In the ongoing search for new treatments for obesity and its related conditions, scientists are turning considerable attention to the role our genes might play. The hope is that drugs could one day be developed to switch key genes on or off in at-risk subjects, and a new UVA study has offered up some new potential targets by identifying groups of genes that appear to cause weight gain and others that prevent it.
University of Virginia scientists have identified 14 genes that can cause weight gain and three that can prevent it. The research helps shed light on the complex intersections of obesity, diet and our DNA. If researchers can identify the genes that convert excessive food into fat, they could seek to inactivate them with drugs and uncouple excessive eating from obesity.
ANI
“This is especially important when you consider the physiological realities of obesity,” said co-author Siddhartha Angadi of the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Virginia. “Body weight is a highly heritable trait, and weight loss is associated with substantial metabolic alterations that ultimately thwart weight loss maintenance,” added Angadi.
Walking, cycling or running is more beneficial than calorie-cutting, as so-called “weight cycling” or “yo-yo dieting,” in which overweight people quickly shed and regain the pounds, “is also associated with health problems, including muscle loss, fatty liver disease, and diabetes,” according to the authors, and does not factor in hereditary aspects of weight, metabolism and body shape. “Body weight is a highly heritable trait, and weight loss is associated with substantial metabolic alterations that ultimately thwart weight loss maintenance,” said Siddhartha Angadi of the University of Virgini...
Writing in the journal iScience, Professor Glenn Gaesser, from the College of Health Solutions at Arizona State University, and associate professor Siddhartha Angadi, from the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Virginia, want us to reboot how we think about “healthy” culture.
A bone-loss discovery from the University of Virginia School of Medicine points to a potential treatment for osteoporosis and rheumatoid arthritis, according to a news release.
Researchers at the University of Virginia are training their education students using virtual reality simulators created by Mursion, a tech company. The teacher trainees experience several virtual practice scenarios such as a parent-teacher conference, small-group instruction, and large-group instruction. A digital puppet master plays the role of the parent and pupils behind the scenes, but the developers plan for the programme to eventually become automated. The technology is currently being used in over 50 American colleges.
A recently released report by the Virginia Public Access Project shows that Dinwiddie County, along with other Tri-City localities, has among the highest college acceptance rates in the commonwealth for high school students. According to the report, which examined the percentage of applicants from localities accepted at four-year public colleges and universities in 2019 and 2020, Dinwiddie students had an acceptance rate of 85.7%. Applicants in the county had a 50% acceptance to the College of William & Mary, 46.7% to the University of Virginia, 50% to the Virginia Military Institute, 66.7...
“Plagues, Witches, and War: The Worlds of Historical Fiction” offered by The University of Virginia – This course sets context for the study of historical fiction. Some renowned historical fiction authors discuss their famous works with the professor during some modules of the course. 
(Commentary) In its fiscal year 2021 annual report, the University of Virginia Investment Management Company noted that real assets produced a 49% investment return—and mentioned that oil prices had rebounded more than 80% during the year, recovering from the pandemic low: a source of huge profit for some traders, if not necessarily Virginia itself.
The Indianapolis Motor Speedway will host the first autonomous racecar competition on October 23 with algorithms driving the cars instead of humans. College students are writing the software to power the cars. Among the competitors is UVA’s Cavalier Autonomous Racing. The first team to cross the finish line in 25 minutes or less will win $1 million. Second place is $250,000 and third place is $50,000. The remaining prize money was awarded earlier in the competition for the first and second place finishers in a simulated race.
When Mike McConnell decided what he wanted to spend his career working on, he was 29, inspired to begin his Ph.D. – and flat broke. He’d learned from his biology classes that immune cells in the body constantly rearrange their own DNA: it’s what allows them to protect us by making receptors in the right shapes to bind to invasive pathogens. As he wrapped up a master’s degree in immunology in the late 1990s, he’d obsess about it over beers with his roommates. “Suddenly this idea kind of clicked,” McConnell recalls. 
That preliminary report is promising, says Debbie-Ann Shirley, a pediatric infectious diseases doctor at the University of Virginia and medical director of the COVID-19 clinic. Side effects from the vaccine were similar to those seen in older children with most being “brief, quickly resolved and mild.”
A lawyer for a man once charged in the deaths said she believes DNA that would lead to the killer of Julie Williams and her partner, Lollie Winans, 26, in Shenandoah National Park in 1996 still sits stashed away, all but untested, in an evidence locker at the FBI lab in Quantico. “They have male DNA on a gag, they have hairs,” said Deirdre Enright, founder and director of the Innocence Project at UVA’s School of Law.
Early adulthood holds many of life’s achievements — the start of a career, the keys to a new home, the first sparks of romance. For [UVA alumnus] Lloyd F. Stamy Jr., those milestones are long behind him, but the Fox Chapel novelist is nowhere close to resting on his laurels. Stamy, who retired after decades in the institutional investment industry, has published a series of semi-autobiographical novels that touch largely on the passage of time. His latest book, “Strangers No More” (Word Association Publishers, $17.95), explores the way relationships ebb and flow across the course of a lifetime...
(Commentary) Long before she became an urban planner, Ebony Walden saw color-coded differences written into the landscape. As an 8-year-old traveling from her working-class Black and Latino community in Hempstead, N.Y., to whiter, more affluent spaces on Long Island, the future UVA alumna noticed that the homes were larger; the schools and shopping, better; the liquor stores, fewer. Years later, after moving to Richmond, she observed similar disparities but felt empowered to do something about it. The result is Richmond Racial Equity Essays, a multimedia project to create a Richmond “absent of...
(Co-written by Emily Oksen and Kristin O’Donoghue, students at the University of Virginia and interns with the High Atlas Foundation) All individuals and people who share a common identity have a right to be remembered, to protect and preserve their cultural heritage, and to have autonomy over the safeguarding of their collective experience, cultural artifacts, oral and written history.
The Center for Civic Innovation has announced its 2021 Fellowships, recognizing 13 community leaders. According to a release, these leaders address various issues in Charlottesville, such as poverty, equality, access to services and environmental issues. This is the second year CCI has announced fellowships for individuals or teams, aiming to encourage them to create change in their communities.This year’s Fellows include a team of University of Virginia students: Marissa Harris-Turner, Anson Parker, Allison Weiderhold, Michelle Miles, Taylor Frome and BJ Pendleton.
A University of Virginia fourth year student started a program that is making a difference for many. When Chris Obolensky started his journey on Grounds, he noticed public speaking skills were an expectation. He says there were only a few ways to nurture those skills built into the curriculum, especially for underclassmen. This led him to begin the UVA Speaking Center.
If anyone is sceptical about this, watch the Netflix documentary “Surviving Death.” The sixth episode, titled “Reincarnation,” features the research of Professor Jim B. Tucker, director of the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia.