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 goes beyond ‘dead white men’ in European studies | Los Angeles Times
Bucking national trends that have closed down many European language programs, UCLA is doubling down on its commitment to European studies by redefining it with a 2021 twist. Germanic, French, Italian and Scandinavian languages are being merged into a single department with a transcultural bent. Perspectives from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Central and South America — areas touched by Europe’s colonial legacies — will be injected into a new way of studying foreign language. (UCLA’s Dominic Thomas, David Schaberg and Todd Presner were quoted; UCLA’s Kalani Mitchell was cited.)
GM wants its cars to be fully electric by 2035 | Popular Science
“This is a seismic event that is hard to overstate in its importance to America’s transition to zero-emission vehicles” says JR DeShazo, an expert in sustainable transportation policy and the director of the Luskin Center for Innovation at the University of California, Los Angeles.
As alcohol abuse rises amid pandemic, a wave of liver disease | Los Angeles Times
“The pandemic has brought out our uneasy relationship with alcohol,” said Dr. Timothy Fong, an addiction psychiatrist at UCLA. “We’ve welcomed it into our homes as our crutch and our best friend.”
Debunking 10 COVID vaccine myths | Parade
“The biggest myth is that a person can get COVID-19 from receiving the vaccine,” explains Dr. Timothy Brewer, M.D., M.P.H., a professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases and of epidemiology at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. “The two approved vaccines from Pfizer[-BioNTech] and Moderna do not contain any virus and therefore cannot cause COVID-19 disease.”
By tracking mutations, scientists aim to forecast the pandemic’s future | Los Angeles Times
Dr. Marc Suchard, a professor of biomathematics and human genetics at UCLA, said when that information is merged with epidemiological data, researchers and public health officials will be able to “reconstruct a much richer history of how, where and when the virus is moving through our communities” and effectively act to counter it.
Super Bowl parties as superspreader events: Can we learn from past? | Los Angeles Times
“If we let down our guard and end up having large numbers of people in our home, inside, not masked, yelling for our teams, then we can see a potential reversal of the downward trend and end up with a new surge,” said Dr. Robert Kim-Farley, medical epidemiologist and infectious diseases expert at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.
Lack of internet access limits vaccine availability for many | The Conversation
(Commentary co-written by UCLA’s Tamra Burns Loeb and Dr. Arleen Brown) We are researchers who study health disparities. We are concerned that even when vaccinations are offered in these communities, those at greatest risk for COVID-19 may be unable to obtain appointments without the help of family or friends. This includes racial and ethnic minority communities and older adults, the age group that is currently being vaccinated.
Follow the science and reopen schools now | Los Angeles Times
(Commentary written by UCLA’s Dr. Alice Kuo) It’s no secret that we’re in the midst of a public health crisis in California. But public school children — more than 6 million students — are suffering through a silent crisis at home and they desperately need our help before it’s too late.
Dying of COVID in a ‘separate and unequal’ hospital | New York Times
“That is a tragedy,” Dr. Nida Qadir, co-director of the medical intensive care unit at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, said of the MLK statistic. Her hospital had mortality levels “a lot lower than that,” she said, though the hospital had not publicly released the figure. (UCLA’s Dr. Vadim Gudzenko and Dr. Christopher Ortiz were quoted.)
Vaccine distribution woes reflect wealth and class divides | NBC News
It was her patience that helped her unravel the bureaucratic tangle that is Los Angeles’ vaccination appointment system for her good friend Sonja Diaz. Diaz, a Los Angeles resident who is the founding director of the UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Initiative, spent hours navigating the county’s online portal to book appointments for several of her elderly relatives, who were having trouble confirming vaccinations at Dodger Stadium.
Some health care workers don’t want the vaccine | HuffPost
“A trend we saw in our survey was that people were really concerned about the fast-track development timeline of the vaccine, how quickly it was going, Operation Warp Speed, all of these kinds of subliminal messages about, ‘This is fast. This was put together quickly,’” said Adva Gadoth, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles who is conducting an ongoing study of UCLA hospital employees about their experiences during the pandemic.
A spreader of conspiracy theories surrenders medical license | Cal Matters
Conspiracy theories like Cowan’s erode public trust, create confusion, and undermine public health, said Anne Rimoin, a UCLA epidemiologist. “Social media amplifies misinformation in a way we’ve never seen before,” Rimoin said. “These theories not based in science now have a conduit to get out to the world so easily. When you have confusion, people make bad decisions and we have to divert precious resources towards stamping out misinformation. It doesn’t just hurt the believer. It hurts everybody.”
Lingering health problems months after fighting COVID | Press-Enterprise
“COVID-19 is a disease of extremes. Some people can be asymptomatic and some people can be on a ventilator,” said Dr. Judith Currier, chief of UCLA’s Division of Infectious Diseases in the Department of Medicine. “There’s a full spectrum of outcomes. Most people do recover completely, but there are people who have lingering signs and symptoms.”
Robinhood traders have a troubled track record | Bloomberg
In a paper last year, Ivo Welch, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, showed a portfolio of common Robinhood holdings beat market benchmarks and a quant factor model in the two years through mid-2020. Welch’s work focused on stocks widely owned by users, rather than those seeing an increase in buying on the platform.
Delivery workers fight for rights as industry booms | ABC News
“Prop. 22 makes it way easier for them to be able to classify their workforce as independent contractors, and not employees,” said UCLA’s Tia Koonse (approx. 3:25 mark).
California needs more storms, groundwater to avoid prolonged drought | CapRadio
Despite the rain, parts of Northern California are experiencing their driest two years on record, and the state is joining a years-long regional drought, according to Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “The drought is still worse over Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah than it is in California,” he explained. “But it’s a pretty broad and expanding drought right now across most of the West. In some cases, it’s quite severe.”
Brain stimulation tested to awaken coma patients | The Scientist
In a study published online last month in Brain Stimulation, [UCLA’s Martin] Monti and his colleagues report preliminary results from a trial in which they used ultrasound to noninvasively stimulate an area known as the thalamus in patients with long-term disorders of consciousness. Of the three patients included in the write-up, two showed behavioral improvements, such as responding to simple commands and, for one, gaining the ability to motion yes or no in answer to questions.