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.
Sports betting is driving gambling addiction among college students | Time
Mobile phones also mean easy access to loans, via payday loan services and other sources, some of which will deposit funds into gambler’s accounts minutes after opening an account. “You can’t have a gambling addiction unless you have credit,” says Dr. Timothy Fong, a University of California, Los Angeles psychiatrist who specializes in addictions. “That’s what sustains it.”
In SoCal, killer commutes worsen for working class | Los Angeles Times
Commute times improved during the pandemic thanks to work-from-home policies. But Evelyn Blumenberg, an urban planning professor and director of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies at UCLA, suggested the benefits have been uneven. She noted that those who work from home are disproportionately higher-income workers.
Most L.A.P.D. flights aren’t for ‘high priority’ crimes | Los Angeles Times
Critics of the helicopter program had a mixed response to the report. UCLA biology professor Nicholas Shapiro, who for months has been studying the helicopters’ environmental impact, said he found the cost analysis “helpful” but had hoped for more data and analysis on “how racialized inequities are happening.”
L.A. City Council members wrestle with increasing their numbers | LAist
“I am deeply concerned about the issue of momentum,” said Gary Segura, dean of the Luskin School of Public Affairs at UCLA, who co-chairs the L.A. Governance Reform Project, a group of academics across the city advocating for reform. “Why would they prefer a charter commission? Because it pushes the window out later.”
Why it took 17 years to build 49 housing units in L.A. | Wall Street Journal
Los Angeles is aiming to construct more than 450,000 new homes by 2029, a feat that would require five times as much construction as occurred in the previous decade, according to a May report from researchers at the University of California Los Angeles’ Ziman Center for Real Estate and California State University Northridge.
The elusive shot to protect babies from RSV | Los Angeles Times
“It has taken many months for people to be able to find it reliably at local pharmacies,” and it’s still rare to get it at a doctor’s office, said Dr. Mya Zapata, an OB-GYN at UCLA Health. The vaccine’s availability “wasn’t clear and transparent,” and many patients had to call around or rely on word of mouth to find it.
The appeal of irrationality, anti-science and toxic extremism | The Hill
(Commentary co-written by UCLA’s Dr. Peter Katona) Doctors are of course not all-knowing, and the essence of science, is in fact, a healthy skepticism. But toxic skepticism, fear and doubt borne of ignorance and a steady overload of false information can be even more pernicious than an old-school blind faith in physician expertise. In an Information Age bad information is dangerous, even deadly.
How to get people addiction help that works | New York Times
And it’s been more than 15 years since Steven Shoptaw, a psychologist and addiction researcher at UCLA, demonstrated that contingency management, yet another version of the same approach, could help gay and bisexual men reduce their methamphetamine use, to great effect.
Fentanyl overdoses in 2022 hit Black community hardest | Daily Breeze
“It’s really striking what the rates are now for Black individuals dying of fentanyl,” said David Goodman-Meza, substance use researcher and assistant professor at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine. “Unfortunately, because of systematic racism that Black individuals suffer in Los Angeles County, they tend to live in more marginalized communities,” he added. “And they are less likely to access services.”
Is El Salvador’s crypto push working? | ABC News
“Because there’s so much joy around being able to feel safe right now people don’t want to think about what else might be happening behind the scenes that might really be mostly about supporting those who have always been in power in the country,” said UCLA Professor Leisy Abrego, who was born in El Salvador.
Inside the troll army waging Trump’s online campaign | New York Times
Because the Dilley Meme Team’s content is shared on the internet, rather than on television or radio, it generally isn’t subject to laws requiring ads to include disclosure about who paid for them. “If it goes on the internet, there’s essentially no regulation,” said Richard Hasen, an elections law expert at the University of California, Los Angeles. And without regulation, he added, it’s impossible to know who is paying for the content.
Marijuana use during pregnancy linked to low birth weight | NBC News
One of the “very notable features” of the new study is that the researchers were able to identify and measure how much, if any, cannabis the moms-to-be had used during their pregnancies, said Ziva Cooper, a professor at UCLA and the director of its Center for Cannabis and Cannabinoids.
It was a great year for movie sex scenes, despite the discourse | Vox
There is actually data to back up the sensation that Gen Z is resistant to seeing sex depicted. A study from UCLA recently revealed that 47.5 percent of 13- to 24-year-olds surveyed said they didn’t think sex was necessary in movies and TV shows.
Helping more people get to safety in a wildfire | Scienmag
Researchers from UCLA’s John Garrick Institute for the Risk Sciences have built a new web-based software platform that allows emergency planners to design custom-made evacuation plans for their communities that will help more people safely escape an oncoming wildfire.
