U.S. News & World Report once again ranked the University of Michigan Hospitals and Health Centers best in Michigan. The annual rankings are based on several factors, including patient survival rates, patient safety, nurse staffing, reputation with specialists, and breadth of patient services.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently approved a bionic eye, and soon it will be available for those who need it in Michigan. The U-M Kellogg Eye Center will be one of only 13 centers in the country to offer the retinal implant.

Horizontal fracking has made it easier and cheaper to extract natural gas and oil from shale deposits in the U.S. and around the globe. Horizontal fracking has meant a boom in gas drilling in the U.S. and it’s meant more jobs in certain areas of the country. It’s meant less dependence on foreign sources for energy. And because burning natural gas emits about half the CO2 emissions of coal or oil, it means less of the greenhouse gases that are causing climate change. But the extraordinary expansion of natural gas extraction through this use of horizontal hydraulic fracturing is causing some real concerns about risks to air and water quality. Andy Hoffman, a professor of sustainable enterprise at the University of Michigan, weighs in.

U-M’s Ross School of Business is rolling out a new master of management program designed for recent graduates in the liberal arts, sciences, and engineering who want a business credential that will help them compete for jobs. The 10-month, full-time program, which is expected to cost about $41,000 for Michigan residents and $46,000 for nonresidents, will cover the basics of general management and serve a younger group of students than Ross’ MBA program. The first cohort begins in July 2014.

An estimated 11.5 million undocumented migrants live in the United States. Most have come in from Mexico, eluding border patrol agents and cheating death along the way. Crossing from Mexico to the U.S. on foot is a formidable undertaking. It’s the poor and the desperate from all over Latin America who undertake this journey—men, women, and children willing to take monumental risks for a fresh start. Since 2009 U-M anthropologist Jason de León has been recording the gritty details of the story through his Undocumented Migration Project. So far, de León’s team has collected 10,000 artifacts that testify to the sometimes tragic journeys. The team also photographs objects just as they’re found in the desert.

After graduating from the University of Michigan in 1998, Brian Mulloy followed the path of many of his classmates, fleeing his home state for a job in a bustling city. But after 10 years of working in technology startups in San Francisco, he has returned as founder of a company in Detroit’s budding technology sector. Mr. Mulloy is part of a group of workers that Detroit is suddenly hungry for—software developers and information technology specialists who can create applications for the next generation of connected vehicles. “You’re going to see developers set up shop in Detroit because they’re going to follow the money,” Mr. Mulloy says, “and there will be lots of money.”

What happens to empathy as we age? In recent studies, U-M researcher Sara Konrath, PhD, found that the youngest and the oldest adults had the lowest empathy, while middle-aged adults had the highest empathy. Women also had higher empathy than men. Overall, the most empathetic people in the United States are women in their late 50s and early 60s.