A UVA law professor said the law is written quite broadly. “And while it does not specifically denote the closing of businesses, it does certainly give the governor wide discretion to do what needs to be done in the face of an emergency,” said professor Rich Schragger. As for Dillon’s claim that the governor’s order infringes on a person’s right to assemble under the First Amendment, Schragger doesn’t agree. The right has to be connected with the exercise of speech, he said. “It protects a right of collective protest, not a right to eat in a restaurant or operate a restaurant,” he said.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has named the district as a target the party wants to pick off. But in an email, John Miles Coleman, associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at UVA, warned that flipping the seat might not be easy. His organization rates the seat “Likely Republican,” and he noted that in 2018, Fitzpatrick was reelected even as Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf and Democratic Sen. Bob Casey carried the district by double digits. “That type of crossover vote is impressive,” Coleman said.
“What tales or myths about America do we cling to in the face of social upheaval? I think that’s what we’re struggling with here,” says Shilpa Davé, a UVA media studies scholar who teaches about representations of race and gender in media and popular culture. “Who gets to pursue these ideals? That’s what’s in contention,” she says.
A team of researchers from UVA, the University of Stuttgart and Koc University in Istanbul, have 3-D-printed multi-material parts with multidirectional stiffness gradients. By combining their expertise in materials engineering and digital processing, the researchers were able to create sets of cellulose-based filaments with varying mechanical and rheological properties, despite having similar compositions. The materials were then used in conjunction with each other to program specific deformation profiles into complex parts.
Researchers say common components of our daily diet, such as amino acids, may increase or decrease the effectiveness and toxicity of the drugs used for cancer treatments. “The first time we observed that changing the microbe or adding a single amino acid to the diet could transform an innocuous dose of the drug into a highly toxic one, we couldn’t believe our eyes,” said Eileen O’Rourke of UVA’s College of Arts & Sciences and the UVA School of Medicine’s Department of Cell Biology.
In a famous study conducted a few years ago at the University of Virginia, participants were led one at a time into a completely bare room with all distractions removed. They had no phone, no books, no screens – and they weren’t allowed to take a nap. Electrodes were fitted to their ankles and they were left alone for 15 minutes. It was an opportunity to kick back and relax for a short while. So, how did it go? Well, before being left alone, participants were shown how to press a computer key which was wired up to a machine that delivered an electric shock. You might suppose that hav...
An online program will be launched for high school students to develop successful leaders through unique case studies, social enterprise Aspire Impact said. The program, which will be offered online this year, is in academic partnership with UVA’s Darden School of Business.
“The pandemic has impacted more people’s lives directly than some of the other major events in the Trump era,” said J. Miles Coleman, associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at UVA’s Center for Politics. “Combine that with the very concrete images of rioting and looting that have been blanketing the news, and I can see why the electorate would feel especially anxious.”
A new partnership aims to solve problems for both rural businesses and college students who lost their summer internships due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Central Virginia Small Business Development Center and the UVA Career Center launched the Propel Management Consulting Program.
Republicans are having a harder time gaining traction in Michigan, one of their few chances to go on offense in a state with a Democrat-held seat up for election. Recent polls show Biden leading Trump in Michigan. “We think the presidential and Senate races there are probably going to be tied pretty closely together,” said political analyst Kyle Kondik of UVA’s Center for Politics.
It has been over a week since George Floyd, an African American man, died after a white police officer knelt on his neck for several minutes, sparking a wave of protests across the country against institutional racism. For Dr. Ebony Hilton, a physician at UVA Health, the issue highlights what she calls the threat of the two pandemics: COVID-19 and police brutality.
Richard Schragger, a UVA professor who specializes in constitutional law, said public health orders are generally valid. “There is no individual constitutional right to refuse to wear masks indoors and no general constitutional right for businesses to operate without government restrictions that protect the health, safety and welfare of the community,” he said in an email. “Even if a right were implicated, such as a First or Second Amendment right, the government has a compelling interest in requiring mask wearing.”
A new tool is helping biomedical scientists working with COVID-19. According to a release, the new tool is helping them better understand the virus and feel confident with the structural models they are using in their research. Wladek Minor of the UVA School of Medicine and top structural biologists led an international team of scientists to investigate the protein structures contained in this strain of coronavirus.
Updated modeling from the University of Virginia shows that the state’s peak in COVID-19 cases could arrive in late July or early August. The severity is largely dependent on how closely social interaction returns to pre-pandemic levels, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
Last week, the VDH reported that mitigation efforts – stay-at-home orders, wearing masks in public and social distancing – are believed to have prevented 682,882 cases, according to the University of Virginia model. The model is designed to help policymakers determine the best course of action to take – posing “if-then” scenarios. The model is not designed to predict future numbers, but to offer a range of possibilities based on different policy actions.
The University of Virginia is among the top 20 law schools for 2021, according to U.S. News & World Report.
The University of Michigan is America's top-rated public college, based on national rankings issued by American City Business Journals. The University of North Carolina and the University of California-Berkeley are the runners-up in the 2020 academic standings, with the University of Virginia and the University of California-Los Angeles rounding out the top five.
Researchers project that coronavirus closures could lead to much greater learning loss in reading than usually occurs during the traditional “summer slide.” But with the stress and trauma that many students are experiencing during the shutdowns, it’s possible that the effects could be even greater, said Emily Solari, a professor of reading education at UVA’s Curry School of Education and Human Development.
Mendelsohn – a 1982 UVA alumnus, international bestselling author and translator who writes regularly for The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books – shares his thoughts on the coronavirus and quarantine. His latest book, “Three Rings: A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate,” is due out from the University of Virginia Press in September.
Frontline workers at Sentara Martha Jefferson and UVA Health got an artful and luminous thank you Monday night. Once the sun set, both buildings were lit with a projection mapped art display, provided by The AV Company and Zilog80 Visual Art.