Archive for category: College News

Portrait of Lauren Ng, David Clewett, Bridget Callaghan

Three psychologists selected as 2022-23 UCLA Society of Hellman Fellows

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Portrait of Lauren Ng, David Clewett, Bridget Callaghan

From left: Lauren Ng, David Clewett and Bridget Callaghan. All are assistant professors of psychology in the UCLA College. | UCLA

UCLA Newsroom | 

Assistant professors Bridget Callaghan, Dave Clewett and Lauren Ng have been being selected as 2022–23 UCLA Society of Hellman Fellows.

The UCLA Hellman Fellows Program was established by the Hellman Family Foundation to support and encourage the research of promising assistant professors who show the capacity for great distinction in their research.

Callaghan studies how different early life experiences influence interactions between physical and mental health across the lifespan. She directs the Brain and Body Lab, which has a goal of using research that combines analysis of behavior, neural systems, gastrointestinal bacteria and health, and physiology to create better mental and physical health treatments across development.

Clewett’s research seeks to understand how arousal responses — particularly those elicited by emotional, stressful or motivating (rewarding/threatening) situations — influence:

  • what people remember: the information they selectively attend to and remember later on
  • how people remember: the way in which memories become organized and updated over time
  • when people remember: certain neurochemical and brain states, such as elevated norepinephrine and dopamine release, that are induced before, during or after an event.

Ng conducts translational psychological science and health disparities research for children, adolescents, and adults. The goal of her research is to reduce mental health disparities for underserved, minority communities in the Unitd States and in low- and middle-income countries. In addition, her research emphasizes bi-directional learning between global and local research and practice settings to improve access to and quality of care in the United States and around the world.

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom. For more news and updates from the UCLA College, visit college.ucla.edu/news.

First underground radar images from Mars Perseverance Rover reveal some surprises

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Unexpectedly tilted rock layers in the Jezero crater hint at a complex geological history

Image of Jezero crater delta

Aerial photo of the remains of a delta where a water source once fed an ancient lake at the Jezero crater. NASA’s Perseverance Rover is currently exploring the area. | NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

Holly Ober | August 25, 2022

Key takeaways:

• Roving the Red Planet. NASA’s Perseverance landed on Mars in February 2021 and has been gathering data on the planet’s geology and climate and searching for signs of ancient life.
• What lies beneath. The rover’s subsurface radar experiment, co-led by UCLA’s David Paige, has returned images showing unexpected variations in rock layers beneath the Jezero crater.
• Probing the past. The variations could indicate past lava flows or possibly a river delta even older than the one currently being explored on the crater floor.

After a tantalizing year-and-a-half wait since the Mars Perseverance Rover touched down on our nearest planetary neighbor, new data is arriving — and bringing with it a few surprises.

The rover, which is about the size of car and carries seven scientific instruments, has been probing Mars’ 30-mile-wide Jezero crater, once the site of a lake and an ideal spot to search for evidence of ancient life and information about the planet’s geological and climatic past.

In a paper published today in the journal Science Advances, a research team led by UCLA and the University of Oslo reveals that rock layers beneath the crater’s floor, observed by the rover’s ground-penetrating radar instrument, are unexpectedly inclined. The slopes, thicknesses and shapes of the inclined sections suggest they were either formed by slowly cooling lava or deposited as sediments in the former lake.

Image of RIMFAX subsurface readings

Top: Path of the Perseverance Rover through the Jezero crater. Middle: Subsurface radar image obtained by RIMFAX. Bottom: Diagram indicating where unexpectedly inclined rock layers were located. | Hamran et. al., 2022

Perseverance is currently exploring a delta on the western edge of the crater, where a river once fed the lake, leaving behind a large deposit of dirt and rocks it picked up along its course. As the rover gathers more data, the researchers hope to clear up the complex history of this part of the Red Planet.

“We were quite surprised to find rocks stacked up at an inclined angle,” said David Paige, a UCLA professor of Earth, planetary and space sciences and one of the lead researchers on the Radar Imager for Mars Subsurface Experiment, or RIMFAX. “We were expecting to see horizontal rocks on the crater floor. The fact that they are tilted like this requires a more complex geologic history. They could have been formed when molten rock rose up towards the surface, or, alternatively, they could represent an older delta deposit buried in the crater floor.”

Image of David Paige

David Paige, deputy principal investigator for Perseverance’s RIMFAX instrument. | Courtesy of David Paige

Paige said that most of the evidence gathered by the rover so far points to an igneous, or molten, origin, but based on the RIMFAX data, he and the team can’t yet say for certain how the inclined layers formed. RIMFAX obtains a picture of underground features by sending bursts of radar waves below the surface, which are reflected by rock layers and other obstacles. The shapes, densities, thicknesses, angles and compositions of underground objects affect how the radar waves bounce back, creating a visual image of what lies beneath.

During Perseverance’s initial 3-kilometer traverse, the instrument has obtained a continuous radar image that reveals the electromagnetic properties and bedrock stratigraphy — the arrangement of rock layers — of Jezero’s floor to depths of 15 meters, or about 49 feet. The image reveals the presence of ubiquitous layered rock strata, including those that are inclined at up to 15 degrees. Compounding the mystery, within those inclined areas are some perplexing highly reflective rock layers that in fact tilt in multiple directions.

