June 2024 Media Highlights

NPR - After saying Charlotte, a lone stingray, was pregnant, aquarium now says she's sick - "This is a very weird story," Warren Booth, who studies facultative parthenogenesis, a type of asexual reproduction, and is an associate professor of entomology at Virginia Tech, told NPR. "The most unusual thing for me is that I recall seeing footage of an ultrasound [which Charlotte had in February], and on that ultrasound you could see an embryonic ray," he said.

NPR - Charlotte the stingray, the would-be mom, has died at her N.C. aquarium - "I have been amazed at how much attention parthenogenesis attracts any time it is reported," Warren Booth, who studies facultative parthenogenesis and is an associate professor at Virginia Tech, told NPR, adding that asexual reproduction is much more common in invertebrates.

Smithsonian - ‘Pregnant Virgin’ Stingray Won’t Give Birth After All—Here’s Why - “The most unusual thing for me is that I recall seeing footage of an ultrasound [which Charlotte had in February], and on that ultrasound you could see an embryonic ray,” says Warren Booth, who studies parthenogenesis at Virginia Tech, to NPR’s Bill Chappell. He wonders “if the female aborted the developing embryo(s) and either consumed them or a tank mate consumed them.”

Newsweek - Maryland Map Shows Where State Could Be Underwater From Sea Level Rise - The risks of sea level rise are compounded by the fact that some parts of Maryland are sinking by more than 10 centimeters per decade, according to research from Virginia Tech and the U.S. Geological Survey. The problem, known as land subsidence, is particularly affecting states on the East Coast. It happens partly due to natural geological processes and also from human activities such as the extraction of groundwater from deep in the earth.

Fox Business - Housing prices in swing states can impact the election, experts say - In the study, published in the Journal of Real Estate Research, a leading academic journal in real estate, the authors discovered that counties with "superior house price performance" in the four years leading up to an election are more likely to "vote-switch" to the incumbent party. The report was authored by Eren Cifci, an assistant professor of finance at Austin Peay State University, Alan Tidwell, associate professor of finance at The University of Alabama, J. Sherwood Clements, assistant professor at Virginia Tech, and Andres Jauregui, a professor at California State University, Fresno.

Financial Times - The still lives and distant voices of old family photographs - In the absence of sound evidence, could technology help? Facial recognition (FR) is used in criminal investigations. Surely it could identify my ancestors. Not any time soon, says Kurt Luther, an associate professor of computer science at Virginia Tech.  Civil War Photo Sleuth, Luther’s online project, uses FR to help identify subjects in US civil war-era portrait photography — firmly outside living memory. It is one of the most robust experiments in FR to date, with a data set of thousands of portraits from public archives and private collections to help make matches.

El Debate (Mexico) (also MSN) - Algunos jabones podrían atraer mosquitos del dengue, según estudio - Google translation: Researchers at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) have discovered that certain soaps can attract dengue-transmitting mosquitoes, according to a recent study published in the journal iScience. This research is important as it offers a new perspective on how the aromas of common personal hygiene products, combined with natural body odors, can increase the attraction of these insect vectors of diseases such as dengue, yellow fever, Zika and Chikungunya.

New York Times - The Best Father’s Day Sales on Gear Dads Actually Like and Use -  Specialized Mode Bike Helmet. Other things to know: Scored exceptionally well on Virginia Tech’s crash tests. Looks more like a skateboarding helmet. Less generous crash-replacement policy than those of our other picks. The heaviest helmet we tried. All sizes on sale, but limited color availability.

USA Today - Try this pro trick for an affordable and stress-free summer vacation - You can also be flexible when it comes to the rate you pay, said Virginia Tech hospitality and tourism professor Mahmood Khan. Hotels cut their rates by about 20% if you pay upfront (but you have to be sure you're going because those lower rates are usually nonrefundable). "At times, selecting a hotel away from busy destinations, yet comfortable for commuting, helps in finding an economical deal," he added.

