Part of Trump's genius, some political observers say, is the way that he uses fresh controversies to drown out older ones. “There are almost too many Trump controversies for an average person to keep track of,” said Kyle Kondik, a political analyst at UVA’s Center for Politics. “So I don’t think these disclosures matter much right now. What matters is how the Clinton campaign weaponizes these controversies in the summer and fall.”
By the late 20th century, “presidential” had become entirely bound up in technological savvy, and Reagan, as could be expected from a former president of the Screen Actors Guild, was an artist when it came to optics. Brian Balogh, a professor at UVA’s Miller Center and co-host of the radio show “BackStory With the American History Guys,” told me that “Reagan’s stroke of genius was to continue running against the establishment while he was actually the president.”
Growing financial insecurity has been accompanied by another trend: an increased number of Americans who report living with physical pain. A research team led by UVA public policy professor Eileen Chou hypothesized that the confluence of these two trends – greater economic uncertainty and more physical pain – may not be entirely coincidental.
Research from UVA and Middle Tennessee State University concludes that the soft skills learned during early career work experience – even part-time or seasonal jobs – translate into 10 percent higher hourly earnings throughout careers.
The police departments in Charlottesville, Albemarle County and UVA are implementing a special kind of training for new officers. The required course teaches officers how to recognize biases. Instructors are trying to teach the officers to control any prejudice they may have when dealing with people.
While cases of misconduct and subsequent retractions headline a growing reproducibility problem in the sciences, they actually represent a relatively small number of the flawed studies out there. “It is a big problem, and it is a pervasive problem,” says Brian Nosek, a UVA psychologist and cofounder/executive director of the Center for Open Science.
The late U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy has been remembered as “one of the truly great architects” of the Northern Ireland peace process by his former Senate colleague and peace-broker, George Mitchell, at an event in Washington. The Kennedy Institute, in partnership with UVA’s Miller Center, has been conducting interviews with people who worked and knew Kennedy to build the oral history on his life and times.
A team of researchers argue that a steady increase in collaborative work is undermining organizations’ performance. We spoke to one of the researchers behind The Harvard Business Review article, UVA Professor of Commerce Rob Cross, about how this process typically unfolds and what can be done to prevent it.
(Commentary by Erich Reimer, a UVA law student) When Donald Trump first announced his candidacy back in June 2015, I was just as flabbergasted and entertained as anyone else. I thought he would be one of those fad candidates who quickly faded. His poll numbers, hovering around 1 percent to 2 percent, combined with unbelievably high unfavorables seemed to support my theory. However, soon enough not only did I become intrigued by his candidacy, but many millions of other Americans seemed to be as well.
UVA’s Larry Sabato sees a Clinton romp in the making. A year ago, his forecast showed Democrats with an advantage in states adding up to 247 electoral votes, Republicans with an edge in states adding up to 206 and six states totaling 85 votes rated as toss-ups. Today, Sabato sees no states as toss-ups. Instead, he shows Clinton with 347 electoral votes and Trump with just 191.
“The Clinton foundation controversies give good material to Trump as the two campaigns engage in a scorched-earth game called ‘Who’s More Corrupt?’ ” said Larry Sabato, director of UVA’s Center for Politics. “As always, the best defense is a good offense.”
Cook Political Report, Rothenberg & Gonzalez Political Report and the team at UVA’s Center for Politics have designated Pennsylvania as leaning or likely going to the Democrats. Larry Sabato's team at the Center for Politics has labeled Pennsylvania likely Democratic in its complete projection that Clinton will pick up 347 electoral votes to Trump's 191.
(By Carolyn Long Engelhard, director of UVA’s Health Policy Program) These are difficult times for Paul Ryan, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, what with the ideological chaos that presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump is bringing to the Republican Party, and the need to continue to rally the voters around repealing ObamaCare as a 2016 election referendum. Nevertheless, one Affordable Care Act replacement idea floated by the speaker is bad news: triaging people with serious and expensive medical conditions into state-based high-risk pools.
If you're having sex and the phone rings, do you answer it? How about when a text comes through or a tweet pings? How about when that nagging voice in your head merely says: I need to check my phone. These questions are important because of new research from the University of Virginia and the University of British Columbia. It notes the increasing amount of research that shows people can't do without their phones. It highlights the proliferation of notifications that now plague our lives like locusts of loquaciousness.
A UVA study reports that the pervasiveness of smartphone notifications is making us increasingly hyperactive and could cause "ADHD-like symptoms even among the general population."
A Dallas auction house says a lock of hair from Thomas Jefferson was sold Saturday for nearly $6,900. The anonymous buyer gets 14 strands of hair that got snipped by University of Virginia professor Robley Dunglison when Jefferson died at Monticello on July 4, 1826. Dunglison was Jefferson’s personal physician.
A high school robotics team in Central Virginia is looking for new members. Cavalier Robotics, or Team Six 19, organized an open house Sunday at UVA. The students work with students from UVA who serve as mentors.
A banking crisis has the effect of eroding the public’s trust in leadership, according to Erika Hayes James, a organizational psychologist at UVA’s Darden School of Business, whose case study on crisis in the financial services sector demonstrates how leadership competencies of integrity, positive intent, capability, mutual respect and transparency impact on the trust-building process.
Sometimes social class can make a difference. Growing numbers of working-class Americans are eschewing marriage and having children outside of marriage. In a 2013 study conducted by researchers at UVA and Harvard, working-class respondents cited low wages and a lack of job security as the primary reasons for these changes.
For months, Bruce Boucher, the director of UVA’s Fralin Museum of Art, had been immersed in a project of such nerve-fraying proportions that most people would have deemed it unthinkable to take on.