. This finding suggested the leaves’ movements represented something more than a response to the sun; rather, they were controlled by some sort of internal process.</p><p>In 1751, subsequent experiments by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Linnaeus">Carl Linnaeus</a> would suggest the presence of species-centric biological clocks. He’d created a “floral clock” using the predictable timing of flowers opening and closing. He went on to develop the modern system of biological classification, known as Linnaean taxonomy, in which organisms are assigned a two-part scientific name, such as <em>Homo sapiens</em> for humans. This fundamental classification system, including the five-level hierarchy of kingdom, class, order, genus, and species, is still used today.</p><p>Modern techniques for studying biological clocks span molecular, cellular, physiological, and behavioral methods, using advanced technologies to unravel their mechanisms. These newer techniques and methodology have had enormous influence on newer, emerging medical procedures to cure or ameliorate different diseases and conditions. The most promising new methods include:</p><ul><li><a href="https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2024/06/stanford-explainer-crispr-gene-editing-and-beyond">CRISPR Genome Editing</a></li><li><a href="https://www.illumina.com/techniques/multiomics/epigenetics.html">Epigenetic Analysis</a></li><li><a href="https://www.news-medical.net/news/20250729/Tiny-artificial-cells-successfully-mimic-biological-clocks.aspx#:~:text=These%20vesicles%20were%20loaded%20with,using%20simplified%2C%20synthetic%20systems.%22">Artificial Cells & Clock Proteins</a></li><li><a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10706996/">Proteomics and Metabolomics</a></li><li><a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38838328/">Actigraphy and Smartphone Apps</a></li></ul><aside class="callout right"><h3>Gene Editing–CRISPR</h3><p><a href="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Health-Yourself-GeneTherapy.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-49493" src="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Health-Yourself-GeneTherapy-300x197.png" alt="Image shows manipulation of the genome." width="300" height="197" srcset="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/Health-Yourself-GeneTherapy-300x197.png 300w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/mc-image-cache/2025/10/Health-Yourself-GeneTherapy.png 620w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a></p><p>CRISPR is a genetic engineering technique by which a living organism’s genome — the complete set of genetic information — is modified. The cell’s genome can be cut at any location, permitting removal or insertion of genes. This technique permits creation of new medicines, agricultural products, and even creation of genetically modified organisms. CRISPR can be applied to the control of pathogens and pests. It also offers potential in the treatment of inherited genetic diseases, as well as cancer.</aside><h2>What biological clocks do</h2><p>Biological clocks regulate the timing of physiological processes, helping organisms synchronize their activities with environmental cycles such as day and night, as well as schedules for work, play, travel, sports, and so on. Properly aligned, biological clocks help optimize the body’s performance, making individuals feel alert during the day, ready for meals and other events at the right time, and able to sleep soundly at night. These clocks allow organisms to anticipate and adapt to regular environmental changes, maximizing health and efficiency.</p><h2>Why it matters</h2><p>Knowing about biological clocks allows for the prevention and management of several chronic conditions including metabolic syndrome, which includes a host of preventable conditions and some types of cancer. Disrupted clocks (such as from shift work, jet lag, or irregular daily routines) have well-established links to elevated risks for these diseases.</p><p>Biological rhythms make individuals healthier when daily activity, eating, and sleeping patterns are synchronized with natural day–night cycles. This alignment boosts energy, metabolism, cognitive performance, and immune function.</p><p><a href="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/unnamed.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class=" wp-image-49619 alignleft" src="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/unnamed-286x300.png" alt="A graphic that represents metabolic syndrome, noting hypertension, cancer, PCOS, heart disease, dementia, NAFLD, insulin resistance, Lipid problems and Type 2 diabetes." width="308" height="323" srcset="https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2025/10/unnamed-286x300.png 286w, https://michigantoday.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/mc-image-cache/2025/10/unnamed.png 334w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 308px) 100vw, 308px" /></a>The effectiveness of medications and health interventions also can depend on the time of day they are administered, a concept called chronotherapy. For some drugs, as well as cancer treatments, timing based on biological rhythms can improve outcomes and reduce side effects.</p><p><strong>Finally</strong>, knowing about circadian rhythms is important because they profoundly influence health, energy levels, and mental state. Maintaining a healthy rhythm can improve your overall well-being, while consistent disruption is linked to numerous chronic diseases, including sleep quality, mental health, metabolism, immune function, and cardiovascular health.</p><p><em>Stay tuned for Part 2.</em></p><p><em><strong>References:</strong></em></p><ul><li><em>Aoyama, S., Shibata, S. “The role of circadian rhythms in muscular and osseous physiology and their regulation by nutrition and exercise.” Frontiers in Neuroscience. 2017;11:63.</em></li><li><em>Gutierrez-Monreal, M.A., et al. “Ticking for metabolic health: The skeletal-muscle clocks.” Obesity. 2020;28(Suppl. 1):S46.</em></li><li><em>Huang, Z.Q., et al. “Circadian rhythms and pain: A narrative review on clock genes and circadian-based interventions.” Journal of Pain Research. 2025;18:4687.