A new $4 million gift to support financial aid at the University of Virginia has blunted some of the criticism the school faced after it decided to scale back a landmark grant program for its neediest students. The gift from graduate John Griffin, a professional investor and member of the U-Va. governing board, was announced Monday. It is conditioned on the university’s ability to raise $4 million in matching funds. But the university is sticking by its new financial aid policy despite the likelihood of an $8 million philanthropic infusion.
The most precise measurement yet of a fundamental property of quarks – one of the building blocks of matter – brings scientists closer to finding new exotic particles. The new study, which revisited a decades-old experiment, could help physicists find a theory beyond one of the most successful in physics: the Standard Model.
The legislation proposed in the General Assembly is modeled after programs in Virginia and Florida. Gil Siegal, a law professor at the University of Virginia who studied both programs, said they were successful at reducing malpractice premiums and easing the financial burden on the families of injured babies. The Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is reviewing the bill and has not taken a position on it. "More kids are being helped, and in that sense it's a huge social success," Siegal said.
When she was 13, Elizabeth Welsh entered a road race in Norristown. When she saw the huge trophy for the top female finisher, she made a vow: "I'm going to get that." Welsh kept that promise, passing, among others, a fortysomething man to win the overall title. That trophy is in the bedroom of the house where she grew up in Haverford, draped with the many ribbons and medals she has won since in rowing and running contests.
Whether incumbent Sen. Kay Hagan, a Greensboro Democrat, hangs onto her seat could prove central to the success or failure of President Barack Obama’s last two years in office, said Larry Sabato, the director of the highly regarded Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “I’ve been told repeatedly that the Republicans see North Carolina as the key seat,” Sabato said last week. “If the Republican analysis is right, Kay Hagan’s seat could be the critical sixth seat that enables them to take control of the Senate – or not.”
University of Virginia law professor Douglas Laycock brings a different point of view to the table. Laycock argued for the challengers at the Supreme Court. "We are not asking the court to say that local government meetings cannot have a prayer," Laycock said in comments posted on the University of Virginia Law School website before the Nov. 6 argument. "This is a case about what kind of prayer they can have and how it is presented."
A report titled "Why Marriage Matters, Third Edition: Thirty Conclusions From the Social Sciences," sponsored by the Center for Marriage and Families at the Institute for American Values and the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, came to these five conclusions, among others, about the important of marriage: Children are less likely to thrive in cohabiting households, compared to intact, married families; marriage increases the likelihood that fathers and mothers have good relationships with their children; married couples seem to build more wealth on average tha...
(Commentary by James B. Murray Jr. and W. Heywood Fralin,, former U.Va. rector) Years before the postwar world took shape, Winston Churchill said the empires of the future would be “empires of the mind.” More than a half-century later, we are seeing the truth of the English statesman’s vision. As leaders of the Virginia Business Higher Education Council and former rectors of two of Virginia’s great universities, we have often invoked Churchill’s wisdom in urging innovation and investment in higher education here in our commonwealth. Today, we have one of the best ...
Last April, Madeleine Maury Downing, a senior at the University of Virginia, received several messages from her father, Edgar Downing, in Mobile. Because she didn’t immediately return his call, she assumed she might be in trouble. And then, when she talked to him, her dad informed her that he would no longer be able to call her “Princess,” his name for her since she was a child – but not for the reason she thought. “He said, ‘I can’t call you princess anymore, because now you’re a queen!’” Madeleine Maury recalled, laughing. She was &...
That Obama would immerse himself in a single city’s crisis is a “classic sixth-year, midterm move” to remain relevant, said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “Detroit is one of the nation’s premier basket cases right now, and it’s the premier source of Democratic votes in Michigan – it’s not just another urban area,” Sabato said. “He needs to look like he’s doing something. ... his struggle over the next three years is to stay relevant when political conditions are not good for him.”
Baby Basics Moms Club is a collaborative effort of University of Virginia Children’s Hospital and Women’s Health Center, Martha Jefferson Hospital and the PD10 Improving Pregnancy Outcomes Workgroup in partnership with the What to Expect Foundation and the March of Dimes.
One recent study reported that 82 percent of runners get injured at some point in a given year. You could blame training mistakes. But Jay Dicharry, a biomechanics expert at the University of Virginia, blames it on poor running mechanics. If you employ his methods, you might just find yourself among the 18 percent noninjured out there.
DNA testing has helped more people recognize that false confessions happen. In exoneration cases around the country that featured post-conviction DNA tests, false confessions were involved about 20% of the time, said Brandon Garrett, a University of Virginia law professor.
That anyone would falsely confess to a heinous crime can be hard to believe. But cases around the country have proved this phenomenon happens. Brandon Garrett, a University of Virginia law professor who has published papers and a book on false confessions, said that of 310 convicts exonerated through post-conviction DNA testing, at least 59 of them involved false confessions.
University of Virginia professor Brandon Garrett is part of that committee and has pushed eyewitness identification changes in the commonwealth. In a survey last year, Garrett found that fewer than half of the departments in Virginia conducted blind lineups, while only a handful – 6 percent of 144 agencies – adopted the model policy recommending double-blind sequential lineups. “A lineup is designed to test someone’s memory, but a bad lineup can change someone’s memory,” Garrett said. “These policies are important to make sure police don’t work w...
(Press release) NASA’s Physical Science Research Program will fund seven proposals to conduct physics research using the agency’s new microgravity laboratory, which is scheduled to launch to the International Space Station in 2016. Among the proposals that will receive a total of about $12.7 million over a four- to five-year period: Cass Sackett, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, “Development of Atom Interferometry Experiments for the International Space Station’s Cold Atom Laboratory.”
80amps exists side by side with Boost Partners, a marketing and strategic development agency founded by Eric Martin in July 2011. Boost works with Fortune 500 companies, such as Coca-Cola and Verizon, to help them develop products, launch marketing strategies or make operational changes. Martin also is co-founder of the Galant Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce, where he is still on the faculty.
Proximity to the University of Virginia attracts many students, said Valerie Palamountain, the college’s dean of Workforce Services. The ease of transferring to UVa after two years is enough to bring students from outside the area. “The benefits of being near UVa are very strong,” she said. “We see people from out of state coming here for the chance to transfer.”
It's been more than 200 years since the U.S. and France fought their revolutionary wars. “To remember that moment is crucial and it has been the basis of Franco-American solidarity is the memory of those revolutions,” said Peter Onuf, Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor of History emeritus. That past will collide with the present on Monday when President Obama and President Hollande visit Monticello both for the first time.
Theologian and chemist Joseph Priestley immigrated to the United States in 1794 after a mob destroyed his house and laboratory in Birmingham, England. On the 210th anniversary of his death, curator Deborah Warner shares the story of the relationship between Priestley and one of America's Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson. … Jefferson also valued Priestley's ideas about education, and he often sought Priestley's advice as he developed his own plans for primary schools and for the University of Virginia.