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.
Future storms may look recent rains look quaint | San Francisco Chronicle
The atmospheric rivers that pummeled California are a far cry from what a series of extreme storms could potentially bring, climate scientist Daniel Swain said at a legislative hearing on Wednesday that explored the impacts of the recent storm sequence. “We’re nowhere near the kinds of events that we think are possible in a warming climate,” said Swain, a researcher at UCLA and The Nature Conservancy.
L.A. students will be able to carry Narcan | Los Angeles Times
The decision to update and clarify the L.A. Unified policy was praised by advocates working to stop overdoses. Chelsea Shover, a UCLA researcher who has taught teens about naloxone, said that quick intervention is crucial during an overdose, and “having students carry it will really make a difference.” “We know there will be times when teens are with their friends and not close to the nurse’s office,” Shover said. “If their friend has Narcan, their friend can save their life.”
Fake Mexican pharmaceuticals laced with fentanyl | Los Angeles Times
A team led by UCLA researchers recorded similar results in a study last week, but this phenomenon has otherwise gone largely unnoticed. The new findings could represent a dangerous shift in the fentanyl crisis … “Whenever you have counterfeit products that contain fentanyl, you are going to have people use them and die,” said Chelsea Shover, a UCLA researcher and the study’s senior author.
How Groundhog Day came to the U.S. | NPR’s ‘Morning Edition’
Daniel Blumstein is a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCLA who studies marmots, the group of 15 species of large ground squirrels that includes groundhogs. His department always has a Groundhog Day party, even in perennially-sunny Los Angeles — but he says you don’t have to be a “marmot enthusiast” (as he describes himself) to get something out of the day.
Smartphone app may help detect stroke symptoms | Washington Post
Researchers have developed an app called FAST AI to detect the most common stroke symptoms — facial asymmetry, arm weakness and changes in speech — using machine learning algorithms. The preliminary findings will be presented next week at the American Heart Association’s International Stroke Conference. “Our goal is very simple. We want to detect stroke at onset,” said Radoslav I. Raychev, lead author of the study and a vascular neurologist at the University of California at Los Angeles. (Also: Medical Xpress and Scienmag.)
California to end COVID state of emergency this month | New York Times
The coronavirus is still killing about 40 people a day in California, and is infecting people at the level of a “very bad flu season,” said Dr. Timothy Brewer, an epidemiologist at U.C.L.A. But the state seems to have avoided a catastrophic winter surge, and reports of new cases have been falling in recent weeks. Three-fourths of all Californians have received at least an initial vaccination against the virus.
Ultraprocessed foods and cancers | NBC’s ‘Today’
One clear sign that a product is ultraprocessed is a very large number of ingredients — many with chemical names — listed on the label and multiple types of sugar and fat, Dr. Vijaya Surampudi, an assistant professor of medicine at the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of California, Los Angeles, tells TODAY.com. You might, for example, see sugars disguised by terms like “rice syrup,” she added.
Concerns over new African American studies AP course | KCRW-FM’s ‘Press Play’
Robin D.G. Kelley, history professor at UCLA, says he doesn’t feel bad about his work being dropped. “They dropped all secondary sources, they removed any scholarly texts. And the argument was … they wanted to avoid what they called canonization. But … the official reason … was that most AP courses don’t include a list of secondary sources, they leave it up to the teachers to choose.” He says the College Board minimizes contemporary history in its revised curriculum.
ER visits rise among cannabis-consuming seniors | KTTV-TV
Dr. Michael Levine, a Medical Toxicologist at UCLA Medical Center, says the number of people rushing to the emergency room because of a bad experience with marijuana use is growing – and surprisingly – the people most affected are senior citizens. “They’re becoming unsteady and they’re falling and they’re breaking a hip, or they’re hitting their head or they’re having some other injury that is a result of their being unsteady as a result of eating the cannabinoid,” said Dr. Levine.
The latest on L.A. real estate | Los Angeles Magazine
Now that L.A. is officially in a drought emergency, water-sucking lawns are again passé. But there’s an eco-friendly alternative to yucca and gravel: fruits and vegetables … According to UCLA horticulturist Jill Morganelli, citrus trees, herbs, mustard greens, sunflowers, and grapes are all less thirsty than a lawn. Bonus: “All this greenery absorbs carbon monoxide better than sod, so you’ll breathe cleaner air around your home,” she says.
Recent shootings and California’s strict gun laws | Yahoo News
Mark Kaplan, a professor of social welfare at the University of California Los Angeles, says the government spends only a small amount of money on firearm violence research. “Quite often with prevention, we don’t know what’s been prevented. So it’s hard to establish. It may have prevented some incidents that never got any media attention,” he told Yahoo News.
