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.
A team of engineers from UVA and the University of Texas at Austin developed a first-of-its-kind light-detecting device that rapidly amplifies weak signals bouncing off of faraway objects. In doing so, it could massively improve the vision of self-driving cars, robots and digital mapping technologies.
She came into town the same weekend that Nazis marched in downtown Charlottesville; helped the Cavalier football team beat Virginia Tech on its way to the Orange Bowl; took her third-year finals from her childhood bedroom; and won high honors in pursuit of a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering. No doubt about it, Catherine Barton made the best of her four years at UVA.
Amadita Singh was born in Nepal and came to the U.S. in 9th grade. It was a struggle to adjust at first, but things have gotten better. Now, she’s graduating in the top 10 of her class and heading to the University of Virginia.
Rubio won’t be easy to beat. The two-term Senator has considerable sway with the state’s influential Latino population, which tilted Republican in the last election. “Part of the problem is erosion for Democrats in some places that are heavily Latino,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “Rubio is not the kind of candidate who you would expect that would struggle with Latino voters,” he said. “Whether it’s Demings or somebody else, how are they going to assemble the kind of coalition you need to beat Rubio?”
(Audio) More than 100 million people worldwide have interacted with COVID-19 misinformation since the beginning of the pandemic, according to a new study in PLOS One. We speak to Professor David Nemer, from the University of Virginia, to explain the impact of social media misinformation in Brazil. WhatsApp’s No. 1 market.