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.
Hollywood backsliding on diversity | Los Angeles Times
Despite efforts made by Hollywood movie studios to diversify talent following George Floyd’s murder three years ago, people of color remain underrepresented in films, going by the latest numbers. In fact, in some aspects, the diversity stats last year fell behind 2019 levels. ... according to the newest UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report, which was released Thursday. (UCLA’s Ana-Christina Ramón, Darnell Hunt and Michael Tran were quoted. Also: Associated Press, Reuters and The Hollywood Reporter.)
‘Death gap’ widens between United States and Europe | Associated Press
The United States has more excess deaths than high-income European countries, a divide that widened during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study. Excess deaths are those from all causes above and beyond what would be expected under usual conditions. And the widening gap between Europe and the United States was not just due to the United States’ handling of COVID-19, said study author Patrick Heuveline, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. (Also: Scienmag and Medical Xpress.)
Myrlande Constant exhibition at the Fowler | NPR’s ‘Morning Edition’
The work of Haitian artist Myrlande Constant is getting attention at the top of the contemporary art world. Her meticulously embroidered flags, known as drapos, were featured at the Venice Biennale last year, and she just wrapped up a New York gallery exhibition. Now with a new show at UCLA’s Fowler Museum, Constant becomes the first Haitian woman to have a solo show in a major U.S. Museum. Her work challenges the dominant narrative that Haiti is a place of chaos and despair. (UCLA’s Katherine Smith was quoted. Also: Los Angeles Times.)
Mexican masked man fights for immigrant workers | Los Angeles Times
Victor Narro, project director and professor of labor studies for the UCLA Labor Center, said the day-laborer community has come a long way since the 1990s, at least in California. “In the 1990s, day laborers were attacked from different angles. They were pointed out for interfering with businesses, for interfering with public roads, and even groups of neighbors argued that day laborers were interfering with the aesthetics of their neighborhoods. There were cities that put rules to limit day laborers from congregating in public places, and this is still happening,” he said.
Earliest galaxies challenge ideas about star birth | Science
LCDM cannot account for the excess galaxies astronomers are seeing, but few astronomers are ready to tear it up. “Let’s get a bigger population,” says Alice Shapley of the University of California, Los Angeles. “Then it will be time to look at theories.
California water sources are rising | USA Today
“Clearly, the amount of water that’s fallen this year has greatly alleviated the drought,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “It has not ended the drought completely, but we’re in a very different place than we were a year ago.”
Shooting exploited by right for anti-trans rhetoric | Washington Post
Transgender people are four times more likely than cisgender people to be the victims of crimes including rape, sexual assault, and aggravated or simple assault, according to the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, a think tank that focuses on LGBTQ issues. The study relied on the 2017 and 2018 National Crime Victimization Survey, a comprehensive source of data that includes gender identity. “It is a consistent finding that trans people have a high prevalence of experiencing violent victimization,” said Jody Herman, a senior scholar at the [institute] and co-author of the study.
Migraine, cluster headaches linked to internal clock | NBC News
“Not only are these headache disorders influenced by sleep, conversely they are also huge disruptors of sleep. They might feed back and amplify whatever the circadian mechanisms are,” said Dr. Andrew Charles, director of the UCLA Goldberg Migraine Program, who was not involved in the new study. “It’s hard to know if the influence of the cortisol is related to the circadian rhythms or something related to the stress response.”
Marijuana has special risks for older people | Wall Street Journal
Marijuana also affects your cognitive abilities, at least in the short-term. Physiological and brain changes in aging adults may make them more vulnerable to the negative effects of THC, says Ziva Cooper, director of the UCLA Center for Cannabis and Cannabinoids. However, some research has suggested that when older mice are administered THC, their cognitive outcomes slightly improve, says Dr. Cooper.
The risks of using Medi-Cal for housing | Southern California News Group
KHN notes that one rationale for the effort is that providing housing this way can in fact yield savings. But an analysis from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research found that such programs saved “an average of $383 per Medi-Cal beneficiary per year — a meager amount compared with the program’s cost.”
Fatal drug overdoses in seniors soar | HealthDay News
Drug overdose deaths – both accidental and intentional – have quadrupled over the past 20 years among older adults in the United States, a new study finds. … “The dramatic rise in overdose fatalities among adults over 65 years of age in the past two decades underscores how important it is for clinicians and policymakers to think of overdose as a problem across the life span,” said co-author Chelsea Shover, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles David Geffen School of Medicine.
Finding child care for your baby | LAist
“Each eligibility criteria is going to look a little bit different because the communities that each program serves are a little bit different,” said Delia Vicente, executive director of the UCLA Early Head Start program.
