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Gift from Astrid and Howard Preston will Fund Renovation of UCLA’s Remote Observing Facility

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Howard and Astrid Preston in front of a painting by Astrid in the UCLA Luskin Conference Center. (Photo Credit: Reed Hutchinson)

The UCLA College’s Division of Physical Sciences has received a gift of $500,000 from alumni Astrid and Howard Preston to renovate and expand the facility that allows prominent UCLA astronomers and research scientists to observe distant galaxies and stars without leaving campus.

Galaxy: Stellar orbits. (Photo courtesy of NCSA, UCLA / Keck)

Renamed in honor of the couple, the Astrid and Howard Preston Remote Observing Facility in Knudsen Hall provides remote access to the Keck telescopes in Hawaii and the Lick telescope in Northern California, and, when completed, will also link to the Thirty Meter Telescope in Hawaii.

The division matched the Prestons’ gift at 50%, bringing the total investment to $750,000.

Dean of physical sciences Miguel García-Garibay said, “We are incredibly grateful for this generous gift, which will enhance remote observing capabilities for world-renowned research groups in our division for decades to come. It’s yet another impactful example of the Prestons’ long record of leadership and philanthropy in support of the Department of Physics & Astronomy.”

The Preston Remote Observing Facility is used by four leading astronomy UCLA research groups:

-The Galactic Center Group, led by 2020 Physics Nobel Laureate Andrea Ghez, studies the formation and evolution of galaxies and their central supermassive black holes.

-The Infrared Laboratory develops techniques and applications of infrared imaging devices for astrophysics, including infrared cameras and spectrometers for Lick Observatory, Keck Observatory, Gemini Observatory, the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) Observatory, and NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy.

– Extrasolar planets and planetary science faculty study the dynamics and physical properties of the interiors, surfaces and atmospheres of Earth, planets, moons and other solar system objects.

– Cosmology, galaxies and galaxy evolution faculty study the nature of galactic nuclei and quasars, the first generation of galaxies and the structure of the early universe.

Following the renovation project, which is due to begin later this year, the facility will comprise 750 square feet with two distinct remote observing areas equipped with state-of-the-science technology, which can open to one shared area to optimize functionality of the space. Also included in the plans are areas for video conferencing, group discussion, food preparation, and even sleeping, since most observing time is scheduled during night and early morning hours.

Ghez, who holds the Lauren B. Leichtman and Arthur E. Levine Chair in Astrophysics, said, “I can’t emphasize enough how critical the remote observing facility is to our work. It allows us convenient real-time access to precious telescope time so that we can collect the observational data that advances our research. The renovation made possible by the Prestons’ gift will not only make a huge difference to all of us who use the facility but also will facilitate the technical development of the Thirty Meter Telescope, the Keck telescopes and the Lick telescope.”

Any funds remaining after completion of the project will be used to create an endowment to cover ongoing costs related to the space, including computational analysis, future renovations and maintenance, and technology upgrades.

The Prestons have supported the Department of Physics & Astronomy for more than 20 years. They previously established the Howard and Astrid Preston Term Chair in Astrophysics and the Preston Family Graduate Fellowship in Astrophysics. Howard serves on UCLA’s Galactic Center Group Board of Advisors and Physical Sciences Entrepreneurship and Innovation Fund. Astrid is on the board of Women & Philanthropy at UCLA and the Department of English board of visitors. The couple met as UCLA undergrads in 1963. After earning a doctorate in physics, Howard founded Preston Cinema Systems, maker of high-tech camera and lens control systems for film and television. Astrid, who graduated with a B.A. in English, is an acclaimed painter.

Howard Preston said, “Astrid and I have followed the exciting progress of UCLA’s astronomy research groups for some time, and we know how important this facility is to their work. We are absolutely delighted that we can support this much-needed renovation and expansion, and we are eager to see what discoveries are around the corner.”

This article was written by Margaret MacDonald. 

A portrait of Clara Pratte.

Tribal leader Clara Pratte wins Pritzker Award for young environmental innovators

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A portrait of Clara Pratte.

Clara Pratte: “There’s a Navajo saying that when there’s a world to heal, there’s going to be a mother to do it — a woman to do it.” (Photo Courtesy of Clara Pratte)

The UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability presented the 2020 Pritzker Emerging Environmental Genius Award to Clara Pratte, a Navajo advocate for tribal communities and a member of President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team who focuses on tribal engagement.

