With Good Reason

It has been three years since the tragic deaths of the 13 trapped miners in West Virginia.  In an effort to prevent such an event from happening again, Col. Jim Squire, Lt. Col. Jay Sullivan, and Maj. Elizabeth Baker (Virginia Military Institute) have developed a device that uses seismic waves to communicate with miners trapped [...]

Think you could pick out a serial killer in a crowd? Mike Aamodt (Radford University) says you couldn’t if your life depended on it.  Aamodt has compiled a database profiling information on more than 1,700 serial killers around the world.  The data were collected, in part, to determine whether the commonly used profile of a [...]

Despite what many people believe, fall leaf color in Virginia is remarkably consistent every year. Dendrologist John Seiler (Virginia Tech) has been studying fall leaf color for decades. Also: biologist Dan Cristol (William & Mary) says mercury pollution in waterways is not only bad for fish-eating birds, but for songbirds as well, who are absorbing [...]

Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald (left) had a celebrity marriage during the Jazz Age of the 1920s.  However, from 1930 until her death in 1948, Zelda was in and out of mental hospitals.  Karen Tatum (Norfolk State University) is exploring the possibility of a link between the medication Zelda took for eczema and her debilitating [...]

When Virginia’s fight against integration of the public schools failed, white families moved out of cities in droves and left behind social and physical scars that are still felt today.  Renee Hill (Virginia State University) and John Moeser (University of Richmond) discuss the history of “white flight” and its effect today on Richmond, Virginia, the [...]