A new blueprint aims to help businesses take all the necessary steps they need to recover from the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Project Rebound, a Charlottesville Chamber of Commerce collaboration with the economic development organizations at UVA, Albemarle County and Charlottesville, released the “Blueprint for Economic Resiliency and Reinvention in the Greater Charlottesville Region” Thursday.
(Commentary by Osman Ozbulut, associate professor of civil engineering) Fighting a two-front battle is never an ideal arrangement, but it is something we must consider. After all, we will almost certainly face another natural disaster in the coming year, on top of the devastating effects of coronavirus.
(Commentary by Peter Debaere, E. Thayer Bigelow Research Chair in Business Administration at the Darden School of Business) There is a lot of discussion about reopening the economy, and rightly so. For an economist, however, the argument that favors caution is straightforward. We have made considerable investments, at great expense, and with longer-run benefits in mind. We don’t want to squander those for uncertain short-term gains.
The presidents of three of Virginia’s largest public universities have asked the state to set aside $200 million to increase testing for the novel coronavirus on college campuses and elsewhere, arguing that the funding will be crucial to resume higher education and other activities in the coming year.
Malcolm Brogdon, a former Virginia men’s basketball star and current member of the Indiana Pacers, has tested positive for COVID-19. “I recently tested positive for the COVID virus and am currently in quarantine,” Brogdon said. “I’m doing well, feeling well and progressing well. I plan to join my teammates in Orlando for the resumption of the NBA season and playoffs.”
Mary Jackson went on to work with NASA’s 4×4 supersonic pressure tunnel and became the agency’s first Black female engineer in 1958. She completed additional training and courses for her new role after petitioning the city of Hampton to allow her to learn with white students, taking University of Virginia night classes at a local high school. Her contributions, along with the work of NASA mathematicians Katherine Johnson and Dorothy Vaughan, were highlighted in the 2016 film “Hidden Figures,” inspired by a book of the same name by Margot Lee Shetterly, a 1991 UVA alumna.
An exciting addition to the exhibit will be a film made by the University of Virginia in 1959 documenting Charles Smith’s artistic process. The movie of Smith, the former head of the University’s art department, has been restored and digitized and will be showing in the History Gallery.
Larry Sabato, director of UVA’s Center for Politics, said that with the nominations of UVA Health Dr. Cameron Webb on the Democratic side and Bob Good on the Republican side, the House of Representatives race will be much more competitive than usual.
Dr. Cameron Webb is taking care of COVID-19 patients at the University of Virginia Hospital, and now he's also the Democratic nominee for Congress in Virginia's 5th District, which Trump won in 2016.
The International Healthcare Worker Safety Center at the University of Virginia developed the statement, entitled, “Moving the Sharps Safety Agenda Forward in the United States: Consensus Statement and Call to Action,” which described five key areas to further reduce the risk of sharps injuries to health care workers.
The “alpha-gal” meat allergy is commonly seen throughout the Southeast, the Mid-Atlantic and the Midwest, but it is not seen very often along the Gulf Coast or in Texas. The UVA researchers determined that this is likely caused by the steady expansion of fire ants that were accidentally imported from South America in the 1930s. However, in some cases, these ants can cause life-threatening anaphylaxis, a severe allergic reaction, with their bite as well as posing dangers to animals and crops.
UVA Health’s telehealth services will see $700,000 in support during the COVID-19 pandemic through the COVID-19 Telehealth Program, established under the “CARES” Act. Those funds will now go toward tablets, video monitors and other equipment that allows health care workers to treat patients remotely.
UVA assistant professor of media studies Aynne Kokas warned that Zoom is “allowing for local censorship to take precedence over academic freedom.” Now she’s considering that some of her online classes could put Chinese students in a “risky situation.”
Some state and local officials are taking a closer look at an issue that has long bedeviled Black homeowners: inflated property tax assessments. “These are forms of structural racism that are very invisible,” said Andrew Kahrl, a UVA associate professor of history and African American studies. “It’s subtle. It’s insidious and happens in ways the victims themselves aren’t aware of.”
Michael Lewis said, “At Nassau Community College I did some rewrites of stories with my byline that included a goalkeeper named Bruce Arena. Wonder whatever happened to him? Yeah, that’s right, same Bruce Arena who went on to coach the University of Virginia, the U.S. national team and D.C. United, the Red Bulls and the LA Galaxy. Ironically, I never got to watch Arena play soccer.”
UVA linebacker Charles Snowden is a modern-age defensive catalyst, and in 2020, he can take his game to new heights. Analyst Andrew DiCecco details his rise, and what remains in store.
“In my opinion, the most intriguing part of this study is the detection of an object in the ‘mass gap,’ which is a sort of no-man’s-land between the heaviest neutron star and lightest black hole masses we’ve measured,” Thankful Cromartie, an astrophysicist at the University of Virginia and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory who wasn’t involved with the new study, wrote in an email to Gizmodo.
Jim Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association, called the attempt to equate Confederates with Founding Fathers “absurd” and “unacceptable for the president of the United States,” while Douglas Blackmon of the University of Virginia said, “The most kind explanation of that can only be ignorance, and I don’t say that to insult the president.”
In a recent op-ed in The 74, an education news outlet, Emily Solari, professor of reading education at UVA’s Curry School of Education and Human Development, argued that the coronavirus pandemic has potential to amplify a critical and widening nationwide gap in reading.
In the 5th District, UVA physician Dr. Cameron Webb secured the Democratic nomination to take on Republican Bob Good, who ousted Rep. Denver Riggleman in a GOP convention after Riggleman officiated a same-sex wedding.