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 dramatic story of how Denver decriminalized mushrooms | Vice
“We’ve been studying psilocybin for its potential therapeutic applications, and it appears to be very considerable, if utilized wisely and with proper caution,” said Charles Grob, a professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at UCLA whose research has focused on psilocybin and cancer patients facing existential anxiety at the end of their lives. “What’s so interesting about the psilocybin treatment model is that the patient population that might optimally respond are those who do not respond well to conventional treatments,” he added, clarifying that he was referring to people with substance abuse problems and obsessive compulsive disorder.
How 1800s racism birthed Chinatown, Japantown and other ethnic enclaves | NBC News
At the same time, Nihonmachis — the most prominent of which were in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland and Seattle — provided critical services to Japanese, said Lane Ryo Hirabayashi, professor emeritus at UCLA. These neighborhoods connected Japanese to jobs and housing, and helped them adapt to a new country…. In addition to traditional Japanese organizations, such as Buddhist temples and judo clubs, larger enclaves also developed institutions parallel to those found in mainstream American society, such as Nisei Boy Scout troops and Christian churches, Hirabayashi said. “Under such conditions, a unique and specific Japanese American identity began to evolve, and many fascinating transformations occurred,” Hirabayashi said.
Migrants are organizing to gain political power and retain voting rights in Mexico | La Opinión
Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda, associate professor in UCLA’s Department of Chicano Studies, considers that it “is inevitable” that within every presidential term and within every Mexican government exists “the challenge of fulfilling the needs of migrants” when it comes to increasing their political representation. “On their own, migrants are a national force; they are growing at a faster rate than Mexico, and the basic concept of a democracy is that there should be representation for what they contribute to [Mexican] society,” said the professor. (Translated from Spanish)
Cory Booker’s misleading claim that toy guns are more regulated than real guns | Washington Post Analysis
Eugene Volokh, a law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, said there appear to be relatively few cases of people being injured by defects in firearm design or manufacturing. “My sense is, this is something that is not a material factor in the gun debate,” he said. “Certain products are unsafe because of design. Others can be unsafe from misuse.” He places firearms in the latter category. He noted that more people die of alcohol abuse than from guns each year in the United States, including innocent third parties, “but you can’t make whiskey safer.” (Also: Politifact)
UCLA flourished despite headwinds. Future risk-taking will bring it to its full potential | Zócalo Public Square Opinion
California’s most important educational institution is UCLA — and the contest really isn’t close…. Despite its late start, UCLA has come to embody the American dream of college — it receives more applications each year than any U.S. university, nearly 140,000, from all 50 states. While the academic performance of its students and the research work of its faculty rival those of the Ivy League, UCLA educates far more poor kids than other elite American colleges. Some 35 percent of undergraduates receive Pell grants (a rate twice that of the Ivies), and one-third of graduates are the first in their families to earn a four-year degree. (Also: KCRW-FM’s “Zócalo’s Connecting California”)
Hyperactive comets hint at origins of Earth’s oceans | Scientific American
Others, such as comet researcher David Jewitt at the University of California, Los Angeles, are more concerned with simply getting that water to Earth. In addition to D/H ratios, celestial mechanics make a solid argument for asteroids as a dominant source of Earth’s water. Asteroids from the asteroid belt can crash into Earth much more readily than even the closest comets in the outer solar system, and research has revealed that many asteroids contain water with Earth-like fingerprints locked up inside of minerals.
Is it safe to drink moonshine? | Live Science
Methanol is far more dangerous than ethanol, said Anne Andrews, a professor of psychiatry, chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles. In the human body, methanol is converted to formaldehyde — the same substance in embalming fluid — and then to formic acid, which is highly toxic to cells, Andrews told Live Science. “It interferes with their mitochondria, and actually causes cells to suffocate,” Andrews said…. “That moonshine could have been safe for years,” Andrews said. “But then something changes in the environment, affecting local microbes that are doing the fermentation. Now there’s a higher concentration of methanol, and the person making it would never know.”
School-based legal clinic addresses needs of L.A. immigrant families | Education Dive
The Immigrant Family Legal Clinic at RFK Community Schools is a partnership between the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Law, the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies and the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD)…. The legal clinic “advances two key pillars” of the community school model — “integrated student supports and family and community partnerships,” Karen Quartz, the director of UCLA’s Center for Community Schooling, said in an interview. (UCLA law student Matt Erle also quoted.)
Conversion therapy is psychological torture, and the practice needs to end | Medium
A study by the Williams Institute at UCLA Law found that 698,000 LGBTQ+ adults in the United States have received conversion therapy. The study further found that 20,000 LGBTQ+ youth will receive conversion therapy from a licensed health care professional, and 57,000 youth will receive conversion therapy from religious advisors, all before turning 18.