Pratte advises tribes across the United States on economic development issues, with the goals of alleviating poverty and advancing tribal sovereignty. She founded Strongbow Strategies, a firm that assists tribal and government clients with business and technical issues, in 2013. She is also part of the leadership team of Navajo Power, a public benefit corporation that transitions tribal lands from extractive energy industries such as coal to large-scale solar energy.

The annual award carries a prize of $100,000, which is funded through a portion of a $20 million gift to UCLA from the Anthony and Jeanne Pritzker Family Foundation. It is the field’s first major honor specifically for innovators under the age of 40 — those whose work stands to benefit most from the prize money and the prestige it conveys.

Pratte said the award, which was presented Dec. 16 in an online ceremony, brought to mind traditional wisdom.

“There’s a Navajo saying that when there’s a world to heal, there’s going to be a mother to do it — a woman to do it,” Pratte said.

A screen shot of Pratte reacting to the announcement of her selection as the 2020 winner of the Pritzker Emerging Environmental Genius Award.

Pratte reacts to the announcement of her selection as the 2020 winner of the Pritzker Emerging Environmental Genius Award. (Photo Credit: UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability)

Through her work with Navajo Power, Pratte gathers input to make sure prospective clean energy projects serve the community’s needs. In many cases, she said, companies trying to work on Native lands fail because they lack an understanding of the everyday realities facing residents. They often communicate only with tribal leadership, which may not understand the needs of each individual community. The results create injustices, such as power lines that run over homes lacking electricity. Navajo Power makes sure that’s not the case on its projects.

The company reinvests its profits in the community — reimbursing people for the use of their land and making sure every home has electricity and water.

“I was born and raised in the Navajo community with no water or electricity, thinking that the only way we could survive is to join the capitalist community we’re part of,” Pratte said. “We destigmatize and demystify what it’s like to work on tribal lands.”

The Pritzker Award is open to anyone working to solve environmental challenges through any lens — from science to advocacy and entrepreneurism. For the second straight year, the winner represents an indigenous group and, for the third consecutive year, all three finalists were women.

In addition to Pratte, the finalists were Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner, a Marshallese poet and climate activist who performed at the United Nations Climate Summit, and Leah Penniman, who co-founded a community farm centered on Black and Indigenous people that aims to end racism and injustice in the food system. A panel of UCLA faculty members selected the finalists from among 20 candidates who were nominated by an international group of environmental leaders.

Pratte was chosen as winner by a panel of four distinguished judges: Anousheh Ansari, CEO of XPrize Foundation; Kevin de León, Los Angeles City Councilmember; Lori Garver, CEO of Earthrise Alliance; and Kara Hurst, head of worldwide sustainability at Amazon.

“I don’t need to convince this crowd that climate change is an existential threat,” de León said. “We cannot solve it unless all individuals can access the latest and greatest energy technologies and live in a sustainable community.”

The announcement of Pratte as the winner was made by Tony Pritzker, who founded the award and is a member of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability’s advisory board. He praised all of the nominees for their practical efforts during a difficult time.

“2020 obviously has been a different sort of year,” Pritzker said. “The word that I have in my mind is ‘grateful.’ I’m grateful for my health and the health of my family in a way I’ve never appreciated before. I’m grateful for your perseverance and dedication to the Earth and its various environmental needs. You’re all working toward solutions that can make this a better place to live.”

This article, written by David Colgan, originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom. 

A photo of flood waters caused by Tropical Storm Erin in Kingfisher, Oklahoma, in August 2007.

Extreme rainfall projected to get more severe, frequent with warming

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A photo of flood waters caused by Tropical Storm Erin in Kingfisher, Oklahoma, in August 2007.

Flood waters caused by Tropical Storm Erin in Kingfisher, Oklahoma, in August 2007. (Photo Credit: Marvin Nauman/FEMA)

Across the continental United States, massive, often-devastating precipitation events — the kind that climate scientists have long called “hundred-year storms” — could become three times more likely and 20% more severe by 2079, UCLA-led research projects.

That’s what would happen in a scenario in which greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase at a rapid rate — what the paper calls a high-warming scenario. Extreme rainfall events, the so-called hundred-year storms, would then be likely to occur once every 33 years.

