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.
UCLA establishes Barbra Streisand Institute | City News Service
Barbra Streisand is establishing an institute at UCLA to conduct research into a range of social issues, ranging from climate change to environmental health to gender relations and how to combat disinformation at a national level. The Barbra Streisand Institute will be located in UCLA’s division of social sciences and consist of four centers that will address specified areas of concern. (UCLA Chancellor Gene Block and UCLA’s Darnell Hunt are quoted. Also: CNN, Variety, Inside Higher Ed, KTLA-TV and KNX-AM. )
Convincing unhoused people to get COVID shots | Los Angeles Times
So in L.A. County, health officials are enlisting people living in tents, RVs and makeshift shelters to help get unhoused people vaccinated against COVID-19. The fledgling effort, which launched in August, is being funded as a study through the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “A lot of people who are experiencing homelessness are not going to look at me or my healthcare colleagues as people who can speak to their experiences,” said Chelsea L. Shover, a UCLA School of Medicine assistant professor and principal investigator for the study. “It means more to have someone they’ve lived with and spent time with say, ‘I got mine, and it wasn’t a big deal.’”
Vaccination deadline nears for L.A. city workers | Los Angeles Times
Dr. Robert Kim-Farley, an epidemiologist at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health … added that “side effects are very low and comparable to other vaccines.” Millions have been vaccinated, he said, reducing “needless suffering, disability and death.” And “the risks of COVID disease are much, much higher than any risk of side effects due to the COVID vaccines.” (Kim-Farley was also interviewed about COVID-19 vaccines for pregnant women by BBC World News.)
UCLA is selling a Picasso. Why that’s a good thing | Los Angeles Times
The fine surprise comes from the Regents of the University of California, which is expected to announce today that it is deaccessioning Picasso’s head of a woman, “Profil,” to establish a fund for the acquisition of drawings, prints, photographs and other works of art on paper at the UCLA Hammer Museum and its admired Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts. The painting, given to UCLA in 1959 but languishing in storage since a 1961 exhibition in honor of the artist’s 80th birthday, is estimated to bring between $6 million and $8 million at the upcoming Nov. 11 sale at Christie’s. (UCLA’s Ann Philbin and Cynthia Burlingham are cited.)
Obituary: UCLA donor, champion of artists Margo Leavin | Los Angeles Times
In 2019, UCLA unveiled the Margo Leavin Graduate Art Studios in Culver City, a state-of-the-art facility for what was at the time the nation’s No. 2 graduate art school, according to U.S. News and World Report, whose latest ranking lifted UCLA to No. 1. The studios were made possible by a $20-million gift from the art dealer — the largest donation ever made by an alumna to the arts within the University of California system.
COVID tests prices can vary widely | New York Times
Gerald Kominski, a professor of health policy and management at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that the reason for the vast difference in pricing is a lack of government oversight, which “creates an opportunity for a company to, in some cases, exploit the fact that prices are not regulated.”
The linguistics of ‘Squid Game’ | NBC News
Ali starts off speaking at the most formal, polite level to Sang-woo, said Jennifer Jung-Kim, a lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles, who specializes in Korean history, gender, popular culture and food. At this speech level, “-mnida” or “-sumnida” are added to verb endings, she told NBC Asian America.
Pressure on Biden to end Title 42 expulsion policy | The Hill
“That rationale is dramatically untied to what we’re doing at the border now,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law. “People awaiting repatriation are often held for days, if not weeks, which obviously is much longer than needed to transmit COVID, and they often transport them together, so the core rationale for Title 42 and holding facilities has no connection to the reality of what they’re doing on the ground,” he said.
Oil wells could jeopardize wetlands | Orange County Register
The ocean can recover from major spill, with proper cleanup, in five to 10 years, according to Richard Ambrose, a coastal ecologist at UCLA. But a wetlands would take 30 to 40 years to recover. While Bolsa Chica has been spared damage from the latest spill, Talbert Marsh in the much smaller Huntington Beach Wetlands, which is less than 200 acres, did see wildlife and habit coated with oil and tar.
China and the COP26 climate summit | Quartz
“China does care about how it looks to the world,” Alex Wang, co-director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the University of California, Los Angeles, told McDonnell. “As long as they can seem better than the U.S., that’s better for them.” “The old message was, ‘resist action and blame the U.S.’ The new message is, ‘We’re the active and responsible ones’,” he added.
Will higher prices hurt California Democrats next year? | Sacramento Bee
“A lot of the agricultural valley workforces are relatively low income, which means that they’re ill equipped to deal with higher prices,” said Chris Tilly, an economist and professor of urban planning at UCLA. “If I’m an agricultural worker, and possibly even an agricultural worker who’s dealing with supply chain problems in their own industry, so the work may be more irregular than usual, then I’ve got a problem,” he said.
Groups sue to have ivermectin administered to COVID patients | Salon
Timothy Brewer, an epidemiology professor at UCLA, added that Lorigo’s “why not?” approach is far from justified, largely because the studies proffered by Lorigo are hardly conclusive, potentially adding complications to drugs patients are already being given. For instance, many of the studies use statistically insignificant sample sizes, deliver unsafe doses of the drug, or were written by doctors with clear conflicts of interest.
California housing production goals | CalMatters
A recent report from UCLA’s Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, for example, found nearly 70% of the new housing production in the Bay Area over the last eight-year cycle didn’t occur on property designated in cities’ housing plans.
Humanitarian crisis plagues U.S.–Mexico border | Fast Company
“I became interested in seeing whether or not instead of us constructing a map, we could ask people to make their own maps,” says Jason De León, the executive director of the Undocumented Migration Project, and an anthropology professor at UCLA. The physical act of writing out the names of those who have passed invites participants’ reflection and empathy.
COVID shaving years off life expectancy in some areas | Bloomberg
In Texas, COVID-19 caused an implied reduction in life expectancy at birth of 2.6 years to 76.4 in the twelve months ending in September, according to an analysis of death statistics from University of California at Los Angeles sociology professor Patrick Heuveline, an update of data originally published in the BMJ Open journal.
After dinosaurs, Earth became all-you-can-eat buffet for snakes | Popular Science
When it comes to snakes, the modern world offers an embarrassment of riches. There are almost 4,000 different snake species alive today, placing the group not far behind mammals in terms of diversity. The snakes are also varied in the types of food they prefer to consume: Some feast only on earthworms, while others can swallow an entire deer. “They just have an astounding variety of diets,” says Michael Grundler, a postdoctoral researcher in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Reducing sodium in processed and packaged foods | KABC-TV
“This is the first time that we’ve tried to attack a widespread problem in the community by addressing the manufacturers … The thought is, if we can get a 12% reduction in manufactured foods’ sodium content, then we can probably get the population down to a sodium intake of about three grams per day. That change will make a big improvement in health,” said UCLA’s Dr. Karol Watson (approx. 1:05 mark).
