(Commentary; subscription may be required) UVA Political scientist and analyst Larry Sabato grew up during the era in Virginia known as “massive resistance” and in a community, Norfolk, where the schools closed rather than adopt the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision to integrate, “so I’ve always been sensitive to this,” he told The Daily Beast. … As a native Virginian, Sabato has seen the power of race to shape our politics, which is why the creator of the “Crystal Ball” political rating system housed at the University of Virginia, on the eve of this most watched race, switched his prediction from...
“Youngkin winning these college-educated white voters who are skeptical of Trump indicates Biden’s approval is likely slipping with these same types of groups in key battleground metropolitan areas like Atlanta,” said J. Miles Coleman, a political analyst at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
Youngkin’s victory may provide a template for Republicans who will walk a fine line in competitive congressional races next year. “It’s a tricky path,” said Kyle Kondik, an analyst at the UVA Center for Politics. Kondik said Youngkin deftly distanced himself from Trump while also making pledges to improve election integrity as a way to appeal to Trump voters.
Some political soothsayers said early this week that the race appeared to be breaking in the Republicans’ favor. Although the UVA Center for Politics hedged its bets a bit, it ultimately rated the governor’s race as leaning Republican on Monday, a shift from “leans Democratic.”
(Commentary) William O. “Bill” Luckett Jr. was a man with an extensive and surprising list of gifts and talents. When I learned of his passing last week at the age of 73 after battling cancer and other challenges, I recalled a day spent with him in his beloved Clarksdale when he was gearing up to run for the Democratic nomination for governor of Mississippi in 2011. Talents? Entrepreneur, attorney, pilot, Mississippi National Guard officer, developer, preservationist, actor, film producer, restaurant and nightclub impresario, and politician — and that’s nowhere near a complete recitation of Lu...
NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn, a medical doctor and veteran of launches on the space shuttle and Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft, joins three rookie space fliers on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon “Endurance” poised for liftoff on mission to the International Space Station. Marshburn was born in Statesville, North Carolina, and graduated high school in Atlanta. He earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Davidson College and a master’s degree in engineering physics from the University of Virginia, then attended medical school at Wake Forest University.
Resilience has been described as the ability to withstand adversity and bounce back from difficult life events. Times are not easy now. How do we develop greater resilience to withstand the challenges that keep being thrown at us? In this interview series, we are talking to mental health experts, authors, resilience experts, coaches, and business leaders who can talk about how we can develop greater resilience to improve our lives. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing [UVA Engineering alumna] Jill Tietjen.
Dysautonomia is not rare. More than 70 million people worldwide have the condition. Despite these high numbers, it can take patients years before they get diagnosed, and many times are misdiagnosed due to a lack of awareness in the public and medical profession. Third-year University of Virginia student Erica Szymanski first noticed something was wrong in middle school. “I started blacking out a little bit in class. I’d lost the edges of my vision and doctors weren’t really sure what was going on,” Szymanski explained.
Twenty months since she was announced by the SUNY Board of Trustees – and more than 16 since she actually assumed the office – Maurie McInnis has finally been inaugurated as Stony Brook University president. … The search committee ultimately chose McInnis, a Yale University-educated art historian with a long record of executive leadership, primarily at the University of Virginia.
Virginia Solicitor General Toby J. Heytens, a former UVA law professor, was confirmed by the U.S. Senate late Monday for a seat on the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Whether a company adopts certain aspects of the corporate metaverse, or uses it for every aspect of remote work, there’s nothing to stop unconscious biases from seeping in. “It’s easy for companies to just invest in the technology, but businesses need to understand the psychology driving people to use it,” says Roshni Raveendhran, a professor at UVA’s Darden School of Business. “Can employees thrive within that sort of universe? What would allow them to thrive?”
Lacking just one sugar gene, the organs aren’t a viable option for xenotransplants, which need to last for years. Other sugar molecules on porcine cells have similar immune-triggering effects, and experts say they, too, should be genetically purged. Plus, several human genes may need to get added to the pig genome to further temper the body’s immune reaction. But the pigs, engineered at a biotech company now called Revivicor, do have promise for other medical applications with less chance of immune rejection. “Just taking out one sugar, you can make a big difference,” says Thomas Platts-Mills,...
While there has always been excitement around new technologies, there continues to be barriers that prevent them from being used by all people with diabetes. Dr. Linda Gonder-Frederick, an expert on behavioral and psychological issues in diabetes at the University of Virginia, shed light on how diabetes technology can affect quality of life, adoption of treatment, health outcomes.
“In general, if there are abnormalities and irregularity in semen but female testing is normal—open tubes, normal uterus—we’d be most optimistic about IUI or artificial insemination in making the biggest impact in terms of making the sperm get closer to where the egg would be,” says Dr. Laura Smith, a reproductive infertility and endocrinology physician at UVA Fertility and a UVA associate professor.
We’ve heard a lot of corporate promises about diversity, equity and inclusion, and this year companies like McDonald’s, Nike and Starbucks are tying some executive pay to fulfilling those promises. “In the past, usually, these incentives have been almost exclusively focused on financial outcomes,” said Yo Jud Cheng, a business professor at the University of Virginia. About a third of S&P 500 companies report using a diversity measure in compensation programs – a growing trend – but Cheng says the devil is in the details.
(Commentary) Seanna Leath, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, shared with Golden the results of a study that showed how some Black female students were wearing the stoic mask in preparation for working “in the White world.” “Fearful of being labeled Angry Black Women, the young women often chose not to respond to racist comments or what they felt were misinterpretations of Black culture and life in their classes,” Golden writes. She quotes one student as saying, “I’d be dismissed if I got angry.”
In Leah Calote’s classes, she wants students to feel safe just being themselves. To encourage that, Calote tries to model it. She participates in warm-up games, shares parts of her life from beyond school, and, perhaps most importantly, she’s honest about her emotions, both the highs and the lows. “You have to have boundaries,” Calote says, but she advocates “being generous with the things that you can so that (students) can feel safe being generous and compassionate with each other.” That kind of openness is not the norm, according to Patricia Jennings, a University of Virginia researcher who...
The AMA STEPS Forward toolkit “Stress First Aid for Health Care Professionals,” provides tips that can help your health care organization support long-term recovery. The toolkit’s co-creator, Richard Westphal, co-director of the Wisdom and Wellbeing Program at UVA Health, added that “part of the advantage of this model is that it also allows us to ask what is going on in our environment that makes it really difficult to work here. Was the person who had the stress injury the canary in the mineshaft? Did they give the early warning signal? Is there a larger systems issue? If so, what needs to c...
When Lawrence Wright started to research his latest book, “The Plague Year,” he knew there were stories to tell beyond the media headlines and the failures of government agencies that didn’t do enough to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 virus. What surprised him was how many people, just by doing their jobs, impacted their communities. Dr. Ebony Hilton, an anesthesiologist at the University of Virginia, volunteered to go to communities of color near Charlottesville to provide testing.
A young veteran who was discharged following injuries she suffered while deployed has found a new mission and a new purpose. U.S. Army Specialist Jenna Schmaltz went from fighting on the front lines of the battlefield to fighting on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. Schmaltz is now a pediatric nurse at UVA Children’s, where she took on a whole new mission when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.