</em></li><li><em>Juliana, N., et al. “Effect of circadian rhythm disturbance on the human musculoskeletal system and the importance of nutritional strategies.” Nutrients. 2023;15(3):734.</em></li><li><em>Karabulut, S., Oria, L. “The effects of circadian rhythm on reproductive functions.” Zygote. 2025:1.</em></li><li><em>Kim, H.K., Shibata, S. “Circadian rhythm and muscle function.” Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology. 2025;1478:101.</em></li><li><em>Luo, B., et al. “Circadian rhythms affect bone reconstruction by regulating bone energy metabolism.” Journal of Translational Medicine. 2021;19:410.</em></li><li><em>Mansingh, S., Handschin, C. “Time to train: The involvement of the molecular clock in exercise adaptation of skeletal muscle.” Frontiers in Physiology. 2022;13:902031.</em></li><li><em>Mohd, Azmi NAS, et al. “Consequences of circadian disruption in shift workers on chrononutrition and their psychosocial well-being.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2020;17:2043.</em></li><li><em>Pareek, M., et al. “Trials on timing of cardiovascular medication administration: The cardiovascular circadian chronotherapy trial concept.” JACC: Advances 2025;4(10 Pt 2).</em></li><li><em>Pifer, G.C., et al. “Long-lasting effects of disturbing the circadian rhythm or sleep in adolescence.” Brain Research Bulletin. 2024;213:110978.</em></li><li><em>Vitaterna, M.H., et al. “Overview of circadian rhythms.” Alcohol Research & Health. 2001;25(2):85.</em></li><li><em>Wang, F., et al. “Circadian regulation of vascular function: Metabolism as a link from molecular mechanisms to clinical implications.” Biochimica et Biophysica Acta — Molecular Basis of Disease. 2025;1872(1):168048.</em></li><li><em>Zhang, R., et al. “A circadian gene expression atlas in mammals: Implications for biology and medicine.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. 2014;111:16219.</em></li></ul><p> </p>]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>https://michigantoday.umich.edu/2025/10/20/clocking-your-biological-rhythms/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> <item> <title>U-M roboticists aim to expand robotic prosthetic leg’s benefits</title> <link>https://news.umich.edu/robotic-knee-prosthesis-advanced-control-algorithm-could-expand-commercial-legs-benefits/</link> <comments>https://news.umich.edu/robotic-knee-prosthesis-advanced-control-algorithm-could-expand-commercial-legs-benefits/#respond</comments> <dc:creator><![CDATA[UMC Admin]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Mon, 20 Oct 2025 16:14:03 +0000</pubDate> <category><![CDATA[Innovation]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Research News]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Engineering]]></category> <category><![CDATA[mobility]]></category> <category><![CDATA[robotocists]]></category> <category><![CDATA[robots]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://michigantoday.umichsites.org/?p=49524</guid> <description><![CDATA[A commercial robotic leg could potentially benefit both higher- and lower-mobility amputees, U-M roboticists have shown. The leg provided the largest gains when the U-M team applied its own control strategy, enabling a more symmetrical gait, lower tripping risks, and a reduction in strain on study participants.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[A commercial robotic leg could potentially benefit both higher- and lower-mobility amputees, U-M roboticists have shown. The leg provided the largest gains when the U-M team applied its own control strategy, enabling a more symmetrical gait, lower tripping risks, and a reduction in strain on study participants.]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>https://news.umich.edu/robotic-knee-prosthesis-advanced-control-algorithm-could-expand-commercial-legs-benefits/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> <item> <title>This digital hand enables hands-free virtual reality</title> <link>https://news.engin.umich.edu/2025/10/this-digital-hand-enables-hands-free-virtual-reality/</link> <comments>https://news.engin.umich.edu/2025/10/this-digital-hand-enables-hands-free-virtual-reality/#respond</comments> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Deborah Holdship]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Mon, 20 Oct 2025 16:00:28 +0000</pubDate> <category><![CDATA[Innovation]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Research News]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Science and Technology]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Engineering]]></category> <category><![CDATA[prosthetics]]></category> <category><![CDATA[virtual reality]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://michigantoday.umichsites.org/?p=49521</guid> <description><![CDATA[New software developed by computer scientists at U-M provides a digital, voice-controlled hand that could improve the accessibility of virtual and augmented reality by enabling hands-free use of games and apps. Users of the prototype HandProxy can ask 'the hand' to grab and move virtual objects, drag and resize windows, and even give a thumbs up. ]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[New software developed by computer scientists at U-M provides a digital, voice-controlled hand that could improve the accessibility of virtual and augmented reality by enabling hands-free use of games and apps. Users of the prototype HandProxy can ask 'the hand' to grab and move virtual objects, drag and resize windows, and even give a thumbs up. ]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>https://news.engin.umich.edu/2025/10/this-digital-hand-enables-hands-free-virtual-reality/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> </channel></rss> If you would like to create a banner that links to this page (i.e. this validation result), do the following:
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Upload the image to your own server. (This step is important. Please do not link directly to the image on this server.)
Add this HTML to your page (change the image src attribute if necessary):
If you would like to create a text link instead, here is the URL you can use:
http://www.feedvalidator.org/check.cgi?url=https%3A//michigantoday.umich.edu/feed/
