“All else being equal, when we’re alone, our brain is a little more vigilant for any signs of danger. Also, our brain perceives demands from the world as more demanding than they would be if we had someone with us,” UVA psychology professor James Coan said. “And there’s a really simple reason for it: It’s that the world is more demanding when we’re alone, because anything that the world demands of us when we’re alone, we have to do by ourselves.”
Kitty Joyner was not only the first woman to graduate from the University of Virginia’s engineering program, but she also went on to become the NACA’s first woman engineer, getting her first job with the agency in 1939. She worked first for the NACA and then for NASA until her retirement in 1971, making significant contributions to research on aeronautics, supersonic flight, and airfoil designs.
(Commentary) Originalist legal scholars such as UVA Law professor Larry Solum have delved deeply into analytic philosophy of language to articulate how their efforts to find the original meaning of constitutional language relate to social and historical facts that bear on that interpretive enterprise. In no sense is this a kind of “literalism.”
The brisk fundraising since the violent protest indicates that most Republican voters are “comfortable” with the party that has been remade in Trump’s mold, says J. Miles Coleman, a nonpartisan analyst at the UVA Center for Politics. “The Republican Party — it’s not going to go back to the party it was before Trump,” he said.
With Virginia limiting its governors to a single term, Ralph Northam can’t run for re-election this year. It’s still startling that he’ll manage to finish out this term. Back in 2019, Northam was embroiled in scandal. A photo on his medical school yearbook page showed a man in blackface. At first, the Democrat said he was in the photo, then he denied it. “Everybody in the Democratic Party that mattered demanded Northam’s resignation, not just in Virginia but nationally,” recalls Larry Sabato, who directs UVA’s Center for Politics.
After living in Virginia for most of the life, Larry Sabato has now been remembering the segregated racially schools and their systematic efforts in stopping the Black people voting. Now he, at 68, has observed that the state has diversified enough and now has embraced the liberal values. It has shifted from the symbol of this old South to the symbol of the quite new.
Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a newsletter produced by UVA’s Center for Politics, downgraded the Missouri Senate race from “safe Republican” to “likely Republican,” still favoring the eventual GOP candidate. “We’ll see if Democrats can get a good recruit here,” said J. Miles Coleman, associate editor of the newsletter.
Historically, this level of involvement among young American voters has been scarce, if not nonexistent. In recent history, the U.S. has had one of the lowest youth voter turnouts of anywhere in the world. “In U.S. presidential elections, about 70% of voters 60 and up have turned out — which is nearly three times the rate of Americans between 18 and 29,” UVA public policy professor John Holbein wrote recently in the Conversation.
Companies contribute to these funds on behalf of workers through payments negotiated with unions, but they are less heavily regulated than single-employer plans, in part because they were presumed to be safer. For a number of reasons, that has turned out not to be the case. “This is not a new problem...,” said James Naughton, a former actuary and an associate professor at UVA’s Darden School of Business. “This is a problem that’s been around for at least 15 years.”
(Podcast) Throughout his presidential campaign, Joe Biden called for national reforms to police practices and civil rights. What specific policies might the Biden Administration and Congress pursue in the months and years ahead? To discuss these issues, on Feb. 25, the Gray Center hosted the fourth event in its webinar series, “The Administrative State in Transition.” The panel discussion included Rachel Harmon of the UVA School of Law.
“Watching the storming of the Capitol on January the 6th ... definitely brought back memories of the scene in Charlottesville during the summer of hate,” says Claudrena Harold, chair of history at the University of Virginia and co-editor of “Charlottesville 2017: The Legacy of Race and Inequity.”
International Women’s Day spotlight: 32 thoughts on leadership from women in the healthcare industry
In honor of International Women’s Day March 8, Becker’s Hospital Review asked women in the health care industry to share their insights on leadership. … Dr. Tracey Hoke, Chief of Quality and Performance Improvement for UVA Health: “When I was a little girl, my mom used to tell me that I could accomplish anything that I set my mind to. Now that I serve on a nearly all-female hospital leadership team, it is clear to me that other moms must have been deliberately building strength, confidence and resilience in their girls as well. This generation of women in leadership has extended the success of...
Researchers think manageable stress increases alertness and performance. “When we experience stress, we have an increase in arousal, which signals to us that something important is happening,” explains Bethany Teachman, a UVA professor of psychology. “If we appraise the situation as challenging but manageable, then the arousal helps us focus and direct effort toward addressing the challenge. Think about how difficult it is to give a good presentation or performance if you feel no arousal at all.”
“Blocking references to ‘Nomadland’ underscores China’s new power position,” said media studies professor Aynne Kokas, referring to the online censorship. “As the world’s largest market, there is much less need to bring Hollywood studio films into the market.”
For the first time in his nearly 16 years on the Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Roberts has filed a solo dissent. In it, he bluntly accused his colleagues of a “radical expansion” of the court’s jurisdiction. … The results of Thursday’s decision are simply unclear, University of Virginia law professor Ann Woolhandler said. The decision is out of keeping with other recent Supreme Court decisions, she observed.
As more people get vaccinated, researchers are screening thousands of infected samples looking for signs of mutations. According to Dr. William Petri, a UVA infectious disease specialist, researchers are analyzing randomized samples at a lab in Richmond right now. “It’s actually kind of hard, because you have to sequence the virus, and the virus has 30,000 bases in it,” he said.
On Thursday, Chancellor Jeremy Haefner hosted the final session of DU’s 20th annual Diversity Summit. Haefner spoke with Dr. Kevin McDonald, vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion at the University of Virginia, about antiracism and the complex institutional history which universities hold.
(By Dr. William Petri, professor of medicine) If you’ve been vaccinated for COVID-19, is it safe to gather with friends and loved ones in person? According to guidelines issued Monday by the Centers from Disease Control and Prevention, yes, fully vaccinated people can gather in small groups with other fully vaccinated people. And you can do that without the encumbrance of a mask or social distancing.
Researchers at the University of Virginia Medical Center have struggled to practicalize predictive software applied to COVID treatment guidance. “These algorithms have been proliferating, which is great, but there’s been far less attention placed on how to ethically use them,” one medical scientist tells Morrison. “Very few algorithms even make it to any kind of clinical setting.”
A new method of monitoring communications within the brain may help explain why Alzheimer’s drugs have limited effectiveness. Scientists at the University of Virginia School of Medicine developed the tool.