Howard Epstein, head of environmental studies at the University of Virginia, tracked changes in Arctic vegetation for the report card, and said that this year’s edition highlights variability, geographically and in time. Greenery has increased in some parts of the Arctic but declined in others. “From a vegetation perspective, the surprise for me is the changing dynamics,” he said. From about 1990 to 2010, the Arctic greened steadily, but since then, it has “been flat or decreasing,” he added.
In Virginia, leaders use a model developed by the Biocomplexity Institute at the University of Virginia. UVA doesn’t prioritize coming up with exact case numbers, calling it “impossible and unnecessary.” “The model that we provide the state is not about forecasts or predictions at all, it's about various possible scenarios, and the possible state of the system after a certain period of time,” said Madhav Marathe, one of the researchers who works with the UVA model.
The University of Virginia says three new endowed professorships will be created thanks to recent gifts from an alumni couple.
With warnings of a possible holiday surge of COVID-19 cases and many hospitals and health systems across the country overwhelmed with patients, UVA Health officials are preparing for the worst and hoping for the best.
While vaccine distribution is on the horizon here in the Charlottesville area, testing will continue throughout much of next year. Officials with Sentara Martha Jefferson and UVA Health say the hospital systems have performed thousands of tests over the past few months and there are no plans to stop anytime soon.
We are just one week out from the distribution of the very first COVID-19 vaccines in Charlottesville. UVA Health employees will be some of the first to receive it. The health system will be distributing the Pfizer vaccine to its high-risk, frontline health care workers on its medical campus starting as early as Tuesday.
(Book review) Painter, engineer, anatomist, the designer of torture devices as well as machines to break men out of prison, Leonardo is heralded as the “real Renaissance man.” Never mind that this notion is reductive and plain wrong – or so argues UVA art historian Francesca Fiorani in her new book, “The Shadow Drawing.”
UVA researchers have recently presented a case series pointing to a potential association between infection with SARS-CoV-2 and the development of acute appendicitis in children.
(Commentary by Deborah Parker, professor of Italian) From the onset, I wanted to teach in person. I’ve found Zoom meetings tedious and think students already spend too much time in front of computer screens. I wanted to engage students directly, knowing that meeting in person would be more fulfilling for both them and me.
A group of criminologists and law professors has challenged a new report by the Pretrial Justice Institute that says pretrial risk assessment instruments used by many judges to help determine which defendants should be released while their cases are pending are dangerous and have unintended consequences. Risk assessment tools “can support the effectiveness of other reform efforts,” contends the group, led by James Austin of the JFA Institute, Sarah Desmarais of North Carolina State University and University of Virginia law Prof. John Monahan.
The UVA Center for Politics says a convention can lead to candidates further to the right or left of their respective party. "They tend to draw the attention of more party loyalists, more of your hardcore partisans," said J. Miles Coleman, associate editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball.
Despite the increase in projected doses, health experts are warning that early vaccinations will not drastically control the spread of the virus. Bryan Lewis, a computational epidemiologist at the University of Virginia, says that’s an intentional part of the distribution design. “What we’re really trying to do with these first doses is protect the people who need to be protected the most,” he said. “These first shipments of this vaccine are mainly targeting saving lives and allowing the hospitals to function.”
Among the 60 highest-ranked business schools, Texas A&M University led all schools with five accounting faculty from underrepresented groups. They made up 12% of the total accounting faculty. The University of Virginia and Cornell University had higher percentages of accounting faculty from underrepresented groups, but a smaller total number. Some 36 of the nation’s leading business schools had no faculty members from underrepresented groups who were teaching accounting.
A University of Virginia COVID-19 model projects that cases here will continue to trend upward until the end of February.
The most startling statistic from Takeoff’s new research report, conducted in partnership with Timothy Lasseter, professor at the Darden Business School at the University of Virginia, is that the percentage of shoppers who shopped exclusively for groceries online pre- and post-pandemic barely moved at all.
Though there are likely many contributors to the emergence of Lyme disease (including climate change), researchers think changes in land use have played a major role. That’s why scientists like Pyrros Telionis, a postdoctoral researcher at UVA’s Biocomplexity Institute, are studying how land cover affects Lyme disease risk.
Robert Pianta, the dean of UVA’s School of Education and Human Development, said simultaneously teaching in-person and online puts unprecedented pressure on educators, who are largely left to improvise in the absence of research or established best practices.
Through personal tragedy and professional triumph, a UVA School of Nursing professor is helping to make the final moments of life a little more equitable for all. In 2017, Kim Acquaviva published a book about LBGTQ hospice and palliative care inclusion.
Two York County brothers are working to help people in the community affected by COVID-19. Jeffrey and Sabian Beyon started sewing face masks back in April after they were inspired to help. [Sabian is a second-year student at UVA.]
The Empire State Building is 1,250 feet tall. I have since learned that because a penny’s lightweight, flat round shape, and the fact that it experiences a lot of air resistance would most likely not kill someone if tossed from the Empire State Building. However, according to Louis Bloomfield, physicist at the University of Virginia, “falling ballpoint pens are the real danger. If someone nonchalantly tossed one of those off the top of the Empire State Building, it could kill.”