To Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, those results capture the squeeze facing Youngkin. To maintain the super-heated energy that Trump generated among the GOP’s mostly rural Virginia base, “he can’t change” his opposition to vaccine mandates or legal abortion, even though those views limit his suburban potential. “Youngkin’s affable and he’s a good guy. But he can’t do anything about the positions that are hurting him [in the suburbs],” says Sabato.
The data will now be reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration for emergency use authorization. “Then the CDC will also go through their independent review and will make recommendations to us on use in children,” said Dr. Debbie-Ann Shirley, a pediatric infectious disease expert at UVA Health.
(Press release) From the onset of the global pandemic about 18 months ago, Dr. Ebony Hilton emerged as a leader and a powerful voice of reason. Critical care anesthesiologist doctor at the University of Virginia and founder of GoodStock Consulting LLC, Dr. Hilton has loudly denounced quick re-openings, anti-vaxxers, and reckless gatherings during the pandemic. … It’s because of her bold and courageous stand and tireless work that Dr. Hilton will receive the 2021 National Newspaper Publishers Association National Leadership Award for excellence and innovative leadership in Black America.
(By Tianshu Li, research assistant in systems engineering) Photographs and computer vision techniques using artificial intelligence are able to detect the presence of bats on bridges automatically with over 90% accuracy, according to our new study. More than 40 species of bats are found in the U.S., and many of them are endangered or threatened. Bats often nest by the hundreds or thousands underneath bridges, so transportation departments are required to survey for them before conducting repair or replacement projects.
(By Dr. Abigail Kumral, assistant professor of pediatrics) As a pediatrician, I see children in my clinic daily for ear infections. Because these are associated with viral upper respiratory infections, we typically see most ear infections in the fall and winter, when influenza and cold viruses are prevalent. However, with near-universal mask-wearing due to COVID-19 last winter and many children out of school, the number of viral upper respiratory infections dropped drastically. As a result, we saw very few ear infections in our clinic. This summer, with the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions, we...
Researchers have identified 17 genes that may lead to new treatments for an issue that affects more than 40% of Americans: obesity. According to a release, researchers at the University of Virginia have identified 14 genes that can cause weight gain and three can prevent it.
In the ongoing search for new treatments for obesity and its related conditions, scientists are turning considerable attention to the role our genes might play. The hope is that drugs could one day be developed to switch key genes on or off in at-risk subjects, and a new UVA study has offered up some new potential targets by identifying groups of genes that appear to cause weight gain and others that prevent it.
University of Virginia scientists have identified 14 genes that can cause weight gain and three that can prevent it. The research helps shed light on the complex intersections of obesity, diet and our DNA. If researchers can identify the genes that convert excessive food into fat, they could seek to inactivate them with drugs and uncouple excessive eating from obesity.
“This is especially important when you consider the physiological realities of obesity,” said co-author Siddhartha Angadi of the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Virginia. “Body weight is a highly heritable trait, and weight loss is associated with substantial metabolic alterations that ultimately thwart weight loss maintenance,” added Angadi.
Walking, cycling or running is more beneficial than calorie-cutting, as so-called “weight cycling” or “yo-yo dieting,” in which overweight people quickly shed and regain the pounds, “is also associated with health problems, including muscle loss, fatty liver disease, and diabetes,” according to the authors, and does not factor in hereditary aspects of weight, metabolism and body shape. “Body weight is a highly heritable trait, and weight loss is associated with substantial metabolic alterations that ultimately thwart weight loss maintenance,” said Siddhartha Angadi of the University of Virgini...
Writing in the journal iScience, Professor Glenn Gaesser, from the College of Health Solutions at Arizona State University, and associate professor Siddhartha Angadi, from the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Virginia, want us to reboot how we think about “healthy” culture.
A bone-loss discovery from the University of Virginia School of Medicine points to a potential treatment for osteoporosis and rheumatoid arthritis, according to a news release.
Researchers at the University of Virginia are training their education students using virtual reality simulators created by Mursion, a tech company. The teacher trainees experience several virtual practice scenarios such as a parent-teacher conference, small-group instruction, and large-group instruction. A digital puppet master plays the role of the parent and pupils behind the scenes, but the developers plan for the programme to eventually become automated. The technology is currently being used in over 50 American colleges.
A recently released report by the Virginia Public Access Project shows that Dinwiddie County, along with other Tri-City localities, has among the highest college acceptance rates in the commonwealth for high school students. According to the report, which examined the percentage of applicants from localities accepted at four-year public colleges and universities in 2019 and 2020, Dinwiddie students had an acceptance rate of 85.7%. Applicants in the county had a 50% acceptance to the College of William & Mary, 46.7% to the University of Virginia, 50% to the Virginia Military Institute, 66.7...
“Plagues, Witches, and War: The Worlds of Historical Fiction” offered by The University of Virginia – This course sets context for the study of historical fiction. Some renowned historical fiction authors discuss their famous works with the professor during some modules of the course.
(Commentary) In its fiscal year 2021 annual report, the University of Virginia Investment Management Company noted that real assets produced a 49% investment return—and mentioned that oil prices had rebounded more than 80% during the year, recovering from the pandemic low: a source of huge profit for some traders, if not necessarily Virginia itself.
The Indianapolis Motor Speedway will host the first autonomous racecar competition on October 23 with algorithms driving the cars instead of humans. College students are writing the software to power the cars. Among the competitors is UVA’s Cavalier Autonomous Racing. The first team to cross the finish line in 25 minutes or less will win $1 million. Second place is $250,000 and third place is $50,000. The remaining prize money was awarded earlier in the competition for the first and second place finishers in a simulated race.
When Mike McConnell decided what he wanted to spend his career working on, he was 29, inspired to begin his Ph.D. – and flat broke. He’d learned from his biology classes that immune cells in the body constantly rearrange their own DNA: it’s what allows them to protect us by making receptors in the right shapes to bind to invasive pathogens. As he wrapped up a master’s degree in immunology in the late 1990s, he’d obsess about it over beers with his roommates. “Suddenly this idea kind of clicked,” McConnell recalls.
That preliminary report is promising, says Debbie-Ann Shirley, a pediatric infectious diseases doctor at the University of Virginia and medical director of the COVID-19 clinic. Side effects from the vaccine were similar to those seen in older children with most being “brief, quickly resolved and mild.”
Innocence Project says answers to cold case Shenandoah murders may sit buried in FBI evidence locker
A lawyer for a man once charged in the deaths said she believes DNA that would lead to the killer of Julie Williams and her partner, Lollie Winans, 26, in Shenandoah National Park in 1996 still sits stashed away, all but untested, in an evidence locker at the FBI lab in Quantico. “They have male DNA on a gag, they have hairs,” said Deirdre Enright, founder and director of the Innocence Project at UVA’s School of Law.