Take a fresh look at Alfred Eistenstaedt’s famous “Drum Major,” photographed on the University of Michigan campus in 1950. “It was early in the morning,” Eisenstaedt said about the photograph taken on assignment for LIFE, covering U-M’s nationally famous marching band. He spotted the school’s drum major, Richard (Dick) Smith, practicing. Then, Eisenstaedt said, “I saw a little boy running after him, and all the faculty children on the playing field ran after the boy. And I ran after them. This is a completely spontaneous, unstaged picture.” (Note: Time incorrectly identified the drum major as “David” Smith.)

It comes as a surprise to no one that the top public school in the Midwest remains University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. U-M is the No. 5 public school overall, and No. 3 state school (excluding the service academies.)

Mercury pollution from power plants in China and India is making its way into fish in waters near Hawaii, according to new research from the University of Michigan. In a new study, published August 25 in the journal Nature Geoscience, Michigan researchers say that mercury produced by the coal-burning power plants in these northern Pacific countries travels thousands of miles through the air before rainfall deposits it on the ocean floor near Hawaii.

Google expects its driverless car will be ready for consumers in the next three-five years. GM thinks intelligent vehicles will be on the roads by 2020. Ford predicts 2025. And researchers at the University of Michigan are making sure the Great Lakes State is front-and-center in developing and testing the connected vehicle technology that is essential to the self-driving car.

Scientists from the University of Michigan recorded electroencephalogram (EEG) signals in nine anesthetized rats after inducing cardiac arrest. Within the first 30 seconds after the heart had stopped, all the mammals displayed a surge of highly synchronized brain activity that had features associated with consciousness and visual activation. The burst of electrical patterns even exceeded levels seen during a normal, awake state. In other words, they may have been having the rodent version of a near-death experience.

Computer scientists at the University of Michigan have made a big technological advance for researchers who study the Internet and how people use it, cutting the time necessary to survey the whole of the network from two or three months to just 44 minutes—and cutting the cost accordingly. That means it’s possible to take meaningful snapshots of the Internet at various points in time and compare them in ways that may reveal behavioral trends, security problems, and other information.

Archaeologists think they are catching a glimpse of Roman tastes in monumental architecture much earlier than previously thought, about 300 years before the Colosseum. They have uncovered ruins of a vast complex of stone walls and terraces connected by a grand stairway and surrounded by many rooms, a showcase of wealth and power spread over an area more than half the size of a football field. The discovery was made last summer by a team of archaeologists and students led by Nicola Terrenato, a professor of classical studies at the University of Michigan and a native of Rome.

At least that’s the upshot of a recent survey conducted by Net Impact, a nonprofit group that encourages young people to pursue careers in sustainability. Eighty-five percent of the more than 3,300 students who responded to the survey said they would take a 15-percent pay cut to work for an organization with values that match their own.

Sure, Facebook can make you feel as if you’ve got all the friends in the world, but some days it can also make you feel as if the world is out to get you. Or at least that’s what a new study from the University of Michigan seems to suggest. According to researchers, the more you use Facebook, the more unhappy you are likely to be. “Everyday Facebook use leads to declines in subjective well-being, both how happy you feel moment to moment and how satisfied you feel with your life,” says Ethan Kross, an assistant professor of psychology at U-M and a co-author of the study.