Researchers at the Nutrition 2018 convention in Boston have put together a list of foods that fight different diseases. For instance, a UVA study suggests an egg a day improves blood sugar levels and insulin resistance in overweight and obese people. The researchers say eggs can reduce type 2 diabetes risk factors.
Each year, U.S. adults with high blood pressure incur almost $2,000 more in annual health care costs, according to a new study. “The increased cost burden of hypertension may cause some patients to discontinue antihypertensive medication,” especially if they don’t have insurance coverage for prescription drugs, Dr. Robert M. Carey of the UVA School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study, said by email.
Historians note, however, that even before preserving these records became a federal law, presidents have been conscious of the importance of document retention. That’s a sentiment echoed by Russell Riley, professor and co-chair of the Presidential Oral History Program at UVA’s Miller Center. Riley has interviewed hundreds of former White House officials dating back to the Carter Administration and says most government workers are, in his experience, careful about such records.
Dr. Leslie J. Blackhall, section head for palliative medicine at the UVA School of Medicine, was a pioneer when she started an outpatient palliative care clinic in the UVA Health System Cancer Center in 2001. “My thinking was that we don’t get upstream enough,” she says. Blackhall and her colleagues have demonstrated that outpatient palliative care improves patients’ quality of life: They are much less likely to die in the hospital, to have a hospital admission in the last month of life or to die in an intensive care unit; and they are more likely to be admitted to hospice.
Two of this year’s most vulnerable Senate incumbents will find out Tuesday who they’ll face in November, as residents of Nevada select the challenger to GOP Sen. Dean Heller and voters in North Dakota pick the candidate to run against Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp. “If you were to make the list of the top races that are most likely to flip, these races are in the top five, and maybe the top two,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of the nonpartisan Sabato’s Crystal Ball at UVA’s Center for Politics.
District Director of Special Services Toni Cappelletti said the cornerstone for the committee focusing on prevention and intervention is threat assessment training, a form of staff development that gives schools guidelines for responding to students who present threats of violence. Cappelletti referred to earlier training given by Dewey Cornell, a forensic psychologist and a professor of education from the University of Virginia, who developed the Virginia Student Threat Assessment Guidelines, an evidence-based model for schools to use in conducting threat assessments of students.
In the final session of Teresa A. Sullivan’s tenure as president, the Board of Visitors commended her, discussed college affordability and applauded a major donation from a board member.
Dewey Cornell, the director of UVA’s Virginia Youth Violence Project, says anti-bullying seminars often only play a minimal role in combating the problem. “Some schools make only token efforts to deal with bullying,” the bullying expert said. “One-day programs and motivational speakers will arouse students briefly, but there is no evidence that they have a sustained effect.”
“Maine is the nation’s statewide test case,” said Larry Sabato, director of UVA’s Center for Politics and editor-in-chief of the center’s closely watched Crystal Ball political analysis newsletter. “After all, states are the laboratories of democracy.”
Dr. Neal Kassell, founder and chair of the foundation, gave a presentation about the evolution of focused ultrasound. The foundation formed a research partnership in 2009 with UVA, where Kassell previously served as co-chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery. Together, the foundation and Dr. Jeff Elias, a UVA neurosurgeon, pioneered the treatment of essential tremor, a neurological disorder. Kassel said this treatment validated the technology, making it the tipping point in the evolution of focused ultrasound.
In a planetary-science first, astronomers used their knowledge of Jupiter's magnetic field to model what kinds of radio signals might be emitted naturally by the fields of smaller, rocky worlds. "If we can get a handle on how to find direct radio emissions from large exoplanets, we can then eventually use these same techniques to study Earth-sized planets and determine which ones have magnetic fields," Jake Turner, a doctoral student in UVA’s Department of Astronomy, said in a statement.
Republicans now dominate state leadership, controlling 33 governors’ seats, the highest number in nearly a century. In November, the GOP must defend 26 of 36 seats to Democrats’ nine. “Republicans are very exposed,” said Kyle Kondik of UVA’s Center for Politics. “You would expect that the number of Republican governorships will decrease because they control so many seats” and the president’s party typically loses ground in midterm elections “up and down the ballot.”
Both sides say they want to do what’s best for children waiting for homes. But children adopted by LGBTQ couples fare as well as those adopted by straight couples, researchers have found, and that can get lost in the debate. “There are not significant differences among the children in terms of their overall development,” said Charlotte J. Patterson, a UVA psychology professor who has studied adopted children in both kinds of families.
Democrats will have to win at least some "Trump districts" to win the House, and Michigan's 8th is the kind they could "hypothetically" win, said Kyle Kondik of UVA’s Center for Politics. "I don’t think it’s necessarily a 'must-win' for Democrats. With several dozen competitive Republican seats scattered across the country, there aren’t that many that are truly must-wins," he said.
(By Brandon Garrett, Justice Thurgood Marshall Distinguished Professor of Law) “In studies of DNA exonerations, I have found that juveniles accounted for a third of all false confessions and another third were intellectually disabled or mentally ill.”
The company said it was poised to initiate a Phase III clinical trial with staff at the University within a few weeks. The university's Department of Radiology & Medical Imaging was a worldwide pioneer in the clinical research of hyper-polarized gases for lung imaging and a key clinical collaborator with Polarean.
Recent research shows the commonwealth is becoming a retirement hot spot. A study by the University of Virginia shows retirement growth in more rural parts of the state is up 113 percent since 2010.
After facing the possibility of closure in 2013, big changes are nearing completion at the historic Barrett Early Learning Center. Building Goodness in April, a student-run organization that partners with UVA’s Darden School of Business, contributed to the center’s landscaping efforts. Through the organization, community members volunteer in local neighborhoods twice a year.
Members of UVA’s class of 1993 are in town this weekend for their 25th reunion. UVA’s Lifetime Learning Program and the Office of Engagement held flash seminars to mark the occasion.
(By Daniel Willingham, UVA professor of psychology) Personalized learning – the notion that children’s educational experiences should be tailored to their interests and abilities – has a long history, but the digital age has brought new promise to the idea.