(Commentary) Back when I taught a course on race, racism, and racial identity, one of my students discovered the University of Virginia’s Racial Dot Map, a tool that allows users to visually assess the racial demographics of a given location, including the racial and ethnic disparities of state prisons. This interactive resource was created by the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service and added a great deal to our understanding of the racialization of geography.
(Commentary) After learning about the birth of country music, I wanted to know more about Southwest Virginia. It’s still rural and sparsely populated compared with the rest of the state, roughly 90 percent White, working class and solidly Republican. An article posted in September to the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics website found that for voters in the state who fit that profile, “racial resentment” was a driving force behind their candidate preferences.
One of the studies, published by University of Virginia researchers earlier this month, used satellites to measure the near-daily emissions of nitrogen dioxide in 52 major U.S. cities, including Phoenix, Los Angeles and Newark, New Jersey. It found that low-income neighborhoods and communities of color experience an average of 28% more nitrogen dioxide pollution than higher-income and majority-white neighborhoods.
A new forecast by University of Virginia scientists indicates that an increase in cases is possible if transmissions mirror that of last winter; however, Virginia is not currently on this trajectory. “It is possible that a severe flu season, in conjunction with the ongoing COVID pandemic, may push hospitals to near capacity in January of 2022,” the report states.
New COVID-19 treatments may be leaving certain populations out. A study out of the University of Virginia suggests that minorities and those who live far from cities are not participating in crucial trials.
Getting your hands on a COVID-19 treatment research trial has been a viable path toward patient care access during the pandemic, but new research out of UVA Health shows those trials are out-of-reach for about a third of Americans and three-quarters of folks living in rural areas.
So where should you go for peak ginkgo? If you’re up for a 70-mile drive from DC, the Ginkgo Grove at Blandy Experimental Farm in Boyce, Virginia boasts over 300 trees and is one of the largest public ginkgo groves in America. If you’re homebound, check out this virtual ginkgo seminar from Blandy/University of Virginia faculty.
Unbiased policing is the goal of new training for the University of Virginia Police Department. It’s called justice training and is hosted by the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement, or NOBLE.
The next few days will look a bit different for the University of Virginia Police Department. The entire staff is receiving training from National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives. The goal is to engage in procedural justice. It’s a combination of reading, talking, and exercises to help the officers understand the community and its goals better.
For the second straight year, University of Virginia students living on the Lawn have canceled the community trick-or-treat that attracted scores of neighborhood children, both older and younger than 18.
The University of Virginia has broken ground on a facility for a new data science school on its Charlottesville campus. The School of Data Science will sit on 14-acre campus area that also will have a hotel and conference center, a performing arts center and other academic buildings, the university says in a news release.
(Subscription required) “When photography was invented and developed, it was almost entirely used in the West,” said John Edwin Mason, a UVA associate professor of African history and the history of photography. “The technology and the practical techniques that photographers developed were to capture white people’s skin tones.” He added, “Film and digital technology both are still biased toward doing justice to white skin tones, with Black skin tones being an afterthought.”
(By Rachel K. Alexander, a postdoctoral research associate and lecturer in the Department of Politics) As more Americans opt out of traditional burial, it’s worth considering the political significance of graveyards.
(Subscription may be required) Dr. William A. Petri, an immunologist at the UVA School of Medicine, answers this week’s COVID-19 questions from readers. And there’s big news: an FDA panel says that the benefit of the Pfizer vaccine for kids 5-11 is greater than the risks.
Naturally, some people are better at certain things than they are at others; this can be related to the differences in ability to process various types of information. However, learning styles are often treated as a superior way for people to understand content — and studies don’t support the prediction that leaning into them will help learners remember material better, says Daniel Willingham, a cognitive psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of Virginia.
Spine implants do not have to be one size fits all any more. Doctors at the University of Virginia Health System are customizing to each patient’s unique spine shape to provide personalized care.
The findings from University of Virginia School of Medicine researchers and their collaborators help explain why specialised bone cells called osteoclasts begin to break down more bone than the body replaces.
“We’ll be screening over 85 films in that five-day period on the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville and on the Grounds of the University of Virginia,” Festival Director Jody Kielbasa told WTOP.
Once the new data science center opens in early 2024, it will anchor a 14.5-acre parcel on the campus at Emmet Street and Ivy Road.
The civil trial that starts Monday will examine whether the far-right organizers had plotted to foment violence. “The trial will provide a detailed look into the world of far-right extremism and organization, but that world should not be understood as an outlier,” said Richard C. Schragger, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law.