December 2023 Media Highlights

Harvard Business Review - Research: When — and Why — Employee Curiosity Annoys Managers Written by: Phillip S. Thompson is an assistant professor of management and organizational behavior at Virginia Tech’s Pamplin College of Business. His research examines how various organizational behavior topics, including curiosity and gender, influence employees’ job performance. / Shu-Tsen Kuo is a PhD candidate in organizational behavior at Virginia Tech’s Pamplin College of Business. Her research examines how employees achieve work goals strategically.

Fast Company - Yes, we should remove lead pipes, but clean drinking water is still no guarantee “We know that the majority of homes, if not all, have lead-bearing plumbing,” says Yanna Lambrinidou, cofounder of the nonprofit Campaign for Lead Free Water and an affiliate professor in the department of science and technology at Virginia Tech.

Salon - New tech simulates having an octopus arm Last year mechanical engineering professor Michael D. Bartlett and researchers from Virginia Tech invented a so-called "Octa-glove" which allows people to securely grip objects under water with the same control as an octopus. As Bartlett explained to Salon, most man-made adhesives do not work underwater, but "the octopus displays this ability with their suckers."

Yahoo News - Authorities seeking the source of big boom heard in local communities  "It wasn't an earthquake," said Professor Martin Chapman with the Department of Geosciences at Virginia Tech. "I don't know what it was. We didn't record it in Blacksburg … Our seismographs in Blacksburg didn't pick up any disturbance there," he stated about the Mercer County area. [Reprinted from Bluefield Daily Telegraph]

Earth - Bird feeding benefits people as much as birds Ashley Dayer, an associate professor in the Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation at Virginia Tech, is challenging the traditional view of bird feeding as an activity solely beneficial for birds. In a recent study, Dayer emphasizes the significance of bird feeding not only for avian populations but also for human wellbeing. This perspective invites a broader discussion on integrating bird feeding into public policy and guidance.

Science Alert - Scientists Warn Vampire Bats May Soon Spread Into The Southern US That concern is based on precedent, notes biologist and lead author Paige Van de Vuurst from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. "What we found was that the distribution of vampire bats has moved northward across time due to past climate change, which has corresponded with an increase in rabies cases in many Latin American countries," Van de Vuurst says.

Fox News  -  Bird feeding is not just for the birds but may be good for the human soul, too, researchers say Ashley Dayer is an associate professor in the Fish and Wildlife Conservation department at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. Dayer ... is the lead author of an article recently published in People and Nature. Its aim: to find the positive human effects of bird feeding.

CNN Business - Colonizing Mars could be dangerous and ridiculously expensive. Elon Musk wants to do it anyway Damien Williams — a teacher and PhD student at Virginia Tech who studies the intersection of advanced technologies, ethics and societies — warns that the stories we may tell ourselves about America and exploring outer space can leave out key context.  [Also on AOL and Yahoo Finance]

Men’s Health - How to Stay Healthy When the Air Around You Isn't In early June, as toxic wildfire smoke from Canada blanketed the Northeast, Linsey Marr, Ph.D., a professor of environmental science at Virginia Tech and one of the nation’s preeminent air experts, sat at her computer, feeling agitated as she scrolled through Twitter. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

Earth - Less ice, more salt: The environmental cost of deicing Researchers from Virginia Tech and the University of Maryland set out to better understand and possibly help mitigate this growing issue … Megan Rippy, an assistant professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering, describes the situation as a “slow-moving train wreck.”

NerdWallet - No STEM Major, No Problem: How to Make a Liberal Arts Degree Count “Career-readiness is really an ongoing process. It's not a one-time thing, so I think it's really important for students to start out early,” says Leigh Anne Byrd, assistant director of career development and college relations at Virginia Tech, a large public university.

Fox News Edge (via WGHP and picked up by other Fox affiliates) - How to talk to students about war in Israel and Gaza Transcript: Todd Schenk a professor at Virginia Tech and a parent of a teenager suggests engaging your child with a serious of healthy questions to get to the root of their thinking. Todd: What’s underlying this? Why do you feel this way? And also it could be how. How? How did you come to this opinion?

