Melvyn P. Leffler, Professor of History at the University of Virginia, will receive the American Historical Association’s 2008 George Louis Beer Prize for his book “For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War.”

Leffler, named the Randolph Jennings Fellow at the United States Institution for Peace in 2004 and Henry A. Kissinger Fellow in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the Library of Congress in 2004 said he was surprised and deeply gratified by the award, which he will receive in January at the association’s annual meeting in New York City.

Leffler said he has a passion for the history of foreign relations because international diplomacy involves “some of the most important things — war and peace, life and death…”and he went on to say, “This is the best prize the American Historical Association gives to a writer of history of international relations. It is exhilarating to be able to step down from the deanship and revive one’s scholarly career.”

Published in 2007, Leffler’s book examines four crucial episodes during the Cold War when American and Soviet leaders considered modulating, avoiding or ending hostilities, and asks why they failed. He then illuminates how U.S. and Soviet leaders were able to reconfigure Soviet-American relations after decades of confrontation.”

Interested in why it lasted as long as it did and why it ended when it did, Leffler concluded that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, without losing his faith in communism, transformed many of his ideological views on what was necessary to improve the political and economic systems in Russia. Leffler also credited U.S. President Ronald Reagan with building up the U.S. military and then negotiating from that position of strength.

Leffler said, “The importance of Reagan was that he did want to negotiate with the men who ran the ‘Evil Empire.’”

Duane Osheim, chairman of U.Va.’s history department, said, “Mel is internationally recognized as a scholar of the Cold War and he richly deserves this prize. His book is an important work on United States foreign policy during the Cold War. It is instructive because of the thoughtfulness he gives to the values and the ideology of both sides…”

The Economist, a respected news magazine, praised the book as “a highly relevant and much-needed historical study, one of the best books on the period to have been written.”

Leffler is currently co-editing, with Norwegian scholar Odd Arne Westad, the three-volume Cambridge History of the Cold War, a project that has engaged the pair for the past eight years.

Ann Goldberg, associate professor of history at the University of California-Riverside, who chaired the award committee that selected Leffler’s book, said “The Soul of Mankind” is a “masterful treatment” that will become required reading. Using newly accessible archival sources, Leffler constructs a richly nuanced, empirically rigorous history of the Cold War that avoids the ideological blinkers of past Cold War scholarship”

You’ve been listening to the Oscar Show, I’m Jacob Canon. The College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Virginia, WTJU and myself would like to thank you for joining us this past year as we have examined many different people and points of interest concerning UVa and its impact on the world.

Please tune in during the next semester to enjoy our new weekly show brought to you by UVA Today.

Did you miss a show? Then go to www.wtju.net and click on “blogs & pods” or just Google, “The Oscar Show.” Questions about this program; please call WTJU at 434-924-0885 or email at wtju@virginia.edu.

Over the past weeks, candidates for President –elect Obama’s cabinet and transition team have been vetted so that the president-elect can make them offers to be part of the new team that will lead our nation over the next 4 years, following the inauguration scheduled for January 20, 2009.

Since the Commonwealth of Virginia went “blue” for the first time since 1964, there names connected to the Commonwealth that have been considered for posts in the new administration.

To help the incoming administration, University of Virginia law professors, Jonathan Z. Cannon and David A. Martin, have been selected as part of the Transition Team. Martin will serve on the Agency Review Team for the Department of Homeland Security, while Cannon will join a team on the Environmental Protection Agency.

Responsibilities formerly handled by the INS were transferred to the Department of Homeland Security when the DHS was created in 2003, and are now assigned to three separate bureaus. Martin will bring a special focus on immigration issues to the Homeland Security Team.

The Warner-Booker Distinguished Professor of International Law, Martin formerly was special assistant to the assistant secretary for human rights and humanitarian affairs at the U.S. Department of State, before joining the Virginia faculty. He co-authored a leading casebook on immigration and citizenship, and served as general counsel of the Immigration and Naturalization Service from 1995 to 1998 under President Clinton.

He has twice served as a consultant to the Administrative Conference of the United States, preparing studies and recommendations on federal migrant worker assistance programs. In 1993 he undertook a consultancy for the U.S. Department of Justice that led to major reforms of the U.S. political asylum adjudication system. In 2003-04 he was asked by the State Department to provide a comprehensive study of the U.S. overseas refugee admissions program, leading to recommendations for reform of that system.

Martin said, “I am honored and excited to be involved in this transition work. Immigration will be a significant issue for the new administration to consider, and I welcome the opportunity to contribute toward making the immigration pieces of Homeland Security work as effectively as possible.”

Jonathan Cannon, the Blaine T. Phillips Distinguished Professor of Environmental Law and director of the Law School’s Environmental and Land Use Law Program said, “It’s a privilege to serve and help the new administration get established and begin to operate effectively.”

General counsel for the Environmental Protection Agency from 1995 to 1998, Cannon also served as assistant administrator for administration and resources management from 1992 to 1995, and held senior management positions at the agency from 1986 to 2000.

Before joining the EPA, Cannon was in the private practice of environmental law and also served as an adjunct professor of environmental Law at Washington and Lee. He has authored numerous articles on environmental law and policy, including several on relationships between the EPA and the White House, Congress and the courts.

