With the Obama administration proposing to build new preschool funding right into the Elementary and Secondary Education Act going forward, the expansion of government preschool continues apace. Even if Congress resists, the movement has strong momentum at the state and local levels. But the preschool push is strikingly similar to an older movement with little evidence behind it: full-day kindergarten.A working paper published last fall by the University of Virginia’s Chloe Gibbs investigated the impact of full-day versus part-day kindergarten using a random-assignmen...
A new multidisciplinary approach to managing patients undergoing a colorectal operation results in shorter hospital stays, fewer complications, and lower medical costs, according to research results published online in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. Currently, patients undergoing a colorectal operation remain in the hospital for five to 10 days, and often experience significant pain and complications. In an effort to improve these outcomes, researchers at the University of Virginia Health System, Charlottesville, developed a standardized approach for colorectal surgical ...
The finance sector’s allure has held strong at the University of Virginia’s McIntire School, where 47.8% of students accepted jobs in the field in 2014, nearly the same number as last year, said Tom Fitch, McIntire’s associate dean for career services and employer relations. But students entering finance are expanding their horizons beyond investment banking to look at other jobs in the industry, including trading, investment management, and wealth management, he said.
While some students with an English degree may pursue a teaching career, others have gone into law, business, marketing or communications. English programs help students develop critical thinking and analytical skills, while improving writing and oral communication. The list below breaks down the top 10 places to get an English degree in the U.S. …No. 6: The University of Virginia-Main Campus is one of the top schools in the country due to its strong academic programs and outstanding faculty. Students at UVa have the opportunity to develop their understanding of their cho...
A team of researchers has devised a new way to target tumors with cancer-fighting drugs, a discovery that may lead to clinical treatments for cancer patients. Patrick Dillon, an associate professor of hematology and oncology at the University of Virginia who was not involved in the research, said that the new technique has potential clinical applications, and believes that "the use of novel drug delivery devices such as this will improve the experience of cancer treatment for an important segment of the cancer patient population."
The chances of Virginia joining the three states that have urged Congress to call for a convention of states appear to be decreasing rapidly as the General Assembly session nears crossover, Tuesday’s deadline for each chamber to complete work on its own bills. “Conservative Republicans and the tea party have mostly embraced this idea, but it is opposed by more moderate GOP office holders and a large majority of Democrats,” said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. He is author of “A More Perfect Constitution,” a bo...
The overall goal of Enhanced recovery pathways programs is to minimize the disruption of a person’s normal physiology, Cima says: “Surgery is a major insult to the body. You have to recover from it.” Thus, ERP protocols are designed to keep your body functioning as normally as possible, says Traci Hedrick, an assistant professor of surgery at the University of Virginia and a colorectal surgeon at UVA Medical Center in Charlottesville. They implemented ERP programs there two years ago, which has led to significant reductions in patients' hosp...
The old culture war politics is dying but new culture wars are gathering force. The transformation of the battlefield will change our public life. The idea of a "culture war" was popularized by Pat Buchanan in his joyfully incendiary 1992 Republican National Convention speech, but it was introduced into the public argument a year earlier by James Davison Hunter, a thoughtful University of Virginia sociologist. In his 1991 book "Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America," Hunter described a raging battle between the orthodox, committed to "an external, definable and ...
Researchers at the University of Virginia say they may have found a way to keep cancer from spreading in the body. Stefan Bekiranov and Marty W. Mayo — who work in UVa’s Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics — recently published a study showing that inhibiting a particular protein may keep lung cancer cells from metastasizing, or spreading.
The Cavalier Daily at the University of Virginia has elected an all-female managing board for the first time in its 126-year history. Incoming editor-in-chief Julia Horowitz: “I want to make sure that when news breaks two months from now, five months from now, 12 months from now that we have an institution there that can react … and that comes from being financially sustainable.”
