The Los Angeles Times reported on a UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute study finding that immigration enforcement activity in Los Angeles County caused steep revenue losses for Latino-owned small businesses, with many continuing to struggle nearly a year later. Researchers estimated that businesses near nine enforcement sites lost more than $3 million in revenue in the two weeks following the 2025 raids, with entrepreneurs also reporting persistent financial stress and mental health impacts. (UCLA’s Amada Armenta was quoted. Also: Washington Post, KNBC-TV, KCAL-TV and Spectrum News 1.) Read more about UCLA in today’s Politico, Smithsonian Magazine, and others.

More highlights from UCLA in the News: July 23, 2026

‘Medical freedom’ takes a back seat in Florida’s midterm fights | Politico

Mark Peterson, a policy and political science professor at UCLA, said the medical freedom movement exposed a lack of communication between doctors and patients about the pros and cons of each vaccine. Even if Republican lawmakers are no longer emphatically backing protections against COVID-19 health requirements, many parents still have questions, and doctors and other medical professionals should be ready to inform them with facts.

The AI that could boost biomedical imaging, autonomous vehicle sensors | Phys.org

A research team led by UCLA and the University of Rochester has demonstrated a promising evolution of an imaging system designed to capture details within “complex media,” which scatter light, from depicting structures inside body tissue to seeing obstacles through heavy fog. The system uses physics-based machine learning to improve an existing imaging technique.

People aren’t born as righties or lefties, new study suggests | Smithsonian Magazine

“The dominant arm isn’t more capable because one hemisphere of the brain is simply better at controlling movement,” study co-author Ahmet Arac, a neurologist at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, says in a separate statement. “It is because we’ve spent a lifetime practicing the specific, complicated movements that tools and handwriting demand. Take away that practice by switching to a body part like the elbow that’s never done the task before and the advantage disappears.”