UCLA In the News lists selected mentions of UCLA in the world’s news media. See more UCLA In the News.
A February to remembrrr in California: It never even reached 70 degrees | Los Angeles Times
Even factoring in the cold snap, California is still warmer than average, and swings between periods of severe winter rainstorms and profound drought will probably become more pronounced in the future because of climate change, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA. He added that it might not be as cold as locals perceive it to be given how much warmer it has been in the last several years. “This year seems anomalous because we have already internalized a lot of the warming that’s occurred,” he said.
States consider longer school recess, and the adults aren’t complaining | New York Times
[UCLA’s Dr. Robert] Bilder headed the “Big C Project” at the University of California, Los Angeles, where researchers studied the brains of accomplished artists, scientists and others to understand how creative genius worked. “They showed a pattern of functional connectivity that was more random,” he said. “It’s not clear what promotes it. But it is established at an early age.” … Children who are given an open-ended problem are more apt to explore a variety of relationships and patterns, unlike when they are given a toy with preset instructions or uses. “The ‘thing’ should not be dictating the activity,” Dr. Bilder said of toys. “The person dictates the activity.”
Moderating the internet is hurting workers. How can companies help them? | CNN
“It’s not really clear what the ideal circumstance would be for a human being to do this work,” said Sarah T. Roberts, an assistant professor of information studies at UCLA, who has been sounding the alarm about the work and conditions of content moderators for years…. Roberts says there’s still a “reckoning” that needs to happen when it comes to understanding the facets, implications and costs of the job on workers. “There's really two exit pathways for people who do this work for the most part: Burnout and Desensitization,” she told CNN Business.
Who wants to go to work in the dark? Californians need Permanent Standard Time | Sacramento Bee Opinion
(Commentary co-written by UCLA Chancellor Gene Block) Permanent Standard Time is the only fair and viable option, not only for California, but the entire nation. California lawmakers, regardless of district, have a responsibility to residents in the northern part of the state. They also have an opportunity to make this important point to Congress, which might someday impose a permanent time change for the nation.
Does the First Amendment protect vanity license plates and bumper stickers? | Pacific Standard
“There's been some controversy about it and there are plausible arguments both ways,” says Eugene Volokh, a First Amendment scholar at the University of California—Los Angeles School of Law…. This intermediate position — quasi-governmental, quasi-citizen speech — is how lower courts have tended to view vanity plates. “While printed by the government, the author of each one is each particular person,” Volokh says. “It’s a so-called ‘non-government forum,’ where the government can’t discriminate based on viewpoint. But it can discriminate based on content that is viewpoint neutral.”
Metro considers fees on ride-hailing services | KCRW-FM’s “Design and Architecture”
UCLA transportation expert Michael Manville asks, “Are you walking along an 80-foot-wide arterial street, [where] there’s not many people on the sidewalk? Or do you have a relatively narrow street with diagonal parking and shops that are open and people are flowing back and forth and it’s well-lit? A quarter mile in the latter scenario goes by a lot faster than a quarter mile in the former scenario.” Anyone who’s used public transit around the world knows stations invariably have a lot of economic activity around them: stores, coffee kiosks, street vendors, and so on.
Newsom proposes to hold charter schools to same standards as public schools | Los Angeles Times
“Gov. Newsom is marking off a new approach that both reflects a different governing philosophy and in all likelihood his desire to respond to the politics that played out during the primary election,” said John Rogers, a professor of education at UCLA.
New study shows warming oceans have already changed the world’s fish supply | Mother Jones
“Everyone wants to know what the future of our marine resources are — the problem is that getting even basic information is hard,” says Daniele Bianchi, an assistant professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences at the University of California-Los Angeles. It’s a great starting point, he says, “that they can prove there is this influence, and to do that they had to do a lot of work, not just in this paper, but really collecting all the data.” … “Populations of fish that are negatively affected declined quite a lot, and I’m sure the people that rely on these resources might find these results quite worrisome, even more than someone taking the global perspective.”
