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.
For a man with sickle cell disease, hope for the holidays | Los Angeles Times
Junior’s doctors at the UCLA Broad Stem Cell Research Center say the genetically modified stem cell infusion that he received last summer seems on track to correct the genetic error responsible for his sickle cell disorder. “If we can get enough of the stem cells to pick up our [new] gene … the idea is he won’t have sickle cell anymore,” explained Dr. Donald Kohn, a UCLA professor and physician who has been studying gene therapy for 35 years and leads the medical trial, along with Dr. Gary Schiller.
UCLA study offers new strategy for conservation efforts | City News Service
The study upends the conventional wisdom that a transplant’s success improves if it comes from a nearby habitat, as the data showed no connection between geography and survival. “It flies in the face of what we know from other translocation studies, but lots of genetic variation was hands-down the best predictor of whether a tortoise lived or died,” said UCLA professor Brad Shaffer, a conservation ecologist and senior author of the study. (Also: KPCC-FM, Phys.org, Science Daily and Scienmag.)
Scenarios for Trump’s last months in office | Salon
“Executive orders are only as good as the president who is issuing them,” says Cynthia Lebow, a senior political science lecturer at UCLA and former general counsel for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee under then-chairman Joe Biden. “He could issue as many executive orders as he wanted in the last two weeks or, for that matter, [on] the last day of his presidency, and they could all be overturned and reversed [on] day one [when] Joe Biden becomes president.”
Governor Newsom considers Senate pick | New York Times
“There’s been a failure by both political parties to champion the needs of a growing electorate,” said Sonja Diaz, director of Latino Policy and Politics Initiative at the University of California, Los Angeles. Choosing a Latino for one of the nation’s most powerful posts, she added, would help reverse that.
Congressman seeks to have Giuliani disbarred | Washington Post
Giuliani and the rest of the efforts of the Trump campaign’s legal team won’t shift the election results in the president’s favor, but legal ethicists such as Scott Cummings of the UCLA School of Law do not view the former New York mayor as harmless. “People are emailing me saying this is comical, and I’d say it would be comical if it weren’t so dangerous,” Cummings told The Washington Post on Monday in reference to Giuliani’s actions on Trump’s behalf. “We’re living through this moment where actions that should have consequences don’t seem to — at least not in a way we would have predicted in the past — and that erodes trust in the system.”
Nearly half of LGBTQ adults are religious, U.S. study finds | NBC News
Almost half of LGBTQ adults in the United States are religious, according to a recent report from the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute. … Religiosity was highest among people 64 and older: Nearly two-thirds (65 percent) were moderately or highly religious. That surprised lead author Kerith J. Conron, research director at the Williams Institute, considering how unwelcoming most churches have been toward LGBTQ people historically. “Their faith must have been pretty strong when they were younger and coming out and there were even fewer accepting places,” she said. “It persisted despite discrimination and rejection.”
A guide to quarantining after holiday travel | Los Angeles Times
Dr. Robert Kim-Farley, a professor at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and former director of the division of communicable disease control and prevention at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, said people should think of quarantine as the middle position between isolation (what you do when you know you are infected — which includes avoiding immediate family members as well as the outside world) and “normal” pandemic life (where you might venture outdoors while masked and maintaining social distance). (Kim-Farley was also quoted in another Los Angeles Times article and interviewed on KPCC-FM.)
SCOTUS ruling on COVID-19 order could influence other cases | Wall Street Journal
However, Eugene Volokh, a professor at University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, said the Supreme Court’s decision was significant because of its implications for other cases and the fast-changing nature of the pandemic. “Because things are moving so fast here, what would otherwise be viewed as a tentative decision becomes much more important,” he said.
L.A.’s COVID-19 restrictions face skepticism from a weary public | Los Angeles Times
“Everything that people do, you have to ask yourself: Is it worth it? Is it worth losing somebody that I love?” said Anne Rimoin, professor of epidemiology at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. “I think people forget that these decisions are life-and-death decisions.”
