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.

Fires gave unprecedented look at LA urban blazes | Washington Post

It was Jan. 7, 2025. The UCLA researchers, equipped with expensive monitoring devices and contacts in the area, pivoted. They were meant to assess air quality at the site of a decade-old gas leak, but committed instead to conducting a real-time analysis of the disaster unfolding in front of them. It felt like a rare opportunity — an obligation, almost — to sample the air during an active fire. A year later, those samples served as the bedrock of a peer-reviewed analysis published this month that found harmful carcinogens were still present after the blazes were extinguished. Levels continued to increase in people’s homes for weeks. (UCLA’s Yifang Zhu was quoted.)

Why almost none of the homes burned in LA have been rebuilt | Vox

“The system structurally is not built for rebuilding and recovery,” said Minjee Kim, an assistant professor of urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles. “You just need a whole different animal to enable comprehensive reconstruction.”

El Super workers demand ICE protocols to protect them and shoppers | LAist

Victor Narro, an expert on workplace rights for immigrant workers and a lecturer at UCLA Law School, said more and more unions have been adding the type of language El Super workers want to their contracts in recent years. “Especially unions that have a large immigrant workforce as members,” he said.

Protests intensify in Iran | KCAL-TV

“This is a government regime that is suffering from mismanagement of its own making. There has been rampant inflation. There has been a devaluation of the currency. Job opportunities are scarce,” said UCLA’s Benjamin Radd. (Radd was also interviewed by KNBC-TV – approx. 1:25 mark).

COVID-19 lockdowns changed the beak shape of these city birds | New Atlas

Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, followed dark-eyed juncos (Junco hyemalis) living on a university campus from 2018 to 2025. They found that birds hatched during the lockdown period developed beaks that more closely resembled those of nearby wildland populations, rather than the shorter, thicker beaks typically seen in urban juncos. As human activity and food waste returned, those differences appeared to fade in later generations.

Medical marijuana debate: Believe science or patients? | Washington Post

I spoke with Michael Hsu, a psychiatrist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the lead author of a JAMA paper on cannabis’s benefits and harms, to better understand how he reconciles his research with these patient anecdotes. “There is a gap between what science can confidently tell us and what patients are experiencing in their day-to-day lives,” he told me.

American historian Daniel Walker Howe dies | New York Times

Professor Howe was known above all for a landmark book, published in 2007 and awarded the Pulitzer Prize in history the following year. By this time, he had already retired into emeritus status at the two universities where he taught, UCLA and Oxford. He had never before tried to write history for a nonspecialist audience. His book’s title elegantly embedded several arguments at once: “What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848.”

The food pyramid is back and beefier than ever. Is that a good thing? | GQ

That said, there are some important downstream effects of these updated guidelines that will inevitably impact a lot of people who depend on government programs. “They help determine school nutrition programs, as well as nutrition benefits — for example, the SNAP program — and where dollars get spent in terms of agriculture bills and things like that,” says Dana Hunnes, senior clinical dietitian at UCLA Health.

Best foods to help you live a longer, healthier life | Healthline

Numerous studies indicate the Mediterranean diet affords many health benefits, including promoting longevity. “This diet is anti-inflammatory, it’s cardio-protective [and] protects our heart and other organs,” said Dana Hunnes, a senior clinical dietitian at UCLA Health. “It is full of unprocessed, whole foods,” Hunnes said of the Mediterranean diet.