Few Californians pay the health insurance penalty. Often, those that do are poor | Sacramento Bee
By counting those with incomes below $50,000, the results also include people who are eligible for subsidies but are not purchasing insurance. Experts say affordability may still be an issue in the state where three out 10 residents surveyed in 2017 cited cost as the reason for not purchasing health insurance, according to [UCLA’s] California Health Interview Survey.
Chemists grew a ‘synthetic brain’ that stores memories in silver | Futurism
In the ongoing quest to build an artificial human brain, scientists from UCLA may have just taken a big step forward. While a real synthetic brain is still far away, a team of chemical engineers found out how to grow self-assembling circuitry that resembles the structure and electrical activity of parts of a brain, According to ZDNet. The research is the pet project of UCLA chemical engineer James Gimzewski, who proclaimed that he wanted to create a synthetic brain back in 2012. “I want to create a synthetic brain,” Gimzewski wrote at the time. “I want to create a machine that thinks, a machine that possesses physical intelligence.… Such a system does not exist and promises to cause a revolution one might call the post-human revolution.”
Smoking tied to artery disease in African-Americans | Reuters Health
Smoking is the top risk factor for peripheral artery disease and the study offers fresh evidence of how cigarette use may impact the risk of PAD [peripheral artery disease] among African-Americans who are already at high risk for developing this condition, said Dr. Joseph Ladapo, a researcher at the David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California Los Angeles, who wasn’t involved in the study. “The take-home message is that people should do everything within their power to quit smoking, and if their attempt fails, they should try again and again and again,” Ladapo said by email.
Developers shrink square footage and prices as young buyers enter market | Chicago Tribune
Paul Habibi, a professor at UCLA’s Ziman Center for Real Estate, disagrees. His experience is that conventional wisdom holds for young buyers. “People generally want to buy the largest home they can,” he said. “I don’t know too many millennials who would turn away a larger house if they could afford it.”
Radioactive cancer drugs could pose risk to cremation workers | Reuters Health
The case report was “very informative,” said Dr. Amar Kishan, an assistant professor in the department of radiation oncology at the University of California, Los Angeles. “As we begin to use radiopharmaceuticals more and more frequently, it will become more and more imperative to ensure that public health considerations are fully evaluated,” Kishan, who was not involved in the new report, said in an email. “It is surprising and noteworthy in this case that it was an unexpected isotope often used in diagnostic scans that was the true contaminant. Policies are critical here.”
The New Israel Fund navigates political and generational change | Inside Philanthropy
“I feel, as a collective, that we American Jews haven’t been very good at listening to younger people and hearing what they think,” says UCLA’s David Myers. “There is tremendous talent in young Jews, as I see on college campuses, and we’re losing them from Jewish life. There is no mechanism to hold onto that talent pool and empower those young people to be a generation of Jewish leaders engaged in shaping the contours of our community. I do lose sleep over that.”
Henri Bollinger memorial scholarship established at UCLA Extension | Broadway World
The Henri Bollinger Memorial Scholarship Fund has been established by the Pansky Family in honor of the legendary publicist and beloved and respected UCLA Extension instructor. The Henri Bollinger Memorial Scholarship provides funds to individuals with a passion for public relations to study a certificate in Strategic Branding and Public Relations at UCLA Extension. The scholarship is intended to help mid-career professionals get an edge in a competitive industry.
What to expect in an online engineering degree program | U.S. News & World Report
At UCLA, near the end of the online program, students have a capstone experience where they must either take and pass three comprehensive exam questions or complete a research project, [UCLA’s Shanna] Revoner says. “We do let students know that just because it is an online program does not mean that it has less quality,” she says. “Our program has the same quality and same rigor as the on-campus program.”
Take a walk through the ‘Infinity Room’ at Wood Street Galleries | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“I found that at 12 minutes, or after, you find different details in your perception,” [UCLA’s Refik] Anadol said by telephone from Los Angeles, where he operates Refik Anadol Studio and is a lecturer and researcher in the Department of Design Media Arts at the University of California, Los Angeles…. Seven years ago he moved to California to study with “some of the most exciting minds” in his field, earning a second master of fine arts degree from the UCLA department that he now lectures in. His studio has a global reach, and he employs 12 staff at the Los Angeles location including coders, architects and designers.