He also wrote on the Supreme Court’s decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, a 2006 ruling that affirmed the EPA’s right to regulate greenhouse gases, which is likely to figure importantly in early efforts to address climate change.

Other transition team members and people considered include:

Janet Napolitano ’83, who is serving on the advisory board for the transition
Tom Donilon ’85, a team lead for department of state review
Michele Jolin ’92, a team lead on the council of economic advisors.
Rachana Bhowmik ’97, national security
Kelley Shawn Coyner ’88, transportation
Neil MacBride ’92, justice and civil rights
Jonathan B. Sallet ’78, science, technology, space and arts

With appointments on the horizon, and many to be made once the administration is officially empowered, it will be interesting to see if any of the University of Virginia’s alumni may eventually be made part of the next President’s Staff.

You’ve been listening to the Oscar Show, I’m Jacob Canon. Join us next week when we will look at the Commonwealth’s first ever, Doctor of Nursing Practice Degree. The historic achievement which the UVa Nursing School granted, on November 14, 2008.

Habeas corpus, the judicial means by which prisoners may demand that their jailer show a valid reason for their detention, is considered a bedrock of personal liberty in U.S. law—and is the only specific right enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

This summer, when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its historic affirmation of the right of Guantánamo Bay detainees to challenge their confinement, one University of Virginia history professor’s research was critical to how the justices arrived at their decision.  For nearly a decade, Associate Professor of History Paul Halliday has been quietly studying the use of habeas corpus in England and its empire back to the 16th century and earlier.

James Oldham, St. Thomas More Professor of Law and Legal History at Georgetown University Law Center consulted with Halliday about the writ’s history for several amicus briefs written on behalf of the Guantánamo detainees.   Oldham said, “Paul is probably the most knowledgeable person on the planet about the historical scope of the writ of habeas corpus and its use in the Anglo-American tradition, and Halliday’s book on the subject (expected in 2010) “will rewrite that history [of habeas corpus] in a fundamental way.”

Halliday never dreamed he would be doing research on habeas corpus. But while immersed in research of litigation in 16th- and 17th-century English politics at London’s National Archives, he realized that documents concerning more than 11,000 habeas cases from the court of the King’s Bench—the king’s greatest common law court—remained bundled in their original files, most unopened since they were stored away hundreds of years ago.  Halliday said, “The more work I did, I realized that what’s in the archive and what’s been written [about habeas corpus] had nothing to do with one another.”

Scribbled on tiny scraps of parchment (1 or 2 inches by 8 to 10 inches) and written in Latin, many writs are rumpled, worm-eaten and soiled with coal dust, dirt or water stains. Halliday has since photographed thousands and noted their contents, which he then analyzes in an intricate computer database that tracks each case.

Halliday said he was surprised to learn that “The writ of habeas corpus was not founded on ideas about liberty.”  Instead, it was designed to ensure that individuals imprisoning people in the king’s name upheld the law and did not abuse their authority.

The key in the Supreme Court Guantánamo case (Boumediene v. Bush) was whether non-citizens are entitled to habeas corpus, and if so, whether they must be on American soil to use it.

A recent Virginia Law Review article by Halliday, and UVa Law School’s American legal historian G. Edward White, was cited four times in the decision by attorneys on both sides.  They both identified what Founding Fathers understood about habeas corpus and included the “Suspension Clause” in the Constitution, which reads: “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended unless, when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety, may require it.”

Since 1789, the writ has been suspended only a few times, always controversially, including by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War and following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 allowing U.S. internment of people of Japanese descent.

The article also showed that the English court consistently allowed foreigners access to habeas corpus. In the 1640s, during the English Civil War, justices used habeas corpus to release those imprisoned by military officers. Halliday said, “Place was not the point in habeas litigation. People were.” And went on to say, “What we find in thousands of cases across thousands of miles are patterns revealing principles about habeas corpus.”

Having consulted Halliday about Gauntanamo cases, Jonathan Hafetz of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law said, “Paul’s work sheds light on the original meaning and purpose of the Constitution’s guarantee of habeas corpus.  It shows that efforts to deny habeas corpus to detainees today, and to create prisons outside the law, contradicts centuries of history and tradition.”

You’ve been listening to the Oscar Show, I’m Jacob Canon.  Join us next week when we will look at MacArthur Fellow, Bill T. Jones, and his discussion of the Struggles for Art in Society.

During the course of the seven years since 9-11, the United States and its elected representatives have made calculated moves to deal with the declared “War on Terror.”  Because of the nature of this global war, which is based more in backrooms around the world than on battlefields, it has become increasingly difficult to have concrete ideas about whom and where we are, or should be fighting.

Because of the clandestine nature of the war, the measures to combat it have also taken a more covert form, including… Abu Ghraib… and more recently, Guantanamo Bay.  These Prisoner Detentions Camps were set up in an effort to isolate suspected enemy combatants from battle regions and interrogate them so that the war in the Gulf, and on Terror could be mitigated.

In the movie, “The Response,” writer, Sig Libowitz, utilizes transcripts from Combatant Status Review Tribunals, or CSRT’s, to dramatically explore the events that lead up to and occur, during these trials.

The setting for the movie is a CSRT in Guantanamo, and examines the interactions between a detainee played by Aasif Mandvi, and his inquisitors as portayed by Kate Mulgrew, Peter Reigert and Libowitz, who plays a “King Solomon - like” character who ends up interpreting the limited protection of rights for the accused combatant, while shielding the world from a potential terrorist.