“RIMFAX is giving us a view of Mars stratigraphy similar to what you can see on Earth in highway road cuts, where tall stacks of rock layers are sometimes visible in a mountainside as you drive by,” Paige explained. “Before Perseverance landed, there were many hypotheses about the exact nature and origin of the crater floor materials. We’ve now been able to narrow down the range of possibilities, but the data we’ve acquired so far suggest that the history of the crater floor may be quite a bit more complicated than we had anticipated.”

Rendering of Perseverance, whose RIMFAX technology is exploring what lies beneath the Martian surface.

Rendering of Perseverance, whose RIMFAX technology is exploring what lies beneath the Martian surface. | NASA/JPL/Caltech/FFI

The data collected by RIMFAX will provide valuable context to rock samples Perseverance is collecting, which will eventually be brought back to Earth.

“RIMFAX is giving us the backstory of the samples we’re going to analyze. It’s exciting that the rover’s instruments are producing data and we’re starting to learn, but there’s a lot more to come,” Paige said. “We landed on the crater floor, but now we’re driving up on the actual delta, which is the main target of the mission. This is just the beginning of what we’ll hopefully soon know about Mars.”

The paper, “Ground penetrating radar observations of subsurface structures in the floor of Jezero crater, Mars,” is one of three simultaneously published papers discussing some of the first data from Perseverance.

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom. For more news and updates from the UCLA College, visit college.ucla.edu/news.

Image of a person in a crowd in front of the U.S. Capitol, holding a sign that reads: "Let their hearts beat."

What really drives abortion beliefs? Research suggests it’s a matter of sexual strategies

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Image of a person in a crowd in front of the U.S. Capitol, holding a sign that reads: "Let their hearts beat."

Rather than thinking that religiosity causes people to be sexually restricted, an evolutionary perspective suggests that a restricted sexual strategy can motivate people to become religious. | Maria Oswalt/Unsplash

Jaimie Arona Krems and Martie Haselton | 

Martie Haselton is a psychology professor in the UCLA College and Jaimie Arona Krems is an assistant professor of psychology at Oklahoma State University.

Many people have strong opinions about abortion — especially in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, revoking a constitutional right previously held by more than 165 million Americans.

But what really drives people’s abortion attitudes?

It’s common to hear religious, political and other ideologically driven explanations — for example, about the sanctity of life. If such beliefs were really driving anti-abortion attitudes, though, then people who oppose abortion might not support the death penalty (many do), and they would support social safety net measures that could save newborns’ lives (many don’t).

Here, we suggest a different explanation for anti-abortion attitudes — one you probably haven’t considered before — from our field of evolutionary social science.

Why do people care what strangers do?

The evolutionary coin of the realm is fitness — getting more copies of your genes into the next generation. What faraway strangers do presumably has limited impact on your own fitness. So from this perspective, it is a mystery why people in Pensacola care so strongly about what goes on in the bedrooms of Philadelphia or the Planned Parenthoods of Los Angeles.

The solution to this puzzle — and one answer to what is driving anti-abortion attitudes — lies in a conflict of sexual strategies: People vary in how opposed they are to casual sex. More “sexually restricted” people tend to shun casual sex and instead invest heavily in long-term relationships and parenting children. In contrast, more “sexually unrestricted” people tend to pursue a series of different sexual partners and are often slower to settle down.

These sexual strategies conflict in ways that affect evolutionary fitness.

The crux of this argument is that, for sexually restricted people, other people’s sexual freedoms represent threats. Consider that sexually restricted women often get married young and have children early in life. These choices are just as valid as a decision to wait, but they can also be detrimental to women’s occupational attainment and tend to leave women more economically dependent on husbands.

Other women’s sexual openness can destroy these women’s lives and livelihoods by breaking up the relationships they depend on. So sexually restricted women benefit from impeding other people’s sexual freedoms. Likewise, sexually restricted men tend to invest a lot in their children, so they benefit from prohibiting people’s sexual freedoms to preclude the high fitness costs of being cuckolded.

Benefiting from making sex more costly

According to evolutionary social science, restricted sexual strategists benefit by imposing their strategic preferences on society — by curtailing other people’s sexual freedoms.

How can restricted sexual strategists achieve this? By making casual sex more costly.

For example, banning women’s access to safe and legal abortion essentially forces them to endure the costs of bearing a child. Such hikes in the price of casual sex can deter people from having it.

This attitude is perhaps best illustrated by a statement from Mariano Azuela, a justice who opposed abortion when it came before Mexico’s Supreme Court in 2008: “I feel that a woman in some way has to live with the phenomenon of becoming pregnant. When she does not want to keep the product of the pregnancy, she still has to suffer the effects during the whole period.”

Force people to “suffer the effects” of casual sex, and fewer people will pursue it.

Also note that abortion restrictions do not increase the costs of sex equally. Women bear the costs of gestation, face the life-threatening dangers of childbirth and disproportionately bear responsibility for child care. When women are denied abortions, they are also more likely to end up in poverty and experience intimate partner violence.

No one would argue this is a conscious phenomenon. Rather, people’s strategic interests shape their attitudes in nonconscious but self-benefiting ways — a common finding in political science and evolutionary social science alike.

Resolving awkward contradictions in attitudes

An evolutionary perspective suggests that common explanations are not the genuine drivers of people’s attitudes — on either side of the abortion debate.

