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.
COVID’s toll on Latino, Black and Asian life expectancy | CalMatters
Racial and economic health disparities exposed by the pandemic have factored into a widening gap in Californians’ life expectancies, according to a study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association … “Our findings are another troubling sign of how the pandemic’s impact was not felt evenly across all communities,” said Till von Wachter, a UCLA economics professor and California Policy Lab faculty director who is one of the report’s co-authors. (Also: Sacramento Bee and Newsweek)
Car canceling in Griffith Park | Los Angeles Times
“What these things do is they make these recreational spaces feel a lot more welcoming for folks on foot, folks on bikes and so forth,” said Michael Manville, an urban planning professor at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs. “And it’s to accentuate the park’s original purpose as a respite away from the noise and activity of the city.”
Anti-abortion laws and undocumented women | USA Today
Arturo Vargas Bustamante, a senior fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles’ Center for Health Policy Research, said ensuring undocumented women have access to telehealth services and are able to obtain abortion pills at a low cost could be a solution. But he said health organizations will need to work hard to win the trust of these women, who might fear their information will land in the hands of law enforcement and be used to deport them.
A diversity of opinions on college campuses? | Los Angeles Times
A 2020 poll by UCLA found that at least 80% of students from every part of the political spectrum felt their colleges encouraged them to share their ideas openly. They were much less satisfied with the campus “atmosphere for the expression of diverse beliefs.” In other words, this is more a social problem among peers than an indoctrination attempt by schools, which have generally been defending freedom of speech and diversity of opinion
State gun restrictions after Supreme Court ruling | Politico
California laws banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines are already winding through legal challenges … The high court’s decision could remap the trajectory of those and other consequential cases. The ruling “makes the last 14 years, with its thousands of Second Amendment cases decided by the lower courts, largely irrelevant,” said Adam Winkler, a UCLA professor who specializes in constitutional law and gun policy. The next few years of court cases will determine the extent of the shift.
Following the news without spiraling into despair | New York Times
(Column by UCLA’s Jenny Taitz) Following nonstop news in an era of gun violence, war and political divide can become overwhelming. And amid our many ongoing challenges — the pandemic, climate change, economic uncertainty — it’s understandable to feel sad, angry and anxious. As a clinical psychologist who specializes in giving people the tools to cope with intense emotions, I know how difficult it can be to remain positive — or simply balanced — while caring deeply about our world.
Community schools and the future of public education | LAist
It’s easy to walk around UCLA Community School and lose yourself in the question: Why don’t all schools look like this? The school — on a bright, modern campus in Koreatown, part of the L.A. Unified School District — features bilingual programs in Spanish and Korean, mirroring the languages most students speak at home. There’s an on-campus immigration law clinic, which represents students and parents seeking visas, or even asylum. (UCLA’s Io McNaughton, Debbie Bailey, Karen Hunter Quartz, Elia Lara, Queena Kim, Nancy Garcia, Leyda Garcia and Rebekah Kang are quoted.)
Contagious variants keeping COVID cases high | Daily Breeze
“The fact that many persons may be infected, but are without symptoms, means that crowded indoor spaces become even more likely places where transmission can occur,” said Robert Kim-Farley, a UCLA expert in epidemiology and infectious diseases.
The outlook for America’s prospective teachers | ABC News
As the University of California at Los Angeles’ Cooperative Institutional Research Program found, only 4.3% of college freshmen intended to major in education in 2018, compared to 11% in 2000.
Ballot measure to allow sports betting in California | KCRW-FM’s “Greater LA”
Dr. Timothy Fong, co-director of UCLA’s Gambling Studies Program, says about 1% of California residents have a gambling problem. “Now, one out of 100 people, it doesn’t sound like a lot,” says Fong, “but that’s about the same percentage of men and women with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia or severe psychosis in the state of California.”
HIV may speed up the body’s aging process | Healthline
For lead study author Elizabeth Crabb Breen, PhD, a professor emerita at UCLA’s Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology and of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, it was important that this specific study examined the years after “the initial HIV infection event … This study uniquely gave us the opportunity to look at the virus infection itself, and at the end of the day, take the same person and look at them before HIV infection and after HIV infection,” she said.
Conditions for LGBTQ migrants at detention centers | Newsweek
Migrants around the world who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or intersex (LGBTQI+) can face “challenging” conditions inside the detention centers they come across while migrating, according to a new study published this month by the Williams Institute at the University of California Los Angeles’ School of Law. The migration process overall brings risks to the LGBTQI+ community, many of whom are “particularly vulnerable to discrimination, persecution, and violence” while traveling from one country to another, the study said, adding that the detention centers can pose serious difficulty. (UCLA’s Ari Shaw is quoted.)
Avoiding salmonella in meat products | Healthline
Dana Ellis Hunnes, Ph.D., a senior clinical dietitian at the UCLA Medical Center and assistant professor at the University of California Los Angeles Fielding School of Public Health, said although the results of the investigation are concerning, they aren’t entirely surprising. “The way we raise the vast majority of chickens/hens in this country in over-crowded, enclosed quarters significantly increases the risk that any one of them (or more) will harbor/be contaminated with salmonella and/or other bacteria that are becoming resistant to more antibiotics,” Hunnes told Healthline.
Creating materials for flexible artificial muscles | Scienmag
UCLA materials scientists and colleagues at the nonprofit scientific research institute SRI International have developed a new material and manufacturing process for creating artificial muscles that are stronger and more flexible than their biological counterparts. “Creating an artificial muscle to enable work and detect force and touch has been one of the grand challenges of science and engineering,” said Qibing Pei, a professor of materials science and engineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering and the corresponding author of a study recently published in Science.
L.A.: County supervisors vs. sheriff | KCAL-TV
“I think the board is right in being frustrated about this sheriff, who just believes he’s Donald Trump. He’s the judge, jury and executioner here, and it’s a problem. But they need to be careful that the remedy doesn’t undermine their position, their high ground position,” said UCLA’s Zev Yaroslavsky (approx. 0:55 mark).
The war in Ukraine | Yomiuri Shimbun
(Commentary by UCLA’s Jared Diamond) The current war in Ukraine has surprised all three participants: Russia, Ukraine and NATO countries. The war has been far more prolonged, has caused far more deaths and destruction and refugee movements, and has involved much bigger military investments than any of the participants had expected. Russia didn’t expect such strong Ukrainian resistance, such massive input of NATO military supplies, and such widespread NATO retaliation against Russia’s economy.