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(05/04/10 7:23pm)
Fourth-year College student George Huguely - who was charged with first-degree murder in connection to the death of fourth-year College student Yeardley Love yesterday - admitted to police officials that "he shook Love and her head repeatedly hit the wall" during an altercation, according to an affidavit for a search warrant.
(03/23/10 5:49am)
A local judge ruled last week that the City of Charlottesville does not have the legal authority to enforce a local ordinance that brings criminal charges against parties for not clearing their sidewalks of snow immediately, according to state code.
(01/25/10 6:44am)
Months have passed since Virginia Tech student Morgan Dana Harrington's disappearance Oct. 17, but state police continue to stress that the investigation is still active and that anyone with relevant information should not hesitate to contact them.
(01/22/10 4:45am)
As Haiti copes with the strongest aftershock since last week's destructive 7.0 earthquake, former and current members of the University and Charlottesville communities have continued their efforts to aid the devastated nation.
(12/03/09 6:43am)
Two University professors have been awarded fellowships by the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program, while another has been awarded the Fulbright Senior Scholarship from the Australian-American Fulbright Commission. The awards will help these professors to conduct research abroad.
(11/23/09 6:28am)
The University's Faculty Senate voted unanimously Friday to support the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Culture's proposal to create its first master's degree program. Members also continued to discuss the body's scholarly copyright resolution, which would require publishers to release unedited versions of faculty members' articles.
(11/23/09 6:25am)
A group of University Engineering students is working to launch an undergraduate research journal titled The Spectra Engineering and Science Research Journal.
(11/13/09 6:09am)
Results from the National Survey of Student Engagement, released Monday, reveal that more than 41 percent of higher education institutions surveyed showed some level of improvement in at least one area of student engagement since the last survey period.
(11/04/09 8:30am)
RICHMOND, Va. - The Republican Party of Virginia made significant gains last night as voters elected Bob McDonnell as the commonwealth's first Republican governor in eight years, selected University alumnus Ken Cuccinelli as attorney general and re-elected Lt. Governor Bill Bolling.
(10/30/09 5:56am)
At its working meeting yesterday, the Faculty Senate discussed the draft resolution on scholarly publication and authors' rights, as well as changes to University employee health insurance plans.
(10/28/09 5:14am)
The University ranked 28th on the 2009 Trojan Sexual Health Report Card, receiving an overall "sexual health" GPA of 2.94
(10/22/09 5:11am)
The Virginia Department of Education released data yesterday about the statewide four-year graduation rates for high school students who entered ninth grade for the first time in the 2005-06 academic year and were expected to graduate in 2009. Compared to the data for the class of 2008, the graduation rates increased and dropout rates decreased slightly for most demographic groups in Charlottesville, Albemarle County and the statewide average.
(10/02/09 6:15am)
The American Political Science Association's Task Force on U.S. Standing in World Affairs published a report yesterday revealing that overall favorability about the U.S. has improved in some regions but that opinions about U.S. policy still tended to be negative throughout the world.
(09/24/09 5:47am)
The Faculty Senate met yesterday to continue discussion about issues such as state budget cuts, the presidential search and scholarly publication rights.
(09/16/09 5:30am)
The University administration has recommended that instructors make course materials available online so that students infected with the H1N1 virus may quarantine themselves without missing class material.
(09/14/09 6:04am)
As part of its mission to produce global citizens, the University has increased its efforts to advertise itself abroad, especially to prospective students who could boost the international presence on Grounds. During the past year, new student initiatives also have been created to inform prospective international students about the University. At the same time, the University has expanded existing programs that seek to engage international alumni and strengthen their ties with each other, prospective students and parents. These efforts are expected to give the University a more positive image and greater name recognition outside the United States.