In fact, people’s stated religious, political and ideological explanations are often rife with awkward contradictions. For example, many who oppose abortion also oppose preventing unwanted pregnancy through access to contraception.

From an evolutionary perspective, such contradictions are easily resolved. Sexually restricted people benefit from increasing the costs of sex. That cost increases when people cannot access legal abortions or prevent unwanted pregnancy.

An evolutionary perspective also makes unique — often counterintuitive — predictions about which attitudes travel together. This view predicts that if sexually restricted people associate something with sexual freedoms, they should oppose it.

Indeed, researchers have found that sexually restricted people oppose not only abortion and birth control, but also marriage equality, because they perceive homosexuality as associated with sexual promiscuity, and recreational drugs, presumably because they associate drugs like marijuana and MDMA with casual sex. We suspect this list likely also includes transgender rights, public breastfeeding, premarital sex, what books children read (and if drag queens can read to them), equal pay for women, and many other concerns that have yet to be tested.

No other theories we are aware of predict these strange attitudinal bedfellows.

Behind the link to religion and conservatism

This evolutionary perspective can also explain why anti-abortion attitudes are so often associated with religion and social conservatism.

Rather than thinking that religiosity causes people to be sexually restricted, this perspective suggests that a restricted sexual strategy can motivate people to become religious. Why? Several scholars have suggested that people adhere to religion in part because its teachings promote sexually restricted norms. Supporting this idea, participants in one study reported being more religious after researchers showed them photos of attractive people of their own sex — that is, potential mating rivals.

Sexually restricted people also tend to invest highly in parenting, so they stand to benefit when other people adhere to norms that benefit parents. Like religion, social conservatism prescribes parent-benefiting norms like constricting sexual freedoms and ostensibly promoting family stability. In line with this, some research suggests that people don’t simply become more conservative with age. Rather, people become more socially conservative during parenthood.

Restricting everyone to benefit yourself

There are multiple answers to any “why” question in scientific research. Ideological beliefs, personal histories and other factors certainly play a role in people’s abortion attitudes.

But so, too, do people’s sexual strategies.

This evolutionary social science research suggests that restricted sexual strategists benefit by making everyone else play by their rules. And just as Justice Thomas suggested when overturning Roe v. Wade, this group may be taking aim at birth control and marriage equality next.

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom. For more news and updates from the UCLA College, visit college.ucla.edu/news.

Female monkeys with female friends live longer

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UCLA professor Susan Perry and her team of researchers reveal their findings on capuchin monkeys and social integration
Image of two white-faced capuchin monkeys

A female white-faced capuchin inserts a finger into another female’s mouth, one of several socially learned rituals. | Courtesy of Susan Perry

Elizabeth Kivowitz | 

Key takeaways:
• Strength of female-female relationships. Female capuchin monkeys who are better integrated into social networks with other adult females tend to survive longer.
• Social interactions are helpful. These include giving and receiving grooming, foraging nearby and helping each other in conflicts by fighting or making aggressive sounds and facial expressions.
• Monkeys test their friendships. Researchers observed capuchins engaging in interactions that involve risky or uncomfortable elements — such as poking a finger into a friend’s eye socket — to test the quality of their friendships.

Female white-faced capuchin monkeys living in the tropical dry forests of northwestern Costa Rica may have figured out the secret to a longer life — having fellow females as friends.

“As humans, we assume there is some benefit to social interactions, but it is really hard to measure the success of our behavioral strategies,” said UCLA anthropology professor and field primatologist Susan Perry. “Why do we invest so much in our relationships with others? Does it lead to a longer lifespan? Does it lead to more reproductive success? It requires a colossal effort to measure this in humans and other animals.”

Perry would know. Since 1990, she has been directing Lomas Barbudal Capuchin Monkey Project in Guanacaste, Costa Rica, where her team of researchers document the daily life of hundreds of large-brained monkeys. While chimpanzees and orangutans are more closely related to humans, the white-faced capuchin monkey has highly sophisticated social structures that influence behavior and are passed to others.

Throughout the year, Perry’s team of graduate students, postdoctoral students, international volunteers and local researchers, trek into the forest for 13-hour days of observation to try to draw conclusions that may help us understand our own relationships, culture and other behaviors.

Female-female relationships matter

The latest findings, published recently in Behavioral Ecology, honed in on the relationship between female capuchins’ social integration and survival. The authors tracked the female monkeys’ interactions with other females, males and companions of any sex and age, based on 18 years of data. Lead author Kotrina Kajokaite earned her bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate at UCLA while working with the monkey project data under Perry’s supervision.

Their key finding — adult female capuchins who are better integrated into social networks with other adult females survive longer.

Interactions counted in the study included giving and receiving grooming, foraging nearby, and taking part in coalitionary conflicts — intervening to help one another in conflicts by fighting, chasing, or making aggressive sounds and facial expressions.

There was no evidence that heterosexual relationships provided any survival-related benefits to females, at least regarding the types of behaviors measured in this study. But this doesn’t rule out the possibility that some adult females might benefit from social interactions with one or a few male partners who co-reside with them for long periods of time.

While there is also some evidence that females who were more socially integrated into their overall group survived longer, the overwhelming conclusion from the research is that female-female relationships had the greatest impact on survival.

