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.
Western drought is worst in 12 centuries | New York Times
The megadrought in the American Southwest has become so severe that it’s now the driest two decades in the region in at least 1,200 years, scientists said Monday, and climate change is largely responsible … Exceptional conditions in the summer of 2021, when about two-thirds of the West was in extreme drought, “really pushed it over the top,” said A. Park Williams, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who led an analysis using tree ring data to gauge drought. As a result, 2000–2021 is the driest 22-year period since 800 A.D., which is as far back as the data goes. (Also: Los Angeles Times and National Public Radio.)
Bob Saget’s death highlights head injuries | Los Angeles Times
Thousands of Americans suffer traumatic brain injuries every year, but incidents like the ones that claimed Saget’s life are rare … [UCLA’s Dr. Christopher] Giza agreed. “Hitting your head on the headboard is not going to create a lot of force,” he said. By contrast, he said, “slipping in the bathroom and hitting your head on the side of the bathtub is going to have considerable force.”
Billionaire Rick Caruso enters L.A. mayoral race | New York Times
But Mr. Caruso’s candidacy for the officially nonpartisan post of mayor will face a political dynamic that has undergone substantial change over the past generation … “The electorate in 1993 is completely dissimilar to the electorate in 2022,” said Sonja Diaz, the director of the Latino Policy & Politics Initiative at the University of California, Los Angeles. “We’re talking about two different Los Angeleses.” (Diaz was also quoted in the Los Angeles Times.)
Is climate change heating up the Super Bowl? | Los Angeles Times
Experts … warn of the difficulty of attributing a single meteorological event to a long-term trend like global warming. But at the same time, they said, rising temperatures are driving up the probability that unseasonable heat events will occur. “Due to climate change, we’re basically shifting the baseline toward these warmer temperatures,” said UCLA climate scientist Karen McKinnon. “All else being equal then, that makes an event like this more likely.”
Homelessness is top issue in L.A. mayoral race | USA Today
“This problem has been around for a long time (but) we’re past the tipping point now, the political tipping point. This is as potent a political issue as there is in the election coming forward,” said Zev Yaroslavsky, a former L.A. city councilman and county supervisor who teaches at the University of California, Los Angeles’ Luskin School of Public Affairs.
How climate change is affecting animal species | ABC News
Species typically adapt in one of three ways, Morgan Tingley, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California Los Angeles, told ABC News. They shift their distribution, change spaces or move from one place to another when the region gets too hot (either to a cooler region to higher altitudes).
Weaponizing our oceans against climate change | Daily Beast
Another proposal for using the ocean as a sponge for carbon involves inducing electrolysis (splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen) to remove carbon dioxide from the water and locking it up within mineral salts called carbonates. Gaurav Sant, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles is going to test out such a method in a new startup project called SeaChange. (Sant is quoted.)
Hammer Museum spotlighting works on paper | Los Angeles Times
At UCLA’s Hammer Museum and its affiliated Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, which both collect works on paper, the answer is to embrace an established museum practice while giving it an updated twist. As part of the Hammer’s ongoing, $100-million renovation and expansion project at its Westwood building, a new Grunwald study-storage facility for works on paper is nearing completion, expected in early spring.
‘Black joy’ as a form of resistance | NBC’s “Today”
As Black people continue to fight for justice against policy brutality, discrimination, institutionalized racism, and more, Kleaver Cruz of the “Black Joy Project” is just one of many who have been encouraging Black people to choose joy as a form of resistance … According to a recent study from researchers at UCLA, discrimination can greatly impact a young adult’s mental health, causing them to turn to drugs or experience “psychological distress,” because of higher levels of anxiety and depression.
Vaccine hesitancy in Bay Area schools | Bay Area News Group
Tyrone Howard, a professor of education in the School of Education & Information Studies at UCLA, said it would be a mistake to move ahead with vaccine mandates in schools where a disproportionate number of Black and Brown students lack the shots. Moving those students into online schooling programs with fewer resources would result in unjust segregation, he said.
Massive sewage spill caused by human, technology errors | Southern California News Group
[Michael] Stenstrom — a UCLA civil and environmental engineering professor who has worked primarily on wastewater treatment plants since 1977 — said he also initially assumed the cause of the spill was outside debris. But when he and others started investigating, they knew that wasn’t the case, Stenstrom said in a Friday phone interview.
Pandemic put brakes on cancer research, care | HealthDay News
Dr. Antoni Ribas, report chair, past president of the AACR and director of the tumor immunology program at University of California, Los Angeles, said that the disruption to cancer research “is estimated to result in thousands of additional cancer deaths in the coming years.” “The pandemic has caused significant challenges for cancer researchers,” Ribas added, noting that a survey of AACR-funded cancer researchers found that nearly all had experienced significant negative impacts to their productivity and careers.
February heatwave and climate change anxiety | Politico
“Folks with self-described severe climate anxiety now reach out to me (& other climate scientists I know) essentially every week,” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain tweeted on Monday. “Climate scientists are not equipped to be on the front lines of the surge in climate anxiety — there really need to be more clinicians and practitioners who specialize in this.”
Changing landscape of college admissions | Forbes
Gary Clark is the director of admission at the University of California Los Angeles, another school that has experienced notable changes in both the volume of applications and the makeup of their applicant pool. He says, “At my campus, we’re seeing significant increases among our strongest applicants. The increasing number of applications combined with the move away from standardized testing has led to declining admit rates and increasing uncertainty around admission outcomes.”
College equity gaps for L.A.’s Black, Latino students | Diverse Issues in Higher Education
The percentage of Black and Latinx students graduating from LAUSD who completed A-G courses plummeted from 63% to 54% for Latinx graduates — and 53% to 46% for Black graduates. “That’s a notable decrease, especially when there has been so much intentionality over the years around increasing those numbers,” said Dr. Tyrone Howard, a professor of education in the School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). “To see them go down is troubling.”
Study of lions shows evidence of poaching in Zambia | Gizmodo
[Paula] White and colleague Blaire Van Valkenburgh, both of the University of California, Los Angeles, used photos to compare natural wear on the lions and leopard’s teeth, comparing it to the more serious damage caused by shotgun pellets or wire snares. The photos showed large, noticeable indents in teeth from snares.
How to select the right meal containers | NBC News
Experts said any meal prep container should have a leak-proof lid or seal. This reduces the risk of bacteria growth on stored food, according to Shelby Yaceczko, an advanced practice clinical dietitian in the Center for Human Nutrition at UCLA Health. And if you’re transporting meal prep containers during the day, a tight seal or leak-proof lid helps prevent spills and leakage.
Increasing blood donations amid supply shortage | Well + Good
School blood drives and blood donation buses are often how younger people donate, but many of those have been shuttered or reduced during the pandemic — and that’s a problem. “We need to obtain healthy donors that are willing to donate,” says Dawn Ward, MD, medical director of the Blood and Platelet Center at UCLA Health. “Additionally, many of our life-long donors are older in age, so we need to do a better job of encouraging and retaining young people to donate blood.”