Newsweek - It's Time To Finally Pass the DREAM Act | Opinion - “The DREAM Act has been introduced in Congress a dizzying 10 plus times since. If every introduction of the DREAM Act were a year, it would be older than I was when I became undocumented. Currently, there is a new version of the DREAM Act before the 118th Congress, introduced by Senators Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), as well as two additional versions folded, one for worse, into larger bills. With three in the cycle, and with 72 percent of voters in 2021 in favor of the DREAM Act, something must give.” By Janine Joseph, Associate Professor of Creative Writing.

US News and World Report - Pairing Up Shelter Dogs Can Raise Their Odds for Adoption - “Despite being a social species, dogs are often housed alone in shelters to reduce disease transmission and possible injury from inter-dog conflict,” said lead researcher Erica Feuerbacher, an associate professor with the Virginia Tech School of Animal Sciences. “But this social isolation can work against dogs’ behavioral health and adoptability.”

Health Day/MSN - Pairing Up Shelter Dogs Can Raise Their Odds for Adoption - "Despite being a social species, dogs are often housed alone in shelters to reduce disease transmission and possible injury from inter-dog conflict," said lead researcher Erica Feuerbacher, an associate professor with the Virginia Tech School of Animal Sciences. "But this social isolation can work against dogs' behavioral health and adoptability."

Popular Science - Shelter dogs appear ‘less stressed’ when paired with a buddy - “Despite being a social species, dogs are often housed alone in shelters to reduce disease transmission and possible injury from inter-dog conflict. But this social isolation can work against dogs’ behavioral health and adoptability,” study co-author and Virginia Tech University animal behavior psychologist Erica Feuerbacher said in a statement. “We wanted to examine whether pair housing could be a useful intervention for improving shelter dogs’ welfare.”

Huffpost (Italy) - "Se nei rifugi i cani vivono in coppia provano meno stress e vengono adottati prima" - Google translation: Dogs in shelters do better when they are in pairs. And, what's more, they are adopted earlier. This is what emerges from a new study from Virginia Tech, published in the research journal Plos One. “Despite being a social species, dogs are often housed alone in shelters to reduce disease transmission and potential injury from dog-to-dog conflicts,” said Erica Feuerbacher, associate professor in Virginia Tech's College of Animal Sciences and chief study researcher - . But this social isolation can work against dogs' behavioral health and adoptability."

Axios - What's in Potomac Yard's post-arena future - Why it matters: It's a large, valuable chunk of land with close proximity to D.C. and a new $370 million Metro stop that sits in what Alexandria and Arlington are trying to establish as an innovation corridor, thanks to nearby Amazon HQ2 and Virginia Tech's forthcoming Innovation Campus.

Scripps - Data, public opinion differ on economy - Interview with Jadrian Wooten: “People, when they're buying their groceries, they're buying it in real time. They’re pumping gas in real time, they’re paying their electricity in real time, and so a lot of times what we're seeing sort of upfront, we’re experiencing those higher prices, or we’re experiencing joblessness, we’re experiencing rent increases, we’re experiencing the bad stuff. It usually takes a month or two for the government to collect that data, and then come back and say, you know, it really wasn't that bad. And, you know, people just don't respond well to that.”

Space.com - What is the 3-body problem, and is it really unsolvable? - "I think of it as if you're walking on a mountain ridge," Shane Ross, an applied mathematician at Virginia Tech, told Live Science. "With one small change, you could either fall to the right or you could fall to the left. Those are two very close initial positions, and they could lead to very different states.”

The Age (Australia) — ‘Truckification’ of family car creates culture of menacing driving, motorists say - A 2018 research paper by Virginia Tech political science associate professor Cara Daggett identified a social trend of “petro-masculinity” in which men flamboyantly use fossil fuels to express their opposition to social progress.

Deutsche Welle (Spain) and also MSN (Mexico) - Científicos descubren nueva forma de hacer levitar el agua - Google Translation: A team led by Jiangtao Cheng, associate professor of Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech, has managed to induce the Leidenfrost effect at much lower temperatures, around 130 degrees Celsius. This has been possible thanks to the development of surfaces covered with micropillars. These microscopic structures, just 0.08 millimeters tall (about the thickness of a human hair), are arranged in a regular pattern 0.12 millimeters apart, according to a press release.

