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.
Google ex-chief Eric Schmidt on why we can trust the market to fix what ails the internet | Los Angeles Times Opinion
Fifty years ago, at 10:30 p.m. on Oct. 29, 1969, Leonard Kleinrock, a professor in the new-ish field of computer science, along with his colleagues in their UCLA lab, laboriously fashioned the first computer message. It went the 350 or so miles to a Stanford computer set up through a Defense Department program. The intended pioneering message, “login,” only got as far as “l-o” before the system crashed, so the effect, if not the intent, was likewise biblical. Next week, UCLA marks the 50th anniversary with a daylong symposium tracking the evolution of the world-altering phenomenon. Among the panelists at the event will be Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google and former executive chairman of Google’s parent company Alphabet.
Fossil fuels on trial: New York’s lawsuit against Exxon begins | New York Times
Ann E. Carlson, co-director of the Emmett Center on Climate Change and the Environment at the University of California, Los Angeles law school who has consulted pro bono with attorneys in some of the state and local cases, said if the state proves what it is claiming, “this is a company that has been engaged in denial and deception across several fronts, and I think that denial might be coming back to haunt them and may end up costing them millions and even billions of dollars.”
How Beto O’Rourke has helped America’s gun lobby | The Economist
“For years liberals have said we’re not coming to take your guns and now Beto O’Rourke has said we’re coming to take your guns,” says Adam Winkler, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles and the author of “Gunfight: the battle over the right to bear arms in America”. Long after Mr O’Rourke has dropped out of the race, he says, the main pro-gun lobbyist, the National Rifle Association (NRA), will continue to elide Mr O’Rourke’s confiscation plan with the more moderate gun-control proposals of other Democratic candidates. That is liable to boost turnout for pro-gun candidates — including Mr. Trump — in 2020.
Happy 50th birthday, internet: How it was born with an error message | New Scientist
It is fair to say that no one there quite appreciated the full scope of what had happened. “We knew we were creating an important new technology that we expected would be of use to a segment of the population, but we had no idea how truly momentous an event it was,” Leonard Kleinrock, Kline’s supervisor, later said. Fifty years on, we are still only just beginning to come to terms with the consequences.
Waiting for the quantum simulation revolution | Physics
Emily Carter, a theoretical chemist at the University of California, Los Angeles, says quantum computing may help in studying materials whose complex electronic structures strain existing classical methods, such as superconductors in which individual electron-electron interactions determine the material’s behavior. If researchers can develop quantum algorithms for simulating such “strongly correlated” materials, “you could end up learning things that are qualitatively new,” she says.
At L.A. City Hall, victory went to the little guy in the battle over rents and evictions | Los Angeles Times Column
“Housing at the high end is getting built,” but there’s no trickle down benefit for those in the middle-class and beyond, said UCLA Professor Scott Cummings. Cummings led a research team that studied the housing crisis and published a report in June called “Priced Out, Pushed Out, Locked Out.” The team found that while some rent stabilization exists, hundreds of thousands of L.A. County residents have no protections against huge rent increases. A half million evictions have been filed in L.A. County since 2010, they found, and our percentage of “rent-burdened” residents is among the highest in the nation.
Scientists have found a way to create energy from the night sky | Fast Company
[Aaswath] Raman, an assistant professor of materials science at engineering at UCLA, wanted to take advantage of this phenomenon to produce clean energy. So he and his colleagues designed a device that can harness nighttime cooling to generate a small amount of power.
These 3 stress-reducing techniques will help make your next presentation unforgettable | Inc.
Researchers at UCLA found that people with spider phobias showed fewer signs of reactivity when they verbalized their emotions. So before your next big moment, unleash your fears (“I am scared of messing up in front of my employees”), then remind yourself of how you’ve contained it (lots of rehearsal, solid content, good night’s sleep). “Naming the monster” won’t eliminate the fear, but it will give you a powerful psychological hold over it.
Can you really be addicted to video games? | New York Times Magazine
Timothy Fong, a professor of addiction psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, says he is convinced that video-game addiction is real. “It’s quite possible and common to have both addiction and another mental or behavioral disorder simultaneously,” he told me, like depression or anxiety.
