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.
Barbra Streisand funds UCLA institute | KTTV-TV
“It was years of conversation around her vision, and she’s a visionary. She’s been a civil rights advocate — gender rights, equity, health issues. And she really wanted to bring it all together. And she saw the nation’s number one public university as a great opportunity to endow something that will be here forever, basically,” said UCLA’s Darnell Hunt.
Racist history of America’s highway boom | Los Angeles Times
All this occurred not only because of explicitly racist decision-making, but also because of how race influenced the nation’s housing and economic policy at the time, said Eric Avila, a history and Chicano studies professor at UCLA and author of multiple books on urban freeways.
Sheep may be firefighting solution | ABC News
Climate change is not the only culprit. Six of the seven largest fires in California have occurred in the past two years, and experts including Glen MacDonald, professor of geography and environment sustainability at UCLA say natural fuel is building up in forests, sparking hot, intense and fast-moving fires.
Is port congestion worsening L.A. pollution? | Los Angeles Times
Suzanne Paulson, professor of atmospheric and oceanic studies at UCLA, said that up until January 2020, cargo ships burned heavier fuel. Now, when those ships get near the coast of California, they’re required to shift to low-sulfur fuel. What’s unclear is whether the ships idling along California’s coast have enough of that fuel to wait out the backlog at the ports. “This issue is unprecedented,” Paulson said. “Usually, ships come and go. The ships off the coast may be a component that contributes to the pollution we’re seeing, but a lot of it has to do with the chemistry.”
Vulnerability of China’s coal industry | Reuters
“I’m puzzled as to why there is not a campaign-style push to ramp up renewable energy like we have seen with coal,” said Alex Wang, co-director at UCLA’s Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. “Coal reliance makes China vulnerable,” he added. “It’s an energy security problem.”
Is this the fifth COVID-19 wave? | USA Today
Wintertime COVID-19 surges may simply be something we’ll have to learn to live with. “It’s not going to go away,” said Dr. Timothy Brewer, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Can Biden presidency survive inflation? | Los Angeles Times
Though Republicans have used inflation to attack Biden, the numbers are actually a “signal that the economy has been able to recover very rapidly,” said Leo Feler, a senior economist at UCLA Anderson Forecast. Simply put, if consumers didn’t have money to spend on goods, demand for supplies would not be high, Feler said.
‘Rust’ tragedy, labor climate frame Hollywood contract vote | Associated Press
“This is going to get approved by the membership. They’ve never balked in the face of leadership recommending (approval) and I don’t see that this will be the exception,” said [Tom] Nunan, a lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Theater, Film and Television. “The progress that the team made on behalf of IATSE is spectacular by any measure.”
China opens first clinic for transgender youth | NBC News
It’s unclear how many children in China identify as transgender, as there is little research from the country on its trans community. However, a 2021 analysis by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law found that 14 percent of over 1,000 Chinese respondents say that they have transgender acquaintances.
Mysterious frog re-evolved full set of teeth | National Geographic
Some answers may be hiding in the treefrog’s embryos, according to Alexa Sadier, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California-Los Angeles. While she primarily explores the evolution of bat teeth, she recently reviewed several cases where lost traits remained in the early stages of a creature’s development. She believes that comparing the development of G. guentheri with the embryos of other frog species may help yield insights into how and when genes turn tooth formation on or off.
S.F.’s jails leading California in COVID prevention. How? | San Francisco Chronicle
The lack of COVID data tracking and reporting in jails and prisons is an issue across the country. The COVID Behind Bars Project at UCLA reported in its June 2021 scorecard that of the 53 state and federal carceral agencies they assessed for transparency and quality of data reporting, more than 80% received an “F.”
The latest on the pandemic | KPCC-FM’s “AirTalk”
“I think this is good news. It’s not very hard to make a justification for getting the booster. The CDC requirements or recommendations were fairly open so that if anyone perceived they had an increased risk of having COVID or being exposed to COVID, then they were allowed to get it without having to show documentation or proof,” said UCLA’s Dr. Annabelle De Saint Maurice (approx. 1:40 mark).
Culling trees to fight fires | Guardian
“Bushes are second-class citizens compared to trees,” says ecologist Brad Shaffer, director of the UCLA La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science, noting that fire effects on this system are understudied, compared with the northern forests. Shaffer, who is studying how ecosystems recovered after the Woolsey fire, which torched the chaparral-covered mountains in Los Angeles and Ventura counties in 2018, said it largely comes down to public perception.
Is Texas trying to lure cargo ships away from California? | Modesto Bee
Texas could help smaller ships, those with rough 14,000 containers or less, said Chris Tang, faculty director of the UCLA Center for Global Management. Bigger ships often have as many as 20,000 containers. The larger vessels would have trouble getting through the Panama Canal to the Gulf Coast ports, he said.
Not everyone can achieve optimal sleep times | Salon
“Overall, shift workers tend to be continually sleep-deprived,” the University of California–Los Angeles Sleep Disorders Center states. “It is very hard for night shift workers to get enough sleep during the day; they get a daily average of two to four hours less sleep than normal.” (Also: UCLA’s Dr. Gregg Fonarow is quoted by HealthDay News.)
Researching ‘institutional courage’ | Insider Higher Ed
Another funded project will examine Asian college students’ experiences of sexual harassment and sexual violence and xenophobia and their help-seeking behaviors. “Instead of blaming it on the students not seeking out help, we’re instead thinking about how may the institution frame the system in a way that’s not accessible for those students,” said Jianchao Lai, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Social Welfare at the University of California, Los Angeles, who is conducting the research along with Jennifer Wagman and Eunhee Park, both also of UCLA.
Latinx community needs fair redistricting map | Seattle Times
This issue recently came to the forefront at the state level when UCLA voting rights expert Matt A. Barreto determined that the Washington Redistricting Commission must draw a majority Latinx district in the Yakima Valley to comply with the federal Voting Rights Act.
American Dream is more attainable for TV characters than Americans | Phys.org
The American Dream may have faded, but it is unrealistically — and perhaps detrimentally — alive and well on teenagers’ favorite TV programs, according to a report published today by UCLA’s Center for Scholars and Storytellers. The persistence in popular entertainment of that dream—that anyone, regardless of their race or socioeconomic status, can achieve success through hard work and talent—ignores not only the stark economic realities of 21st-century America but the systemic inequities faced by people of color and the poor, say the report’s authors, who assessed the ways in which characters on the 10 fictional shows most popular with teens had “made it.” (UCLA’s Yalda Uhls is quoted.)
