UCLA In the News lists selected mentions of UCLA in the world’s news media. See more UCLA In the News.
Large gift will support philosophy, the humanities at UCLA | Inside Higher Ed
On Monday, the University of California, Los Angeles, announced a $25 million gift for the humanities, of which $20 million will support the philosophy department. A statement on the department’s website said in part, “This gift will have a profound, positive impact on our ability to generate leading philosophical research and offer a world-class education in philosophy for undergraduates and graduate students alike. It will allow us to recruit and support the best students from around the country and the world, to provide substantial new support for faculty research, and to enrich our undergraduate curriculum. We also look forward to richer offerings of talks, colloquia, and conferences and to hosting a wide array of distinguished visitors throughout the year.”
In remote Mexico convent, endangered salamander finds a shot at renewal | New York Times
At Lake Pátzcuaro, fishermen have been catching and eating achoques since before the Spanish arrived in Mexico. In the late 1970s and early ’80s, achoques caught in the lake were piled high at the fish market in town, recalled Brad Shaffer, a professor of biology at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has studied the salamanders.
Earth, Mars and the theory of cross-contamination | Forbes
All quite conceivable, suggests Jean-Luc Margot, professor and chair of the Department of Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences at UCLA: “Some microbes are fairly resilient in space.” Perhaps a few of those microbe-filled rocks, after millions or billions of years, eventually crashed on Mars. That too is reasonable. “We have meteorites from Mars here on Earth,” says Margot, “and there may be rocks from Earth that landed on Mars.”
How music has responded to a decade of economic inequality | Vox
Music historian Robert Fink of UCLA points out that in the years after the stock market crash, the nation experienced its first black president, who was widely popular, especially with black people. When Obama was replaced with a man with a reputation for antagonizing black people, alongside a rash of police killings of young African-American men, politically minded hip-hop and R&B artists increasingly focused their attention on Black Lives Matter and related movements, rather than economics. “I can’t think of a single hip-hop song about people getting subprime mortgages or that kind of thing,” Fink says.
‘Invest and prioritize’: What to do about California schools | Sacramento Bee
“Authority needs to be properly distributed Teachers need better pay and less of a role setting education policy. Districts need the flexibility to experiment with charters and other innovative schools. Principals need authority over their schools,” says UCLA’s Jim Newton. (UCLA’s Matt Barreto also quoted)
Trial will test Mueller’s Russia investigation and Trump’s ‘witch hunt’ charge | USA Today Opinion
(Commentary written by UCLA’s Harry Litman) We are about to see the first test of special counsel Robert Mueller’s charges in the Paul Manafort trial that starts Tuesday, and the consequences will be critical not only for Manafort but also for President Donald Trump. If Mueller wins a conviction, and I predict he will, it will severely undercut Trump’s contention that the Mueller investigation into Russia’s attack on the 2016 election is nothing more than a politically motivated “witch hunt.”
Global wildfire season | KCRW-FM’s “Press Play”
“We are breaking records in terms of global temperatures,” says UCLA’s Glen MacDonald. “Fires burn when you have warm temperatures, low humidity and dry fuels. There was a study done in terms of global changes in fire weather, the kind of weather you can get fires in. That study looked at the trend from 1979 to 2013. That trend is strong. There has been an increase globally in the type of weather that produces fires and particularly in terms of the length of the fire season. We are seeing a pervasive trend towards warmer temperatures, drier conditions through the summer because of that extra heat and evaporation and greater fire weather. And, of course, now we are seeing an explosion of fires.”
Why planes can’t fight Shasta’s deadly Carr Fire | Bay Area News Group
The northern stretch of the Sacramento Valley is prone to inversions because of its terrain, said climate scientist Daniel Swain of the University of California at Los Angeles. “It is a bowl, surrounded on three sides by mountains. It is only open to the south,” he said. “The air is stagnant at the top, the north end, of the valley.”
Cohen’s recordings focus attention on state wiretap laws | Washington Examiner
UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh said “I’m not a fan of the laws, but I think that it’s not surprising that they do have their fans. I think that more people can envision themselves being the victim of such recordings than being the beneficiary.”
Economy sees 4.1% growth in 2nd quarter — can it last? | KPCC-FM’s “AirTalk”
“The GDP represents the sum total of all the production of goods and services in the United States for the quarter and it is calculated on an annualized basis,” says UCLA’s David Shulman. “For example, the annual increase was 4.1 percent but in reality it was one percent over the quarter but they have multiplied it by four to come up with the 4.1 percent.” (Approx. 2:10 mark)
Majority of battleground voters oppose current immigration policies | Houston Chronicle
“This is the first survey of this election cycle that looks at the perception on immigration issues among all groups, which is (a topic) that has been at the center of the national politics” recently, said Matt Barreto, co-founder of research firm Latino Decisions and professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles. “We now have evidence that this is not just a Latino issue but one that is influencing registered voters of all population groups.”
Which doctor can help with genetic diseases? | U.S. News and World Report
If the results are unclear or it’s a very complicated case, patients may end up at a facility like UCLA’s Undiagnosed Diseases Network, a genetics-based initiative to diagnose elusive conditions. Dr. Stanley F. Nelson, professor and vice chair of human genetics and professor of psychiatry at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, is affiliated with the network and says that his team applies “whole genome [sequencing] technology and RNA sequencing to try to diagnose kids with very rare genetic diseases. Some of the diagnoses have only affected a single child in the world so far, some have affected only a couple dozen.”
Obesity warps the shape, function of young hearts | HealthDay
Obese young people are at higher risk for heart failure and diabetes, and they’re also more likely to have a heart attack or stroke at an earlier age, said [UCLA’s Gregg] Fonarow, who is also co-director of UCLA’s Preventative Cardiology Program. “If current trends in obesity continue without effective interventions, prior gains in reducing cardiovascular events and extending life may be lost,” he said.