Inside Higher Ed - Positive Partnership: Building Real Projects for Real Life Skills - At Virginia Tech’s Innovation Campus, computer science and computer engineering master’s students have the option to create their own capstone project or work with a private corporation on a specific venture. Recently, a student group worked with Torc Robotics, headquartered in Virginia, to create rain detection software for autonomous trucks. The six students collected camera data and lidar sensor data to create a machine-learning model that can detect rain in images, as well as an algorithm that detects rain in scans. The two pieces had a 90 to 92 percent accuracy when working together.

Time - What’s the Least Amount of Exercise I Can Get Away With? - How about if you skip a week or two at a time? Well, if you reach the minimum amount of physical activity for only, say, three out of every four weeks, that’s much better than never reaching it. “It’s normal for people to have highs and lows with physical activity, even if they love it,” adds Stella Volpe, a professor of exercise and nutrition at Virginia Tech and president of the American College of Sports Medicine, another influential organization that publishes activity guidelines.

The Atlantic - The New Calculus of Summer Workouts - But balancing those risks with the benefits of outdoor activity is still a judgment call. Staying inside on a single horrendously smoke-choked day is a solid choice. The more summer days end up clogged with pollution, though, the hazier the long-term trade-offs of that decision become. Some researchers, such as Linsey Marr, an environmental engineer at Virginia Tech, err on the side of caution: Going off of the EPA’s color-coded air-quality index, she deems orange levels of air quality a “time to start scaling back.” At red, the next level up, “people should not exercise outdoors,” she told me.

Fortune (also Yahoo Finance) - Bill Gates and Mark Cuban swear that failure helped build their billion-dollar ideas, but new research says making mistakes isn’t actually a key to success - The benefits of failure aren’t so much overrated as they are misunderstood, according to Rick Hunt, PhD, director of doctoral studies in management at Virginia Tech’s Pamplin College of Business. “No matter where you stand on the benefits of failure, you are probably wrong,” Hunt tells Fortune via email.

Fox News Edge (shared with local Fox affiliates across U.S.) - Donna Wertalik on social media warning labels - The tech CEOs behind these platforms told lawmakers there’s already safety tools in place. Yet the room was filled with parents who say their children were harmed by their apps, coaxing an apology from meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Donna Wertalik: “I think tech companies are going to look and say how do we partner, and how do we educate, because they don't want to lose the audience.”

Fox News Edge (shared with local Fox affiliates across U.S.) - Stephanie Lareau on heat illness - As of Monday 17 states from Iowa to Maine were under a heat alert. Stephanie Lareau: “It's tough, because it's really early in the season for such hot weather, so people haven't had a chance to acclimate to the hot weather yet. So it's going to kind of hit us all at once.”

Daily Dot - EXCLUSIVE: How a century-old law keeps Virginia's prestigious public universities tied to prison labor - Inmates in the Virginia Department of Corrections can be “purchased” for labor outside the facility. A memorandum of agreement from 2020 reveals an agreement between the department, the Commonwealth of Virginia, and Virginia Tech.

The Telegraph (also Yahoo News) - Earthquakes are shaking North Georgia. Here’s what may be behind them - Martin Chapman, a professor of geophysics at Virginia Tech, said Lake Lanier sits near what is known as the Brevard Zone, a major fault system that was active hundreds of millions of years ago when the Appalachian Mountains were forming. But most of those ancient faults are no longer active, and it’s more likely that the quakes near Lake Lanier are occurring on minor, unmapped faults in the area, Chapman said in an emailed response.

Le Monde (France) - Quand les éponges n’avaient pas de squelette - Google Translation: The fossil that the international team (China, United Kingdom and United States), led by Shuhai Xiao, from the geosciences department of Virginia Tech, in the United States, is located in a range oscillating between 551 and 539 million years.

