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 first UC with four-year room guarantee | Los Angeles Times
Now, UCLA has reached a unique milestone. With two new apartment buildings opening this fall providing 3,446 beds, UCLA will become the first and only University of California campus to guarantee housing for four years to first-year students and two years for transfer students. The campus plans to tout that selling point as it releases admission decisions this month. “Residential housing allows us to better ensure that every student gets a good start and is therefore more likely to be successful. So we wanted to give every student an option of having four years,” UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said in an interview. “That was the dream and it’s finally coming true.” (UCLA’s Pete Angelis and Youlonda Copeland-Morgan are also quoted.)
Obituary: Jazz and blues legend Barbara Morrison | Los Angeles Times
Later came the California Jazz & Blues Museum, which she opened to educate the community on the region’s prolific jazz performers … She also passed on that musical education as an adjunct associate professor of global jazz studies at UCLA. In 2020, UCLA launched the Barbara Morrison Scholarship for Jazz. (Also: City News Service, KNBC-TV and KPCC-FM.)
Hard life of food delivery robots | Los Angeles Times
As co-executive director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the UCLA School of Law, Hecht has more than a passing interest in these things. Determining the effects of bots and scooters, both positive and negative, is not a simple task. “If it turns out that scooters are mostly replacing walking trips, then there is no environmental benefit and people get less exercise,” Hecht said. “For delivery robots, it’s a matter of convenience for people, but I think there are plenty of cases where it probably is a little silly for somebody to get something delivered in a robot if they could walk a quarter of a mile and order the same thing.”
Which COVID rules have changed in L.A.? | Los Angeles Times
Otto Yang, UCLA professor of medicine and microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics, said the situation is still in flux as we wait for data from the first booster shot. “We’re following the data in real time to make decisions, but based on the monitoring in other countries that started boosting earlier, and based on the data that’s developing now, it is looking like the immunity does wane,” Yang said.
Animal tranquilizer contributes to rising overdoses | CNN
Xylazine is just one of the many adulterants found in the illicit drug supply that has shifted from heroin, a natural opioid derived from poppy plants, to lab-made synthetics such as fentanyl. “All of a sudden, you can synthesize hundreds of compounds and kind of mix them together and see what does the best in the market,” [UCLA’s Joseph] Friedman said. “People are synthesizing new benzodiazepines, new stimulants, new cannabinoids constantly and adding them into the drug supply. So people have no idea what they’re buying and what they’re consuming.”
Want your book to be a movie? | Inside Higher Ed
(Column by UCLA’s Eric Jager) Quite a few professors have confided to me that they dream of seeing one of their books adapted for the screen, its cover emblazoned, “Now a Major Motion Picture” … Two colleagues in my home department at the University of California, Los Angeles — the novelists Mona Simpson and Justin Torres — have seen their books turned into films. But if you want to see your work on the screen, be careful what you wish for, and you may not want to hold your breath.
More dry years to come in megadrought | Southern California News Group
Reading the tree rings from Montana to northern Mexico, from Pacific beaches to the Colorado Rockies, a team of scientists led by a UCLA researcher has shown that the current long-term drought in the West is the most severe in 1,200 years. It’s not just a dry spell — it’s a megadrought. The rigorous study, aided by NASA, shows all that talk you have heard most of your life, about how the lack of rain in these parts is normal, and about how “we live in a desert anyway” — we don’t; we live in a rare Mediterranean climate — is nonsense.
Diversity drives global audiences | The Wrap
International audiences want to see themselves represented both in front of and behind the camera, a study conducted by Starz and the Center for Scholars & Storytellers at UCLA found. The study also showed that both men and women around the world want more diverse talent behind the scenes … Yalda T. Uhls, founder of the Center for Scholars & Storytellers at UCLA said, “This report provides firm data that the international consumer cares as much and sometimes more than United States’ audiences about what they see on screen and who is behind the screen.”
Midlife obesity a harbinger of health problems | Healthline
Dana Ellis Hunnes, PhD, a senior dietitian at the University of California, Los Angeles’ medical center and an assistant professor at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health, said people who have overweight or obesity should take action sooner rather than later. “It’s never too late to acquire healthier eating habits, such as more plant-forward or plant-based eating that puts whole foods, as nature grew them, in your body ahead of less-healthy processed and animal-based foods,” Hunnes told Healthline.
Why calculus keeps students from STEM fields | Scientific American
In 2013, life sciences faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles, developed a two-course sequence that covers classic calculus topics such as the derivative and the integral, but emphasizes their application in a biological context. The professors used modeling of complex systems such as biological and physiological processes as a framework for teaching linear algebra and a starting point for teaching the basics of computer programming to support students’ use of systems of differential equations.
Black Americans see big jump in drug OD deaths | Yahoo News
According to a recent study published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, Black Americans saw the sharpest increase in drug mortality rates of any demographic group in 2020, outpacing the rate among white Americans for the first time since 1999. Dr. Helen Hansen, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine who co-authored the study with Joseph R. Friedman, spoke to Yahoo News about the various factors, such as systemic racial and socioeconomic inequalities and policies, that have played a significant role in the crisis among Black Americans. (Hansen is interviewed.)
Possible COVID memorial in L.A. | KPCC-FM’s “AirTalk”
“One of the things that was very, very important, or will be very important considering creating a meaning … is how to tell the story of what happened with COVID, how it affected its diverse communities. I can give you a sense of how I approached the conceiving and designing of the way to tell the story for the Tucson January 8th memorial. What we needed to do was to really… understand the people who were affected. To design a memorial that would be honoring the victims and the survivors of the mass shooting,” said UCLA’s Rebecca Mendez (approx. 4:40 mark).