The paper, published in the American Geophysical Union journal Earth’s Future, finds that warming has a more profound effect on both the severity and frequency of extreme precipitation events than it does on common precipitation events.

The findings have serious implications for how we prepare for the future, UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said.

“The five-year flood, the 10-year flood — those aren’t the ones that cause huge amounts of damage and societal disruption,” said Swain, who is also a fellow with the Nature Conservancy. “That comes when you get 50- or 100-year floods, the low-probability but high-consequence kinds of events.”

For example, the occurrence of historic rainfall events such as the one that caused California’s Great Flood of 1862 or Houston’s flooding from Hurricane Harvey in 2017 is increasing much faster than that of lower-magnitude events that happen every decade or so.

The paper predicts extreme precipitation increases for the entire continental United States, but some areas are expected to see bigger relative increases than others, including the West Coast and the hurricane-prone Southeast.

The paper also delves into the consequences of those extreme rainfall events: the increases in the number of floods and the number of people who would be exposed to them.

Combining climate, water physics and population models, the paper also projects that, in a high-warming scenario, the increases in extreme precipitation alone would put up to 12 million additional people at risk of exposure to damage and destruction from catastrophic flooding —  29.5% more people than face that risk today.

The paper also made projections using other scenarios that combine the effects of warming and projected population growth. For example, high warming juxtaposed with high population growth would increase the number of people exposed to risk of so-called 100-year floods by around 50 million in the continental U.S.

And even in the absence of climate change — at least some of which is unavoidable over the next 30 years — medium or large population growth would expose an additional 20 million or 34 million, respectively, to such floods, highlighting the importance of demographic factors in driving the growing risk.

Combining the factors would compound the changes in some regions that have so far been outside of flood zones and are sparsely populated because, thanks to climate change and population growth, those areas are likely to be within flood plains and have higher population density in the future. That “hot spot effect” could put up to 5.5 million more people at risk of devastating floods than warming or population growth alone would.

“There’s a huge difference between best- and worst-case scenarios,” Swain said. “People’s exposure to flooding in a warming climate is definitely going to increase. It could increase by a somewhat manageable amount or by a truly massive amount, and that depends both on the climate trajectory we take and on the demographics of the U.S.”

Previously, projections for extreme precipitation events relied on limited historical records that go back only 100 years. For the new study, the researchers used a modeling technique to create multiple plausible pasts and futures, essentially increasing the amount of available data by 40 times over what was available from history alone.

“We don’t just have one 100-year event we can pull from the historical record; we have lots of really severe, rare events we can pull out to give us a better sense of how they’re likely to change,” said Swain, who is a member of the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.

Importantly, the authors write, the risk of flooding in the U.S. will increase significantly over the next 30 years, even with moderate warming — meaning a temperature increase of 1.5 to 2.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 to 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) globally. That would expose more than 20 million additional people to a 100-year flood within the next 30 years, they projected.

Even the term “100-year flood” is probably already something of a misnomer, Swain said. With global temperatures already having increased by about 1.2 degrees Celsius (about 2.1 degrees Fahrenheit) over the past century, the term is fast becoming outdated.

James Done, a co-author of the paper and a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said further work is required to understand exactly why extreme events are increasing more rapidly than less extreme ones.

“It’s not just because of a shift in the distribution of the flooding,” Done said. “There’s something else that’s reshaping the most extreme of the very dangerous rainfall events.”

The precipitation changes predicted are already beginning, he added. And the nation’s infrastructure — from flood control channels to concrete-heavy urban design that drains slowly — were not designed for the scenarios that now seem likely to occur.

This article, written by David Colgan, originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.

A graphic of the predictive model.

UCLA model ID’s areas that should have priority for vaccine, other COVID-19 help

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The predictive model can guide public health officials and leaders across the nation in harnessing local data that can help prevent infections and save lives, the UCLA researchers say. (Photo Credit: UCLA CNK-BRITE)

To help slow the spread of COVID-19 and save lives, UCLA public health and urban planning experts have developed a predictive model that pinpoints which populations in which neighborhoods of Los Angeles County are most at risk of becoming infected.

The researchers hope the new model, which can be applied to other counties and jurisdictions as well, will assist decision makers, public health officials and scientists in effectively and equitably implementing vaccine distribution, testing, closures and reopenings, and other virus-mitigation measures.