Wired (Italy) - I cani non sono solo compagni di vita, ma anche “sentinelle” della salute - Google translation: The central points of the discussions by Courtney Sexton and Audrey Ruple of the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine are two: on the one hand the similarity between dogs and owners from a biological point of view and on the other the sharing of environments frequented. That is to say: dogs and humans frequent almost the same spaces, have similar habits, to the point that it can reasonably be considered that they are both exposed, if not exactly to the same ones, to very similar environmental factors.

El Universal (Mexico) (also MSN) - ¿Cómo advierten los perros de forma anticipada los problemas de salud de sus dueños, según ciencia? - Google translation: The study was carried out by researchers Audrey Ruple and Courtney Sexton, from the Virginia Tech College of Veterinary Medicine, and they point out that dogs have adapted so much to humans that they can help study certain factors that affect human health, since in In them you can find the consequences of the socioeconomic conditions of the home and even the effects of exposure to certain contaminants.

CNN - ‘This disorder has almost killed me’: His addiction to ultraprocessed food began as a child - “If there is a really high value meal in front of you, something rich and fatty that has a lot of calories in it, the brain is set up to say, ‘Go ahead and eat it,’ even if you are full because our ancestors had no guarantee they would find food the next day,” said appetite specialist Alexandra DiFeliceantonio, an assistant professor at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg.

BBC World News - NASA delays return of Boeing Starliner indefinitely - Ella Atkins: “Obviously, it was successful in rendezvousing and docking to the International Space Station. One of the things that is done to actually dock with the space station is that you fire what are called reaction control thrusters. They allow you to position yourself and orient yourself properly so that you can execute a precision dock, which was successfully accomplished, but five of the 28 thrusters failed as they were approaching the space station. Now, 28 is a lot extra. You didn't need those five to be safe. The spacecraft was able to dock, and the astronauts are on board.”

U.S. News and World Report - Everything You Need to Know About Tonight’s Presidential Debate - The muted microphone rule – likely in place to discourage cross talk between the candidates – hurts both men by limiting the opportunity for a viral moment or pithy sound bite, says Cayce Myers, professor and director of the graduate studies program at the School of Communication at Virginia Tech. “If you have mics cut off, the opportunities to have that kind of sharp exchange – where it’s point counterpoint – are limited,” says Myers, who specializes in political communication. Karen Hult, professor of political science at Virginia Tech, says the muted microphones might also put a spotlight on each man’s nonanswers or debate shortcomings. The rule might “allow more time for uninterrupted answers,” she says. “But it also may raise the visibility and the costs of candidates' misstatements, halting or meandering answers, and non-responsiveness.”

The Epoch Times -  Biden vs. Trump: The High-Stakes First Debate in Race to White House - There’s no single best approach for debate preparation, according to Karen Hult, a political science professor at Virginia Tech. “I think it’s important for Mr. Biden to get his thoughts in order, do enough studying and preparation on how to frame issues, respond to questions, especially difficult ones, and probably also keep his temper and reactions under control,” she told The Epoch Times.

Spectrum News - Cayce Myers on presidential debate - “You may see a situation where these debates really have an impact, and they may have an impact on those undecided voters.” (transcription)

Reuters (also U.S. News & World Report) - Iran Election Hopefuls Struggle to Offer Fix for Economic Woes - “It is not difficult to understand why most Iranians are angry,” said Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, Professor of Economics at Virginia Tech. “Living standards and poverty may have improved in the last two years, but this is not true going back a decade or two. The new president can inject hope and stop the conditions from getting worse, but not get Iran back to the 2000s,” Salehi-Isfahani added, referring to a more prosperous period.

