In 1997, residents of Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay area found patches of seagrass that had bounced back after a mold slime disease and hurricane wiped them out more than 60 years earlier. This sparked an ongoing effort by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and the University of Virginia to repopulate seagrass beds in smaller neighboring bays. “Every year from 2001 through today, we would harvest the seeds from Chesapeake Bay, and then let nature do the rest,” Robert J. Orth, a professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, tells Mongabay. The results came quickly, and the beds have ...
University of Virginia finance professor Richard Evans examined the practice of incubation among mutual fund managers. Incubation involves registering and seeding a number of public funds. At first, the funds aren’t given a ticker symbol and as such are effectively private. The sponsoring fund company will ultimately select the better-performing funds, slap a ticker on them, and begin marketing them to the investing public. The underperformers are left to die on the vine. Evans found that this process led to an upward bias in fund returns. He also discovered that, while incubated funds outperf...
(Commentary) The Weldon Cooper for Public Service at the University of Virginia, in charge of the state’s demographic count, has given itself a pat on the back for its ten-year projection of 2020 Virginia population. The self congratulations are probably deserved. Weldon Cooper’s projection was only 0.27% higher than the Census Count. The actual population increase was 7.4% between 2010 and 2020. Also, projections for 90% of Virginia’s localities fell within 5% of the actual count.
For better health and a longer life span, exercise is more important than weight loss, especially if you are overweight or obese, according to an interesting new review of the relationships between fitness, weight, heart health and longevity co-led by Siddhartha Angadi, a UVA professor of education and kinesiology. The study, which analyzed the results of hundreds of previous studies of weight loss and workouts in men and women, found that obese people typically lower their risks of heart disease and premature death far more by gaining fitness than by dropping weight or dieting.
UVA | NOVA will be the University of Virginia campus in Northern Virginia. This expansion is part of the university’s strategic plan to be great and good all across the commonwealth. After years of discussions, UVA has announced its expansion into Northern Virginia.
In the list of UNESCO Wortld Heritage Sites in the U.S., the Monticello/UVA combination ranks No. 13.
The University of Virginia ($131,700) and Virginia Tech ($121,800), which are growing their presences in Northern Virginia, would both place highly on our list. Virginia Tech is building a $1 billion graduate school campus in Alexandria focused on computer science education, while UVA just announced plans to increase its presence in Rosslyn — and hinted at expansion to other sites in the region.
Tired of government regulations standing in the way of his wife’s whiskey distillery, Denver Riggleman decided to enter “the belly of the beast” and run for public office. “We need people who understand how that dance happens,” he said at UVA’s Democracy Biennial conference over the weekend. The former congressman was one of a dozen panel participants at the opening event of UVA’s Miller Center of Public Affairs’ two-day conference. UVA has invested a lot in the study of democracy: The school hosts The Miller Center of Public Affairs, the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Poli...
(Subscription may be required) Large college endowments have notched their biggest investment gains in decades, thanks to portfolios boosted by huge venture-capital returns and soaring stock markets. Duke University over the weekend said its endowment had gained 55.9%. Washington University in St. Louis last week reported a 65% return, the school’s biggest gain ever, swelling the size of its managed endowment pool to $15.3 billion. The University of Virginia’s endowment reported a 49% gain.
The University of Virginia Police Department has created a new unit. The goal of the Community Oriented Policing Squad (COPS) is to take on a more visible presence on the Corner and neighborhoods adjacent to Grounds along with officers in the city. The COPS unit includes four UPD officers and focuses on “building relationships, creating a safe environment, and providing for a more sustained police presence in those neighborhoods where students live, gather, and integrate into the community,” according to a news release.
Shots fired calls in areas near the University of Virginia and incidents at the Corner and nearby areas have led the UVA Police Department to expand its patrol duties beginning this week to include areas of Charlottesville adjacent to the University. The department has created a new squad from its existing force called Community Oriented Policing Squad, or COPS, that will focus on the Corner and neighborhoods adjacent to the school from Thursday to Sunday, 7 p.m. to 3 a.m., when students are often out and socializing.
A student’s grade point average means nothing to admissions officers without context, University of Virginia admissions dean Jeannine Lalonde, aka “DeanJ,” explains in posts on social media. “Methodologies differ so much that it’s impossible to know an applicant’s academic story from the GPA. GPAs are not standardized,” Lalonde wrote in a blog post for the UVA admissions blog, “Notes from Peabody.” “Two students with identical GPAs could have very different coursework and grades on their transcripts. This is why we talk about the transcript being the most important factor in understanding your...
A handful of scientists around the world are trying to create a universal vaccine that would protect against this – and all future – coronavirus pandemics. The problem they face is that viruses are constantly mutating. That’s why a vaccine that protects against the virus that causes COVID-19 may not protect against future variations of the same virus. In order to achieve that, scientists need to find something deep within the coronavirus that must remain constant. In a small lab tucked away at the UVA Medical Center, infectious disease specialist Dr. Steven Zeichner and his team believe they h...
Afterward, the grooms and their families dined privately at the Inn’s Michelin three-star restaurant. The Inn thoughtfully arranged florals in University of Virginia orange and Columbia blue, reflecting the grooms’ legal alma maters and offering tribute to the late Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia, a former UVA professor, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a Columbia alumna, whose close friendship despite ideological differences always inspired the Aiden and Brady.
Hard seltzer category revenues leapt from $41 million in 2016 to $2.5 billion in 2020, according to figures from market-research firm T4. It also aligns with the experiences of the half-dozen current or recently graduated college students from across the country I interviewed for this story. “I really didn’t drink them that much, or even know that much about them at all my freshman year, but second year they were there a lot,” says Katharine (not her real name), 22, who graduated from UVA earlier this year. “I have not seen a keg in awhile,” she continues. “Even in my sophomore year [2018-19, ...
Jason Morefield says he was introduced to the game of chess at a very young age. Now, as a first year at the University of Virginia, his skill and passion for the game are paying off. While many people spent Labor Day relaxing and enjoying the last bit of summer, Morefield was competing for the state chess title. His path to winning the championship included matchups with two former state champions.
J. Miles Coleman, Associate Editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at UVA, said on Twitter that Joe Biden still would have won District 2 with this new map, just by fewer points.
UVA’s Larry Sabato agrees that economic insecurity had little to do with non-college educated votes for Trump in 2020, but believes it’s “fundamentally” about ideology. He writes: “I find that support for Donald Trump among white working class voters reflected conservative views across a wide range of policy issues including social welfare issues, cultural issues, racial justice issues, gun control, immigration, and climate change. In other words, the rejection of the Democratic Party by white working class voters is fundamentally ideological. This fact makes it very unlikely that Democrats wi...
The ads appear to be part of “an attempt to undermine Youngkin’s support in western rural areas, where gun ownership is sacred and the Republican has a big lead – as all Republicans do these days,” according to Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.
“There are a lot of factors that suggest the Democrats are going to have a really hard time holding the House majority and the Senate’s 50-50, and so they lose one net seat and the Senate majority is gone,” said Kyle Kondik, an analyst at UVA’s Center for Politics. With Biden’s majorities in the House and Senate in peril, “you’d feel better about Democrats’ chances if his approval rating was more like it was two months ago than it is now,” Kondik said.