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Climate scientist Aradhna Tripati receives honors from two science organizations

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Picture of Aradhna Tripati

Aradhna Tripati. Courtesy of Aradhna Tripati

Aradhna Tripati, an associate professor affiliated with UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and the department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences, has been named recipient of the Willi Dansgaard award from the American Geophysical Union.

Tripati, who is the founder and director of the Center for Diverse Leadership in Science at UCLA, has also recently been elected as a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences. Fellows of the academy are a group of distinguished scientists nominated and appointed in recognition of their outstanding contributions to the natural sciences.

She has been a mentor and advisor to many and has established a number of laboratories. Tripati’s research is focused on using the chemistry of natural compounds as well as models as tools to understand how the Earth works. Her work is relevant to understanding climate change, the oceans, and the transfer of carbon between the biosphere, atmosphere and oceans.

The Dansgaard Award is presented annually and recognizes significant contributions to the fields of paleoceanography or paleoclimatology from a mid-career scientist within eight to 20 years of receiving their doctorate. Named in honor of Willi Dansgaard, a paleoclimate pioneer, this award is presented at the union’s fall meeting.

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.

Terence Tao in his UCLA office

Terence Tao named to President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology

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Terence Tao in his UCLA office

Terence Tao in his UCLA office. Photo credit: Reed Hutchinson/UCLA

Terence Tao, UCLA professor of mathematics, has been selected by President Joe Biden as one 30 of America’s most-distinguished leaders in science and technology who will serve on his President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

A direct descendant of the scientific advisory committee established by President Eisenhower in 1957 in the weeks after the launch of Sputnik, the council is the sole body of external advisers charged with making science, technology and innovation policy recommendations to the president and the White House to address the country’s most pressing challenges.

Tao, who holds the James and Carol Collins Chair in the UCLA College, became the first mathematics professor in UCLA history to be awarded the Fields Medal in 2006, often described as the “Nobel Prize in mathematics.” He has earned many other honors, including the National Science Foundation’s Alan T. Waterman Award, the Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics, Royal Society’s 2014 Royal Medal for physical sciences, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ Crafoord Prize and the first Riemann Prize in Mathematics, established by Italy’s Riemann International School of Mathematics. National Geographic magazine featured him in its “What makes a genius?” May 2017 issue.

The new council includes two Nobel laureates, 20 elected members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, five MacArthur Foundation Fellows and two former cabinet secretaries.

The council advises the president “on matters involving policy affecting science, technology, and innovation, as well as on matters involving scientific and technological information that is needed to inform public policy relating to the economy, worker empowerment, education, energy, the environment, public health, national and homeland security, racial equity, and other topics,” the White House said.

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.

Military vehicles traveling through a flooded street in Minnesota. Photo Credit: Tech. Sgt. Erik Gudmundson/U.S. Air Force

Climate change definitively linked to increases in extreme rain and snow, UCLA research finds

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Study uses machine learning to analyze decades’ worth of data from around the world

Military vehicles traveling through a flooded street in Minnesota. Photo Credit: Tech. Sgt. Erik Gudmundson/U.S. Air Force

Military vehicles traveling through a flooded street in Minnesota. Photo Credit: Tech. Sgt. Erik Gudmundson/U.S. Air Force

 

A UCLA study published in Nature Communications shows definitively that abnormally heavy rain and snowfall events around the world are becoming more severe due to human-driven climate change.

While climate change is widely understood to cause higher temperatures and more devastating droughts, it is also linked to heavier precipitation. That’s mainly because the warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, which can lead to more dramatic wet seasons, said Gavin Madakumbura, the study’s lead author, a UCLA doctoral candidate studying climate modeling.

The study clearly shows that human activity is causing the intensification of heavy rain and snow events, which can lead to problems like floods, soil erosion, crop damage and problems with water resource management.

“These findings further elevate the urgency of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to prevent even larger impacts down the road,” said senior author Alex Hall, director of the UCLA Center for Climate Science, which is a part of the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. “We can now say that extreme precipitation is increasing globally due to human-induced climate change.”

For more than a decade, scientists have been able to demonstrate in climate models and smaller, regional studies what they could not yet detect globally from data gathered from real-world observations: that human-induced, or anthropogenic, climate change had already begun causing more intense extreme precipitation events worldwide.