Testing friendship through rituals

In a different study published in a special journal of the Royal Society, Perry’s team observed white-faced capuchin monkeys engaging in socially learned human-like rituals. Among the interactions: inserting a finger into the mouth, eye, nostril or ear of a social partner; prying open each other’s mouths or hand to conduct a detailed inspection of its contents; passing an object back and forth from mouth to mouth in a gentle tug-o-war; and clasping each other’s hands.

Other rituals observed included cupping the hand over some part of the partner’s face, sucking on an appendage belonging to the partner and using the partner’s back or belly as a drum to create loud, rhythmic noises. Some of these rituals went on for up to 30 minutes, even though some include uncomfortable elements that might be expected to annoy a partner.

How do these behaviors function in the lives of these animals and what — if anything — can they tell us about the evolution of ritual behaviors in humans?

The rituals are used to test the quality of friendships and alliances and are particularly prevalent in pairs of monkeys uncertain of the current status of their relationship, Perry said. They’re most often performed by pairs that rarely interact; the rituals are also most often used by monkeys with a history of primarily friendly interactions.

Although the capuchin rituals have nearly all the elements present in anthropologists’ and psychologists’ definitions of rituals, they differ from humans in that they are not performed simultaneously by all members of a group. Perry said the psychology behind the nonhuman primates’ bond-testing may have been an evolutionary precursor to the more group-oriented form of humans’ ritual practices.

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom. For more news and updates from the UCLA College, visit college.ucla.edu/news.

Image of a child drinking water

Simple method destroys dangerous ‘forever chemicals,’ making water safe

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Using common reagents in heated water, chemists can ‘behead’ and break down PFAS, leaving only harmless compounds
Image of a child drinking a glass of water

Unsplash/Johnny McClung

Holly Ober | August 18, 2022

Key takeaways:
• World’s water tainted. Synthetic PFAS, which have been linked to cancer and other diseases, have contaminated nearly every drop of water on the planet.
• Unbreakable bond. These chemicals contain a carbon-fluorine bond that is almost impossible to break, making it extremely difficult to eradicate them from water supplies.
• Off with their heads! Researchers devised a “guillotine” solution that uses moderate heat and inexpensive reagents to remove the “heads” of PFAS, initiating their destruction.

If you’re despairing at recent reports that Earth’s water sources have been thoroughly infested with hazardous human-made chemicals called PFAS that can last for thousands of years, making even rainwater unsafe to drink, there’s a spot of good news.

Chemists at UCLA and Northwestern University have developed a simple way to break down almost a dozen types of these nearly indestructible “forever chemicals” at relatively low temperatures with no harmful byproducts.

In a paper published today in the journal Science, the researchers show that in water heated to just 176 to 248 degrees Fahrenheit, common, inexpensive solvents and reagents severed molecular bonds in PFAS that are among the strongest known and initiated a chemical reaction that “gradually nibbled away at the molecule” until it was gone, said UCLA distinguished research professor and co-corresponding author Kendall Houk.

The simple technology, the comparatively low temperatures and the lack of harmful byproducts mean there is no limit to how much water can be processed at once, Houk added. The technology could eventually make it easier for water treatment plants to remove PFAS from drinking water.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances­ — PFAS for short — are a class of around 12,000 synthetic chemicals that have been used since the 1940s in nonstick cookware, waterproof makeup, shampoos, electronics, food packaging and countless other products. They contain a bond between carbon and fluorine atoms that nothing in nature can break.

When these chemicals leach into the environment through manufacturing or everyday product use, they become part of the Earth’s water cycle. Over the past 70 years, PFAS have contaminated virtually every drop of water on the planet, and their strong carbon-fluorine bond allows them to pass through most water treatment systems completely unharmed. They can accumulate in the tissues of people and animals over time and cause harm in ways that scientists are just beginning to understand. Certain cancers and thyroid diseases, for example, are associated with PFAS.

For these reasons, finding ways to remove PFAS from water has become particularly urgent. Scientists are experimenting with many remediation technologies, but most of them require extremely high temperatures, special chemicals or ultraviolet light and sometimes produce byproducts that are also harmful and require additional steps to remove.

Leading PFAS to the guillotine

Northwestern chemistry professor William Dichtel and doctoral student Brittany Trang noticed that while PFAS molecules contain a long “tail” of stubborn carbon-fluorine bonds, their “head” group often contains charged oxygen atoms, which react strongly with other molecules. Dichtel’s team built a chemical guillotine by heating the PFAS in water with dimethyl sulfoxide, also known as DMSO, and sodium hydroxide, or lye, which lopped off the head and left behind an exposed, reactive tail.

“That triggered all these reactions, and it started spitting out fluorine atoms from these compounds to form fluoride, which is the safest form of fluorine,” Dichtel said. “Although carbon-fluorine bonds are super-strong, that charged head group is the Achilles’ heel.”

But the experiments revealed another surprise: The molecules didn’t seem to be falling apart the way conventional wisdom said they should.

To solve this mystery, Dichtel and Trang shared their data with collaborators Houk and Tianjin University student Yuli Li, who was working in Houk’s group remotely from China during the pandemic. The researchers had expected the PFAS molecules would disintegrate one carbon atom at a time, but Li and Houk ran computer simulations that showed two or three carbon molecules peeled off the molecules simultaneously, just as Dichtel and Tang had observed experimentally.

