A UVA neuroscience lab has found that the brain directly connects to the immune system of the body. This means the doctors could load the brain with custom blends of immune cells to fight genetic disorders like Alzheimer's.
Some local entrepreneurs are walking away with some big prizes after the Tom Tom Founders Festival Crowdfunded Pitch Night on Wednesday. Another entrepreneur that took home a prize Wednesday night was Bennett Reck. His company, called Ripe Gelato, will get a mentorship with the i.Lab at the University of Virginia.
The Tom Tom Founders Festival is highlighting the future of innovation across the commonwealth. On Thursday, 14 college startup companies from 11 universities will be pitching their ideas for the chance to win over $20,000 in prizes. Groups like UVA startup Kestrel: their idea came from learning millions of babies born prematurely each year that are at risk of brain damage when moving between hospitals by ambulance or helicopter.
One obvious impediment to economic growth in Virginia is that there aren’t enough workers to fit the needs of the new economy. That’s why Gov. Ralph Northam, has proposed a significant expansion of UVA’s College at Wise.
(Commentary by Kyle Kondik, political analyst at UVA’s Center for Politics) The political world was rocked Wednesday morning by House Speaker Paul Ryan’s decision to not seek reelection to his southeastern Wisconsin House seat.
The UVA Athletics Department announced that they’ll introduce the first “Wahoowa Weekend” on April 27-29, featuring home sporting events in football, track and field, baseball, and potentially the ACC men’s lacrosse tournament.
Privacy changes Facebook made to its platform in 2015 made it harder for third-party groups to get users’ data, according to Siva Vaidhyanathan, the director of UVA’s Center for Media and Citizenship. And in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica revelations, Facebook announced still more changes meant to further safeguard privacy.
Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg has promised to protect user privacy before. Will this time be different?
"Facebook wants us to forget that it has been explicitly and openly in favor of every one of us exposing ourselves maximally for years," says Siva Vaidhyanathan, a UVA professor of media studies and author of an upcoming book on Facebook, “Antisocial Media.”
Brig. Gen. Kenneth "Ed" Brandt, a high-ranking chaplain in the U.S. Army National Guard, appears to have violated a little-known federal policy that bars active-duty military personnel from engaging in partisan political speech. A. Benjamin Spencer, a UVA law professor and an officer in the Judge Advocate General's Corps of the U.S. Army Reserve, said the DOD's directive is intended to avoid the appearance of impropriety.
Judges on the Virginia Court of Appeals on Tuesday heard an innocence advocate and the Virginia attorney general's office urge exoneration for a man they contend was wrongly convicted of two 2006 bank robberies. "Mr. Bush spent nine years in prison for crimes he did not commit," began Jennifer L. Givens, a lawyer with the Innocence Project at the UVA School of Law representing Bush.
Reports by ProPublica Illinois and the Chicago Tribune show that the tax appeals system can exacerbate existing inequalities in the tax system in Illinois, in part because appeals are filed most frequently by those who can afford lawyers. Experts say they see this in many places across the country. “The trend has often been that these appeals processes have been abused by those that are already advantaged,” says Andrew Kahrl, an expert in the history of taxation and an associate professor at UVA.
A working paper from economics professors Gaurab Aryal and Federico Ciliberto, and Ph.D. candidate Benjamin T. Leyden, all of UVA, concludes that when legacy carriers communicated about capacity discipline to investors in a given quarter, the average number of seats offered in an origin-destination market decreased by 1.45 percent in the next quarter. The effect is entirely driven by the legacy airlines, the researchers write. Although the size of the effect decreases as market size increases, in smaller markets the reduction in the number of seats available is substantial, a drop of 4.21 perc...
In a 2016 study focused on talc use in the genital area in black women, researchers looked at nearly 600 cases of ovarian cancer and found a "modestly stronger association" with people who used talc. That risk increased more in those who used it below the belt. Author Dr. Joellen Schildkraut, a UVA epidemiologist, believes that more research is needed.
UVA has named its choice to fill a new safety and security role recommended in the wake of Aug. 11 and 12 white supremacist rallies. Gloria Graham, assistant vice president for safety and security and deputy chief of police at Northwestern University, will become associate vice president for safety and security on May 7.
UVA’s third annual Hannah Graham Memorial Award will support work to improve maternal health and women’s workplaces in Africa, according to the University. Nayya Annapareddy, a first-year student, will participate in a study on the preventable causes of maternal death in Rwandan hospitals. Jordan Beeker, a second-year student, will study women working in unregistered businesses in Senegal, such as street markets.
UVA’s annual day of giving raised more than $3 million this year. The 24-hour, online “Giving To Hoos Day” campaign has been putting more and more money toward various UVA schools and programs since its launch in 2016.
UVA alumnus Doug Doughty is being inducted as the media honoree in this year’s hall of fame class. To thousands of people who read Doughty’s work every day in the paper or online, his is among The Roanoke Times’ best-known bylines. Most of his career has been spent covering UVA sports, which he has done full-time since 1978.
The Republicans are viewing the November elections with trepidation with many analysts predicting the House could fall to the Democrats. A number of Republicans have already announced they are not seeking re-election. “If you are fighting the toughest war in years and your general retires, that is not a good sign,” said Larry Sabato, a UVA professor of politics.
In other words, “there’s evidence that people do try to treat tasks in accordance with what they believe to be their learning style, but it doesn’t help them,” UVA psychologist Daniel Willingham said. In 2015, he reviewed the literature on learning styles and concluded that “learning styles theories have not panned out.”
Paul Stephan, an expert on international business law at the University of Virginia, said that asking top political figures to intercede in international judicial proceedings is not unusual — especially in countries where the judicial process might leave something to be desired — and that international agreements such as the Bilateral Investment Treaty could apply in such cases.