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.

‘Gaslighting’: Are we using the term correctly? | Los Angeles Times

(Commentary by UCLA’s Jessica Rett) Merriam-Webster has just announced that “gaslighting” is their word of the year for 2022, noting that searches for the word on its website have increased a whopping 1,740% from last year. From my perspective as a semanticist — a linguist who studies meaning — the word has two properties that have been driving us to look it up.

Evictions loom as pandemic tenant protections expire | NPR

Court records show that in the last decade, there were about 40,000–50,000 evictions per year in Los Angeles County. But at the height of the pandemic, that number dropped by more than half — to 13,000 annually. That’s largely due to pandemic tenant protections, like rental assistance and eviction moratoria, said urban sociologist and UCLA postdoctoral fellow Kyle Nelson. Now, those protections are expiring, and Nelson said evictions are skyrocketing.

UCLA to incorporate tribal traditions for campus land use | KPCC-FM

“UCLA has importantly acknowledged that we are on indigenous land that was never ceded by the Tongva. So I think that as a land grant university, there’s a kind of moral responsibility that UCLA is trying to step up to meet,” said UCLA’s Shannon Speed.

Climate change risks: Pacific Northwest | Yahoo News

“We’re not losing the ability to predict weather or extreme events, really. In fact, if anything, our ability is improving incrementally over time. But if we’re talking about predicting large-scale shifts over decades, I still think we’re kind of behind the curve,” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain told Yahoo News. “We can’t always represent those changes very well because we don’t always understand them.”

L.A.’s antibiotic and cold medicine shortages | LAist

Amoxicillin is typically found in liquid form used to treat children for bacterial infections like bronchitis or pneumonia, though it’s not quite as effective in treating the common cold or the flu. There are alternatives to amoxicillin, says UCLA Health pediatrician Anu Seshadri, but what’s most concerning is the shortages in fever reducers like Motrin and Tylenol. “It’s very hard to find a substitute for a fever reducer,” Seshadri said.

Legality of bans on care for transgender youth | New York Times

The trial, the first in the country over a challenge to a state ban on what has become known as gender-affirming care, concluded on Thursday after four days of testimony in October and four more last week … The Williams Institute at the U.C.L.A. School of Law estimates that there are 1,800 transgender youths in Arkansas.

Law promises to light up marijuana research | Science

President Joe Biden today signed into law a bill that streamlines access to marijuana for medical research … “This is exciting,” says Ziva Cooper, director of the Center for Cannabis and Cannabinoids at the University of California (UC), Los Angeles. “The bill is a significant step forward with respect to chipping away at the barriers” for research. Scientists are eager to study cannabis and its derivatives as potential treatments for cancer, chronic pain, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other conditions.

Will electric cars replace need for public transit? | San Diego Union-Tribune

A basic tenant of the [California blueprint] is to promote walkable cities serviced by transit to conserve energy … “It’s actually a really powerful strategy,” said Juan Matute, deputy director of UCLA’s Institute of Transportation Studies. “If you don’t change development patterns, you end up having more power generation, including delaying retiring existing natural gas plants to accommodate the switch to electric vehicles.”

Can a plant-based diet help with hot flashes? | U.S. News & World Report

Dana Ellis Hunnes, a senior clinical dietitian at UCLA Medical Center, assistant professor at UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and author of “Recipe for Survival,” agrees that diet can make a big difference to how you feel during menopause. “Staying fit and healthy can go a long way, weight management can go a long way, and diet — specifically a whole, plant-based diet — can go a really long way,” she says.