The model maps Los Angeles County neighborhood by neighborhood, based on four important indicators known to significantly increase a person’s medical vulnerability to COVID-19 infection — preexisting medical conditions, barriers to accessing health care, built-environment characteristics and socioeconomic challenges.

The research data demonstrate that neighborhoods characterized by significant clustering of racial and ethnic minorities, low-income households and unmet medical needs are most vulnerable to COVID-19 infection, specifically areas in and around South Los Angeles and the eastern portion of the San Fernando Valley. Communities along the coast and in the northwestern part of the county, which are disproportionately white and higher-income, were found to be the least vulnerable.

“The model we have includes specific resource vulnerabilities that can guide public health officials and local leaders across the nation to harness already available local data to determine which groups in which neighborhoods are most vulnerable and how to prevent new infections to save lives,” said research author Vickie Mays, a professor of psychology in the UCLA College and of health policy and management at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.

Mays, who also directs the National Institutes of Health–funded UCLA BRITE Center for Science, Research and Policy, worked with urban planner Paul Ong, director of the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, to develop the indicators model, along with study co-authors Chhandara Pech and Nataly Rios Gutierrez. The maps were created by Abigail Fitzgibbon.

Utilizing data from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research’s California Health Interview Survey, the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and the California Department of Parks and Recreation, the researchers were able to determine how the four vulnerability indicators differentially predicted which racial and ethnic groups in Los Angeles County were the most vulnerable to infection based on their geographical residence.

Racial and ethnic groups with the highest vulnerability

Preexisting conditions. The authors found that 73% of Black residents live in neighborhoods with the highest rates of preexisting health conditions like diabetes, obesity and heart disease, as well as poor overall health and food insecurity. This was followed by 70% of Latinos and 60% of Cambodians, Hmongs and Laotians, or CHL. Conversely, 60% of white residents live in areas with low or the lowest vulnerability.

Barriers to accessing services. Forty percent of Latinos, 29% of Blacks, 22% of CHL and 16% of “other Asians” reside in neighborhoods with the greatest barriers to health care, characterized by high proportions of non–U.S. citizens, poor English-language ability, a lack of access to computer broadband service, lower rates of health insurance and poor access to vehicles for medical purposes. Only 7% of whites live in these neighborhoods.

Built-environment risk. Sixty-three percent of CHL, 55% of Latinos, 53% of Blacks and 32% of whites live areas considered to be at high or the highest vulnerability due to built-environment challenges, which include high population density, crowded housing and a lack of parks and open spaces.

Social vulnerability. According to the Centers for Disease Control, neighborhoods with high social vulnerability are characterized by lower socioeconomic status and education attainment, a higher prevalence of single-parent and multigenerational households, greater housing density, poorer English-language ability and a lack of access to vehicles, among other factors. While only 8% of whites live in these neighborhoods, 42% of both Blacks and Latinos do, as do 38% of CHL.

How the model can help with COVID-19–mitigation efforts

“When the pandemic hit, we were slowed down by a lack of science and a lack of understanding of the ways in which health disparities in the lives of some of our most vulnerable populations made their risk of COVID-19 infection even greater,” Mays said. “We thought elderly and people in nursing homes were the most vulnerable, yet we found that lacking a number of social resources contributes to a greater likelihood of getting infected as well.”

► Read an interview with Mays on the how COVID-19 is affecting Black Americans and how better data can help prevent its spread.

And while nationwide statistics have shown that the virus has had a disproportionate effect on low-income communities and communities of color, knowing precisely which populations are the most vulnerable and where new infections are likely to occur is critical information in determining how to allocate scarce resources and when to open or close areas, Mays and Ong said.

If, for example, English-language ability is a barrier to accessing health information and services in a vulnerable neighborhood, health officials should develop campaigns in Spanish or another appropriate language highlighting the availability of testing, the researchers stress. If access to a car is a barrier for families in an at-risk area, walk-up testing sites should be made available. When crowded housing in a high-risk neighborhood is the predominant housing stock, testing resources should be set up for entire households and hotel vouchers made available to help with quarantining after a positive test.

The data can also provide critical knowledge and insights to social service providers, emergency agencies and volunteers on where to direct their time and resources, such as where to set up distribution sites for food and other necessities. And importantly, identifying the areas and populations with the highest vulnerability will help decision-makers equitably prioritize vaccine-distribution plans to include the most vulnerable early.

