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.
UCLA Institute to tackle global food challenges | City News Service
UCLA, working with chefs and scholars, is putting together a recipe to research ways to tackle global food challenges by creating an institute devoted to the emerging field of food studies, it was announced today. UCLA has received a $13.5 million donation and created an interdisciplinary institute focused on research, education and policies about food. (UCLA Chancellor Gene Block and UCLA’s Amy Rowat, Adriana Galván and Wendelin Slusser are quoted. Also: LAist, KPCC-FM and KNX-FM.)
Supreme Court to hear affirmative action cases | NPR’s “All Things Considered”
UCLA professor Mitchell Chang, who testified as an expert witness in the UNC case, observes that the stereotypical vision of an Asian student working harder than other students has some merit, but largely for first-generation students whose families have immigrated to the United States. He points to Asian American groups that have been in the U.S. for a longer period — Japanese Americans, for example. “If you look at their academic records, they tend to be more like whites than their first-generation American counterparts,” he says.
Officials limit treatments that don’t work on omicron | New York Times
Dr. Mark Morocco, a University of California, Los Angeles emergency physician, said high-risk patients, no longer eligible for the antibody treatments, were getting treatment that is similar to what people got in 2020, including supplemental oxygen and steroids. As for the antiviral pills and the effective antibody treatments, he said, supplies are “very difficult to find.”
Exercise is good for you, even with mild COVID | Wall Street Journal
“There is very little good-quality data on exercise resumption post-COVID,” Gabriel Vorobiof, a cardiologist at UCLA, says in an email. “At one point, there was a big controversy when a few cardiac MRI papers showed some potentially concerning cardiac findings post-COVID.” But since the studies didn’t include a control group for comparison — such as athletes or young people without COVID who get an MRI—he says the “findings were later dismissed as associations, not necessarily causative links.”
Can CBD help against COVID? | STAT
Outside researchers also noted that the two papers reported sometimes opposing results for how cannabinoids interacted with the coronavirus, indicating that any potential effect needs to be further studied. “These are the seeds of our knowledge related to how cannabinoids might interact with the SARS-Cov-2 virus,” said Ziva Cooper, the director of the UCLA Cannabis Research Initiative. “We have a long way to go.”
Access to vital health services fell during COVID | Scienmag
Americans’ use of common outpatient health services dipped sharply at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, then rebounded to near-normal levels by the end of 2020, only to decline again during the second surge in January–February 2021, according to a new UCLA-led study. But the 2020 recovery in care wasn’t equal for all. (UCLA’s Dr. John Mafi and Dr. Katherine Kahn are quoted. Also: ScienceDaily.)
Small businesses struggling during pandemic | KPCC-FM
UCLA professor Paul Ong says that his research on minority-owned small businesses shows they’re facing similar struggles, and explains reasons the effects may be more pronounced. “One is that they have higher odds of not being able to recover. And among those who have not recovered, minority-owned businesses, their owners and their families, are suffering much more financially.”
