Small acts of kindness are frequent and universal, study finds
Key takeawaysA study by researchers from UCLA, Australia, Ecuador, Germany, the Netherlands and the U.K. found that people around the world signal others for assistance every couple of minutes.The research, which examined behaviors in towns and rural areas in several different countries, revealed that people comply with these small requests for help far more often than they decline them.The findings suggest that people from all cultures have more similar cooperative behaviors than prior research has established.A new study by UCLA sociologist Giovanni Rossi and an international team of collaborators finds that people r...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - April 21, 2023 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
In memoriam: Charles Williams, 88, philanthropist and co-founder of UCLA ’s Williams Institute
Charles “Chuck” Williams, a philanthropist and businessman who co-founded the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law in 2001, died April 12 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 88.Williams was known across UCLA for his generosity and vision. His $2.5 million gift to found Williams Institute — the nation’s preeminent center of LGBTQ legal research and policy, and the first to be housed at a law school —was at the time the largest donation ever given to a college or university in support of LGBTQ research. To date, Williams and his partner Stu Walter have committed more than $20 million to UCLA, with most ...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - April 20, 2023 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
The brain cells you haven ’t heard about
For years, Baljit Khakh has been studying stars — not those in the firmament but those in our brains. Astrocytes, so named because of their starlike shape, make up around half of our brain cells, but in research they’ve long taken a back seat to neurons.Khakh ’s research is changing that. The professor of physiology and neurobiology still recalls sifting through scientific studies, seeing the progress being made in neuronal research and being struck by how little was known about astrocytes. “The more I read,” he recalled, “the more I became convi nced that key questions remained to be tackled.”To that end,Kha...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - April 12, 2023 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
Worldwide, those with ‘traditional’ values adhered more strictly to COVID precautions
Given the battles over COVID-19 rules and recommendations in the United States over the past three years, the findings of a new UCLA-led study may come as a bit of a shock: Globally, those who professed to hold traditional values tended to adhere more closely to coronavirus-prevention measures than those who considered themselves more liberal.“Across a wide range of countries, people who endorsed traditional cultural values — a position that often underlies socially conservative political philosophies — were more likely to report taking strict COVID-19 precautions, despite the opposite pattern being observed in the U...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - April 11, 2023 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
Drug overdose fatalities among older adults have quadrupled in past 20 years
The rate of overdose deaths among people age 65 and older quadrupled over the 20-year period starting in 2002, according to a new study co-authored by UCLA Health ’s Chelsea Shover.The findings suggest a need for better public health policies aimed at mental health and substance use disorders.The deaths stemmed from both suicides and accidental overdoses, with nearly three-fourths of the unintended fatalities involving illicit drugs such as synthetic opioids like fentanyl, heroin, cocaine and methamphetamines. Prescription opioids, antidepressants, benzodiazepines, antiepileptics and sedatives were used in 67% of int...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - April 4, 2023 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
Nanoparticle with mRNA appears to prevent, treat peanut allergies in mice
Key takeawaysPeanuts are one of the most common food allergens for children.UCLA scientists have developed a nanoparticle that delivers mRNA to liver cells in order to teach the immune system to tolerate peanut protein and alleviate allergies.In mice, the nanoparticle successfully dampened symptoms of serious allergy.Peanut allergies affect 1 in 50 children, and the most severe cases lead to a potentially deadly immune reaction called anaphylactic shock.Currently, there is only one approved treatment that reduces the severity of the allergic reaction, and it takes months to kick in. A group of UCLA immunologists is aiming ...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - April 3, 2023 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
Would more parks and trees help L.A. County residents live longer?