NASA - NASA Provides Update on Venture-Class Launch Services NASA awarded SpaceX a task order to launch Dione under the agency’s CubeSat Launch Initiative. The 6U CubeSat from Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, will quantify how Earth’s ionosphere and thermosphere respond to electromagnetic and kinetic energy inputs from the magnetosphere. The mission is a collaboration with Catholic University of America, Utah State University, and Virginia Tech.

Space - Space weather is chaotic and hard to predict. This new model could change that In addition to APL, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the University of New Hampshire, Rice University, Virginia Tech, UCLA and Syntek Technologies are contributing to the effort.

Fortune — Wizards, Capitals billionaire owner strikes deal with Virginia governor to ditch DC—except for his WNBA franchise The new development would be located in the Potomac Yard section of Alexandria, along the Potomac River and near Virginia Tech’s ambitious Innovation Campus, an under-construction graduate school.

Wall Street Journal — Swimming Pools and Granite Countertops: How College Dorms Got So Expensive “I think the world has changed in 20 years as it relates to safety, as it relates to Wi-Fi, as it relates to a desire to have more than just a box, 12-by-15, with two mattresses and two desks and two lamps,” said Virginia Tech spokesman Mark Owczarski.

Foreign Policy — How Do You Solve a Problem Like Belarus? “The West, in particular the EU, does not have a coherent strategy outward Belarus. The West has a reactionary approach—when something happens, they introduce sanctions,” said Katsiaryna Shmatsina, a researcher at Virginia Tech.

Yahoo News — Arlington expects more tech growth in 2024 “We’re working on some efforts to, you know, really grow innovation districts or innovation corridors, both near the George Mason innovation campus and the Virginia Tech innovation campus,” he said. “Both of those are slated to open in 2024. George Mason in the Virginia Square neighborhood at Virginia Tech, just across our border in Alexandria,” he added. [Originally published at DC News Now]

Yahoo News — Award-winning doc, ‘Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project’ hits Max on Jan. 8 Giovanni was notably named one of Oprah Winfrey’s 25 “Living Legends” ... she welcomed the “Masters of the Game” crew to Virginia Tech, where, after a 35-year tenure, she is University Distinguished Professor Emerita. [Originally published at The Grio]

Inside Higher Ed — A Neglected Aspect of Good Teaching [op-ed] Our project, Teaching With Heart, strives to bring character into the preparation of college and university teachers … Qin Zhu is an associate professor of engineering education at Virginia Tech. They are the project team for Teaching With Heart.

Better Homes and Gardens — Boxwood Blight: How to Spot and Prevent This Devastating Plant Disease The brown/black stem lesions form small (1/8 inches wide and 3/4 inches long) streaks along young green stems and are visible without a magnifying glass. In humid weather, leaf spots and stem lesions develop fluffy, white spores large enough to be visible to the naked eye.

Washington Post — As the pandemic adoption boom cools, pet shelters overflow But in this holiday season, animals in overcrowded shelters still need help. Taking dogs on temporary outings or fostering them for a night or two can increase their odds of adoption by up to 1,400 percent, according to a 2023 study conducted by researchers at Arizona State University and Virginia Tech and published in the journal Animals.

Washington Post — Genetic engineering was meant to save chestnut trees. Then there was a mistake. “I would have considered it a blip if not for the mounting evidence from other trials,” said Jason Holliday, a Virginia Tech professor whose transgenic chestnuts died at a higher rate.

NPR — E-scooter firms set out to revolutionize transportation. Instead, many are collapsing Bird and companies like it made a pretty good case for e-scooters in the late 2010s, says Ralph Buehler, a professor of Urban Affairs and Planning at Virginia Tech. “The e-scooter can facilitate trips that are a little bit too long to walk, but there’s no bus or no subway to take you there easily,” he said.

NPR/Marketplace — Where the Biden administration's $3 billion farming grant has been going So these grants are specifically for commodity projects, like corn, beef, soybeans and so forth. The biggest awards are up to $100 million, and they went to large, multinational companies, like Tyson and Pepsi, and some of the biggest land-grant universities, like Ohio State and Virginia Tech.