Most inventors have high hopes for their creations: Even Frankenstein had good intentions for his monster's future. But once it is set loose in the world, an invention may live out a very different life than its creator intended. The creator of Corn Flakes was John Harvey Kellogg, a 7th Day Adventist, doctor and surgeon. John Harvey Kellogg’s writings, which are available online through the University of Virginia, offer a window into his austere and often creepy life philosophy, of which food and diet was a main part.
Left to my own devices, would I do away with summer reading? No, I’d try a variation on it. Instead of assigning one book that is expected to do several things (inspire engagement, spark debate, build community), I would present the students with several books -- a menu of options -- in hopes of promoting reading. If they read none (yes, it’s true: some students don’t crack their summer reading) but go online for a “study guide,” they will not find one. The book is not on many syllabi. They will find reviews, which tend to be better written than cheat sheets and m...
Today, the FDA approved Flibanserin (Addyi), the "female Viagra" made to treat Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSDD) in pre-menopausal women. HSDD refers to a series of disorders related to problems with desire, arousal, orgasms, and sexual pain. But can you take female viagra if you have depression? I talked to Dr. Anita Clayton, the interim chair of the department of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences at the University of Virginia School of Medicine in Charlottesville, to see whether or not the new “female Viagra” drug was safe to take for women w...
The University of Virginia's College at Wise Chancellor Donna P. Henry on Tuesday said the college will double down on its regional economic development leadership role. While welcoming students back to campus on Tuesday during the college's annual convocation activities, Henry said Southwest Virginia's future will be the focal point of her leadership at UVa-Wise.
Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk was the lone Republican senator to vote against the GOP’s defunding bill. Kirk bolted from his party’s official line because the vote would have hurt his chance of re-election. Kirk won his seat by less than 2 percentage points in 2010, during the Republican-wave election. His likely Democratic opponent will be the popular Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth — a pro-choice, highly decorated Iraq War veteran and double amputee. The University of Virginia’s Larry Sabato now has Kirk’s race listed as a likely win for Democrats in his Crystal Ball po...
Imagine a book that has pages you can tear out and use to turn raw sewage into drinking water. Each page is implanted with silver or copper nanoparticles that kill bacteria when water passes through them. That’s exactly what one postdoctoral researcher at Carnegie Mellon University says she’s created. She calls it the “drinkable book.” Dankovich came up with the idea while working at McGill University in Montreal and developed it later at the University of Virginia.
Of all the illustrious men and women who have passed through the University of Virginia, Julian Bond holds a special place. That is primarily because he was a direct link to a crucial time in American history — but also because he represented that history so compellingly, as a teacher, philosopher, leader and activist.
The University of Virginia has announced that it will establish a permanent position in the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences in honor of Julian Bond, the civil rights leader and social activist who died Saturday at age 75. Funding for The Julian Bond Professorship of Civil Rights and Social Justice stands at $2 million, according to the university, and has a goal of $3 million.
(By Teresa A. Sullivan is president of the University of Virginia) We lost a passionate champion for equal rights and one of our most eloquent voices for human justice when Julian Bond died last Saturday. Mr. Bond was a driving force for social change in our country for more than a half-century — as a civil rights leader, politician, scholar and writer.
(Mark Edmundson, a professor of English at the University of Virginia) I was giving a lecture in New York not all that long ago. I was talking about ideals. The audience was made up of therapists and therapists in training at the eminent William Alanson White Institute on the Upper West Side. After the talk was over, I was asked a remarkable question. Certainly it was the best-posed question that I have ever gotten at a talk.
Currently a professor in the University of Virginia’s art department, Rebecca Schoenthal has been announced as the Fralin Museum of Art’s new curator.
The University of Virginia is taking new action to make it safer for students arriving in Charlottesville this week. UVA’s efforts follow a tumultuous school year with the murder of a student and the fallout of the now-debunked Rolling Stone magazine rape story.
If this is war, then the attacks have hit home. The University of Virginia disclosed last week that it had been the victim of a “sophisticated” cyberattack originating in China.
Get this: Renting is the new American dream. And that doesn't bode well for America. According to a University of Virginia Center for Politics study, you see, "homeowners are much more likely to vote for Republicans than renters (34 to 18 percent), while renters are more likely to vote for Democrats than homeowners (44 to 35 percent)." That's because the responsibility of homeownership — the continuous hassles, expenses and taxes — brings out the conservative in even the most diehard liberal.
In June 2014, the Sunni militant group ISIS declared that it had established a new caliphate spanning territory in Syria and Iraq. Since then, the region under its control has expanded, despite airstrikes and the deployment of U.S. military advisers, and Jihadist groups across the Muslim world have pledged their allegiance. What should the Obama administration's next steps be? Should the U.S. goal be containment, or can ISIS be defeated? For the motion: Philip Zelikow, the White Burkett Miller Professor of History at the University of Virginia and former dean of its graduate school. A care...
Developing ways to pinpoint one's latitude and longitude was one of the greatest scientific endeavors in history, a quest that ultimately took centuries and was a matter of life and death. These astronomical calculations depended on navigators knowing how their instruments might be tilted with relation to the positions of the moon and stars, explained study co-author Ken Seidelmann, an astronomer at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. The act of "determining the vertical," or knowing which way was straight down, in turn depended on watching a basin of li...
(By Boris Heersink, a Ph.D. candidate at the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics at the University of Virginia and a National Fellow at the Miller Center) Donald Trump’s surprising and ongoing role as the de facto frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination has raised considerable concern among Republican leaders. At this point, they may not yet be worried that Trump will actually become their nominee. After all, the history of presidential nominations is full of one-time frontrunners who failed to make it all the way.
The matrimonial bird of paradise may flap harder with the right wing. According to researchers at the University of Virginia and University of Utah, Republicans are more likely to self-identify has very happy in marriage than Democrats and political independents. A report co-authored by UVa sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox and released today shows 67 percent of married Republicans report being happy in their connubial relationships compared to 60 percent of married Democrats.
Sometimes two problems can cancel each other out. Carbon dioxide emissions from power plants could be put to good use, preventing fracking chemicals from contaminating drinking water supplies. Although fracking has unlocked new fuel sources and slashed energy prices, there is a risk that toxic compounds in the fracking fluid can get into shallow aquifers via fractures in the bedrock. Andres Clarens at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and his team say pumping CO2 into the wells could prevent this. At the high temperatures and pressures found at depth, it re...
Vacations say a lot about people. For one thing, where people choose to go indicates how much they like to be around others. In new work in the Journal of Research in Personality, psychologists from the University of Virginia quizzed college students about their geographical preferences and found that introverts prefer the mountains while extroverts prefer the ocean. The researchers found more evidence for this when they looked at who actually lives where: Residents of especially mountainous states were more introverted on average than their counterparts who live in flatter places.