Holly Ober
Media relations for physical and life sciences at UCLA. ucla.in/45FA7Oe
- Find out how much wood a woodchuck could chuck if it could chuck wood, why you shouldn't take parenting advice from a marmot, and what it's like to touch a hibernating marmot in this delightful episode of @ologies.bsky.social with UCLA marmotologist Daniel Blumstein. 🧪
- Rarity Public Benefit Corporation is trying to turn a UCLA cure for a rare disease into a medicine. The bottleneck now is not showing that it works, but another key part of the drug approval process — developing the commercial manufacturing. Great story by @carolynyjohnson.bsky.social 🧪
- UCLA researchers are developing a tool that can predict when winter salmonella outbreaks are likely to happen in wild songbirds like pine siskins so people can take down their feeders to prevent the epidemic from starting. #addBirder ucla.in/4sVM6ki 🧪
- UCLA biologist Pamela Yeh joins Raffaela Lesch on Science Friday discuss how living alongside humans is changing wild animals' bodies, from raccoons to urban juncos. 🧪
- UCLA astrophysicist Erik Petigura studied four baby planets in the V1298 Tau system that are becoming super-Earths and sub-Neptunes. Despite being 5 to 10 times Earth’s radius, the planets have masses only 5 to 15 times Earth’s, meaning they are about as dense as Styrofoam. ucla.in/4aPC8Kz 🧪🔭
- Weird and wonderful science: How elephant poop leads to guitars and 12 other unusual UCLA research findings from 2025: ucla.in/4p8tXfY 🧪
- UCLA-led research has found that by electroplating thorium onto stainless steel, they can excite its nucleus with a laser and measure the electric current it produces. The achievement can be used to miniaturize the nuclear clock. ucla.in/48L8iFL 🧪
- You might know that if you're reading this on the internet, you can thank UCLA. But did you know that UCLA also brought you the nicotine patch and cleaner drinking water through reverse osmosis? 10 Bruin discoveries that are changing the world: ucla.in/4aSQbPl 🧪
- Gut bacteria have evolved rapidly to digest starches in ultra-processed foods. UCLA study finds gut microbes are evolving differently in industrialized and non-industrialized parts of the world. ucla.in/4aWigp5 🧪
- I had a joke about Ariadne but you probably couldn't follow the thread.
- A gene therapy co-developed by UCLA's Donald Kohn has restored immune function in 59 children born without the ability to make immune cells, a disease that typically gives them only a few short years of life. With the therapy, they qre now living normal lives. 🧪
- This video featuring UCLA organic chemist Neil Garg helps explain why a dreaded college class is a wildly popular crowd favorite at UCLA. 🧪
- UCLA-led research found what caused Myanmar’s 2025 supershear earthquake: A straight, smooth fault, stress accumulation since the last major quake, and contrasting rock properties all created an ideal setting for the rupture to accelerate over hundreds of kilometers. ucla.in/4hyws8Z 🧪
- UCLA astronomer Jean-Luc Margot told the Atlantic that the International Astronomical Union has been in charge of planetary nomenclature for more than 100 years, but “surprisingly, they have not defined what a moon is." 🧪
- UCLA biologist Joey Curti is UCLA's very own batman. Join him on a recent evening where he shared the secrets of LA's bats with an eager crowd, and cleared up some myths about these important but misunderstood mammals. www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/v... 🧪
- Math professor Terence Tao and neuroscientist Vidya Saravanapandian told PBS Newshour's Stephanie Sy that US's global leadership in science hangs in the balance. 🧪
- A photonic lantern used for the first time on a telescope has helped UCLA-led astronomers achieve the sharpest-ever measurement of a star’s surrounding disk, revealing that is is-- surprisingly-- lopsided. ucla.in/43wGO3k 🧪
- A UCLA-led effort has taught enzymes an entirely new reaction mechanism—a radical hydrogenation process that nature itself never discovered. Enzymes can now rival or surpass precious-metal catalysts, paving the way for greener pharmaceuticals, fine chemicals, and biocatalytic materials. 🧪
- A blood stem cell gene therapy co-developed by UCLA’s Dr. Donald Kohn restored immune function in 59 of 62 children with ADA-SCID, a rare and fatal immune disorder, with no serious complications reported. Long-term follow-up shows 95% success rate in largest study to date. ucla.in/4ojUZke 🧪
- 2025's 5 Nobel Laureates who work and/or were educated in the University of California system reflect the power of a healthy, well-funded research ecosystem and of academic freedom. www.latimes.com/california/n...
