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 researchers host science fair to showcase suspended work | LAist
On Thursday evening, dozens of researchers hosted a science fair at UCLA aimed at showcasing the work that’s been suspended by the Trump administration. The administration’s stated reason for freezing $584 million in grant funding is that the university did not do enough to address antisemitism on campus during protests and encampments against the Israeli war in Gaza. Later, the administration announced it wants $1 billion from UCLA to settle those claims. (UCLA’s Sydney Campbell and Cole Peters were quoted.)
Details of Trump’s $1.2-billion call to remake UCLA | Los Angeles Times
The Trump administration’s settlement proposal to UCLA — which includes a nearly $1.2-billion fine over allegations of antisemitism and civil rights violations — seeks to drastically overhaul campus practices on hiring, admissions, sports, scholarships, discrimination and gender identity, a Times review of the document shows. (UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk is cited.)
California’s $23 billion plan to restore federal cuts | New York Times
Democratic lawmakers in California want the state to restore funding for scientific research that has been slashed by the Trump administration, creating an ambitious plan to use tens of billions of dollars in voter-approved bonds to fill the void … In California, the federal cuts have been deep, and are expected to worsen. At one site alone — the University of California, Los Angeles — the Trump administration has already sought to freeze roughly $584 million in federal research grants, state lawmakers said.
Cal State seeks a delicate balance on diversity under Trump | EdSource
The names of student support offices have repeatedly morphed since the civil rights era of the 1960s, as colleges across higher education swapped terms like minority affairs and multicultural education for diversity and inclusion, said Eddie Cole, a professor of education and history at UCLA.
Low birth weight rates rose nearly 50% around Aliso Canyon gas leak | LAist
A study published Friday in the journal Science Advances found that women who were pregnant at the time of the leak had babies with low birth weights at rates almost 50% higher than normal. “There are risks to having these large natural gas storage facilities close to major urban populations,” said Michael Jerrett, principal investigator of the UCLA Aliso Canyon Disaster Health Research Study team. “It can translate into substantial health effects that could have lifelong effects.” (UCLA’s Kimberly Paul was also quoted. Also: KNBC-TV.)
Water bills in L.A. County are rising faster than inflation | Los Angeles Times
Over the last decade, water bills in Los Angeles County have risen nearly 60% on average, outpacing inflation and adding to financial strain for low-income households, according to a UCLA report… “It is concerning that we have this trend of rates outpacing inflation,” said Edith de Guzman, a cooperative extension water researcher at UCLA’s Luskin Center for Innovation. (UCLA’s Gregory Pierce was also quoted.)
Water around the Santa Monica Pier will be pink Monday morning | KCAL-TV
Those who want to see a unique view of an iconic Southern California locale can do so on various days this month as researchers perform an experiment that will turn the water around the pier pink. Researchers from the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, along with The Bay Foundation, will use pink dye to study the water quality in the area. (UCLA’s Isabella Arzeno-Soltero was quoted. Also: KTLA-TV, KNBC-TV, KABC-TV, KTTV-TV and LAist 89.3-FM.)
Stress, social factors change gut and brain to drive weight gain | New Atlas
Researchers from UCLA Health have conducted a comprehensive review that demonstrates how social challenges reshape the gut’s bacteria and brain circuitry in ways that make it easier to gain weight and much harder to keep it off. They found that these environmental and social factors — including income, education, healthcare access, neighborhoods, discrimination, childhood trauma, isolation and loneliness — exacerbate inflammation, stimulate appetite signals and change brain chemistry, essentially rewiring the body to consume more calories. (UCLA’s Arpana Church was quoted.)
Brain stimulation may offer faster relief for depression | HealthDay News
In the trial conducted by UCLA researchers, 71 adults with major depression were randomly assigned to receive either active HD-tDCS or a sham treatment for 20 minutes a day over 12 working days. The group receiving real treatment showed a greater drop in their depression scores than the control group, according to findings published Sept. 11 in JAMA Network Open. (UCLA’s Mayank Jog was quoted.)
What astronomers know so far about interstellar visitor | CBC News
“We know that it is definitely interstellar, and we know that because it’s travelling really, really fast, and it’s actually moving faster than the escape speed from the solar system,” said David Jewitt, astronomer and professor of astronomy at UCLA. “So basically, it’s going so fast that the gravity of the sun cannot hold it back.”
Hispanic Heritage Month celebrations make adjustments | Associated Press
The weeklong commemoration was expanded to a month two decades later, with legislation signed into law by President Ronald Reagan. “It was clustered around big celebrations for the community,” Alberto Lammers, director of communications at the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute said. “It became a chance for people to know Hispanic cultures, for Latinos to get to know a community better and for the American public to understand a little better the long history of Latinos in the U.S.”
Immigration raids crushing fire recovery, economy | Los Angeles Times
And the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling this week that green-lights racial profiling has raised new fears that “deportations will deplete the construction workforce,” as the UCLA Anderson Forecast warned us in March ... And it’s not just deportations that matter, but the threat of them, says Jerry Nickelsburg, senior economist at the Anderson Forecast. If undocumented people are afraid to show up to install drywall, Nickelsburg told me, it “means you finish homes much more slowly, and that means fewer people are employed.”
Kirk assassination puts spotlight on campuses again | New York Times
“We were seeing this shift in American higher education even before this administration,” said Eddie Cole, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies higher education. He described Trump as “an amplifier” who has “taken the talking points that were really strong at the state level and projected them to the federal level.”
Toxic social media after shooting brings calls to unplug | Los Angeles Times
“The most fringe perspectives are going to at least appear to us to be the most widely shared opinions because we know not all speech is equal online,” said Ramesh Srinivasan, professor of information studies at UCLA and host of the podcast Utopias, which examines what it means to be human in a data-saturated world.
Why it’s so hard to keep America’s public transit riders safe | CNN
“Transit systems have to be open and accessible,” said Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, interim dean at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs and a transit safety expert. “It’s very difficult to install measures that you put, for example, in airports because the public is not going to accept such delays.”
Here are questions parents should ask about AI in the classroom | Axios
“The developmental concerns are huge” for young people offloading reading and summarizing to a [large learning model], says children’s literacy advocate Maryanne Wolf, a director in UCLA’s education department. She tells Axios she’s concerned that if kids are not deep reading they will lose the ability to think critically, to relate and to separate fact from fiction.
Is the hype over solfeggio frequencies legit? | HuffPost
Jenna Marcovitz, a board-certified music therapist and the director of music therapy in the department of integrative medicine at UCLA Health, suspects solfeggio frequencies have become so popular because people are busier as ever and “are craving ways to feel calm and grounded in a world that feels overstimulating and loud.” Men’s Health
L.A. needs resident input to increase and improve parks | LAist
Jon Christensen, a teacher and researcher at UCLA who worked on the assessment, described the approach as looking to solve problems for the greatest number of people. “ For a parks system that is in pretty dire straits, and we have to figure out a pragmatic path forward,” Christensen said. “We can’t solve all the problems all at once.”
