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 music therapy study giving dementia patients new hope | KTTV-TV

But there’s new hope in a new music therapy study now underway at UCLA’s Easton Center for Alzheimer’s Research. “Music has a way of engaging parts of the brain that are not accessible through other means,” says Dr. Keith Vossel, UCLA Neurology Professor, who runs the study. Vossel is studying patients over 50, some healthy, others like Harmon experiencing mild to moderate dementia symptoms. 

Can studying ants help eliminate traffic? | KCRW 89.9-FM’s ‘Greater LA’

Ants can be a nuisance when they storm your kitchen or invade your yard. But according to Noa Pinter-Wollman, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCLA, these tiny insects have a lot more in common with humans than you might imagine, and they might have some big lessons to teach us. 

Out-of-this-world fact about migrating birds | Smithsonian Magazine

In the other study, in Scientific Reports, ecologist Morgan Tingley of the University of California, Los Angeles, correlated bird vagrancy with geomagnetic disturbances and solar activity. Over the course of 60 years, scientists at the Bird Banding Laboratory captured and banded two million birds in the United States and Canada, recording their species and location. Using these records, Tingley calculated a vagrancy index for each capture by juxtaposing the bird’s documented location with the expected range of its species for that season. (Tingley was quoted.)

Raising pay for Head Start teachers could hit enrollment | Associated Press

“Early educators make poverty wages in many places,” said Anna Markowitz, a University of California Los Angeles professor who has studied Head Start turnover and wages. “There are real consequences to these low wages.” She said “it’s unfortunate we had to wait for the turnover to become a major crisis.”

Narrow house in Venice makes the case for building up | Los Angeles Times

With Southern California in desperate need of housing and state and federal laws constantly evolving to make permitting ADUs easier, the detached home by architects Todd Lynch and Mohamed Sharif of Sharif, Lynch: Architecture feels like a harbinger of what’s to come … Resting a few feet from a dingbat apartment to the south, the ADU is lifted off the ground to preserve two parking spots in the alley and a swimming pool in front. “Its entire width is dictated by that two-car side-by-side dimension,” said Sharif, who teaches in the undergraduate and graduate design studios at UCLA.

Are the Bay Area’s sewage systems ready for El Niño? | KQED-FM

“Watersheds are already more saturated; reservoir levels are already running higher,” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said. “So the background conditions are more favorable for a quicker development of flooding.” The world is warmer than in recorded history, so the atmosphere can hold more water vapor. “The storms that are out there are progressively more juiced-up than they used to be,” said Swain.

The incredible story behind the life, and home, of one of California’s Latina pioneers | Los Angeles Times’ De Los

López de Lowther graduated from the Los Angeles State Normal School, which is now UCLA. She is believed to be the first Latina to teach at UCLA and the youngest instructor at the time, said UCLA historian Cynthia L. Chamberlin.

Native American storytellers enjoying a rare spotlight | Associated Press

In 2020, the University of California, Los Angeles published a diversity report that examined media content from 2018-2019 and found Native representation to be between 0.3%–0.5% in film. In television or on stage, Native representation was virtually nonexistent.