April 2024 Media Highlights

Washington Post - After Va. arena plan collapses, politicians and dealmakers trade blame - The state’s prosperous D.C. suburbs have in recent years attracted one major headquarters after another — from Amazon’s much-hyped “HQ2” in Arlington to defense heavyweights Boeing and Raytheon and the real estate data company CoStar just a few weeks ago, not to mention a Virginia Tech graduate campus in Alexandria that is meant to boost the potential workforce for those companies.

BBC - How might Iran seek to hurt Israel after general's killing? - Yousof Azizi at Virginia Tech's School of Public & International Affairs believes that there will be a struggle going on behind the scenes in Iran between those who argue that Iran should seek to establish itself as a nuclear power to deter Israeli aggression and more hawkish figures who suggest direct attacks on Israel and its military installations.

Business Insider - Shein made $2 billion in profits last year. That's a lot of fast fashion. - This Janus-faced behavior might be attributable to what economists call "stated preferences vs. revealed preferences." As Jadrian Wooten, an economics professor at Virginia Tech, previously told BI, it's the difference between "what we say we want" and "what we actually do."

Business Insider - Some people are being given thousands of dollars with no strings attached in universal basic income trials. They mostly spend the cash wisely.  - But "if recipients were to spend their income not to meet basic needs, to develop human capital, or to save for the future, wasting it instead, this would be a worry," said Fabian Wendt, an assistant professor in Virginia Tech's political science department.

Consumer Reports - When You Really Need to Replace Your Bike Helmet - Depending on where and how it’s used, a helmet will be exposed to different levels of wear and tear, as well as specific environmental conditions (heat and humidity). These collectively may alter impact performance, says Barry Miller, PhD, director of outreach and business development for the Virginia Tech Helmet Lab. The lab tests helmets for a variety of sports and conducts research into how helmets can reduce risks of brain injury.

Newsweek - Solar Eclipse to Be Chased by NASA Jet Planes - "The eclipse basically serves as a controlled experiment," said Bharat Kunduri, the leader of the ionosphere project and a research assistant professor at Virginia Tech, said in the statement. "It gives us an opportunity to understand how changes in solar radiation can impact the ionosphere, which can in turn impact some of these technologies like radar and GPS that we rely on in our daily lives."

The Economic Times - Why NASA planes will chase the April 8 solar eclipse, from an altitude of 50,000 feet - A third experiment will focus on studying the ionosphere, Earth's upper atmospheric layer affected by solar radiation. Led by Bharat Kunduri of Virginia Tech, this project will use an ionosonde instrument to measure ionospheric charge changes during the eclipse.

Axios - Here's what NASA will study during Monday's eclipse - Using the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network, researchers led by Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University will study how solar radiation impacts the ionosphere, which could give insights into space weather.

ABC News (also on Yahoo News) - 'The sun has been eaten': Inside the history and mythology of total solar eclipses - Additionally, in Missouri, a team of students from Virginia Tech will launch "high altitude scientific weather balloons" along the total solar eclipse path as part of the National Eclipse Ballooning Project for NASA.

Inverse - 105 Years Ago, This Astrophysicist Used a Solar Eclipse to Prove Einstein’s Theory Of Relativity - On the ground, radar dishes in the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN) will measure radio waves bouncing back from the ionosphere during the eclipse. A NASA-funded project led by Virginia Tech physicist Bharat Kunduri will compare the SuperDARN measurements to computer simulations to learn more about how the ionosphere reacts to the rapid changes that happen during an eclipse.

CBS News (also on Yahoo News) - When is the next total solar eclipse in the U.S. after today? See the paths for the 2044 and 2045 events - "A total solar eclipse is one of the most spectacular things anyone can see in their lifetime," Virginia Tech astrophysicist Nahum Arav told CBS News. The eclipse "looks like a black hole in the sky," said Arav, who watched the paths of totality of eclipses in 1991 and 2017.

Forbes - Here's How To Keep Your Eyes, Children And Pets Safe During The Total Solar Eclipse - Mark Freeman, a clinical associate professor at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine said eclipses are one “of those instances where our pets are actually ‘smarter’ than we are,” explaining that “animals don’t look directly at the sun (as) it is painful, and they have no reason to do it.”

