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.
Why Southern California’s wildfires are inevitable | Outside
Air flowing from the high desert down to sea level is subsiding, which means that as air loses altitude, it is compressed. Compressing air causes it to warm. “If you take a piece of air located only a mile above your head, and brought it down to your feet, it would wind up 30 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than when it started,” explains Robert Fovell, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of California at Los Angeles, on the school’s website. “You don’t need to change the altitude of air very much to alter its temperature significantly.” Much of the Great Basin is around a mile higher in elevation than L.A.
UCLA freshman reads consent letter to party goers entering fraternity | KCBS-TV
Fraternities have a reputation for having wild parties, but the young men at Delta Sigma Phi are trying to change the culture. The UCLA fraternity is taking steps towards making sure their parties are safe. UCLA freshman Justin Sanchez was seen on video Thursday night reading a consent letter to party guests at the frat house…. “Honestly it was just to spread the importance of consent,” Sanchez told CBSLA’s Amy Johnson. “That’s what it has always been…Its really just to spread the message that consent is important to us.”
Why do some people need less sleep than others? | Live Science
Jerome Siegel, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles, Center for Sleep Research, says he is comfortable with Fu’s group’s main finding: that the neuropeptide S receptor 1 (NPSR1) gene is important in regulating sleep. But it is likely only one small piece in a very complex process, he adds. And he is not convinced by the connection between sleep and memory the group claims. Sleep may have many functions, but there is no indication, he says, that needing less of it somehow boosts memory or cognition. “We consolidate memory while we sleep and while we’re awake, even when we’re anesthetized,” he says. “It’s not something that just occurs during sleep.”
How sun exposure can affect your microbiome | NBC News
There have been a number of studies looking at the connection between microbiome composition and a variety of factors, said Dr. Jonathan Jacobs, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, Medical School and the director of the UCLA Microbiome Core. “What makes this study of potentially greater interest is the intervention with UV exposure,” Jacobs said, adding he doubted anyone in the medical community would recommend sun exposure due to fears of skin cancer. Still, “there is significant evidence, primarily from animal models, that vitamin D is important for intestinal [health],” he said.
Everyone is asking Google about CBD. But does it actually work? | USA Today
Ziva Cooper, research director at the UCLA Cannabis Research Initiative, said the results highlight a concerning gap between the interest in CBD products and the level of rigorous testing on the available products’ effects. “We don’t know very much about cannabidiol’s effects,” said Cooper, who was not involved in the research. “People are searching for scientific information on the products ... (but) we don't have very much data.”
Why Big Oil faces court cases that echo the litigation against Big Tobacco in the ’90s | CBC
“They are brought under very similar legal theory,” said Ann Carlson, an environmental law professor at the UCLA School of Law. “That is that the companies are creating a public harm or public nuisance by misleading the public about whether their product actually causes harm.”
What do changes in the stock market actually mean? | Marketplace
Stock indices measure different things. For example, the Dow Jones tracks 30 large companies, while the S&P measures the 500 biggest American stocks and weights them based on their size. Consequently, the numbers mean different things across different indices, said Andrea Eisfeldt, professor of finance at UCLA Anderson…. “I think people should know what it means for the S&P to be at a certain level, but I think it’s more important to look at the percentage changes,” said Eisfeldt. Unlike fluctuating numbers, percentage changes show the net change to an index over time.
These are the key political endorsements in the 2020 presidential race so far — but do they matter? | Fortune
“It may seem given Trump’s success in the 2016 Republican primary that endorsements by party elites are no longer relevant, but I think that is hasty,” Lynn Vavreck, a professor of political science and public policy at UCLA said. “As a signal of either who has or is gaining momentum or as a signal of who elites think can do the job well, these signals are valuable to donors and voters.”
