Robert Arthur Rankin, 71, a native of Richmond, Virginia, who shared a Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing at The Miami Herald, died Wednesday. He received an M.A. in government from UVA in 1974.
The commission is also directing the state Department of Conservation and Recreation to consider including environmental justice advocates in the master planning for the state’s park system moving forward. “The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of outdoor recreational space for physical and mental health,” said Lukus Freeman, a student at the University of Virginia School of Law State and Local Government Policy Clinic who contributed research on environmental justice issues to the commission’s report.
While Republicans seem to be early favorites to hold the seat, it may look tantalizing to Democrats: the district has gotten progressively bluer in presidential elections, with former President Donald Trump only winning it by three points in 2020. “The district is almost like a tug-of-war,” J. Miles Coleman, associate editor at the University of Virginia’s Sabato’s Crystal Ball, told TPM in a recent interview. “Tarrant County makes up about 70% of the district, and Biden carried that part by 11% last year. But the other 30% of the seat comes from Ellis and Navarro counties — both more exurban/...
Reconciliation – it’s a term federal budget experts would understand, but for the rest of us, it sounds like what you do with a family member you haven’t talked to in years. It’s also the process congressional Democrats plan to use to pass President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 rescue and stimulus bill in the Senate. We asked Raymond Scheppach, who is a public policy scholar at UVA Virginia and a former deputy director at the Congressional Budget Office, to describe reconciliation and explain why its use now is causing such controversy.
With the help of UVA Health and the World Health Organization, CBS19 put together a list of terms you should know in the era of COVID-19.
With the help of UVA Health and the World Health Organization, CBS19 put together a list of terms you should know in the era of COVID-19.
(Satire) The University of Virginia published the results of an extensive 18-month study Wednesday revealing that 96 percent of human beings across the planet would strongly prefer to be a singing, dancing animatronic bear.
(Commentary) AI researchers at UVA and the University of Washington used a well-known set of labeled images called imSitu to train an image recognition algorithm. Each of the 125,000 images in the set included, among other things, a label for the place (e.g., “kitchen”), an agent (e.g., “man” or “woman”), and an activity (e.g., “cooking”). After training their image-classifier algorithm on a subset of the images, the researchers then applied the algorithm to the rest of the set to see how closely its classification matched the human labels. The algorithm performed well in general but failed in...
Virginia has reported nearly 1,600 COVID deaths in past 10 days. Most are from December and January.
The UVA Biocomplexity Institute wrote Friday in its weekly update of virus trends that impending warm weather will likely help reduce spread. But variants and pandemic fatigue are “substantial concerns,” according to the report, which cited how ZIP codes near universities are experiencing increased outbreaks and hot spots due to noncompliance with safety protocols.
Last week, a chart from an academic study went viral on Twitter confirming that dudes do indeed rock. The chart showed the number of men versus women who voluntarily self-administered an electric shock while sitting alone for 15 minutes. Sixty-seven percent of men decided, “F--- it, I’m just going to shock myself for literally no reason whatsoever except to ease the burden of being alone with my thoughts.” Twenty-five percent of women made the same choice. It turns out, the data the chart utilized was published in 2014, but its research might be more relevant than ever. Featured in Science, re...
(Commentary) James Davison Hunter is a well-respected social scientist at the University of Virginia. A Christian, he has written perceptively and sympathetically about contemporary Christianity. He and some colleagues at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture have conducted a research project studying today’s polarized political culture. They explore the conflict between what they call the “Social Elite” and the “Disinherited.” The published and downloadable report, “Democracy in Dark Times: The 2020 IASC Survey of American Political Culture,” is fascinating.
For the third consecutive year, a discovery at the UVA School of Medicine has been selected as one of the most significant biomedical discoveries of the year. UVA’s entry for the “STAT Madness” competition, which features 64 contenders, is a discovery made by Dr. Hui Li. He identified the oncogene, or cancer-causing gene, responsible for glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer.
UVA School of Medicine researchers are in the running for a big award, after discovering a gene that is responsible for causing one of the deadliest cancers. Hui Li and other researchers identified the oncogene, which is responsible for causing glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. Now Li and researchers at UVA are working to use what they know about the gene to create drugs and therapies for this type of cancer.
Five Virginia colleges would be required to make reparations for using enslaved people’s labor to build their institutions, under a bill currently awaiting Gov. Ralph Northam’s signature. The proposal from Del. David Reid (D-Loudon) requires the five public colleges – the University of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University, Virginia Military Institute, Longwood University and the College of William and Mary – to begin the process of researching and memorializing their past use of enslaved labor.
The proposal includes a lower level, which restores pre-pandemic service hours but with several modifications, and an upper level, which would result in a 27% increase in overall service hours, and could include new weekend service and improved frequencies on some routes, as well as additional service between UVA and the U.S. 29 corridor.
Wednesday will see multiple events to commemorate the arrival of the Union troops, including a bell ringing at the UVA Chapel. On Friday, there will be an event at the UVA Monument to Enslaved Laborers involving descendants of those workers.
Brokos pointed to a Feb. 12 incident where University of Pittsburgh educators were discussing sexual and American Jewish history on Zoom with academics from UVA and Brandeis University. At one point, the event was infiltrated and unknown persons posted anti-Semitic imagery including swastikas, as well as anti-Semitic rants.
In 1869, the Buckingham County courthouse – and the records within it – burned to the ground. One historian says it was another blow to African Americans in the commonwealth, part of over 200 years of theft and exploitation committed by the white aristocracy, which continue today. The cause of the fire has been debated for decades, but Dr. Lakshmi Fjord, a visiting scholar at UVA, believes it’s quite clear what happened that night.
Valerie Adams-Bass is a UVA developmental psychologist who studies Black youth and media stereotypes. She says often, in the media, Black students are portrayed as being uninterested in education, and Black boys are portrayed as scary or intimidating. “If that’s what the teachers and administrators or their peers see, then oftentimes that is what they’re responding to when they’re engaging with Black students in reality.”
In the era of online interactions via Zoom, most conversations do not end when people want them to, a new study reports. The study has been authored by experts from Harvard University, as well as University of Pennsylvania and the University of Virginia.