UCLA In the News lists selected mentions of UCLA in the world’s news media. See more UCLA In the News.
L.A.’s ambitious goal: Recycle all of the city’s sewage into drinkable water | Los Angeles Times
“Money’s going to be the big thing,” said Mark Gold, UCLA’s associate vice chancellor for environment and sustainability. “It’s a bold move by the city,” he added. “But if you look at water planning going back to the early [aughts], there’s been talk about this. This is not a new concept.”
As demand for Hollywood content explodes, Latinos say their time is now — behind and in front of the camera | Press-Enterprise
“Latinos are quite underrepresented in Hollywood, in front of and behind the camera compared to their population share,” observed Darnell Hunt, dean of Social Sciences at UCLA. “The trend has been upward in recent years but they still have a long way to go before they’re going to reach proportionate representation.” Hunt, a professor of sociology and African-American studies, is among the authors of the Hollywood Diversity Report, which published its latest findings Thursday. It reported Latino actors played 5.2 percent of roles in the top 200 films released in 2017, the most recent full year studied. That was up from just 2.7 percent of roles the year before.
A teacher says he was dismissed for his sexuality. He filed a lawsuit to protect others like him | Washington Post
Adam P. Romero, a lecturer at the UCLA School of Law, said in an interview that two federal appeals courts have found that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is sex discrimination. The appeals court that covers Kentucky has ruled unfavorably in this regard, he said, and will present a tougher case. There are several cases of this nature pending in front of the Supreme Court, he said. “Whether the Supreme Court will take them, we don’t know, but at some point the Supreme Court will probably need to step in and resolve this conflict,” he said. “Or Congress could step in and amend the Civil Rights Act.”
Split-sex animals are unusual, yes, but not as rare as you’d think | New York Times
Hormones can’t be the sole drivers of sex either, but they most likely play some role, said Arthur Arnold, a distinguished research professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. In a paper published in 2003 in PNAS, Dr. Arnold showed that in gynandromorphic zebra finches, brain cells on the female side were more masculine than comparable cells in a typical female.
L.A. County weighs a tax on Uber and Lyft to curb traffic congestion | Los Angeles Times
Whether fees change rider behavior depends on their size and how they are applied, said Juan Matute, deputy director of UCLA's Institute of Transportation Studies. A fee charged by the mile, as a flat rate or as a percentage of the cost of the total ride could each have a different effect. A large fee could limit options for low-income riders, he said, while wealthier riders could pay and continue to use a ride-hailing service. A flat fee for all rides could limit short trips, and prompt Uber and Lyft to nudge customers toward scooters, bicycles or other devices, he said.
What’s an Oscar win worth? | Los Angeles Times
“The ratings have declined, and Oscars are famous in the last decade for picking less popular films,” said Jonathan Kuntz, film historian at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. “But the hype and commentary in the news media has been bigger than ever, so it’s kind of weird.”
UCLA tops public universities in philanthropic fundraising | City News Service
UCLA was the No. 1 public university in philanthropic funds raised during the 2017-18 fiscal year, UCLA reported Friday. UCLA’s statement quoted a report by the Council of Advancement and Support of Education. The latest Voluntary Support of Education survey analyzed the period from July 1, 2017, through June 30, 2018, during which UCLA secured $786,650,878 in cash from private sources, according to the school.
Dear liberal arts major: STEM companies need your skills to grow | EdSurge
That was the experience of an executive assistant hired recently by Chandrakant Patel, chief engineer at Hewlett-Packard. Although she majored in psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, Patel said, his assistant managed to learn new technical areas and leadership skills to become a program manager. What is important in this approach, he stressed, is to “hire someone with a non-tech degree, but with the aptitude to grow.”
L.A. jazz never went away, but now it’s on the world stage | KCET-TV’s “SoCal Connected”
“This is a two-year, full scholarship master’s program that accepts one group of six to eight students. And during that time, they study with artists like Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter … along with some incredible artists,” said UCLA’s Daniel Seeff. (Approx. 3:45 mark)
Are California’s teachers’ strikes part of a coordinated ‘wave’? Not exactly | Los Angeles Times
Pedro Noguera, a professor of education at UCLA, said with the finances so bad in many districts, unions face a danger of hurting their own members by focusing on local problems. “I think actually the balance isn’t being struck very well,” he said. “Yes, you have to hold the district accountable, but if in holding it accountable you actually make it weaker, then everybody is going to lose.”
Build the California bullet train | Los Angeles Times Column
With any such project, “you can’t be completely sure of what it will cost,” Martin Wachs, an expert on transportation and urban planning at UCLA and a member of the peer review committee monitoring the business plans of the high-speed rail project. “The technology changes as it’s being built, the demand pattern changes as it’s being built. There’s an enormous amount of uncertainty.”
Free rides to doctor’s offices help low-income Californians get to medical care | California Health Report
The new law is expected to have the biggest effect in California’s rural counties, where transportation can be a challenge. “Transportation is tough in the San Joaquin Valley, and medical transportation is an issue,” said Nadereh Pourat, a professor at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and adjunct professor at the UCLA School of Dentistry. “There are a confluence of factors that come into play, including low incomes and even availability of drivers.”
Gwinnett transit vote could bring new life to Norcross | Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A 2018 study by the University of California, Los Angeles, found that the development “increased the socio-economic well-being of residents in the immediate neighborhood” while preserving racial and ethnic diversity in the historically Latino neighborhood while other parts of the region experienced gentrification.
