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.
Trump hush money case raises thorny legal issues | Associated Press
“The bottom line is that it’s murky,” said Richard Hasen, an expert in election law and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles law school. “And the district attorney did not offer a detailed legal analysis as to how they can do this, how they can get around these potential hurdles. And it could potentially tie up the case for a long time.” (Hasen was also cited by the New York Times.)
Unequal distribution of urban greenery | The Guardian
Even as California grapples with the effects of an extremely wet winter, the threat of drought and heat lingers, especially for areas where vegetation is too sparse to blunt the dangers. The impacts are profound across these cityscapes, according to a new [UCLA] study that focuses specifically on Los Angeles, which also found they have a disproportionate effect on disadvantaged communities of color. (UCLA’s Glen MacDonald, Michael Jerrett and Chunyu Dong were quoted.)
‘Latinx’ debate complicates a cultural renewal | Washington Post
“We are seeing a moment in any ethnic community life span where members have to reconsider what it means to be part of the group, what the content of the identity means, and how to be a good member of this community,” said Efrén Pérez, a professor of political science and psychology at UCLA, where he directs the Race, Ethnicity, Politics and Society Lab.
Floods may be a sample of Megafloods to come | NPR’s ‘Morning Edition’
California residents are reeling from this winter’s intense storms. Climate scientists say these storms are just a fraction of what’s expected in a warmer world. … UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain warns what Californians have lived through this winter is only a taste of what’s to come, as human-caused climate change continues. “As disruptive as this year’s events have been, we’re nowhere near close to a plausible worst-case storm and flood scenario for California,” [Swain said]. (Approx. 1:00 mark.)
Addiction to parking lots fueling housing shortage | Business Insider
UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs has estimated that carless renters, primarily lower-income residents, pay nearly half a billion dollars annually for parking they don’t use and are effectively subsidizing for others. Building housing becomes that much more difficult solely because of the cost of accommodating cars that many residents don’t even have.
Population winners and losers by county | Los Angeles Times
The “waning of the worst days of the pandemic has slowed the exit from major cities” as fear of living in crowded communities has decreased and in-office workers have become more common, argued Paul Ong, director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at UCLA. The cities have “once again become appealing to a new generation of young workers,” he said, though they still have major issues to address.
Rise in K-12 enrollment for homeless students | CalMatters
The overarching cause of homelessness among all Californians is the perennial shortage of affordable housing in the state, according to Angela James, a researcher at UCLA’s Center for the Transformation of Schools. “It’s alarming to me, quite frankly,” James said. “Housing instability may be deepening in California as a result of the pandemic.”
Foldable robots can squeeze into extreme situations | Popular Science
A team of UCLA researchers has designed a new way to integrate traditionally inflexible semiconductor and sensory components into their devices’ structural materials. … “These types of dangerous or unpredictable scenarios, such as during a natural or manmade disaster, could be where origami robots proved to be especially useful,” said Ankur Mehta, the study’s principal investigator and director of UCLA’s Laboratory for Embedded Machines and Ubiquitous Robots.
UCLA creation could prevent peanut allergy | Scienmag
In testing in mice, the nanoparticle not only reversed peanut allergies, but also prevented them from developing. The study was published in the journal ACS Nano. “As far as we can find, mRNA has never been used for an allergic disease,” said [UCLA’s] Dr. André Nel, the paper’s co-corresponding author … “We’ve shown that our platform can work to calm peanut allergies, and we believe it may be able to do the same for other allergens, in food and drugs, as well as autoimmune conditions.”
Drug overdose deaths soaring among seniors | The Hill
In the past twenty years, drug overdose fatalities quadrupled among Americans aged 65 and older, according to new research published in JAMA Psychiatry… The research “underscores how important it is for clinicians and policymakers to think of overdose as a problem across the lifespan,” study author Chelsea Shover, assistant professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, said in a statement.
Autism risk may be linked to lithium in water | CTV News
The level of lithium in a pregnant woman’s household’s tap water may correlate to a higher chance of their infant being diagnosed with autism, according to a new study looking at how this environmental factor may impact the prevalence of the neurological difference. … “Any drinking water contaminants that may affect the developing human brain deserve intense scrutiny,” Beate Ritz, the lead author of the study, said in a press release. Ritz is professor of neurology in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and professor of epidemiology and environmental health at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.
How to easily create a calorie deficit | Men’s Health
As Dana Ellis Hunnes Ph.D., M.P.H., R.D., a senior clinical dietitian at UCLA medical center and author of Recipe For Survival, explains, a calorie deficit occurs when you expand more calories from activity and daily living than you take in from the foods and beverages that we consume. “There is more than one way to achieve a calorie deficit,” Ellis Hunnes says.
