|

UCLA Research on Cruise Uncontrol

Byuclafaculty

Mal de debarquement, marked by a constant swaying sensation, can follow a boat or plane trip: Research at UCLA seeks answers (excerpts)

Sonja Bjelland, Los Angeles Times, October 3, 2010

Amanda Coronado wakes up every morning wondering whether she’ll be able to walk out of her bedroom.

It’s almost impossible on a bad day. The world is moving too much for her to keep her balance.

“I can’t just go for a run,” she said. “I can hardly find my feet.”

During the first week of August, Coronado took a cruise along the Mexican coast. Since stepping off the ship, that feeling of cresting, rolling waves has not gone away.

At first she thought it was funny. Then a few days after her return from the cruise, a migraine struck. The swaying sensation intensified, and she could not walk. An emergency room doctor said she had mal de debarquement syndrome, a condition marked by a constant swaying sensation that can last for months or years and has no cure.

When she walks down store aisles, she feels as though they are rising up to hit her. In the shower, she feels as though it might cave in on her. Looking at the ocean now is intolerable for the beach lover and Orange County native…

Looking up her symptoms online, Coronado found the MdDS Balance Disorder Foundation. She connected with its 1,200 online members and learned about the first federally funded research at UCLA… UCLA visiting assistant professor Dr. Yoon-Hee Cha is researching what happens in the brains of syndrome patients.

“It’s like a normal phenomenon, but it’s not normal for it to go on for a long time,” she said. The syndrome most frequently occurs in people who have been on a boat or ship, but airplanes and long drives can also bring it on, Cha said…

Full article at http://www.latimes.com/travel/la-tr-disembark-20101003,0,5113880.story

Presumably, this problem has been around for a long time:

Similar Posts

| |

College Diversity Requirement Gathers Support

Byuclafaculty

The following statement has been circulating among faculty today and has about 80 co-signers as of Wednesday afternoon. We Support the College Diversity Requirement We, the undersigned faculty of the University of California, Los Angeles, express our enthusiastic support for a College Diversity Requirement for students within the College of Letters and Science. Our signatures reflect our confidence in the process, proposal, and the expected benefits of such a requirement for our students and our campus more generally. We recognize fully that for over 30 years, generations of students have worked hard alongside faculty in achieving this goal and now…

| |

College of Letters and Science Faculty Vote on Diversity Requirement

Byuclafaculty

UCLA faculty with appointments in the College of Letters and Science are voting this week on a proposed Diversity Requirement for undergraduate students  in the College. The vote is open between October 24th and October 31st. The Academic Senate has an extensive informational site (votediversity.ucla.edu) that includes documentation on the requirement, a frequently asked questions section, and a forum for faculty to share information and views on the requirement. The forum includes six separate faculty statements in support of the requirement, and one statement in opposition. An additional statement in support circulating on Wednesday has garnered about 80 co-signers. The…

| |

Dig a Deeper Hole?

Byuclafaculty

The plaintiffs in the case against the UCLA Grand Hotel have filed an amended brief.  You can read it at the link below.  There are actually two cases, one involving environmental and other matters and another regarding the tax issue.  The environmental case will be heard in September.  And there is legal skirmishing around the tax case. The tax issue is basically that if the hotel is a commercial operation, it has to pay taxes just as would any other hotel.  There is also an issue of whether the Regents can run a commercial enterprise and, if that’s what they…