How you (and your dog) can avoid snake bites — and what to do if you get bitten | NPR
I invited emergency room physician Mark Morocco to join me on an early morning hike. “The canyons and passes in Southern California are places where the animals can be relatively undisturbed,” says Morocco, who works at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. “The snakes aren’t going to hunt you. They’re not coming after you,” he says. But if you accidentally step on a snake, then it will reflexively bite. “That's the majority of snake bites for people who are hiking,” Morocco says.
‘Gay panic’ defense ban moves forward in Connecticut | Stamford Advocate
“According to research from the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, these defenses have been used or attempted to be used in approximately half of the states at one time or another,” Sen. President Pro Tem Martin Looney said. “We’ve had reports of it in Connecticut, especially in circumstances where someone solicits a prostitute and the prostitute turns out to be other than the customer intended and reacts violently. … The result in many cases has led to a reduction in charges for some offenders.”
Doctors say dramatic rise in STDs is a major wake-up call | KTTV-LA
“There’s a dramatic rise in STDs,” said UCLA’s Robert Huizenga. “We’re up, over the last four years alone, 30% chlamydia, 70% gonorrhea, and we doubled the rate of syphilis. Syphilis is a disease we essentially killed in the 1950s.” … “We have to understand that condoms are great, but they only can prevent probably 60 or 70 percent of all STDs.”
Congress demands Mueller report, but Trump claims executive privilege | KPCC- FM
“The response today from the White House is ‘hey, there’s gonna be some executive privilege materials in there,’” said UCLA’s Harry Litman. “It’s a nuance, but they didn’t exactly assert executive privilege. They asserted protective executive privilege.”
Using neurostimulation to treat ADHD isn’t as scary as it sounds | Gizmodo
The Monarch eTNS system is nothing like even modern-day ECT, according to James McGough, a clinical psychiatrist at the University of California, Los Angeles. McGough, who is also the chief of staff at UCLA’s Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital, and his team studied the Monarch system in the pivotal clinical trial that led to the FDA’s approval of the device…. Though McGough is optimistic about the future of the device for the treatment of ADHD, both he and his principal co-author Sandra Loo, a professor at UCLA’s Brain Research Institute, say there’s still more research that needs to be done before it becomes widely adopted by doctors. Key among these future studies would be finding the ideal patients who best respond to the treatment. In their study, about half of children felt some improvement after using the device.
Lagging behind, Julián Castro needs a moment | Austin American Statesman
Generally, what we’ve been seeing is the more his name recognition goes up the more his favorability goes up, so his biggest challenge is just breaking through and getting more media attention, ” said Matt Barreto, a professor of political science and Chicana/o studies at the University of California, Los Angeles and co-founder of Latino Decisions.
For ‘L.A.’s Finest’ launch party, Spectrum Originals taps ATTN:’s new experiential division | Variety
One of ATTN: Moment’s next events is with UCLA. For the university’s centennial celebration in September, ATTN: Moment plans to create a multidimensional pop-up space at the ROW DTLA that will include master classes led by UCLA alumni, art exhibits and interactive installations.
Runoff election for Los Angeles school board has long-term implications for future of California's largest district | EdSource
If she wins, she would be in a position to “really shape the work of the board going forward” because of her alliance with UTLA (teachers’ union) and her years of experience in California education politics, said John Rogers, a UCLA professor of education and a close observer of the district. “I suspect that Jackie Goldberg, if she does win, will have a great influence on the board,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve seen anyone else … move into a board seat with the sort of level of experience that she has.”
How California neighborhoods with only single-family homes might change under SB 50 | Los Angeles Times
But doing away with single-family-only zoning would unalterably diminish California for current and future residents, said Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and a former Los Angeles County supervisor. “When people around the world think of L.A., one of the things they think of is a home with a backyard,” Yaroslavsky said. “I think much of it should be preserved.”
Two elections affecting L.A. schools make for strange bedfellows | Los Angeles Times
For the most part, there’s an underlying logic to the shifting alliances, said UCLA education professor John Rogers. Parties warring over the board seat agree, Rogers said, that “Los Angeles schools are underfunded relative to the nation and relative to what L.A. students need.” They are finding “common cause” over Measure EE.
Chickenpox is a lifelong herpes virus with a serious side effect | NBC News
Chickenpox “is erroneously thought of as a not-too-unpleasant rite of passage of childhood,” said Dr. Nina Shapiro, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Medicine, who is the director of pediatric otolaryngology at UCLA, and the author of “Hype: A Doctor's Guide to Medical Myths, Exaggerated Claims, and Bad Advice — How to Tell What's Real and What's Not.” The image of chickenpox as a benign disease has led to some poorly thought out behaviors, like taking children to chickenpox parties, Shapiro said in an email.
How diet affects brain health and mood, and what to eat to reduce stress and feel good | South China Morning Post
Emeran Mayer, a gastroenterologist, neuroscientist and professor in the departments of medicine, physiology and psychiatry at the David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California in Los Angeles, is a pioneer of medical research into brain-gut interactions. He says that broader acceptance of the concept of interactions between the brain and the gut in the medical community is leading to a renewed interest in diet in the treatment of mental health disorders.
