Beard observes that there is no word in Latin for “smile,” and makes the striking suggestion that the Romans simply did not smile in the sense that we understand the social gesture today. (Writing in The New York Review of Books, Gregory Hays, a classicist at the University of Virginia, has challenged the claim: “It may well be that the Romans did not smile, as we do, to indicate greeting or willingness to serve. But the smile of amusement, pleasure, or approval is probably as Roman as gladiators and stuffed dormice.”)
... Results of a study done by Habitat through the Weldon Cooper Center at the University of Virginia were also unveiled at the picnic. The study gauged how new homeownership affected the families over time. 
University of Virginia researchers last month published in the journal Science results of a study in which they got a bunch of people in a variety of situations and told them to sit still for 15 minutes with nothing but their thoughts for entertainment.
... What I found absolutely shocked me: the researchers from the University of Virginia couldn’t tell if pretend play is a means to an end or if it’s merely a sign that things are going well. More specifically, the article weighs three possibilities: Is pretend play necessary for positive development? Is it one of many routes to development? Or is pretend play a symptom of other factors that lead to positive development? Here’s what they found:
... SpermCheck FertilitySpermCheck Fertility, an over-the-counter male fertility test developed locally, is now available in Rite Aid stores nationwide, the company recently announced. Dr. John Herr, director of the Center for Research in Contraceptive and Reproductive Health at the University of Virginia, developed the test. 
Women who have several sexual partners before getting married have less happy marriages - but men do no harm by playing the field,a study has found.According to  new research by the National Marriage Project, more than half of married women who had only ever slept with their future husband felt highly satisfied in their marriage. But that percentage dropped to 42 per cent once the woman had had pre-marital sex with at least two partners. It dropped to 22 per cent for those with ten or more partners. But, for men, the number of partners a man had appeared to have no bearing on how satisfie...
Officials from the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia recently briefed Wythe County supervisors on a study they conducted to determine how an agricultural exposition center will impact the county. 
By Mark Edmundson, a U.Va. English professor and author of the just published book "Why Football Matters: My Education in the Game."... Through football, my father explained the world to me. Through football, my father began to teach me what he thought I ought to value and why.
By Mark Edmundson, a U.Va. English professor and author of the just published book "Why Football Matters: My Education in the Game."... What exactly have we become that makes football the American game?The best answers are sometimes the simplest. Football is a warlike game and we are now a warlike nation. Our love for football is a love, however self-aware, of ourselves as a fighting and (we hope) victorious people. ... The rise of football over baseball is about a change in America's self-image. We've been ready to fight always (ask the Indian tribes or the Spanish who contr...
By Robert F. Bruner, dean of the Darden School of BusinessWe’re about to enroll the Darden School of Business’s Class of 2016, among whom many students are looking to end one career path and embark on another. Alumni I’ve been speaking with recently, took vacations, found the time to stop and reflect, and confronted the itch to change employers. And for the Darden Class of 2015, who have had summer internships, this week is probably the closing act: Companies will start to make full-time offers.Common to all of these groups is a fundamental question: Should I work for this co...
By Ed Hess, a Darden Professor... Carl Frey and Michael Osborne of the University of Oxford predict that 66 percent of the current U.S. job force has a medium to high likelihood of being replaced by technology over the next decade or two. Good jobs could well be in short supply. 
By Ashley Deeks, a professor of lawIn the wake of Thursday’s statements by Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey and Friday’s comments by Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes, it sounds like the U.S. Government is at least considering whether to conduct air strikes against ISIS in Syria. A decision to do so clearly is not a done deal.
The University of Virginia's Pegasus program is celebrating 30 years of life-saving flights over central Virginia. UVA Health System hosted more than 100 people for a birthday party in honor of the chopper.King Family Vineyards hosted the party and everyone from UVA hospital administrators, doctors, and pilots were there to look back and see the growth the Pegasus program has made in the past 30 years.
Yiqi Cao, a fourth-year Jefferson Scholar at the University of Virginia, will speak at TEDx Charlottesville about food culture and its ties to family history. She joins Les Sinclair on 1070-WINA Radio to give us a preview. 
Bob Brown, a law student at the University of Virginia, spent the summer working at a public relations firm in Washington, D.C. The company had the prized task of creating the campaign materials for the Democratic National Convention that August.The convention, in Atlantic City, N.J., would be a treat for Brown, who was a progressive Democrat and felt that times needed changing, particularly in Virginia. The Portsmouth native had been an undergrad at U.Va. in 1958 when the commonwealth shut several schools in the state, including some in Norfolk, rather than allow blacks and whites to take cla...
Jared Brown, a 22-year-old graduate of the University of Virginia, spoke about his 2010 arrest and subsequent 15-day sentence for misdemeanor assault. Brown said his arresting officer told him that his actions would cast an indelible mark on his future, which Brown took as a challenge.“[The officer] assumed that where I had been was more important than where I was going,” Brown said to resounding cheers from the crowd. “In spite of my record, in spite of my past, in spite of the belief shared by many that I would become a statistic, I have gone on to receive a quality educati...