The Weather Channel - Weather Geeks Podcast: Caribbean Flash Droughts - What about the drought that resides in the column of air above our heads, what does that look like? … Craig Ramseyer is utilizing a newly proposed drought index to predict and measure flash droughts in the Caribbean, which aims to trigger policymakers to enact drought mitigation faster and more efficiently.

Scripps News - Major earthquake hits Taiwan (Virginia Tech login required) - Transcription: “Joining us now is associate professor of remote sensing and geophysics, Manoochehr Shirzaei. So the area on the east coast of Taiwan is no stranger to earthquakes but how different was this one?”

NPR - The excitement in women's NCAA basketball has created a demand for tickets - Jadrian Wooten teaches economics at Virginia Tech. He says this year's tournament attracted a lot of attention. “For, you know, a team like Iowa, LSU, South Carolina, they're doing a really good job of selling their story, of their players, of their progress, of their program.” 

Washington Post - What to do - and not do - in an earthquake - Get as far away as possible from power lines and buildings. Windows, awnings and other fixtures can fall from buildings. “Best would be to go in the middle of an open parking lot or lawn and wait for the shaking to be over,” said Manoochehr Shirzaei, a geophysics professor at Virginia Tech.

New York Times - New Method That Pinpoints Wood’s Origin May Curb Illegal Timber - The model could also narrow the wood’s origin to a roughly 125-mile radius, a remarkable feat in a continent that’s roughly 40 percent covered by forest. The method is “very, very solid from a technical point,” said Naren Ramakrishnan, a data scientist at Virginia Tech who was not involved in the research.

New York Times - Should Colleges and Universities Get Rid of Legacy Admissions? - The ban will notably affect the University of Virginia and William & Mary, which are among the country’s more selective public universities. Virginia Tech, another prestigious public university, already announced last year that it would no longer take an applicant’s legacy status into account in the admissions process.

ABC News (also on Yahoo News) - With razor-thin GOP margin, could House control flip to Democrats? - Karen Hult, a political science professor at Virginia Tech, said the likelihood of a flip from Republican to Democratic control in the House decreases as the general election nears. “I think as we move closer to the election, and people are listening to their folks back home, a lot of people on the Republican side are saying, 'You know, we're going to be listening to nominee Donald Trump on the Republican side, we're also going to be listening to members of our district.”

Forbes - Coastal Cities Need To Be Better Built To Survive Our Warming Future - Another major paper published just last month in Nature suggests that building defenses may not be sufficient to avoid a flooded future. Led by Virginia Tech researchers, the study examined the flooding potential for 32 major US coastal cities. The team showed that even when taking coastal-defense structures into account, the combination of land subsidence and sea-level rise is putting an increasing proportion of the population at risk.

Forbes - Five Strategies For Getting Admitted Off The Waitlist - For example, for the 2022-23 application cycle, Johns Hopkins University offered 3,443 students a spot on its waitlist. While 2,358 students accepted this spot, the university ultimately didn't accept a single student off the waitlist. On the other hand, Virginia Tech had 7,587 students accept a spot on the waitlist and ended up accepting 2,458 of them.

Bloomberg - From NYC to Amsterdam, the Smell of Weed Has Critics Fired Up - “Cities were regulating odors because they were dangerous,” says Melanie Kiechle, a history professor at Virginia Tech and author of Smell Detectives: An Olfactory History of Urban America, 1840-1900. “That’s a key distinction between what was happening then and people not liking the smell of weed now.

New York Times - W.H.O. Broadens Definition of Airborne Diseases - Linsey Marr, an environmental engineer at Virginia Tech and a member of the advisory group, found that phrase more awkward than a simpler term like airborne transmission. “I find it very clunky,” she said. “But we were looking for the lowest common denominator terminology that everyone could live with.”

Washington Post - Baltimore bridge collapse highlights outdated safety standards, experts say Researchers say changes are needed. “The whole system was calibrated to older bridges, older ports, older ships, and so on,” said Roberto Leon, a structural engineering professor at Virginia Tech. “We have to recalibrate.”

