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.

Will Biden bail out California’s troubled bullet train? | Los Angeles Times

“Prospects for some financial participation by the federal government are better than they were, but it is easy to overestimate them,” said Martin Wachs, an emeritus professor at UCLA who is an expert in transportation. “There could be a few billion dollars, but it would not eliminate the need for the state to put the project on a sound financial footing.”

Big Oil presses on venues for climate change suits | Axios

UCLA law professor Ann Carlson, who consults pro bono with plaintiffs suing oil companies, notes that the Justice Department has sided with the industry defendants on jurisdictional questions. “The Trump Administration was actively supporting the oil company arguments in court,” Carlson said via email. “A Biden DOJ could (and in my view likely would) back away from these arguments and could even support the municipal and state plaintiffs.”

The development of a COVID-19 vaccine | KTTV-TV

We took her concerns to UCLA Emergency Medicine Professor Matt Waxman who told us, “For kids, we have not frankly seen a ton of kids die from the disease. There are some kids - a small subset - has gotten infected and pretty sick. But, that’s the minority. This has really affected primarily adults.”

Evaluating COVID-19 vaccine candidates | KNBC-TV

“What that leads me to believe is, this vaccine was highly protective. And in the cases where there was a breakthough in the infection, where it wasn’t completely protective, it at least reduced the severity of infections,” said UCLA’s Dr. Jesse Clark (approx. 0:48 mark). Also: KCAL-TV.

Shopping safely during the pandemic | KNBC-TV

“It’s the wearing of masks and avoiding crowds that’s really going to make a difference. … Go in with a list, know exactly what you need and make it a very targeted visit. Everything that you do, you need to think: should I be doing this? Is it absolutely necessary? Is it worth the risk of potentially coming in contact with someone who potentially has COVID-19?” said UCLA’s Anne Rimoin (approx. 0:55 mark). Rimoin was also quoted in the Boston Globe and Popular Science.

L.A. County considering more COVID-19 restrictions | KCAL-TV

“We’re using a sledgehammer of shutting down counties. Shutting down regions. All with this same universal approach,” said UCLA’s Dr. Jeffrey Klausner (approx. 1:56 mark).

How school discipline has changed during the pandemic | EdSource

Those actions aren’t likely to be recorded as formal suspensions, but in a way, they are still removals from the learning environment if they last for significant amounts of time, such as an hour or more, said Dan Losen, director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at UCLA. “This is something we are very concerned about,” he said. “Unfortunately, even if we had data from last year, which we don’t, there is not a category or clear definition for an out-of-school or in-school suspension from online instruction.”

Highway project follows a different script in 2020 L.A. | KCRW-FM’s “Greater L.A.”

“There’s no situation in a vital growing economy under which expanding a roadway to fight congestion makes much sense,” said Michael Manville, an urban planner at UCLA. He thinks of highway space as valuable land that we treat in a sort of ridiculous way, economically speaking. ”We offer it to people for no direct charge. And so as a result at times, when lots of people would like to use it, there is more demand for the [highway] than there is actual [highway] in existence. And so we end up with congestion.”

How will Airbnb IPO influence housing prices? | San Francisco Chronicle

“We really see a bigger impact when there’s a surprise” offering, said Barney Hartman-Glaser, an assistant finance professor at UCLA who co-authored the study. Glaser said because the Airbnb offering has been anticipated for so long, its potential impact on real estate may have already rolled through the market.

Study identifies lung cancer patients likely to respond to immunotherapy | Medical Xpress

“Finding out that immunotherapy in HLA-B44 patients performed differently in non-small cell lung cancer than melanoma really set us off on this journey to dive down into how HLA-B44 works,” said lead author Dr. Amy Cummings, clinical instructor of hematology/oncology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and member of the Jonsson Cancer Center. (UCLA’s Dr. Edward Garon was also quoted.)

The meaning of austerity | Marketplace

“So austerity, it’s an old word. We get it from Greek… It started out meaning bitter, harsh, rough. And that came to mean over the centuries, effectively severe self-discipline, simplicity. Just an absence of fun stuff,” said UCLA’s Jessica Rett.

Debbie Reynolds gets her due as a costume conservator | New York Times

Deborah Nadoolman Landis, founding director of the David C. Copley Center for Costume Design at the University of California, Los Angeles, pointed out that an Oscar was not awarded for the art until 1949 and costume designers were not able to secure their own membership branch within the academy until 2013.

Your brain likes burpees | Elemental

“Exercise seems to be good for practically every function in the brain and body,” says Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, a professor in the Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology at UCLA. If exercise were a drug, we would say its benefits were too good to be true.

SGLT2 inhibitor as treatment for heart failure | Medical Xpress

“These data support the broad generalizability of recent trial findings evaluating the SGLT2 inhibitors to U.S. clinical practice,” said Gregg C. Fonarow, M.D., senior author of the study, interim chief of the division of cardiology, director of the Ahmanson-UCLA Cardiomyopathy Center, co-director of the Preventative Cardiology Program, and the Eliot Corday Chair in Cardiovascular Medicine and Science at the University of California, Los Angeles.