In the longer term, the researchers say, the model will also provide valuable information to urban planners so that they can target specific areas for the development of less-dense housing and more parks and open spaces, creating healthier neighborhoods that can better withstand future pandemics while promoting equity in long-term health outcomes.

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

A photo of a researcher in the lab.

12 UCLA College scientists among world’s most influential researchers

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A photo of a researcher in the lab.

A researcher in the lab. Photo Credit: iStock.com

Thirty-six UCLA scholars have been named as the world’s most influential scientific researchers. Twelve are from UCLA College.

Clarivate released its annual list of the most highly cited researchers, which includes dozens of UCLA scientists across various disciplines. The list is compiled by the Institute for Scientific Information at Clarivate using data based on scholarly publication counts and citation indexes. The selected researchers wrote publications that ranked in the top 1% by citations in their field for that year, according to the Web of Science citation index.

Current UCLA College faculty members and researchers who were named to the list, noted with their primary UCLA research field or fields, are:

For the full list and article, written by Max Gordy, please visit the UCLA Newsroom. 

Photo of Andrea Ghez

Andrea Ghez wins 2020 Nobel Prize in physics

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Photo of Andrea Ghez

Andrea Ghez, UCLA’s Lauren B. Leichtman and Arthur E. Levine Professor of Astrophysics, has been awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in physics. Photo Credit: Elena Zhukova

Andrea Ghez, UCLA’s Lauren B. Leichtman and Arthur E. Levine Professor of Astrophysics, today was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in physics.

Ghez shares half of the prize with Reinhard Genzel of UC Berkeley and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. The Nobel committee praised them for “the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy.” The other half of the prize was awarded to Roger Penrose of the University of Oxford “for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity.”

In July 2019, the journal Science published a study by Ghez and her research group that is the most comprehensive test of Albert Einstein’s iconic general theory of relativity near the monstrous black hole at the center of our galaxy. Although she concluded that “Einstein’s right, at least for now,” the research group is continuing to test Einstein’s theory, which she says cannot fully explain gravity inside a black hole.

Ghez studies more than 3,000 stars that orbit the supermassive black hole. Black holes have such high density that nothing can escape their gravitational pull, not even light. The center of the vast majority of galaxies appears to have a supermassive black hole, she said.

“I’m thrilled and incredibly honored to receive a Nobel Prize in physics,” said Ghez, who is director of the UCLA Galactic Center Group. “The research the Nobel committee is honoring today is the product of a wonderful collaboration among the scientists in the UCLA Galactic Center Orbits Initiative and the University of California’s wise investment in the W.M. Keck Observatory.

“We have cutting-edge tools and a world-class research team, and that combination makes discovery tremendous fun. Our understanding of how the universe works is still so incomplete. The Nobel Prize is fabulous, but we still have a lot to learn.”

UCLA Chancellor Gene Block lauded Ghez for her accomplishments.

“The UCLA community is exceedingly proud of Professor Ghez’s achievements, including this extraordinary honor,” Block said. “We are inspired by her research uncovering the secrets of our universe and its potential to help us better understand the cosmos.”

David Haviland, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, said: “The discoveries of this year’s Laureates have broken new ground in the study of compact and supermassive objects. But these exotic objects still pose many questions that beg for answers and motivate future research. Not only questions about their inner structure, but also questions about how to test our theory of gravity under the extreme conditions in the immediate vicinity of a black hole.”

Ghez and her team have made direct measurements of how gravity works near a supermassive black hole — research she describes as “extreme astrophysics.”

Einstein’s general theory of relativity is the best description of how gravity works. “However, his theory is definitely showing vulnerability,” Ghez said in 2019. “[A]t some point we will need to move beyond Einstein’s theory to a more comprehensive theory of gravity that explains what a black hole is.”

Less than two months after her publication in Science, she and her research group reported in Astrophysical Journal Letters the surprising finding that the supermassive black hole is having an unusually large meal of interstellar gas and dust — and they do not yet understand why.

“We have never seen anything like this in the 24 years we have studied the supermassive black hole,” she said at the time. “It’s usually a pretty quiet, wimpy black hole on a diet. We don’t know what is driving this big feast.”

In January 2020, her team reported the discovery of a new class of bizarre objects — objects that look like gas and behave like stars — at the center of our galaxy, not far from the supermassive black hole.

Ghez and her team conducted their research at the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. They are able to see the impact of how space and time get comingled near the supermassive black hole, which is some 26,000 light-years away.

