One event on Wednesday examined how social media undermines democracy. Media scholars have been trying to answer that question since the 2016 presidential election. On Wednesday evening, University of Virginia professor Siva Vaidhyanathan and University of Pennsylvania professor Kathleen Hall Jamieson shared their thoughts at a UVA Center for Politics forum.
A study from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of British Columbia and the University of Virginia found that moderate background noise enhances consumer "creativity" – meaning they will see the range of benefits of buying a new, innovative product, for example. A medium level of music volume will help reduce distraction for your customers so they can think about their purchase choice this way.
The National Center for Health Statistics report relies on information from death certificates, which don’t always specify the type of drug that caused the overdose. Previous research, including a 2017 study from the University of Virginia, has estimated that opioid mortality rates might actually be 24 percent higher than stated in official reports due to incomplete reporting on death certificates.
The University of Virginia is now ranked second on a list of major colleges that provide Peace Corps volunteers. UVA had 74 volunteers serving in the Peace Corps last year. The only school with a higher total is the main campus of the University of Wisconsin at Madison. It had 75 volunteers.
The FCC builds its coverage maps using data that ISPs report twice a year in what's called the Form 477. There are two main problems with this report. "Form 477 just creates this wildly distorted image of a competition in broadband that's nonexistent," said Christopher Ali, a UVA assistant professor of media studies and a former FCC employee who's writing a book about rural broadband policy.
“You can typically track ancestry back to the 1870 Census, when the vast majority of African-Americans in the United States are listed as individuals in the U.S. census,” UVA history professor Kirt von Daacke said. Before then, he said, “enslaved people show up as statistical references.”
Spring on Neptune is twice as long. The planet experiences distinct seasons, but “I don’t think we’ve been able to observe Neptune long enough with enough detail to say for sure how spring in one hemisphere differs from any other season in terms of atmospheric activity,” says Anne Verbiscer, a UVA planetary scientist.
They were four kids, baby faced and slender, wide-eyed and talented. They were barely of legal driving age. But they had grand visions. One summer 2016 afternoon, as they walked from John Paul Jones Arena to the old Cavalier Inn, Kyle Guy, Ty Jerome, Jay Huff and De’Andre Hunter contemplated their future. What if, the four Virgina freshmen imagined, they could help Virginia be among the best teams in the ACC in three years time? Fast-forward to March 12.
Alexis Ohanian co-founded Reddit, which is now ranked the sixth-most popular website in America. Ohanian was dubbed "the mayor of the internet."… You're making the right choice when you walk into the history department first semester of your first year at the University of Virginia to declare your major, shocking the department head at how early you commit. Trust your instincts.
Alpha-gal is familiar to many scientists because it is responsible for an enduring disappointment: Its ability to trigger intense immune reactions is the reason that organs taken from animals have never successfully been transplanted into people. The puzzle was why the drug recipients were reacting to it. A team of allergy specialists led by Dr. Thomas Platts-Mills at the University of Virginia scrutinized the patients and their families for anything that could explain the problem. The reactions appeared regional – patients in Arkansas and North Carolina and Tennessee experienced the hypersens...
Why did Facebook air live video of the New Zealand mosque shooting for 17 minutes? Didn't anyone alert the company while it was happening? Facebook says no. According to its deputy general counsel, Chris Sonderby, none of the 200 or so people who watched the live video flagged it to moderators. In a Tuesday blog post, Sonderby said the first user report didn't come until 12 minutes after the broadcast ended. "When we see things through our phones, we imagine that they are like a television show," said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor of media studies at the University of Virginia. "They ar...
Heightened sensory perception in toddlers with autism predicts sleep problems at around age 7, according to a new study. The findings suggest that sensory sensitivities interfere with sleep in children with autism. They also hint that adjusting for these sensitivities – by minimizing background light or noise at bedtime, for example – could ease the children’s sleep difficulties. “If you’re hearing noises or are really bothered by light or touch, it might make it harder for you to fall asleep,” says lead investigator Micah Mazurek, associate professor of human services at the University o...
The students' project is a tool that will analyze data of satellites in space. The satellites will then send that info back to ground stations at Virginia Tech, University of Virginia and Old Dominion University.
High school students in Albemarle County got a chance to tackle real-world health issues by teaming up with the University of Virginia. Students from the Health & Medical Sciences Academy, a magnet program at Monticello High School, faced off Tuesday in a competition at the Darden School of Business.
According to data from the University of Virginia, the Appalachia region of Virginia has an overwhelming amount of people facing obesity and diabetes. On Tuesday, students from UVA and area high schools put their heads together for some winning solutions to tackle this health crisis.
When staff members of UVA, the city of Charlottesville and Albemarle County realized that their planning timelines overlapped, they decided to start an initiative called “Climate Action Together” that formalizes communication between the groups.
The debate over the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which at first addressed only racial discrimination, included a key moment when U.S. Rep. Howard Smith, a powerful Virginia Democrat, inserted “sex” into the bill in a way that led many to believe he was trying to tank it. The gesture backfired – and the bill passed. “Women get equality on paper because of a political stunt,” says Jennifer Lawless, Commonwealth Professor of Politics at UVA.
UVA President Jim Ryan’s Final Four is Virginia, Kentucky, Florida State and Michigan State. He has the Cavaliers defeating Michigan State in the national championship game.
Traditionally, babies at the UVA Children’s Hospital’a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit would spend long periods of time being heavily monitored by high-tech medical equipment, kept there until they were deemed well enough to go home. And when that time came, they often went home with "a big binder full of tables and charts for parents to fill out," calling in updates to doctors every few days, according to Jeffrey Vergales, a pediatric cardiologist at UVA. Brooke Vergales, a NICU pediatrician and wife to Jeffrey, said babies had to have mastered these things before they could leave. Together with...
(Commentary by Lois Shepherd, UVA co-director of studies in reproductive ethics and justice) Some laws directly delay abortion, like mandatory counseling and waiting periods. Some are less direct, placing unnecessary and expensive regulations on clinics in an effort to close them down. These obstacles do not ultimately deter most abortions. They are just delayed. But delays mean a more developed fetus that starts looking more like a baby. That makes abortion morally more difficult for the pregnant person, for the providers, for everyone. It also makes the abortion riskier.