But that changed when the UCLA researchers applied machine learning, in which a computer can, without being explicitly programmed, produce conclusions as it “learns” by analyzing data. For the first time, the researchers were able to present clear evidence that human activities have already caused extreme precipitation globally.

The UCLA researchers compared 11 global datasets of land precipitation records taken from 1982 to 2015. In every dataset they reviewed, they found a link between human activity and precipitation patterns.

Scientists have long sought to understand and explain the phenomenon on a worldwide scale. But those efforts were hampered in large part because of the challenges of reconciling climate information from around the world.

In addition, the amount of precipitation considered “extreme” in one region can differ from one area to the next — unusually heavy rain in an otherwise arid desert might appear mild compared to the same rainfall in a monsoon region — making it even more difficult to evaluate the planet as a whole. As a result, most previous studies on the topic have been regional, rather than global, Hall said.

Analyzing data using machine learning changed that.

“This is the first time anyone has taken into account these deep uncertainties to detect a human influence on extreme precipitation over the whole globe,” Hall said.

The UCLA scientists used climate models to create yearly global maps to display each area’s largest single-day precipitation. They fed that data into the machine learning program, which was trained to review world maps displaying the precipitation data and then “guess” which year each map represented.

After the machine learning program was trained on the computer-modeled data, the researchers put it to work analyzing actual observed precipitation data from 1982 to 2015.

Tellingly, in climate models, the system struggled to accurately infer which year it was reviewing when it was prompted to analyze data from the 1920s through the 1970s, when the signs of human activity were not strong enough to identify separately from natural climate variations.

But for climate model data beginning in the 1970s, thanks to the strength of unnatural precipitation events that were being caused by human activities, the system became increasingly accurate in its predictions.

“We know that the signs of human influence started in the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century, but it takes some time for the signal to be strong enough to recognize compared to natural variations,” Madakumbura said. “We used this new methodology to build on the work that came before, and it means we can look at these disparate datasets from different regions around the world and still detect the human influence.

“Greater precipitation extremes will not be detectable yet in every individual location on the globe, but we do see them in the global pattern.”

The paper’s other authors are Chad Thackeray, Jesse Norris and Naomi Goldenson, all researchers at the Center for Climate Science.

This article, written by Alison Hewitt, originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.

 

The researchers focused on the dynamics of a key signaling molecule in immune cells called macrophages (pictured here).

UCLA study reveals how immune cells can be trained to fight infections

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The body’s immune cells naturally fight off viral and bacterial microbes and other invaders, but they can also be reprogrammed or “trained” to respond even more aggressively and potently to such threats, report UCLA scientists who have discovered the fundamental rule underlying this process in a particular class of cells.

In a study published June 18 in the journal Science, the researchers identified a key molecular mechanism within macrophages, infection-fighting cells of the innate immune system, that determines whether — and how well — the cells can be trained. Their findings could help pave the way for future targeted strategies to enhance the function of the immune system.

“Like a soldier or an athlete, innate immune cells can be trained by past experiences to become better at fighting infections,” said lead author Quen Cheng, an assistant clinical professor of infectious diseases at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine. However, he noted, the researchers had previously observed that some experiences seemed to be better than others for immune training. “This surprising finding motivated us to better understand the rules that govern this process.”

Whether immune training occurs depends on how the DNA of the cell is wrapped. In human cells, for instance, more than 6 feet of DNA must fit into the cell’s nucleus, which is so small that it is not visible to the naked eye. To achieve this feat, the DNA is tightly wrapped into chromosomes.

Only selected regions of the DNA are exposed and accessible, and only the genes in those accessible regions are able to respond and fight infection, said senior author Alexander Hoffmann, UCLA’s Thomas M. Asher Professor of Microbiology and director of the Institute for Quantitative and Computational Biosciences.

However, by introducing a stimulus to a macrophage — for example, a substance derived from a microbe or pathogen, as in the case of a vaccine — previously compacted DNA regions can be unwrapped. This unwrapping exposes new genes that will enable the cell to respond more aggressively, in essence training it to fight the next infection, Hoffmann said.

The new research reveals that the precise dynamics of a key immune signaling molecule in macrophages, called NFκB, determine whether or not this unwrapping and exposing of genes occurs. Moreover, the researchers report, the dynamic activity of NFκB itself is determined by the precise type of extracellular stimulus introduced to the macrophage.