As Henrico County school officials work to find a way to drive down class sizes, the number of students they are charged with educating continues to grow. Next year, for the first time, the number of kindergartners through 12th graders is expected to top 50,000. The school division uses live birth data from the Department of Health and historical models to gauge how many students they should expect in lower grades. Figures from the University of Virginia and county data about development activity is taken into account as well, Hinton said.
Another influential voice on Wednesday joined the chorus in favor of a federal gas tax hike to meet a looming gap in transportation funding. The nonpartisan Miller Center at the University of Virginia, which had documented an urgent need for renewing critical infrastructure, said increasing the 18.4 cents-per-gallon federal gas tax for the first time since 1993 was the best available option.
A new study at the University of Virginia is examining the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, and why so many young women are opting out even though the state started mandating it in 2008. Healthcare professionals are working on ways to better approach patients about HPV. "One of the aspects of our research is looking at messaging; How do we, as providers, have those conversations with our patients?” said Emma Mitchell, assistant professor at the UVA School of Nursing.
Each year, about 19,000 women will develop cervical cancer, and about 8,000 men will be diagnosed with throat cancer. Both diseases are caused by the human papillomavirus. Nationally, about 35% of young women are getting the required series of three shots, but here in Virginia the number is even lower – just 28%. Jessica Keim-Malpass is an assistant professor at the University of Virginia School of Nursing. She says the way parents are informed about the vaccine by doctors and nurses may be part of the problem.
Students are taking advantage of the University of Virginia’s new UBike system on grounds. The program launched at the beginning of the spring term and has been doing pretty well. UBike is available at more than a dozen stations on grounds, and each bike can be monitored with via GPS. "People are taking the trips downtown to the downtown mall, we've seen trips to dormitory areas that are not within the station maps. It gives you that mid-day mobility,” said Rebecca White, UVa Parking and Transportation Director.
Bicycle sharing on the UVA Grounds. It’s a new way to get around called UBike. Members have an account number or a coded membership card to unlock a bicycle from a special rack. They can ride it anywhere and return it to a UBike rack. There’s an extra charge if the bicycle is not returned to a station or if the bicycle is kept beyond a 90-minute limit. UVA director of Parking and Transportation, Becca White says it’s not like a sharing program in the city several years ago where all the bicycles were stolen. White says the bikes have electronic locks and are equipped with GPS...
Although Virginia was one of the first states to pass legislation mandating the human papilloma virus vaccine for sixth-grade girls, the Commonwealth has fallen behind the national average of the number of girls actually getting vaccinated. Now researchers at the University of Virginia want to know why. The human papilloma virus (HVP) vaccine is three shots series that can prevent a deadly disease. "It's the only vaccine we have to prevent cases of cancer," said UVa assistant professor Jessica Keim-Malpass.
The University of Virginia issued a health warning to students about one confirmed case of the Mumps and four other suspected cases. As of right now the cause of those four other cases has not been confirmed. However, the director of General Medicine at the Student Health Center on grounds says it’s not uncommon to see cases of the Mumps on college campuses. Dr. Meredith Hayden also says Influenza A, this year’s flu, shares similar symptoms with the mumps, including swollen parotid glands and a high fever.
With the left-wing Syriza political party now leading a ruling coalition in Greece, there are concerns about whether Athens will continue to make good on its more than $260 billion economic bailout and austerity agreement with the so-called “troika” — the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. “You’ve got this real tension in that nobody is really empowered to provide the safety net that allows a country to get through a recession — or in Greece’s case, a depression,” said William Antholis, a foreign p...
E.D. Hirsch was an educational conservative before educational conservatives were cool. Now a retired professor of education and humanities at the University of Virginia, Hirsch has been arguing for a back-to-basics approach since the 1980s. In a series of bestselling books that include "Cultural literacy: What every American needs to know" (1987) and "The schools we need and why we don't have them" (1996), Hirsch has called for grounding K-12 education in facts — in the history, literature, science, geography, art and knowledge of their own country and cultu...