The Los Angeles Times featured several UCLA experts in an article about LA Metro’s Wilshire subway line, a route that will cover some of the city’s densest communities. Rider behavior is yet to be determined, and people like UCLA’s Jacob Wasserman, a research program manager at the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, says wait times may cause potential riders to stick with their cars. Brian Taylor, a fellow at the institute and a professor of urban planning and public policy at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs, says the line will need to be “the best way to get around” if it’s going to change commuter behavior. Read more about UCLA in today’s Discover Magazine and Vox.

More highlights from UCLA in the News: May 8, 2026

Health officials across 4 continents race to contain Hantavirus outbreak | MS Now

British and Spanish authorities say they are monitoring new suspected cases of Hantavirus in connection with the cruise ship at the center of this outbreak. MS Now Senior Reporter Josh Einiger and UCLA Professor of Epidemiology Anne Rimoin join Ana Cabrera with the latest updates. (Rimoin was also interviewed by KCAL-TV and KTLA-TV.)

Potatoes may have given some Andean populations a genetic advantage | Discover

“The high-altitude Andes are known for being a rich region for understanding human evolutionary adaptation — for instance, hypoxia, in which tissues do not get enough oxygen,” said [UCLA] study co-author Abigail Bigham in a press release. “This new research highlights how the Andes are useful for understanding human evolutionary adaptation to other selective environmental pressures like diet.” (Also: Earth.com.)

Climate extremes are changing how monkey societies survive | Earth.com

The Lomas Barbudal Monkey Project has tracked capuchins since 1990. Researchers followed 12 groups across 33 years. They recorded feeding habits, movement, and interactions with nearby groups. “But when I started observing a single capuchin group back in 1990, I had no idea three decades later that the study would have expanded to this size, or that the monkeys would experience such extreme climate disruption, or that there would be such dramatic within-group variation in size over time,” said Susan Perry from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Texas reflects the nation’s Latino wealth divide | Axios San Antonio

The UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute–UnidosUS report claims the Latino wealth gap isn’t accidental but a result of decades of U.S. policy decisions that shape economic inequality today … The disparities are also evident in Texas, where the Latino median household income is about $65,000 annually compared to $80,000 for white households, Gabriella Carmona, the report’s lead author and a senior research analyst at the institute, tells Axios.

LA’s golden streetlights have turned harsh white | Los Angeles Times

Travis Longcore, an adjunct professor at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability who studies the effects of artificial night lighting on human health, said that should not be hard to achieve with LED. “There’s this take out there that all LEDs are bad, but that’s not the case. You can achieve warmer colors with LEDs,” Longcore said. 

The solution to urban heat is much, much simpler than you think | Grist

“I think that for us to use trees as a type of living infrastructure, that can counter those increased temperatures, is paramount,” said Edith de Guzman, a cooperative extension researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies urban heat but wasn’t involved in either study. “I think it’s pretty much the most important thing we can do.”

What does the post-Voting Rights Act world look like? | Vox

“To give up that influence for a party that has repeatedly failed to deliver on working-class Latino voters’ priorities and is now asking for additional sacrifice to give itself a political boost may not be acceptable,” Sonja Diaz, a founding member of the UCLA Latino Politics and Policy [Institute], told me.

Scientists finally see inside the ‘black box’ of depression treatment | Medical Xpress

In a study published in Cell, a collaborative team out of the UCLA Neuromodulation Division reported the first preclinical model showing how a fast-acting form of TMS physically repairs brain circuits disrupted by stress to produce antidepressant effects. Remarkably, TMS selectively targeted specific brain cells to restore a disrupted communication channel in the brains of mice. (UCLA’s Dr. Scott Wilke and Dr. Michael Gongwer were quoted; UCLA’s Laura DeNardo was cited.)