Today - What does the slang word 'mid' really mean? - What does 'mid' mean? Think: a lukewarm bowl of mac-and-cheese or a three-star hotel, says Kelly Elizabeth Wright, a postdoctoral research fellow in language sciences at Virginia Tech.

CNN - WHO clarifies what counts as a pathogen that can spread through the air - “This report is important because it will enable better, clearer communication with the public about transmission of pathogens and how to reduce the risk of transmission,” Linsey Marr, an aerosol scientist and professor at Virginia Tech, who is a member of the consultation group behind the new report, said in an email Thursday.

New York Times - China’s Cities Are Sinking Below Sea Level, Study Finds - “Land subsidence is an overlooked problem that almost exists everywhere,” said Manoochehr Shirzaei, a geophysicist at Virginia Tech who has studied subsidence in American coastal cities using similar methods. Dr. Shirzaei also reviewed the new study on Chinese cities by Zurui Ao of South China Normal University, Xiaomei Hu and Shengli Tao of Peking University, and their colleagues.

CNN - 270 million people are living on sinking land in China’s major cities, new study finds - Thursday’s study is “scientifically robust” and did “a fine job” of highlighting that subsidence is not just a “coastal problem,” said Leonard Ohenhen, a doctoral researcher at Virginia Tech who recently published a study on land subsidence in the US. “Most urban cities experience land subsidence, but we focus our attention on coastal cities because of sea level rise.

NBC - Multistate 911 outage shows fragility of systems, experts say - "There are over 6,000 jurisdictions for 911," said retired Rear Adm. David Simpson, chief of the FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau from 2013 to 2017. "The decisions made for equipment and budget vary from state to state to state."

USA Today - Why do mosquito bites itch? Some people get them more than others. Here's why. - TFloral-scented soaps tend to be more attractive to mosquitoes, according to a study by Virginia Tech researchers funded in part by the United States Department of Agriculture and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

USA Today - Here's what 'Cicadageddon 2024' will sound like, and how long it will last: Graphics - The timing of a 13- or 17-year cycle is one of the great mysteries of the insect world, according to Virginia Tech. Research and mathematical modeling suggest that the length of these brood cycles could be attributed to predatory avoidance.

Axios - STD-riddled "zombie" cicadas are coming in hot - Zoom in: Virginia is at the "very edge" of where Brood XIX will emerge, Doug Pfeiffer, Virginia Tech professor of Entomology, tells Axios. In Virginia, they'll likely be limited to the North Carolina border, south of Caroline County and east of I-95 — making a Richmond sighting a strong possibility, but not a definite one, Pfeiffer says.

Delish - The Science Behind Stringy Chicken - Don't get us wrong, we love chicken spaghetti. Spaghetti chicken, on the other hand, is decidedly less delicious. But what exactly is it? Is it safe to eat? We chatted with Dr. David Gerrard, Director of Virginia Tech's School of Animal Science, to demystify spaghetti meat.

Wired (also in Grist and Mother Jones) - Mexico City’s Metro System Is Sinking Fast. Yours Could Be Next - “Trains can get derailed very easily if there is a slight change in the leveling of the railways,” says Manoochehr Shirzaei, an environmental security expert at Virginia Tech who studies subsidence but wasn’t involved in the new paper. “Most of the infrastructure has certain thresholds; it tolerates a certain level of differential land subsidence. But often they don’t account for the rate that we see, for example, in Mexico City.”

NBC News - 10 years after Flint's lead water crisis began, a lack of urgency stalls 'proper justice' In the summer of 2015, Virginia Tech researchers found samples of Flint water had abnormally high lead levels. Exposure to lead can be harmful to children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, potentially causing slowed growth and development, behavioral problems, and brain and nervous system damage.

USA Today (carried by many Gannett papers) — Flint's water had lead. The government lied about it. 10 years later, we need answers. - [Op-ed] They attacked Hanna-Attisha, the pediatrician/researcher whose medical center was a regional catchment for blood-lead level testing in small children, and who went public with what she had learned. A state spokesman described a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency water expert as a "rogue employee" and a Virginia Tech scientist as some sort of flimflam artist.