“Importantly, our study shows that innate immune cells can be trained to become more aggressive only by some stimuli and not others,” Cheng said. “This specificity is critical to human health because proper training is important for effectively fighting infection, but improper training may result in too much inflammation and autoimmunity, which can cause significant damage.”

In this image from a microscopy video, scientists track the activity of NFκB inside the cell as it responds to a stimulus.

In this image from a microscopy video, scientists track the activity of NFκB inside the cell as it responds to a stimulus. Credit: Brooks Taylor/UCLA

NFκB helps immune cells to identify incoming threats. When receptors on immune cells detect threatening external stimuli, they activate the NFκB molecule inside the cell. The dynamics of NFκB — how it behaves over time — form a language similar to Morse code by which it communicates the identity of the external threat to the DNA and tells it which genes to ready for battle.

The specific “word” of this code that NFκB uses to tell DNA to unwrap is dependent on whether NFκB is oscillatory or steady over eight or more hours after encountering a stimulus. Oscillating NFκB builds up in a macrophage’s nucleus, then moves into the cytoplasm, then returns to the nucleus in cycles, much like a swinging pendulum. Non-oscillating, or steady, NFκB moves into the nucleus and stays there for several hours.

Using advanced microscopy, the researchers followed the activity of NFκB in macrophages derived from the bone marrow of healthy mice, tracking how the molecule’s dynamics changed in response to several different stimuli. They discovered that NFκB was successful at training macrophages — unwrapping DNA and exposing new infection-fighting genes — only when the stimulus induced non-oscillating NFκB activity.

“For a long time, we’ve known intuitively that whether NFκB oscillates or not of must be important but had simply not been able to figure out how,” Cheng said. “These results are a real breakthrough for understanding the language of immune cells, and knowing the language will help us ‘hack’ the system to improve immune function.”

The researchers were also able to simulate this training process with a mathematical model, and the predictive understanding they gleaned may allow for future precision-targeted engineering of trained immunity, Hoffmann said. Mathematical modeling of immune regulatory systems is a key goal of his laboratory, in order to use predictive simulations for precision medicine.

Cheng earned his Ph.D. under Hoffmann’s guidance through UCLA’s Specialty Training and Advanced Research, or STAR, program for physician scientists.

Hoffmann and Cheng expect this research to inspire a wide range of additional studies, including investigations into human diseases caused by immune cells that are improperly trained, strategies to optimize immune training to fight infection and ways to complement existing vaccine approaches.

“This study shows how collaborations between researchers in the UCLA College and David Geffen School of Medicine can produce innovative and impactful science that benefits human health,” Hoffmann said.

The study’s co-lead author is Sho Ohta, an assistant professor at the University of Tokyo and a former postdoctoral scholar in Hoffmann’s UCLA laboratory. Other co-authors are UCLA M.D.–Ph.D. student Katherine Sheu; Roberto Spreafico, a former postdoctoral scholar in Hoffmann’s laboratory; Adewunmi Adelaja, who earned his Ph.D. in Hoffmann’s laboratory and is now working toward his M.D. at UCLA; and Brooks Taylor, a former UCLA doctoral student in Hoffmann’s laboratory.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the UCLA Department of Medicine’s STAR program.

 This article, written by Stuart Wolpert and Todd Schindler, originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.

Young boy with school workbook and tablet computer

Through UCLA course, students deliver funding to L.A. nonprofits

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Young boy with school workbook and tablet computer

Young boy with school workbook and tablet computer

 

Philanthropy as Civic Engagement class has distributed $780,000 to local organizations over past decade

Thanks to an unusual undergraduate course at UCLA, students have distributed hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past decade to Los Angeles nonprofits.

The latest edition of the class, Philanthropy as Civic Engagement, concluded in June. Students distributed funds to three beneficiaries: Open Paths Counseling Center, which received $40,000 toward training clinicians to support the mental health needs of underserved communities; School on Wheels, which received $25,000 to provide laptops for homeless K-12 students; and Jazz Hands for Autism, which received $15,000 to provide musical training, career support and advocacy for musicians who have autism.

And since 2012, when the course was first offered, students have distributed a total of $780,000 to 27 local organizations.

The course enables students to explore their sense of responsibility to care for and improve their communities. While many of the students are already engaged in volunteerism, the experience provides a different perspective, introducing them to the process that individuals and grantmaking organizations go through when deciding how to allocate their charitable giving.

