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.
Do gay men perform better academically than others? | NBC News
Ilan Meyer, a researcher at UCLA’s Williams Institute, expressed intrigue over the story Mittleman’s paper tells of many gay men apparently overcoming considerable odds. Meyer pointed to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance reports that have chronicled the myriad stressors lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender young people weather in school and the litany of deleterious impacts, including depression and suicidality. (Meyer is quoted.)
The battle against Russian disinformation | Marketplace Tech
“We have seen Russia perform amazing feats of disinformation in terms of creating new accounts, networks that are comprised of both bots and actual supporters, the creation of narratives that really promote Russian superiority, diminish Ukraine and its president’s ability to defend itself, and lots of videos, including the use of humor to perpetuate pro-Russian narratives,” [said UCLA’s Courtney Radsch.]
California is failing to prepare for droughts | Mercury News and East Bay Times
A study published Feb. 14 notes that the past two decades ranks as the driest 22-year period in at least 1,200 years in the American West. “Here we are 22 years into a bad drought, and because of climate change we are now surpassing the severity of megadroughts that have always been thought of as the worst-case scenarios,” said Park Williams, an associate professor of geography at UCLA and lead author of the study.
How poor sleep affects the brain | Salon
Prolonged wakefulness is often championed by leaders, like they are deserving of accolades for not sleeping, whether it’s because they were doing work or up late socializing or doing some recreational activity,” [UCLA’s Dr. Constance] Fung wrote to Salon. “Sleep is often regarded as a period of inactivity (wasting time), which reflects a poor understanding of the ‘work’ that’s being done during the sleep period.”
Texas legal opinion on trans youth questioned | Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Brenda Bursch, a psychologist and professor at UCLA whose specialties include illness falsification, said in an email that the parallel doesn’t track. Factitious disorder imposed on another is harmful to the child, Bursch said, while research has shown that gender-affirming care helps to improve a transgender child’s mental health. “While any child can be the victim of any type of child abuse, appropriately seeking gender-affirming care is protective, not harmful,” she said.
Fast-food workers fight for sweeping protections bill | The Hill
A study by the University of California–Los Angeles surveyed 417 fast-food workers across 118 companies and 342 individual workplaces across Los Angeles. The results showed 38 percent of workers brought up concerns of COVID-19 with their employer, but 55 percent reported the employer did not or only partly addressed the problem. At the same time, 17 percent of workers said they experienced some type of retaliation when asking for protection or taking leave.
Supply chains still taking a beating | Barron’s
(Commentary by UCLA’s Christopher Tang) Americans can now breathe a sigh of relief as U.S. cities and states are easing Covid-19 restrictions. But the prolonged shortages and high prices caused by a new wave of global supply-chain disruptions are another matter. Like our normal life in the post-pandemic era, normal supply-chain operations will take at least a couple of years to restore.
As pandemic wanes, will autism diagnoses rise? | Spectrum
Some pathogens affect development by passing directly from a pregnant woman to her fetus — what clinicians call “vertical transmission.” … “We were reassured early on that [COVID-19] doesn’t seem to cause vertical transmission in the same sense that Zika would,” says Karin Nielsen-Saines, professor of pediatrics at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has studied Zika and works on the COVID-19 study in which Knipe is enrolled.
Biden gives State of the Union address | KCAL-TV
“I know that major speeches occur when there are major events that are swirling around the country and the world,” said UCLA’s Zev Yaroslavsky. “And tonight is such a night. I recall Lyndon Johnson’s speech after the Selma march and, of course, Franklin Roosevelt’s speech after Pearl Harbor. The country is on edge. The pandemic, inflation, the economy — but most importantly, the anxiety over what’s going on in Ukraine and threats of nuclear war for the first time in some time. This going to be an important speech for the president.”
4 signs the U.S. health care system is broken | NBCLX
Americans spend more on health care than any other people — about one-sixth of our nation’s GDP. According to Thomas Rice, Ph.D., at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health, our health care expenses are double that of other wealthy nations, like Germany, Japan and the U.K. “We spend over $4 trillion in the United States each year on health care. It’s a large chunk of the entire world spending on health care, around 40%. But if you look at it per person, we spend about $12,500 per person per year on health care,” he told NBCLX.