Key takeawaysResearchers quantified the relationship between life expectancy and theamount of green space in Los Angeles County ’s census tracts.They found that two-thirds of the county ’s Black and Latino populations live in areas that have disproportionately less green coverage and lower average life expectancies.They estimated that by increasing tree canopy, vegetation and park access in green-poor areas, county residents could gain hundreds of thousands of years in overall life expectancy.Improving tree coverage and access to parks and green spaces in Los Angeles County, particularly in lower-income communitie...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - April 3, 2023 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
Those who support Black Lives Matter tend to be less hesitant about vaccines, UCLA study finds
Key takeawaysA UCLA study found that people who expressed support for the Black Lives Matter movement were less hesitant about receiving COVID-19 vaccines than those who did not.One possible explanation for the phenomenon could be that people expressing concern for others through support of a social movement, for example, are also willing to get vaccinated out of concern for others.The findings suggest that involvement in anti-racism activities could have other unintended, positive consequences.Efforts to encourage vaccination might do well to take advantage of the positive feelings and actions between different social...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - March 30, 2023 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
Gap in ‘excess deaths’ has widened between U.S. and Europe, but only partly due to COVID-19
New UCLA research reveals that the U.S. has substantially higher death rates at all but the oldest age groups than five similarly high-income European countries.The study, conducted by UCLA sociologist Patrick Heuveline, also found that the gap between the U.S. and the five other nations — England and Wales, France, Germany, Italy and Spain — widened during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the study reveals, only a portion of that phenomenon was directly attributable to COVID-19.Heuveline found that between 2019 and 2021 in the U.S., the annual number of excess deaths — meaning the difference be...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - March 29, 2023 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
Rats! Rodents seem to make the same logical errors humans do
Animals, like humans, appear to be troubled by a Linda problem.The famous “Linda problem” was designed by psychologists to illustrate how people fall prey to what is known as the conjunction fallacy: the incorrect reasoning that if two events sometimes occur in conjunction, they are more likely to occur together than either event is to occur alone. Now, for the first time, UCLA psychology researchers have shown that this type of logical error isn ’t the sole province of humans — surprisingly, rats seem to make the same mistakes. Theirstudy is published in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin and Review.“The classic...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - March 29, 2023 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
UCLA Nursing receives UC grant to diversify pool of nursing doctoral candidates
The UCLA School of Nursing has been awarded a grant from the University of California ’s Hispanic-Serving Institutions Doctoral Diversity Initiative to increase the number of underrepresented students in its doctoral programs with the long-term goal of developing a nursing faculty that reflects California ’s diversity. The new UCLA Nursing program, spearheaded by the school ’s Associate Dean for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Robert Lucero, will invest a total of $700,000 — $350,000 each from the UC and UCLA Nursing — to recruit and support students from federally designated Hispanic-Serving Institutions of hi...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - March 28, 2023 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
Q & A: Bioengineer Mireille Kamariza can ’t wait to see what’s next
When Mireille Kamariza joined theUCLA Samueli School of Engineering as an assistant professor of bioengineering in January, she brought with her an early record of innovation.Just a decade after earning her undergraduate degree at UC San Diego, Kamariza has already developed a potential point-of-care diagnostic test for tuberculosis. TB is the world ’s second-deadliest infectious disease, behind COVID-19, and still a serious burden in low-income countries.In the late 2010s, as a doctoral fellow at Stanford University, Kamariza and colleagues designed a system with a fluorescent “reporter” molecule attached to a sugar...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - March 23, 2023 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
When it comes to identifying new gene therapies, she ’s in it for the long run
Like any experienced distance runner, Grace McAuley always keeps her focus on the finish line — even if it’s out of sight. That’s what makes her such a promising young scientist.In spring 2021, McAuley was a UCLA senior who was wrapping up four years on the Bruin track and cross-country teams. Not long after running her last race for UCLA, she joined the lab of Dr. Donald Kohn, a UCLA physician-scientist known for developing gene therapies for blood and immune disorders.“I kept telling Grace she was too busy to join the lab, but she wouldn’t take no for an answer,” says Kohn, a member of theEli and Edythe Broad...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - March 23, 2023 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
Vegan, Mediterranean diets have lower carbon footprints than standard U.S. diet
Twenty-six percent of the United States ’ total greenhouse gas emissions comes from food production and consumption. So what people choose to eat matters — to personal health and to the global climate.A new UCLA study published in the journal Nutrients finds that diets centered on plants and unprocessed foods benefit the health of both people and the planet.The study analyzed six diets: standard American, Mediterranean, vegan, paleo and keto, as well as “climatarian” — a diet that minimizes the consumption of red meats and other foods, such as out-of-season produce, that have large carbon footprints.Carbon dioxid...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - March 21, 2023 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
Paleo, keto and ‘climatarian’ diets have lower carbon footprints than standard U.S. diet
Twenty-six percent of the United States ’ total greenhouse gas emissions comes from food production and consumption. So what people choose to eat matters — to personal health and to the global climate.A new UCLA study published in the journal Nutrients finds that diets centered on plants and unprocessed foods benefit the health of both people and the planet.The study analyzed six diets: standard American, Mediterranean, vegan, paleo and keto, as well as “climatarian” — a diet that minimizes the consumption of red meats and other foods, such as out-of-season produce, that have large carbon footprints.Carbon dioxid...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - March 20, 2023 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
