Grand Challenges

UCLA awarded $3M to train students on sustainable food, energy and water management

The ongoing global trend of migration into large cities will only heighten the need for urban planning focused on sustainability.

Courtesy of Perkins + Will

UCLA will receive $3 million over the next five-years from the National Science Foundation’s NSF Research Traineeship to launch a program that will educate graduate students on sustainable supplies of food, energy, and water to growing urban centers under the pressure of global climate change. Understanding the food, energy, water nexus in conjunction with complex regional socioeconomic and urban planning challenges is an important step towards achieving a sustainable LA. Read more →

Sustainable LA

New UCLA report looks at improving water quality and supply in L.A.’s Dominguez Channel and Machado Lake watersheds

Dominguez Channel in Los Angeles County

Katie Mika

UCLA researchers have looked at how to improve water-quality and increase water-supply with a focus on the City of Los Angeles – a necessary step towards realizing 100% locally-sourced water for L.A. County by 2050, which is a goal of the UCLA Sustainable LA Grand Challenge. In the recently released report, LA Sustainable Water Project: Dominguez Channel and Machado Lake Watersheds, researchers specifically studied the highly urbanized Dominguez Channel watershed, which includes the Machado Lake watershed and looked at the Terminal Island Water Reclamation Plant, as well as the underlying groundwater basins, to better understand opportunities to improve water quality and increase water supply. Read more →

Depression

UCLA’s Dr. Michael Fanselow: Understanding post-traumatic stress and how to treat it

Michael Fanselow is a Distinguished Professor of Behavioral Neuroscience at UCLA and Director of Staglin Family Music Festival Center for Brain and Behavioral Health at UCLA. Fanselow’s research through the Center focuses on uncovering the neurobiological bases for anxiety disorders such as post-traumatic stress. Specifically, Fanselow has studied why humans overgeneralize fear, which causes individuals to Read more →

Depression

Not all astrocytes in the brain are the same, study finds

Thousands of branches and branchlets emanate from an astrocyte’s cell body, which is the dense portion in the middle of the image.

Baljit Khakh/UCLA

UCLA researchers reveal that astrocytes, a type of brain cell that supports and protects neurons, aren’t all the same. Baljit Khakh, a UCLA professor of physiology and neurobiology and the study’s senior author, has upended a long-standing idea in neuroscience that all astrocytes are indistinguishable. The astrocyte has several unique functions in the brain and impaired astrocyte function has been implicated in diseases Read more →

Sustainable LA

Understanding L.A. County’s local water supply potential

Researchers at UCLA are trying to determine what it would take to get to 100 percent local water supply.

Planet Labs inc./Wikimedia Commons

Researchers at UCLA created a comprehensive model to find out how L.A. County can reduce its reliance on imported water: an important step towards reaching the UCLA Sustainable LA Grand Challenge goal of 100% local water by 2050. Read more →

Archive Tag: Research