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.
Fentanyl and OD deaths among the unhoused | Los Angeles Times
“Being unhoused puts you at such a greater risk for mortality than the general population. It’s not just overdoses,” but also other health threats such as food insecurity that disproportionately affect unhoused people, said Sarah E. Clingan, an assistant project scientist at UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Programs.
Dealing with medical bills in U.S., other countries | Los Angeles Times
“There isn’t one system that works,” said Thomas Rice, a UCLA health economist who is writing a textbook about health insurance systems around the world. “Lots of different kinds of systems can protect patients from high costs.”
Is ‘qualified immunity’ built on flawed foundation? | New York Times
Joanna Schwartz, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of “Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable,” said that “there is general agreement that the qualified immunity doctrine, as it currently operates, looks nothing like any protections that may have existed in 1871.” The new article, she said, identified “additional causes for skepticism.”
Wild weather and California tornadoes | San Francisco Chronicle
Tornadoes aren’t that unusual for California — just relatively infrequent compared with other parts of the country, like the central United States. They tend to land more frequently in two “miniature Tornado Alleys” — the Central Valley and the Los Angeles coastal plain — Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA and the Nature Conservancy, said during an online presentation.
Remote work could mean less innovation | Wall Street Journal
Do chance encounters among employees of different Silicon Valley companies in coffee shops, restaurants and other public places lead to innovation? The answer is yes, say researchers who examined such “knowledge spillovers” in a study that may have implications for today’s work-from-home culture. The researchers — Keith Chen of the University of California, Los Angeles, and David Atkin and Anton Popov of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — tracked the locations of 425,000 phones using commercially available cellphone-location data. (Chen was quoted.)
Thousands of Section 8 vouchers go unused in L.A. | KABC-TV
“You have to find a rental unit at or below the fair market rent. The landlord, very importantly, has to agree to participate in the program, which means that they don’t have biases against people that are using government money,” explained Professor Michael Lens, from the [UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs]. “So there are these things that get in the way.”
Influencers and social media confessionals | Wall Street Journal
Lia Haberman, a social media marketing adjunct instructor at the University of California, Los Angeles, suggested that the action of putting on makeup may ease someone’s nerves when talking about difficult subjects. “There’s something about the beauty routine that’s the emotional equivalent of a fidget spinner,” Ms. Haberman said. “And so when you’re applying makeup, it’s like a behavioral coping mechanism that they might use while they’re also unpacking whatever trauma it is that they’re sharing.”
Trailblazing L.A. politician Gloria Molina dies | LAist-89.3 FM
Sonja Diaz heads the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute. “Gloria Molina’s political career made clear to me at a young age that Latinas could not only lead, but that they could be powerful,” said Diaz (approx. 3:50 mark).
Record-setting May heat waves on the way | Scientific American
The current meteorologic setup is very similar to the one that caused the infamous 2021 heat dome over [the Pacific Northwest], says Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Though the current ridge is occurring earlier and is centered farther north, it is still “a huge blob of essentially unprecedented atmospheric high pressure and temperatures for this time of year,” Swain says.
Quantum physics offers new way to study biology | The Conversation
(Column by UCLA’s Clarice Aiello) Imagine using your cellphone to control the activity of your own cells to treat injuries and disease. It sounds like something from the imagination of an overly optimistic science fiction writer. But this may one day be a possibility through the emerging field of quantum biology.
Health insurer changes colonoscopy policy | STAT
“People with concerning symptoms for cancer, suddenly they may have to wait potentially weeks or months or longer for this to get approved,” said Folasade May, a gastroenterologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “It may not even get approved.” For those patients who have undiagnosed cancer, a months-long delay in diagnosis can be disastrous, May said.
Study finds no ‘twin’ stars around black hole | Science Daily
When supermassive stars are born, they’re almost always paired with a twin, and the two stars normally orbit one another. But astronomers at UCLA’s Galactic Center Group and the Keck Observatory have analyzed over a decade’s worth of data about 16 young supermassive stars orbiting the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Their findings, published today in the Astrophysics Journal, reveal a startling conclusion: All of them are singletons. (UCLA’s Devin Chu was quoted. Also: Space Daily.)
Study reveals ‘developmental window’ for thinking styles | Phys.org
A recent study by an international team from UCLA, Romania and Israel suggests there may be a developmental window for reasoning skills as well — the first 25 years of life — and that a person’s social, political and economic environment strongly influences how they acquire these skills. Their findings are published in the journal PLOS one. (UCLA’s Amalia Ionescu and Patricia Greenfield were quoted.)
