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.
The key to treating Alzheimer’s disease may not be a drug | Los Angeles Times
For instance, Michael Phelps, a UCLA biophysicist and the inventor of the PET scan (the technology that produces images of disease changes in the body), has found that some of the chemical changes in the brain as a person moves from wellness to Alzheimer’s disease occur from four to 10 years before any clinical diagnosis could be made.
The record temperatures enveloping the West are not your average heat wave | National Public Radio
“It’s not only unusual for June, but it is pretty extreme even in absolute terms,” says Daniel Swain, climate scientist at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. “It would be a pretty extreme event for August,” Swain says, when these typically occur.
Scientists on the scorching US heatwave | Guardian (U.K.)
“Climate change is a major contributor to, if not the dominant factor, in a lot of the changes that we’re seeing out west and elsewhere. And it just is going to keep getting worse unless we do something about it. And so far, you know, we have yet to do the kinds of things, on a large enough scale, that are actually going to make a meaningful difference,” said UCLA’s Daniel Swain.
Concern grows over rapid spread of COVID variant | CNN
“It’s very important to note that this Delta variant is much more contagious than the original variant, the original strain, and the B117, or the U.K. or Alpha variant. In fact, it could be up to 60% more contagious. Meaning that if you have the same interaction with somebody who has COVID-19, you are that much more likely to get it than previous variants,” said UCLA’s Anne Rimoin (approx. 1:15 mark).
Children’s birthday parties may have fueled COVID-19 spread, study finds | USA Today
Informal gatherings, like birthday parties, are an important source of transmission, said Dr. Timothy Brewer, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of California, Los Angeles. “While people are doing a good job or a better job of social distancing or wearing their masks when they go to a supermarket, when they get home they’re more likely to relax and not necessarily wear masks or social-distance,” said Brewer, who was not involved with the study.
The latest on the pandemic | KPCC-FM’s “AirTalk”
“I think the real challenge is, it puts businesses in the very difficult position of making public health decisions. And I think that’s really unfair to them. We know that the vaccines work. We know that they prevent infections, not 100%, but they reduce the risk of infection and transmission. But a business shouldn’t have to be figuring out, ‘Do I require everyone to wear a mask?’” said UCLA’s Dr. Timothy Brewer.
Latinas exited workforce at highest rate during pandemic: Report | ABC News
From March 2020 to March 2021, the number of Latinas in the workforce dropped by 2.74%, meaning 336,000 fewer Latinas were in the labor force, according to a report released Wednesday by the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative, a Latino-focused think tank. … Sonja Diaz, the founding director of UCLA LPPI, said Latinas will need incentives such as an increased minimum wage, increased child care support, mandatory paid leave and training and education programs to allow Latinas to enter into high-wage employment.
Recognizing the pandemic’s long-term mental health impacts and how to find help | KNBC-TV
According to Dr. Bridget Callaghan, UCLA assistant professor of psychology and director of UCLA’s Brain and Body Lab, that hesitation is normal. The changes everyone had to make at the beginning of the pandemic, such as bringing a mask everywhere and washing and sanitizing hands more often, were “very habitual,” Callaghan said.
Only one U.S. city saw a bigger pandemic exodus than San Francisco | San Francisco Chronicle
Also contributing to the decline in San Francisco and San Jose is that California had a decrease of new people moving into the state, leaving fewer people to replace those who left according to a March study by the California Policy Lab, an initiative from UCLA and UC Berkeley that uses data to address policy questions.
Race, health care, pandemic: Hope in a year of challenges | WebMD
Medell Briggs-Malonson, MD, chief of health equity, diversity, and inclusion for UCLA Health, sees a silver lining yet also finds that how we describe the problems in America matters as well. “For the first time, our country and our world started to see how patients’ health was impacted by inequities. People for the first time started to open their eyes. We have started to acknowledge more the ribbon of humanism that connects us all. We are finally starting to look at each other and say, ‘You deserve the best, I deserve the best.’”
California gun-control battles sparked by one judge’s decisions | Wall Street Journal
“If you’re a gun-rights group challenging the law in California then you want to be before Judge Benitez,” said Adam Winkler, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has written a history of gun laws. “He has become the most vigorous defender of gun rights in the federal courts today.”
We need clear, fact-based guidance to recover from Trump’s public charge rule | California Health Report
(Commentary co-written by UCLA’s Susan Babey) Nutrition programs and Medi-Cal offer Californians assistance when it’s needed most. Yet a recent study from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research found that, throughout California, one in four adult immigrants with low income avoided public programs such as Medi-Cal and nutrition assistance for fear of harming their immigration status or that of their family members. Exclusionary policies cause indiscriminate damage: Even immigrants not subject to the public charge rule have avoided public programs.
There was a $500K reward in alleged road rage shooting of Aiden Leos in California. Will it be paid? | USA Today
“There are quite a few hoops that you have to go through in order to get reward money,” Diane Birnholz, a former federal prosecutor and current lecturer at UCLA School of Law, said. “That’s why I think it’s more of a minority of cases where rewards are actually dispersed.”
