Posts

UCLA faculty voice: Body mass index perpetuates stigmas and indicates little about health

You’ve just returned from your morning run and you’re rustling through your snail mail when you receive some shocking news — an official memo from your employer informing you that your health insurance premium is increasing by 30 percent.

UCLA IoES fundraiser honors champions of the environment

At its recent annual gala, UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability raised a record $1.75 million for UCLA’s environmental research, education and community projects and honored four individuals who’ve made major contributions to that effort.

UCLA sociologist approaches modern Iran from ‘best of both worlds’

Perhaps Kevan Harris’ greatest good fortune was to arrive in Iran as a sociologist with no preconceptions about its culture or values. An Iranian American, Harris grew up in Kentucky and then Chicago, where he earned a B.A. in economics and political science at Northwestern University.

Confirming Einstein: Q&A with LIGO Scientist and EE Alum Richard Savage

Earlier this month, researchers at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) announced they had detected gravitational waves, confirming a prediction by Albert Einstein in his theory of general relativity. Massive objects accelerating at extremely high speeds, such as two colliding black holes, can radiate enough energy during their collision as to ripple the very fabric of space-time, causing the force of gravity itself to oscillate.

Hollywood Diversity Report: Mounting evidence that more diverse casts help the bottom line

The Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies has published its third annual Hollywood Diversity Report. The comprehensive study, subtitled “Busine$$ as Usual?,” examines the relationships between diversity and profitability in Hollywood, and finds once again that audiences, regardless of their race, prefer diverse content.

Antarctica could be headed for major meltdown

In the early Miocene Epoch, temperatures were 10 degrees warmer and ocean levels were 50 feet higher — well above the ground level of modern-day New York, Tokyo and Berlin. It was more than 16 million years ago, so times were different.

Uphill battle for California’s native plant species

Invasive species have moved faster than native species, colonizing and competing in new territories. But endemic species — those unique to California — have largely stayed put. Endemics currently occupy spaces where they can successfully compete against invasive species and other disturbances – but climate change could prove too challenging.

Q&A: UCLA psychologist Robert Bjork on the science of learning

Robert Bjork, Distinguished Research Professor in the UCLA Department of Psychology, will share insights from his work as a renowned expert on human learning in the 120th Faculty Research Lecture, “How We Learn Versus How We Think We Learn.”

Don’t use body mass index to determine whether people are healthy, UCLA-led study says

Over the past few years, body mass index, a ratio of a person’s height and weight, has effectively become a proxy for whether a person is considered healthy. Many U.S. companies use their employees’ BMIs as a factor in determining workers’ health care costs.

Moon was produced by a head-on collision between Earth and a forming planet

The moon was formed by a violent, head-on collision between the early Earth and a “planetary embryo” called Theia approximately 100 million years after the Earth formed, UCLA geochemists and colleagues report.