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.
Changes mean prenatal testing delays in California | Los Angeles Times
On Oct. 26, more than a month after the state mandated the new rules, officials held a meeting where doctors, genetic counselors, patients and lab executives complained about the changes. “Our patients have been very upset,” Lawrence Platt, a UCLA clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology, said at the hearing. He pointed to language in the regulation that said physicians’ licenses could be jeopardized if they did not follow the new rules. “This program is a mistake and it needs to be changed urgently,” Platt said. “It needs to get back on track to really helping the pregnant population and their families.”
Should L.A.’s train and bus rides be free? | Los Angeles Times
Bragdon points to a 2018 UCLA study that found that ridership is declining in part because of increased car ownership. Michael Manville, one of the authors of the study and associate professor of urban planning at UCLA, said that trend is probably more pronounced since the pandemic. Though there are no data available, it is likely many regular transit riders who were essential workers now have cars, Manville said.
L.A. seeks to start using groundwater wells again | Los Angeles Times
Mark Gold, a Los Angeles water expert and adjunct professor at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, said it pained him to think of such a valuable resource being underutilized for the better part of four decades. “The only people who were getting paid were the lawyers and the people doing the groundwater studies, but at the end of the day the public was not getting their supply,” Gold said.
Assessing a new AI-powered chatbot | Los Angeles Times
We tested ChatGPT ourselves and … brought in experts to analyze ChatGPT’s responses and offer their own perspectives on whether this a landmark technological achievement or merely an incremental innovation … “The fact that this chatbot generates long and coherent responses without inconsistency (within a single response) is an amazing achievement,” said UCLA’s Violet Peng.
Touring L.A.’s radical past with UCLA prof | Los Angeles Times
With us was UCLA history professor Kelly Lytle Hernandez. Her recent book “Bad Mexicans” tells the Magonista saga in cinematic detail. She explained how in 1907, the location where we stood was a hideout for Ricardo Flores Magón, the brilliant but problematic leader who lent his name to the Magonistas. Lytle Hernandez, a MacArthur “genius” grant winner, was about to take us on a two-mile walk through Magonista L.A., ending at City Hall.
Facing the past in U.S. cities haunted by race massacres | NPR
The first step is acknowledgment, and simply admitting that horrible events took place moves in the right direction, says Marcus Anthony Hunter, a sociology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. “What happens a lot in terms of the history of violence against Black communities is that people treat it like it’s false,” Hunter says. “It creates a condition where Black people are led to believe that they’re making up stuff.”
America’s pain problem: How can we find relief? | USA Today
The high pain rates in the United States have a lot “to do with just poor general health in our country,” said Dr. John Mafi, a primary care doctor and associate professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
Karen Bass takes over a city divided by crisis | Washington Post
“Los Angeles is a city at a crossroads,” said Sonja Diaz, the founding director of UCLA’s Latino Policy and Politics Institute. “We’ve seen great increases in housing insecurity, food insecurity and widening economy inequality.” While these issues are long-standing, Diaz noted that they’ve been “exacerbated because of a lack of leadership from City Hall and coordination across jurisdictions,” especially during the coronavirus pandemic. (UCLA’s Michael Lens was also quoted in an LAist story, and UCLA’s Jim Newton was interviewed on KPCC-FM’s “AirTalk” — approx. 2:15 mark.)
Prosecuting Julian Assange threatens press freedom | Daily Breeze
As scholars such as UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh have shown, the “freedom … of the press” guaranteed by the First Amendment protects your right to communicate with the public through the printed word and other tools of mass communication, regardless of whether you do that for a living or work for a mainstream news organization.
Was a beloved Bay Area priest also a pedophile? | San Francisco Chronicle
Dr. Paul Abramson, a UCLA psychology professor and researcher who has been helping Lewis, said Lewis’ memories of Garcia assemble a classic story of clergy grooming and manipulation. “Everything he described to me fits the modus operandi,” said Abramson, who has served as a psychological expert witness for victims.
America has become tired, old and mediocre | San Francisco Chronicle
As the United States becomes less dynamic, its politics have grown rigid and inflexible. The UCLA scholar of American politics and policy Lynn Vavreck and colleagues, in new research on the 2020 election, identify the problem as “calcification.” One of its by-products, she says, is that “within parties, people are more alike than ever.” Our sameness makes Americans boring.
The Supreme Court’s elections case | Reuters
This outcome would not be as onerous as completely cutting state courts out of the elections process, according to Richard Hasen, a UCLA School of Law election law expert. But it is still a “bad alternative,” Hasen said, because it would let the Supreme Court second-guess state court rulings protecting the rights of voters — even in highly charged elections cases including presidential races. “State legislators would get another bite at the apple,” Hasen said.
It’s snow season: Stay safe on the slopes | HealthDay News
“We see a lot of patients in the After-Hours Clinic (of the department of orthopaedic surgery) on their way back from skiing and snowboarding,” said Dr. Sabrina Sawlani, a sports medicine physician at UCLA Health, in Los Angeles. Sawlani, whose UCLA sports medicine fellowship included training at the urgent care ski clinic at Northstar Resort in Lake Tahoe, offered some tips for those who want to hit the slopes without getting hurt.
Environmental stories that shaped the region in 2022 | Southern California News Group
In July, UCLA released an online tool that lets the public search for heat-related data by ZIP code. The tool shows health risks from excessive heat don’t play out equally from city to city. The tool’s creators hope the information will guide officials’ decisions about emergency planning.
CDC tip: Washing hands the right way | Parade
But the truth is that using hot or cold water when washing your hands is equally as effective. Russell G. Buhr, MD, PhD, a pulmonary and critical care physician at UCLA Health, says that this is because it’s not the water temperature that’s important; it’s the friction between the soap and water. “The soap dissolves the oils that make up the little envelope that enclose viruses and the walls of cells of other pathogens like bacteria and also helps remove the oils from your skin that help the pathogens stick to your hands. The friction helps break them away from your skin,” Dr. Buhr explains.
‘Tripledemic’ virus cases in the U.S. | CNN
“The thing that we worry about when we see so many cases of all three viruses surging at the same time is what’s going to happen with our hospitals? Are they going to be able to have enough beds? Are the ICUs going to be overwhelmed?” said UCLA’s Anne Rimoin (approx. 1:00 mark).
NSF funding shows racial disparities | KNX-FM
Scholars from five universities, including UCLA, say they sifted through two decades of data and discovered the National Science Foundation consistently funded white researchers at higher rates than their non-white counterparts. “The systemic disparities continue and actually were even growing, where white scientists were getting a bigger fraction of the pie very recently,” said UCLA’s Aradhna Tripati.
The potential to cure disease by editing DNA | New York Times
A case study from gene therapy with viruses highlights the problem. Dr. Donald Kohn at U.C.L.A. built a therapy for a devastating genetic disease called severe combined immune deficiency. Partnering with clinicians at University College London, he used this therapy to treat 50 children doomed to die. Forty-eight were cured by the therapy; the other two survived after receiving a bone-marrow transplant.