The simulations also showed the only byproducts should be fluoride — often added to drinking water to prevent tooth decay — carbon dioxide and formic acid, which is not harmful. Dichtel and Trang confirmed these predicted byproducts in further experiments.

“This proved to be a very complex set of calculations that challenged the most modern quantum mechanical methods and fastest computers available to us,” Houk said. “Quantum mechanics is the mathematical method that simulates all of chemistry, but only in the last decade have we been able to take on large mechanistic problems like this, evaluating all the possibilities and determining which one can happen at the observed rate.”

Li, Houk said, has mastered these computational methods, and he worked long distance with Trang to solve the fundamental but practically significant problem.

The current work degraded 10 types of perfluoroalkyl carboxylic acids (PFCAs) and perfluoroalkyl ether carboxylic acids (PFECAs), including perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). The researchers believe their method will work for most PFAS that contain carboxylic acids and hope it will help identify weak spots in other classes of PFAS. They hope these encouraging results will lead to further research that tests methods for eradicating the thousands of other types of PFAS.

The study, “Low-temperature mineralization of perfluorocarboxylic acids,” was supported by the National Science Foundation.

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom. For more news and updates from the UCLA College, visit college.ucla.edu/news.

Image of Oroville dam spillway flooding

Climate change makes catastrophic flood twice as likely, study shows

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Increased runoff could lead to devastating landslides and debris flows — particularly in hilly areas burned by wildfires
Image of Flood waters surging over the Oroville Dam spillway in California and damaging the surrounding channel on Feb. 11, 2017.

Flood waters surging over the Oroville Dam spillway in California and damaging the surrounding channel on Feb. 11, 2017. | William Croyle/California Department of Water Resources

David Colgan | 

Key takeaways:
• Climate change has already made extreme precipitation in California twice as likely, part of a trend projected to continue through 2100.
• Extreme storm sequences are projected to generate 200% to 400% more runoff by the end of the century.
• Today’s study is the first part of ArkStorm 2.0, a scenario to prepare for catastrophic flooding in the western United States.

California lives with a sleeping giant — an occasional flood so large that it inundates major valleys with water flows hundreds of miles long and tens of miles across.

Motivated by one such flood that occurred in 1862, scientists investigated the phenomenon in 2010. They called it the “ArkStorm scenario,” reflecting the potential for an event of biblical proportions.

To account for the additional flood-worsening effects of climate change, scientists from UCLA and the National Center for Atmospheric Research have completed the first part of ArkStorm 2.0.

“In the future scenario, the storm sequence is bigger in almost every respect,” said Daniel Swain, UCLA climate scientist and co-author of the paper, which is published today in the journal Science Advances. “There’s more rain overall, more intense rainfall on an hourly basis and stronger wind.”

In total, the research projects that end-of-the-century storms will generate 200% to 400% more runoff in the Sierra Nevada Mountains due to increased precipitation and more precipitation falling as rain, not snow.

The researchers used a combination of new high-resolution weather modeling and existing climate models to compare two extreme scenarios: one that would occur about once per century in the recent historical climate and another in the projected climate of 2081-2100. Both would involve a long series of storms fueled by atmospheric rivers over the course of a month.

The paper also simulated how the storms would affect parts of California at a local level.

“There are localized spots that get over 100 liquid-equivalent inches of water in the month,” Swain said, referring to the future scenario. “On 10,000-foot peaks, which are still somewhat below freezing even with warming, you get 20-foot-plus snow accumulations. But once you get down to South Lake Tahoe level and lower in elevation, it’s all rain. There would be much more runoff.”

The increased runoff could lead to devastating landslides and debris flows — particularly in hilly areas burned by wildfires.

The paper, which was coauthored by climate scientist Xingying Huang, found that historical climate change has already doubled the likelihood of such an extreme storm scenario, building on previous UCLA research showing increases in extreme precipitation events and more common major floods in California. The study also found that further large increases in “megastorm” risk are likely with each additional degree of global warming this century.

“Modeling extreme weather behavior is crucial to helping all communities understand flood risk even during periods of drought like the one we’re experiencing right now,” said Karla Nemeth, director of the Califiornia Department of Water Resources, which provided funding for the study. “The department will use this report to identify the risks, seek resources, support the Central Valley Flood Protection Plan, and help educate all Californians so we can understand the risk of flooding in our communities and be prepared.”

With drought and wildfire getting so much attention, Californians may have lost sight of extreme flooding, Swain said. “There is potential for bad wildfires every year in California, but a lot of years go by when there’s no major flood news. People forget about it.”

The state has experienced major floods over the years, but nothing on the scale of the Great Flood of 1862. During that disaster — when no flood management infrastructure was in place — floodwaters stretched up to 300 miles long and as wide as 60 miles across in California’s Central Valley. The state’s population then was about 500,000, compared to nearly 40 million today. Were a similar event to happen again, parts of cities such as Sacramento,

Stockton, Fresno and Los Angeles would be under water even with today’s extensive collection of reservoirs, levees and bypasses. It is estimated that it would be a $1 trillion disaster, larger than any in world history.

Though no flood so large has happened since, climate modeling and the paleoclimate record — including river sediment deposits dating back thousands of years — shows that it typically happened every 100 to 200 years in the pre-climate change era.

The ArkStorm flood is also known as “the Other Big One” after the nickname of an expected major earthquake on the San Andreas Fault. But, unlike an earthquake, the ArkStorm would lead to catastrophe across a much larger area.

