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.
What scientists know about the first interstellar objects ever detected | Scientific American
(Article co-written by UCLA’s David Jewitt) Late in the evening of October 24, 2017, an e-mail arrived containing tantalizing news of the heavens. Astronomer Davide Farnocchia of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory was writing to one of us (Jewitt) about a new object in the sky with a very strange trajectory. Discovered six days earlier by University of Hawaii astronomer Robert Weryk, the object, initially dubbed P10Ee5V, was traveling so fast that the sun could not keep it in orbit. Instead of its predicted path being a closed ellipse, its orbit was open, indicating that it would never return.
Retired UCLA professor, a World War II hero, is honored | Los Angeles Times
Wearing a mask as he sat at the front of the event hall, [Eldon] Knuth smiled as speakers — who cleaned the microphone between each speech — praised his valor and the full life he lived after the war. He was an engineering professor who taught for 35 years at UCLA, wrote more than 100 scientific papers and traveled the world with Margaret. (Also: Ventura County Star.)
The role of race in false accusations | Los Angeles Times
“While oftentimes we argue that the United States is quote-unquote ‘post-racial,’ we see a lot of incidents such as this one in Torrance, where we can see how race is still really a fundamental feature that we use when we interact with one another,” said Natalie Masuoka, an associate professor of political science and Asian American studies at UCLA.
Newsom signs farmworker protections package | Salinas Californian
Similarly, a University of California Los Angeles study demonstrated that Latino deaths have quintupled since May because of their status as “unsung essential workers,” such as agricultural workers.
New executive order may put palliative care for newborns at risk | Forbes
(Column by UCLA’s Dr. Nina Shapiro) Dr. Judith Brill, Pediatric Anesthesiologist, Professor Emeritus, and former Director of the Pediatric Critical Care Division at Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA has had over 35 years of experience treating critically ill children both at UCLA as well as worldwide on medical missions: “One of the most difficult moments while caring for a critically ill baby or child is when we come to the realization that none of our sophisticated, technologically advanced and up to date treatments will be able to change or even improve the child’s ultimate outcome.”
The debate was a disaster. But hey, climate change came up | Wired
“It was kind of interesting that that was the most watchable part of the entire debate, I think,” says University of California, Los Angeles climate scientist Daniel Swain. “And that seems to be something that other people have noticed, too. It was the part of the debate with fewest interruptions. I don’t know—maybe that’s because Trump just hadn’t prepared for it at all and didn’t really know what to say.” (Swain was also interviewed by KCRW-FM’s “Press Play”.)
Can we get through the election with our mental health intact? | Los Angeles magazine
Efrén Pérez, a professor of political psychology at UCLA, believes the anxiety and uncertainty surrounding COVID-19 could actually be suspending people’s normal political habits, strengthening more hard-line political views in some while pushing others away from politics altogether. “It’s plausible that some individuals who are already the least predisposed to participate in politics will become even less engaged,” Pérez says. “I wouldn’t be surprised if voter participation levels are lower than what you’d expect because more people are depressed.”
Trump has a chance to change his public health rhetoric | Business Insider
Anne Rimoin, an epidemiology professor at the University of California at Los Angeles’ Fielding School of Public Health, told Insider that the White House should have disclosed the positive result sooner. “I think that this is a perfect example of the sooner that you have information, the sooner that you can act on the information of course,” she said. “People should know immediately. I mean the sooner the people who have been in contact with Hope Hicks can isolate themselves and protect their families and their communities, their coworkers, the better.” (Rimoin was also interviewed by NBC’s “Early Today” and quoted by The Armenian Reporter.)
Airlines to introduce coronavirus testing at airports | Los Angeles Times
“If it’s an accurate test, a good one, it will help,” said Dr. Timothy Brewer, a professor in the division of infectious diseases at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine. “It won’t eliminate the risk, but it will reduce it.”
Lockdowns leave their marks on people’s dreams | NBC News
To Jennifer Martin, a professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, having strange dreams after a crisis is pretty common. “And believe it or not, a relatively normal part of how we respond to stress,” Martin said.
South Korea’s entertainment biz is taking the world by storm | Variety
Without a large home market, the Korean music business lost two-thirds of its revenue between 2000-05 when the conventional disc business crumbled, but the upheaval ultimately made the K-pop industry more resourceful, according to Suk-Young Kim, a professor in UCLA’s School of Theater, Film & Television. “Ironically these challenging circumstances pushed the K-pop industry to chart out foreign markets, and [work] much more aggressively to create foreign fandom,” says Kim.
Jobless hospitality workers face bleak future | Thomson Reuters Foundation
The least well-off workers are shouldering the economic burden of the pandemic throughout Los Angeles, said Kent Wong, director of the University of California Los Angeles Labor Center. “Here, you see some of the wealthiest people in the world .... and the workers creating that wealth getting squeezed,” he said. “This is the reality of L.A. today — record homelessness, a huge divide based on race and immigration status. It’s a tale of two cities.”
A church-vs.-state fight in the middle of a pandemic | KCRW-FM’s “Greater L.A.”
“The church’s argument is not ridiculous, but it’s unlikely to prevail,” says Eugene Volokh, a professor of First Amendment law at UCLA. “Normally, of course, the freedom of assembly gives everybody, religious or not, the right to gather for political reasons, religious reasons, to listen to speakers about art or literature or whatever else. But these are not normal times. And in such times, generally speaking, courts have allowed the government to restrict religious services alongside other similar gatherings.”
The facts about miscarriages | KCBS-TV
“Miscarriages are exceedingly common. And overall, for all comers, they happen in about 10% of what we say are clinically recognized pregnancies,” said UCLA’s Dr. Rishmi Rao.
School in the era of COVID-19 | KABC-TV
“What we know is that we’re doing a better job of getting our students connected. We’re getting better devices, we’re getting better internet connection, which we did not have in the Spring when we had the initial outbreak. So that’s good. Where we should be concerned is that many of our students, as we know, have suffered learning loss because they were not able to connect over the Summer and over the Spring,” said UCLA’s Tyrone Howard.
Milky Way’s largest star cluster may have eaten a smaller cluster | Science News
To get a look at the Milky Way’s core, Tuan Do, an astronomer at UCLA, and colleagues observed about 700 red giant stars within five light-years of the galaxy’s heart. Because dust between Earth and the galactic center blocks the stars’ visible light, the astronomers studied infrared wavelengths, which better penetrate the dust. “We noticed a very curious thing about our data, which is that the stars with less metals than our sun seem to be moving differently than the stars with more metals,” Do says.
Researchers discover first enzymes to catalyze a classic organic reaction | Phys.org
The Tang, Garg, and Houk research groups have discovered nature’s natural protein catalysts (enzymes) that catalyze the Alder-ene reaction. All groups are part of the UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry.
Thousands of older Californians are economically insecure | KPCC-FM
“You can imagine, if you’re in a household, you have an adult child with you now that you’re helping feed. You’re helping your grandchildren. You’ve been laid off or furloughed. These numbers were during a relatively healthy economic period, so you can imagine that they would be going up,” said UCLA’s Steven Wallace.
