(Podcast; subscription required) This week’s “Ahead of the Curve” breaks down the University of Virginia School of Law’s impressive hiring cycle, which has brought in nine new faculty members, including plenty of laterals with sterling resumes.
(By Daniel T. Willingham, psychology professor) Before the pandemic, the average American child between 8 and 18 played video games for an hour and 20 minutes a day, and if my kids are representative, that figure skyrocketed this past year. Like many parents, I gave in to increased gaming time but gravely told my children they should choose educational games. Unlike many parents, I knew my rule made no sense.
Longtime Virginia political observer Larry Sabato, director of UVA’s Center for Politics, said that even if the Democratic nominee is Terry McAuliffe, a powerful, well-connected fundraiser, Youngkin will pose a threat. “I think McAuliffe has to take him seriously. I’ve heard Youngkin can spend $30 million or more of his own money, in addition to state and national dollars. This is real money, and even McAuliffe will have a hard time competing with that kind of money,” Sabato said.
A new analysis done for Poets&Quants by PayScale shows that the MBA – even from schools that lack global or national cache – delivers hefty seven-figure income over a post-MBA lifetime. And if you were lucky enough to earn your MBA from one of five schools – Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, Dartmouth or Virginia – your estimated median pay would surpass $8 million over a 35-year period. The bottom line: Despite the high costs of the degree, the long-term returns on the education are not in dispute. “Education should be a dream machine through which talented students come from anywhere – and go...
Dr. Ed Diener passed away Tuesday, April 27, 2021, in Salt Lake City. After completing his doctorate in psychology at the University of Washington, Ed joined the psychology department at the University of Illinois in 1974. He was a Joseph R. Smiley Distinguished Professor of Psychology at his retirement in 2009. He continued to conduct research and teach at the University of Utah and University of Virginia. Known as “Dr. Happiness,” Ed is credited with being a pioneer of research into well-being. For 40 years, Ed investigated the psychological concept of happiness. His measure of life satisfac...
Last week, Jonathan Kuttab, a UVA Law alumnus, Palestinian-American lawyer and a leader among Palestinian activists, now residing in Virginia, spoke at a conference sponsored by overseas supporters of the Israeli Labor Party, and elaborated on his recently published book, “Beyond the Two-State Solution,” asking: “How about a state where any Jew, any time, no questions asked, can go and live where he doesn’t need to defend himself?”
(Commentary) Michael Bills is going long on Virginia politics. “There are voices that deserve to be heard,” said Bills, a UVA alumnus and a Charlottesville hedge fund guy. He, his political action committee and his wife, lawyer Sonjia Smith, collectively have given $6.7 million this campaign season to Democratic candidates who share their left-of-center, bright-green agenda, which includes shackling Dominion Energy.
William Scott lived an extraordinary life until someone took it from him earlier this week. Scott, 97, died after being shot to death. Two suspects, Mark Fleck and Devin Young, are accused of murdering him. “He was the smartest guy we ever knew,” his cousin Jeffrey Payne said. “He went to the University of Virginia got his master’s in engineering. Then went to Idaho Falls and worked with the nuclear research they were doing there after the war. Then back to Virginia, Newport News. He worked on the shipyard there and worked on nuclear reactors for aircraft carriers. Just incredibly smart.”
With her Hockney level talent, [UVA alumna] Uzo Njoku is the name to know in the art world right now. The buzzy newcomer has just opened her first exhibition, “A Space of My Own,” with Voltz Clarke Gallery in New York. She tells The Daily how she feels about being dubbed a breakout star and her unconventional path to success.
(Commentary) So how does Brooks Averell Ames – a St. Paul Prep School, University of Virginia, Boston Law School graduate, member of The Country Club, who was employed by a prestigious blue chip law firm in downtown Boston – become entangled in a lawsuit defending a Black firefighter’s civil rights against the Town of Brookline? Far too many lawyers I’m acquainted with in this Town drape themselves in “Civil Rights” banners across their chests, yet not one of them came within 10 miles of defending the Black firefighter who found the “N” word had been left on his cell phone by his white supervi...
(By environmental sciences student Shivani Lakshman, an intern at the High Atlas Foundation) Climate change is likely the most urgent crisis facing us in the 21st century. Rising temperatures are causing increasingly frequent and severe natural disasters, more droughts and heat waves, precipitation changes, and sea level rise. Consequently, this is leading to high levels of food insecurity, mass displacements, the spread of disease, and many other social, economic, and political challenges worldwide.
The University of Virginia has now been certified as a "Bee Campus" by the Xerces Society, thanks to the efforts of two graduate students. Emily Spindler and Kelsey Schoenemann are both in the UVA Department of Environmental Science.
Justin Thompson, a senior associate dean and chief operating officer at the University of Virginia, said directing money for a surplus could allow officials to direct more money for research in the long term because it provides GW with financial flexibility. “Inevitably, those investments – some portion of future investments from this so-called surplus – will be made in faculty research, so it’s not really a debate about research or not research, as a matter of research now or research and other investments later,” he said.
(Video) University of Virginia Political Science Chair Jennifer Lawless spoke to the “nuttiness quotient” in the midterm elections, as the Republican in-fighting around Representative Liz Cheney’s leadership has exposed serious rifts in the party.
The UVA Center for Politics’ executive director, Larry Sabato, said whichever GOP candidates come out on top will have an uphill battle in November. “What the Republicans are trying to do is to nominate somebody who can actually win a general election in a state where Democrats have won every significant election for over a decade,” Sabato said. “That’s going to be tough to do.”
Larry J. Sabato, the director of UVA’s Center for Politics, said the Republican candidates for governor this year fit into three categories: “Trumpy, Trumpier, Trumpiest.” By embracing the former president, who lost Virginia by 10 percentage points last year, Republicans are trading electability in the general election for viability in a primary. “They play the Republican nominating game very well, but they go so far to the right that most people find them offensive,” Sabato said. “It’s not respectable anymore for well-educated people to identify with the Trump G.O.P.”
Political observers said the arrangement was “unseemly,” but likely legal, so long as the rent is not inflated. Suozzi’s campaign provided documents showing it was paying market rate. “It’s absolutely not good. You shouldn’t use running for office or serving in office to enrich yourself in any form. Trump was a master of this,” Larry Sabato, a UVA political scientist, said.
Available data shows mRNA vaccines remain above the protection threshold established by regulatory agencies, although there is still the chance boosters would be needed earlier than after increased hospitalisations, particularly in certain at-risk subpopulations, noted Dr Steven Zeichner, professor, UVA Department of Pediatrics and Microbiology.
When it comes to treating COVID-19, by now most of us have heard of Remdesivir, the antiviral drug given to former President Donald Trump and used to treat hospitalized patients. But what many may not know is there’s another successful treatment, available right now, for those who have underlying conditions. “What we like to do is prevent you from having come into hospital,” said Dr. Bill Petri, a UVA professor of infectious disease. Petri said antibody infusions are doing just that.
Dr. Amy Mathers and her team of infectious disease specialists at UVA are tracking variants of COVID-19 in Central Virginia, studying nearly every single positive case in our region. “It’s been pretty interesting. We’ve been trying to get all sequences of all positive cases done since Feb. 1, so we’ve been watching a change in emergence of the different variants,” Mathers said in a press briefing hosted by UVA Health on Friday.