UCLA In the News lists selected mentions of UCLA in the world’s news media. See more UCLA In the News.
Report shows slight progress for Hollywood on diversity | New York Times
“Over the five-year run of the report, areas where women and people of color saw sustained progress were rare,” [UCLA’s] Ana-Christina Ramón, an author of the study, said in an interview. “You’d think there would be better results, especially given the public pressure and the ratings and box office evidence, which clearly show that diversity sells. Audiences want it.… I do see change starting to happen, especially in television. But the entertainment industry moves slowly, and the problem is that, at this rate, parity is a very long way off.” [UCLA’s Darnell Hunt also quoted in coverage.] (Also: Los Angeles Times, Variety, Associated Press, The Guardian (U.S.), HuffPost, NPR’s Morning Edition, KABC-TV, KTTV-LA, KCBS-LA, City News Service)
The gun control debate continues | NPR’s “All Things Considered”
“That’s right. The NRA and its allies have pushed laws that restrict the ability of federal agencies to finance gun violence prevention research. But it’s also a difficult problem because there are so many guns, and figuring out exactly what causes crime has bedeviled researchers for ages. So it’s very difficult to know whether one particular reform will have a huge impact on gun violence,” said UCLA’s Adam Winkler. (Also: Associated Press, The Washington Times, HuffPost, The Spectrum)
Delta tried to find middle ground on gun control | Los Angeles Times
But Eugene Volokh, a professor at UCLA’s law school, thought the lieutenant governor had not overstepped his bounds. “They may be playing political hardball, but that’s not a 1st Amendment violation,” Volokh said, adding that officials can’t regulate political speech, but they can regulate a company’s commercial activity.
Who’ll tackle the Rohingya crisis? | CBS News
“We’ve been very actively engaged, civically engaged on Capitol Hill for many decades, but this particular acute crisis is a catastrophe, a human rights catastrophe. Our community … went on Capitol Hill, over a hundred of us, and we visited over 200 congressional offices,” said UCLA’s Amjad Mahmood Khan. (Approx. 02:00 mark)
The long, obvious path to corporations being people | NPR’s “1A”
In his new book, “We the Corporations,” professor Adam Winkler argues that while racial minorities, women and LGBT Americans gained rights through both judicial victories as well as protests, “corporate rights were won in courts of law.” “Ronald McDonald and the Pillsbury Doughboy never marched on Washington or protested down Main Street with signs demanding equal rights for corporations,” he writes. Instead, judges and legislators expanded corporate rights through laws and constitutional interpretations. (UCLA’s Edward Walker is also quoted)
Students get jump-start on data science careers | KQED’s “The California Report”
The Los Angeles Unified School District has teamed up with UCLA to develop an introduction to data science course that meets University of California and California State University application requirements. Students use a blend of statistics and computer science to analyze data sets they’ve either collected or found.
How AI will help hologram technology find practical use | Futurism
In two new studies, researchers at UCLA used artificial neural networks to reconstruct a hologram — not just any hologram, though. Not only is the technique an advancement of holographic technology, but the resulting microscopic images could have fascinating medical applications.
Fear, misunderstanding of breast cancer radiation | Reuters Health
“There are many scary word-of-mouth stories out there and many unfounded concerns or concerns from another era,” said senior study author Dr. Susan McCloskey, of the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California Los Angeles. (Also: Medical Xpress, HealthDay)
Rain, snow, hail pound Northern California | Sacramento Bee
Daniel Swain, a climatologist at UCLA, said the latest storms will improve the snowpack but won’t erase the considerable deficit that’s built up over the past few months. “It’ll be a nice white snowpack by later in the week,” Swain said. But “this week alone isn’t going to cut it.”
How green spaces benefit urban neighborhoods | Scientific American
But Mark Kaplan, a public health researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, Luskin School of Public Affairs, who was not involved in the study, cautions these programs “need to be done alongside other things. You have to address the question of social and economic inequality, and green space alone is not going to fix that.” A major reduction in urban gun assaults is unlikely, he adds, “without regulation of the guns that are contributing to the violence.”
Iran leader calls labor unrest ‘enemy plot’ | Voice of America
In an article published by The Washington Post last month, two Los Angeles-based sociologists at the University of California said a study of Iran’s recent labor unrest shows that escalations into violence have been rare. The authors wrote that local police have attempted to guide protesters off the streets and into negotiation with state officials on specific issues. They also said police across Iran increasingly have been trained in routine crowd control tactics since the deadly 2009 street battles triggered by that year’s disputed presidential election.
Electrode design could boost supercapacitors’ performance | Phys.org
“We often find inspiration in nature, and plants have discovered the best way to absorb chemicals such as carbon dioxide from their environment,” said Tim Fisher, the study’s principal investigator and a UCLA professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. “In this case, we used that idea but at a much, much smaller scale—about one-millionth the size, in fact.”
Why the poor don’t vote to soak the rich | The Washington Post
(Commentary written by UCLA’s Daniel Treisman) In a democracy, income inequality should in theory correct itself. The poor majority should vote to tax the rich and divide the proceeds among themselves. But that’s not happening in the United States. In fact, inequality has been rising for decades. Scholars suggest various explanations. Here’s one possibility that few have discussed: Poor voters may oppose a policy of higher taxes and income transfers because they wrongly think they’ll be victims of it.
Janus v. AFSCME is threat to all workers | Los Angeles Daily News
(Commentary written by UCLA’s Kent Wong) The basic right for workers to form and join unions did not come without struggle. Fifty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood with striking Memphis sanitation workers in their quest for union rights and justice and dignity, and advanced the slogan, “I Am A Man.” Fifty years ago, Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta stood with striking farmworkers in Delano, California, in a five-year campaign that resulted in the very first union for farmworkers, and proclaimed, “¡Sí, se puede!” or, “Yes, we can!”