Scripps - Marc Edwards on nationwide water infrastructure - "They were engineered to last 50 to 100 years, and for the most part, they are way beyond that. This is a classic case of where we could invest pennies today to save dollars tomorrow. But since these pipes are out of sight, out of mind, we have generally gone to fixing pipes on failure, which is the worst. It is the most expensive option and it leaves people vulnerable to water contamination and water flooding.” (transcription)

CBC News - Probably only Joe Biden can have Joe Biden replaced atop the Democratic ticket - If Biden opts to abandon his re-election campaign, Harris would likely join other top Democratic candidates looking to replace him. But that would probably create a scenario where she and others end up lobbying individual state delegations at the convention for their support. That hasn't happened for Democrats since 1960, when John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson jockeyed for votes during that year's Democratic convention in Los Angeles.In response to a much-talked about New York Times column in February about the possibility of a Biden replacement, Caitlin Jewitt, an associate political science professor at Virginia Tech, told CBC News such a situation would be "utter chaos."

National Geographic Deutschland Online - Der größte Süßwasserfisch der Welt erholt sich – und alle gewinnen -  Google translation: The best results in such counts were achieved by those who know the arapaima best: the local fishermen. “The animals only emerge from the water for a fraction of a second,” says tropical ecologist Leandro Castello, who helped develop the counting method at the Global Change Center at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. “But for experienced fishermen, this is enough to determine the size, weight and direction in which the arapaima swims.”

Inside Higher Ed - How your Ph.D. or postdoc prepares you for entrepreneurship (opinion) - American universities also offer an increasing number of programs that either focus on training Ph.D.s for careers in the technology transfer space or assist them in learning how to commercialize technological and other innovations coming from their research work, as our Innovation Postdoctoral Fellowship here at Virginia Tech seeks to do.

Psychology Today (also Yahoo News) - How Non-Monogamous Couples Are Surviving and Thriving - An extensive literature review by Virginia Tech researchers Shivangi Gupta, Mari Tarantino and Caroline Sanner published in the Journal of Family Theory and Review in November highlights how non-monogamous relationships are perceived.

ScienceDaily - Invasive ants spread by hitchhiking on everyday vehicles - Scotty Yang, assistant professor in the Virginia Tech Department of Entomology within the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, recently published a paper in Ecological Entomology describing this automotive phenomenon.

Interesting Engineering - ‘Queens of highway’: Ants in Taiwan hitch rides on cars to spread colonies - Scotty Yang, assistant professor in the Virginia Tech Department of Entomology described this automotive phenomenon in Ecological Entomology. Researchers note that hitchhiking ants need to climb the surface of the vehicle, showcase colonizing behaviors, and bear the temperature of the vehicle they choose to settle in to succeed.

NPR - Meet the Democrats seen as up-and-comers for 2028 — or maybe sooner - But most of the governors haven't had the time they'd need to build a national profile where they could beat Trump. Caitlin Jewitt, a professor of politics at Virginia Tech, says that's a problem. CAITLIN JEWITT: There is no obvious choice, and that makes this idea - that Biden should step aside and things will be better - concerning to me.

NPR - Virginia Tech new program in leadership  - “There are some places I've learned recently where the humanities are growing and they're growing because they're not calling them the humanities anymore. Virginia Tech has a new program in leadership. They've substituted the word leadership instead of calling it ‘humanities.’” (transcription)

CBS (Piece from Fall 2023 reaired on 60 Minutes) - Indoor air systems crucial to curbing spread of viruses, aerosol researchers say - Skagit County health officials said the rehearsal "could be considered a superspreading event" – one of the earliest in the country – and concluded that choir members had "an intense and prolonged exposure" to surfaces, droplets and possibly even microscopic airborne particles called "aerosols," containing the virus. That caught the attention of Linsey Marr, a Virginia Tech university professor specializing in aerosol science, and several of her fellow researchers. Even though the medical community was focused on droplets, surfaces and handwashing, these researchers strongly believed COVID was mostly an airborne disease, but needed more proof. So they launched their own analysis.

CBS (Piece from Fall 2023 reaired on 60 Minutes) - Face mask effectiveness: What science knows now - In an interview for 60 Minutes, CBS News chief medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook posed that question to Linsey Marr, a Virginia Tech university professor specializing in aerosol science.