UCLA In the News lists selected mentions of UCLA in the world’s news media. Some articles may require registration or a subscription to view. See more UCLA In the News.
Are there limits to the rights revolution? | New York Times Opinion
In contrast to Cain, Seana Shiffrin, a professor of philosophy, law and social justice at UCLA, argued that “the Democrats should take a matter of fact approach about these issues, with the tone that they are pretty straightforward. They shouldn’t hand-wring or talk about it as “a difficult matter.” In Shiffrin’s view, “showing strength and conviction here is also a strategic approach.”
Sen. Feinstein urges CDC to study link between climate change and early births | Sacramento Bee
A University of California, Los Angeles study has prompted Sen. Dianne Feinstein, warning of a future health crisis if leaders fail to act, to call on the national health agency to consider the effects of how unseasonably hot weather is tied to early deliveries…. “That’s a very big number — one in 100 births. This is a very high risk,” [UCLA’s Alan] Barreca told The Sacramento Bee in an interview this month discussing the study’s findings. “The birth implications of climate change affect people the most.”
Is Judaism an ethnicity? A race? A nationality? Trump signs an order and provokes an identity crisis | Washington Post
As the United States grew more ethnically diverse, Jewish Americans increasingly were seen as white, a characterization that brought its own awkwardness and ambivalence. “There is such variation: Yes, I’m white in the sense that as I walk around publicly, I have all the privileges allocated to white women,” said Karen Brodkin, a UCLA anthropologist who has written extensively on the subject of how Jews came to be considered white. “But there’s a hell of a vicious history of anti-Semitism.”
Would Booker and Castro be in tonight’s debate if polls counted people of color accurately? | Washington Post Opinion
(Commentary written by UCLA’s Matt Barreto) urrent polling methods don’t accurately sample minority voters. That failure particularly skews our understanding of the Democratic electorate — and limits the candidates who will be on tonight’s debate stage…. Many 2020 polls are conducted only in English or offer Spanish callbacks rather than immediate options — which results in sampling too few Spanish-speaking voters. As a result, too many of the “mainstream” polls significantly oversample college-educated and higher-income minority voters simply because they’re easier to reach than those with lower socioeconomic status.
New tests use epigenetics to guess how fast you’re aging | Wired
In 2011, after analyzing hundreds of epigenetic markers, Steve Horvath developed the first epigenetic “clock,” a new way to calibrate aging. It measures specific epigenetic patterns that are linked to aging and disease, and compares that result against what would normally be expected for someone of your age. You may look or feel younger than expected, but this clock puts a number on it and tells you whether you really are aging more slowly than most other people…. Horvath, a biostatistician at the University of California Los Angeles, wasn’t trying to create a scientific oracle. A test of cellular aging, he reasoned, would be a powerful tool for researchers trying to find ways to prolong life and health.
What are independent voters’ burning issues? | New York Times
(Article co-written by UCLA’s Lynn Vavreck and Chris Tausanovitch) Although impeachment of the president is a big issue for independents, unlike partisans they do not lean overwhelmingly in one direction. Among those with an opinion, 55 percent are in favor. The second-most important issue for independents is the separation of immigrant children at the border — an issue that was first in importance for Democrats and 19th for Republicans.
The 2010s were a devastating blunder for the climate, but we have to be hopeful going into 2020 | Vogue
“Every decade since we’ve understood that human emissions of greenhouse gases cause global warming has been a missed opportunity for action,” says Katharine Davis Reich, associate director of the UCLA Center for Climate Science. “The more time that passes, the more glaring the inadequacy of our collective response.” … “Scientists can talk with policymakers until they are blue in the face, but the truth is that policymakers don’t act without pressure from their constituents,” Reich says. “If we citizens are not exercising our political power through our votes, through calls and messages to our representatives, and other direct and indirect actions, we’re not going to get the change we need.”
The push to quash criticism of Israel is a push to quash free speech | The Nation Opinion
(Commentary written by UCLA’s Saree Makdisi) The only thing that has stood in the face of all these efforts — including the one in the UC system — has been the principle of freedom of speech, with which they are manifestly at odds.
