Newly discovered immune vessels in the brain appear to control social behavior, a finding that could have future implications for neurological disorders such as autism, say U.S. scientists. The discovery debunked the belief that the immune system is external to the brain. Further research by UVA scientists has found these immune vessels controlled social behavior in mice.
Along with otolaryngology resident Dr. Robert Reed and design lab engineer Dwight Dart of the UVA School of Engineering and Applied Science’s Rapid Prototyping Lab, Dr. Gurrola has created 3D printed skulls that allow procedures such as endoscopy to be practiced and perfected before residents ever have to perform them on a patient.
(By Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball newsletter, produced by UVA’s Center for Politics) Now that the conventions are upon us, recent history suggests that both major-party presidential candidates will, or at least should, narrow their travel.
Schools and colleges spend billions of tuition and tax dollars on digital teaching tools and other educational-technology products, yet they rarely demand rigorous evidence that those products are effective. "It’s a circle of gridlock," says Bart Epstein, chief executive of Jefferson Education at the University of Virginia, which has begun a project aimed at cutting through the excuses and breaking open that logjam.
McAuliffe argues he has the power under the Virginia Constitution to restore voting rights to felons who have fulfilled their debt to society, and UVA Law School professor A.E. Dick Howard, whom McAuliffe calls "Virginia's foremost constitutional scholar" in the state, came to a similar conclusion.
UVA political scientist Larry Sabato doubts that Christie’s call to arms will convert anti-Trump Republicans into supporters or draw fence-sitters into the Trump camp. Despite polls showing Trump closing the gap against Clinton, Sabato believes most voters have already made up their minds. “The establishment donors, and party machinery, is just not going to be there for him,” he said.
Not feeling very social these days? Your immune system could be the culprit, according to a new study that might change the way doctors diagnose and treat conditions such as schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorders. For the study, researchers at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and the University of Virginia tracked an immune system molecule called interferon gamma in lab mice to see how it affected their social responses to one another.
Do you really know the racial make-up of your community? Here’s a “racial dot map,” an interesting tool developed by UVA’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service. Using data from the 2010 census, the project placed 308,745,538 dots – one for each person in the U.S. – and colored each by race and ethnicity.
A study in Nature by a joint team of researchers from the University of Virginia School of Medicine and the University of Massachusetts Medical School presents evidence that the immune system can produce what one might call a "social molecule" that promotes interactivity with others. This suggests that some cases of social dysfunctionality may be linked to problems in the immune system.
Charlottesville's "Signature Yearbook Camp" is underway. One of only four offered in the country, it allows students to learn about design, photography and the latest trends. The camp is a partnership between Herff Jones, Varsity Brand and UVA.
“Two of the big trends in humanities education now are original undergraduate research and teaching in classrooms with the original textual artifacts,” said Michael F. Suarez, a UVA English professor and the director of Rare Book School. For example, Suarez’s students can find an image of Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” on the Internet and then examine dozens of 18th-century versions of the pamphlet in the University’s Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library.
In the midst of a national controversy surrounding racial inequality and civil rights, members of the Charlottesville-Albemarle Bar Association unveiled a 150-pound bronze marker July 12 to commemorate the first African-American student ever admitted to UVA.
UVA researchers say students from the high school class of 2014 who received the text reminders attempted a higher number of course credits, earned more credits and completed more courses during their first year of college.
"I'm old enough to have closely followed the 1964 and 1972 presidential campaigns, so I've seen the parties commit suicide before,” said Larry Sabato, a UVA professor of political science. “But in those two years, Presidents Johnson and Nixon were very unlikely to lose, so it wasn't as though a party was throwing away a winnable election. Not so in 2016. With a solid, appealing ticket, Republicans would have had a good shot at retaking the White House. Instead, they nominated an extremely controversial candidate, who appears quite unlikely to win, at least from the...
Hispanic criticism of Trump is as much about style as policy, some analysts said. "It's the way he talks about Latinos," said Nicole Hemmer, a political historian and research associate at the University of Virginia. "That sort of thing lingers on with voters."
UVA media studies professor Siva Vaidhyanathan was a finalist for dean of the University of Texas’s Moody College of Communications. Due to concerns about campus carry, he withdrew his candidacy. "Classrooms are a special place in the world, not unlike a church or a temple, where we can argue freely and frankly and be unafraid of the sort of change in the environment that a weapon brings," Vaidhyanathan said. “If you’re in a heated discussion with students and you have the faintest concern that someone might be armed, you might dial back your emotion....
Geoff Skelley at UVA’s Center for Politics says Republican legislatures have been solidly against expanding Medicaid, even though it had some support among Republican governors.
One of the most important systems in the human body is the lymph system, through which immune cells travel to places where they’re needed to fight pathogens. But one crucial part of the body, scientists thought, was cut off from the lymph system: no connection had ever been found between lymph vessels and the brain. Now, UVA scientists have discovered lymph vessels in the brain, along with evidence that these pathways could allow the immune system to control behavior and personality.
Dorrie K. Fontaine – dean of UVA’s School of Nursing, Sadie Heath Cabaniss Professor of Nursing and associate chief nursing officer at UVA Health Systems – is at the forefront of a cutting-edge initiative to find and implement remedies for what ails nurses and doctors.