In the Atlantic Ocean, off Virginia’s southern coast, a meadow of underwater grass has been inching along for roughly 25 years. Now close to 10,000 acres wide, it’s poised to become the world’s first verified seagrass-based carbon credit program. It’s a unique collaboration of The Nature Conservancy, The College of William and Mary’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science, and the University of Virginia and its Anheuser-Busch Coastal Research Center. As an ecosystem restoration story, the project offers hope to stressed habitats everywhere.
UVA School of Medicine researchers are studying ways to improve care for patients who suffer from Clostridioides difficile, more commonly known as C.diff. Researchers are studying how transplanting a healthy person’s feces into someone who suffers from the dangerous infection can improve health outcomes.
It is one of the largest gifts given to any college or university in Virginia, exceeded only by two gifts received in 2019 by the University of Virginia, including $100 million from alumnus David Walentas to assist first-generation college students and $120 million from alumni Jaffray and Merrill Woodriff to establish the UVA School of Data Science, and a 2007 gift of $100 million by Frank Batten Sr. to establish a school of leadership.
The University of Virginia’s Board of Visitors will vote Friday on a request from the athletic department to pull $10.3 million from a special gift fund, money that could be used to jumpstart fundraising for the school’s proposed $65 million, 160,000-square-foot football facility, according to its meeting docket.
(Podcast) From the darside cave on Dagohbah to the mirror cave on Ach’To, “Star Wars” is full of mysterious caves where our characters embark on intense experiences of self-discovery. This week we are joined by Caroline Carter, a Ph.D. student at the University of Virginia who studies caves and their religious and mythological importance in ancient Greece and Rome, to look at some these cave scenes in “Star Wars.”
(Commentary by Nicholas Sargen, lecturer at the Darden School) After the past two presidential elections, as well as the recent Virginia gubernatorial contest, there has been a growing narrative about “two Americas.” One consists of thriving urban areas that voted overwhelming for Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden and the other of “hurting” rural communities that went heavily for Trump.
(Video) The latest wave of COVID-19 infections is leading to more hospitalizations and deaths in the U.S., and there are rising concerns about the emerging omicron variant. University of Virginia critical care and infectious disease physician and medical ICU director Dr. Taison Bell discusses the latest coronavirus news.
Two members of the University of Virginia men’s basketball team are partnering with the Blue Ridge Bank through a name, image, and likeness deal. Kadin Shedrick and Reece Beekman will be working with the central Virginia bank with the focus on giving back to the community.
Virginia Attorney Gen.-elect Jason Miyares has named the former top counsel to U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., as Virginia’s next solicitor general. In the position, Andrew Ferguson – who holds undergraduate and law degrees from UVA – will represent the state in matters before the U.S. Supreme Court, Supreme Court of Virginia and other situations.
The quest for approval of the Mountain Valley Pipeline has proved to be so herky-jerky over the past seven years that even diligent watchdogs need a spreadsheet to stay on top of each layered zig and zag. One such dogged individual is David Sligh, conservation director for the nonprofit Wild Virginia. The Charlottesville-based attorney and University of Virginia graduate describes himself as a policy nerd who has worked for 35 years to make the promises of the country’s environmental laws real.
Greenbar, a healthy fast casual concept committed to serving communities within healthy food deserts, debuted this month in Ft. Washington, Maryland, 35 miles south of Baltimore. The area in Prince George’s County is one of the highest-income, African-American-majority counties in the country but remains a food swamp and a healthy food desert with an abundance of fast food outlets and convenience stores, according to Sharisse Barksdale-Lane, co-founder of Greenbar, along with her brother, Brandon. [The Barksdale-Lanes are UVA alumni.]
The House of Representatives voted Wednesday to pass bipartisan legislation to support health care professionals’ mental and behavioral health. The Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Act would authorize grants to train healthcare professionals in evidence-informed strategies to reduce and prevent suicide, burnout, mental health conditions, and substance use disorders, as well as fund mental and behavioral health treatment and peer-support programming. This legislation is named after Dr. Lorna M. Breen, an emergency medicine attending physician from Charlottesville and graduate of the ...
(Press release) The Champlain College Board of Trustees announced today that Alejandro (“Alex”) Hernandez will become the tenth President of Champlain College. Hernandez currently serves as the Dean of the School of Continuing and Professional Studies and Vice Provost of Online Learning at the University of Virginia. He will begin his new role on June 6, 2022 and relocate to Burlington this summer.
Karen Van Lengen, architect and professor of architecture at the University of Virginia, developed Soundscape Architecture in collaboration with artist James Welty and musician Troy Rogers. According to her, “We don’t study how to listen in architecture, which has been promoted as a visual field since the Renaissance. Soundscape Architecture is a resistance to this purely visual approach. It asks designers to think about the sounds of spaces, how they could be more vibrant, and how they can reinforce the visual aspects of architecture.”
(Commentary) All of which has some people wondering what the committee will be able to conclude if the key witnesses never testify—and if enough voters will care by the time the conclusive report is published. “I don’t think we can say what the impact will be until they finish. But most committees/commissions have little impact. Maybe this will prove to be the exception,” University of Virginia School of Law professor Saikrishna Prakash, who specializes in constitutional law and executive powers, said in an email.
Regardless of Youngkin’s action on RGGI, the carbon targets will remain in state code — something that cannot be changed without new legislation from the General Assembly, said Cale Jaffe, an associate professor at the University of Virginia School of Law and director of the school’s Environmental Law and Community Engagement Clinic. The Senate remains under narrow Democratic control. “You might leave this multistate trading program but still have to meet the zero-carbon mandate in the code,” Jaffe said. “Leaving the trading program just seems like cutting off your nose to spite your face. ......
Cale Jaffe, director of the University of Virginia School of Law’s Environmental Law and Community Engagement Clinic, said Youngkin can’t do that by executive order because of the way state laws authorizing participation are written. “The (State Air Pollution Control) Board has promulgated regulation to join RGGI,” said Jaffe. “No governor can issue an executive order to just undo a duly promulgated regulation.”
Youngkin’s exact strategy or timeline for exiting RGGI was not immediately clear. But Cale Jaffe, an associate professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, said removing the state from the program will require a specific process under Virginia law that cannot be accomplished instantly through an executive order. “Respectfully, governors do not have the authority to undo regulations via executive order, and the Virginia Air Pollution Control Board has finalized the regulations that guide Virginia’s participation in RGGI and Virginia’s transition to a zero-carbon electricity grid,” Jaf...
“It appears omicron may be less deadly, so that could be actually a blessing in disguise,” said Dr. Bill Petri, an infectious disease specialist at UVA Health. “It clearly is more infectious. It replaced delta in South Africa, presumably, it’s going to replace Delta in North America as well, but that actually may be a good thing if it’s less deadly than is delta.”
(Video) Thousands attended an anime convention in New York resulting in many contracting COVID-19. MSNBC’s Craig Melvin is joined by one of the convention attendees who contracted the omicron variant, Peter McGinn, and University of Virginia professor Dr. Ebony Hilton to discuss the cause of the spread and how to prevent it in mass gatherings.