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.
Democracy Fund, UCLA partner in plan to survey 500,000 voters before election day | USA Today
Democracy Fund, a bipartisan foundation that aims to improve the Democratic process, and researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, announced Friday that they are creating a new survey, called Nationscape, which will interview more than 500,000 voters leading up to the 2020 elections. When complete, it would be one of the largest public opinion surveys ever fielded…. Lynn Vavreck, the Marvin Hoffenberg Professor of American Politics and Public Policy at UCLA and co-creator of Nationscape, said in a statement “the project will illustrate differences across the country on the topics voters care about most, and the way voters trade off policies when choosing among sets of issues.”
Why this ‘genius’ scholar is mapping out the world’s largest jail system | The Guardian
The 45-year-old University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), professor [Kelly Lytle Hernández] recently added “genius” to her résumé, as a recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship award. She’s working on a new book about a group of Mexican intellectuals and workers who launched a revolution when they came to the United States in the early 20th century, driven out of Mexico by the dictator Porfirio Díaz.
Gun suicides: America’s unseen public health crisis | The Hill Opinion
(Commentary written by UCLA’s Jonathan Fielding) Despite its toll, suicide may be the firearm-related health risk that we can most successfully address through public-health solutions. The most important ingredient in reducing firearm suicide (as well as homicide) deaths is a broad-based willingness to construct a path built on common sense and science. One under-explored public health approach I wrote about for The Hill last year would parallel the national campaign to increase motor vehicle safety in our nation by making the offending object safer.
Florida mangroves reveal complex relationship between climate and natural systems | Phys.org
A new study led by UCLA’s Kyle Cavanaugh of how Florida's mangroves and salt marshes are affected by changes in climate, both man-made and natural, illustrates the complex interplay between our changing climate and living natural systems…. “We didn’t find evidence that climate change has altered this system to date,” said Cavanaugh, who is an assistant professor of geography and member of the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. “But then we used climate model projections to look to the year 2100, and those suggest future warming will increase mangrove suitability.”
UCLA launches new institute to study kindness | KCRW’s “Greater LA”
Civility, compassion, kindness. Is there a shortage of these today, particularly in public life? Jenifer and Matthew Harris seem to think so. Through their Bedari Foundation, they recently gave UCLA $20 million to start an institute devoted to the study of kindness. It’s called the Bedari Kindness Institute, and it’s lead by UCLA anthropology professor Daniel Fessler.
Millions are out of power in California, but were the PG&E shutoffs necessary? | PBS
As they move, these winter storm systems “leave behind cold air and are replaced by surface high pressure,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.
Turkish attack on Syria endangers Kurds’ remarkable democratic experiment | United Press International Opinion
(Commentary written by UCLA’s James Gelvin) Turkey’s attack on Kurdish-run territory in northern Syria will likely snuff out a radical experiment in self-government that is unlike anything I have seen in more than 30 years studying the Middle East.
Gwinnett’s first black school board member announces he’s gay | Atlanta Journal-Constitution
An estimated 4.5% of U.S. adults identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, and they tend to be younger and poorer than the population at large, according to an analysis of polling data released in March by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. The Williams Institute, which specializes in LGBT research for law and public policy, also concluded that most U.S. adults estimate that nearly one in four Americans (23.6%) are gay or lesbian.
DNA could hold key to predicting prostate tumor growth, according to new study | City News Service
The answer to how physicians might be able to predict the growth of patient’s prostate cancer could lie in the person’s DNA, according to a report released Monday by a research team that included experts at UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. Researchers identified nearly 1,200 biomarkers in men’s DNA that appear to predict how an individual’s prostate cancer will grow, according to the study published in Nature Medicine.
Only half of California students meet English standards and fewer meet math standards, test scores show | Los Angeles Times
“We don’t have high-quality preschool available; the same supports that you see in the affluent, suburban and private schools, you don’t see in the public schools serving poor kids,” said UCLA education professor Pedro Noguera. “No one ever says, ‘Wow, we should do for the kids in Compton what we do for the kids in Brentwood,’” where a plethora of expensive private schools with small class sizes serve the wealthy, Noguera said. (Noguera also interviewed on KPCC-FM’s “Take Two.” Approx. 22:46 mark)
Study: Black students face ‘accumulation of disadvantage’ | Education Dive
While many of the factors impeding the success of black students lay outside the classroom, Tyrone Howard, one of the researchers and the director of the UCLA Pritzker Center for Strengthening Children and Families, said there are additional things schools can do to address the problem. First, Howard said, it is important for schools to openly acknowledge the problem that there are “real challenges that black students face.” He says the “big elephant in the room” is racism and points out that schools and communities don’t discuss its pervasiveness nearly as much as they should.
‘Managed retreat’ from climate change isn’t turning out the way we thought | Inverse
Although tens of thousands of buyouts have already taken place, they’ve generally been treated as ad hoc results, not parts of a broader pattern, Liz Koslov, Ph.D., assistant professor in the department of urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, tells Inverse. “What this shows is retreat is already happening, and it’s been happening at a scale that would surprise most people,” says Koslov, who was a reviewer of the paper but not a part of the research team. “They’re taking that first step to point out these broader patterns in how this funding is getting distributed.” (Also: Gizmodo)
Saturn is the new moon king | Popular Mechanics
Along with the University of Hawaii’s Jan Kleyna and UCLA’s David Jewitt, the co-discoverer of the Kuiper Belt, Sheppard spotted the moons while using the Subaru telescope atop Hawaii’s Mauna Kea volcano.
Everything you’ve been wondering about the anatomy of your leg muscles | Shape
“Women tend to gain fat in very specific body parts, mostly those from the waist to the knee,” explains Andrew Da Lio, M.D., professor and chief of plastic and reconstructive surgery at University of California, Los Angeles. The most common of those parts is the outer thigh, says Dr. Lio. There are two levels of fat in the legs, Dr. Da Lio explains: a superficial layer and a deeper one. The superficial layer is where we find cellulite when fat pushes through between the tissues that connect skin to the underlying muscle.
The benefits of mushroom coffee, according to doctors | Mic
That doesn’t necessarily mean traditional medicinal mushroom remedies had no rationale, but perhaps that modern medical research still needs to catch up, says Rashmi Mullur, an integrative endocrinologist at UCLA Health. For instance, while lion’s mane is often cited anecdotally for its cognitive benefits, “there’s very little evidence of its effectiveness,” Mullur says, and while there have been clinical trials of reishi in immunity and Alzheimer’s disease, they’ve involved only a few dozen patients.
The top 20 millionaire-producing US colleges | Business Insider
In July, Wealth-X released their findings on which US colleges have produced the most millionaires. The study focused on those alumni deemed to be ultra-high net worth (UHNW) individuals: those with fortunes of $30 million or more…. UCLA has 1,945 UHNW alumni, with 79% being deemed “self-made.” 84% of UCLA’s UHNW alumni are from the US, while only 16% come from abroad.
Mark Bradford is one of our era’s most important artists. You have to look beyond his canvases to see why | Washington Post
This is where Art + Practice opened its 3,000-square-foot gallery in 2014, a space programmed in partnership with institutions including the Broad and the Hammer Museum at the University of California at Los Angeles.
UCLA study claims health problems, trauma rates high for unsheltered homeless | MyNewsLA
“People experiencing homelessness face a number of challenges related to their health and well-being, but this new analysis suggests that people who are unsheltered are far more likely to encounter these problems and that the problems are exacerbated the longer they are unsheltered,” said Janey Rountree, executive director of the California Policy Lab at UCLA. “These issues were the most profound for unsheltered women, especially experiences with abuse and trauma.”