“People sometimes assume that to be philanthropic, you must be abundantly wealthy,” said Jennifer Lindholm, UCLA’s assistant dean of undergraduate education, who has led the course’s teaching team for the past five years. “That mindset can disempower us from engaging actively to strengthen our communities.

“Through this course, we aim to help students understand the work of nonprofit organizations, consider different perspectives on philanthropic giving, and challenge themselves to consider the myriad ways they can contribute — both now and in the future — to enhancing the common good.”

The money the students give away is provided by UCLA donors who have chosen to invest in cultivating a new generation of philanthropists. Since 2019, the course has been supported by Women & Philanthropy at UCLA, which continues to raise funds toward the class endowment.

In the 2021 class, students were divided into eight-person groups, each of which researched a pool of 14 potential nonprofit beneficiaries. Based on what they learned, each group chose eight semifinalists and held meetings with those organizations’ leaders.

One of those meetings was especially meaningful for Adriana Perez, a psychology major from Chatsworth, California, who is studying how to make mental health resources more accessible. During an online interview with representatives from Open Paths, Perez said, she connected deeply with the counseling center’s mission. But she had never before seen herself as a philanthropist.

“The ability to grant a real monetary award was incredibly empowering in that, as a class, we were able to decide what issues were most important to us, and the ability to encourage change was within our hands,” she said. “Philanthropy was not an area I thought I would ever be involved in, but this course definitely changed my perspective.”

Following those meetings, each group zeroed in one nonprofit as its chosen beneficiary, and presented a funding proposal for that organization to the other students in the class. A class-wide vote determined how much of the class’s total funds should go to each of the three organizations.

Students are free to consider and debate which criteria are most important to their funding decisions. In the latest iteration of the course, which ended in June, some students prioritized pandemic emergency relief, while others were more concerned with programs’ long-term viability or organizations’ prospects for sustained growth. Most were focused on social justice and equity.

Johnny Perez, a psychology major from Whittier, California, was a member of this year’s class. One of his long-term goals is to open a drug treatment center, and he took the course to better understand how funding decisions are made, which could come in handy when he seeks financial backers for his own nonprofit.

Course discussions helped him realize that all of his classmates had their own perspectives and priorities.

“We all had different views, and one was not necessarily better than the other,” Perez said. “I wanted to listen to other people’s views, to have the ability to want to learn and expand, and learn about other people’s values.”

Michael Lima-Sabatani is a public affairs major from Yorba Linda, California, with an interest in organizational governance. He said the course provided real opportunities to evaluate how his and his classmates’ skill sets could determine who was best equipped to serve certain roles on the team.

“I had done a lot of research on one organization and was passionate about it, but from listening to the other presentations, I knew one particular classmate would be the best advocate and presenter,” he said. “She had the most poise and was the best storyteller. And I took on an editorial position, which I know was a good fit for my writing skills.”

Lima-Sabatini said he also appreciated the opportunity to meet with leaders of the nonprofits he researched. “Gaining the first-hand experience in a setting where you are being supported was super valuable,” he said.

For other students, the course highlighted the importance of diversity in philanthropy.

“Being in this position gave me a lot of insight into philanthropy, and how diversity in board rooms is a hugely important issue,” said Aaron Tann, a communications major from Baldwin Park, California. “Different communities have different needs, perspectives and diverse opinions. We also need that diversity at the highest level of power where money is being distributed.

“A lot of us think we know what a community needs, but the organizations that are hands on with the community have a much better idea about the best use of the money.”

Armed with insights like that, those who completed the 2021 edition of the course have already laid the groundwork for the UCLA students who will take the class after them. Damola Adeyemo, a physiological science major from Rancho Cucamonga, California, shared her thoughts in an open letter that will be shared with students who might enroll in the 2022 class.

“This UCLA class is very different and you will be astonished by how much you will grow in 10 weeks. I do not think I will ever have another class as unique and exciting as this one in my time as an undergraduate.”

Raves from the beneficiaries

“It was a great experience working with the students. They were fully engaged in the project and asked questions to deeper their understanding of the work we do.”
– Charles Evans, executive director, School on Wheels

“It was a pleasure working with the Philanthropy as Civic Engagement class. They were very thoughtful and professional in their approach and inquiry. Their enthusiasm for our work was palpable, which made working with them an absolute delight.”
– Sierra Smith, executive director, Open Paths

“Working with the UCLA Philanthropy as Civic Engagement students was an incredible and emotional experience. Through their interviews and questions, the students were able to construct a cohesive narrative about the work JHFA does that I don’t think would have been possible without their help.”
– Ifunanya Nweke, executive director, Jazz Hands for Autism

This article, written by Elizabeth Kivowitz, originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.

