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.

Enlisting the public in the search for extraterrestrials | Los Angeles Times

A team of scientists at UCLA is sifting through all of that noise for a very specific type of signal that can’t be generated by any natural source in the known universe. And they’d like you to help them find it. On Tuesday, the UCLA SETI group launched “Are we alone in the universe?”, a citizen-science effort to sort data collected by the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, the largest fully-steerable telescope on Earth. (UCLA’s Jean-Luc Margot was quoted. Also: KTLA-TV.)

Exodus out of California continues | Los Angeles Times

Paul Ong, director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at UCLA, pointed to economic, health and sociopolitical factors driving people to leave the state. He noted that housing prices in California have pushed many to move to states where costs are lower. “While salaries in other regions and states are lower, the cost of housing is even lower,” he said. “This means that they have a higher standard of living because of more disposable income and/or high chance of owning.”

Fake Mexican pharmaceuticals laced with fentanyl | Los Angeles Times

Officials from Washington, D.C., to Mexico City have begun calling for action after an “alarming” Los Angeles Times investigation revealed that some pharmacies in Mexico are selling counterfeit medication laced with powerful narcotics including fentanyl and methamphetamine … The findings echoed those published in a recent UCLA study that examined 45 pills purchased at pharmacies in the same region.

Climate change is spreading malaria in Africa | New York Times

“Often we reduce the impacts of climate change down to the world just generally getting warmer, and we don’t often think about the vastly interconnected world in which we live,” said Morgan Tingley, an ecologist at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Hydrogen peroxide does not cure cancer | Associated Press

Dr. John Glaspy, an oncologist and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Medicine, told the AP that hydrogen peroxide can’t be absorbed via the skin as Gerson suggests. And if someone were to drink or inject enough hydrogen peroxide to maintain a high concentration in their body, it would likely just kill them.

Questions over China’s COVID data | Bloomberg News

“China is exceptional in the pace of reduction of Covid-related deaths,” said Zuo-Feng Zhang, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “I would expect the reduction of mortality (to occur at) a slower pace” because of China’s size and the uneven distribution of infections across different-sized cities and rural areas, he wrote in an email. 

Leafy greens, grains may help boost metabolism | La Opinión

One surefire way to add more fiber and protein to your meal is to center your plate around whole grains as the main ingredient, explains Dana Ellis Hunnes, PhD, MPH, RD, a senior dietitian at UCLA Medical Center. “The foods that most often contribute to anti-inflammation are whole plant-based foods, such as whole grains, nuts, seeds, legumes, fruits and vegetables,” she says. (Translated from Spanish.)

Models assess women’s breast cancer risk differently | Medical Xpress

Breast cancer risk estimates for individual women vary substantially depending on which risk assessment model is used, and women are likely receiving vastly different recommendations depending on the model used and the cutoff applied to define “high-risk,” according to a new study from UCLA. The study appears online in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. (UCLA’s Dr. Joann Elmore was quoted.)

Long COVID now looks like a neurological disease | Scientific American

Research on other viruses, and on neurological damage from the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in particular, is guiding work on long COVID … “I now think of COVID as a neurological disease as much as I think of it as a pulmonary disease, and that’s definitely true in long COVID,” says William Pittman, a physician at UCLA Health in Los Angeles, who treats Ghormley and many similar patients. (UCLA’s Helen Lavretsky and Nisha Viswanathan were also quoted.)