“I think of humor as a form of cognitive play, so it helps to begin by considering the functions of play more generally. A huge range of species, including humans, do it. Play includes spontaneous and often exaggerated behaviors that do not contribute to immediate survival. During play, the brain releases opioids that feel good, help us recover from stress, and strengthen social bonds,” said Adrienne Wood, assistant professor of psychology and principal investigator of UVA’s Emotion and Behavior Lab.
(Commentary by Saikrishna Prakash, law professor) “In this moment, when we have no clear sense of who will be our next president, we are now in the perfect climate to consider what the American presidency has become over time and to reacquaint ourselves with what it ought to be.”
UVA Health, as one of several health care providers, has outlined infection control policies and procedures for contractors in an effort to minimize the impact of construction projects on the health of its patients. The system requires training and also sets some guidelines for contractors and their workers to follow during construction, which vary depending on the risk level of patients.
A UVA class with a focus on teaching high school students about climate change and the environment is going virtual to complete an art project made out of single-use plastics. The UVA WriteClimate project was set to debut an art installation constructed from buns made of disposable plastics on Earth Day. However, with coronavirus closing schools, WriteClimate has created a website to continue the work online. The group is still connecting with the students, who have taken their learning online.
Some two dozen UVA professors are among a network of scientists who’ve signed onto an open letter to Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam urging him to take stronger measures to not just stop the spread of COVID-19, but stamp it out. The letter says the goal needs to be “near zero” infections in the short-term.
Researchers at CDDEP, Princeton University and other leading institutions are part of a consortium led by UVA’s Biocomplexity Institute that is funded by a new $10 million, five-year US National Science Foundation grant.
Another popular dashboard from the University of Virginia – called The COVID-19 Surveillance Dashboard – provides a visualization of COVID-19 cases, recoveries, and deaths across the globe and is being constantly updated by the extremely busy team (they are currently on version 1.3.1).
A network of doctors, scientists, policy experts and concerned citizens have penned an open letter to Gov. Ralph Northam calling for more aggressive measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in Virginia. The group, which includes dozens of professors with ties to UVA and Virginia Commonwealth University, said in the letter that Northam’s stay-at-home order has saved lives, but that more action is needed before reopening can be done safely.
Even though many students feel derailed by pandemic, Everette Fortner with the UVA Career Center thinks it can still be a productive summer. He said there are opportunities out there; they just might not be what students originally had in mind.
Central to these grading makeovers: Many students lack access to technology, and not all teachers have mastered the ins and outs of online instruction. Families are reeling from health concerns or lost employment. Some students are tending to siblings or getting jobs themselves. “You have to err on the side of fairness to all of the students and the validity of whatever performance measure you use,” said Robert Pianta, dean of UVA’s Curry School of Education and Human Development.
Doctors at UVA Health specializing in infectious disease and critical care began looking at evidence for different potential therapies for COVID-19 before treating their first patient. “We wanted to hit the ground running,” said Dr. Patrick Jackson, an infectious disease specialist leading the remdesivir trial at UVA.
Mager Koromhas (Virginia), a graduate of the University of Virginia with a B.S. in Commerce and M.S. in Accounting from the University of Virginia is employed with KPMG LLP in Norfolk, Virginia.
The Focused Ultrasound Foundation, based in Charlottesville, announced Tuesday that it has named Patrick Edelmann as its managing director. He received his bachelor’s degree from Vanderbilt University and his master’s degree in business administration from the University of Virginia.
In effect, the banks agreed to become worldwide enforcers of U.S. law, including financial sanctions – sometimes despite their own governments’ protests. That’s the take of UVA law professor Pierre-Hugues Verdier, author of the just-released book, “Global Banks on Trial U.S. Prosecutions and the Remaking of International Finance.”
TJHD Deputy Incident Commander Ryan McKay says the district’s top priority right now is containing outbreaks in long-term care facilities, as well as communication. ”It’s just making sure that that we’re facilitating tests and testing quickly, and we’ve established a relationship with UVA Health to make sure that we can deliver a test kit,” McKay said.
Lower chief executive officer integrity is associated with higher audit fees at large public corporations and deteriorating performance, according to a recent academic study published in The Accounting Review. Researchers pored through over 30,000 shareholder letters, scrutinizing the words used by CEOs, according to the study, titled “CEO Behavioral Integrity, Auditor Responses, and Firm Outcomes,” from the University of Virginia, INSEAD, Duke University and Yale University.
“Obviously, we would love to open in the fall – meaning, have students back. That’s true of my colleagues in Virginia and across the country,” said UVA President James E. Ryan. “What we’re trying to do right now is ask the question, ‘Under what conditions can we safely open?’” Ryan sees three scenarios for the 24,000-student public university.
UVA is among the 10 law schools where class of 2018 graduates employed at law firms were most likely to possess full-time jobs lasting at least a year at firms with more than 500 lawyers.
Former UVA students have created a way to deliver groceries to those susceptible to the novel coronavirus. Dubbed “Social Distance Delivery,” the service was created by Nicholas Ehat and Fayez Jabboure, both members of the Class of 2019, and operates in the Charlottesville area as well as Washington, D.C., Northern Virginia, parts of Maryland and Wesley Chapel, Florida.
Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe spoke Wednesday to Larry Sabato’s class at UVA about several current issues, including what he would have done had he been in the Oval Office during the COVID-19 crisis.