When you fall off your bicycle, slamming your knee into the pavement, your attention focuses on the pain. But the rest of your body is focusing on something else. Your injury has just begun rallying a large number of your cells to do serious battle. Scientsts, including Shayn Peirce at the University of Virginia, are trying to find better ways to understand the immune system. To do that, they're borrowing a method pioneered in video games and the movies. It's called agent-based modeling. Scientists study the process by essentially playing a computer game that attempts to mim...
If foreign travel is on your retirement bucket list, a world of wonders awaits. But if a health crisis arises while you are out of the country, you could face a world of worries. "Medicare, as well as the private health insurance companies, do not provide any significant support for people traveling overseas," says Dr. William Brady, medical director for travel insurer Allianz Global Assistance. Brady, who is also a professor of emergency medicine at the University of Virginia, notes that travelers could face steep costs in addition to whatever the hospitals and doctors charge.
100 years ago, if you were a pedestrian, crossing the street was simple: you walked across it. Today, if there's traffic in the area and you want to follow the law, you need to find a crosswalk. And if there's a traffic light, you need to wait for it to change to green. Fail to do so, and you're committing a crime: jaywalking. "In the early days of the automobile, it was drivers' job to avoid you, not your job to avoid them," says Peter Norton, a historian at the University of Virginia and author of Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American...
Third hour guest, social psychologist Prof. Timothy D. Wilson has investigated unconscious processing and happiness, and discussed why many approaches in the self-help industries as well as some social programs not only don't help, but produce outcomes which are the opposite of what they claim to fix. For instance, the Scared Straight programs, in which convicts tell teens about the horrors of prison life, actually do more harm than good, he cited. He also reported that if people are able to modify or tweak their own personal narrative or story about themselves (what he calls &qu...
Everyone knows by now that 2010 and 2014 were very good to the Republican Party. What they don’t understand (or understand well enough) is just how good. Yes, Republicans now control the Senate and have their largest majority in the House since World War II. But it’s downballot (way downballot) where the depth of the Republican victories over the past three elections truly reveal themselves -- and where the impact will be felt over the long term. In the past three elections, Republicans have gained 913 state legislative seats, according to calculations made by Larry&...
Every year, Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute produces EduScholar rankings--a list of the 200 most influential scholars in the education policy field--for Education Week. The rankings combine six distinct metrics to assess each expert's influence in the academic, book, and media realms. While there are, of course, many ways to interpret the rankings and, as Hess himself acknowledges, legitimate criticisms of them, a key trend in the 2014 EduScholar list is hard to miss. Robert Pianta (22nd), dean at the University of Virginia Curry School of Education, whose res...
Startups and entrepreneurship are the key to boosting the numbers of middle-class jobs according to Steve Case and Carly Fiorina. The University of Virginia's Miller Center released a report on Thursday from a commission led by Case, the co-founder of AOL and Fiorina the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard proposing ways that state and local communities and governments can increase entrepreneurship and middle-class jobs.
Clearly, there are two very different ways to divorce, and separating couples must choose whether they plan to dissolve a marriage or wage a war. According to a study conducted at the University of Virginia, those who decide to mediate rather than litigate their divorce are more likely to talk regularly about the children’s needs and problems, to participate in school and special events, daily activities, holidays and vacations. The study’s author, American divorce researcher, therapist, and family mediator Dr. Robert Emery says the way separating adults handle powerful emotions is...
Two fraternities at the University of Virginia say they won’t sign an agreement dictating new safety procedures after a student’s claim of being gang raped.
A temporary police substation is now up and running near the 14th Street railroad bridge in Charlottesville. The public can expect more police patrolling the University of Virginia Corner area on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights. Charlottesville Police Chief Tim Longo says this joint effort with the UVA Police Department is going to improve visibility and collaboration.
Unless you work for a company that voluntarily offers it, or in one of three states, paid maternity leave doesn’t exist in the U.S. A law called the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) grants up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave every year, but it applies only to full-time workers at companies with 50 or more employees. About half of all working Americans are covered by FMLA. The other half—freelancers, contract workers, entrepreneurs, people who work at small businesses—are on their own. Before it was passed, California’s law was vehemently opposed by manufacturin...