The health risks of disinfectants | Wall Street Journal
“We use them very frequently in the hospital and don’t see adverse effects,” says Annabelle de St. Maurice, assistant professor of pediatrics at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine. Avoid expired products where the ingredients could have evaporated, she adds.
Evictions led to hundreds of thousands more COVID-19 cases | CNBC
“When people are evicted, they often move in with friends and family, and that increases your number of contacts,” said Kathryn Leifheit, one of the authors on the research and a postdoctoral fellow at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. “If people have to enter a homeless shelter, these are indoor places that can be quite crowded.”
Nearly 19 million could lose homes when eviction limits expire | CBS News
In Los Angeles, where 1 in 5 renters were late on rent at some point this summer, residents are facing “an income crisis layered atop of a housing crisis,” researchers at the University of California - Los Angeles have said. “Delivering assistance to renters now can not just stave off looming evictions, but also prevent quieter and longer-term problems that are no less serious, such as renters struggling to pay back credit card or other debt, struggling to manage a repayment plan, or emerging from the pandemic with little savings left,” they wrote in August report.
Don’t delay getting a mammogram, colonoscopy or checkup during pandemic | KCRW-FM’s “Press Play”
Dr. Pauline Yi, an internist at UCLA Health, says Bryant’s experience is typical during COVID. That’s because at the start of the pandemic, many health care providers recommended delaying routine appointments because personal protective equipment (PPE) were in short supply. She says many of her patients’ routine mammograms and colonoscopies are delayed three to four months due to backlogs from February and March.
UCLA study identifies groups most vulnerable to COVID-19 | City News Service
The team from UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health used demographic data to estimate test-based infection and test-based case fatality rates across California. … “Our approach combines aggregate COVID-19 case and fatality data with population-level demographic survey data to estimate test-based infection and case fatality rates for population subgroups across combinations of demographic characteristics,’’ said co-author Marc Suchard, professor of biostatistics. “What it shows is that as tragic as the pandemic has been for Californians generally, it has hit certain groups even harder.’’ (UCLA’s Christina Ramirez was also quoted.) Related coverage on KNBC-TV and MyNewsLA.
UCLA professor indexes search engine bias | Medium
To give myself a break — if I can call it that — recently I turned my attention to a more narrowly scoped book, Safiya Umoja Noble’s “Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism.” Dr. Noble is a professor at the UCLA Department of Information Studies, where she directs the Center for Critical Internet Inquiry.
Creating connections during a time of separation | Seattle Times
The UCLA Center for Health Policy Research reports that Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders have had some of the highest COVID-19 case and death rates compared by race and ethnicity in Washington state.
Vaccine effort faces enormous challenges in California | Orange County Register
It’s one thing to have a vaccine, it’s another thing completely to have people vaccinated, said Vickie Mays, professor of health policy and management at UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, who also directs the National Institutes of Health–funded UCLA BRITE Center for Science, Research and Policy. “Let’s say, ‘Hip, hip hooray!’ about the fact that we have potential vaccines, but we need to start educating people about them today, right now. We shouldn’t wait,” she said.
Young people are dying from COVID-19, too | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“Those who are in terrific shape, are young and have no prior illness can, indeed, become critically ill from COVID,” said Nina Shapiro, a professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and author of the book, “HYPE: A Doctor’s Guide to Medical Myths, Exaggerated Claims and Bad Advice.”
COVID-19 infections hit record high in California prisons | Cal Matters
“What should happen is populations in the jails should be reduced, and populations in the prisons should be reduced,” said Aaron Littman, deputy director of COVID-19 Behind Bars Data Project at UCLA School of Law.
Officials worry about virus spread at restaurants | Kaiser Health News
In Los Angeles, about 6% of COVID infections have occurred among restaurant customers, according to the public health department, though only outdoor dining has been allowed there since the state debuted its current tiered system in August. That data suggests that even outdoor dining may spread the virus, said Shira Shafir, an associate professor of community health sciences and epidemiology at UCLA.