(09/07/09 9:26am)
Researchers at the University's Beirne B. Carter Center for Immunology Research recently received an $8.2 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to study how the body removes diseases infecting the immune system from the body.\nMicrobiology and Pathology Prof. Thomas Braciale and Microbiology Professor Young Hahn will study Interleukin-10, or IL-10, a regulatory chemical produced by the immune system as part of the human body's response to diseases. Interleukin-10 also is responsible for stopping the body's immune response from causing injury to itself.\nBraciale will be studying IL-10's effects on the immune system's response to the flu, while Hahn is studying IL-10's effect on Hepatitis C in mice.\n"The immune system is really a two-edged sword," Braciale said. "On the one hand it's producing molecules that can kill the virus-infected cells, but at the same time those molecules have the capacity to injure normal cells if they're not controlled."\nThe immune system produces inflammatory chemicals to kill virus-infected cells and stop the infection from spreading, Braciale said. IL-10 is an anti-inflammatory chemical that stops the production of these virus-killing - but potentially harmful - chemicals.\nAs such, the balance of the body's distribution of IL-10 is important in fighting off diseases like influenza. Research conducted at the University may even help scientists counter more potent strains of the virus, including H1N1 swine flu.\nWhile swine flu behaves much like the regular seasonal flu, Braciale said the coat protein receptors on the swine flu H1N1 virus are different enough from the regular flu virus that more people are susceptible to contracting swine flu. As a result, swine flu is more likely to cause serious cases simply because it is more likely to infect people to begin with. Because of this higher potential for serious cases, Braciale hopes to find out what causes some people to contract more serious illnesses as a result of the flu.\nBraciale has hypothesized that the one percent of people who suffer more serious illnesses as a result of influenza become sicker because their bodies do not produce enough IL-10. As a result, their immune systems may end up causing too much damage to their bodies, which can result in pneumonia and other flu-related diseases, Braciale said.\nBraciale will test his hypothesis by studying patients who have contracted the flu.\n"One of the big challenges is to try to get information from people ... who go to Student Health and are diagnosed with influenza but it's not severe," Braciale said.\nSuch individuals probably have adequate levels of IL-10, Braciale said, and his research team would like to sample them, but it may be difficult to take samples from people who are more or less healthy and have little incentive to have their lungs probed. People with more severe cases, however, will already have minor operations on their lungs, so it should generally be easier to sample them, Braciale said.\nWhile Braciale's project hypothesizes that having too little IL-10 may make the immune system overly aggressive in its response to influenza, Hahn's research hypothesizes that having too much IL-10 makes it more difficult for the immune system to combat hepatitis C.\nTo test her hypothesis, Hahn will study viral antigens analogous to hepatitis C in mice. Her research team will administer IL-10 to the infected mice to see whether their immune systems are inhibited by the chemical, Hahn said.\n"The most [challenging aspect] will be [seeing] what we learn from the mouse [and deciding] whether it is really happening in humans," Hahn said.
(09/02/09 8:52am)
The Special Committee on the Nomination of a President held two more forums yesterday for University community members to discuss the presidential selection process.\nAs before, the forums were open to the public so that the search committee could hear people's opinions about a number of issues related to the search.\nIn particular, though, participants were asked to consider what opportunities and challenges they see the University facing in the next 10 years, and also what qualifications and leadership characteristics the next president should possess to deal with these opportunities and challenges.\nGraduate College student Alexander Cohen, a former Cavalier Daily Opinion columnist, suggested that the next president would need to be committed to the University's values. He noted though, that current University President John T. Casteen III's successor should be careful to avoid being tied down by tradition to lead the University into the future.\n"Another distinctive factor [about the University] is student self-governance," Cohen said. "Some of the powers that would otherwise be exercised by a university president are ... exercised by students."\nHe noted that a new president could potentially hinder the amount of student authority at the University. As a result, Cohen said, the new president must respect the principle of student self-governance and should be willing to not sacrifice in the face of short-term goals.\nEmma Edmunds, director of the Editorial & Design group in the Department of Public Affairs, said while she values global issues, the University should not lose sight of local concerns. Many of these concerns, Edmunds said, pertain to disparities among the commonwealth's different populations and different geographic areas.\n"I think that U.Va., although it receives very little public funding, admittedly, still has a public obligation to the state," Edmunds said.\nThird-year College Student Francesca Tuazon, meanwhile, said the administration must do more to support scientific departments. For example, she said the biology department has only added a few faculty members recently despite the fact that there are 300 or 400 more biology majors now than in previous years.\n"I would really like to see the University grow as an innovator ... especially since we're one of the top universities [in the nation]," Tuazon said.\nLeah Puryear, director of the Upward Bound program, said it will be very important to select a forward-thinking president. Puryear said the University's commitment to diversity - as well as the University departments that seek to foster diversity - should be prioritized and respected more than they are now.\n"I think if we are concerned about diversity and how we are perceived, I think we need to look at programs that are here and can assist you in bridging the gap, rather than saying they are small and don't matter," Puryear said.\nAnthropology department Chair Susan McKinnon raised the concern that the declining level of public funding may be sending public higher education into a crisis.\nFor example, the pressure for private money often means that the University is overly concerned with the needs and desires of donors, McKinnon said. In addition, the pressure to raise funds may shift decision making from the faculty to the administration, she said.\nOther speakers brought up concerns such as the University's need to focus more aggressively on sustainability and research, as well as its obligation to address not only the positive aspects of its past, but also negative ones such as slavery.\nUniversity spokesperson Carol Wood said the forums in general have seemed to foster a valuable exchange.\n"People who spoke came prepared, many were passionate about the issues that they thought the candidates for president needed to think about ... [and] I think people were also grateful to be asked their opinions," Wood said.\nAnother forum will be held Sept. 12 at Alumni Hall. Like the four that have been held thus far, the forum will be open to the public, but the University hopes to see attendance from alumni and parents who will be visiting for Saturday's football game, Wood said.\nIn addition to the forums, the search committee is accepting responses from an online form. More than a hundred pages of responses have been submitted so far, Wood said.\nMoreover, videos of the forums will be posted online, so that members of the University community can stay better informed about the discussion and progress being made in the search process. So far, audio recordings of the first two forums from last week have been posted on the University's Web site, and anyone who missed the events can listen and submit their own thoughts, Wood said.
