Grand Challenges

UCLA faculty voice: El Nino isn’t a drought buster – it’s a missed opportunity

When Los Angeles waterways like the Ballona Creek surge on rainy days, most of that water is lost to runoff rather than retained for usage by our water systems.

Owen and Aki/Flickr

Mark Gold, Associate Vice Chancellor for Environment and Sustainability at UCLA, foreshadows tens of billions of gallons of lost water runoff resulting from Los Angeles’ lack of appropriate infrastructure to capture and store rainfall.

Resilience Peer Network to supplement student mental health services

The Resilience Peer Network, a peer-to-peer counseling service, will be implemented in the spring to supplement Counseling and Psychological Services.

Daily Bruin file photo

The UCLA Student Affairs office and UCLA Campus and Student Resilience are partnering with the Depression Grand Challenge to provide students with peer-to-peer counseling outside of a clinical setting. UCLA psychologists will train student volunteers in active listening and suicide prevention, among other skills.

Source: Resilience Peer Network to supplement student mental health services Daily Bruin, 19 Jan. 2016

Additional coverage of the Depression Grand Challenge on campus:

All of Us town hall encourages wider discourse on mental health issues UCLA Newsroom, 27 Jan. 2016

Depression

UCLA scientists create graphene barrier to precisely control molecules for making nanoelectronics

Paul Weiss (California Nanosystems Institute, department of chemistry and biochemistry) and a team of scientists developed a technique to precisely control molecules for making nanelectronics. This technique would make it much more efficient to build nanoelectronic and nanobioelectronic devices that could measure brain cell and circuit function in real time. Neurosensors that could measure brain cell and circuit function immediately could provide further insight into diseases like depression and provide further support to the Depression Grand Challenge.

Mountain lions of L.A.

According to Robert Wayne and Seth Riley of the department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, recent changes in the health and behavior of Santa Monica mountain lions could be mitigated by the construction of an overpass for the animals on the 101 freeway, opening up a migration route.

Urban Planning at your fingertips thanks to new web app from UCLA Lewis Center

The Revision web application allows any user to very simply aggregate data from various public and private sources.

Thanks to “Revision”, a new web application created by the UCLA Lewis Center with leadership from Juan Matute (Institute of the Environment and Sustainability; UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, department of Urban Planning) anyone can aggregate data from various public and private sources to create a complete picture of neighborhood change with just a few clicks.

Happenings