The Rev. James Lawson Jr. gives a speech after being presented with the UCLA Medal.

UCLA Labor Center building to be renamed for civil rights icon Rev. James Lawson Jr.

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The Rev. James Lawson Jr. gives a speech after being presented with the UCLA Medal.

The Rev. James Lawson Jr. gives a speech after being presented with the UCLA Medal.

New California budget also sets aside $15 million for renovations

It’s been big news for the UCLA Labor Center. The historic building that houses the UCLA Labor Center will be named in honor the Rev. James Lawson Jr., a a civil rights and workers’ rights leader who worked closely with Martin Luther King Jr., and the 2021-22 California budget includes $15 million to renovate the building that overlooks MacArthur Park.

UCLA has leased this building since 2002 and purchased the building in November 2020. This one-time allocation will fund necessary renovations for the building and establish a permanent home for the center, which has provided a base for low-wage worker research, innovative labor projects, and community-engaged learning and leadership development for hundreds of UCLA students.

Lawson has taught a labor studies course on nonviolence at UCLA for the past twenty years. In 2018, Lawson received the UCLA Medal, the campus’s highest honor.

The UCLA Labor Center was established in 1964 as the Center for Labor Research and Education within the UCLA Institute of Industrial Relations, now the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, through a statewide joint labor-university committee. Since its inception, the center has been dedicated to research, education, and service in the interest of California’s workers.

“We wanted to bridge the gap between the university and the labor movement, worker centers, and community-based social justice organizations,” said Kent Wong, director at the UCLA Labor Center. “We’re located in the most immigrant-dense zip code in the country and in direct proximity to the communities served by our research and programs.”

Read the full news release about the funding for the labor center on the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment website.

 

Professor Barbara Fuchs speaks with Pedro Sánchez, the president of Spain, on UCLA’s campus

Spanish government to honor UCLA professor for promoting language and culture

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Professor Barbara Fuchs speaks with Pedro Sánchez, the president of Spain, on UCLA’s campus

Professor Barbara Fuchs speaks with Pedro Sánchez, the president of Spain, on UCLA’s campus

The Cervantes Institute, a Spanish government agency dedicated to promoting Spanish around the world, has chosen Barbara Fuchs, UCLA professor of Spanish and English, to receive its inaugural Ñ Prize, honoring her work disseminating Spanish language and culture through theater and literature.

The president of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, will join Fuchs on July 22 at UCLA as part of an event to announce the first Instituto Cervantes branch in Los Angeles, which will be the seventh such center in the United States. In October, Spain’s King Felipe VI will present the bronze Ñ Prize to Fuchs in person in Madrid.

Fuchs, a professor in the Spanish & Portuguese department and also the English department, currently serves as president of the Modern Language Association. She has served as the director of the UCLA Center for 17th- and 18th-Century Studies and UCLA’s William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. In 2014, she founded Diversifying the Classics, an initiative to promote awareness and appreciation of Hispanic classical theater.

“In a region with 4 million Spanish speakers, there was nevertheless a sense that ‘the classics’ still primarily meant Shakespeare,” Fuchs said. “But the classics come in different flavors. In addition to Shakespeare in the park, we can have Lope in the park and Sor Juana in the park. It will be incredible to have a partner like the Instituto Cervantes to collaborate with in Los Angeles.”

The July 22 event will be opened by UCLA Chancellor Gene Block.

“I am proud of the rigorous and creative work of Professor Fuchs,” Block said. “She has brought much-needed awareness of the richness and depth of Hispanic classical theater and helped make that important cultural heritage accessible to our communities.”

Diversifying the Classics includes a collaborative translation workshop that makes Hispanic classical plays available in English. In 2018, the program launched the biennial La Escena festival, the first Hispanic classical theater festival in Los Angeles. The project also sponsors Golden Tongues, an adaptation initiative that pairs Los Angeles writers with Spanish source texts.

“We’ve offered performances after which a Latinx student will ask us, ‘Why did I never hear of this in high school?’ That’s heartbreaking,” Fuchs said. “Spanish isn’t just the everyday language for the home, it’s also the language of art and culture. In the U.S., conversations about diversity in theater and the classics have primarily been about who performs the plays, but they should extend to what plays are presented.”