(09/01/09 8:31am)
A study co-authored by University environmental sciences professor emeritus William Ruddiman concluded that the agricultural methods of ancient human populations may have had an effect on global climate change.\nRuddiman built his conclusion off of a hypothesis made more than five years ago, which stated that humans started having a measurable effect on carbon dioxide values as populations started practicing agriculture about 7,000 years ago. According to the hypothesis, this increase in carbon dioxide values resulted from the large-scale deforestation practiced at that time. Ruddiman also conjectured that methane was released into the atmosphere when humans started raising livestock and growing rice 5,000 years ago.\n"One of the criticisms [for the original hypothesis] is very basic and it sounds very plausible," Ruddiman said, noting that many experts doubted whether there were enough farmers at that time to have an effect on atmospheric carbon dioxide. Current estimates state that there were around 10 to 20 million people alive about 6,000 years ago, Ruddiman said.\nClaiming that this population was too small to affect the global climate, however, would assume that past populations had the same environmental impact per person as does the modern population. This assumption is "simply not true," Ruddiman said, noting that several archaeological and anthropological studies show that people in antiquity used much more land than people do today.\n"Go back 6,000 years ago, the average farmer would go out into the woods, take an axe, girdle a notch into a tree [to kill it], girdle an acre's worth of trees, they all die ... go away for a few years, come back, set fire to them [and] burn them," Ruddiman said.\nThis slash-and-burn approach gave early farmers a large quantity of fertile soil with plenty of sunlight but it encouraged farmers to simply abandon old fields and clear away more forest, Ruddiman said. Eventually, this method led to a usage of 10 times as much land per-capita as modern populations use.\n"If there were 10 to 20 million people back then, but they had the effect of 10 people [today], that's enough to just become detectable in the carbon dioxide curves, according to our calculations, and become more and more detectable over time," Ruddiman said.\nIn the past, people chose to burn and clear land to such a large extent either because they did not understand how to replenish nutrients or because they simply did not want to do the labor, said co-author Erle Ellis, associate professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.\n"It's a lot easier to burn a forest than build a field," Ellis said, noting that because there was not a land shortage at the time, people used more land for less labor.\nAlthough the study concluded that populations thousands of years ago began the process of altering the climate, "that doesn't change what we've done today," Ellis said.\n"It took them thousands of years to do what we did in five years," Ellis added, referring to the atmospheric release of greenhouse gases that could increase the planet's overall temperature. "What they did was profound but is insignificant to what we've done today"
(08/31/09 7:48am)
The University begins work today on the restoration of the capitals of Pavilion II's columns, using specially designed lasers to clear away pollutants and grime. Because lasers will be in use, both the University and the conservation firm involved in the project are taking precautions to protect passersby from any harmful effects.\nJames Zehmer, project manager for the Pavilion II renovation, said the capital cleaning work is part of the larger Pavilion II renovation that began last October and should be completed before Sept. 25.\nPavilion II, which is located on the East Lawn, is one of three pavilions that have capitals carved out of marble instead of local sandstone, Zehmer said. Of these three pavilions with marble capitals, only Pavilion II's capitals have experienced deterioration deemed worthy of restoration by University officials.\n"What's happened is that over the years, atmospheric pollutants have sort of 'attacked' the marble, if you will," Zehmer said, "and they slowly have been degrading it and turning it into gypsum."\nThe buildup of pollutants has been happening for many years, he added, but it may have been at its peak when coal was burning at a much greater rate in Charlottesville than it is now. Zehmer said it is still difficult though to tell exactly what pollutants have caused the buildup.\nTo clear away the sediment, the University hired Milner + Carr, a Philadelphia-based company that specializes in architectural and statuary conservation.\n"Basically the method that they're using is a laser technology [called] the CL-20 backpack laser," Zehmer said. "They can set the laser so it basically vaporizes the deteriorated material and the buildup of these pollutants on the marble and [the laser] knows when to stop when it gets to ... the marble on the surface."\nThis innovative technology, however, does not remove all complications from the restoration process, said Leigh Hassler, a Milner + Carr representative.\n"In terms of challenges, I would say the major thing was developing [a laser] that would not introduce water on the site," Hassler said. "Pavilion II has just been recently restored, so we didn't want to have water running down the columns or saturating the ground or anything like that."\nHassler noted that the conservation firm foresees no other major complications during the restoration process.\n"It is very, very unlikely that anyone will get hurt or anything through this process," Zehmer said. "Basically, to be injured by it, you would have to turn the laser around and look right into it and shoot right into your eye."\nNevertheless, both the University and Milner + Carr are taking safety precautions.\nWhile the firm will work with the laser manufacturer to ensure that safety remains a priority, Hassler said, the University will create a 30-foot radius around the project site. As a result, two areas of the Rotunda terrace will be blocked off about 30 feet away from the capitals, Zehmer added. The East Lawn sidewalk will still be open to pedestrians, but a plywood wall will block people from walking too close to the project site. Additionally, a sheet will hang in front of the columns to prevent people from viewing the laser. Zehmer also said the University has sent out a safety notice to pavilion and Lawn residents to inform them of the restoration work and has provided a specially trained laser safety officer to oversee the ongoing renovations.