Former University of Michigan football coach Lloyd Carr retired as associate athletic director for the Wolverines.

The University of Michigan has received official notice that it has earned continuing accreditation from the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.

New research at the University of Michigan suggests that in healthy cells, zinc acts like a security guard at a rock concert, whose job is keeping fans from turning troublesome and destructive. In molecular terms, zinc prevents a protein called amylin from forming harmful clumps similar to those found in degenerative diseases. But in the zinc-starved cellular environment of someone with type 2 diabetes, amylin has no watchful guard to rein it in.

As if the ongoing oil spill weren’t calamity enough, U-M’s Donald Scavia predicts that this year’s “dead zone” in the Gulf—an area starved of oxygen by pollution mostly from the Mississippi River—will be one of the biggest ever. “The growth of these dead zones is an ecological time bomb,” Scavia says, that was threatening Gulf fisheries even before the spill.

For the fourth consecutive year, the University of Michigan received a record number of applications from prospective freshmen, and applications and paid deposits are up for underrepresented minority students.

Black people with cancer are up to twice as likely as other races to die from their disease. “Black cancer patients don’t fare as well as whites. Their cancers are diagnosed at a later stage, the care they receive is often not as good—or they get no care at all,” says U-M’s Arden Morris, M.D., M.P.H.

“What our study suggests is that many [newly discovered DNA] variants are associated with changes in glucose levels long before people get diabetes,” said U-M’s Michael Boehnke, a co-leader of the study.

Related:

• “Security guard” zinc is off-duty in diabetes

Designed to connect students, faculty and staff, Michigan is a free iPhone app that provides access to university information. With a few taps on an iPhone people now can search for somebody in the U-M directory, navigate campus, access the Magic Bus system and even check out what’s being served in the dining halls.

“These findings raise serious doubts about the belief that the type of political regime and the level of health care spending exert major influences on population health,” says U-M’s Jose A. Tapia Granados.