The movie is delivered in two acts.  First, we are introduced to the shortened trial process,  in which a detainee is brought before the tribunal and asked a series of questions about his knowledge, or lack thereof, concerning their connection to terrorists and terror activity.  Libowitz characterized the experience for the detainee as a “… few minutes in front of a war tribunal…this is him defending his life.”

The process presented is antithetical to what we as American citizens expect as our basic rights in a court of law.  Elements important and implicit in our court system that are not available to a detainee include: the right to counsel by a competent attorney - they are given a military advisor who is not an actual attorney; to know the identity of their accusers, which are only known by the tribunal officers, and what the charges are against them.

Finally, and potentially most important is the “writ of habeas corpus,” which states that the accused may demand a determination of the right to be held by their accuser.  This element is one of the most important parts of the US justice system, and yet was not available to these detainees, who could have been held indefinitely, until a Supreme Court ruling on June 12, 2008.

After the testimony period the movie shifts to the second act, the deliberations of the tribunal judges.  It is during this period that most of the moral arguments for and against the policies and ramifications of Guantanamo are explored.   Col Jefferson (Peter Reigert) makes the telling comment, “Why don’t we measure our behavior against who we say we are and tell ourselves we are as a country.”  To which Col. Simms (Kate Mulgrew) responds, “That’s a little simplistic after 9-11…” The detainees fate is then left in the hands of Capt. Miller (Libowitz).

(See clip of “The Response” here)

This even handed look at the Guantanamo Tribunals was lauded by two Special Forces soldiers who came to a recent Baltimore screening.  They were so impressed with how the material was presented, both gentlemen expressed their thanks in a unique way.  Libowitz read from one of the letters which said, “Thank you and the film for highlighting the real nexus confronting us today.  The discipline in presenting a balanced treatment is most patriotic. The enclosed stone is from the World Trade Center, Tower Number 2.  The razor wire is from Gitmo.  They are presented to you and the film on behalf of the soldiers that are in this nexus with you.”

It will be interesting to see how this story unfolds.  Just yesterday, president-Elect Obama stated that he planned on bringing charges against these detainees in US courts.  This plan is speculated to require creation of a new legal system because of the classified information in the most sensitive cases.

To learn more about the movie,“The Response” please visit www.theresponsemovie.com.

You’ve been listening to the Oscar Show, I’m Jacob Canon. Join us next week when we will discuss the work of UVa Professor Paul Halliday, and his research of Habeas Corpus, the only specific right enshrined in the US constitution.

This year’s Virginia Film Festival, hosted by the University of Virginia, kicked off Thursday Evening, Oct. 30, and featured some80 films and 100 guests exploring images of immigrants, outsiders and extraterrestrials.

As in years past, the Festival included Stars and events that will be remembered for years to come. Thursday’s Opening of Lake City was no exception. The featured guests included the film’s writer/directors Perry Moore and Hunter Hill, producers Mark Johnson and Weiman Seid, Sissy Spacek, Lake City’s male lead Troy Garity and his mother, Jane Fonda.

When asked about someone else portraying Troy’s mother, Fonda, with the UVa Pep band playing in the background, remarked, “I’ve seen it now a number of times so I’m use to it now, but I didn’t like it at the beginning… except that I love Sissy so it helped that I love and admire her so much.”Lake City is the touching story of a family’s struggle to cope with tragedy. Garity described the movie as “a wonderful southern story about a troubled family that has lost the ability to speak to each other (who) bridge that gap finally…”

After the Film, festival director, Richard Herskowitz, led the actors, writer/directors, and producers in a discussion about the film which included many funny, as well as introspective moments concerning the making of Lake City. The story is based on a family that writer/director Hunter Hill knew as a child. Hill said that in spite of the tragedy “the whole point of the movie is that there is hope and… healing.”

(Lake City Expanded Article)

On Friday evening, UVa grad, Julie Lynn, along actor David Morse and director Rodrigo García, introduced Passengers, an exploration of romance and intrigue under the shadow of death. When asked about how he came to be part of the film project Garcia said, “I was looking to do something with hopefully a little bit more of a popular entertainment appeal and something that I hadn’t written…I read the story and I thought it was a good story. I liked the character of Claire (Ann Hathaway).”

When asked about his involvement with Passengers, David Morse (St. Elsewhere, Disturbia, ) said, “the two things about this first of all was the script… and I watched Nine Lives which I thought was just brilliant. Just the quality of everything… about the daring… and the story telling… and the performances, I just thought it was great. So I thought this is just an experience that you want to be a part of… Rodrigo I thought, ‘I’m completely impressed with him.’”

The Garcia-Lynn team is already working on their next project and is set to include Passengers’ actor David Morse, who, when asked if he knew about this, joked, “I just found this out.”

(Passengers Article)

Saturday evening, producer and UVa alum, Glen Williamson and writer Megan Holley, introduced their film, Sunshine Cleaning. Based on the script that won Holley the Virginia Governor’s Screenwriting Award in 2003, Sunshine Cleaning was first premiered at Sundance and will be released by Overture Films this winter. This wonderful, quirky, heart-felt story leads us through the lives of two sisters, Rose (Amy Adams) and Norah (Emily Blunt) who start a biohazard removal/crime scene clean-up service. As the story unfolds we find out about the strained and yet loving dynamic that these sister’s share, balanced by their father Joe (Alan Arkin).

