For Biden, his first week has been disciplined and orderly, which is a reflection of how he ran his campaign, said Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at UVA’s Miller Center. “A moderate persona and personality” is how Perry described Biden, “someone who’s not a great orator, not going to set the world on fire, but is well-meaning, a good soul, feels people’s pain.”
Political scientist Bill Antholis, 56, who has been the director and CEO of UVA’s Miller Center of Public Affairs since 2014, has a deeper knowledge of the goings-on in Washington than most people. … Antholis, who is Greek American, spoke to Kathimerini about the Biden administration’s new policies related to Greece, Turkey, Europe and NATO, while also providing useful insights regarding the recent developments in U.S. politics that marked the tumultuous ending of the Trump era.
Melvyn Leffler, UVA’s Edward Stettinius Professor of History Emeritus, said the Cold War analogy grossly exaggerates the nature of the threat that lurks in the international environment. The renowned historian on U.S. foreign policy said that the geopolitical and ideological contexts in the late 1940s were totally different from the current situation.
Two of the biggest obstacles to access, health experts say, are in the ways people can sign up for vaccines and where they can actually go to get the shots. “Right now [we’re] using hospitals and we’re using pharmacies, of which 70% of those health care resources are in predominantly white communities,” said Dr. Ebony Hilton, UVA associate professor of anesthesiology and critical care. “They are still using the Internet for people to sign up, right? And what we know is that … our children were directly impacted by the fact that we don’t have WiFi at the same access to WiFi as other communities...
Jennifer Givens, director of the Innocence Project at UVA’s School of Law, said research suggests that the “error rate” in capital cases nationally is more than 4%. That means, she said, that at least 100 of the 2,500 death row inmates across the country are actually innocent. “If we want to eliminate the risk of executing innocent people, the only way to do that is to pass this bill,” Givens said.
The tight ship appears to have given the White House the early narrative it hoped. “It’s as if for the last four years, the country was left in the hands of an irresponsible teenage babysitter, where the mother and father leave and say: ‘Don’t call boys. Don’t have alcohol,’“ said Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at UVA’s Miller Center. “And now the parents are back. The father runs the household on a strict schedule with a plan.”
“It’s very surprising how strenuous shoveling snow can be. It increases your heart rate, it increases your blood pressure, and it puts a huge strain on your heart. And if you’re not somebody who is physically fit or used to exercising, and is at risk of a heart attack, it can certainly precipitate it,” said Dr. William Brady of UVA Health.
(Co-written by Christopher Ali, associate professor of media studies) At the end of 2020, Congress passed the Consolidated Appropriations Act, a $1.4 trillion budget that included the largest public investment in broadband since the 2009 Recovery Act.
The UVA Medical Center in Charlottesville reported an average daily census for the Jan. 22-28 period of 478.7, 78.0% of its 614-bed capacity. The average number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients at UVA for the period was 48.7, down 18.8% from last week’s average of 60. The average ICU census was 132.9, 74.7% of capacity.
In a press briefing Friday, UVA Health says it’s administered 29,909 vaccines. The total amount received is 46,150. That includes second doses saved. There are 22,024 people in the Blue Ridge Health District who need appointments to get vaccinated.
UVA Health and the Blue Ridge Health District are launching a new COVID-19 vaccination site in Charlottesville. They are hoping this will pick up the pace of vaccine distribution. UVA Health will give the vaccines at Seminole Square in a building next to Marshalls starting on Sunday.
Starting on Sunday, an empty store front in the Seminole Square shopping center will transform into the area’s second COVID-19 vaccination clinic. The Blue Ridge Health District is partnering with the UVA Medical Center on the new site.
When a UVA researcher set out to justify his sedentary lifestyle, he discovered that rising from the couch offered some eye-opening benefits: Even moderate exercise may slow or prevent vision loss. In a study using lab mice, Bradley Gelfand, an assistant professor at UVA’s Center for Advanced Vision Science, found that exercising reduced the harmful overgrowth of blood vessels in the eyes – known to cause macular degeneration and other vision problems – by as much as 45%. Because the findings do not rely on self-reporting by study participants, Gelfand says, “This [study] offers hard evidence ...
Researchers at Indiana University – in collaboration with scientists from West Virginia University, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, UVA, and the University of Warwick – have found that classifying temperate forest trees based on the type of symbiotic fungi with which the trees associate can serve as a broad indicator of how the trees and forests function.
(Commentary) Common sense tells us private schools generally outperform public schools. Right? A recent study published in the journal Educational Researcher by UVA professors Robert Pianta and Arya Ansari offers important insight. … Private schools don’t outperform public schools. Differences between the two sectors has more to do with student characteristics than instructional practices.
Like many low-income, first-generation students, rural students may feel ignorant of college’s unspoken norms – from negotiating financial aid to talking with professors. In addition, rural students often feel sidelined by the political climate. According to UVA’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, people in rural areas are “twice as likely to feel powerless and marginalized as those in cities and suburbs.”
(Commentary) As Norman Ornstein tweeted in 2018: “I want to repeat a statistic I use in every talk: By 2040 or so, 70% of Americans will live in 15 states. Meaning 30% will choose 70 senators. And the 30% will be older, whiter, more rural, more male than the 70%. Unsettling to say the least.” The Washington Post checked this claim and found that “In broad strokes, Ornstein is correct.” The Post continued: “The Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service of the University of Virginia analyzed Census Bureau population projections to estimate each state’s likely population in 2040, including the expe...
UVA’s Biocomplexity Institute now forecasts that new cases will most likely peak at 46,000 a week (about 6,500 a day) in the week ending Feb. 21. The institute’s updated forecast takes into account the effects of vaccinations, along with growth in new, more contagious variants of coronavirus.
(Editorial) Congratulations to two UVA researchers who, between them, hold 40 patents in the U.S. and 76 – 76! – overseas. Robin A. Felder and Boris Kovatchev recently were named as fellows to the National Academy of Inventors.