How Facebook bought a police force | Vice
Public records obtained by Motherboard — hundreds of pages of notes, proposals in draft and final form, presentations, and emails between Facebook and the Menlo Park Police Department over several years — provide an unprecedented look at how the partnership was forged and how it operates, as well as at public concerns about law enforcement’s intimate ties to one of the most powerful technology companies in the world. “This would be concerning to me as a community member,” said Chris Burbank of the Center for Policing Equity, a research consortium founded at the University of California-Los Angeles that focuses on transparency in law enforcement. “I don’t care who it is. You don’t get to buy a police department.”
The creator of the nicotine patch says that ‘anti-vaping forces’ are trying to kill the life-saving e-cig industry | Business Insider
Then, as a post-doc at UCLA, [Jed] Rose became fascinated with how millions of people, like his own dad, could become cripplingly addicted to a drug that “doesn’t get people visibly high.” … Rose invented the first nicotine patch in 1984 alongside his brother, Dr. Daniel Rose. Around that same time, Rose met a young biomathematician who’d later become his wife and longtime lab partner. Frederique Behm-Rose worked with Rose to develop a prototype e-cigarette in the mid-1980s at UCLA. They called it “distilled smoke.”
1 in 5 LGBTQ Americans lives in poverty — and some groups are particularly worse off | MarketWatch
About one in five LGBTQ people in America (21.6%) lives in poverty, compared to an estimated 15.7% poverty rate among their cisgender straight counterparts, according to new research from the Williams Institute, a UCLA Law think tank that researches sexual orientation, gender identity and public policy, and campaigns against discrimination faced by LGBTQ people…. The study’s co-author Bianca D.M. Wilson, a researcher at the Williams Institute, noted that age, ethnicity and sexual orientation and gender identity, are “all social statuses and characteristics that are known to be independently related to poverty rates.”
L.A. City Councilman John Lee calls for review of Aliso Canyon investigations | Los Angeles Daily News
Air quality samples collected near Aliso Canyon at the start of the leak showed elevated levels of pollutants known or suspected to be associated with serious health problems, according to a UCLA Fielding School of Public Health-led study released in June. In a post-leak community survey, 63 percent of households reported that someone in their home had experienced symptoms persisting after the leak was plugged, including headaches, nausea, and gastrointestinal or respiratory problems, according to UCLA.
Child psychiatry experts say mentally strong kids have parents who taught them these 4 traits | Inc.
I just caught up with a book published in January this year titled “The Yes Brain” by Daniel Siegel, clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, and Tina Payne, a pediatric and adolescent psychotherapist. The authors share the key to developing mentally strong children and navigating them away from destructive emotional states to more positive ones, even if it means getting them out of their comfort zone.
On water sustainability, L.A. County earns C+ from UCLA Environmental Report Card | Scienmag
“The Los Angeles we know today exists only because of vast water infrastructure that takes water from hundreds of miles away and pumps it here,” said Cassie Rauser, an author of the study and the director of the UCLA Sustainable LA Grand Challenge. “With L.A. getting hotter and rain becoming more unpredictable throughout the state, we need to move to more dependable, drought-resistant local water sources.” Felicia Federico, executive director of the California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA and the report’s lead author, said the county would have a long way to go to earn an A grade. “The report card underscores the scope and complexity of considerations around sustainability,” she said.
Study identifies brain injury as a cause of dementia in some older adults | Medical Xpress
“We already knew that MRIs can reveal subtle abnormalities in patients with neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer’s,” said Dr. Somayeh Meysami, lead author and a postdoctoral clinical research fellow in cognitive and behavioral neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “The purpose of our study was to evaluate whether MRI also could reveal distinct abnormalities in traumatic brain injury. And, if we could identify such a pattern, it would lead to improved diagnosis of TBI-related memory loss from other causes of dementia.”
New York Stem Cell Foundation announces 2019 class of NYSCF–Robertson Investigators | Scienmag
“The class of 2019 are a group of incredibly impressive scientists — it was an honor to be involved in the selection of these individuals, and I have no doubt that their future accomplishments, thanks in part to NYSCF funding, will be stellar,” said Jonathan Flint, MD, Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles.