“Every major population center in California would get hit at once — probably parts of Nevada and other adjacent states, too,” Swain said.

The effects on infrastructure would complicate relief efforts, with major interstate freeways such as the I-5 and I-80 likely shut down for weeks or months, Swain said. Economic and supply chain effects would be felt globally.

The first ArkStorm exercise concluded that it would not be possible to evacuate the 5 to 10 million people who would be displaced by flood waters, even with weeks of notice from meteorologists and climatologists. While it helped inform flood planning in some regions, the exercise was limited due to lack of organized resources and funding, Swain said.

California has already seen increases in climate-driven drought and record-breaking wildfires, Swain said. With climate change-amplified flooding, ArkStorm 2.0 aims to get ahead of the curve.

Further research and preparations to respond to such a scenario — including advanced flood simulations supported by the California Department of Water Resources — are planned to follow, Swain said.  This will include collaborations with partner agencies including the California Office of Emergency Services and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Researchers next hope to map out where flooding could be worst and inform statewide plans to mitigate it. That could mean letting water out of reservoirs preemptively, allowing water to inundate dedicated floodplains and diverting water away from population centers in other ways.

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom. For more news and updates from the UCLA College, visit college.ucla.edu/news.

Portrait of Abel Valenzuela

Abel Valenzuela Jr. to serve as interim dean of UCLA’s division of social sciences

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Portrait of Abel Valenzuela Jr. at Royce Hall

Abel Valenzuela Jr. | © Carla Zarate

Beginning Sept. 1, 2022, Abel Valenzuela Jr. — professor of labor studies, urban planning and Chicana/o and Central American studies and director of UCLA’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment — will serve as interim dean of UCLA’s division of social sciences.

He will remain in the role through the end of the 2023–24 academic year as UCLA conducts a search for the division’s next permanent dean to succeed Darnell Hunt, who was appointed the university’s next executive vice chancellor and provost.

“I am proud to pass the torch to such an extraordinary colleague as Abel Valenzuela,” said Hunt. “He is an exceptional scholar, visionary and leader who exemplifies the highest ideals of the division, College and UCLA itself.”

“Stepping into this role is a deep honor and a remarkable opportunity to further the important and impactful work of the division under Dean Hunt’s leadership. The division is special for many reasons, including harnessing social science for the public good,” said Valenzuela. “We will move forward with excellence, doing what we do best at UCLA and in the division of social sciences: impactful research, teaching and service that make a difference locally, nationally and beyond.”

A faculty member since 1994, Valenzuela holds appointments in the César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies and the labor studies program in the UCLA College division of social sciences, as well as in the department of urban planning in the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

He has held several administrative leadership positions, including chairing Chicana/o and Central American studies for six years and directing the Center for the Study of Urban Poverty. He recently stepped down as special advisor to the chancellor on immigration policy after working with the chancellor and an advisory council to safeguard and enhance student success among immigrant, undocumented and international students.

As director of UCLA’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) for the past six years, he oversaw multiple units: labor studies, the Labor Center, the Labor Occupational Safety and Health Program (LOSH) and the Human Resources Round Table (HARRT), which are dedicated to advancing research, teaching and service on labor and employment issues in Los Angeles and beyond. Under his leadership, the Labor Center and LOSH have generated millions in extramural research grants and contracts. In fall 2019, the IRLE also launched the labor studies major for undergraduates — the first of its kind at the University of California — which continues to surpass yearly enrollment goals.

Valenzuela worked closely with campus and Labor Center leadership in the purchase, naming and current renovation of the Labor Center’s building located in downtown Los Angeles. In late 2021, the historic building was named in honor of Reverend James Lawson Jr., a labor and civil rights icon and UCLA Medal recipient.

During UCLA’s Centennial Celebration, Valenzuela led UCLA: Our Stories, Our Impact, an effort to recognize and uplift alumni of color who have dedicated their work to social justice and change. As a traveling exhibit, the project engaged the campus’s ethnic studies centers, UCLA community schools and local organizations.

Known as a leading national expert, Valenzuela continues to frame public and policy conversations on immigrant and low-wage workers. He has published numerous articles and reports on immigrant settlement, labor market outcomes, urban poverty and inequality. He earned his B.A. from UC Berkeley and his master’s and Ph.D. in city planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“Given his experience in numerous leadership roles across campus and the UC, and his passion to leverage social science to better understand and lead positive change, I am confident Professor Valenzuela will provide effective leadership and continue the division’s momentum during this period of transition,” said Michael S. Levine, interim executive vice chancellor and provost. “I hope you will join me in wishing outgoing dean Darnell Hunt the very best as UCLA’s next EVCP, and in thanking Professor Valenzuela for stepping into this leadership role.”

Group image of Miguel García-Garibay, dean of the UCLA Division of Physical Sciences; Steven Chu, Stanford’s William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Physics and Professor of Molecular and Cellular Physiology, winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics and U.S. Secretary of Energy from 2009-2013; Mani L. Bhaumik, Institute founder, physicist and philanthropist; David Gross, UCSB’s Chancellor’s Chair Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics and winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics; Andrea Ghez, UCLA's Lauren B. Leichtman & Arthur E. Levine Chair in Astrophysics and winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics; Gene D. Block, UCLA Chancellor; and Zvi Bern, director of the Mani L. Bhaumik Institute.