Asked where the idea for the film came from, Holley said, “the kernel of the story really came from an NPR story that I heard about two women who started a crime scene cleaning business, and I was really struck by the interview… just how important they thought their job was… they were helping somebody… The more I researched this business, the more I realized how important it is to honor what they are doing.”

(Sunshine Cleaning Article)

And for the fifth year, one of the most popular events at the Virginia Film Festival, the Adrenaline Film Project, came to its culmination Saturday night. The Culbreth Theater was filled to capacity as 13 imaginative teams vied for the accolades of the Judges and Audience. The winners entries included:

Hail Mary - Audience Award Honorable Mention
Girl Powered - Audience Award
Roommate from Hell - Jury Award Honorable Mention
They will come for You - Jury Award

(Adrenaline Film Project Expanded Story)

For links to expanded articles and movie trailers, for these and other Film Festival Events, please visit The Oscar show podcast-Blog site by visiting www.wtju.net and click on blogs & pods. And select The Oscar Show.

You’ve been listening to the Oscar Show, I’m Jacob Canon. Join us next week when we will discuss The Response. This special film examines the turmoil that is the plight of the Guantanamo Detainees.

This year’s Virginia Film Festival, hosted by the University of Virginia, will kick off tomorrow, Oct. 30, and will feature some 80 films and 100 guests exploring the fearful and alluring images of immigrants, outsiders and extraterrestrials alike.

One of the highlights will be a special 70th-anniversary rebroadcast of Orson Welles’ classic radio play, “The War of the Worlds, “ tomorrow at 7 p.m. in the McCormick Observatory. And at 10 p.m., the Culbreth Theatre will be screening George Pal’s film classic, “War of the Worlds.” Pal biographer and Charlottesville resident Justin Humphreys will introduce the film.

Richard Herskowitz, the festival’s artistic director said, “Not only is this the perfect way to open our festival this year, it is also a great way to honor one of the more bizarre evenings in Charlottesville’s history. On the night of Oct. 30, 1938, Welles’ ultimate hoax had the whole nation on edge and our city was no exception. Citizens were so nervous, in fact, that the McCormick Observatory had to open its doors just to prove with its telescopes that the skies were not in fact filled with alien spaceships.

The festival will also kick-off with a screening of Lake City at 7:00PM at the Culbreth Theatre. Starring Sissy Spacek, Troy Garity, Rebecca Romijn, and Dave Matthews, Lake City is a film with deep Virginia roots. It captures a slice of small-town Virginia life with underlying layers of Southern gothic tragedy. Lake City is produced by Mark Johnson and co-directed by Perry Moore, who met at the Film Festival in the 90’s and have since partnered on a number of projects, including producing the Narnia series. Moore co-wrote and co-directed the film with his partner, Hunter Hill, and brought on board a third UVa alumnus, leading independent film and talent publicist Weiman Seid, as executive producer.

Glen Williamson, executive producer of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, also represents UVa as producer of Sunshine Cleaning. Based on a script that won the writer, Megan Holley, the Virginia Governor’s Screenwriting Award in 2003, Sunshine Cleaning premiered at Sundance and will be released by Overture Films this winter.

UVa grad, Julie Lynn, producer of 10 Items or Less, starring Morgan Freeman, is the producer of Passengers, an exploration of romance and intrigue under the shadow of death. Passengers is directed by Rodrigo García, the director of Nine Lives, which García presented at the 2007 Virginia Film Festival.

Charlottesville native and producer, Temple Fennell, will be the speaker at the Darden Producers Forum, held at the Darden School starting at 1:20 PM on October 30

Additionally, a free program of films by Charlottesville filmmakers Doug Bari, Elizabeth Howard and Light House students will screen at the Gravity Lounge at 3:30 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 2, under the heading “Moviemaking in Charlottesville.”

To address images of human aliens who migrate across national borders, the festival and the UVa Media Studies Department welcomes their first Festival Fellow, Hamid Naficy, a film scholar and John Evans Professor of Communication at Northwestern University. His book, “An Accented Cinema,” explores the themes and styles of filmmakers who live and work away from their country of origin.

Keeping with this theme, the festival will also screen, Koryo Saram – The Unreliable People, a film executive-produced by the recently appointed UVa Dean of Arts & Sciences, Meredith Jung-En Woo. Honored as “Best Documentary” at the 2007 Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival, the film tells the harrowing story of Stalin’s massive ethnic cleansing campaign in 1937 of forced deportation of Koreans living in the coastal provinces of Far East Russia to the unsettled steppe country of Central Asia.

Finally, there is one of the most popular events at the Virginia Film Festival, the Adrenaline Film Project. Mentored by filmmaker Jeff Wadlow and producer Beau Bauman, The Adrenaline Film Project welcomes 10 groups of film makers who will create a short film, concept to completion, from Wednesday evening to the showing scheduled for Saturday night, November 1st at 10 PM at the Culbreth Theater.

To learn more details about these films and all of the events at the Virginia Film Festival please visit www.vafilm.com.

