UCLA In the News lists selected mentions of UCLA in the world’s news media. Some articles may require registration or a subscription to view. See more UCLA In the News.
Speech recognition tech is another example of bias | Scientific American opinion
Safiya Noble, associate professor of information studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, admits that language is tricky to incorporate into a technology. “Language is contextual,” says Noble, who was not involved in the study. “Certain words mean certain things when certain bodies say them, and these [speech] recognition systems really don’t account for a lot of that.”
Rulings on gays, immigrants benefit environmental cases | San Francisco Chronicle
“Gorsuch just gave proponents of using the Clean Air Act for expansive regulation of greenhouse gases a potent new precedent,” UCLA law Professor Ann Carlson said in a blog posting after the recent ruling.
L.A. freeways: The infrastructure of racism | KCRW-FM’s “Greater LA”
UCLA professor Eric Avila says some city transportation planners, especially in the Southern U.S., were motivated by white supremacy. In others, city planners were choosing the path of least resistance or trying to get rid of so-called “blighted neighborhoods.” Boyle Heights, for example, was redlined by banks and home insurance providers because its mix of races was considered unsafe. “It was described by the federal government as hopelessly heterogeneous. A Homeowners Loan Corporation report called it an ideal location for a slum clearance project. That slum clearance project was highway construction,” says Avila.
Conspiracy theories about fireworks in Black communities | Mother Jones
Patricia Turner, a professor at the University of California Los Angeles’s Department of African American Studies, says the fireworks conspiracies “reminded me of an adage: ‘Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.’”
Latinos want change for themselves, too. | New York Times
“Many Latino youth, they are making the connection, they are pressing their families to have difficult conversations,” said Chris Zepeda-Millán, a professor of Chicano studies and public policy at the University of California, Los Angeles.
What does it mean to be American in 2020? | USA Today
“White Americans have defined the nation, its norms, what it means to be an American for decades. That means that, by definition, some individuals ... have been on the outs,” said Efrén Pérez, a professor of political science and psychology at UCLA. “Now things have changed demographically, politically, where some of those individuals are saying: ‘Hold on a minute. If I’m excluded by that version of being American, which I view as very narrow, we’re going to develop our own sense of what it means to be an American.’” (Pérez also wrote a commentary in the Washington Post.)
Did a mutation help the coronavirus spread? | New York Times
“It’s exciting to see a group take on the challenge of solving this, and the differences they report are intriguing, particularly the consistency across geography,” said Dr. Marc Suchard, a biostatistician at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Medicine. “But this is an extraordinarily challenging problem, the evolution and demography are complex, so there’s much more work to be done.”
The latest on the pandemic | MSNBC
“I think that the advice is really straightforward. Everybody should be wearing a mask. I won’t be the first person to say this, but I’m going to say it right now. If you want to show your patriotism and your love of your country on the Fourth of July weekend, wear a mask. It’s the patriotic thing to do,” said UCLA’s Anne Rimoin. (Rimoin was also interviewed on CNN and KTLA-TV and quoted by the Associated Press and KTTV-TV.)
How California’s coronavirus plan went wrong | Guardian (U.K.)
As more Californians emerged from their homes, crowding restaurants and public spaces, “it really put our essential workers most at risk,” said Ninez Ponce, director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. The vast majority — more than 90% — of farmworkers in California are Latinx, working in precariously crowded environments. More than 60% of workers involved in food preparation are Latinx as well. And it’s those workers, many of whom lack access to healthcare and can’t afford to stay home, who have the most to lose as the virus barreled through the state, Ponce said.
How did wearing masks become a political football? | Orange County Register
“We now know that any barrier in front of your face is better than none,” [UCLA’s Dr. David] Eisenman said. “We know that it will prevent you not just from exhaling the virus, but also inhaling it.”
COVID-19 in jails and prisons threatens nearby communities | Stateline
“We’re in an epidemic of mass incarceration of Black people at the same time as a disease epidemic that is disproportionately affecting minorities,” said Dr. Liz Barnert, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, who studies correctional health.
Dealing with anxiety during the pandemic | KABC-TV
“It’s when the anxiety gets so overwhelming and it overpowers us that it starts to affect everything else in our lives that it becomes a problem where we can seek help,” said UCLA’s Dr. Jena Lee.
California limits July Fourth celebrations | Wall Street Journal
“It becomes really important for us at this time not to have a spike on top of our spike,” said UCLA’s Dr. Robert Kim-Farley (approx. 0:50 mark. Kim-Farley was also quoted in the Los Angeles Times.)
How strict should schools be about masks? | LAist
“Reopening [schools] in a cautious and careful way does make sense,” said Dr. Richard Jackson, a pediatrician and former head of the California Department of Public Health. “Part of that is for children to be using masks in the beginning.... To make a statement that masks don’t work as a statement of theological belief is ridiculous.”
Three models for forecasting COVID-19 spread | Xinhua
U.S. researchers have presented and detailed three regional-scale models for forecasting and assessing the course of COVID-19 pandemic in a new study published on Thursday. The three models are an exponential growth model, a self-exciting branching process model, and the susceptible-infected-resistant (SIR) compartment model, according to the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Modeling and forecasting the spread of COVID-19 is critical for effective public health policy, yet it remains challenging to do so, according to the research team led by Andrea Bertozzi, professor of Mathematics and Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at University of California, Los Angeles.
Two new climate lawsuits give Big Oil the tobacco treatment | Salon
William Boyd, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, says the two new lawsuits might get more traction than past attempts. “These are broad consumer protection statutes, and the facts that are alleged in the complaints are pretty damning for the big oil companies in the sense that they show a systematic effort to suppress and divert climate science and to mislead the public about the impacts of climate change,” said Boyd. Oil companies did “essentially what the tobacco companies did in funding and supporting a whole campaign through a whole network of organizations to essentially mislead the public,” Boyd said.
Commonly prescribed drug found to be ineffective in slowing kidney disease | Healthline
Dr. Anjay Rastogi, director of the CORE Kidney Program at the University of California, Los Angeles, says the findings of the trial are somewhat surprising. “It’s a bit of a surprise, as observational data suggested otherwise. I won’t necessarily call it bad news, but definitely disappointing,” he told Healthline.
Do you need to wait to go in the pool after eating? | Mel
Dana Hunnes, senior dietitian at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, seconds this notion: “Light physical activity after a meal, including walking and possibly swimming, is good for digestion and helps to move food through the digestive tract.” In which case, perhaps following that hot dog party with a quick swim is for the best.
UCLA students unpack architecture through video games | Archinect
This week Archinect connected with Chunsu Ouyang, Tianyi Song, Xianrui Wang to learn more about their final project — INNERMOST. The trio of recent graduate students of UCLA Architecture and Urban Design’s Master of Architecture II discuss their project’s use of video game narratives in architecture, working remotely, and their outlook on finding a job after graduating. Advised by Natasha Sandmeier & Nathan Su of UCLA’s IDEAs Entertainment Studio program, the students work towards “conceiving a game that can make a metaphor of people growing up/self-developing while collaborating with others, in order to explore the possibility of a game as a new social medium.”
