(Subscription may be required) “Pfizer is a big hammer,” Dr. Jeffrey Wilson, an immunologist and physician at the University of Virginia said, but “Moderna is a sledgehammer.”
Anna Dickinson, a student at Eastern Virginia Medical School, was a varsity swimmer for the University of Virginia. Before the start of each semester, the biology major looked at her class and swim schedules and planned exactly when she would study, go to class, swim and conduct lab research. “I enjoyed working hard and I loved the grind,” she says. “I took pride in learning in the classes, then working hard in the pool and then advancing science in my research lab.”
Constitutional law experts agree employers risk lawsuits by challenging the sincerity of workers’ religious beliefs. “It’s very difficult to investigate sincerity,” University of Virginia law professor Douglas Laycock told WBEZ-FM in Chicago. “How do you decide what someone really believes in their heart of hearts about religion?”
Black voter turnout will be pivotal in next year’s midterm election when Democrats risk losing control of the House and Senate, according to an analysis last week in Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a political journal published by UVA’s Center for Politics. Typically, voters in mid-term elections are whiter and more educated than in presidential elections, a turnout that tends to favor Republicans. But in 2018, a surge of Black voters helped Democrats gain 41 seats and win control of the House. “At one time, this sort of change from the presidential to the midterm electorate might have made midterm ele...
(Commentary) I queried the University of Virginia’s guru of politics, Larry Sabato, about that press-release storm. He chalked it up to social media’s increasing influence on modern politics. You can summarize that more or like this: A lie can now travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting its shoes on. “Before social media arrived on the scene, it was very difficult to do this kind of thing minute-by-minute. Now that social media is a central part of our lives, every campaign believes it must bring out every gun available, even if a tank is used to squash a small bug,” S...
“It speaks to a pretty familiar idea in politics that the side that feels more threatened by something is probably the one that gets more motivation out of it,” said Kyle Kondik, a political analyst at the University of Virginia. “And so the side that maybe feels more threatened that the abortion status quo is going to change is the Democrats right now.”
Education is “a very big part of a state’s investment in its future,” said Bob Pianta, dean of the University of Virginia School of Education and Human Development. He believes some of Virginia’s economic successes are “directly attributable to the education system in Virginia.”
To Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, those results capture the squeeze facing Youngkin. To maintain the super-heated energy that Trump generated among the GOP’s mostly rural Virginia base, “he can’t change” his opposition to vaccine mandates or legal abortion, even though those views limit his suburban potential. “Youngkin’s affable and he’s a good guy. But he can’t do anything about the positions that are hurting him [in the suburbs],” says Sabato.
The data will now be reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration for emergency use authorization. “Then the CDC will also go through their independent review and will make recommendations to us on use in children,” said Dr. Debbie-Ann Shirley, a pediatric infectious disease expert at UVA Health.
(Press release) From the onset of the global pandemic about 18 months ago, Dr. Ebony Hilton emerged as a leader and a powerful voice of reason. Critical care anesthesiologist doctor at the University of Virginia and founder of GoodStock Consulting LLC, Dr. Hilton has loudly denounced quick re-openings, anti-vaxxers, and reckless gatherings during the pandemic. … It’s because of her bold and courageous stand and tireless work that Dr. Hilton will receive the 2021 National Newspaper Publishers Association National Leadership Award for excellence and innovative leadership in Black America.
(By Tianshu Li, research assistant in systems engineering) Photographs and computer vision techniques using artificial intelligence are able to detect the presence of bats on bridges automatically with over 90% accuracy, according to our new study. More than 40 species of bats are found in the U.S., and many of them are endangered or threatened. Bats often nest by the hundreds or thousands underneath bridges, so transportation departments are required to survey for them before conducting repair or replacement projects.
(By Dr. Abigail Kumral, assistant professor of pediatrics) As a pediatrician, I see children in my clinic daily for ear infections. Because these are associated with viral upper respiratory infections, we typically see most ear infections in the fall and winter, when influenza and cold viruses are prevalent. However, with near-universal mask-wearing due to COVID-19 last winter and many children out of school, the number of viral upper respiratory infections dropped drastically. As a result, we saw very few ear infections in our clinic. This summer, with the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions, we...
Researchers have identified 17 genes that may lead to new treatments for an issue that affects more than 40% of Americans: obesity. According to a release, researchers at the University of Virginia have identified 14 genes that can cause weight gain and three can prevent it.
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.
“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.