You’ve been listening to the Oscar Show, I’m Jacob Canon. Join us next week when we will relive the events of this year’s Virginia film festival.

Author Kath Weston, an Anthropology PhD from Stanford University, grew up in a working-class family and attended college with the help of financial aid, took her first bus trip alone when she was 16, and that unforgettable trip showed her that traveling on the bus was much more than just a way to get somewhere.

Before joining the University of Virginia faculty this fall, she spent more than five years crisscrossing the nation on buses, chronicling the lives of Americans who travel via the least expensive mass transportation option.  She refers to her new book, Traveling Light: On the Road with America’s Poor, as a journey full of unexpected richness.  Her new book describes her fellow passengers’ colorful humanity and tackles issues of class, race and dubious access to America’s opportunities.

Weston said she wanted her social commentary to reveal “the artistry of living poor”—the ingenuity of getting by in a system that often fails to reckon with the widening material gap between rich and poor.

The book’s introduction says “By riding the buses, I hoped to get at aspects of living poor that have eluded community studies of poverty… The road trip has become its own American art form, yet few have bothered to chronicle what happens when people without money take to the road.”

Along the way, the riders she traveled with might have been struggling, hungry or penniless, but she found they were also helpful, creative and philosophical.

For example, take T. J… Traveling in Flagstaff, Arizona , he was almost arrested because a white woman, who was probably insane, thought he was a witch and started screaming at him in a bus terminal snack bar, bringing the police. They were about to haul off T.J., who was black, but a white trucker from the bus talked them out of it.

The trucker loved the road, he said, but he had to give up his rig to have surgery—that’s why he was riding the bus.

When everyone got back on the bus, a Hispanic man walked back to T.J., handing him a foil-wrapped package of burritos his wife had made. It turned out T.J. had no money to buy food as he rode to Oklahoma, en route to a new job in a meat-processing plant.

Then there is a story of a divorced middle-aged man, who had custody of his daughter during the summer.  So he took her on the bus for the only kind of vacation he could afford, to show her another side of America.

Or, the story of a teenage girl, traveling from one city to another, looking for her younger brother, whose mother had taken off with him and then left him someplace.  The sister didn’t know much more than that.

Then, there is the soon-to-be all too familiar story of a once-middle-class woman, who fell onto harder times when her now-deceased husband was laid off.  She told Weston, she hated taking the bus, and even though it was obvious why, the woman stood up for a non-English-speaking passenger when the bus driver started yelling at him. She also changed seats so a young woman and her toddler could sit next to each other.

With America’s appetite for travel and adventure alive and well, and the shrinking economy looming as a back drop, Weston’s story of kindness and humanity, in spite of hardship may become a more familiar one for millions in this country.  And, a tale of humility and grace that may salvage the American ideal, in the face of the difficult times ahead.

You’ve been listening to the Oscar Show, I’m Jacob Canon. Join us next week when we will preview the upcoming Virginia Film Festival.

Biologists at the University of Virginia have discovered a switching mechanism in the eye that plays a key role in regulating the sleep/wake cycles in mammals.  The new finding demonstrates that light receptor cells in the eye are central to setting the rhythms of the brain’s primary timekeeper, the suprachiasmatic nuclei, which regulates activity and rest cycles. The finding appears in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Susan Doyle, a research scientist at U.Va. and the study’s lead investigator said, “The finding is significant because it changes our understanding of how light input from the eye can affect activity and sleep patterns.”

Funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, Doyle conducted her research with colleagues Tomoko Yoshikawa, a visiting scholar from Japan, and UVa undergraduate student Holly Hillson, in the laboratory of Michael Menaker, a leading researcher in the study of circadian rhythms.

Biological clocks are the body’s complex network of internal oscillators that regulate daily activity/rest cycles and other important aspects of physiology, including body temperature, heart rate and food intake.

The investigators did this by both reducing the intensity of light given to normal mice and also creating a mutated line of mice with reduced light sensitivity in their eyes, which rendered them fully active in the day but inactive at night, a complete reversal of the normal activity/rest cycles of mice.

The researchers discovered that they could reverse the “temporal niche” of mice—meaning that the animals’ activity phase could be switched from their normal nocturnality, or night activity, to being diurnal, or day active.

Doyle said, “This suggests that we have discovered an additional mechanism for regulating nocturnity and diurnity that is located in the light input pathways of the eye.  The significance of this research for humans is that it could ultimately lead to new treatments for sleep disorders, perhaps even eye drops that would target neural pathways to the brain’s central timekeeper.”

An estimated one in six people in the United States suffer from sleep disorders, including insomnia and excessive sleepiness. And as the U.S. population ages, a growing number of people are developing visual impairments that can result in sleep disorders.

Besides sleep disorders, research in this field may eventually help treat the negative effects of shift work, aging and jet lag. Doyle said, “Currently, one in 28 Americans age 40 and over suffer from blindness or low vision, and this number is estimated to double in the next 15 years.  Our discovery of the switching mechanism in the eye has direct relevance with respect to the eventual development of therapies to treat circadian and sleep disorders in the visually impaired.”

You’ve been listening to the Oscar Show, I’m Jacob Canon. Join us next week when we look at the University of Virginia’s Kath Weston and the journey that led to her new book, Traveling Light: On the Road with America’s Poor.