Landlords say concerns about mass evictions are overhyped | Los Angeles Business Journal
Under regulations set to expire June 30, it’s illegal for landlords to evict tenants who are unable to pay rent due to “financial distress” caused by Covid-19, including loss of income and increased childcare costs. It also protects against “no cause” evictions. In May 2020, UCLA released a report that found that 365,000 renters could face eviction if the moratorium were lifted. The number was later revised down, according to Los Angeles Magazine, to 295,147.
How broadly will a Supreme Court ruling on LGBTQ rights and religious freedom apply? | Marketplace Morning Report
The court decided this case on relatively narrow grounds, said Cary Franklin at the Williams Institute at UCLA. “The court wrote the decision in a way that was limited to the facts in this case,” much like a ruling from a few years ago where the justices decided in favor of a Colorado baker who refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding,” Franklin said. “We’ve now had two cases in a row where the court has declined to take this huge bite out of anti-discrimination law.”
Critical race theory under attack | MSNBC’s “The Mehdi Hasan Show”
“Critical race theory is the study of law and how it has been part of the infrastructure — from slavery to emancipation to segregation to today — upon which racial inequalities have been based,” said UCLA’s Kimberlé Crenshaw.
Chimp groups have their own distinct “handshakes” | The Scientist
Handclasping behavior is unique among cultural characteristics of chimp groups in the sense that it does not appear to directly promote chimp survival. “To the best of my knowledge, this handclasp grooming is the only convincing evidence of social conventions in chimpanzees,” Susan Perry, an evolutionary anthropologist and field primatologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was also not involved in the work, writes in an email to The Scientist.
When should men be screened for prostate cancer? | NBC’s “Today”
Dr. Matthew Rettig, the medical director of the Prostate Cancer Program at the Institute of Urologic Oncology at UCLA in California, said that even if screenings aren’t performed right away, men should at least start talking about them with their doctors early in life. “I think I would have that conversation fairly early on in life, maybe even in (your) 30s or 40s, about when to initiate screening,” said Rettig.
How to talk about medical marijuana with your doctor | “Science Friday”
“Having moved to Los Angeles fairly recently, what I hear a lot from patients … of physicians that I know is that they’re frustrated. They’re seeking guidance from their physicians, and yet, their physicians can’t really give them good information with respect to how to use cannabis and cannabis products for particular medical indications,” said UCLA’s Ziva Cooper (approx. -15:23 mark).
One in six pregnant women delivering in a U.S. hospital may see a big bill, even with insurance | Reuters Health
“This article illustrates how high the costs of copays and deductibles can be for families, given how common high-deductible health insurance has become, and how frequent the costs of delivery and post-birth care for premature and low birthweight infants and associated copays and deductibles are increased by the need for a Caesarean delivery or intensive care for the infant,” [UCLA’s Jack] Needleman said in an email.
Healthcare workers say it’s an honor to help migrant children in Long Beach | California Healthline
The children arrive at the Long Beach facility by bus, scared and timid but “very well behaved,” said [Chai-Chih] Huang, director of pediatric nursing at Mattel Children’s Hospital of UCLA Health, who is doing temporary duty at the shelter. “They warm up to the staff here and when they get to know you and start talking to you, it melts your heart.” (UCLA’s Tracy Reyes Serrano was also quoted.)
Parents are concerned online kindergarten was a waste. Here’s what experts think. | The Hechinger Report
While loosening the rules around age requirements for the early grades would benefit some families, it may systematically disadvantage others, said Anna Markowitz, assistant professor of education at UCLA. “Some parents are going to be able to do whatever it takes to get the petition for the waiver and get their kid where they need to go,” she said. “But some parents may not have the time, knowledge or language skills to do that.”
Back to campus, and back in person, with mental health at the forefront | Courthouse News Service
“We said that students are safer at home and that they could study from home,” said Youlonda Copeland-Morgan, vice provost of enrollment management at the University of California, Los Angeles. “But that wasn’t true for a lot of our students so we spent a lot of money on computers and other technologies.” Additionally, Copeland-Morgan said, a good portion of the emergency federal funding was put into food, housing and mental health services.
Blacks originated much of American music. And the nation needs to right the record. | USA Today
(Commentary by UCLA’s Marcus Anthony Hunter) Recorded music is one of America’s most remarkable intellectual global contributions, and at its core, American music is Black music. From blues, gospel, jazz, country and rhythm and blues, to house, rock-and-roll and hip-hop, Black artists are the frequent inventors, cornerstone and backbone of musical genres and the recording industry. Despite this objective fact, Black people in the recording industry — artists, producers, songwriters, managers and executives — are more likely to receive less, ask for less, be remembered less and be credited far less than their white counterparts.
Are you ‘cheugy’? Maybe. But here’s why you shouldn’t care. | USA Today
“We often hear praise for younger people moving beyond boxes in one way or another … but when I think about the cheugy term, it’s a bracing reminder that this generation is not moving beyond categories and classifications, they’re just not using the same old ones that other generations did,” explains Juliet A. Williams, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles’ Department of Gender Studies.