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.
California’s economy will grow faster than the nation’s, UCLA forecast predicts | Los Angeles Times
California’s economic growth will slow next year, but it is likely to outshine that of the nation overall, as Golden State employers boost payrolls, according to a new UCLA Anderson School forecast…. “This is still above the U.S. rate,” wrote forecast director Jerry Nickelsburg, noting that U.S. GDP grew by 2.1% in the last quarter. “While we expect further slowing of the California economy as part of the U.S. economic growth slowdown in 2020, this differential is expected to persist.” The 134-page UCLA forecast, a widely watched and often-cited quarterly outlook for California and the nation, offered analyses on the likelihood of recession, the health of the housing market, the impact of the trade war and the geographic distribution of educated workers. (Also: KPCC-FM and MyNewsLA)
405 freeway toll lanes: L.A. Metro’s plan is good news if you hate traffic enough you’d pay to avoid it | LAist
According to Michael Manville, associate professor of urban planning at UCLA’s Luskin School, it shouldn't surprise anyone that Metro plans to add more toll lanes, though “it may be surprising that it took us so long to do it.” “It’s really one of Metro’s most successful programs, honestly, and so we should not be surprised or upset that they want to expand it,” he said. Manville said changing SoCal’s deeply ingrained view of roads as “exalted and unique” will continue to be a challenge as Metro works to get more drivers to buy in to the concept — literally.
Can money buy Bloomberg love? | New York Times
“Can he stay home, do nothing else, buy $50 million in advertising and win the primary? The answer is that it’s highly unlikely,” said [UCLA’s Lynn Vavreck]. “There are lots of people who spend a lot of money. You can’t buy these things.”
Remaining Democratic presidential candidates court Congressional Black Caucus members | Washington Times
Dick Anderson, a political science professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said Ms. Harris’ support was marginal and not sufficient to give any of the other candidates a bump. He predicted her supporters would eventually gravitate to the candidate they believe will defeat President Trump. “I expect that Harris’ voters, that is, people who answered that they supported Harris in recent polls instead of Warren or Sanders or Biden or Buttigieg, will now support no one, but will become supporters of whoever looks likely to win the nomination,” he said.
Leonard Goldberg, producer of ‘Charlie’s Angels’ and ‘Blue Bloods,’ dies at 85 | The Hollywood Reporter
In December 2015, he and his wife, author Wendy Goldberg (her sister is ICM agent Toni Howard), donated $10 million to UCLA Health Sciences to support migraine research.
Diary tool assesses epilepsy seizure risks | Futurity
“This new publication shows the benefits of a quantitative approach that can guide treatment when deciding whether treatment has been helpful,” says John Stern, a professor of neurology and co-director of the Seizure Disorder Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, as well as co-principal investigator of the study. (Also: Medical Xpress)
Schools await ruling as transgender students pose sensitive issues | Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Transgender students are small fraction of Georgia’s school population. The Williams Institute, a UCLA law school think tank on gender identity law and public policy, estimated in a 2016 report that 0.75% of Georgia adults are transgender, compared to 0.6% of adults in the U.S. There is no comprehensive estimate of the number of transgender people under 18.
How microbiomes affect fear | Quanta Magazine
Animal studies like this one are especially helpful in cementing a clear connection between the nervous system and the microbiome, even if they don’t point to treatments for humans, said Kirsten Tillisch, a professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “The way that humans process emotion, physical sensation and cognition in the brain is just so different than in animals that it’s just very difficult to translate,” she said.
Gene therapy is facing its biggest challenge yet | Nature
Furthermore, the tools were not yet up to the task, says Donald Kohn, a specialist in pediatric bone-marrow transplants at the University of California, Los Angeles. If researchers were to shuttle in a normal hemoglobin gene, it would need to be able to crank out large amounts of protein to sufficiently mute the effects of the sickled version. Early gene-therapy technologies were not able to express genes in human cells at such high levels, says Kohn.
China’s genetic modification of humans has created mutant babies, scientists claim | Metro (U.K.)
“The answer is likely yes, it did affect their brains,” Alcino J. Silva, a neurobiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, told the MIT Technology Review. “The simplest interpretation is that those mutations will probably have an impact on cognitive function in the twins,” said Silva, whose lab uncovered a major new role for the CCR5 gene in memory and the brain’s ability to form new connections.
Content moderation dilemma tests Big Tech’s reach | Financial Times
Moderating content is problematic for all big social media platforms, says Sarah Roberts, assistant professor of information studies at University of California, Los Angeles. “They wish they could be out [of content moderation]. But that’s not going to happen and if anything, it’s going to increase.”
Changing wildfires in California’s Sierra Nevada may threaten northern goshawks | Phys.org
“To effectively manage and conserve wildlife, we need to understand how animals use the landscape across their life cycle,” noted corresponding author Dr. Rachel Blakey at The Institute for Bird Populations and UCLA La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science…. “While there was individual and sex-based variability in selection of habitat at the finest scales, at the larger spatial scales that are arguably most important for management, goshawks consistently selected for late-seral forest,” added Dr. Blakey.
Making hydrogel bioelectronics at room temperature | Science X
“We believe this is just the beginning of a new era of hydrogel bioelectronics,” said Shiming Zhang, a postdoc researcher in Prof. Ali Khademhosseini’s lab at UCLA. “We have demonstrated it is possible to fabricate various hydrogel bioelectronics devices directly in tissue with these unique RT hydrogels. However, we have not yet evaluated their efficacy in animal studies. To meet the critical need for clinical translation, many parameters need to be further optimized, such as conductivity, biocompatibility and mechanical stability.”