“Making a measurement of such fundamental importance has required years of patient observing, enabled by state-of-the-art technology,” Richard Green, director of the National Science Foundation’s division of astronomical sciences, said in 2019.

“Andrea is one of our most passionate and tenacious Keck users,” Keck Observatory director Hilton Lewis said, also in 2019. “Her latest groundbreaking research is the culmination of unwavering commitment over the past two decades to unlock the mysteries of the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy.”

The National Science Foundation funded Ghez’s research for the past 25 years. More recently, her research has also been funded by the W.M. Keck Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Heising-Simons Foundation, Lauren Leichtman and Arthur Levine, and Howard and Astrid Preston.

In 1998, Ghez answered one of astronomy’s most important questions, helping to show that a supermassive black hole resides at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The question had been a subject of much debate among astronomers for more than a quarter of a century.

Ghez helped pioneer a powerful technology called adaptive optics, which corrects the distorting effects of the Earth’s atmosphere in real time and opened the center of our galaxy as a laboratory for exploring black holes and their fundamental role in the evolution of the universe. With adaptive optics at the Keck Observatory, she and her colleagues have revealed many surprises about the environments surrounding supermassive black holes, discovering, for example, young stars where none were expected and a lack of old stars where many were anticipated.

In 2000, Ghez and her research team reported that for the first time, astronomers had seen stars accelerate around the supermassive black hole. In 2003, she and her team reported that the case for the Milky Way’s black hole had been strengthened substantially and that all of the proposed alternatives could be excluded.

In 2005, Ghez and her colleagues took the first clear picture of the center of the Milky Way, including the area surrounding the black hole, at the Keck Observatory.

Ghez has earned numerous honors for her research, including election to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; she was the first woman to receive the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ Crafoord Prize, and she was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2008. In 2019, she was awarded an honorary degree by Oxford University.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from MIT in 1987 and a doctorate from Caltech in 1992, and she has been a member of the UCLA faculty since 1994. When she was young, she wanted to be the first woman to walk on the moon.

Ghez is the eighth UCLA faculty member to be named a Nobel laureate, joining Willard Libby (chemistry, 1960), Julian Schwinger (physics, 1965), Donald Cram (chemistry, 1987), Paul Boyer (chemistry, 1997), Louis Ignarro (physiology or medicine, 1998), Lloyd Shapley (economics, 2012) and J. Fraser Stoddart (2016). Stoddart was a Northwestern University faculty member when he received the honor, but much of the work for which he was recognized was conducted at UCLA from 1997 to 2008.

In addition, seven UCLA alumni have been awarded the Nobel Prize.

Ghez is also the fourth woman to receive the physics prize, following Marie Curie in 1903, Maria Goeppert Mayer in 1963 and Donna Strickland in 2018.

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

A photo of a sleeping baby.

UCLA-led team of scientists discovers why we need sleep

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A photo of a sleeping baby.

A UCLA-led team of scientists explains why sleep is so vital to our health and shows for the first time that a dramatic change in the purpose of sleep occurs at the age of about 2-and-a-half. (Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com)

Prolonged sleep deprivation can lead to severe health problems in humans and other animals. But why is sleep so vital to our health? A UCLA-led team of scientists has made a major advance in answering this question and has shown for the first time that a dramatic change in the purpose of sleep occurs at the age of about 2-and-a-half.

Before that age, the brain grows very rapidly. During REM sleep, when vivid dreams occur, the young brain is busy building and strengthening synapses — the structures that connect neurons to one another and allow them to communicate.

“Don’t wake babies up during REM sleep — important work is being done in their brains as they sleep,” said senior study author Gina Poe, a UCLA professor of integrative biology and physiology who has conducted sleep research for more than 30 years.

After 2-and-a-half years, however, sleep’s primary purpose switches from brain building to brain maintenance and repair, a role it maintains for the rest of our lives, the scientists report Sept. 18 in the journal Science Advances. This transition, the researchers say, corresponds to changes in brain development.

All animals naturally experience a certain amount of neurological damage during waking hours, and the resulting debris, including damaged genes and proteins within neurons, can build up and cause brain disease. Sleep helps repair this damage and clear the debris — essentially decluttering the brain and taking out the trash that can lead to serious illness.

Nearly all of this brain repair occurs during sleep, according to senior author Van Savage, a UCLA professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and of computational medicine, and his colleagues.

