UCLA in the News lists selected mentions of UCLA in the world’s news media. Some articles may require registration or a subscription. See more UCLA in the News.

Gift fuels UCLA effort to create debt-free education | City News Service

Fueled by a $15 million donation, UCLA announced an effort Wednesday to raise funds for student scholarships as part of a larger goal of creating debt-free education by 2030 by removing the need for student loans. The UCLA Affordability Initiative was unveiled thanks to a $15 million donation by real estate investor and UCLA graduate Peter Merlone. (UCLA’s Chancellor Gene Block and UCLA’s Gary Clark were quoted. Also: KMEX-TV.)

Twitter hate speech surged with Elon Musk | Los Angeles Times

According to data collected by researchers from USC, UCLA, UC Merced and Oregon State University, daily use of hate speech by those who previously posted hateful tweets nearly doubled after Musk finalized the sale. And the overall volume of hate speech also doubled sitewide. … “I didn’t have any expectations one way or the other,” [Daniel] Fessler, who is director of the UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute, said in an interview with The Times, “because it’s very difficult to gauge in advance. You don’t know what the population of users potentially producing such content is, you don’t know what the size of the population is or what their frequency of tweeting and retweeting is.”

Polio, measles stored in lab now under siege | KCRW-FM’s ‘Press Play’

The [World Health Organization] says there’s a “high risk of biological hazard” in Khartoum following the lab’s capture. … “It just really makes me think about the importance of biosecurity, global biosecurity and why we all need to be working together to strengthen biosecurity. In particular, in low-resource settings,” said UCLA’s Anne Rimoin.

Buses are getting safer. Trains should pay attention. | Los Angeles Times

(Commentary by UCLA’s Madeline Brozen) Los Angeles Metro is taking steps to improve public transportation safety for riders. Transit agency officials are deploying more security and law enforcement, introducing transit ambassadors, promoting their Transit Watch app to report crimes, and playing music in stations to deter unwanted behaviors. However, these strategies may not be sufficient to address the growing violence and drug use on the system.

Suburbs are a climate disaster, but they can be redeemed | Nature

(Commentary by UCLA’s Dana Cuff) But even U.S. suburbs are not beyond redemption. Over the past two decades, my colleagues and I at cityLAB, my urban-design research center at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), have been finding and implementing solutions to the suburban sprawl of southern California, as I describe in my 2023 book, Architectures of Spatial Justice.

California braces for flooding as heat wave starts | USA Today

“The ‘Big Melt’ is now officially arriving,” UCLA scientist Daniel Swain warned on Twitter a few days ago. ”Flows on many rivers draining the central and southern Sierra will double or triple (with locally greater increases) as temperatures rise. Some rivers will exceed flood stage, and Tulare Basin flooding will worsen.”

The internet is already racist. AI chatbots are making it worse. | MSNBC

In a 2018 book “Algorithms of Oppression,” internet studies scholar Safiya U. Noble exposed how racism was baked into the algorithm that powers Google’s search engine. For example, Noble, now a professor at UCLA, found that when Googling the terms “Black girls,” “Latina girls” or “Asian girls,” the top results were pornography.

Discrimination at work associated with new health risk | Healthline

Lead study author Dr. Jian Li, M.D, Ph.D., a professor of work and health in the Fielding School of Public Health and the School of Nursing at the University of California, Los Angeles, told Healthline that he initially hypothesized there would be a link between high blood pressure and workplace discrimination heading into this project. He said he was “excited to see the association” between discrimination and blood pressure to be so strong. (Also: HealthDay News, Medical Xpress and Scienmag.)

The mysteries of ovulation pain | New York Times

There are two other potential culprits, said Dr. Aparna Sridhar, an OB-GYN at [UCLA] Health: luteinizing hormone, called LH, which triggers follicle rupture, and prostaglandins, which are hormone-like substances that spur muscle contractions (and thus, sometimes pain), including in surrounding muscles like the bowels. The surge in LH invites a surge in prostaglandins, she said.

Bee venom as cancer treatment not a valid option | USA Today

As a University of California, Los Angeles article points out, laboratory findings may not translate into successful medications for humans. Dr. John Glaspy, an oncologist at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, said the trick to cancer treatments is finding an agent that kills cancer cells while not harming healthy ones. 

Long COVID in California | CalMatters

Each new variant of COVID-19 also changes which symptoms are most common, making it doubly difficult for the average primary care doctor to diagnose, said Dr. Nisha Viswanathan, a primary care physician at UCLA Health’s long COVID clinic. The “vague nature” of many symptoms like fatigue and insomnia also lead to misdiagnosis and frustration among patients.

Falling life expectancy linked to incarceration | California Healthline

At least 6,182 people died in state and federal prisons in 2020, a 46% jump from the previous year, according to data recently released by researchers from the UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project.

Study finds potential danger in commonly used sleep aid | KNX-FM

A recent study by Cambridge Health Alliance found that more than two dozen melatonin gummies sold as sleep aids had potentially dangerous amounts of the hormone. Dr. Alon Avidan, a neurologist and director of the UCLA Sleep Disorders Center, told KNX News that melatonin is a natural hormone that helps us sleep but, as a packaged product, is considered a dietary supplement and, therefore, not regulated.

A five-year fight for the ‘bubble boy disease’ treatment | CNN

The treatment is for a particular type of severe combined immunodeficiency called ADA-SCID that’s extremely rare – in the U.S., eight babies a year are born with it. Currently, 26 children in the U.S. and Canada are on the waiting list to get the therapy, according to Dr. Donald Kohn, a UCLA scientist who has been working on the treatment for nearly 40 years.

Black hole destroys a dust cloud | ABC (Australia)’s ‘The Science Show’

“So we believe that X7, it’s a cloud made of dust and gas, and it’s particularly interesting because this cloud happens to be very close to the supermassive black hole at the centrer of our own galaxy. So this gives us the unique chance of observing the evolution of the cloud under the influence of the strong gravitational pull of the black hole,” said UCLA’s Anna Ciurlo.

Netflix data shows diversity gains, leaves out job cuts | Los Angeles Times

A recent UCLA diversity report that examined Hollywood films noted that many directors of color tended to be be given smaller budgets.

Law would increase teacher pay 50 percent by 2030 | Daily Breeze

And a 2022 survey by UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools found that one in five teachers say they intend on leaving the profession in the next three years.