Associated Press writer Josh Funk contributed to this report.

“They wrote my name in blood on the floor in front of the House, in front of the governor’s office,” Ryan said. “They were trying, hectic times, frankly.”His willingness to set aside party orthodoxy sometimes put him at odds with more conservative Republicans.

He led a failed effort in 1989 to get the General Assembly to restrict assault weapons. He backed gambling expansion. He became the first governor to visit Cuba since Fidel Castro took power. And in 2000, after signing off on the execution of one killer, he decided not to carry out any more. He imposed a moratorium on executions and began reviewing reforms to a judicial system that repeatedly sentenced innocent men to die.Ultimately, Ryan decided no reforms would provide the certainty he wanted. In virtually his last act as governor, he emptied death row with pardons and commutations in 2003.“Because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious — and therefore immoral — I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death,” Ryan said.

Ryan found himself mentioned as a contender for the Nobel Peace Prize at the same time federal prosecutors were closing in. Before year’s end, he would be charged with taking payoffs, gifts and vacations in return for steering government contracts and leases to cronies, as well as lying to investigators and cheating on his taxes.Much of the illegal activity took place during Ryan’s two terms as Illinois secretary of state, including the 1994 deaths of six children. They burned to death after their minivan struck a part that had fallen off a truck whose driver got his license illegally from Ryan’s office.

Federal investigators found that Ryan had turned the secretary of state’s office into an arm of his political campaign, pressuring employees for contributions — some of which came through bribes from unqualified truck drivers for licenses. After the children’s deaths, Ryan also gutted the part of his office responsible for rooting out corruption.

Then as governor, he steered millions of dollars in state leases and contracts to political insiders who in turn provided gifts such as trips to a Jamaican resort and $145,000 loans to his brother’s struggling business, investigators found. He was convicted on all charges April 17, 2006.Following the 2010 tragedy, city officials, with help from public health and heat experts, devised an action plan to warn citizens when the heat is at dangerous levels and prepare city hospitals to respond rapidly to heat-related illness. The plan has been replicated across India and other parts of South Asia.

The last two years have been theand researchers hope their work can provide an additional line of defense for those who bear the brunt of increasing heat.

The Ahmedabad study is only one part of a global research project examining how heat is affecting poor, vulnerable communities in four cities across the world. Researchers also are measuring heat impacts using smartwatches and other devices in Africa’s Burkina Faso, the Pacific island of Niue near New Zealand and in the Sonoran desert region in Mexico.More than 1.1 billion people — about one-eighth of the world’s population — live in informal settlements and poor neighborhoods that are particularly vulnerable, said Aditi Bunker, environmental health researcher associated with the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and Heidelberg University, Germany, who is leading the global project.