(Commentary) [Double Hoo] Robert Bersch, 85, called it quits in December following a 60-year career as a Roanoke Valley lawyer. Health and age were certainly factors, he told me. So was COVID-19. The pandemic put the kibosh on Bersch’s business niche — house and hospital calls. So he quietly closed Wills on Wheels, the low-overhead, two employee law firm he’s run mostly out of his house since 2009. Besides wills, Bersch specialized in trust and estate work and preparing documents such as medical directives and powers of attorney.
Two hours before her tee time, Lauren Coughlin called her husband and unloaded. Weary of golf and burdened by disappointment, she was on the brink of abandoning her dream. Two days later, the 2016 ACC individual champion and University of Virginia graduate was celebrating her first professional victory. Coughlin has yet to win again as a pro, but she enters Thursday’s opening round of the LPGA Tour’s Pure Silk Championship in Williamsburg playing the finest golf of her life.
Elizabeth Horton, injury prevention coordinator at UVA Health, says while the hospital has a level-one trauma center that can handle traumatic injuries, it is important to take precautions in order to try to prevent injuries from occurring in the first place. “It’s the simplest things, like wearing a helmet properly, buckling your seat belt, watching your child around a body of water, but they’re simple things, so we forget about them,” said Horton. “Or we think they’re just not as important as they really are.”
(Audio) In this conversation, Dana is joined by Dr. Meg Jay, clinical psychologist and an associate professor of human development at the University of Virginia who specializes in twentysomethings, and Bill Hemmer, co-anchor of “America’s Newsroom” on FOX News Channel. They share what advice they have for recent graduates or graduates at heart.
(Audio) University of Virginia historian Alan Taylor shares both criticism and praise of the 1619 Project’s specific claims as well as its overall aim, which is to emphasize the importance of slavery and systemic racism in American history instead of the founding principles of liberty and freedom that were, as the project’s opening essay argued, betrayed by the crime of human bondage.
Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, suggested the public stance McConnell took reflects how the Senate GOP caucus actually feels about the proposed commission. “A caucus leader has to be, first and foremost, a good follower. That’s how you stay leader. You make sure that you are where your members are,” Sabato said. “Even if McConnell had come out in favor of this commission, I don’t see how in the world they would get 10 Republicans to go along. “They don’t want an investigation at all,” he said of congressional Republicans. “Look, there couldn’t possib...
(Audio transcript) An interview with Kyle Kondik, director of communications for UVA’s Center for Politics, on the significance of U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney’s removal from House Republican leadership.
A key challenge with privacy is precisely determining how it is violated in the eyes of the law, in terms of harm that can occur that is quantifiable, according to Danielle Citron, Jefferson Scholars Foundation Schenck Distinguished Professor in Law at the University of Virginia. Citron observed that existing privacy laws in the US are not well suited to the problems of the 21st century. She noted that privacy laws that exist were made in an era when there was mass media publishing stories about people and advertisers using someone’s face without permission.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is dealing with limitations that have confronted other progressive Democrats elected in recent years as cities have grown more left-leaning — as to what political or legal power they actually have to get things done, said Richard Schragger, a UVA law professor who has written about mayoral powers. “They’re operating in an environment where making change is really hard,” Schragger said.
One of the court’s two central reasons is the hassle of reviewing past convictions and trials – the administrative burden on the court system of ensuring that those who appeal were actually convicted via fair and constitutional processes. Thomas Frampton, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law who wrote the juror Taylor’s brief, said the court’s opinion is “animated” by a “fear of too much justice.”
(Commentary) The oldest sample of squid ink goes back long before humans ever walked the Earth, to the Jurassic period, 160 million years ago. Of course, squid go back much farther as a species, over 600 million years. Because they lack any bones or shells, squid are only rarely part of the fossil record. But in this one case, we got lucky. Chemists at the University of Virginia analyzed the 160-million-year-old ink sac of a well-preserved cephalopod. They found that the ink was not substantially different from what today’s squid make.
(Podcast) Justene Hill Edwards, assistant professor of history, is the author of “Unfree Markets: The Slaves’ Economy and the Rise of Capitalism in South Carolina.” “Unfree Markets” focuses in on an area of slavery’s history that has seldom been explored: the economic lives of enslaved people, and its meaning for them, enslavers, non-enslavers, and the institution of slavery itself. Hill Edwards explores how the complicated history of the slaves’ economy from the colonial period to the Civil War, showing the relationship between it and the development of capitalism in the nation.
Researchers at the University of Virginia Cancer Center just released a discovery that could boost treatment efforts for prostate cancer. The findings focus on how hormones called androgens act on our cells. It sheds light on how these hormones interact inside the cell affecting gene activity.
Researchers at the University of Virginia Cancer Center are revealing new findings that could help in the fight against prostate cancer. Bryce Paschal of the UVA School of Medicine’s Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics says they have identified a new signal transduction pathway that responds to the male hormone androgen.
(Commentary) A new economic study concludes that in the big U.S. stimulus response to the Great Crash of 2008, politically connected firms got a disproportionate share of the funds that went to private companies and their spending’s effect on employment in their state was statistically indistinguishable from zero, compared with an average effect of 13 jobs saved per $1 million spent for other companies. This news will not shock students of the public choice theory of rent-seeking. What is more surprising is that the study was published by the U.S. Federal Reserve Board and written by two board...
Across the country at the University of Virginia, another robot is undergoing tests to rid spaces of the coronavirus and other potentially deadly germs. This one, DINGO, looks more like a rolling giraffe. And it cleans with ultraviolet light instead of chemicals. It beams certain wavelengths known as UVC. This light shines out from the sides and bottom of the robot. Meanwhile, its giraffe-like neck twists and turns, beaming more germ-killing light onto the backs or tops of chairs, desks and other things in a room.
After receiving more than 1,300 requests for a test waiver from potential applicants, the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business is extending its test optional admissions policies into 2021-2022. Roughly 13% of its next entering cohort of MBAs this fall will have enrolled with an approved test waiver.
Nine colleges in the South are ranked among the top 20 public schools in the country in the Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education College Rankings. Five of the region’s private schools are among the country’s top 25 schools of any kind. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is the highest-ranked public school in the South. UNC is followed in the ranking of Southern public schools by the University of Virginia, ranked No. 51 among all colleges nationwide, which puts it at No. 10 among the country’s public schools.
The magnitude of Saturday’s Commencement continues to grow on Elsie Woodward. After all, it is the day her granddaughter Anna graduates from the University of Virginia. It’ll be the first of two shining moments that day for the Woodward family. In the evening, Elsie, 75, will graduate from William & Mary with a degree in kinesiology. Anna plans to be there throughout, from the traditional walk across campus before Commencement to the moment Elsie’s name is called and she walks across the stage at Zable Stadium.
(Audio) Much of this last year, we’ve been hearing that the goal for ending the COVID-19 pandemic is to reach “herd immunity.” But now many public health officials say that won’t happen. Still, we’re told it’s safe for vaccinated people to remove their masks in most places. So are we in the clear? Dr. William Petri, a UVA professor of medicine and immunology, gives some answers.