Getting that jab now, before a widespread surge in the U.S., might be the best bet at preventing serious illness. “I think hearing that you might need another shot, in some aspects, is demoralizing for some,” said Dr. Taison Bell at UVA Health. Booster turnout nationally hasn’t been as high as doctors hoped. “There’s a feeling from when we first released the vaccines that, this is it. Once I get the vaccine, things are done,” added Bell.
“Recognize that we are going to be in some degree of a pandemic for a time to come,” said Dr. Kyle Enfield, acting chief medical officer of critical care at the University of Virginia. Enfield said this variant seems to have some mutations with the spike protein that may allow it to escape antibodies produced by the immune system. “We don’t think that omicron will take vaccines back to square one or the absence of vaccines,” he said. “But it may, like delta, lead to some more breakthrough infections.”
Representing industries ranging from retail and fitness to tech and biosciences, these creative, visionary trendsetters and entrepreneurs keep the Old Dominion new and relevant. (The list includes alumna and former Cavalier diver Tracy Tynan, director of the Virginia Unmanned Systems Center.)
The omicron variant of coronavirus is new and different, but a University of Virginia infectious disease expert is cautioning the public to not assume it’s more dangerous. “I would say the word right now is diligence. And being cautious,” said Dr. Taison D. Bell, an assistant professor of medicine at UVA’s division of infectious diseases and international health, as well as the division of pulmonary/critical care medicine.
“We’d all like to let our guard down,” said Dr. William Petri, chief of the division of infectious diseases and international health at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. But “it behooves us to continue doing the common sense things that protect other people, like wearing masks when you’re in the grocery store,” he said.
Overshadowing the case is the Supreme Court’s still-pending decision in a separate dispute over Texas’ unprecedented six-week abortion ban, SB8, which has been in effect for nearly three months and dominated national headlines. “SB8 has the effect of making the Mississippi statute look quite moderate,” UVA law professor Julia Mahoney said. “So in a sense, upholding the Mississippi statute looks now like kind of a middle ground.”
A festival that supports area families battling childhood cancer has gotten a big boost from a local fuel company. According to a release, Tiger Fuel Company is making a $20,000 holiday contribution to JackFest. JackFest is named for a local boy, Jack Callahan, who beat metastatic cancer following 13 months of intensive treatment in 2019 and 2020. JackFest fundraising efforts benefit the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Charlottesville and the Pediatric Oncology unit at UVA Children’s.
(Press release) This year’s Little Giraffe Foundation’s NICU Support Grant recipients include UVA Children’s Hospital – $1,000 for heartbeat bears for memory-making that will be given to families who have lost a child in the NICU.
A new art exhibit at UVA Health is helping women and men heal, and build relationships, after life-changing diagnoses. The Bodice Project’s exhibit outside of UVA Health’s Battle Building gives a window inside the lives touched by breast cancer.
Over the last two decades, the foreign-born population in Virginia and in the metropolitan Richmond area has increased exponentially, going from 1 in 100 people in 1970 to 1 in 9 in 2012, based on University of Virginia research.
The Integrated Translational Health Institute of Virginia has developed an online tool to collect COVID-19 related information from volunteers who are Virginia residents. The iTHRIV research team is led by Don Brown and Johanna Loomba at the University of Virginia, with guidance provided by a cross-state group of advisers.
Almost 15 years ago, Robert Gilliard posed for a photo in front of MIT’s Great Dome. At the time, he was an undergraduate at Clemson University visiting MIT with his research adviser. Just last month, Gilliard arranged a similar photo in front of the dome. This time, though, he was the professor behind the camera, wrangling his own students. Gilliard, a UVA assistant professor of chemistry, is back working in experimental chemistry alongside MIT Dreyfus Professor of Chemistry Christopher “Kit” Cummins with the 2021-22 cohort of Martin Luther King Visiting Professors and Scholars.
How do so many incompetent men bluster their way into high office? The short answer is confidence. There is, of course, a class element to this. One of the most valuable aspects of an elite education may well be the entitlement it imbues. A series of recent studies by researchers from Stanford University and the University of Virginia found that “individuals with relatively high social class are more overconfident.” Others buy into the hype. The result is that “advantages beget advantages.”
UVA scientists have investigated how the behavior of Antarctic fish has changed as a result of the warming of the Southern Ocean. The authors of the new work studied the changes in the behavior of marine animals in the Southern Ocean to understand how they would respond to heat stress caused by the increase in temperature.
UVA’s Darden School of Business tied for No. 9 out of 84 U.S. schools in the 2021-2022 Bloomberg Businessweek Best B-Schools MBA list, released this week.
The University of Virginia, founded by Thomas Jefferson, is taking yet another step into the future thanks to its 21st-century School of Data Science. The new educational building broke ground this fall, with a projected opening for early in 2024.
Researchers may have solved a mystery about the origins of Earth’s water, finding the sun to be a surprising source. The scientists describe how new analysis of an ancient asteroid suggests extra-terrestrial dust grains carried water to Earth as the planet formed. Researchers from several institutions, including UVA, contributed to the paper.
Soothing scents can also help, says Terrell Smith, a UVA resident physician and the founding physician of Spora Health, a telehealth platform for people of color. “Consider getting a diffuser for your kitchen, bedroom, home office or bathroom, and try ‘happy’ scents, such as bergamot, orange and lemon,” he says.
UVA Health is one of the few places in the country sequencing COVID in its lab. This will tell doctors exactly when the new variant is in the area.
Age-based restrictions on obtaining a firearm are not conclusive in reducing injury and death of young people, according to a of panel of researchers from Duke University and UVA.