Big Oil’s climate change reckoning finally arrives in court | Bloomberg
Ann Carlson, a law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles who’s done consulting work for cities involved in such litigation, said the nuisance battles are at an early stage, with energy companies fighting to move the lawsuits to federal venues, which are traditionally more accommodating to defendant companies…. “The more evidence that comes out about oil companies engaging in misleading and deceptive behavior, whether about their own risk or the bigger risks from climate change, their political position weakens even further,” she said. (Also: New York Times)
In search of snoring solutions | New York Times
“Oral products help, but they do not fix the problem,” said Dr. Nina Shapiro, an ear-nose-throat specialist in the department of head and neck surgery at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Are you in a social media bubble? Here's how to tell | NBC News Online
“We experience conflicting thoughts as actual psychological discomfort. Brain scanning has, in fact, revealed that cognitive dissonance activates emotional areas like the anterior insulae and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex,” says Don Vaughn, a neuroscientist at the department of Psychology at UCLA. “Given that we prefer to eschew negative experiences, it comes as no surprise that people avoid the immediate psychological discomfort from cognitive dissonance by simply not reading or listening to differing opinions.”
An attempt to resegregate Little Rock, of all places | The Atlantic
The number of students attending intensely segregated schools — those where 90 percent or more of students are nonwhite — has more than tripled since 1988, according to a 2019 report from the UCLA Civil Rights Project. “Segregation is expanding in almost all regions of the country,” Gary Orfield, a UCLA professor who led the study, said in a release. “Little has been done for a generation.”
The surprising science behind wine tears | Popular Mechanics
Why does the liquid slide back down the glass, forming its familiar tear-shaped streaks? Yonatan Dukler and his team at the University of California, Los Angeles set out to find the answer. He and his colleagues created theoretical models that mapped out how and why the liquid trickles down the walls of the glass in its signature tear shape.
Ellipses and emoji: How age affects communication at work | Marketplace
Miscommunication between different age groups is hardly a new phenomenon, said Bob McCann, a management communications professor at University of California, Los Angeles. But the fast pace of technological change is deepening the divide between generations. “Every three weeks, we have a new platform that we need to deal with, a new app that’s coming out, and we have to adjust and we have to change.”
U.S. troops leave Syria | KPCC-FM’s “AirTalk”
“We’re not really sure what’s happening, because there’s a lack of independent reporting on the ground there. It’s of course a very dangerous region there, the Turkey and Syria border, and so we’re not really sure if this ceasefire is holding, if Turkey is still attacking the Kurdish people who are there and what’s happening,” said UCLA’s Matt Barreto. (Approx. 0:25 mark)
A look at the future of California housing policy | KPCC-FM’s “AirTalk”
“I don’t know whether it’s inevitable or not, but I don’t think there’s been a really thorough discussion about what this bill, SB 50, does. When we talk about transit, all of us want to see more housing around transit or development around transit; it makes common sense,” said UCLA’s Zev Yaroslavsky. (Approx. 2:25 mark)
Living near a park is good for your health | Daily Mail (U.K.)
Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that children in the state who grew up within a third of a mile of a park were at a lower risk of becoming obese by age 18 and were less at-risk for chronic health problems later in life. Plus, the report authors argue, proximity to a park has been linked to lower stress levels, even for people whose financial insecurity places them under greater levels of distress.
The best new podcasts for the week | Digital Trends
In an episode of “The Simpsons,” an “Itchy and Scratchy” fan wonders why, when the cartoon mouse plays the cat’s skeleton like a xylophone and strikes the same rib twice, it makes two different tones. Homer dismisses the question with aplomb. It’s just the kind of query Dr. Shane Campbell-Staton might tackle and genuinely try to answer. The evolutionary biologist and assistant professor at UCLA hosts “Biology of Superheroes,” where he discusses Spider-Man’s web and the Flash’s super speed.
The legacy of the migrant caravan | Hoy
Signaling how much things have changed, earlier this month, Mexican authorities rapidly stopped a new caravan of about 2,000 migrants less than 50 km from where it began. “Mexico has become a big wall,” said Rubén Hernández-León, sociologist and expert on migration at the University of California, Los Angeles. (Translated from Spanish)
Hard science, no universe: How ‘Bloodshot’ aims to reboot superhero movies | Inverse
Wilson consulted with the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA to learn more about the technology at the heart of the film. He jokes the professors there “will be horribly disappointed” by the film’s depiction of nanotech.
A step closer to creating a Latino American history Smithsonian Museum | Mitú
In a 1994 Willful Neglect report, the Smithsonian Institution acknowledged that Americans and visitors alike were absorbing American history as presented by the institute with a near erasure of Latino contributions. The UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute recently reconfirmed the erasure in a 2018 report.
Could ‘itchy’ gut nerves be responsible for irritable bowel syndrome? | Healthline
Emeran Mayer, PhD, co-director of the CURE: Digestive Diseases Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, says the discovery of such itch receptors is unlikely to influence treatment options for IBS. “Many different receptors have been identified in mouse models of IBS, but findings have never been translatable into human patients,” Mayer told Healthline.