Celebrating the fifth anniversary of the Mani L. Bhaumik Institute for Theoretical Physics

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Group image of Miguel García-Garibay, dean of the UCLA Division of Physical Sciences; Steven Chu, Stanford’s William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Physics and Professor of Molecular and Cellular Physiology, winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics and U.S. Secretary of Energy from 2009-2013; Mani L. Bhaumik, Institute founder, physicist and philanthropist; David Gross, UCSB’s Chancellor’s Chair Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics and winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics; Andrea Ghez, UCLA's Lauren B. Leichtman & Arthur E. Levine Chair in Astrophysics and winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics; Gene D. Block, UCLA Chancellor; and Zvi Bern, director of the Mani L. Bhaumik Institute.

At Mani-Fest 2022: Miguel García-Garibay, dean of the UCLA Division of Physical Sciences; Steven Chu, Stanford’s William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Physics and Professor of Molecular and Cellular Physiology, winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics and U.S. Secretary of Energy from 2009-2013; Mani L. Bhaumik, Institute founder, physicist and philanthropist; David Gross, UCSB’s Chancellor’s Chair Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics and winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics; Andrea Ghez, UCLA’s Lauren B. Leichtman & Arthur E. Levine Chair in Astrophysics and winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics; Gene D. Block, UCLA Chancellor; and Zvi Bern, director of the Mani L. Bhaumik Institute. (Not pictured is Barry Barish, Linde Professor of Physics emeritus at the California Institute of Technology and winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics, who delivered a presentation at the event, “Gravitational Waves and Multi-Messenger Astronomy.”) | Photo by Marco Bollinger

Jonathan Riggs | July 28, 2022

“I believe in one thing,” goes the famous quote by Albert Einstein, “that only a life lived for others is a life worth living.” From one world-changing physicist to another — Einstein’s truism could also be the motto of Mani L. Bhaumik, who celebrated two milestones this year: his 91st birthday and the fifth anniversary of the Mani L. Bhaumik Institute for Theoretical Physics at UCLA.

“Mani’s generosity is truly amazing, matched only by his deep passion for fundamental physics,” says Zvi Bern, director of the Institute. “I am confident that 50 years from now, people will see that the creation of the Institute was a defining moment that changed everything, bringing UCLA’s physics department to the top global echelon.”

Beginning with a transformative $11 million gift in 2016 that was the largest in the history of both the UCLA Division of Physical Sciences and the UCLA Department of Physics and Astronomy, Bhaumik’s vision of a world-leading center to support foundational work in quantum field theory, unification of forces and, more recently, foundational issues in quantum mechanics, has surpassed all expectations. In fact, its success has allowed UCLA to compete head on with the best universities in theoretical physics.

“Just this past year, two of our students got great faculty offers one year out of graduate school — it is extremely rare even at top universities for a single student to accomplish this, but two students in one year is simply unprecedented,” says Bern. “I am also happy to report that the most-cited paper of 2021 on the hep-th physics arXiv — pushing the frontiers of precision general relativity by using ideas from the quantum field — is from the Bhaumik Institute. We are doing what we promised Mani.”

In addition, the Institute currently has 10 postdocs and is providing fellowships for 31 graduate students this summer; it has sparked more than 250 scientific papers — and counting; it is involved in efforts to diversify the field of nuclear physics; and it has attracted top-tier faculty to UCLA, including Mikhail Solon, who won a Sloan Research Fellowship, and Thomas Dumitrescu, who won the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science Early Career Award as well as funding to establish multi-institute collaboration on symmetries.

“The Institute attracts the best people with different scientific backgrounds, and fosters an environment where they can freely exchange ideas and pursue bold new directions. The focus is on supporting young people such as postdocs and graduate students: the lifeblood of the field,” says Solon. “This density of people and ideas really elevates the day-to-day scientific interactions and provides the stimulus for creativity. We cherish the intellectual freedom the institute provides, and use it to pursue the best science.”

“For me personally, coming to UCLA as a faculty member was completely entwined with the promise of the Bhaumik Institute —I have the honor of being the inaugural holder of the Mani L. Bhaumik presidential term chair in theoretical physics,” says Dumitrescu. “I think the Institute has made amazing strides and this rapid progress has definitely been noticed and is appreciated at UCLA and far beyond.”

Of course, none of this would be possible without Bhaumik himself, the largest supporter to the UCLA Division of Physical Sciences. In addition to a 2018 gift of $3 million, he recently completed his pledges early ($15.26 million for current-use and endowed funds for the Bhaumik Institute and $1.175 million to support the construction of the UCLA Collaboratory, formerly the chemistry library in Young Hall).

Prior to his distinguished career as a laser physicist, Bhaumik’s love of theoretical physics originated as a student in India where he learned about Kaluza-Klein theories from S. N. Bose (of Bose-Einstein fame), igniting his passion for deep questions in theoretical physics.

“Mani’s vision for the Institute — to be a world-class center for theoretical physics, to plant the seeds for future Nobel prizes — can be intimidating, but I believe it can be realized and I am honored to be part of building this,” says Solon. “Mani’s vision for science is at the core of everything the institute is and does. His own quest to understand nature at a fundamental level inspires us all to pursue the deepest questions.”

