Ohio native Kyle Kondik is at Sabato’s Crystal Ball at UVA’s Center for Politics. He noted Ohio’s delegation has been shrinking since a high of 24 seats in 1973. And he also finds the timing of the decision of a Democratic Congressman to join Ohio’s open US Senate race matches up with this Census announcement. “If you gave Tim Ryan a truth serum, he probably would admit that part of the reason he’s running for Senate is because his district won, frankly, isn’t all that Democratic anymore, and too, is seems likely to be dismantled as part of this redistricting process,” Kondik said.
Kyle Kondik, an elections analyst with the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, also projected that Republicans could see most of the gains under the new lines. GOP officials will control the map-drawing process in Texas, Florida, and North Carolina, and will be favored to gain in Montana and Oregon as well, for an edge in six of the seven new seats being drawn, he said. “On balance, Republicans should benefit from these changes — not necessarily by doing better in the states losing seats, but rather by potentially picking up the lion’s share of the new seats in the states gaining dis...
Joe Biden's presidency has come as advertised: more calm and less chaos after the 1,461-day roller-coaster presidency of Donald Trump. "Biden is often called boring," said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics.
Congress passed a massive and far-reaching $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief and economic stimulus bill and appears poised to approve a jobs and infrastructure spending measure later this year, fulfilling key campaign promises by Biden. “Biden was a focused candidate in that regard,” said Kyle Kondik, an analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “He talked about the pandemic a lot, talked about the economy a lot,” Kondik told Al Jazeera.
With semiregular speeches, few news interviews and no unscripted tweets, Biden has fashioned himself the foil of the previous president. “He’s a fairly calm, rational person and he is a thoughtful person and he just is the antithesis, I think, of Donald Trump in terms of persona and style,” said Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at UVA’s Miller Center. “I think that has come across and calmed the country.”
"I'm usually a hard grader, but I give Biden an 'A,' a full 'A,' said Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia Center of Politics. "It is important and significant that President Biden has been able to get support among Independents and even a sliver of Republicans because it's a big country. It's a controversial country and we all have to live together."
Over 5 million people scheduled to get the COVID-19 vaccine did not show up to their appointment for the second dose. “The mRNA vaccine is incredibly effective after even just one dose, but even more protection is available after both doses.” Dr. Petri, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Virginia said. Petri says he thinks some people have been hesitant to get the second dose of the vaccine after Johnson and Johnson was paused.
When the University of Virginia Medical Center set out on the design of its University Hospital Expansion project in November 2013, the plan called for expansion of its emergency department, surgical suite and a new six-story inpatient tower. But when the new inpatient tower was only months from completion, the pandemic hit, prompting UVA to rethink the project’s design and make some last-minute changes, according to Health Facilities Management.
Dr. Steven Zeichner and others at the University of Virginia have been studying when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. “We thought if we have these technologies that we think can be beneficial, we really should re-tool and re-orient and see if we can do something,” Zeichner told News 3. He and others across UVA and Virginia Tech have been working on a new COVID-19 vaccine. “We wanted to come up with a vaccine that would be appropriate for the whole world,” he said.
Scientists at the University of Virginia report what may be an important medical breakthrough. Laboratory testing shows the use of two cheap oral drugs can treat a common form of anemia.
The answer to why some patients die unexpectedly following an epileptic seizure may finally have been answered in new research from the University of Virginia School of Medicine. Through looking at a certain type of seizure in a mouse model of epilepsy, researchers found that death occurs only when the seizure induces failure of the respiratory system.
Teasing out the measurement was a lot like “knowing you got this tiger by the tail,” Kent Paschke, a physicist at the University of Virginia and co-author of the new study, said. It took three months of intense runs of the laser, enduring power outages and round-the-clock monitoring of the system. The team wasn’t sure if they’d be able to complete the work in the three months they were given. But ultimately, the atomic-scale marathon turned up an exact measurement, one that redefines our understanding of the size of the neutron skin.
The University of Virginia has eased limits on indoor and outdoor gatherings due to the lower number of COVID-19 cases in the area and increasing vaccination rates. Students in the UVA community can now gather in groups of up to 25 people indoors, which is up from six.
Blowing out birthday candles is a tradition that has been around for centuries, but this celebratory ritual may be going away, as one UVA alum is debuting a cleaner way of making a wish. “Nobody’s handing you the hamburger and blowing on it and being like, ‘Here’s your hamburger. I just blew on it for you,’” Mark Apelt said. When Apelt was out with friends before the pandemic, he had an idea.
(Commentary by former U.S. surgeon general Jerome Adams, writing in his private capacity as a Darden dean’s fellow) We can’t reach the COVID-19 finish line with only half the herd. To finish this race and safely reopen, we urgently need to make it easier for holdouts to get vaccinated and implement new strategies to encourage them to do so.
(Video) The CDC is easing restrictions on masks, allowing those who are fully vaccinated to unmask for some outdoor activities. UVA critical care and infectious disease physician and medical ICU director Dr. Taison Bell discussed the latest coronavirus news.
[UVA alumnus] Jiajun Zhu is the cofounder of Nuro, a robotics company based in Mountain View, California, that develops fully hands-free, self-driving delivery vehicles. Founded in 2016 by Zhu and his fellow former Google teammate, Dave Ferguson, Nuro recently hit the headlines after its flagship R2 model started making autonomous pizza deliveries in Houston after a successful team-up with Domino’s Pizza. If the idea of getting your Margherita delivered to your door by an autonomous delivery bot appeals, you’re in luck – if Zhu’s ambitions play out, you’ll soon be getting everything from pizza...
Astronomers could watch how gamma rays or radio signals from the candidates change over time to double-check that these objects aren’t really pulsars. Researchers could also look for optical or infrared signals that might indicate the candidates are actually black holes. “Obviously this is still preliminary … but it’s interesting,” says Julian Heeck, a physicist at the University of Virginia not involved in the work.
(Podcast) Chloé Zhao became the first woman of color to win Best Director and Best Picture for “Nomadland” at Sunday’s Academy Awards. Hollywood celebrated, but in Zhao’s native China, mentions of her huge night were reportedly scrubbed from the internet and social media, and the state-run media barely reported on the Oscars. The censure is the result of Zhao’s history of criticizing the Chinese government, says Aynne Kokas, author of “Hollywood Made in China” anda UVA associate professor of media studies.
“These deaths are still happening -- and they happen to well-meaning parents,” said Dr. Rachel Moon, a UVA pediatrician who chairs the American Academy of Pediatrics task force on SIDS and authored the AAP policy statement on safe infant sleep. “We have remained at the same rate of sleep-related deaths since around 1998,” she added. “And the rate in the U.S. is much higher than that in most developed -- and even some not-so-developed countries.”