The Cervantes Institute’s Ñ Prize is granted to individuals or institutions that have promoted Spanish in the world or have a career of special dedication to its international dissemination.

Fuchs’ research played a vital role in a 2019 Instituto Cervantes exhibition in Madrid, said the institute’s director, Luis García Montero. The exhibition featured women writers during the Spanish Golden Age in the 16th and 17th centuries, and Montero praised Fuchs’ historical research as a “fundamental reference” for the exhibition.

“Looking back has allowed Barbara Fuchs to teach us a lot about our theater, the benefits and difficulties of multiculturalism, our relations with the Anglo-Saxon culture, the picaresque and the presence of women — an essential look to complete the truth of our history,” Montero said.

Fuchs’ publications include “Passing for Spain: Cervantes and the Fictions of Identity,” “Exotic Nation: Maurophilia and the Construction of Early Modern Spain,” and “Knowing Fictions: Picaresque Reading in the Early Modern Hispanic World.” She is co-editor of “The Golden Age of Spanish Drama” and “Representing Imperial Rivalry in the Early Modern Mediterranean,” among other works. She has translated into English 11 comedias, eight of them with the UCLA Working Group on the Comedia in Translation and Performance. She is also the author of multiple articles on the literature and culture of early modern Europe, with a transnational focus.

In addition to her work as a translator, she has served as editor of Hispanic Review and, since 2017, as editor of the series, “The Comedia in Translation and Performance.” Fuchs taught previously at the University of Washington and at the University of Pennsylvania, and has received numerous fellowships, including from the Guggenheim and Andrew W. Mellon Foundations.

Editor’s note: This story was updated July 22 with pictures from the event.

This article, written by Alison Hewitt, originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.

A photo of Patricia Greenfield.

Patricia Greenfield honored for child development research

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A photo of Patricia Greenfield.

Patricia Greenfield (Photo Credit: Anthony Elgort)

Patricia Greenfield, a UCLA distinguished professor of psychology, has been honored with the Society for Research in Child Development’s Distinguished Contributions to the Interdisciplinary Understanding of Child Development Award.

She was honored for “cutting-edge, integrative work across developmental psychology, anthropology, sociology, communication, ecology, economics, textiles, gender/ethnic/racial studies, education, linguistics, primate sciences, pediatrics and neuroscience,” as well as for “exemplary impactful efforts to organize conferences, volumes, training programs and research centers that foster interdisciplinary work.”

Greenfield has authored more than 250 research publications, and her research has been translated into 10 languages. Her primary theoretical and research interests focus on the relationship between culture and human development.

This February, she and her colleagues published a study on how American values, attitudes and activities have changed dramatically during COVID-19. It was the lead research article in a special issue of the journal Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies dedicated to the pandemic.

In addition to studying American culture, Greenfield has studied the Zinacantec Maya women of Chiapas, Mexico, and the woven and embroidered clothing that expresses their values. Among her other research subjects is the teenage brain on social media.

This article, written by Stuart Wolpert, originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.

A photo of Aurora borealis in Alaska

‘Surfing’ particles: Physicists solve a mystery surrounding aurora borealis

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A photo of Aurora borealis in Alaska

Aurora borealis in Alaska (Photo Credit: Jean Beaufort)

The spectacularly colorful aurora borealis — or northern lights — that fills the sky in high-latitude regions has fascinated people for thousands of years. Now, a team of scientists has resolved one of the final mysteries surrounding its origin.

Scientists know that electrons and other energized particles that emanate from the sun as part of the “solar wind” speed down Earth’s magnetic field lines and into the upper atmosphere, where they collide with oxygen and nitrogen molecules, kicking them into an excited state. These molecules then relax by emitting light, producing the beautiful green and red hues of the aurora.

What has not been well understood is precisely how groups of electrons accelerate through the magnetic field on the last leg of their journey, reaching speeds of up to 45 million mph. In a study published today in the journal Nature Communications, that question is answered by physicists from UCLA, Wheaton College, the University of Iowa and the Space Science Institute.

A popular theory has been that electrons hitch a ride on Alfvén waves — a type of electromagnetic wave that spacecraft have frequently identified traveling Earthward along magnetic field lines above auroras. While space-based research has provided strong support for the theory, limitations inherent to spacecraft measurements have prevented a definitive test.

