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.
Virtual reality meditation helped me relax | Los Angeles Times
Diana Winston, an author and the director of mindfulness education at the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center, is “cautiously optimistic” about the prospects of using [virtual reality] to meditate, though she notes that the world of meditation is as wide as that of sports. VR will be good for some practices and less helpful in others.
Are California’s public pensions headed for crisis? | Los Angeles Times
Ed Leamer, the former longtime director of the UCLA Anderson Forecast, said investors tend to forget that the stock market can produce mediocre returns for years on end. “There are long periods of time when equities like the S&P 500 don’t give you any return at all. If you purchased the S&P in 1970 after their great experience of the ’60s, you weren’t back at that same level until 1990 — 20 years later,” he said.
City Council candidate Danielle Sandoval loses support | Los Angeles Times
Victor Narro, who teaches labor studies at UCLA, said he urged Sandoval on Aug. 5 to contact the Wage Justice Center, a nonprofit group that has been trying to collect money owed to former employees of Caliente Cantina, a restaurant that Sandoval opened in San Pedro in 2014 and later closed. Narro, who sits on the Wage Justice Center’s board, said he withdrew his endorsement Friday, after The Times reported that wage cases involving four of the restaurant’s workers are still outstanding — seven years after the state’s labor commissioner ruled in their favor. He called that article the “tipping point.”
How to handle a wildfire in your area | LAist
Once inside, limit activity — no burning candles or using every burner in the kitchen to cook up a meal — which all add pollutants to the environment you are trying to keep sealed, said Dr. Yifang Zhu, a professor of environmental health sciences with the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.
The most important question about addiction | New York Times
Philippe Bourgois, now a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles, followed the changes in the onset of crack use in East Harlem for his 1996 book “In Search of Respect.” He closely observed the lives of a group of Puerto Rican and Black youths who sold and used the drug. (Bourgois is quoted.)
Another year of drought expected for California | New York Times
Warmer temperatures mean precipitation is more likely to fall as rain instead of snow, so it can’t be stored as easily for the summer. Not to mention that the Colorado River, a major source of water for Southern California, is in dire shape, said Alex Hall, the director of the Center for Climate Science at U.C.L.A. “We need a really terrific water year, and probably even maybe a couple of pretty amazing water years, to get us out of this hole,” Hall told me.
Are abortion-seekers flocking to California? | San Francisco Chronicle
Earlier this year, UCLA’s Center on Reproductive Health, Law and Policy published a report that estimated that between 8,000 and 16,000 people will travel to California each year for abortion care in a post-Roe world.
SCOTUS cases have implications for 2024 election | Politico
“This term has the potential to be a blockbuster term in terms of election law,” said Rick Hasen, a well-known election law expert at the UCLA School of Law. “But it really depends on how far the court is willing to go.”
Should I still be worried about monkeypox? | Washington Post
“This is a nascent outbreak and a nascent epidemic where we are still learning about it,” said Anne Rimoin, an epidemiologist at UCLA who has studied monkeypox in Africa for two decades. “We can’t have the hubris we understand everything about this virus and what we are going to see over an extended period of time just based on data from a short period of time.”
UCLA study examines extreme heat waves | City News Service
A combination of climate change and extraordinary bad luck contributed to the deadly heat wave in the Pacific Northwest in 2021, according to a UCLA study published Wednesday … “It was outrageous how extreme and severe that heat wave was,” said climate scientist and statistician Karen McKinnon, an assistant professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences, who is also part of the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. “Climate models struggle to capture events this extreme, and most early research puts the chances of it occurring at zero.”
How long can you live after a dementia diagnosis? | HealthDay News
Dr. Catherine Sarkisian is a geriatrician and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. She plans to use this tool when talking to patients with dementia and their families about what the future may hold. “It is impossible to predict with certainty how long any person has to live, but this study used a national dataset to construct and test a prediction tool that can give ranges of the likelihood of being alive at different timepoints between one and 10 years,” she said.
Taking Tylenol during pregnancy may affect your child| Healthline
Dr. Ilina Pluym, a maternal and fetal medicine doctor at UCLA Health, says that the study will not alter her practice of recommending acetaminophen to pregnant women when needed. “As the study described, there were many limitations, including the fact that these results are based on surveys mothers completed which require maternal recall of medication use and maternal interpretation of child behavior,” Pluym told Healthline.
Regular weightlifting could lengthen your life | HealthDay News
Dr. Gregg Fonarow, interim chief of cardiology at the University of California, Los Angeles, reviewed the findings. “Much of the focus of the cardiovascular health benefits of physical activity has centered on aerobic activity, including duration and intensity,” he noted. “Muscle strengthening exercise has become a more recent focus and is now included in recommendations for adults for overall health.” Fonarow said the findings of this study offer further support for current exercise recommendations.
LGBTQ college students and suicide | Healthline
Dr. Natalia Ramos, MPH, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry in the Division of Population Behavioral Health and a board-certified child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist at UCLA Health, explained that “young adulthood is a very stressful time.” “Students who face discrimination, marginalization, and stigma often find themselves experiencing higher rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidality as a result of these experiences,” said Ramos, who is also unaffiliated with The Trevor Project’s research.
COVID shot in pregnancy helps baby, even if mom’s been infected | HealthDay News
For this study, a team at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), studied both vaccinated and unvaccinated moms. At birth, 78% of their babies had detectable antibodies to SARS-CoV-2. That included all of the babies born to vaccinated moms and about three out of four whose mothers were unvaccinated. (UCLA’s Dr. Mary Cambou is quoted.)
