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.

Rain, snow and high winds hit California | Los Angeles Times

“Yet more rain, yet more heavy mountain snow, more travel disruptions,” Daniel Swain, UCLA climate scientist said Monday. He called it “another moderate to strong storm,” though not comparable to last week’s destructive storm, which caused multiple deaths, severe flooding, and Southern California tornadoes. (Swain was also quoted by the San Francisco Chronicle.) 

Five planets set to line up this week | Los Angeles Times

“With this planetary alignment, you can draw a line in the sky and look toward where the sun sets and see a relatively faint thing that looks like a star, and that will be the planet Mercury,” said Mark Morris, a UCLA astronomy professor. Morris said he’d especially be looking for Mercury, as it’s more rarely seen than other planets. He said those with a good set of binoculars should also check out Jupiter.

Review: The Hammer Museum unveiling | Los Angeles Times

Over the last two decades, the UCLA Hammer Museum has dramatically transitioned from a vanity-fueled embarrassment to a vibrant cultural institution. The leap is large. Today it is one of our liveliest art museums — not just in the city, but in the nation. (UCLA’s Ann Philbin and Connie Butler were cited. Also: Spectrum News 1.)

Three county inmates die in just over a week | Los Angeles Times

Nicholas Shapiro, an assistant UCLA professor who serves as director of the Carceral Ecologies Lab, said he did not see “any cause for celebration” despite the slower pace of deaths in 2023. “The jails are still over capacity, and over half the deaths this year are of Black men in a county where something like 5% of the population are Black men,” he said. “When incarceration rates are vastly reduced and the county meets its goals to close Men’s Central Jail, I’ll definitely be singing from the rooftops.”

‘Inhumane’ practice follows many police killings | Los Angeles Times

Lexipol’s marketing materials emphasize that departments can slash what they pay to settle lawsuits by implementing its training methods and adopting its policies. “The idea of reducing legal liability seems to be front and center in their pitch,” said Joanna Schwartz, a UCLA law professor who has co-written two papers critical of Lexipol.

Talking to children about school shootings | ABC’s ‘Good Morning America’

Dr. Melissa Brymer, director of terrorism and disaster programs at the UCLA-Duke National Center for Child Traumatic Stress, said parents and caregivers should be truthful with kids in an age-appropriate way. “For our young kids, they don’t need to have all the details,” Brymer told ABC News last year. “Many times they’re going to be worried about their safety, your safety as a parent or caregiver or their family members’ safety, so we want to reiterate what’s being done to help them right now.”

Pay transparency motivates workers | Wall Street Journal

A separate working paper published last year suggests employers don’t have to reveal the granular details of their compensation structure to motivate workers. University students who participated in an experimental study worked harder and performed better at a simple videogame when they found out what their peers were earning for playing the game, said Christopher Tang, a professor at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management who worked on the research. 

Paleontologists debunk new dinosaur film ‘65’ | Business Insider

“The title speaks to how outdated information can get deeply engrained,” said Michael Habib, an associate professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a research associate at the Dinosaur Institute at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. “It would be amusing, though probably not very exciting, to see Adam Driver show up 65 million years ago when there would be very little in the way of wildlife that could cause him serious harm, much less eat him,” he added.

HIV reservoirs and prospects for remission | Medical Xpress

“HIV cure is one of the ACTG’s primary research goals, but we still have much to learn,” said Judith Currier, M.D., M.Sc., University of California, Los Angeles, Chair of the ACTG. “This study provides crucial insights into the patterns of HIV reservoir decay. We’re particularly excited about the possibility of learning how to speed up that decay to mirror what we see in the first few years of treatment, which might enable us to eventually identify a path forward toward HIV remission.”

BMI not always an indicator of metabolic health | Health

“We don’t know the whole story just based off of BMI,” Vijaya Surampudi, MD, assistant professor of medicine at the Center for Human Nutrition at UCLA Health, told Health. BMI is based on a person’s weight and height, which can sometimes indicate whether they’re at a healthy weight. But that’s certainly not always the case. “You just have a weight and the height, but it doesn’t give you any information of how weight is deposited on the body,” observed Dr. Surampudi, who was not involved in the study.