To overcome these limitations, the physicists conducted laboratory experiments on the Large Plasma Device at UCLA’s Basic Plasma Science Facility, a national collaborative research site supported jointly by the U.S. Department of Energy and National Science Foundation.

After reproducing conditions that mimicked those in Earth’s auroral magnetosphere, the team used specially designed instruments to launch Alfvén waves down the plasma device’s 20-meter–long chamber. Because Alfvén waves are thought to collect only a small portion of electrons in the plasma of space, the physicists focused on determining whether there were electrons that appeared to be traveling at a rate comparable to the electric field of the waves.

“This challenging experiment required a measurement of the very small population of electrons moving down the chamber at nearly the same speed as the Alfvén waves, numbering less than one in a thousand of the electrons in the plasma,” said Troy Carter, a professor of physics and director of the UCLA Plasma Science and Technology Institute.

“Measurements revealed this small population of electrons undergoes ‘resonant acceleration’ by the Alfvén wave’s electric field, similar to a surfer catching a wave and being continually accelerated as the surfer moves along with the wave,” said Gregory Howes, an associate professor of physics at the University of Iowa.

Electrons surfing on Alfvén waves (yellow) streaming toward Earth collide with nitrogen and oxygen molecules (white); in upper altitudes, these collisions result in the emission of red light, while in lower altitudes the emitted light is green.

Electrons streaming toward Earth as they surf on Alfvén waves (yellow) collide with nitrogen and oxygen molecules (white); in upper altitudes, these collisions result in the emission of red light, while in lower altitudes the emitted light is green. (Photo Credit: Austin Montelius, University of Iowa)

Howes noted that these Alfvén waves appear following geomagnetic storms, space-based phenomena triggered by violent events on the sun, such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections. These storms can cause what is known as “magnetic reconnection” in the Earth’s magnetic field, in which magnetic field lines are stretched like rubber bands, snap and then reconnect. These shifts launch Alfvén waves along the lines toward Earth.

And because regions of magnetic reconnection shift during a storm, the Alfvén waves — and their accompanying surfing electrons — travel along different field lines over that time period, ultimately leading to the shimmering glow of the aurora’s curtains of light, Carter said.

In physics, electrons surfing on the electric field of a wave is a phenomenon known as Landau damping, in which the energy of the wave is transferred to the accelerated particles. As part of their research, the team used an innovative analysis technique that combined measurements of the Alfvén waves’ electric field and the electrons to generate a unique signature of the electron acceleration by Landau damping. Through numerical simulations and mathematical modeling, the researchers demonstrated that the signature of acceleration measured in the experiment agreed with the predicted signature for Landau damping.

The agreement of experiment, simulation and modeling provides the first direct test showing that Alfvén waves can produce accelerated electrons that cause the aurora, Carter said.

“This experimental confirmation of the physics behind the aurora is due to persistent ingenuity of research groups at the University of Iowa and UCLA,” said Vyacheslav (Slava) Lukin, program director for Plasma Physics at the National Science Foundation, who was not involved in the research. “From student support via an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, to the NSF CAREER program for early career faculty, to the 25-year partnership between NSF and the Department of Energy that has enabled the unique capabilities of the Basic Plasma Science Facility, this is a success story of a discovery made possible by consistent support of the university research community.”

In addition to Howes and Carter, study authors included James Schroeder of Wheaton College, Craig Kletzing and Frederick Skiff of the University of Iowa, Stephen Vincena of UCLA, and Seth Dorfman of the Space Science Institute.

Further information on the research findings is available on Howes’ website.

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.

A photo of Anne Nguyen.

Graduating senior forged new connections to Vietnamese heritage through UCLA class

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A photo of Anne Nguyen.

UCLA senior Anne Nguyen. (Photo Courtesy of Anne Nguyen)

Anne Nguyen started observing the economic and emotional tolls of the pandemic before a lot of others.

Having grown up in a community of mostly Vietnamese immigrants, she knew families who owned nail salons, people who worked as nail techs and also was familiar with some of the health concerns given the exposure to chemicals in that industry. It wasn’t until she came to UCLA in 2017 that she realized the severity of some of the health problems associated with spending hours in a salon.

Then in March 2020, nail salon workers were being laid off even before shutdown orders because of the rapid decline in business after false reports that the virus was spreading in nail salons. Soon after there was the rise in anti-Asian racism.

