Although this spiritedness sometimes looks unsavory, child psychologists say the shift is a good thing. It is a reflection of how safe and loved children feel and how much trust they have in their parents. “It can manifest as kids being a bit more assertive and opinionated, and maybe even more argumentative, and I think that the challenge is to not interpret that as a bad thing, but as an important and necessary process,” said Emily Loeb, a psychologist at the University of Virginia who studies how parenting shapes child development.  
(Podcast transcript with Dr. Taison Bell, critical care and infectious disease physician at UVA Health) I wanted to tell the story about Nellie, or as we called her, "Maw Maw." She was a woman who was admitted to our ICU in the earlier sort of days of COVID before we had access to vaccinations or really even effective therapies that we had confidence in.  
Dr. Linda K. Bunker, 74, of Bloomington, died Dec. 6 in Bloomington, Illinois. In 1973, she became a professor at the University of Virginia. She served as department chair from 1976 to 1984. She became UVA’s associate dean for academic and student affairs in 1984. While there she was instrumental in the coeducation of the institution and was an advocate for gender equity and scholarships for female athletes. In 1997, a professional chair, The Linda K. Bunker Professorship in Education, was established in her honor. In 1998, the Women in Sports Foundation in Charlottesville established the Lin...
(Commentary) For his next act of defiance, Louisiana Repoublican U.S. Sen. John Kennedy [a UVA Law alumnus] should topple the exhausted chairman of the Senate Cave-in Caucus, Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell  
For Green Bay Packers quarterback Kurt Benkert, Sunday night will be a long time coming. A very long time. The third-string signal caller has spent all year as a member of the Packers’ practice squad. In fact, his entire professional career has been defined by practice. But all that is going to change Sunday at Lambeau Field — probably.  
One UVA Health doctor has been elected to the National Academy of Inventors. UVA professor of engineering and radiology Dr. Craig Meyer is being recognized for his MRI invention. Meyer invented the spiral MRI. He says it makes MRI scans quicker and more clear.  
The poster further asserts that herpes is not contracted via sex, but rather through food consumption and vaccination. But experts say the post’s claims are totally bunk. For starters, the sexually transmitted herpes is caused by two viruses, not a parasitic worm. “That post is so, so wrong in many different ways,” said Dr. Patrick Jackson, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Virginia.  
“You might find yourself in one district today, and then a couple years from now you might find yourself in a different district,” Kyle Kondik, a political analyst at the UVA Center for Politics, said. “The district lines also matters a great deal for political power, because the way the lines are drawn can determine who ends up winning and losing.”  
The proposed redistricting maps, released late Wednesday, create six Democratic-leaning districts and four that lean Republican. The 2nd District, represented by Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria, would lean slightly Democratic, but by a smaller margin. “The clearest, most competitive district is indeed Virginia Two,” said Kyle Kondik, the managing editor for Sabato’s Crystal Ball at UVA’s Center for Politics.  
Historian Jalane Schmidt, director of UVA’s Memory Project, worked with the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center to develop the proposal. Her organization develops public engagement around issues of public memory as they relate to the Charlottesville rally. In the center’s video, Schmidt notes that “Swords Into Plowshares” will offer locals the opportunity to heal from or reckon with the events of 2017 and beyond. “Our community will confront white supremacy with creativity,” the scholar adds. “Beauty will heal the ugliness of the past.”  
Yet assumptions about who college and classic books are meant for – the young, the elite – may leave adults who don’t have advanced credentials bearing their years of experience as a burden, not a gift. That’s what Chad Wellmon, a professor of German studies and co-author of new book “Permanent Crisis: The Humanities in a Disenchanted Age,” found out when he taught through UVA’s Edge program, which offers liberal-arts courses to working adults. Several of his students lamented that they’d tried college before, but “life got in the way.” The first week of class was an “unmitigated disaster,” We...
Others, such as Melvyn Leffler ​from the University of Virginia, counter that to think in ‘new cold war’ terms is a serious misjudgment. Beijing and Washington are in a great power competition, not a New Cold War. Think 19th century balance of power politics and not the second-half of the 20th century. In this view, China is not an enemy of the U.S. It is a rival which has the U.S. as its top trade partner. Accordingly, common interests must not be overlooked in an unnecessary and misguided return to ideological war-fighting.  
(Commentary) At issue are two provisions of the Build Back Better bill. First, it makes money available to improve facilities at child care centers, but not if they are in a building whose primary purpose is religious. As Patrick Brown of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the University of Virginia’s W. Bradford Wilcox explained in an op-ed in the Deseret News, the bill “would provide funding for child care providers to improve, expand or retrofit their facility to serve more kids. Unless, of course, that facility is, in the words of President Joe Biden’s plan, ‘used primarily for sectar...
A University of Virginia doctor says getting the COVID-19 vaccine booster shot is especially important right now. Dr. Bill Petri says UVA is treating people with the delta variant right now, and boosting is the best way to help and stay ahead of omicron. “It would be a big mistake to wait. We’re really trying to vaccinate right now and boost against delta. We still have big problems with Delta unfortunately in the U.S.,” he said.  
(Transcript) Dr. Patrick Jackson is an infectious disease researcher at University of Virginia. He says it’s almost certain the world will see more coronavirus variants in areas with low vaccination rates, like South Africa. He’s calling on countries to focus more on getting people vaccinated than on restricting travel.  
If you’re looking for the fountain of youth, you may want to look toward the treadmill and not the scale: According to a recent study, consistent exercise (not weight loss) contributes more towards a healthier and longer life. The study, led by Glenn Gaesser and his colleague Siddhartha Angadi, a UVA professor of education and kinesiology, analyzed the relationship between dieting, exercise, weight, heart health, and mortality. Results showed that working out, consistently and regularly, lowered the risk of heart disease and premature death, even for overweight or obese people.  
(Podcast and transcript) We’re joined by UVA associate professor Peter Norton, to talk about his new book, “Autonorama: The Illusory Promise of High-Tech Driving.” Norton discusses the false promises of automakers and technologists and the mobility solutions that are already in front of us.  
In the Atlantic Ocean, off Virginia’s southern coast, a meadow of underwater grass has been inching along for roughly 25 years. Now close to 10,000 acres wide, it’s poised to become the world’s first verified seagrass-based carbon credit program. It’s a unique collaboration of The Nature Conservancy, The College of William and Mary’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science, and the University of Virginia and its Anheuser-Busch Coastal Research Center. As an ecosystem restoration story, the project offers hope to stressed habitats everywhere.  
UVA School of Medicine researchers are studying ways to improve care for patients who suffer from Clostridioides difficile, more commonly known as C.diff. Researchers are studying how transplanting a healthy person’s feces into someone who suffers from the dangerous infection can improve health outcomes.  
It is one of the largest gifts given to any college or university in Virginia, exceeded only by two gifts received in 2019 by the University of Virginia, including $100 million from alumnus David Walentas to assist first-generation college students and $120 million from alumni Jaffray and Merrill Woodriff to establish the UVA School of Data Science, and a 2007 gift of $100 million by Frank Batten Sr. to establish a school of leadership.