In a recent show we discussed UVa researcher team’s attempt to verify or refute the existence of the Higgs Boson.  On September 10, 2008, an international team of scientists circulated the first beam of protons at nearly the speed of light around the 17-mile Large Hadron Collider on the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva. The $3.2 billion LHC, under construction for 15 years, is now the world’s most powerful particle accelerator.

Brad Cox, professor of physics and a principal investigator with the University of Virginia’s High Energy Physics Group said, “Soon we may shed light on dark matter and many other mysteries of the universe, such as the Higgs particle, which we believe gives mass to every other particle in nature.” Physicists have been trying to find it for more than three decades, and Cox has been involved with the planning and instrument design for the LHC since its inception in 1993.

Cox likens the LHC to the first use of microscopes, with the right tools, things that are there but not visible may suddenly be revealed.  The researchers are looking for physical evidence of supersymmetric particles, (possibly the mysterious “dark matter” that may make up 80 percent of the universe), extra dimensions beyond space-time-gravity, and micro-black holes.

Beginning with a series of tests over the past few weeks, scientists have begun sending opposing beams of protons around the accelerator, causing extreme high-energy collisions that shatter protons and produce new particles.  This, in effect, replicates the conditions of the infant universe, the time before particles formed into atoms and molecules, and before elements coalesced to make the stars and planets.

The basic structure of matter evolved from the first seconds after the Big Bang, the explosion of energy that is believed to have created the universe. A better understanding of the basic makings of everything could provide insight into how the universe took shape.

Using a huge international computer grid, UVa physicists and colleagues at dozens of institutions worldwide will gain access to massive amounts of data.  The collider produces 1 billion “interactions” per second.  Cox said, “The electromagnetic particle detectors in the collider must sort through all these interactions and find the one event in 10 trillion that has new physics.”

In spite of equipment failure that shut down the collider on September 19th, the basic knowledge that will be gained from the LHC experiments likely will result in new technologies such as superconductivity links for power grids, advanced forms of software, and currently “unimagined” breakthroughs.

Cox went on to say, “We will see great theories of physics affirmed, and others refuted. The LHC will help us unravel the next layer of the onion of nature by moving us to the next frontier of our understanding of matter and energy.  We are essentially looking for the grand unified theory of everything, and now we have the technology to do the science.”

You’ve been listening to the Oscar Show, I’m Jacob Canon. Join us next week when we will we will look at a team of UVa researchers who have discovered a switching mechanism in the eye that plays a key role in regulating the sleep/wake cycles in mammals.

Last Thursday, the Miller Center of Public Affairs hosted the UVa Faculty Round Table on Race and Gender in Politics.   Sponsored by the University of Virginia’s Arts & Sciences Magazine, the forum was moderated by Douglas Blackmon, the Atlanta bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal. The panel included UVa faculty members, Paul Freedman, Brian Nosek, Lynn Sanders, Vesla Weaver and Nick Winter.

Moderator, Douglas Blackmon called this point in time “an extraordinary moment in American history and American discourse,” while Associate Politics Professor Paul Freedman referred to this time as “Christmas” for political scientists because of the multicultural base of the presidential candidates.

Freedman said the implicit message in political advertising is the important element of political ads.  An example of this was a 2006 Republican ad run in Tennessee, concerning Democrat, Harold Ford, Jr.  Freedman said, the ad included “a white woman who claimed to have had met Harold at the Playboy Party and she suggested that he call her, the ad concluded with the text on the screen, Harold Ford…’he’s just not right.’  And many people suggested that the implicit message was, ‘he’s just not white.’”  Freedman added this year’s election has seen less of these types of messages.

Associate Politics Professor Lynn Sanders, spoke to the question, “will Obama lose this election due to race.”   Referring to a recent Stanford AP poll and the subsequent media spin that Obama will lose the election by six to fifteen percent simply because he is black, Sanders said, “I think that it is really, really interesting how tied we are to that kind of pessimism. There is an alternative framework that we could be focusing on, which is… that we’re living in a time when we have accomplished such a feat that we can have these different kinds of candidates.”   Referring to the Bradley/Wilder effect - when voters tell pollsters they are undecided or likely to vote for a black candidate, yet, on Election Day, they vote for the white candidate - Sanders said this effect has lessened over the past forty to fifty years and the reverse was observed in the 2006 Tennessee race between Ford and the Republican candidate.

Assistant Politics Professor Nick Winter spoke about the book he is working on, “The Secret History of Gender.”  Winter said, looking at data from the last three decades, the Democratic party is associated with stereotypically feminine traits such as being “… compassionate, generous, egalitarian, and so forth and conversely they like the republican party for relatively stereotypically masculine characteristics, it’s efficient, supports the work ethic…”  Yet, when it comes to Presidential candidates, he said the electorate tends to feel “… that our ideas about what it makes a good leader are themselves very associated with ideas about men and masculinity.”

Associate Professor of Psychology Brian Nosek’s data suggests that some political choices we make are influenced by “implicit” feelings toward blacks, women or the aged without us even realizing it. Nosek said of people who participate in his online surveys, “… 80% of white Americans who come on and try this task have a stronger association of black with bad, than white with bad, suggesting that they have associations in their minds that are quite distinct from the egalitarian values that they tend to express.  Likewise with gender, it’s harder to associate female with leader or female with career than males, even if they will explicitly say, ‘no, I’m  egalitarian minded… we don’t necessarily know that these things are happening.”