“The impact on this community feels close to home,” said Nguyen, a soon-to-be UCLA graduate from San Jose, California, who is determined to help the broader immigrant community that raised her.

During her time at UCLA, Nguyen spent four years volunteering with the student-run Vietnamese Community Health organization, or VCH, which operates mostly in Orange County offering screenings for hypertension, blood glucose, cholesterol, as well as women’s health services like mammograms or OB-GYN consultations.

Nguyen and the group have also focused on offering connections to mental health providers who speak Vietnamese. She says the community, especially the elderly members, have historically stigmatized the use of mental health resources, but that these resources are invaluable to refugees and immigrants who are adjusting to a foreign culture and experiences.

“I think that my work with VCH was particularly meaningful to me because it introduced me to community-based medicine,” said Nguyen, who is on track to earn her bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and a minor in Asian American studies. “I loved the focus that the organization had on educating their patients, as well as treating/screening them. It really helped me establish my service philosophy of giving communities the tools they need to commit to long-term change themselves.”

This past winter quarter, Nguyen’s desire to help Asian immigrants, took a more academic turn. She enrolled in a course put on by the Asian American studies department and the UCLA Center for Community Engagement called “Power to the People: Asian American Studies 140XP.”

The Center for Community Engagement supports community-engaged research, teaching and learning in partnership with communities and organizations throughout Los Angeles and beyond. This particular course was borne out of the hunger strike at San Francisco States University in the 60s, during which students demanded the school offer ethnic studies classes and that the school diversify its faculty and student body. This course, which has been taught at UCLA for seven years exposes students to different Asian American and Pacific Islander communities in greater Los Angeles and creates opportunities to work directly with those organizations.

During the course, Nguyen met with the instructor and her classmates two hours each week to discuss history and theory, and met virtually with community organizers, advocates and members of the nail salon industry through the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative. The statewide, grassroots organization addresses health care, environmental factors, reproductive justice, and other social issues faced by low-income, immigrant and refugee women from Vietnam.

Dung Nguyen, program and outreach manager for the collaborative, supervised Anne Nguyen (no relation) and previous UCLA students who interned at the organization. Dung said there is nothing like working directly for an organization to bring social activism to life.

“Our student interns often reflect how civic engagement, advocacy, community organizations and collective power in a text book are very different than seeing this all play out in reality,” Dung Nguyen said.

Nguyen and another student phone banked to raise awareness about two bills in the state legislature — assembly bills 15 and 16, which were intended to protect tenants from being evicted during the pandemic and beyond. The pair created packages of Lunar New Year cards and masks for members of the nail salon collaborative to reinforce social bonds with the group during the isolation of the pandemic. They ran a small fundraiser to support nail salon workers who lost income during the pandemic and couldn’t meet their most basic needs. They also conducted a survey to see which members had been vaccinated, and then helped women get vaccination appointments so they could return to work safely.

“I did not expect to take a class like this when I came to UCLA since I never thought of volunteering/interning as something you can structure into a curriculum,” Nguyen said. “Every organization had a different method of organizing to best fit their communities and this class really reinforced that this was valid. The class gave me a greater appreciation for all the thought that went into the creation and continuation of the nail salon collaborative and all of the other class partners.”

Community organizer and course lecturer Sophia Cheng said that all the community partners tend to see themselves as part of the ethnic studies movement that started in the 1960s.

Cheng, who is the primary liaison for all the organizations, pushes students to go beyond critiquing, analyzing and dissecting situations, instead asking them to come up with real solutions to real issues. She said that she’s not trying to train every student to join the non-profit sector; there aren’t enough jobs in the Asian American nonprofit sector. Instead, Cheng focuses on different ways students can serve their communities in whatever career path they take.

Nguyen’s trajectory continues to be influenced by Cheng’s approach.

“I want to be a doctor, and I am focused on community health,” Nguyen said. “The course taught me to be more cognizant of cultural fit when it comes to health care, and other needs. A lot of Asian American and Pacific Islander patients might not trust or have resources like in typical western health care. The older generation also might not trust the younger generation. I’m using approaches from class to figure out how to approach medicine and how to help people, from the place where they are. I try to figure out what are the needs of the people, how can I serve them, and help them strengthen what they have to improve themselves.”

This article, written by Elizabeth Kivowitz, originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.