The Virginia Film Festival has added six new members from the film industry and the community to its VAFF Advisory Board, including three with University of Virginia ties.
Sagar Sapkota, who is headed to UVA to study mechanical engineering, said he was proud to have been given the opportunity. “I’m really happy that I’m going to college, because my parents have sacrificed a lot for me and my brothers,” he said. Sapkota is one of 31 graduating seniors from the AHC Inc. College and Career Readiness program who are headed off to colleges across the region and across the nation. All are residents of one of AHC’s local apartment communities. Combined, the students were accepted into 135 institutions of higher learning, and received scholarship offers valued at about ...
(Commentary) So, now that Amy McGrath has won the Democratic nomination to challenge Senate Republican Leader Mitch “Root-‘n-Branch” McConnell in the fall, what is she going to do with it? Not much, if you listen to the analysts who are paid to handicap this sort of thing. Both Sabato’s Crystal Ball, ramrodded by Larry Sabato at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, and the Cook Political Report, see the ultimate outcome as likely Republican.
(Commentary) All signs point to a system beyond reform. “You see lots of people putting forth a hopeful idea of a new, humane social media platform to rescue us – one that respects privacy or is less algorithmically coercive,” Siva Vaidhyanathan, a UVA professor of media studies, said recently. “But if we’re being honest, what they’re really proposing at that point is not really social media anymore.”
Stephen Eubank, a professor at UVA’s Biocomplexity Institute and Initiative, said he had read a copy of the paper and found the conclusions well supported. He said he wouldn’t be surprised if the fatality rate from COVID-19, though higher than that for other infectious diseases, turns out to be not as high as some feared. “Especially in the early days of our experience of a novel disease, the case fatality rate is always biased upward because you don’t know what the denominator is,” he said, referring to the number of people infected.
(Commentary co-written by Douglas Laycock, Robert E. Scott Distinguished Professor of Law) Tuesday’s ruling in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue came as no surprise. The Montana Supreme Court had invalidated a state tax credit for donations to organizations supporting students in private schools, solely on the ground that some schools benefiting from the program would be religious. The state court relied for its authority on a state constitutional provision that singled out religious schools for exclusion from generally available funding, however indirect. The U.S. Supreme Court held t...
(Commentary by Russell Riley, co-chair of the Presidential Oral History Program at the Miller Center of Public Affairs) One of the main jobs for any president confronting major crisis is distinguishing merely unimaginable options from the genuinely impossible. Indeed, history indicates that a president relying on gifted help and applying courageous leadership can take a problem that others deem unsolvable and – against overwhelming odds – make it go away.
(Commentary) Which brings us back to the big question for K-12 education: If schools improve, boosting the academic achievement of black students, does that increase their earnings as adults? A 2016 paper from UVA scholars Dajun Lin, Randall Lutter, and Christopher J. Ruhm indicates that the answer is yes. It finds that wages are related to academic skills, as measured at the end of high school – and not just for early career workers, but over the course of a lifetime. Even more importantly, it also finds that African Americans (and Hispanics) see a greater return to cognitive skills than Whit...
“During the Jim Crow era, local white officials routinely manipulated property tax assessments to overburden and punish black populations and as a hidden tax break to landowning white gentry,” said UVA historian Andrew Kahrl.
We know exercise improves everything from cardiovascular disease to one’s cognitive health. Observational studies have also seen physical activity lessen age-related vision loss, but until now it hasn’t been clear how causal that relationship has been. New UVA research is offering the first experimental evidence to show how exercise can directly slow, or even prevent, macular degeneration.
The Bama Works Fund of Dave Matthews Band won’t do its annual round of grants this fall, but it will still be helping nonprofits. The fund is partnering with the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation for the special Community Recovery and Catalyst Grant program, and it is making a $1 million commitment to the program. Bama Works and CACF will leverage the partnership and gifts from UVA Health, Twice is Nice Fund, and the Enriching Communities grant program, to increase funds that are available to make grants.
A Richmond man convicted of a 1996 murder that happened when he was 16 years old, and which he has always maintained he did not commit, was granted a conditional pardon Wednesday by Gov. Ralph Northam. Rojai Fentress, 40, was sentenced to 53 years for the drug-related murder that happened after parole was abolished in Virginia. He was not set to be freed until 2043. His lawyers with the UVA School of Law’s Innocence Project sought a pardon in 2018.
Monuments to African American history are also crucial. Spaces such as the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers in Charlottesville, designed by Mabel O. Wilson in collaboration with Höweler + Yoon design, honor the lives of enslaved people who worked for and built the University of Virginia.
The University of Virginia has surveyed undergraduates as well as graduate and professional students about their preferences for the fall. In the survey, most students indicated that they could adapt to the scenarios that UVA administrators are considering for the fall semester – including a module-based semester and a monthlong delay of the beginning of classes – but it’s not yet clear what decision the university’s leadership will make.
For UVA music professor Fred Everrett Maus, there is much more to music than meets the ear. It presents listeners with the opportunity to understand gender, sexuality, memory, and more.
Since 2010, fewer than half a dozen smartphones have ever incorporated sensors on the rear, and it has never caught on. The reason, according to UVA computer scientist Seongkook Heo, is simply our unwillingness to learn new ways of interacting with devices. “Many users just buy their new phone, turn it on and start using it by touching what is on the screen,” he says. “Not many people look for new features and spend time learning them.”
UVA political science chair Jennifer Lawless spoke about the reports that American officials provided a written briefing to President Donald Trump that Russia paid Taliban militants to kill U.S. troops – and how the President responded.
(By John Edwin Mason, professor of African history and the history of photography) Recent protests in St. Paul evoke the work of Gordon Parks, an influential 20th-century interpreter of African American life and culture.
(By Dr. William Petri, professor of medicine) I am a physician and a scientist at the University of Virginia. I care for patients and conduct research to find better ways to diagnose and treat infectious diseases, including COVID-19. Here I’m sharing what is known about which treatments work, and which don’t, for the new coronavirus infection.
Everette Fortner, associate vice president at UVA’s career center, encourages students to speak up to their managers about their concerns with remote work. “Students are often afraid to ask and jeopardize their internship. Help your employer understand your situation. Don’t try to cover it up. ... It’s a matter of continually communicating with your manager about how to best get your work done in the living situation you’re in,” Fortner said.