(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.”
Yesterday’s apportionment results were less dramatic than some analysts had expected. “It was surprising that Texas only gained two seats. I’d assumed they’d be getting three or even four,” said J. Miles Coleman, associate director of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, the political analysis project of the University of Virginia’s Larry Sabato.
“I’d expect, just from reapportionment, the Republicans to win a few seats,” said Kyle Kondik, an election analyst at the University of Virginia. Republicans only need to flip five seats in 2022 to retake the House.
In the states losing seats, the casualties could be split evenly between Democrats and Republicans, said Kyle Kondik of UVA’s Center for Politics. But Republicans could press their advantage in the states gaining seats, especially in Texas and Florida. “Republicans are going to net out an advantage in that trade-off,” Kondik told Bloomberg TV. “They’re states that are competitive to be sure, but they’re states that are dominated by Republicans at the state level.”
Qian Cai, the director of the Demographics Research Group at UVA’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, said there were generally few surprises for Virginia in Monday’s release by the census, which she said is good news for her team of demographers. Their estimate for Virginia’s population in 2020, which was hatched in 2018, was just 479 people off from the official census count.
U.S.-Mexico border issues are the main thing that Biden is getting wrong or needs to work on, according to Larry Sabato, director of UVA’s Center for Politics. The Biden administration has struggled to handle increasing numbers of migrants arriving at the border, leading to plenty of criticism from Republicans as well as Democrats and independents. “It is the one major policy area where Americans already give him low grades,” Sabato said.
“It’s all fairly artificial, but as humans we need these milestones and markers,” Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, said of the 100-days window. “It’s meaningful at the time. It could be meaningful in the long term. But it could also be overtaken by the swath of history.”
“His trainees were like a 2nd family to him,” Kedes’s son, Dean Kedes, a microbiologist at the University of Virginia, wrote in an email. His father would often have students over for dinner, and their lively discussions were part of what prompted the younger Kedes to pursue a career in science. “In the end, I saw my father’s daily enjoyment of his career not only from his awe of new discoveries in gene expression but also his creation of this super-family ... all of whom shared his joy of science and life. What son wouldn’t also want that type of career?”
“[The Virginia Supreme Court] held that the original law never applied to the statues, so Charlottesville always had the ability to take them down,” said Rich Schragger, a UVA law professor. “Because the language of the revised statute, which allows local governments to remove, tracks the language of the old statute in important ways, the city could take the position that the new statute’s procedural requirements do not apply to the statues and therefore the city can act immediately to remove them.” Given that a previous council’s vote to remove monuments lead to losing a lawsuit and an injunc...
The Virginia volleyball program has its new head coach. Shannon Wells, who has spent the past seven seasons as an assistant at the University of Florida, will replace former head coach Aaron Smith. “She is a perfect fit for who we are currently and what we aspire to be as a volleyball program,” director of athletics Carla Williams said in a statement. “First, she is an exceptional person and will be a wonderful addition to the UVA family.”
As local health care workers continue to fight on the front lines, a team of nurses is looking to provide tools for self-care. Registered nurse Nancy Farish and two other nurses created the Mobile Resiliency Toolbox. They are part of the Compassion Care Initiative at UVA’s School of Nursing.
West Virginia is also one of just two states where deaths exceeded births over the decade. (The other is Maine, which grew because it had a higher rate of in-migration.) The median age in West Virginia is between 42 and 43, compared with the national average of 38. The state’s population is projected to keep shrinking through 2040, according to UVA’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service.
A new advanced PET imaging technique can help surgeons identify and remove areas in the brain responsible for triggering harmful epileptic seizures, according to the results of a small pilot study. Researchers at the UVA School of Medicine say their approach measures glucose utilization in the brain to determine what regions are causing seizures. With the help of this parametric dynamic FDG-PET imaging development, physicians can surgically remove those spots, the UVA team explained.
Huge advancements in how doctors treat epilepsy seizures are in the works at the University of Virginia. A new approach to advanced imaging of the brain may help doctors pinpoint exactly where seizures are coming from. “Once that bad spot is located, we can then evaluate whether or not it can be removed through surgical means and then treat somebody who’s seizures are resisting treatment with normal epilepsy medication,” UVA professor of neurology Mark Quigg said.
The U.S. Census Bureau is beginning to release data that will impact seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. In response, Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics has released a special edition.