Throughout 2014, students at Colgate University in central New York were outraged by a slew of racist comments. They didn't know who said them, just that they came from people on or close to campus. That's because the offensive remarks appeared on Yik Yak, an app that shares anonymous posts with those nearby. Nationwide, 2014 appeared to be the year of Yik Yak on college campuses, but the existence of anonymous online gossip sites is far from a new dilemma for universities. For the better part of a decade -- since the rise of JuicyCampus in 2007 -- colleges have struggled to deal with ...
All these years later, Former F.B.I. Agent Mark Rossini still regrets not disobeyed the gag order, the nearly 3,000 Americans slaughtered on 9/11 would probably still be alive. “The FBI is telling the truth,” Philip Zelikow, executive director of the 9/11 Commission, told Newsweek. As for why the CIA not only failed to share pre-9/11 information on Al-Qaeda operatives but forbade the FBI agents in Alec Station from sharing it, Zelikow said, “We don’t know.” Now a professor of history at the University of Virginia, Zelikow is likewise skeptical of what former White...
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe will deliver the official State of the Commonwealth address Wednesday night at the state capitol. And therein lies a simple question.What, in fact, is the state of the Commonwealth? “The simplest questions,” University of Virginia political maven Larry Sabato said Tuesday, “are the toughest to answer.” From Sabato: “The state of the Commonwealth is basically good but also governmentally gridlocked -- and in clear need of a strong ethics law that isn’t loophole ridden.”
It turns out, we weren’t always obsessed with speed in the United States. When cars were first becoming popular at the beginning of the 20th century, terms like “road hog” and “joy rider” were called out at “speeding” vehicles, which in urban areas tended to mean they were going faster than 10 mph. In his book “Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City,” Peter Norton, a professor of history at the University of Virginia, argues that in the early 20th century, people thought we needed to keep roads safe from...
A federal judge is questioning why the government wants to let an Army subcontractor off with just a fine, rather than pursue charges in a criminal case against the company whose founder doled out tens of thousands of dollars in bribes to a corrupt Army official. The expert, Brandon Garrett, a professor at the University of Virginia, has since said in a report to Judge Sullivan that the proposed half-million dollar fine is hard to assess because court records don’t say how much money Saena Tech took in from the bribery scheme.
Sign your kids up for dance class, STAT. That is, if you want them to learn computer skills and survive the 21st century. Choreography’s not so different from computing, says Jennifer Chiu, an assistant professor of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) Education at the University of Virginia. Both require rhythm and precision alongside abstraction. Plus, it’s “potentially transformative” to get otherwise uninterested young people addicted to computer science.
Serial may have ended in December, but the appeals process for Adnan Syed, the man at the center of the popular podcast, continues. A Maryland appeals court is considering whether Syed should be given permission to move forward his bid to overturn his murder conviction, and has asked the state to respond to the application by Wednesday. Regardless of today’s outcome, Deirdre Enright from the Innocence Project told Time that she plans to file a motion for DNA testing for never-tested physical evidence in the case. Depending on the results, the DNA evidence could be exculpatory.
Acquavella Galleries have collaborated with UVA’s Fralin Museum of Art for an exhibition that opens on Friday titled “Lucian Freud: Etchings.” Often touted as an oil painter, Freud also produced a number of prints in this style during his career; the Fralin show focuses on those created after 1980. And lo and behold, alongside Freud’s celebrity muses like Leigh Bowery and everyday models like the family dog, gallerist Bill Acquavella makes an appearance in one of the portraits. The show will also reportedly include behind the scenes photos of Acquavella sittin...
Acquavella Galleries have collaborated with UVA’s Fralin Museum of Art for an exhibition that opens on Friday titled “Lucian Freud: Etchings.” Often touted as an oil painter, Freud also produced a number of prints in this style during his career; the Fralin show focuses on those created after 1980. And lo and behold, alongside Freud’s celebrity muses like Leigh Bowery and everyday models like the family dog, gallerist Bill Acquavella makes an appearance in one of the portraits. The show will also reportedly include behind the scenes photos of Acquavella sittin...