“In addition to all the magnificent accomplishments of the Bhaumik Institute, I have immensely benefited from profound professional discussions with all the physics luminaries at UCLA,” says Bhaumik. “As a result, I have gained the intellectual satisfaction of confirming that non-relativistic quantum mechanics used by over 90% of the practitioners can be a real theory, and not just based on the collection of postulates.”      

This June’s conference, Mani-Fest 2022: Directions in Theoretical Physics, celebrated the past while looking to the future, covering issues ranging from quantum field theory to black holes to string theory to gravitational waves and beyond as well as featuring several presentations highlighting research carried out at the Institute. Among the notable attendees were four Nobel Prize-winning physicists.

“It was nice to see physics outside of the classroom; I was especially interested in listening and talking to people in the field that I’m moving into, high energy theoretical physics,” says attendee Anna Wolz, a first-year physics doctoral student at UCLA. “It was inspiring to see who are so passionate about their research and their new ideas. Honestly, it reminds me why I’m here and what I have to look forward to.”

“We are so grateful to Mani L. Bhaumik for launching this visionary Institute, and to everyone who has contributed to making his dream an incredible reality,” says Miguel García-Garibay, dean of the UCLA Division of Physical Sciences. “Its remarkable success benefits so many, from faculty to students to the field of science itself, and this is only the beginning.”

For more of Our Stories at the College, click here.

UCLA

$1.2 million from Kachigian family trust establishes UCLA lectureship in Armenian studies

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Armenian language scholar Hagop Kouloujian has been appointed to the position for a five-year term
Black-and-white portraits of Kachigian siblings

Left to right: Siblings George, Alice and Harold Kachigian | UCLA

Jonathan Riggs | July 21, 2022

Key takeaways:
   • Late siblings George and Alice Kachigian were longtime supporters of  Armenian scholarship at UCLA.
   • The inaugural lectureship holder, Hagop Kouloujian, seeks to revive Western Armenian by having students compose creative works in the endangered language.

The UCLA Division of Humanities has received a $1.2 million bequest from the estate of siblings George and Alice Kachigian to support the Armenian studies program in the department of Near Eastern languages and cultures. As part of the gift, the department created the Kachigian Family Lectureship in Armenian Language and Culture.

The inaugural holder of the lectureship will be Hagop Kouloujian, a UCLA scholar and instructor who specializes in Western Armenian, a language that since the Armenian Genocide of the early 20th century has been spoken almost exclusively by people in the diaspora. Kouloujian was instrumental in having it designated an endangered language by UNESCO in 2010.

“We are grateful for the kindness and visionary support of the Kachigian family,” said David Schaberg, dean of humanities and senior dean of the UCLA College. “Their generosity will contribute to the vitality of this endangered language and culture.”

Los Angeles, with the largest Armenian-speaking population outside Armenia itself, and UCLA are natural settings for such scholarship. Since the launch of the Armenian studies program in 1969, UCLA has been a destination for students interested in the field, and the creation of the UCLA Promise Armenian Institute in 2019 cemented the university’s leadership role in Armenian research and public impact programs.

Image of Hagop Kouloujian, UCLA’s inaugural Kachigian Family Lecturer in Armenian Language and Culture

Hagop Kouloujian, UCLA’s inaugural Kachigian Family Lecturer in Armenian Language and Culture | Courtesy of Hagop Kouloujian

Kouloujian’s ongoing Language in Action project at UCLA, funded by the Portugal-based Calouse Gulbenkian Foundation, exemplifies his “creative literacy” approach, which focuses on teaching students by encouraging their own creative output. His students have produced hundreds of pieces, ranging from creative works to nonfiction, with the goal of contributing to the vitality of Western Armenian language and culture.

In May 2022, for example, the department of Near Eastern languages and cultures held an event to celebrate the publication of “Girkov useloo, inchoo hos em?” (“To Say With Passion, Why Am I Here?”), a full-length volume of poetry written in Western Armenian by the late Tenny Arlen, a 2013 UCLA comparative literature graduate who learned the language and wrote most of the collection in Kouloujian’s courses.

Donors George and Alice Kachigian, for whom the lectureship is named, were active members and generous supporters of the Los Angeles Armenian community. Although they moved to Oregon 30 years ago following the deaths of their parents and brother Harold, they continued to support UCLA’s Armenian studies program throughout their lives, providing research funding for faculty in the divisions of social sciences and humanities.

Alice died in 2017, and after George’s death in 2019, the siblings’ estate left generous funding to the Armenian studies program and the department of neurology at UCLA.

“The Kachigian family were friends to all, donated to many causes and counseled anyone who requested their help. They lived lives of goodness and kindness,” said Rafe Aharonian, trustee of the Kachigian Living Trust. “George, Alice and Harold wanted to help the youth learn more about Armenian heritage, and courses like Dr. Kouloujian’s encourage connections between UCLA students of Armenian heritage who might otherwise not have met.”

The Kachigians’ legacy will live on in all those at UCLA and elsewhere who, through the family’s generosity, have developed a deep connection to and appreciation for Armenian culture and language, said Kouloujian, who will hold the lectureship for five years.

“My aspiration for this lectureship is to continue to enhance UCLA’s Armenian work with forward-looking activities and community impact projects that will help invigorate the future of this language and culture,” he said. “I want to share the enduring, evolving beauty and power of Armenian with as many people as possible.”

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom. For more of Our Stories at the College, click here.