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.
UCLA gymnastics leads social media impression, leaves lasting impact at meets | Los Angeles Daily News
While the celebrity-like presence can sometimes get out of hand, the Bruins understand the opportunity at hand is not about the number of followers, but about the impact they’re creating. “It’s wonderful, but it’s also a responsibility,” UCLA coach Chris Waller said. “It gives us, whether it should or shouldn’t, a little more meaning to the fact of the way we carry ourselves and what we value.” UCLA gymnastics has the largest social media following of all collegiate women’s sports teams with a number of over 750,000 followers coming from a combination of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
New study reveals previously invisible health issues among Asians in U.S. | NBC News
Asian Americans typically rank as healthier than the general U.S. population. But a new study says that’s true only when data are looked at collectively. Asian American subgroups have at least one health disparity that’s masked by data aggregation, according to a report published Thursday from researchers at Brown University and UCLA. Much work has been done to debunk the idea of Asian Americans as a “model minority” across multiple areas like educational attainment, employment and income — but health is a new arena, researchers say.
Getting quality autism therapy from thousands of miles away | HealthDay
An ongoing trial for a program developed at University of California, Los Angeles seeks to change [access to therapy] with the novel use of technology and developmental intervention therapy for families of children with a high risk of autism that live in rural areas. Dr. Shafali Jeste, an associate professor at the UCLA Center for Autism Research and Treatment, said, “We’re very proficient at making the diagnosis of autism, but families often can’t get access to behavioral interventions. But if you can intervene early, you’re more likely to change brain development.” Jeste and her research team developed a telemedicine program to offer these families access to clinical trials of behavioral interventions. The new study uses an intensive behavioral intervention called JASPER (for Joint Attention, Symbolic Play, Engagement and Regulation).
New green card rules scare thousands into dropping benefits, like food stamps | KTVU-TV
According to a study from the UCLA Center for Health Policy research, the chilling effect — the number of people who will be discouraged, inhibited or prevented from using CalFresh — in the Bay Area is estimated to be 131,000 people. Nearly 70 percent of the California residents projected to disenroll from health care and nutrition assistance benefits would be children. Tia Shimada, a co-author of the UCLA study and the Director of Programs at California Food Policy Advocates, said that the study also investigated the broad economic impacts of people withdrawing or failing to enroll in benefits. “We looked at an estimated $1.67 billion in lost federal benefits coming to individuals in California,” Shimada said. “And that loss in benefits would ripple out in terms of economic activity, and we would see both job loss, a loss of economic output, and a loss of tax revenue because those federal dollars were no longer coming into California and supporting economies here.”
A look behind California’s mixed record on lung cancer | Los Angeles Times
As California’s unhoused population has swelled to more than 150,000, health care providers have more difficulty reaching those in need of services. “Many of the 60,000 homeless in L.A. County would very likely be considered at risk for lung cancer, and they are not being screened,” said Dr. Steven Dubinett, a pulmonologist at UCLA.
Uber and Lyft increase traffic and pollution. Why do cities let it happen? | Los Angeles Times Column
Some experts believe that reducing taxi fares might make them more competitive. That’s an option explored by Christopher S. Tang of UCLA’s Anderson School of Business, who based his research partially on the impact of the ride-sharing service DiDi in China. He also suggests that public transit systems, taxi services, and the ride-hail firms work out single-ticket arrangements allowing passengers to reach their destinations via a combination of travel modes. “That could be a win-win,” he told me.
By decoding the coronavirus genome, scientists seek the upper hand against COVID-19 | Los Angeles Times
Even a tiny shift might reveal a pivotal moment when the virus mutates in ways that either increase its fitness or spell its demise, said Dr. Marc Suchard, a biomathematician at UCLA who has studied the evolution of HIV and influenza. Armed with the dynamic details of a virus’ life cycle, scientists can do more than confirm their surmises about how natural selection selects a winner, Suchard said. They can help answer some of the most fraught questions: Who should get vaccinated first? Will a quarantine work? When do comforting cultural practices endanger a community’s safety?
The coronavirus may run rampant in some countries least prepared to deal with it | Business Insider
Robert Kim-Farley, a professor at UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, told Business Insider his concern with the spread of the virus is if it reaches poorer countries that are densely populated, or don’t have the resources to screen for and treat people who contract the novel virus. ”My greatest concern is not here in the United States, where we have a robust health care system,” Kim-Farley said.
Gay rights, religious freedom, and the battle over adoption | Christian Science Monitor
In fact, at 19% to 25% of foster care children, LGBTQ youth are overrepresented among the estimated 400,000 children currently in the system, according to researchers at The Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law. Many have been rejected by their biological families.
The cure for healthcare? An end to selfishness | Los Angeles Times Column
Gerald Kominski, a professor of health policy and management at UCLA, told me that once you clear away all the complicated policy brush, there’s one inescapable conclusion about Medicare for all. “Most families would be better off,” he said, citing multiple studies showing that total out-of-pocket costs for most people would go down if current premiums, copays and deductibles were replaced by a tax.
New computational tools identify alternative splicing changes in aggressive cancers | Science Daily
A multi-institutional group of researchers led by Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) has linked a strong cancer driver gene to changes in proteins that regulate alternative splicing. The researchers created new computational tools and biological model systems for the study. This collaborative research, led by Yi Xing, PhD, at CHOP and Owen Witte, MD, at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), was published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
How COVID-19 is spread | The Scientist
The R0 is, by definition, an average value. “What it misses is the fact that not everybody is average,” says James Lloyd-Smith, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who researches disease transmission and adaptation. “There is a lot of variation among individuals in terms of how much they transmit.”
Anti-choking device comes to North Texas schools despite questions | Fort Worth Weekly Column
Lih relied on the news media to help spread the word and earned free publicity by articles such as the one published on June 23, 2019, in Forbes under the headline “Toddler Saved by Anti-Choking Device.” The author was Nina Shapiro, a graduate of Harvard Medical School and director of the pediatric otolaryngology unit at Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA. Shapiro wrote that parents should learn CPR and know how to assess choking incidents.
