Scott LaFee | UC San Diego | July 16, 2021 Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Rady Children’s Institute for Genomic Medicine have produced a stem cell model that demonstrates a potential route of entry of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, into the human brain. The findings are published in the July 9, 2021 online issue ... Continue Reading »
Health + Behavior
Soft Skin Patch Could Provide Early Warning for Strokes, Heart Attacks
Liezel Labios | UC San Diego | July 22, 2021 Engineers at the University of California San Diego developed a soft and stretchy ultrasound patch that can be worn on the skin to monitor blood flow through major arteries and veins deep inside a person’s body. Knowing how fast and how much blood flows through a patient’s blood vessels is important because it can help ... Continue Reading »
Smokers Light Up More Cigarettes Following California COVID-19 Lockdown Order, Study Finds
By: Juan Flores, UC Merced | May 27, 2021 The fallout from the coronavirus pandemic has been felt around the world. COVID-19's grip has affected people's mental health and sense of what was once normal, prompting them to turn to new and familiar behaviors to help cope. According to a new study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and ... Continue Reading »
Embracing diversity – one dental student at a time
By: Brianna Aldrich, UC Los Angeles | May 13, 2021 For UCLA dental students Isaiah “Izzy” Sampson and Ryan Davis, entering the dental field was, in a word, perplexing. Growing up in several different states, Sampson never saw a Black person in his family’s dentist offices. Not the dentists, the hygienists or even the office staff. As he started thinking about ... Continue Reading »
Pulitzer Prize winner Ayad Akhtar to speak at UCLA’s Luskin Lecture for Thought Leadership, May 13
By: Margaret MacDonald, UC Los Angeles | April 29, 2021 Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ayad Akhtar will speak at the Luskin Lecture for Thought Leadership on Thursday, May 13 at 4 p.m. Following his remarks, Akhtar will take part in a conversation with Ali Behdad, UCLA’s John Charles Hillis Professor of Literature. The online event is free and open to the public. “This ... Continue Reading »
Survey shows UC retirees embrace volunteering, active retirement
By: Cynthia Lee, UC Los Angeles | April 7, 2021 Results from a recent survey of nearly 5,000 University of California retirees provide a snapshot of mostly active, engaged individuals who, during the past three-and-a-half years, have put their talents and time to good use by volunteering; teaching, writing and consulting; and starting new jobs and businesses, among many ... Continue Reading »
Now rescinded, Trump-era ‘public charge’ policy may still harm immigrants’ health
By: UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative | April 7, 2021 The Trump administration’s expansion of the “public charge” rule — a move that sought to disqualify immigrants who used social programs like Medicaid from obtaining legal residency in the U.S. — led to widespread disenrollment from these programs and left scores of children in California without access to health ... Continue Reading »
Babies prefer baby talk, whether they’re learning one language or two
By Alison Hewitt, UC Los Angeles | March 23, 2021 It can be hard to resist lapsing into an exaggerated, singsong tone when you talk to a cute baby. And that’s with good reason. Babies will pay more attention to baby talk than regular speech, regardless of which languages they’re used to hearing, according to a study by UCLA’s Language Acquisition Lab and 16 ... Continue Reading »
Study unravels antibiotic resistance in MRSA ‘superbug’ infections
By Elaine Schmidt, UC Los Angeles | March 3, 2021 Researchers applied a new approach pioneered at UCLA to predict which methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, infections will fail to respond to antibiotic treatment. By focusing on epigenetics — changes to gene expression that can't be detected by standard DNA sequencing — the study examined how the immune ... Continue Reading »
Understanding the evolution of SARS and COVID-19 type viruses
By Andy Fell, UC Davis | February 24, 2021 As COVID-19 sweeps the world, related viruses quietly circulate among wild animals. A new study shows how SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and SARS-CoV-1, which caused the 2003 SARS outbreak, are related to each other. The work, published recently in the journal Virus Evolution, helps scientists better understand the ... Continue Reading »