“I was shocked how huge a change this is over a short period of time, and that this switch occurs when we’re so young,” Savage said. “It’s a transition that is analogous to when water freezes to ice.”

The research team, which included scientists with expertise in neuroscience, biology, statistics and physics, conducted the most comprehensive statistical analysis of sleep to date, using data from more than 60 sleep studies involving humans and other mammals. They examined data on sleep throughout development — including total sleep time, REM sleep time, brain size and body size — and built and tested a mathematical model to explain how sleep changes with brain and body size.

The data were remarkably consistent: All species experienced a dramatic decline in REM sleep when they reached the human developmental equivalent of about 2-and-half years of age. The fraction of time spent in REM sleep before and after that point was roughly the same, whether the researchers studied rabbits, rats, pigs or humans.

REM sleep decreases with the growth in brain size throughout development, the scientists found. While newborns spend about 50% of their sleep time in REM sleep, that falls to about 25% by the age of 10 and continues to decrease with age. Adults older than 50 spend approximately 15% of their time asleep in REM. The significant dropoff in REM sleep at about 2-and-a-half happens just as the major change in the function of sleep occurs, Poe said.

“Sleep is as important as food,” Poe said. “And it’s miraculous how well sleep matches the needs of our nervous system. From jellyfish to birds to whales, everyone sleeps. While we sleep, our brains are not resting.”

A chronic lack of sleep likely contributes to long-term health problems such as dementia and other cognitive disorders, diabetes, and obesity, to name a few, Poe said. When you start to feel tired, she said, don’t fight it — go to bed.

“I fought sleep and pulled all-nighters when I was in college, and now think that was a mistake,” Savage said. “I would have been better off with a good night’s sleep. Now when I feel tired, I don’t have any guilt about sleeping.”

For most adults, a regular seven-and-a-half hours of sleep a night is normal — and time lying awake doesn’t count, Poe says. While children need more sleep, babies need much more, roughly twice as much as adults. The large percentage of REM sleep in babies is in stark contrast to the amount of REM sleep observed in adult mammals across an enormous range of brain sizes and body sizes. Adult humans have five REM cycles during a full night of sleep and can have a few dreams in each cycle.

A good night’s sleep is excellent medicine, Poe says. And it’s free.

Co-authors of the study are Junyu Cao, who conducted research in Savage’s laboratory and is now an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin; Alexander Herman, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities; and Geoffrey West, a physicist who is the Shannan Distinguished Professor at the Santa Fe Institute.

Funding sources included the National Science Foundation and the Eugene and Clare Thaw Charitable Trust.

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.

A photo of two N95 respirators.

Single-use N95 respirators can be decontaminated and used again, study finds

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A photo of two N95 respirators.

N95 respirators reduce exposure to airborne infectious agents, including SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. (Photo Credit: CDC/Debora Cartagena)

N95 respirators, which are widely worn by health care workers treating patients with COVID-19 and are designed to be used only once, can be decontaminated effectively and used up to three times, according to research by UCLA scientists and colleagues.

An early-release version of their study has been published online, with the full study to appear in September in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.

N95 respirators reduce exposure to airborne infectious agents, including SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and are one of the key pieces of personal protective equipment used by clinical workers in preventing the spread of the virus. Critical shortages of these masks have driven efforts to find new decontamination methods that can extend their use.

“Although N95 respirators are designed for just one use before disposal, in times of shortage, N95 respirators can be decontaminated and reused up to three times,” said James Lloyd-Smith, a co-author of the study and a UCLA professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. “But the integrity of the respirator’s fit and seal must be maintained.”

In a controlled laboratory setting, the researchers tested several decontamination methods on small sections of N95 filter fabric that had been exposed to SARS-CoV-2. The methods included vaporized hydrogen peroxide, dry heat at 70 degrees Celsius (158 degrees Fahrenheit), ultraviolet light and a 70% ethanol spray. All four methods eliminated detectable viable virus traces from the N95 fabric test samples.

The investigators then treated fully intact, clean respirators with the same decontamination methods to test their reuse durability. Employees with the National Institutes of Health’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Montana volunteered to wear the masks for two hours to determine if they maintained a proper fit and seal over the face. The scientists decontaminated each mask three times, using the same procedure with each.