Firefighters help Santa deliver toys to children in hospital | Patch
Santa Claus visited the Mattel Children's Unit alongside Santa Monica Fire Department Captain James Altman and other SMFD firefighters to delivered presents to the children, who are currently patients at the hospital. The firefighters buy and wrap their own gifts, and the kids were happy to open them, Simi Singer, a UCLA Medical Center representative told Patch.
Hallmark’s bridal ad controversy ruined and then restored my Christmas | Philadelphia Inquirer Opinion
All that fire and brimstone is a reaction not merely to a single commercial, but to the simple fact that more than one million lesbians and gay men are legally married to same-sex partners, according to the Williams Institute of the UCLA School of Law.
Algorithm can identify LA County residents most likely to lose housing | KABC-TV
Researchers at UCLA’s California Policy Lab and the Poverty Lab at the University of Chicago have come up with a new algorithm that will help them do just that. The predictive modeling program analyzes data of L.A. County residents who receive county assistance and can predict which of those people have the highest odds of losing their housing. “We built a model that can analyze hundreds of thousands if not millions of data points that would be very difficult for a human to analyze,” said Janey Rountree, the Executive Director of the California Policy Lab.
Did a conspiracy really destroy LA’s huge streetcar system? | Curbed Los Angeles
As UCLA professor emeritus Martin Wachs points out in a 1984 essay, “The extent of the metropolitan region has not grown significantly since [1910]. And most of the more recent growth has consisted instead of filling in the spaces between outlying centers associated with important stations on the Pacific Electric.”
Proposed Coachella Travel Center with hotel conflicts with 86 interchange upgrade | Palm Springs Desert Sun
UCLA Law School professor Jonathan Zasloff said it’s unclear what legal argument Mucino would have if the city denied the zoning change request. Zasloff, a land use and urban planning expert, said that in general, cities have to consider whether projects are consistent with existing zoning ordinances. “I’m not there, but it seems to me that it’s perfectly legitimate for the city to say, ‘We don’t see any reason to change now. This is what the zoning says.” Zasloff said. “It certainly seems reasonable to me without knowing any more, that if they say, ‘We don’t want to be planning a big development going in a place where we’re about to put an interchange.’ “
NASA releases new image of interstellar visitor | Futurism
“Hubble gives us the best measure of the size of comet Borisov’s nucleus, which is the really important part of the comet,” University of California Los Angeles astronomer David Jewitt told The Independent. “Surprisingly, our Hubble images show that its nucleus is more than 15 times smaller than earlier investigations suggested it might be,” he added.
Our favorite essays of 2019 | Zócalo Public Square
UCLA historian and spatial theorist Genevieve Carpio recounts the turn-of-the-century bicycle craze among Japanese Americans in Southern California — and how authorities eventually used surveillance to limit their mobility and enforce racial separation.
Addicted to video games | The Week
Timothy Fong, a professor of addiction psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, says he is convinced that video-game addiction is real. “It’s quite possible and common to have both addiction and another mental or behavioral disorder simultaneously,” he told me, like depression or anxiety. “At least half the time, compulsive gamers come in with clinical histories and mind-sets that are essentially the same as patients with heroin addiction, alcoholism, or gambling disorder. They have all the hallmarks.”
UCLA researchers observe brain-like behavior in nanoscale device | Patch
UCLA scientists James Gimzewski and Adam Stieg are part of an international research team that has taken a significant stride toward the goal of creating thinking machines.… “This is a system between order and chaos, on the edge of chaos,” said Gimzewski, a UCLA distinguished professor of chemistry and biochemistry, a member of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA and a co-author of the study. “The way that the device constantly evolves and shifts mimics the human brain. It can come up with different types of behavior patterns that don’t repeat themselves.”
UCLA Caregiver Boot Camp | KTTV-TV
There are more than five million Americans living with dementia. Doctors right here at UCLA have created a unique way to make it easier for their family members to take care of them. (UCLA’s Dr. Zaldy Tan is interviewed.)
