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.
Hollywood diversity: Progress on streaming masks decline | The Wrap
For the first time, UCLA’s annual Hollywood Diversity Report separated its findings between films made for streaming and those made for theatrical. The results showed that the industry’s push for diversity is making much more progress on the small screen than the big screen. (UCLA’s Michael Tran and Ana-Christina Ramon were quoted. Also: Forbes, KTLA-TV, KABC-TV, KCAL-TV, KCRW-FM, LAist 89.3-FM, Axios and PAPER.)
Low wages exacerbate crushing cost of elder care | Los Angeles Times
One possible answer, said Fernando Torres-Gil, a UCLA professor and former U.S. Office on Aging executive, would be “a public universal long-term-care financing mechanism we’re all required to pay into … The question is, do we have sufficient public support for it? Do we have a public that recognizes the risks of growing older and all the things that come with it?”
Job-ready college classes in immigrants’ native language | Los Angeles Times
In a move to boost sagging community college enrollment and address student demand for job-ready education opportunities, Los Angeles Community College campuses are experimenting with a new genre of courses taught in the native language of students … Patricia Gandara, a research professor of education at UCLA, said she is not aware of any legal restrictions that would prevent community colleges from providing instruction in languages other than English.
Was it L.A.’s dreariest, wettest winter ever? | Los Angeles Times
Some health professionals say they’ve seen an uptick in patients experiencing common symptoms of seasonal affective disorder, a form of depression related to a change in seasons. “It’s a lot of wanting to sleep more, having difficulty getting out of bed,” said Sierra Kuzava, a clinical psychologist at UCLA Health. “[People are] feeling like something is hanging over their head — because it is.”
Even with mass shootings, gun safety laws being erased | Los Angeles Times
(Commentary by UCLA’s Adam Winker) Once again a mass shooting is in the headlines — this time in Nashville, with three children among the six victims. This latest horrific tragedy is prompting renewed calls for gun reform, but what most Americans don’t know is that a different kind of gun revolution is already underway.
How our weather terminology has grown | Los Angeles Times
Most call the development overwhelmingly positive, but there’s a growing concern that these dramatic-sounding terms can get “misused and abused in different circles,” said Daniel Swain, a UCLA climate scientist. “I think that sometimes using the more colorful language is helpful in a science communication perspective,” Swain said. “But you do need to present things in context.” (Swain was also quoted on California’s weather by CNN and The Hill.)
Original name spellings on birth certificates | NBC News
“That is an important contrast, because if lawmakers didn’t like the way some languages or some ethnicities didn’t conform to their version of English, then that should have been applied equally,” said Matt Barreto, a professor of political science and Chicana/o and Central American studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. “We can very easily infer that this was a move against Spanish [and] Latinos — and that other marks were allowed to stay in if they were from European ancestry.”
Teens say they proved 2,000-year-old theorem | ABC News
According to UCLA’s computer science department, scholars in ancient Babylon and Egypt knew of the theorem and it was displayed on a 4,000-year-old Babylonian tablet. Pythagoras was an ancient Greek philosopher who revealed it to the Western world nearly 2,000 years later.
Donald Trump and women | USA Today
Juliet Williams, the chair of the social science interdisciplinary program at UCLA, said she’s seeing the term “porn star” appear in every major media outlet describing the case against Daniels. “It’s absolutely atrocious and is something that needs to be reckoned with — why that terminology is even considered appropriate. Who cares what her profession is?”
America has too much parking | Wall Street Journal
“The Dutch have reclaimed land from the sea, and I think we can reclaim land from parking,” said Donald Shoup, an urban planner at the University of California, Los Angeles who pioneered the field of parking research.
Autism risk and lithium in drinking water | CNN
Further study is required, said study co-author Dr. Beate Ritz, a professor of neurology in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and a professor of epidemiology and environmental health at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. “Any drinking water contaminants that may affect the developing human brain deserve intense scrutiny,” Ritz said in a news release. She added that the research would need to be replicated in other countries to look for a similar connection.
Medical experts weigh in on COVID | LAist 89.3-FM’s ‘AirTalk’
“The arising of variants and when the next one may arise. I think that’s always a concern we have. And what will be the characteristics of that as it arises — will it evade our vaccine immunity or our natural immunity?” said UCLA’s Dr. Robert Kim-Farley … “We do know that there is an intersection between mental illness and long COVID that we’re still trying to understand, the reasons why these things happen together or why we see them,” said UCLA’s Kristen Choi.
FDA approves over-the-counter sale of Narcan | KCBS-TV
“I think this is a great move by the FDA, and hopefully will get Narcan to more and more people. What it does is that it essentially reverses the effects of opioids. So if you have too much opioids in your system and you’re not breathing, it should help you start breathing again and save a life,” said UCLA’s Dr. Evan Schwarz (Schwarz was interviewed.)
Loneliness can compromise your immune system | Salon
Alarmingly, loneliness also reduces one’s ability to generate an effective immune response to a vaccine. UCLA scientist Steven Cole, who was involved in the above study, states that social disconnection triggers around 200 genes to contribute to what he calls “a molecular soup of death.” He calls loneliness “a fertilizer for other diseases,” promoting low-level inflammation that can lead to heart disease, cancer, neurodegenerative diseases and more.
Fears of an eviction crisis in L.A. | LAist
Housing advocates and elected officials worry that the expiring rules could lead to an eviction crisis in April. But for many renters, that crisis has already arrived… “Evictions are as high as they’ve been in quite some time,” said Kyle Nelson, a UCLA postdoctoral fellow who collects and analyzes data on L.A. evictions.
9 common money myths | CNBC
Holistic financial advice — guidance focused on savings, debt and insurance, in addition to investments — can be worth an income boost of more than 7% a year, said Shlomo Benartzi, a behavioral economist and professor emeritus at the UCLA Anderson School of Management.
Are culture wars making students less tolerant? | Education Week
Fights over lessons of race and racism, LGBTQ+ issues, and books are infiltrating schools even in the most liberal states, and might be resulting in hostile student interactions. That’s according to a report released in March that surveyed high school principals across California, and was conducted by UCLA researchers. (UCLA’s John Rogers was quoted.)
Rodents and people make same logical errors | Medical Xpress
The famous “Linda problem” was designed by psychologists to illustrate how people fall prey to what is known as the conjunction fallacy: the incorrect reasoning that if two events sometimes occur in conjunction, they are more likely to occur together than either event is to occur alone. Now, for the first time, UCLA psychology researchers have shown that this type of logical error isn’t the sole province of humans—surprisingly, rats seem to make the same mistakes. (UCLA’s Valeria González and Aaron Blaisdell were quoted.)
Prioritizing children’s future and well-being | KCRW-FM’s ‘Life Examined’
“School board meetings in which members of the community came in armed, in which members of the community made threats to school board members during the meetings, in which parents or community members threatened educators in interactions via emails — that has deep effect on the willingness of educators to support young people,” explains [UCLA’s John] Rogers.