The masks treated with vaporized hydrogen peroxide experienced no failures, suggesting they potentially could be reused three times, Lloyd-Smith said. Those treated with ultraviolet light and dry heat began showing fit and seal problems after three decontaminations, suggesting these respirators potentially could be reused twice.

The study authors concluded that vaporized hydrogen peroxide was the most effective method because no traces of the virus could be detected after only a 10-minute treatment. They found that ultraviolet light and dry heat are also acceptable decontamination procedures, as long as the methods are applied for at least 60 minutes.

The ethanol spray, the scientists discovered, damaged the integrity of the respirator’s fit and seal after two sessions, and they do not recommend it for decontaminating N95 respirators.

The researchers stressed that anyone decontaminating an N95 respirator should closely check the fit and seal over the face before each reuse.

Co-authors of the study include Amandine Gamble, a UCLA postdoctoral researcher in Lloyd-Smith’s laboratory, as well as researchers with Rocky Mountain Laboratories, part of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Funding sources included the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the National Science Foundation.

In a widely cited study, Lloyd-Smith and colleagues reported in March that the virus that causes COVID-19 remains for several hours to days on surfaces and in aerosols.

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.

 

Picture of Tracy Johnson

Tracy Johnson named dean of the UCLA Division of Life Sciences

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Tracy Johnson, professor of molecular, cell, and developmental biology and holder of the Keith and Cecilia Terasaki Presidential Endowed Chair, has been named dean of the division of life sciences in the UCLA College, effective Sept. 1.

Picture of Tracy Johnson

Tracy Johnson. Photo Credit: Hadar Goren

An award-winning scientist whose research focuses on understanding the mechanisms of gene regulation, particularly RNA splicing, chromatin modification and the intersection between these reactions, Johnson has been a member of the faculty since 2013 and has served as associate dean for inclusive excellence in the division of life sciences since January 2015.

“I am deeply humbled to serve as UCLA’s next dean of the division of life sciences. Our life sciences researchers and educators are consistently at the leading edge of scientific and educational innovation, and our international reputation for excellence has allowed the division to attract truly exceptional students,” said Johnson, who is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute professor.

“These extraordinary times provide an opportunity for UCLA Life Sciences to exercise leadership in new and previously unimaginable ways across the UCLA campus, the city of Los Angeles, the state of California, the nation and beyond,” Johnson said. “I am honored to be a steward of these incredible opportunities to build on a foundation of excellence as we move forward into an exciting future.”

Prior to her appointment at UCLA, Johnson was a member of the UC San Diego biological sciences faculty from 2003 to 2013, and a Jane Coffin Childs postdoctoral research fellow at the California Institute of Technology.

Recognized for her scientific leadership and contributions to educational innovation, and as a champion of diversity, equity and inclusion, Johnson serves as a member of the UCLA Human Pluripotent Stem Cell Research oversight committee; chair and director of the biomedical research minor; co-director and steering committee member for the Bruins in Genomics summer program; and co-director/co-principal investigator for the National Institutes of Health–funded UPLIFT/IRACDA program, which supports postdoctoral researchers preparing for academic careers.

Johnson also started the UCLA-HHMI Pathways to Success program, which is funded through the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to support the success of students from diverse backgrounds in STEM fields. She is also the principal investigator for a second HHMI grant aimed at promoting greater access and success for students studying life sciences who transfer from community colleges.

Additionally, Johnson has served on numerous campus committees, including the faculty advisory committees for the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies and the UCLA Center for the Study of Women, the Moreno Report Implementation Committee, Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center executive committee, and diversity in research committee.

“Chancellor Block and I are confident that the division of life sciences will continue to thrive under Tracy’s capable leadership. Please join me in congratulating her and welcoming her to this new role,” said Emily Carter, UCLA executive vice chancellor and provost, who also thanked Dean Victoria Sork for her leadership of the division of life sciences.

Beyond UCLA, Johnson has served as chair of an NIH Molecular Genetics Study Section, the National Cancer Institute Board of Scientific Counselors, the executive committee for the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students, and the executive board of the Society of Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professors.

She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Science Foundation CAREER Award; the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers; the UCLA Academic Senate Award for Career Commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; and the UCLA Life Sciences Award for Inclusive Excellence through teaching, mentorship, service and research.

Johnson earned her bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and cell biology at UC San Diego and her doctorate in biochemistry and molecular biology at UC Berkeley.

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.