Mr. Blackmon observed that the research of the panelist had led to potentially opposed ideas of how much race and gender effect the election process.

Answering this question, Assistant Politics Professor Vesla Weaver satirically noted,  that this may be the first time that professor Sanders and she had been considered the “racial optimist in a room.”  She went on to say, “I’m certainly not saying that there aren’t negative racial attributions that happen.  I do think we need to question how much the Bradley Effect has been overstated, how much the negative aspect of race is the thing that makes headlines, and what effect that has on perceptions, on people, on raising sensitivities, on looking for it.”  Professor Sanders added that it was interesting “…the way conservative and optimistic, and liberal and pessimistic, are associated.  And this is a real consistent theme in this year’s election.”  She said that none of the panelist felt that bigotry and racism were no longer issues, yet much had changed in the short time since the 1960’s.

The goals of the panel to open public discussion on these issues were summarized by Professor Weaver’s salient comments concerning what would occur if the topic of race and gender were not brought to the public’s attention.  Weaver said, the danger is not only, not having this type of public discourse, but that “it opens up space for a powerful counter narrative to develop on November 5th.  And that is the counter narrative that, for blacks, for young voters, for anyone that was mobilized… and saw this as the first time their constituency was being spoken to, the counter narrative would be, if not now, then when.”  She added, “it opens up a rift in that powerful American dream logic.  It opens a rift in the notion that this is an egalitarian society.  That we can move forward together… And so if we don’t have that very public conversation now about race, the public conversation that going to get had when we look in the mirror on November 5th is going to be a conversation that is going to be uglier.”

You’ve been listening to the Oscar Show, I’m Jacob Canon. Join us next week when we will discuss the work of Brad Cox, professor of physics and a principal investigator with the University of Virginia’s High Energy Physics Group and his involvement with the new Large Hadron Collider in Geneva Switzerland.

View the archived web cast

With the election season upon us, and the diverse nature of the major candidates, Americans are faced with unique challenges when they go to the polls this November 4th.  With the notable exception of Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, the major candidates for the office of President of the United States have been white males.  But this election season, both major political parties have offered candidates that begin to explore the multicultural basis of our nation.

Tomorrow evening, September 25th at 7:00PM, the Miller Center of Public Affairs will be hosting the UVa Faculty Round Table on Race and Gender in Politics.   This event is sponsored by the University of Virginia’s Arts & Sciences Magazine will be Moderated by Douglas A Blackmon, the Atlanta bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal.  This forum will discuss many of the issues that face the electorate this season.  The panel will include UVa faculty members, Paul Freedman, Brian Nosek, Lynn Sanders, Vesla Weaver and Nick Winter.

The moderator, Douglas A. Blackmon, has written extensively about the American quandary of race.  Many of his stories in The Wall Street Journal have explored the interplay of wealth, corporate conduct and racial segregation.

Associate Politics Professor Paul Freedman, has written about the negative advertising that is present in American politics, and has come to the conclusion that this type of discourse has positive effects in educating the public concerning issues. Freedman found that voters who saw more campaign advertising were more energized and knowledgeable.

Associate Professor of Psychology Brian Nosek’s interest in politics emerged while he was doing research in implicit cognition, which examines thought and feeling outside of awareness and control. His data suggests that some political choices we make may be influenced by “implicit” feelings toward blacks, women or the aged without us even realizing it.

Associate Politics Professor Lynn Sanders, has found another dynamic at work in the American political system. Sanders research has found there are differences in survey data received depending on the race of the interviewer and interviewee. If they are the same race, prejudices are more likely to be revealed.  She found this evidenced by the differing results in the public vote of caucus states versus the private vote found in primaries states during the recent Democratic campaign.

Assistant Politics Professor Vesla Weaver’s research has detailed the disparities between the outcomes of whites to darker- and lighter-skinned blacks and Hispanics, including lower incomes, high incarceration rates and higher execution rates for the dark-skinned. Her data appears to show that the gradient of skin tone also appears to have an effect, and that this disparity carries over to politics as well.

Assistant Politics Professor Nick Winter’s book, Dangerous Frames explores the ways that political leaders can mobilize our ideas about race and gender in ways we don’t realize; his current project is exploring the ways that ideas about masculinity and femininity shape political discourse and public opinion.

So, as this multicultural dynamic changes the Presidential debate continues across America, you are invited to the Miller Center tomorrow evening, September 25th at 7:00 PM to hear this panel discuss gender and race and how they effect the political landscape.

The Miller Center address is 2201 Old Ivy Road, Charlottesville, VA.  For more information or direction to the event please call 434-243-8974 or email Cristina Martinez de Andino at clm6q@virginia.edu.

For those who can’t attend, you can watch the forum online by going to www.millercenter.org and the link will appear on the home page shortly before the panel starts.

You’ve been listening to the Oscar Show, I’m Jacob Canon. Join us next week when we will follow up this show with comments and reflections from the UVa Faculty Roundtable concerning Race and Gender in Politics.

Man’s eternal quest to understand the world we live in has led to a series of discoveries that questioned the conventional thinking of the time. In centuries past the great minds that have advanced human knowledge have either been lauded or treated as heretics.  Today’s more tolerant and informed world of science has delved into the deep reaches of space, as well as the smallest inner workings of all matter.

