The tight ship appears to have given the White House the early narrative it hoped. “It’s as if for the last four years, the country was left in the hands of an irresponsible teenage babysitter, where the mother and father leave and say: ‘Don’t call boys. Don’t have alcohol,’“ said Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at UVA’s Miller Center. “And now the parents are back. The father runs the household on a strict schedule with a plan.”
“It’s very surprising how strenuous shoveling snow can be. It increases your heart rate, it increases your blood pressure, and it puts a huge strain on your heart. And if you’re not somebody who is physically fit or used to exercising, and is at risk of a heart attack, it can certainly precipitate it,” said Dr. William Brady of UVA Health.
(Co-written by Christopher Ali, associate professor of media studies) At the end of 2020, Congress passed the Consolidated Appropriations Act, a $1.4 trillion budget that included the largest public investment in broadband since the 2009 Recovery Act.
The UVA Medical Center in Charlottesville reported an average daily census for the Jan. 22-28 period of 478.7, 78.0% of its 614-bed capacity. The average number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients at UVA for the period was 48.7, down 18.8% from last week’s average of 60. The average ICU census was 132.9, 74.7% of capacity.
In a press briefing Friday, UVA Health says it’s administered 29,909 vaccines. The total amount received is 46,150. That includes second doses saved. There are 22,024 people in the Blue Ridge Health District who need appointments to get vaccinated.
UVA Health and the Blue Ridge Health District are launching a new COVID-19 vaccination site in Charlottesville. They are hoping this will pick up the pace of vaccine distribution. UVA Health will give the vaccines at Seminole Square in a building next to Marshalls starting on Sunday.
Starting on Sunday, an empty store front in the Seminole Square shopping center will transform into the area’s second COVID-19 vaccination clinic. The Blue Ridge Health District is partnering with the UVA Medical Center on the new site.
When a UVA researcher set out to justify his sedentary lifestyle, he discovered that rising from the couch offered some eye-opening benefits: Even moderate exercise may slow or prevent vision loss. In a study using lab mice, Bradley Gelfand, an assistant professor at UVA’s Center for Advanced Vision Science, found that exercising reduced the harmful overgrowth of blood vessels in the eyes – known to cause macular degeneration and other vision problems – by as much as 45%. Because the findings do not rely on self-reporting by study participants, Gelfand says, “This [study] offers hard evidence ...
Researchers at Indiana University – in collaboration with scientists from West Virginia University, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, UVA, and the University of Warwick – have found that classifying temperate forest trees based on the type of symbiotic fungi with which the trees associate can serve as a broad indicator of how the trees and forests function.
(Commentary) Common sense tells us private schools generally outperform public schools. Right? A recent study published in the journal Educational Researcher by UVA professors Robert Pianta and Arya Ansari offers important insight. … Private schools don’t outperform public schools. Differences between the two sectors has more to do with student characteristics than instructional practices.
Like many low-income, first-generation students, rural students may feel ignorant of college’s unspoken norms – from negotiating financial aid to talking with professors. In addition, rural students often feel sidelined by the political climate. According to UVA’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, people in rural areas are “twice as likely to feel powerless and marginalized as those in cities and suburbs.”
(Commentary) As Norman Ornstein tweeted in 2018: “I want to repeat a statistic I use in every talk: By 2040 or so, 70% of Americans will live in 15 states. Meaning 30% will choose 70 senators. And the 30% will be older, whiter, more rural, more male than the 70%. Unsettling to say the least.” The Washington Post checked this claim and found that “In broad strokes, Ornstein is correct.” The Post continued: “The Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service of the University of Virginia analyzed Census Bureau population projections to estimate each state’s likely population in 2040, including the expe...
UVA’s Biocomplexity Institute now forecasts that new cases will most likely peak at 46,000 a week (about 6,500 a day) in the week ending Feb. 21. The institute’s updated forecast takes into account the effects of vaccinations, along with growth in new, more contagious variants of coronavirus.
(Editorial) Congratulations to two UVA researchers who, between them, hold 40 patents in the U.S. and 76 – 76! – overseas. Robin A. Felder and Boris Kovatchev recently were named as fellows to the National Academy of Inventors.
UVA, which received a record 48,000 applications – a 14% increase – announced that it would continue applying the test-optional policy for two years. UVA President James Ryan explained that the administration felt this would be a “reasonable and human response” to the pressure that many incoming students are feeling because of the pandemic.
UVA is sticking with its new policy saying applicants don’t need to submit an SAT or ACT score. The policy started for the class of 2021 because of due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but now it’s carrying over to the classes of 2022 and 2023. One reason the University decided to continue the policy is that testing dates in the upcoming months may be cancelled due to the virus.
Students applying to UVA over the next two years will not have to submit either ACT or SAT scores. The decision, announced Friday, extends a policy first implemented in June for those who applied this past fall. Several other universities also have eliminated the requirement for standardized test scores during the pandemic, which disrupted the administration of the tests.
(Commentary by Melvyn Leffler, history professor emeritus) As President Joe Biden and his team turn their attention to designing a new national security strategy, they face a formidable task – one never encountered before in American history. For the first time, the biggest threats facing the United States stem not from great power rivals or geopolitical configurations, but from stateless and even nonhuman actors such as viruses and climate change.
Interviews are underway for the UVA Miller Center of Public Affairs’ latest oral history project about the career of Hillary Clinton. The project is the first time the center has tackled an oral history about a woman and one of only a handful about a non-president.