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.
UCLA researchers put the AI to the test | San Francisco Chronicle
Is GPT-3 smarter than a college kid? According to a new study by researchers at UCLA, the answer is yes. At least when it comes to a few common intelligence tests, and even some SAT-style questions. “It’s fair to say that we were extremely surprised by the results that we got,” said Keith Holyoak, a psychology professor who was one of the authors of the study, along with UCLA Professor Hongjing Lu and postgraduate student Taylor Webb. (Also: The Guardian, Daily Beast, Science Daily and KABC-TV.)
Families with multiple cases give clues to autism’s origins | HealthDay News
In a study of families that have multiple children with autism, researchers have unearthed new insights into genes that might drive the disorder. “Study design is critical, and not enough attention has been paid to studying families with more than one affected child,” said lead author Dr. Daniel Geschwind, a professor of human genetics, neurology and psychiatry at UCLA in Los Angeles.
The real costs of the new Alzheimer’s drug, Leqembi | KFF Health News
“In the history of science, it’s a significant achievement to slightly slow down progression of dementia,” said John Mafi, a researcher and associate professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “But the actual practical benefits to patients are very marginal, and there is a real risk and a real cost.”
Inside the brain of the billionaire visionary | Fortune
It turns out that there’s no one “wealth gene,” says Daniel Benjamin, a professor at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management and the David Geffen School of Medicine, who has worked in the field for two decades. In Benjamin’s studies of educational attainment, instead of a single genetic needle in the genomic haystack, he and his colleagues have identified 3,952 distinct “single-nucleotide polymorphisms”— and he’s sure they haven’t yet found them all.
Colorado River Basin has lost 10 trillion gallons due to warming temps | CNN
Researchers at UCLA found the human-caused climate crisis is contributing significantly to the decline of the Colorado River, which runs through seven Western states and provides drinking and irrigation water for around 40 million people. … “When we set out on this study, we were aware of the mega-drought and the impacts it was having on Lake Mead’s water levels,” Benjamin Bass, a water resources engineer and the study’s lead author, told CNN. “We really wanted to provide a study that was able to look at that long-term drought event and the impacts of anthropogenic climate change.”
Mojave Desert burning in California’s biggest fire of year | Los Angeles Times
This year’s climate patterns have provided a “more continuous fuel bed” than is typical for desert ecosystems, UCLA climatologist Daniel Swain said on Twitter. “Big fires in the desert are entirely consistent with the fire season outlook for 2023,” Swain wrote, noting that poses a major concern for ecologists and desert conservationists. (Swain was also quoted by the New York Times.)
L.A. DWP loosens watering rules to three days a week | Los Angeles Times
Gregory Pierce, director of the Water Resources Group at UCLA, said reverting from two days back to three is “reasonable as a short-term measure.” But he warned that as global conditions continue to get hotter and drier, residents probably shouldn’t get used to the more flexible schedule.
Climate anomalies are emerging around the globe. | Washington Post
“I can’t step out on a limb and say a tipping point has been passed,” said Marilyn Raphael, director of the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. “What I can say is, everything is pointing in that direction.”
This development wants residents to ditch their cars | Bloomberg
Over the past 20 years, a growing chorus of urban planners, led by Donald Shoup of the University of California Los Angeles, have called for abandoning such minimums, arguing that built-in allowances for cars perpetuate their dominance in America cities — adding to congestion, road deaths and carbon emissions — and sap resources from more sustainable modes of development.
Median home prices in L.A. will soon pass $1 million | Los Angeles Times
“Even if it is an arbitrary number, it’s an astounding one,” Michael Lens, a professor of urban planning and public policy at UCLA, said of the million-dollar median. “A signature way that generations have built wealth in this country is through the housing market,” he said, and the figure “puts in pretty sharp focus the barriers to entry in that housing market in building wealth and having a predictable and stable home over your head.”
Trump’s indictments haven’t shattered deadlock between parties | CNN
“The two political parties are farther apart on average than they have been in our lifetime,” said Lynn Vavreck, a UCLA political scientist and co-author of books on the 2016 and 2020 elections. “That makes it harder for people to think about crossing over to the other side.”
Test that screens for cancer raises hopes, and worries | California Healthline
“A screening test has to be magnificent, mathematically, for it to be beneficial,” said Jerome Hoffman, a professor emeritus at UCLA’s Department of Medicine and a longtime critic of over-testing and overdiagnosis. “The biggest threat on the horizon is overdiagnosis — finding things that don’t matter but that we intervene on anyway.”
Schools to expand culturally responsive arts | NPR’s ‘Morning Edition’
“Our children and our students are the vessels of their culture,” said UCLA’s Kevin Kane. “What we’ve really been leaning into is culturally sustaining. It does involve immigration or migration stories, or exile stories. It does involve what is means to be a marginalized or underrepresented person, historically discriminated against person. It involves all of that.” (approx. 1:30 mark).
Oaxacan Heritage Month 2023 kicks off in Southern California | La Opinión
“The Los Angeles Council must be persuaded to make the Oaxacan Corridor something special and invest money in making this recognition,” said Professor Gaspar Rivera Salgado, director of the UCLA Center for Mexican Studies. (Translated from Spanish.)
How Taylormania took over the world | Los Angeles Times
“The Federal Reserve noted that cities that host a Taylor Swift concert show a substantial increase in revenue in hotels and restaurants,” says Lee Ohanian, an economics professor at UCLA. “I’ve never seen them do that before.”
