UCLA In the News lists selected mentions of UCLA in the world’s news media. Some articles may require registration or a subscription to view. See more UCLA In the News.
A medication to treat meth addiction? Some take a new look at naltrexone | NPR
Psychologist Lara Ray, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles and head of the UCLA Addictions Lab, has done several several studies on the effectiveness of naltrexone for methamphetamine addiction…. “We found that naltrexone is better than a placebo at reducing the cravings for methamphetamine,” Ray says.
Superheroes vs. cinema? Scorsese ‘art’ row splits Hollywood | Agence France-Presse
“That's just not good enough — you can’t dismiss an entire genre as uncinematic without watching them,” said Tom Nunan, an Oscar-winning producer and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Theater, Film and Television. “People have always been vocal when they see change going on and it makes them uncomfortable,” Nunan (‘Crash,’ 2006) told AFP, pointing to the arrival of 1970s smash hits like “Jaws” and “Star Wars.” “No-one has ever had the nerve to just dismiss the arena — blockbuster-worthy films — as uncinematic.”
Some CBD products could lead to positive urine test for pot | Reuters
The new study “confirms that even if you are exposed to the low levels of THC in commonly produced cannabidiol products, there is a risk of a positive result in employer drug screens,” said Ziva Cooper, director of research for the Cannabis Research Initiative at the University of California, Los Angeles. “There have been several cases highlighted in the media in which people using CBD products tested positive for THC. So there can be significant legal ramifications.” Cooper agreed that multiple uses could bump up THC levels in the body. “You would expect it to accumulate,” she said.
UCLA professor brings the love to students with stuffed animals | KFI-AM
Remember your favorite teacher or college professor? Did they ever tell you they loved you or give you anything just for coming to class? Well, meet Quyen Di Chuc Bui, a Vietnamese refugee who fled Vietnam with his family in 1977. In 2003, he became a professor at UCLA, teaching Vietnamese classes, and has been teaching there rather quietly for the last 16 years. But last week, he suddenly went viral, when a student posted a video to Twitter of Chuc Bui handing out stuffed animals to students in his introductory Vietnamese class. The video got more than 7 million views and more than 700,000 likes.
Carbon dioxide capture and use could become big business | ScienceDaily
Capturing carbon dioxide and turning it into commercial products, such as fuels or construction materials, could become a new global industry, according to a study by researchers from UCLA, the University of Oxford and five other institutions.
Scientists reveal how brain injury causes post-traumatic stress disorder | International Business Times
Post-traumatic stress disorder frequently occurs because of concussion-like brain injury and mostly affects military personnel, but the link between brain injuries and the condition has been unclear for long. A team of psychologists and neurologists from the University of California in Los Angeles in an experiment revealed a traumatic brain injury caused changes in a brain region called the amygdala, leading the brain to processes fear differently after such an injury.
The 85% Rule: Be correct, but not too correct | International Business Times
This ‘85% Rule’ was arrived at after Wilson and his collaborators at Brown University, the University of California, Los Angeles and Princeton performed a series of machine-learning experiments.
Supreme Court to weigh taking bellwether case against gun industry | New York Times
Several previous legal challenges to the shield law have failed, but the Sandy Hook case is the first to take on the industry in this way, said Adam Winkler, a constitutional law expert at the UCLA School of Law who has written about gun rights. The nearly five years that the Sandy Hook case has spent winding through the court system ‘‘shows you how strong this immunity really is,’’ Mr. Winkler said. The federal law includes six narrow exceptions under which plaintiffs can sue gun companies, including if they can prove they were harmed after a manufacturer ‘‘knowingly violated a state or federal statute applicable to the sale or marketing of the product.’’ The Connecticut Supreme Court’s decision ‘‘made a pretty persuasive case that the advertising fit into this exception,’’ Mr. Winkler said.
Fake sunflowers could harvest solar energy | Popular Mechanics
The tiny sunflower nanotechnology presented by UCLA’s Ximin He and her team may offer new use cases for solar energy collection, compared with traditional solar cell panels, which are large and bulky and may seem intrusive in residential neighborhoods or commercial districts. His research focuses on “biologically inspired materials” like the sunflowers, where polymers mimic the natural responses of plant, animal, or even fungal organisms in order to work more efficiently.
The hit movie ‘Parasite’ puts basement structures in structural inequality | NPR’s “All Things Considered”
Gina Kim, a professor at UCLA and filmmaker originally from South Korea, notes that similar mansions can be found nearly anywhere in the world: Berlin, Dubai, Westchester County in New York. But the semi-basement apartment is particular to Seoul, she says: It dates from the days of the nuclear standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union. “Everyone was paranoid after the Korean War, and they started to build bunkers in all the buildings, even in big apartment buildings,” she says. “So that space depicted in the film, the semi-basement, is a bunker in a way, and it was used as a bunker in the 1970s.”
Why the October insanity will happen again in the San Francisco Bay Area | San Francisco Chronicle
What’s more, the state has a rich history of precipitation data and there’s increasing evidence rain patterns are shifting. Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA, has done research revealing a significant sharpening of California’s rainy season due to climate change, meaning less “shoulder season” precipitation in autumn and spring, but slightly more during peak winter months.
Flu season update: where the virus is hitting and what shots are in short supply | Healthline
“Health authorities work with vaccine manufacturers to monitor the frequency of flu vaccine utilization by time and place,” Jeffrey Klausner, MD, MPH, a professor of medicine and public health at the University of California, Los Angeles, told Healthline. “Manufacturers can look at where vaccine is in high demand and short supply. In the presence of shortages, health authorities can prioritize recommendations for high-risk groups, such as young children, people with chronic diseases, and those over 65 years of age,” he said.
LAX-it won’t improve until LAX embraces mass transit | Curbed Los Angeles Opinion
With engineering and regulatory changes that prioritize shared transportation options, LAX-it would work, says Juan Matute, deputy director of UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, who spent some time surveying the operation on Monday. “If they can’t implement these here, there’s a lot less hope for the rest of LA,” he says.
As states with legal weed embrace vaping bans, black-market risks linger | California Healthline
“There is this risk when you ban something [legal] that people will be driven to the black market,” said Ziva Cooper, director of the UCLA Cannabis Research Initiative. Cooper says the regulated cannabis market is already fraught with problems. People walk into a cannabis shop with neatly packaged products and believe everything has undergone rigorous safety testing, she said. “They think they can trust what’s on the labels,” said Cooper, “but the truth is the labels don’t necessarily accurately portray what’s actually in the products.”
College students, seniors and immigrants miss out on food stamps. Here’s why | CALmatters
Among U.S. citizens who fall below the income limit for the program, the rate of immigrants who reported participating in CalFresh is 70% that of people born in the U.S., according to [UCLA’s] 2018 California Health Interview Survey data.
Texas Heart Institute wins prestigious grant to develop wireless and leadless pacemakers | Scienmag
“One of the major challenges of this technology is maintaining the efficiency of wireless power transfer as the device becomes very small, and the antenna becomes inefficient. We have addressed this issue by significantly lowering the power consumption of the electronics used in the pacemaker, integrating all the elements on a single chip, and designing antennas that resonate strongly with the input circuitry of the pacing chips,” [UCLA’s Aydin] Babakhani said.