Photo by Rebecca Arrington

Steve Swingle of Hydraulic Powerwash, cleans the sidewalks on Rugby Road Feb. 4. U.Va. hired his company and two others to clean city sidewalks in the Venable neighborhood as part of efforts to remove soot, caused by overloaded boilers at the heating plant last month.

U.Va. works to remove soot from Venable neighborhood
Clean-up efforts are continuing in the area north of the U.Va. heating plant that was blanketed with soot last month when two boilers broke down and two others were overworked in an effort to keep the Medical Center warm. The University has also set up a Web site to keep the community abreast of clean-up efforts, as well as progress toward the plant’s renovations. It can be accessed at http://www.virginia.edu/
heatingplant/. Meanwhile, the University has received notice from the state Department of Environmental Quality that it may have violated air-quality and notification requirements.
(Top News Daily, Feb. 5)

Photo by Peggy Harrison

Nash urges audience not to wait for leaders
Charismatic leaders can lead you to the Promised Land, or they can lead you out, civil rights activist Diane Nash told a large Newcomb Hall crowd Jan. 27. The keys to maintaining an effective social movement, she said, lie in individual action and developing functional leaders. Nash, a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, spoke as part of the University’s annual observances of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
(Top News Daily, Jan. 29)

Thornton reflects on space and science
Former astronaut Kathryn Thornton, now on the U.Va. faculty, mourned the loss of the space shuttle Columbia — and three close friends — but said efforts to explore space and push back the frontiers of science must go on. (Top News Daily, Feb. 5)

Anesthesia linked to brain damage
A new study by U.Va. researchers published in the Feb. 1 Journal of Neuroscience suggests that drugs commonly used to anesthetize children may cause long-term disturbances in learning and memory. A team led by Dr. Vesna Jevtovic-Todorovic studied brain development in infant rats and found that the anesthesia during a critical period of brain development triggered cell death and prevented nerve cells from making crucial connections. With surgery being performed more and more frequently on children, including premature infants, “Our results suggest that might be problematic,” he said. Some surgery may be necessary to save lives, he noted, but recommended that other procedures be postponed until later, if possible. (Top News Daily, Feb. 3)