On Tuesday, Juul announced that it will no longer sell its flavored pods – each of which contains the same amount of nicotine as a pack of cigarettes –in retail stores. I texted Katie McCracken, a sophomore at the University of Virginia – whose mint Juul I once sampled in a campus library, for research – and asked if she thought the flavor ban would have an effect. “I don’t think kids are going to keep Juuling if they have to do tobacco or menthol,” she replied. She thought the Juul trend was fading out, anyway.
Patients with obesity who undergo bariatric surgery are less likely to develop new-onset atrial fibrillation over eight years vs. similar patients who received medical therapy, possibly related to a greater reduction in BMI with surgery, according to study data presented here. “We have some evidence that in patients who have been well-matched against a nonsurgical cohort, there still seems to be some reduction in the incidence of new-onset atrial fibrillation for patients who have undergone bariatric surgery,” Dr. Kevin Lynch, a surgical resident in the Department of Surgery at the UVA Health ...
Earlier this fall, the UVA Health System began construction on a new Musculoskeletal Center, which will consolidate multiple outpatient orthopedic clinics to a single location. The 195,000-square-foot facility will include six outpatient operating rooms, advanced imaging, physical and occupational therapy and 95 exam rooms.
Also contributing to the increase in money needed for Medicaid are some one-time expenses – delayed payments totaling $26 million to the University of Virginia Health System and Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters – and a billing dispute with the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services over charges from two state geriatric hospitals. That dispute will cost Virginia $58 million.
A huge gap exists between the need for home-based medical care and what is actually being provided to frail older adults, especially in rural areas, a new study has found. “Most homebound seniors have not received medical care at home,” Nengliang “Aaron” Yao, one of the study’s authors and an assistant professor at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, said. “More medical house call programs are needed.”
Autonomous shuttle service could be on the streets of Albemarle County soon. On Wednesday, Albemarle County supervisors signed off on a $600,000 partnership with Perrone Robotics and JAUNT Inc. The University of Virginia plans to join the partnership with the pilot launch.
Hunter J. Smith was named Benefactor of the Year for giving the largest gift in the history of UVA’s College at Wise. The Carl W. Smith Bicentennial Scholars Fund was established by a $10 million gift from the Hunter Smith Family Foundation. The University of Virginia matched it with an additional $10 million.
(Commentary) Amazon’s decision to locate HQ2 in Virginia strengthens several well-known narratives: Virginia is the technology hub of the East Coast, a top producer of an educated workforce, and one of the best states for business in the nation. We have one of the top higher-education systems in the country.
At first, the judge was skeptical. Maybe he even bought into whispers that Norfolk’s innovative attempt to help drug addicts was “hug-a-thug” court. “I thought it was soft,” he said. Twenty years later, Circuit Judge (and UVA alumnus) Junius Fulton III is a true believer in Norfolk Drug Court, one of the oldest programs of its kind in Virginia.
The 2016 primary season kicked off nearly 20 months before the vote, and the 2020 primary could begin even sooner – especially now that California’s primary, previously held in June, has been moved to March. Having the California vote so early in the primary season could potentially upend the process, said Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia.
Reportedly, research has associated insomnia with high blood pressure, congestive heart failure, diabetes and other ailments. According to JoAnn Pinkerton from the University of Virginia, early surgical menopause is linked to more severe menopause symptoms. Hence, it is essential to examine the sleep quality in women after surgery that leads to menopause, because insomnia and disrupted sleep can cause fatigue, mood changes and reduce your quality of life.
Tech companies like Facebook and Google are relying on FireEye and other vendors in part because they grew so quickly over the past decade that they did not anticipate how people might misuse their services – or they did not act on warnings. Siva Vaidhyanathan, a UVA professor of media studies, said that companies like FireEye have an advantage because they focus on hiring people with language and cultural expertise in contrast to Silicon Valley’s approach of trying to solve problems with large-scale software.
(Subscription required) Beckie has a new article out exploring how and why some colleges are laying out a new vision of what it might look like to educate the whole student. The story uses as its main example a course, “The Art and Science of Human Flourishing,” that she observed at the University of Virginia (it’s being co-developed with, and also taught at, Pennsylvania State University and the University of Wisconsin at Madison). She noticed that the two instructors teaching the course at UVA this fall followed a pretty specific time schedule for how they used the 50-minute class period. Th...
Crozet will be the latest community in the country to test autonomous shuttles. Perrone Robotics, a Crozet-headquartered developer of autonomous vehicle software platform MAX, will be running the pilot autonomous shuttle program in a partnership with JAUNT and Albemarle County around the Crozet area come March. According to a news release, the University of Virginia also plans to join the partnership.
More than 400 graduates from Virginia colleges and universities currently work in Amazon tech jobs. Virginia Tech produced 29 percent of those grads, George Mason 25 percent and both the University of Virginia and Northern Virginia Community College 15 percent.
The Russian government is arguing that a federal court should dismiss a lawsuit brought by the Democratic National Committee alleging that Moscow’s military spies, the Trump campaign and the WikiLeaks organization conspired to disrupt the 2016 campaign and tilt the election to Donald Trump. Ashley Deeks, a senior fellow at UVA’s Center for National Security Law, said she thinks “Russia is likely to prevail in arguing that the commercial-activity exception does not fit the situation at hand.”
The capital of Venezuela is more than 2,000 miles from Charlottesville, but some UVA students are worried. Venezuela has descended into an economic turmoil that has spurred widespread famine and high inflation. These concerns led students to start a fundraising drive on Grounds through an exhibit of housing conditions for the refugees.
As students packed into Albemarle High School's gym, it was not for just any basketball game. This crowd was there for one special team: the Albemarle Power Patriots, a team of students with special needs, taking on a team of AHS teachers. Their honorary coaches include UVA men’s basketball players Jack Salt, Kyle Guy and Braxton Key, as well as AHS alums Austin Katstra and Grant Kersey.
UVA economist Eric Chyn called Kim’s approach creative and effective. “It’s very compelling evidence using new data,” he said. “It tells us something about the way in which peers matter.” He was not involved in Kim’s research but has studied similar social effects in different contexts.
Among findings and recommendations by the Joint Legislative Audit ad Review Commission: The Department of Corrections should work more closely with the health systems at Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Virginia to treat inmates who need high-cost prescription drugs, and possibly create a pilot program; and the Department of Corrections should work with VCU and UVA to develop a pilot project to provide inmate health care for at least one state facility.