Black L.A. residents are disproportionately homeless, study finds | Courthouse News Service
A University of California, Los Angeles, study this month found that homeless Latinos in L.A. are less likely to access homeless services or receive support from public or private agencies due to language and cultural barriers…. The study by UCLA researcher Melissa Chinchilla, “Stemming the Rise of Latino Homelessness: Lessons from Los Angeles County,” found Latinos are undercounted in regional homeless counts because they tend to live in converted garages and households with multiple families. Homeless Latinos and Latino renters are also less likely to utilize support services or advocate for their rights due to their citizenship status, the study found.
Round 2 of teacher strikes looks beyond pay and funding | Associated Press
“Even when teachers are not on strike, the potential for their mobilization is having impact,” said UCLA education professor John Rogers, noting that Kentucky lawmakers this week let die a bill to create a funding stream for charter schools. “It’s hard not to make sense of that without thinking that there was some concern about pushback from the teachers union.”
Three reasons why the periodic table needs a redesign | New Scientist
Eric Scerri at the University of California, Los Angeles, is among those who has argued for more fundamental changes. He previously proposed that the table could be arranged to maximize the number of “triads,” sets of three elements that share similar properties and are related by their atomic weights. These days, he is backing an even more drastic approach: make the table not 18 but 32 columns by slotting all 30 f-block elements between the current groups 2 and 3. This allows the atomic number to run in an uninterrupted sequence.
Jewish Hospital deal could prime University of Louisville for growth | Louisville Courier Journal
Gerald Kominski, a professor with the University of California Los Angeles’ Fielding School of Public Health, said there could be short- and long-range advantages to buying Jewish Hospital for the university. “It increases their presence in the community,” he said. “It seems to me that it’s a move that makes sense.”
Engineering HIV-resistant babies may have accidentally changed their brains | Popular Science
In their most recent study, out this week in the journal Cell, the UCLA researchers blocked the CCR5 gene in mice, then gave them a battery of motor ability tests, like walking across a metal grid and counting the number of times they slipped, for a series of nine weeks. Turns out, the mice with the blocked CCR5 gene had greater improvements (less slipping and falling) than the mice without the altered CCR5 gene.… Alcino J. Silva, a neurobiologist at UCLA who has been conducting research on the cognitive effects of CCR5, told MIT Technology Review that, “the simplest interpretation is that those mutations will probably have an impact on cognitive function in the twins,” though it’s impossible to predict in what ways and to what extent.
Malawi’s health system puts women first. This isn’t always a good thing | The Wire Opinion
(Commentary co-written by UCLA’s Kathryn Dovel) Policymakers, donors and international agencies have, for decades, emphasized the need to prioritize women’s health services — for their own health as well as their children’s. While there is an increasing awareness of — and concern about — the fact that men’s health has been neglected, global money, international and national priorities continue to focus on the health of women and children.
Scientists can read the ‘rust’ on a person’s DNA to predict when they’ll die | CBC Radio
Steve Horvath, a professor in the Department of Human Genetics and Biostatistics at the University of California Los Angeles, is at the forefront of this research. He’s developed an epigenetic clock that he ominously calls, “GrimAge.” “It really allows a researcher to predict how long a person will live,” said Horvath. “And more generally, it also relates to how long is somebody’s so-called health span.”
The Swords school that had the first school computer in Ireland | The Irish Times
This year sees the 50th anniversary since the first message was sent between two computers on a net of sorts. It happened at UCLA in 1969, and is colloquially called “the birth of the internet,” although that inception is debated and can technically be attributed to many incidents. The first message on Arpanet, the precursor to the internet, was sent by Charley Kline, a student, supervised by Leonard Kleinrock, an influential computer scientist.
Report finds women, minorities make modest gains in Hollywood | Agence France-Presse
Women and minorities have made modest gains in Hollywood in the past year but they remain underrepresented in the industry compared with their share of the population, according to a report released on Thursday. The annual “Hollywood Diversity Report” — published by the University of California Los Angeles — examined 200 films released in 2017 and 1,316 television shows that aired or streamed during the 2016-17 season.… “We’ve seen modest advances when it comes to movies and films,” said Ana-Christina Ramon, a lead author of the study. “But deep-seated power systems — dominated by white male decision-makers at the highest levels — are hard to break.
Investigating processes that control the expression of genes | ABC’s “The Science Show” (Australia)
[UCLA’s] Steve Jacobson has spent 20 years trying to understand the chemical pathways by which methylation occurs, how the methyl group is attached and detached from genes. Using Arabidopsis thaliana he aims to develop tools to purposely change methylation one gene at a time. Once methylation has been put on a gene it can be remembered, and a trait changed. This will be heritable, allowing the development of new plant traits. (Audio download)
Think about your weekend like a vacation | KABC-TV
Researchers say it’s important to think about your weekend like a vacation — your Saturdays and Sundays. And that will make your Mondays better. UCLA researchers report it’s less about what you do and more about how you view your activities.
UCLA researchers discover a new method for welding 7075 aluminum alloy | Engineering
Xiaochun Li, UCLA’s Raytheon Professor of Manufacturing and the study’s principal investigator, believes that the new method will have various uses in several industries. “The new technique is just a simple twist, but it could allow widespread use of this high-strength aluminum alloy in mass-produced products like cars or bicycles, where parts are often assembled together. Companies could use the same processes and equipment they already have to incorporate this super-strong aluminum alloy into their manufacturing processes, and their products could be lighter and more energy efficient, while still retaining their strength,” said Li.
