The existence of love and its nature is something that has troubled philosophers for centuries, but a pair of scientists believe they have a set of questions that yield "clear empirical evidence" of it, or at least whether your relationship will end in divorce. They are: 'How happy are you in your marriage relative to how happy you would be if you weren't in the marriage?' and 'How do you think your spouse answered that question?' University of Virginia economists Leora Friedberg and Steven Stern asked this to 4,242 couples twice, six years apart, and analysing th...
Chris Ali, a professor of Media Studies at the University of VirginiaAli joins Coy to discuss media studies in higher education today, the SONY hack, the wonders of the CBC, net neutrality and much more.
Fredericksburg had the largest percentage of population growth among Virginia localities for the past year, a feat it has achieved three of the last four years.The city’s population increased 16.2 percent between the April 2010 census and estimates made on July 1, 2014, according to data from the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service.
According to a new report, Charlottesville's population is booming despite the fact that Virginia's population is hardly growing at all.We've reached the halfway point of the decade, so it's time to take a look back at the last five years to see how the numbers have changed. One group at the University of Virginia looks at the number of births, deaths, school enrollment, drivers licenses issued, and housing to estimate populations.
At the University of Virginia, which has been having a very public debate about its culture, a powerful national group of sororities is trying something new for this weekend: Banning its members from partying with fraternity men.
The University of Virginia has contracted with an international security firm to guide vulnerable students to safety in neighborhoods near campus. The university says the unarmed security guards will be called ambassadors. The ambassadors may help walk students home, call a safe ride or wait with them at a bus stop. The ambassadors may also call a rescue squad if medical attention is needed and they will have a communications link to the emergency dispatch center.
A Charlottesville nonprofit is celebrating a groundbreaking event after 14-years of preparation. The Building Goodness Foundation (BFG) partnered with students from the University of Virginia School of Nursing to build a new medical clinic in San Sebastian, El Salvador.
Doctors at the University of Virginia Elson Student Health Center say they are seeing abnormally high cases of the flu this season. Staff at the health center says the influx of more than 300 students with the flu has come in just the past two weeks.
Political hostility in the United States is more and more becoming personal hostility. New findings suggest that the sources of dispute in contemporary life go far beyond ideological differences or mere polarization. They have become elemental, almost tribal, tapping into in-group loyalty and out-group enmity. More recently, a group of four scholars working with Jonathan Haidt, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, and Thomas Talhelm, a doctoral candidate in social psychology at the University of Virginia, have developed a new line of inquiry into the causes and ...
Here is a question you might never want to ask the person you love (but that maybe you should): If we were no longer together, do you think you would be happier? My guess is that you think you already know the answer to this question. But if new economic research is anything to go by, you probably don’t, and not knowing could put your relationship at risk. Economists Leora Friedberg and Steven Stern, at the University of Virginia, have recently looked at this data and found that, unsurprisingly, people who thought they would be no worse off being single than they were being mar...
For decades, Americans have been in love with the automobile — or so the saying goes. This single idea has been a central premise of transportation policy, pop culture and national history for the last half-century. It animates how we think about designing the world around us, and how we talk about dissidents in our midst who dislike cars. This ‘love affair’ thesis is like the ultimate story,” says Peter Norton, a historian at the University of Virginia, who warns that we need to revisit how we came to believe this line before we embrace its logical conclusion in a futu...
If you have to make a complex decision, will you do a better job if you absorb yourself in, say, a crossword puzzle instead of ruminating about your options? The idea that unconscious thought is sometimes more powerful than conscious thought is attractive, and echoes ideas popularized by books such as writer Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling Blink. But within the scientific community, ‘unconscious-thought advantage’ (UTA) has been controversial. Now Dutch psychologists have carried out the most rigorous study yet of UTA—and find no evidence for it.In spite of the mos...
The University of Virginia is stepping up its development of drones with new technology that has successfully detected and thwarted cyber attacks on unmanned aerial systems, a report said. Project leader Barry Horowitz, engineering professor and chair of the department of systems and information engineering, said the project can be applied to reinforce the security of many physical systems, including drones. Horowitz said his inspiration for the technology came after seeing a flaw in drone security.
Schools across the country are spending billions of dollars on school fortifications and security personnel to protect their students, yet experts say identifying threats early on is key to preventing school violence and the next mass shooting. “What we really need to think about is helping students who are distressed or troubled, in a conflict or being bullied or any number of different problems that can be addressed early before they escalate into violence,” said professor Dewey Cornell, a forensic clinical psychologist at the University of Virginia who has been at the ...
The University presented a panel discussion Tuesday night on “Slavery at the University of Virginia.” Members of the President's Commission on Slavery and the University talked to a crowd about UVA's historic relationship with slavery.Organizers of the event say enslaved laborers played vital roles, especially during the first decades of UVA, but little is recorded about them. Slaves laid handmade bricks and helped build the university. They also chopped wood and washed laundry, cared for white children and cooked meals for faculty and students."It's more...
Reproducibility is a core scientific principle. A result that can’t be reproduced is not necessarily erroneous: Perhaps there were simply variables in the experiment that no one detected or accounted for. Still, science sets high standards for itself, and if experimental results can’t be reproduced, it’s hard to know what to make of them. “The whole point of science, the way we know something, is not that I trust Isaac Newton because I think he was a great guy. The whole point is that I can do it myself,” said Brian Nosek, the founder of a start-up in Charlot...
Contrary to common perception (and the wild claims of the influential feminist lobby), the most likely abuser of a young child is certainly not her biological father. Professors Bradford Wilcox and Jeffrey Dew of the University of Virginia attempt to provide some sort of sociological explanation for these empirical findings. They write: “Mothers living in a married household are less likely to be abusive or neglectful of their children because they enjoy more support from a spouse. Fathers help mothers be better parents in a variety of ways. First, fathers can directly care for their chi...
Many people think body fat can act as a protective padding in a car accident, but a new study finds that's not necessarily the case.University of Virginia professor Richard Kent says that, in some cases, extra body fat can act as cushion in a car crash...but in many cases it does not.
Ruprecht Schultz had a strange habit as a child of forming his fingers into the shape of a gun, and pointing at his head, saying “I shoot myself,” when he was unhappy. His mother became worried and told him emphatically to stop it. As an adult, it became clearer where this habit may have come from.Schultz recorded his story in audio and in writing. It was studied by renowned reincarnation researcher Dr. Ian Stevenson of the University of Virginia, and discussed from Stevenson’s notes in an article by Walter Semkiw, MD.As WWII broke out, Schultz’s laundry business i...
The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts has given the University of Virginia’s Fralin Museum of Art six prints by Andy Warhol. The foundation also gifted the Fralin Museum, in 2009, a few of Warhol’s photos from the 1970s and ‘80s. There will be a large exhibition featuring the works next year.