Christine Mahoney, a professor at the University of Virginia's Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, has an idea she hopes will address the influence of money in politics. Mahoney proposes a system in which interest groups would be required to upload position papers to a public repository on each piece of legislation they are seeking to influence. I recently spoke with Mahoney, who has conducted the first large-scale comparative study of lobbying in the United States and the European Union. Our exchange has been edited and condensed.
If a car's brakes suddenly fail and send it careening uncontrollably into a ditch, how do you know whether it was a mechanical failure or the work of a malicious hacker? There's no foolproof way today to prove a car was hacked. "There's no doubt cars can be attacked. Then the question is, how would we know? Today, there's nothing to collect to show a cyberattack" on a vehicle, says Barry Horowitz, chair of the Systems and Information Engineering Department at the University of Virginia, which has conducted car hacking research. UVA also is involved in the Virginia Sta...
A lawyer's claim that a Maplewood teacher's brain condition is in some way responsible for her actions in the alleged sexual assault of six male students is part of a rare but growing use of neuroscientific evidence in criminal courtrooms across the country. "That is always a challenge with regard to psychiatric and neurological evidence," said Richard Bonnie, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law.
Less than a week after the shootings at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe announced plans to remove the Confederate flag emblem from Virginia vanity license plates. The announcement was met with an outcry from some, and applause from other Virginians. Grace Hale is the director of the American studies program at the University of Virginia and specializes in the history of the South. She said the one thing that confuses her the most about the flag is not regional pride, or even racism, but the continued use of a symbol t...
More than 50 years after William Faulkner's last book, educators are creating an online database of his books and short stories, featuring maps, characters and other information that can be accessed online by scholars and the public. They're calling it Digital Yoknapatawpha, a play on Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County, a fictional county based on and inspired by Lafayette County. Stephen Railton, director of the DY project, is a professor of English at the University of Virginia and a "pioneer" in digital humanities. Railton worked on digital projects involving the work of ...
Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said there is a long history of flavour-of-the-month candidates grabbing attention in the early days of a campaign. “I think he’s already peaked,” Sabato said of Trump. “He can stay in as long as he wants, as long as he’s willing to spend the money, and he can run as an independent. He’s got the resources.
The Ronald McDonald House is celebrating a huge donation. Red Shoe Cville presented the nonprofit with a $10,000 check at a Tap Takeover event at Wild Wing Cafe Thursday night. The group raised every penny of that donation at their Downtown Chili Showdown back in April. Now, the money will help families of children getting treatment at the University of Virginia Medical Center.
A new study finds that Americans’ conscious and unconscious biases against lesbian women and gay men are decreasing across all demographic groups. The new study shows an accelerating trend to rapid cultural changes in attitudes toward lesbian and gay people. “Many people have this gut feeling that our culture has changed,” said lead researcher Erin Westgate, a doctoral psychology student at the University of Virginia. “We wondered whether people’s attitudes were really changing, or if people today just feel more pressure to say they support lesbian and gay people....
Charlottesville’s Annual Community Health Fair will be held this Saturday in Washington Park from 10 a.m until 2 p.m. The event will provide free health screenings and health information. The University of Virginia Health System, Martha Jefferson Hospital, and the Virginia Department of Health will all have staff and volunteers on hand to help the community.
A group of six people were honored Thursday when they graduated from the University of Virginia Apprenticeship Program. The graduates represent several trades, including plumbing, carpentry and electrical.
According to polls, Americans' attitudes toward gay and lesbians have grown decidedly more positive over the past decade. But how deep does this shift really go? That's the conclusion of a just-published study that measured the unconscious attitudes of nearly two-thirds of a million people over an eight-year stretch. "People today are genuinely more positive toward gay and lesbian people than they were just a decade ago," says University of Virginia psychologist Erin Westgate, the paper's lead author.
Working primarily with mice, lead author and University of Virginia neuroscience professor Dr. Jonathan Kipnis and his group identified a previously undetected network of lymphatic vessels in the meninges — the membranes that surround the brain and spinal cord — that shuttle fluid and immune cells from the cerebrospinal fluid to a group of lymph nodes in the neck, the deep cervical lymph nodes.
Democrats are seeing warning signs after a new poll showed Hillary Clinton losing three swing states and deep in negative territory on questions of character. “It’s never good to be trailing in a poll or to have numbers that don’t show you in a particularly good light, but at the same time it’s July 2015,” said Geoffrey Skelley, a political analyst at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “The general election is a political century away.”
A school that serves children with autism from fifteen central Virginia school districts is trying to solve a teacher shortage. The Virginia Institute of Autism (VIA) has funding and space for more students, if it could find the staff to work with those children. “Special education really is where you make a difference, and working with students with autism is probably the prime area right now where we need the most help,” said University of Virginia Curry School of Education Special Education Coordinator Bill Therrien.
Five years after Congress passed the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act as a response to the 2008 financial crisis, Americans remain concerned about the potential for big-bank taxpayer bailouts. “This hasn’t ended bailouts at all,” said Paul G. Mahoney, Dean of the University of Virginia School Law School, during an event at The Heritage Foundation Tuesday.
Allegiances are shifting in Virginia, there are now more ‘Hoos’ than ‘Hokies’ in the Commonwealth. In a new Public Policy Poll, 34 percent of respondents called themselves University of Virginia fans while just 28 percent consider themselves Virginia Tech fans.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich on Tuesday became the 16th candidate to announce he is running for the GOP nomination. Experts say despite his late entry, Kasich could be a contender in the race. "He's a good campaigner," said Larry Sabato, a political science professor at the University of Virginia. "He's a viable dark horse."
Political analyst Larry Sabato said Tuesday he has one word for a potential Donald Trump presidency: "disaster." "He would not really be able to govern because of his bombastic style," said Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, on CNN's "Newsroom with Carol Costello" program. "He's a billionaire. He's used to calling the shots."
The folks at the University of Virginia Health System have done some impressive work with telemedicine. We caught up with Karen Rheuban, MD, director for UVA's Center for Telehealth, and David Cattell-Gordon, director of the UVA's office of telemedicine, to talk mHealth security, challenges and what it means to take it to the next level.