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.
Tooth analysis confirms the megalodon was warm-blooded | Reuters
The study found that megalodon, while warm-blooded, had a lower body temperature than whales. “One theory is that they were regionally endothermic – that some parts of their body were warmer than other parts, whereas body temperature is higher and more uniform across the body in most large mammals,” UCLA atmospheric and oceanic scientist and study co-author Robert Eagle said.
Heat waves show climate change and El Niño are a bad combo | NPR
“Most of the world’s population has experienced record-breaking heat in recent days,” says Daniel Swain, climate scientist at the University of California-Los Angeles. (Swain was also quoted by the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times.)
Supreme Court rejects legal theory regarding elections | NPR
UCLA law professor Richard Hasen goes further, noting that today’s decision gives the federal courts a lot of new power over state courts. “They’ve preserved for themselves the right to be the ultimate arbiter of whether state courts have gone too far. And this harkens back to Bush v. Gore in the 2000 election, when three justices on the court took the view that the Florida state court went too far when it ordered a partial recount of votes.” [said Hasen] (Hasen was also quoted by the Associated Press, Washington Post, New York Times and Salon.)
Marijuana laws need incremental reform | Bloomberg Law
(Commentary co-written by UCLA’s Tommy Tobin) President Joe Biden announced a scheduling review process for marijuana last October, initiating an expedited review of how cannabis should be regulated as a controlled substance at the federal level, which Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra recently said federal agencies hope to complete this year. Cannabis advocates and the industry should be ready for the potential impact of incremental reform.
The failed ban on for-profit ICE detention centers | Los Angeles Times
Sharon Dolovich, a professor and director of the Prison Law & Policy Program at UCLA, said the 9th Circuit’s ruling should prompt lawmakers to strengthen regulations for all types of jails and prisons, such as increased transparency and healthcare requirements. “If people in this state care about reducing the opportunity for prison administrators to hold people in inhumane conditions of detention, they should care as much about publicly run facilities as they do about privately run facilities,” she said.
States passed a record number of transgender laws | New York Times
“In some states, such as Mississippi, the ‘aid or abet’ language is very broad,” said Elana Redfield, the federal policy director of the Williams Institute at the law school of the University of California, Los Angeles, ”and could conceivably subject parents or allies to liability.”
Transgender people face significantly higher suicide risk | CNN
Research from UCLA’s Williams Institute, an organization that does research on the LGBTQ+ community, found a significant drop in suicidal thoughts when people had support and acceptance from families, coworkers and classmates.
Someday, shopping carts might gauge heart health | HealthDay News
“Atrial fibrillation is a leading cause of stroke,” explained Dr. Gregg Fonarow, director of the Ahmanson-UCLA Cardiomyopathy Center, co-director of the UCLA Preventative Cardiology Program, and co-chief of the UCLA division of cardiology, in Los Angeles. “However, atrial fibrillation may be asymptomatic, and first diagnosed at the time of stroke,” Fonarow noted. “Some studies have suggested there may be as many as 750,000 to 1.5 million adults in the United States with atrial fibrillation that has not been diagnosed.”
Patch uses nanomagnets to detect muscle movement | Scienmag
“Our device is very sensitive to biomechanical pressure,” says senior author Jun Chen (@JunChenLab) of the Department of Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles. “The device converts muscle activities into quantifiable, high-fidelity electrical signals that are sent wirelessly to phone apps. This demonstrates the potential for personalized physical therapies and improving the rehabilitation of muscle injuries.”
The robot delivering your meal might have a human driver | Marketplace
In Santa Monica, California, pedestrians, electric scooters and other sidewalk users share space with coolers on wheels, zipping restaurant takeout orders to local customers. ”This is Coco,” said Zach Rash, pointing to a pink-and-orange robot parked outside a family-owned Indian restaurant. Rash and his co-founder, Brad Squicciarini, started developing Coco while they were students at the University of California, Los Angeles. The company, which officially launched in February 2020, has deployed a few thousand robots in Southern California and Texas that can deliver food within 2 miles of restaurants they partner with.
This is why Trump lies like there’s no tomorrow | New York Times
In their paper “Does Anger Drive Populism?” published this month, Omer Ali of Duke, Klaus Desmet of Southern Methodist University and Romain Wacziarg of UCLA found that “a more complex sense of malaise and gloom, rather than anger per se, drives the rise in populism.”