Just recently, an international effort to understand the most basic structure of matter has yielded a particle that is critical to further understanding of the universe and its evolution.

The multi-institutional team of scientists, including Bob Hirosky, a University of Virginia associate professor of physics, has announced the first observation of pair production of Z bosons, force-carrying particles in electroweak interactions, in proton-antiproton collisions.

Properties of the ZZ diboson particle states make this discovery an essential prelude to eventually confirming—or refuting—the existence of the Higgs boson, which is theorized to be the essence of all matter, and the ultimate basis of everything in the universe.

The basic structure of matter evolved from the first nanoseconds after the Big Bang.  This explosion of energy is now generally accepted throughout the science community as the creative force of the universe. And a better understanding of the basic makings of everything could provide insight into how the universe will further evolve.

Hirosky said, “What we learn could lead to new interpretations of the forces of nature and possibly to an understanding of dark matter, the mysterious substance that is believed to contribute the bulk of the mass of the universe.”

The experiments were carried out at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermilab near Chicago, home of the Tevatron, a high-energy particle accelerator.

The accelerator collides intense beams of proton and anti-protons. The collisions shatter the protons, producing new particles and allowing physicists to study the most basic elements of matter and forces that form the basis of all matter.

A new, much higher energy collider, the $3.2 billion Large Hadron Collider near Geneva on the Franco-Swiss border, went  online September 10, 2008, and may ultimately prove whether the elusive Higgs particle exists.

Hirosky said, “Only about one in 10 billion collisions might produce a pair of Z dibosons, which we observed. The Higgs is predicted to be at least 10 times rarer than the ZZ. Our observation of ZZ puts us deeper into Higgs territory. The observation of ZZ is perhaps the last experimental stepping stone before finding the Higgs.”

The questions that remain to be answered ultimately will create new questions.  Whether the Higgs particle’s existence is proven or refuted, the scientific quest of man to explain the world we live in continues to bring the understanding  that we seek.

You’ve been listening to the Oscar Show, I’m Jacob Canon. Join us for our next show, when  we introduce the Moderator and UVa Faculty panel participating in the Race and Gender in Politics Forum being held tomorrow evening at 7:00 PM at the Miller Center of Public Affairs, located at 2201 Old Ivy Road, in Charlottesville, VA.  This event is free to the public.

When the world’s best sprinters stepped up to the mark at the 100 meter final during this summer’s Olympic Games in Peking, they were moments away from subjecting their leg muscles to thousands of pounds of force as they fought to be first across the finish line less than 10 seconds later. By and large, their leg muscles handled the strain well, but inevitably one or more of these elite runners, despite intense conditioning, will suffer a hamstring pull during the track and field season.

As Silvia Salinas Blemker, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Virginia’s School of Engineering and Applied Science has said,  “Of all the muscles that work together when we run quickly, the muscles in the hamstring group are most subject to injury, and one particular hamstrings muscle, the biceps femoris long head, is most commonly injured.”

Blemker has the expertise in three-dimensional muscle modeling to find out why this muscle is so susceptible to pulls. Collaborating with Darryl Thelen, an associate professor of mechanical engineeering at the University of Wisconsin, she has embarked on a project to identify the points of strain as the biceps femoris moves dynamically and compare it to the other two hamstring muscles. Their research is supported by a four-year, $1.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.

The hamstrings run along the back of the thigh and attach on both sides of the knee joint. They are responsible for pulling the foot from the ground with each stride. In the past, researchers treated these muscles like anatomical rubber bands, uniformly elastic along their length.

Blemker said, “This simplistic view made it difficult to understand why one muscle is prone to injury while another isn’t.”
Blemker’s approach is more detailed.  She has developed models that incorporate the muscle’s intricate internal geometry, which she is combining with a model of the whole-body dynamics of sprinting, developed by Thelen.  By combining the model of the hamstrings with the framework provided by Thelen, Blemker will be able to predict how the muscle behaves in the course of real movement.

Blemker and Thelen face a number of challenges. The first is to merge these two models.  Second, they then have to validate their new model by comparing predictions with MRI-imaging techniques that measure muscle strain distribution.
Blemker said, “Ultimately, we hope to learn how the internal structure of muscle changes when it is injured, which will help us suggest more effective rehabilitation strategies.”

As director of the U.Va. Multiscale Muscle Mechanics Laboratory, Blemker is also developing computational models that connect the properties of muscle fibers and the extracellular matrix that binds them together with the properties of the muscle as a whole. This line of research will help us understand how aging and diseases such as cerebral palsy and muscular dystrophy affect muscles.

Blemker’s work straddles several fields. She has appointments in biomedical engineering and orthopedic surgery as well as mechanical and aerospace engineering, but muscles have always been her focus. “I’ve been fascinated by the fact that muscles, which are so strong, are so easily injured,” she said. “Now I am finding out why.”

You’ve been listening to the Oscar Show, I’m Jacob Canon. Join us for our next show, when we will well discuss the research of a multi-institutional team of scientists, including Bob Hirosky, a University of Virginia associate professor of physics, and there attempt to verify or refute the existence of the Higgs boson, which is theorized to be the essence of all matter, and the ultimate basis of everything in the universe.