• share
• favorite_border

Hours after a truce was declared between Ukrainian government forces and opposition protesters on Wednesday, fighting broke out once again this morning in the streets around Kiev’s Independence Square. According to the latest news reports, at least 50 people have been killed and hundreds injured since the protests ignited Tuesday, the result of opposition lawmakers failing to push through constitutional changes that would have limited Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s powers.

• share
• favorite_border

The field of disability studies aims to challenge attitudes about what is considered “normal” and increase public awareness about how society treats, portrays and accommodates the wide range of people with disabilities – which the United Nations estimates at 15 percent of the world’s population, or 1 billion people, making them the world’s largest minority group. The University of Virginia will host several prominent scholars at its first-ever symposium devoted to disability studies on Feb. 28.

• share
• favorite_border

Since the 1970s, the frequency and use of pain relief during childbirth – and most especially the use of epidural analgesia during labor – has increased dramatically. Reports on epidural rates range from 47 percent to as high as 76 percent of vaginal births, while between 39 percent and 56 percent of women use narcotic analgesics – including drugs like Fentanyl – via IV for managing labor and delivery pain. Only about 14 percent of women, the literature reveals, use no pharmacologic method to relieve childbirth pain.

• share
• favorite_border

he University of Virginia today announced a $4 million challenge grant from alumnus John Griffin for the establishment of a new scholarship program to benefit incoming undergraduate students with exceptional promise and significant financial need. The grant is conditional upon a match from other donors, with the goal of raising a total of $8 million.

• share
• favorite_border

The University of Virginia today announced the commitment of a $10 million gift that establishes an endowment to support its new Data Science Institute. The institute advances the University’s aspiration to meet growing national needs in the complex and rapidly expanding field of data analytics, storage, security and ethics.

• share
• favorite_border

Kindergarten classrooms nationwide have changed dramatically since the late 1990s and nearly all of these changes are in the direction of a heightened focus on academics, particularly literacy, according to researchers from EdPolicyWorks, the center on education policy and workforce competitiveness at the University of Virginia.

• share
• favorite_border

She was a caped crusader of a different sort. Mary Elizabeth Finnegan, born on a farm in Bradford, Ill. in 1916, was just 25 years old when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941. She enlisted in the Army Nurse Corps shortly afterward, and began a whirlwind of travel, service and nursing “under live fire” in the European theater in World War II.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

Online classified ad shoppers respond less often and offer lower prices when a seller is black rather than white, finds a newly published study based on an elegant field experiment.

• share
• favorite_border

Research at a new computing center at the University of Virginia focused on new automata technology could lead to solutions to “big data” challenges in areas including health care, privacy, security and international trade.

• share
• favorite_border

The University of Virginia’s Women’s Center has received a $3 million gift to support its programs from 1951 alumna Maxine Platzer Lynn – the largest donation in the center’s 25-year history.

• share
• favorite_border

The Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia is elevating its kinesiology program to department status.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education will develop an early literacy assessment, in Spanish, designed to measure Spanish-speaking preschoolers’ progress toward developing essential foundational literacy skills. The assessment tool, called PALS español PreK, is being funded by a $1.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences.

• share
• favorite_border

University of Virginia researchers have found that the Marcellus Shale geological formation in Pennsylvania has the potential to store roughly 50 percent of the U.S. carbon dioxide emissions produced from stationary sources between 2018 and 2030.

• share
• favorite_border

Should the U.S. pursue a military strike on Syria? Some believe Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime must be punished for its suspected use of chemical weapons Aug. 21 in a rebel-held suburb of Damascus. Others feel that the U.S. is not the world’s police and should not get involved in Syria’s civil conflict.

• share
• favorite_border

Should the U.S. pursue a military strike on Syria? Some believe Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime must be punished for its suspected use of chemical weapons Aug. 21 in a rebel-held suburb of Damascus. Others feel that the U.S. is not the world’s police and should not get involved in Syria’s civil conflict.

• share
• favorite_border

A University of Virginia study using brain scans has found that people experience risk to friends in the same way they feel risk to themselves.

• share
• favorite_border

The decline and disappearance of stable, unionized full-time jobs with health insurance and pensions for people who lack a college degree has had profound effects on working-class Americans who now are less likely to get married, stay married and have their children within marriage than those with college degrees, a new University of Virginia and Harvard University study has found.

• share
• favorite_border

Leading experts on aniridia, which literally means “lack of an iris” and is a congenital eye disorder with severe effects including blindness and obesity, will share new knowledge with patients next week at the University of Virginia.

• share
• favorite_border

Between now and 2040, the population of the United States will continue to grow and become older and more diverse. But these trends will not be experienced evenly across the nation, according to population projections released by demographers at the University of Virginia.

• share
• favorite_border

Between now and 2040, the population of the United States will continue to grow and become older and more diverse. But these trends will not be experienced evenly across the nation, according to population projections released by demographers at the University of Virginia.

• share
• favorite_border

In joint custody arrangements, infants who spent overnights away from their mothers had less attachment to their mothers, a U.Va. study shows.

• share
• favorite_border

When University of Virginia astronomer Charlie Tolbert got a call last month from Chris Ford, an executive at Pixar Animation Studios in Los Angeles, he wondered what for.

• share
• favorite_border

For reporters and editors seeking authoritative commentary on South Africa.

• share
• favorite_border

After a rape, forensic nurses fully document sexual assault victims’ injuries by using a dye that causes lacerations and tears on the skin to “light up.” But the dye – a dark blue – doesn’t show on people of color, and that often means the perpetrators go free. A fluorescent dye may be the answer, posits University of Virginia researcher Kathryn Laughon, associate professor in the School of Nursing.

