If the anthropocene were to become an official epoch, it would be the first time a geological boundary could be witnessed by scientifically literate human beings. But first, scientists must come up with a start date. Some argue it began in the Industrial Revolution, when factories caused an increase in carbon emissions. Others have said it began earlier than that, when agriculture caused widespread deforestation. But William Ruddiman, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Virginia, thinks it goes back much farther than that. “[The atom bomb] is an important marker in human history, b...
NPR's Robert Siegel interviews University of Virginia historian Barbara Perry about the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Andrew Johnson presidency. Perry explains how he was chosen as vice president, and how he suddenly became president after President Abraham Lincoln's assassination.
President Obama hailed Iraq’s prime minister on Tuesday as the kind of leader who could finally unite a fractious nation, and help America leave, after 11 years of war. “What is clear is that we will be successful,” Obama said during his first White House meeting with Haider al-Abadi. “And part of that success is Prime Minister al-Abadi’s commitment to an inclusive government.” “The remarkable thing is to find a case where the relationship went smoothly,” said Phil Zelikow, a historian at the University of Virginia and counselor to former secreta...
Michigan Micro Mote (M3), the world's smallest computer, is taking its place among other revolutionary accomplishments in the history of computing at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. The future of smart dust is being realized by a number of startups coming out of the M3 group. PsiKick was founded in 2012 by Prof. David Wentzloff, Prof. Benton Calhoun of the University of Virginia, and Brendan Richardson. PsiKick is commercializing their own line of ultra-low power systems-on-a-chip.
With 34 donors and 34 recipients, Chain 357, nicknamed a “chain of love,” is the country's largest-ever multi-hospital kidney transplant chain. The National Kidney Registry worked with 26 hospitals across the country to make sure every link of the chain connected. Since Jan. 6, the chain has bounced across the country, including stops at MedStar Georgetown Transplant Institute in Washington, D.C.; Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.; University of Virginia Hospital in Charlottesville, Va.; and two bouts at the University of Maryland Medical Center in B...
Fifty years after he helped lead the storied march in Alabama from Selma to Montgomery, U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., was honored on the steps of Monticello. Lewis is the 2015 winner of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal for Citizen Leadership for his role in the Civil Rights movement. In March, he won the Jonathan M. Daniels ’61 Humanitarian Award from Virginia Military Institute.
Students at University of Virginia received some insight from faculty members about the school's new interim sexual assault policy Tuesday night. The goal of the faculty panel was to break down the policy so students could understand just what changed. The panel is part of a week-long series put on by Take Back the Night.
The University of Virginia Police Department is reporting that some students have been trespassing inside the Rotunda while it is under construction. The work on the structure includes utility trenches, excavations several feet deep and various construction materials, all of which can cause harm.
An expert on gender-based violence says young women and men need to be aware of its prevalence by the hands of authority figures in governments. Social activist Yannette Lukas spoke at the University of Virginia Maxine Platzer Lynn Women's Center on Tuesday. She discussed her own experiences growing up in Colombia, where civil war raged for decades. Lukas says the violence against people, especially women, is rampant and severely under-reported.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, more women in the United States do not have children than at any time in the past 40 years. Bloomberg quoted a research paper performed by Amalia Miller, an associate professor of economics at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, who determined that for each year a women delays motherhood, her career earnings increase by 9 percent, and average wage rates by 3 percent.
Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, the quintessential young man in a hurry and son of working-class Cuban refugees, kicked off an ambitious campaign for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination Monday night with a call for a “new American century." He may find it difficult, though, to keep up with Bush, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Cruz and others in raising campaign funds. Even so, University of Virginia political scientist Larry J. Sabato said Rubio has “plenty of potential, from charisma and many conservative views that the base will like, to his ability to at least get a hearing fro...
Mr. Rubio is the first Spanish-speaking Hispanic to run for the White House. While his appeal may be stronger in the Cuban-American community, he will attempt to draw support from the broader Latino community by campaigning in Spanish. That could be significant given that 25m Latinos — 11 per cent of the electorate — are now eligible to vote, an increase of 3.9m over the past four years. On Monday night he quoted his father saying “En este pais, ustedes van a poder lograr todas las cosas que nosotros no pudimos” — “In this country, you will achieve all the t...
The state of Virginia has an exemplary answer to the question of how to implement threat assessment teams in schools. Simply put, this state requires all of its public schools to set up threat assessment teams. Moreover, one of the threat assessment program guidelines that Virginia schools can choose from has been distinguished as the only evidence-based threat assessment model across the nation. It is called the Student Threat Assessment Guidelines, or VSTAG for short. The VSTAG was created under the direction of Dr. Dewey Cornell, a forensic clinical psychologis...
Our contemporary immersion into political correctness and assumed “rights” regarding the basic building block of society has cumulatively, over the past few decades, steadily eroded not only our sociological strength, but our economic viability as a country. The fundamental significance of the family unit, and the hard data evidencing the undeniable importance of the intact nuclear family, have been ignored. A few years ago, drawing heavily from government data and peer-reviewed sociological and economic research, Robert I. Lerman and William Bradford Wilcox published an extensive ...
Events are being held today across the United States to mark the 150th anniversary of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Although considered one of the country's greatest leaders, some continue to contest the legacy he left behind. "Lincoln's canonisation began almost immediately. Within days of his death, his life was being compared to Jesus Christ," say researchers at the University of Virginia's Miller Center.
The newest member of the University of Virginia Board of Visitors is a longtime political staffer and a former member of the Board of Visitors at James Madison University. Gov. Terry McAuliffe appointed Mark T. Bowles, 55, of Goochland, late last week to replace Dr. Edward D. Miller, a former UVa faculty member who decided to step down one year before the end of his term. Bowles’ term begins June 30.
Argue, if you'd like, with the way University of Virginia officials set the school's tuition schedule for the next few years. Argue with the process used by the Board of Visitors, which allowed for almost no engagement with students or parents. Argue with the $1,000 increases that will hit Virginia families in each of the next two years.Argue with the larger surcharges that will affect leadership and engineering students. Argue that U.Va. officials haven't done nearly enough to ensure that the school is still accessible to middle class and impoverished Virginians. You can argue wit...
The Tom Tom festival is officially underway. The series of events kicked off with an event called Founding Cville, which highlighted some modern day founders and the organizations that they created and helped to grow.
President Thomas Jefferson's birthday marks the beginning of a week-long festival in Charlottesville. Hundreds of people came out Monday for the start of the Tom Tom Founders Festival. “We've grown dramatically.
The University of Virginia Facilities Management department is accepting applications for its highly-regarded and award-winning Apprentice Program, which began in 1982, the first apprentice program started by a state agency. Because of its success over the past 33 years, it has become a model for other agencies and institutions that have set up their own apprentice programs.