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.
L.A.’s new homeless encampment law | Los Angeles Times
Meanwhile, a team of UCLA health researchers posted their own online map showing many of the locations that could be covered by the ordinance. Chelsea Shover, assistant professor in residence in UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, said she and her students found that if every location identified in the ordinance were off-limits, there would be few areas left where people could sleep or camp, particularly in downtown and parts of South Los Angeles.
Finding a reliable at-home COVID test | NBC News
The best type of diagnostic Covid test is the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test, according to Omai Garner, MD, chief of clinical microbiology for UCLA Health. No PCR test is approved for at-home testing, meaning “the most accurate Covid test cannot be done entirely at home,” he said.
What not to worry about in applying for college | USA Today
Gary Clark, director of undergraduate admission at the University of California, Los Angeles, told USA TODAY that admissions officers “assume that all students may have been impacted by COVID in some way, shape or form.” He encouraged students who were not significantly impacted by the pandemic to focus on their achievements in applications.
Enduring appeal of memoirs about confronting disease | New York Times
These books are very different. [Fred] D’Aguiar is a poet, novelist and playwright who was born in London to Guyanese parents. He’s in his early 60s and lives in Southern California, where he’s a professor of English at U.C.L.A. In the fall of 2019, he began to feel unwell. When he learned he had prostate cancer, he had no idea what was in store: a year of tests and probes and radiation treatments and surgery that had to take place under fear of Covid, and under strict Covid protocols.
Text reminders could boost vaccine uptake | Guardian (U.K.)
Researchers at UCLA and Carnegie Mellon University in the US conducting two randomized, controlled trials involving 100,000 patients found simple texts successfully boosted vaccine appointments by as much as 84% and actual vaccinations by as much as 26%. (UCLA’s Daniel Croymans is quoted. Also: Medical Xpress and KCRW-FM.)
L.A. County COVID surge continues | KNX-AM
Professor of epidemiology at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health Dr. Anne Rimoin told KNX the uptick in vaccinations is very encouraging, but she said even more people need to understand the dangers of not getting vaccinated as the Delta variant of the virus keeps spreading. “You are at much greater risk of severe disease, hospitalization and death [if you are unvaccinated],” said Rimoin.
Urban exodus put many Californians in fire-prone areas | San Francisco Chronicle
As of 2018, California needed to build an estimated 3 million housing units to substantially improve affordability, according to UCLA economist Jerry Nickelsburg. But due to restrictive local zoning regulations and challenging permitting procedures, it’s extremely difficult to construct new housing in many of the state’s urban hubs, the Bay Area in particular.
High-tech headphones drown out MRI noise | STAT
“Hopefully you would think about it more in terms of what it’s like to go into a movie theater now,” said Mark Cohen, a functional MRI researcher at UCLA. Cohen is part of a team of scientists, designers, and engineers who have been working since 2016 with a company called SMRT Image to create a sophisticated audio-visual system to keep patients comfortable. Besides making the experience less unpleasant, the technology could cut down on the number of rescans needed because an anxious patient is squirming inside the machine, and could convince patients who otherwise might opt out of an MRI due to discomfort to come in for the scan.
Do on-site employees do better work? | Fortune
Even when remote workers are more productive, David Lewin, a professor and HR expert at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, questions the durability of any advantage. “If you’re reviewing mortgage loan applications, you can certainly do more from home,” he says. “You’ve got these kind of unlimited hours. But for how long will that last? Can you keep that up for three years instead of one?”
Amid drought, Marin County considers desalination | KQED-FM
Gregory Pierce agrees that recycling water or fixing infrastructure is a faster solution than constructing a desalination plant. In a 2019 study, he examined the impact desalination could have on low-income or marginalized communities as the co-director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation. Pierce says people need “an even higher ethic of water conservation” because saving water is about preserving life for all Californians, not just the wealthy, with sprawling green lawns.
Retired doctor carries on with her outreach efforts | Colorado Public Radio News
“Colorado is not too dissimilar to the rest of the U.S. in terms of its slow progress in diversifying its physician workforce,” said Dr. Dan Ly, with the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. Studies have shown nationally Black, Hispanic and American Indian doctors are all underrepresented compared to their share of the population. Ly crunched data from the U.S. Census and its American Community Survey, comparing the percentage of doctors in Colorado by race and ethnicity in 2015–2019 with 2000–2004.
The latest on the pandemic | KABC-TV
“There definitely are a lot of breakthrough cases happening. Fortunately, for the most part, vaccinated people have mild or even asymptomatic illness. So, the vaccines are still providing a lot of protection from serious illness, even if people get infected,” said UCLA’s Dr. Otto Yang (Yang was also interviewed by KCAL-TV.)
Challenges for high school seniors applying to college | KABC-TV
“So what it looks like is recognizing that students have been through a lot. It has been a hard year for everyone, students included. So part of what we have to recognize is as those students begin to apply, talk about your experiences. But, everyone knows you’ve been through the pandemic. What have you learned? How have you gotten better?” said UCLA’s Tyrone Howard.
UC schools still high in-demand | KCRW-FM
UCLA was most in-demand university in the country. It was inundated with more than 139,000 applications for the fall of 2021. The school’s overall admission rate was 10.7%. For California applicants it was even tighter, coming in at 9.9% (approx. 1:05 mark).