In The News

Making the case that offshore wind presents an economically viable piece of the commonwealth’s energy picture has been part of ODU’s role since 2006, when the General Assembly established the Virginia Coastal Energy Research Consortium. Headquartered at ODU, VCERC brought together researchers from Virginia Tech, James Madison University, William & Mary, Norfolk State University, Hampton University, the University of Virginia and Virginia Commonwealth University. In its 2010 final report, VCERC researchers reported that with carbon reduction measures expected to increase the cost of coal-fi...

Doxycycline, a derivative of the drug tetracycline, is an antibiotic used to treat respiratory infections, skin infections, and sexually transmitted infections that has shown potential ability to inhibit coronavirus replication and exhibited anti-inflammatory properties. A study published in July 2020 from professors at the schools of medicine at the University of Virginia, Boston University, and Cornell suggested that doxycycline could be responsible for improvement in condition of four COVID-19 patients who were “high risk for morbidity and mortality” but emphasized the need for a “larger ra...

The University of Virginia’s model projection shows cases will likely peak the week of Oct. 10, but Shelton hopes that peak can be avoided.

As UVA media studies professor Christopher Ali notes in a recent book chapter, it’s no longer the norm that “broadcasters should be responsible to, and reflective of, their communities of license,” with the Federal Communications Commission, the agency that regulates broadcast TV, having left it over the past three decades “to broadcasters, and not the regulatory mechanisms at the disposal of public policy, to ensure local communities are served.”

Siddhartha Angadi is a professor in the Department of Kinesiology at UVA – a man devoted to understanding the relationship between weight, exercise and health. “I look at the effects and interactions of everything from exercise to diet and drugs, health and disease – primarily looking at cardiovascular conditions where obesity is a risk factor,” he said. This month he and a colleague at Arizona State University shared findings from a massive review of studies on weight and fitness. His findings were so surprising that they’ve attracted attention from around the world.

Wladek Minor, a UVA professor of molecular physiology, teamed up with other researchers, including ones from China and Poland, to create the website called VirusMed. The site will be the source to find information on all of the known viruses in one place.

Researchers at the UVA School of Medicine and collaborators in China and Poland have developed a database, called virusMED (virus Metal binding sites, Epitopes, and Drug binding sites), as a freely available resource to help speed the development of vaccines and treatments against viral diseases. Accessed through the https://virusmed.biocloud.top portal, virusMED lays out everything known about the atomic structure and potential vulnerabilities of more than 800 virus strains from 75 different virus families, including SARS-CoV-2, influenza, Ebola, and HIV‑1.

While nobody could have predicted the COVID-19 outbreak, an international team of scientists are staying one step ahead of the next pandemic. UVA School of Medicine scientists, with collaborators in China and Poland, have created a powerful new tool to speed vaccines and treatment for future pandemics. The new tool, called virusMED, in the form of an internet database, maps out everything known about atomic structure and potential vulnerabilities of more than 800 virus strains from 75 different virus families, including SARS-CoV-2, influenza, Ebola and HIV‑1, according to UVA.  

In 2011, UVA ophthalmologist Jayakrishna Ambati and his colleagues made a curious observation: In the pigmented retinal layers of human eye samples afflicted with an advanced form of age-related macular degeneration, they discovered high concentrations of Alu transcripts. Alu is a class of transposable elements, DNA bits that jump around the genome through a copy-paste mechanism that occurs in the nucleus. Further studies by the team suggested that the Alu RNA was somehow causing inflammation and cell death, but it was a mystery how. Earlier this year, Ambati’s team uncovered an important clue

The UVA Center for Politics with Legacy Productions and OWN will be presenting a special screening of a documentary at the Ting Pavilion on Thursday. According to a release, it will be an evening of events around the documentary “The Legacy of Black Wall Street” directed by Deborah Riley Draper. The film covers the history of the rise of Black Wall Street in Oklahoma up until the 1921 Tulsa massacre. Draper will be on hand for a discussion about the film.

The UVA Police Department has established a new unit called COPS, which stands for Community-Oriented Police Squad. The department will increase police presence around the Corner and other surrounding areas.

UVA President Jim Ryan will start having office hours in Madison Hall. Ryan said this is in addition to the new outdoor lunch series with students called “Lunches on the Lawn.”

Days after Pfizer announced it was testing an antiviral pill to treat COVID-19, UVA infectious diseases professor Dr. William Petri said, if effective, the drug could “take the teeth out of this whole terrible pandemic.” 

Based on personality, parenting and position, [former UVA basketball star] Malcolm Brogdon is growing into someone the Indiana Pacers need him to be. The point guard does not have to be the team leader, but it is better if he is. 

(Commentary) UVA psychology professor Shigehiro Oishi says there is another dimension of wellbeing, characterized by variety and perspective-changing experiences. “This new concept of a psychologically rich life is really to address the issue in the literature that was essentially so dichotomous in thinking – that the good life is about either being happy or leading a meaningful life,” he said. “It’s a different type of life goal – you’re trying to accumulate different kinds of experiences.”

UVA alumna Natalie Moore got the idea to start a new business, called Ruff Canine Club, after visiting a dog park bar in Greensboro, North Carolina called Doggo’s Dog Park and Pub. The canine club coming to Scott’s Addition this fall will be the first of its kind in the Richmond metropolitan area.

The Cabinet has formally decided to nominate Supreme Court judge Donal O’Donnell to be the next Chief Justice. O’Donnell, who was selected at the beginning of the summer, will succeed Chief Justice Frank Clarke, who is to retire Oct. 10. O’Donnell, 63, was born in Belfast where his father, the late Turlough O’Donnell, was a senior judge and one of the few Catholic judges of his generation in Northern Ireland. Educated at St. Mary’s Christian Brothers’ Grammar School in Belfast, University College Dublin, King’s Inns and the University of Virginia, O’Donnell was called to the bar in 1982 and ap...

(Co-written by Zyahna Bryant, undergraduate student) In the closing days of Black Philanthropy Month, the annual commemoration of Black donors, philanthropists and social impact investors, a group of 40 Black women funders, entrepreneurs, scholars and activists convened for a weekend in Laguna Beach, California, to discuss strategies for resourcing and empowering young Black women and girls. Our goal was to facilitate a collective brain trust around the development of a year-long fellowship initiative that would provide Black girls with something many of them seldom receive—rest and restoratio...

J. Miles Coleman, an associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball of UVA, said the gubernatorial winner had typically been the opposite of the party of the elected president since the 1970s, until McAuliffe broke that cycle in 2013. Gov. Ralph Northam (D) continued the trend, riding off a wave of anti-Trump energy in Virginia. Coleman said now that Trump is out of the picture, it will be interesting to see what happens. “I think this year may be a good kind of taste-test, OK well, is the state still winnable for Republicans, or is it just too blue now? This would be the first time, if McAuliffe w...

In recent weeks, he has gained on McAuliffe to the extent that the venerable Cook Political Report now calls the race a toss-up. The development is worrisome for Democrats, who have come to view the Old Dominion as their turf. “Low Biden ratings, massive Youngkin spending, and a lack of energy among D voters (false belief that Rs can’t win in the new VA) have made this election quite competitive,” University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato recently tweeted.