UCLA

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UCLA Has a New MacArthur Fellow

Byuclafaculty

From the MacArthur Foundation website: Elissa Hallem Neurobiologist Assistant Professor, Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics University of California, Los Angeles Age: 34 Elissa Hallem is a neuroscientist who explores the physiology and behavioral consequences of odor detection.  As a graduate student, she undertook expansive studies of olfaction in fruit flies that revealed several important, and sometimes unexpected, insights.  Starting with a mutant fly strain that lacks any odorant receptor in a well-characterized subset of olfactory receptor neurons, Hallem produced more than twenty different transgenic fruit fly lines, each expressing a single, known odorant receptor gene in these neurons. …

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UCLA Luskin School Election Event in Downtown LA Oct. 17

Byuclafaculty

With the presidential debate coming up on Oct. 3, and with your state voter pamphlet probably arriving around now, you may have an interest in a program offered by the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs later this month (October 17).  Below is an announcement and below that is a link for registering to attend: After the horse race is over and Election 2012 has been decided, the business of governing is going to get very difficult very quickly. With budget cuts looming and taxes set to rise, voters are struggling to understand competing visions for the future. Is a…

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If you are worried about the return of Carmageddon…

Byuclafaculty

From the LA Times: …UCLA researchers say that last year’s Carmageddon closure of the 405 Freeway rid Los Angeles of both traffic and another notorious problem: pollution.Air quality near the closed 10-mile portion of the freeway reached levels 83% better than typical weekends, according to research released Friday by a team at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.  More striking, the researchers say, air quality also improved 75% in parts of West Los Angeles and Santa Monica, suggesting that whole swaths of residents stayed off the road in those areas. Overall, air quality across the region was 25% better…

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From Metro on “Closure II” This Coming Weekend

Byuclafaculty

Excerpt from the Metro website: The demolition of the north side of Mulholland Dr Bridge has been scheduled for Saturday, September 29 and Sunday, September 30, 2012. As with the demolition of the south side of the 608-foot-long bridge, the I-405 through the Sepulveda Pass will be closed in both directions that weekend to allow for demolition.  As with the south side demolition, Metro and Caltrans are concerned that closing the freeway will result in severe congestion on the I-405 and adjoining freeways, perhaps effecting [sic] freeways throughout the region. Motorists throughout the State of California are asked to “Plan…

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UCOP’s Equalization Plan Will Likely Have the Opposite Effect in the Long Run

Byuclafaculty

…and the folks at UCOP probably know it. The Daily Bruin is running a story about UCOP’s “rebenching” plan designed to equalize the payment per undergraduate each campus receives.  Rebenching is to be phased in over time. Ostensibly, nothing is being taken away.  UCLA currently gets more than the average.  So in the future it will get lower increments.  Of course, that is a take-away. So what will be the likely outcome?  Despite the fact that the Regents and UCOP are officially against campus-set tuition differentials, differential tuition is what is more likely to happen under the plan.  UCLA is…

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UCLA History and Follow Up: Selection and Adverse Selection

Byuclafaculty

The caption of this 1951 photo from the LA Public Library collection reads “Edward A. Dickson, chairman of the University of California Regents, signs contracts for UCLA’s $20,000,000 Medical Center, while architect Carl C. McElvy looks on.”  The selection of the design for the original UCLA med center suggests a follow-up observation on our prior post about Anthem/Blue Cross dropping UCLA (and Cedars-Sinai) from its plan for LA City workers.  Not surprisingly, there were some angry letters about that decision in the LA Times today.  See http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/letters/la-le-0923-sunday-cedars-ucla-anthem-20120923-4,0,5880599.story.  Our prior post is athttp://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2012/09/there-will-be-repercussions.htmlOne of the letters to the editor asks why Anthem/Blue Cross did…

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More Terrible Night Traffic

Byuclafaculty

The Sunset bridge area will be closed tonight 10 PM until 6 AM tomorrow.  The folks in charge of the project actually did the same thing last night.  And I can tell you from personal experience last night that they thought it was OK to direct lots of traffic to a dead end and then let drivers figure out how to turn around.  So stay away.[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYdr-MslXkw?feature=player_detailpage]

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UCLA Is Well Endowed But Seems to Have Problems of Performance

Byuclafaculty

The Regents’ Investment Committee is meeting on September 25 and one of the items on the agenda is a look at what the various campus foundations are doing with their endowment investments.  Above is a chart showing the asset mix of the different campuses as of March.  [Click on the chart to enlarge and make clearer.]  UCLA seems to be lower than the typical for the campuses in what might be viewed as conventional investments, i.e., equities and fixed income (and cash).  It seems higher in such categories such as real estate, private equity, commodities, and absolute return (which a…

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There will be repercussions

Byuclafaculty

If you woke up to see the front-page healthcare headline in the LA Times, you know there will be more about this story in the future.  The article refers specifically to LA City employees not being covered for care at UCLA.  However, the report is indicative of the ongoing turmoil in the U.S. healthcare system.  Although it has been a commonplace to say that uncompensated or under-compensated healthcare costs are passed along to those who do pay, in fact that kind of cost shifting is becoming more difficult to do. We don’t have a single-payer system but the insurance coverage…

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The Sun Shall Rise Soon on the Sunset Bridge

Byuclafaculty

From Zev Yaroslavsky:  A wider, modernized Sunset Bridge is set to reopen for business on Monday, September 24, marking a major milestone in the progress of the 405 Project to bring a northbound carpool lane and other improvements to one of the nation’s most heavily-traveled freeways.  The rebuilt bridge will be 120 feet across—30 feet wider than its 1950s-era predecessor. In addition to two travel lanes in each direction, it also has new, dedicated turn lanes for motorists to access the freeway without affecting the flow of east-west traffic. Sidewalks and shoulders are wider, too, and the bridge has been…