• share
• favorite_border

The European Space Agency is set to develop a new Earth-observing satellite that will map and monitor global forests, providing an unprecedented level of detail and understanding to the role forests play in the global carbon cycle and potential climate change.

• share
• favorite_border

While many Americans mistrust government, and are generally suspicious of health insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry, they overwhelmingly trust physicians and view them as faithful agents of patient interests, reports a new study based on online surveys of more than 5,000 Americans.

• share
• favorite_border

One of the obstacles to acceptance of massive open online courses is the potential for widespread cheating. Two University of Virginia researchers are offering a solution – but it may require MOOC instructors to do a little homework themselves.

• share
• favorite_border

U.Va.’s John Hawley and former colleague Steven Balbus are winners of this year’s $1 million Shaw Prize in Astronomy.

• share
• favorite_border

University of Virginia Nursing professor Kathryn Laughon is testing a new dye that will better reveal tissue lacerations and abrasions for women of color who have been raped. The blue dye currently used on all women examined after a suspected sexual assault works well on light-skinned women, but not as well on dark-skinned women.

• share
• favorite_border

A new project, Notes from Nature, is digitizing information from natural history collections, such as those at the University of Virginia's Mountain Lake, for broader, easier access.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service today unveiled a new poverty measure designed to more accurately reflect the economic distress among residents of the commonwealth.

• share
• favorite_border

U.Va. Innovation launched the University of Virginia’s first crowdfunding website this week, enabling alumni and others to make targeted, tax-deductible donations in support of specific research and development projects under way at the University.

• share
• favorite_border

A deployment in Iraq has led Jeff O'Dell, a graduating engineering student at the University of Virginia, to a sharp focus on developing armor to protect his comrades from harm.

• share
• favorite_border

As barefoot and minimalist running become increasingly popular, a new University of Virginia study is looking at how muscles are affected by the transition from traditional footwear.

• share
• favorite_border

New research findings from the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education and the Stanford School of Education show that “redshirting” in kindergarten – the practice of delaying for a year a child’s entry into kindergarten – is not happening at the rate previously reported.

• share
• favorite_border

The modern banking industry is often seen, and often portrays itself, as an institution that objectively allocates scarce financial resources with the precision and reliability of a Swiss watch. (It's no coincidence that the archetypal banker and watchmaker are both Swiss.) That is one of a handful of myths that obscure the inevitable conflict at the heart of banking – a struggle over who should be granted credit, and at what price – argues a new book, “Conservatives Versus Wildcats: A Sociology of Financial Conflict,” by Simone Polillo, an assistant professor of sociology in the University of Virginia’s College of Arts & Sciences.

• share
• favorite_border

Five University of Virginia students will share a stage Saturday with former President Bill Clinton and will take home a $10,000 check for winning a nationwide competition to engage and educate college students about the federal government’s long-term debt.

• share
• favorite_border

University of Virginia physicist Lou Bloomfield is teaching his popular course, "How Things Work" as a MOOC – massive open online course – to about 5,000 students worldwide through Coursera, an online education company.

• share
• favorite_border

The Dow Jones Industrial Average hit a record high Thursday. Is the surge odd given that the federal government’s forced spending cuts are now a reality? Is it due to other world markets not rebounding quickly? Will the drop in the market that has occurred Friday and Monday continue, or will February data on housing starts and building permits, expected to be released today, counter that trajectory? And what can those with a 401(k) or extra cash to invest expect in the weeks and months ahead?

• share
• favorite_border

One of the major demographic and social changes of the last four decades has been the dramatic increase in the average age at which Americans first marry, from their early 20s in 1970 to their late 20s today.

• share
• favorite_border

A new Center for Open Science, based at the University of Virginia, will encourage openness, accessibility and reproducibility of research across all scientific fields.

• share
• favorite_border

University of Virginia physicist Lou Bloomfield has developed a new type of silicone rubber that may have widespread applications, including shoes, prosthetics, sporting goods and toys.

• share
• favorite_border

Unless Congress acts by this Friday, “a series of automatic cuts – called the sequester – will take effect that threaten hundreds of thousands of middle-class jobs, and cut vital services for children, seniors, people with mental illness and our men and women in uniform,” according to a White House report issued Sunday. Many Republican lawmakers, on the other hand, say President Obama and the Democrats are overstating the likely impact of the sequester.

• share
• favorite_border

Kids are consuming fewer calories, and adults are eating less fast food, according to a federal government survey released Feb. 21. University of Virginia kinesiology professor John Sirard is “cautiously optimistic” about findings of the latest National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

The Rev. Gerald P. Fogarty, S.J., William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Religious Studies and History at the University of Virginia, is available to speak with members of the media about issues of papal succession.

• share
• favorite_border

PureMadi, a nonprofit University of Virginia organization, has invented a simple ceramic water purification tablet. Called MadiDrop, the tablet – developed and extensively tested at U.Va. – is impregnated with silver or copper nanoparticles. It can repeatedly disinfect water for up to six months simply by resting in a vessel where water is poured.

• share
• favorite_border

A $700,000 NASA grant will bring environmental sciences students from around the country to the University of Virginia this summer and for the following two summers to learn high-performance computing and software engineering.

• share
• favorite_border

According to a new University of Virginia study, half of the 50 states could end their primary care physician shortages, and save billions annually in health care costs, by a simple policy change: equalizing the licensure requirements for foreign-educated physicians and U.S.-educated physicians.