In The News

Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia, agreed that the national partisan landscape will likely be an outsize factor in the race. “It seems clear that the national political environment will be challenging for Democrats this year,” he said. “The change in environment alone could doom Mark Kelly as he seeks a full term, even if the Republicans do not nominate a top-tier candidate.” The Republicans in the race, on the other hand, “have a lot to prove,” Kondik added.  

Far from harming Ward and Finchem, the subpoenas against them could end up painting the two as “martyrs” to Arizona Republicans, said J. Miles Coleman, an analyst with Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. He said it could be particularly helpful for Finchem, a secretary of state candidate who is currently “the front-runner on the Republican side.” Finchem’s candidacy has been endorsed by Trump.  

(Editorial) “We live at a tasteless time in a depressingly rude, uncivil society,” said Larry Sabato, director of the UVA Center for Politics. “I think it’s gotten worse, and social media is one cause. But politeness has never been America’s strong suit. Free expression is a core right, and we need to tolerate a lot, individually and collectively.”  

Recently, it was announced that three positions held by women will have new women installed as presidents, including University of Virginia Provost M. Elizabeth Magill at the University of Pennsylvania, pending approval in March. “The Penn presidency is one of the most complicated and demanding in higher education, and there are very few people anywhere in the world with the skills that this job demands,” said Scott Bok, chair of Penn’s Board of Trustees. “But through a thorough search process informed by input from all university constituencies, we found exactly the right person. Liz Magill i...

Ken Ono has impressive academic credentials – head of the math department at the University of Virginia, an undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago, a PhD from UCLA, three books and more than 150 papers. But he’s also consulted actors Jeremy Irons and Dev Patel, who starred in a film about a mathematical genius. He’s helped competitive swimmers win Olympic medals and is, himself, a triathlete, so Ono didn’t think twice when he got a surprising invitation. A production company creating an ad for one of the nation’s top brewers wanted him.  

Peter Sheras, a clinical psychologist at the University of Virginia, told VeryWellFamily in 2020 that before introducing children to a significant other, it’s important to examine the seriousness of the relationship. The article says that introducing children can “leave them vulnerable to becoming attached. Doing so before you’ve even determined for yourself that this will be a long-term relationship is unfair to the kids.”  

Studying grape seeds in their raw form is difficult because the concentration of active ingredients varies from plant to plant. So researchers use grape seed extract instead, said Dr. Christopher Holstege, chief of medical toxicology at the University of Virginia.  

(Commentary by Rachel Augustine Potter, associate professor of politics) Contractors play an important but largely unexamined role in helping federal agencies write rules. There are two reasons why it is important to understand what is happening here.  

(By William Knaus, professor of public health science) Early in a pandemic, the lack of prior data is an obvious limitation to the development of reliable risk prediction models, resulting in delayed analysis. However, there may be a way to overcome this issue and speed up the analysis process: the use of a proxy disease.  

(By Lili Powell, Julie Logan Sands Associate Professor of Business Administration at the Darden School of Business and Kluge-Schakat Professor and director of the Compassionate Care Initiative at School of Nursing) In recent memory, the world has seen profound changes in almost every facet of business and society, and the change is ongoing. Though it’s taken center stage – with good reason – the pandemic isn’t the only urgent issue facing humanity. In a torrent of contemporary challenges, COVID-19 accelerated some changes that were inevitable, brought the need for others into stark focus and s...

Dr. Jalane Schmidt, a Beloved Community C-ville advisory member and UVA professor, noted the importance of talking about Black history and celebrating the stories – especially this month. “It’s been left out of kind of standard narrations of U.S. history, but it’s an important constituent. It’s crazy when you think about just the expansion of democracy as we know it – a lot of it has been as a result of Black people’s struggles,” Schmidt said. “The Republic as we know it today just really wouldn’t exist in the form we know it.”  

Jaime Frias has been named as the University of Houston soccer head coach, Vice President for Athletics Chris Pezman announced Wednesday. Frias arrives at Houston from Virginia where he served as an assistant coach since Jan. 2019. During two stints at UVA, Frias helped the Cavaliers to four ACC titles (2012, 2013, 2015, 2021) and three College Cups (2013, 2014, 2020).  

Minutes after the University of Virginia women swam beat the American record in the 200 freestyle relay, their counterparts on the Cavaliers’ men’s squad matched that feat. The team of Matt Brownstead (18.87), Matt King (18.49), Connor Boyle (18.63) and Augustus Lamb (18.48) swam a time of 1:14.47, three hundredths faster than NC State’s American record of 1:14.50 set in 2018.  

The University of Virginia women opened the ACC Championships with a dominant performance in the women’s 800 freestyle relay Tuesday evening, and they began the Wednesday evening session in even more impressive fashion as they took down a three-year-old American record in the 200 free relay. Virginia’s team of Kate Douglass (21.10), Alex Walsh (21.38), Lexi Cuomo (21.41) and Gretchen Walsh (20.58) swam a time of 1:24.47, eight hundredths faster than the 1:24.55 that Cal set at the 2019 NCAA Championships.  

(Book review) “To write the life of him who excelled all mankind in writing the lives of others,” James Boswell said, referring to the great 18th-century person of letters, Samuel Johnson, “may be reckoned in me a presumptuous task.” Exactly thus do I approach, with humility not unmixed with awe, Lisa Russ Spaar’s “Madrigalia: New and Selected Poems.”  

Curated by Hannah Cattarin, assistant curator at The Fralin, the new “Alternate Futures” exhibition will bring in four different video projects to prompt deeper consideration of people who often get excluded from power and autonomy, and to encourage envisioning circumstances in which everything could change.  

UVA doctors and researchers \ are seeing patients with long COVID-19 showing symptoms that differ from traditional responses. Long COVID-19 is a condition that can be a continuation of COVID-19 symptoms, and can also present new ones. Muscle aches, nerve pain, respiratory issues, and neurological memory loss are all things on the list. These ailments can last a year after initial exposure. “There can also be things like changes in your skin, rashes, hair loss, things like that. So it’s a very broad category and typically it’s seen within a three-month period after you were diagnosed with COVID...

Dr. Bobby Chhabra has been planning the new center for 11 years. He could see that demand for orthopedic services would grow. “When I started as chair we did 58 surgical cases through orthopedics,” he recalls. “Last year we did 9,000.”  

UVA Health is opening what it says is one of the nation’s largest outpatient orthopedic centers. UVA says the new facility along U.S. 250 combines all aspects of orthopedic care under one roof. “One can come to this facility and have comprehensive musculoskeletal or orthopedic care,” UVA Health Executive Officer Dr. Craig Kent said. “It was designed in an incredible way so that we’d be able to move patients through it efficiently and with great patient satisfaction, and also satisfaction for all the people that work here.”  

Middlesex County is among those counties that lost population between the April 1, 2020 census figures and the “July 1, 2021 Population Estimates for Virginia and its Counties and Cities” published last month by the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, Demographics Research Group, at the University of Virginia.