The Weather Channel - Fighting fire without 'forever chemicals' - * Brian Lattimer: “One of the things that we hypothesized: we needed to design new molecules that prevent the fuel vapors from coming up through these foam blankets. The way the firefighting foams work is they basically smother the fire by covering it with this foam, and so we’re designing these molecules with machine learning and analytical techniques, so that they can prevent the fuel from going up through this foam blanket. The fuel can sometimes also degrade the foam, so we are designing molecules so that they have really good characteristics for that.”

CBS News Boston (picked up by many affiliates) - Scientists making progress in less toxic cancer treatment called immunotherapy - Cytokines are small protein molecules that can act as messengers between immune cells. Ordinarily, if cytokines are injected into the body, they can jump-start immune cells in tumors to kill cancer cells, but like chemo, they can also harm healthy cells.  Now, researchers at Virginia Tech have developed a way to keep these cytokines in the tumors and away from healthy cells.

WCBS (Radio) New York - Jadrian Wooten on the economic impact of Taylor Swift’s album drop. - * What kind of fans are driving the economics of the Taylor Swift phenomenon? “Those are our Swifties. They are really carrying a lot of different spending patterns in places we've never seen before. So we've just spent a long time talking about her impact on the NFL and new fans coming in buying jerseys and merchandise, and you're seeing that same sort of behavior. Swifties are bringing a lot of money to different businesses.”

Scripps News - Taylor Swift's Economic Impact - Jadrian Wooten: “One of the big things that Taylor Swift is sort of known for is her connection with her fans. You don't see that in a lot of other artists. It’s there, but it's not as strong as it is with Taylor Swift, where you really feel like she's your best friend singing to you. You're getting to read her lyrics really carefully, find out back stories. You get to talk to other people about it.”

Technical.ly - The Washington Post is developing an AI-powered answer tool informed by its coverage - The Washington Post is partnering with Virginia Tech’s Sanghani Center for Artificial and Data Analytics to develop the new tech. It’s a generative AI project where readers can get answers to questions, using data taken from the Post’s previous coverage. The plan is for it to be built to understand intent in user questions, rather than just relying on keywords like some other AI platforms.

Business Insider - The $6 billion project to power 1 million NY homes with clean energy is the first of its kind - "Because of bottlenecks in the grid south of Albany, there's a limit to the extent to which that generation can be used to satisfy demand in the New York City area," Ryan Calder, an assistant professor in environmental health and policy at Virginia Tech, told Business Insider.

Business Insider - The 3 best self-cleaning litter boxes of 2024, tested and reviewed - We consulted four experts and used their criteria to narrow down our picks. Dr. Mark Freeman is a board-certified veterinarian and assistant professor of community practice at Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine.

Washington Post - Should you kill hammerhead flatworms? - Hammerhead flatworms are, you guessed it, flat in appearance. The group of worms is usually referred to as the broadhead planarians and contains more than 200 different species, experts said. They have broad, shovel-shaped heads and “are usually shades of tan or brown with various patterns of stripes on their backs,” Theresa Dellinger, an entomologist with the Insect Identification Lab at Virginia Tech, wrote in an email. She said some of the worms are “long and skinny,” while other species “are shorter and broader.”

Newsweek — Map Reveals 32 States Where Dog Owners Warned of Common Tick-Borne Disease -  Veterinarians from the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine have warned that the tick-caused illness is spreading in not only humans but also dogs. Lyme disease is spread through the bites of ticks infected with the Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria. . . . The disease has usually been contained to the northeast of the U.S., but canine Lyme disease has now been detected in 32 states, said Jenny Marin, a clinical assistant professor at the college's Veterinary Teaching Hospital.

U.S. News & World Report - Dogs Can Get Lyme Disease, Too - Dogs throughout the United States are increasingly vulnerable to the tick-borne illness, say experts from the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine at Virginia Tech. Lyme disease was traditionally thought to be limited mostly to the northeastern United States, but positive cases of canine Lyme disease have now been reported in 39 states, vets report.