- #UCLA neuroscientists discovered brain cells in rats that are wired for #uncertainty. The neurons, most active when a #decision outcome is unknown, appear to help with decision making and flexibility. ucla.in/3Wumo7g 🧪
- In the 1980s, Louis Ignarro, a UCLA pharmacology professor , studied how air pollutant nitric oxide dilated blood vessels. Then, he was on the fringes of his field. “I pursued that much to the dismay of my colleagues, who thought I was crazy,” Ignarro recalled. Viagra emerged from this work. 🧪
- Funded entirely by taxpayer dollars and developed exclusively at UCLA, a first-of-its-kind drug targets cellular metabolism to promote tissue repair of multiple organs and is ready for clinical trials. ucla.in/46DzOUx 🧪
- "I think the consensus that #science was a route to national #well-being and #prosperity was widely shared by people across the political spectrum until very recently. It’s only been the past few years that we’ve seen a rising lack of trust in #scientists." 🧪
- “It’s not like you can just hit pause and pick it up and continue,” Vidya Saravanapandian of UCLA’s Brain Research Institute told @latimes.com reporter @jaweedkaleem.bsky.social. 🧪
- UCLA Fields Medalist Terence Tao: "Basic #science is an investment in many, many small projects, and if even just a small percentage of them yield fruit, then it's a massive return on investment." youtu.be/skWt_PZosik?... #ResearchPowersProgress 🧪
- “We’re being affected by battles that are taking place well beyond the scope of our focus on training the best scientists,” UCLA professor Rachelle H. Crosbie told @aishabee.bsky.social for @chronicle.com. She said every federal grant across her department has been frozen. 🧪
- #UCLA @ioes.ucla.edu geographers Emelly Ortiz-Villa and Kyle Cavanaugh told Spectrum News reporter Nathalie Basha how marine protected areas help #kelp forests recover after marine heatwaves. Learn more: ucla.in/4fRcC8a #climate #environment 🧪
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- Using #stemcell models, @ucla.edu scientists find how epilepsy genes disrupt different brain regions. The study establishes the first hippocampal assembloid model, creating a new platform for studying epilepsy, autism and Alzheimer’s disease. #ResearchPowersProgress 🔗 bit.ly/3JTyjbR
- UCLA neurologists discovered a gene that helps neurons regenerate, and developed a drug that mimics this gene to help people recover after a stroke. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/04/s... 🧪
- UCLA biologists have discovered that genes linked to some autoimmune diseases are also linked to #mRNA stability. This matters because if mRNA degrades before it can deliver protein-making instructions, enough protein might not get made. There may be a connection to disease risk. ucla.in/4noFIOU 🧪
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- Terry Tao, the world’s greatest living mathematician, avoided politics. Then Trump cut science funding. Tao on math, funding and why America has been such a special place to do research. 🎁 link: wapo.st/47r7Ig1
- A poignant plea from @allard-lab-ucla.bsky.social: The attacks on science and research are multi-pronged and incessant. Yet it is difficult to understand why something as essential as health research has stopped receiving bipartisan support. bit.ly/3HPVWS1 🧪
- “I can’t tell you the number of people who are getting aggressive inquiries, many from out of the country,” Professor Tracy Johnson, UCLA’s dean of Life Sciences, told What A Day. “What we’re looking at is the potential for a serious brain drain.” 🧪
- Mind-blowing UCLA research shows that ebony trees used in guitar frets, piano keys, and other musical instruments depends on elephants. Specifically: Elephant dung.💩Beautiful article by my colleague @ahewitt.bsky.social also shows importance of continued federal funding. ucla.in/4lPSGUD 🧪
- UCLA ornithologist @mwtingley.bsky.social took @brookejarvis.bsky.social to see how #birds, #wildlife, and #plants are recovering from the #PalisadesFire. What she wrote is a tour de force about fire ecology and resilience. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/m... 🧪
- “I find that this administration in particular has been extremely radical with how it is changing the scientific ecosystem in a way that even the first Trump administration was not. This is not normal, and I think a lot of people don’t see the damage that is being done.” bit.ly/3JxOv2b 🧪
- Human ovaries contain a lifetime supply of eggs at birth. Scientists finally have a complete map of how this ovarian reserve forms in primates, which will help them improve treatments for infertility and hormonal disorders. ucla.in/41pjSCp 🧪
- UCLA geographers have learned that kelp in marine protected areas bounces back more quickly from marine heatwaves. The reason? Fish that eat kelp grazers help kelp re-establish itself after a die off. ucla.in/4fRcC8a 🧪
- UCLA research shows that cells use a secret weapon to starve pathogens and weaken infections. Cells detect proteins produced by invading T. gondii and ramp up mitochondrial metabolism. This uses up so much folate that the parasite cannot grow properly. ucla.in/4fU2YS7 🧪
- Suspended funding just made the Loneliness Epidemic a little harder to end. UCLA psychologist Jaimie Krems explains why. www.youtube.com/shorts/TW8dN... 🧪
- Co-author David N. Myers is a UCLA Jewish history professor. This is "a shallow and disingenuous plot to destroy the university and the values of free inquiry and debate in the name of a dangerous, illiberal ideology that has been against higher education for years." www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...
- UCLA Fields Medalist Terence Tao: "This is not a routine policy shift—it is a deliberate dismantling of the institutions, funding, and freedoms that have sustained American science for generations." newsletter.ofthebrave.org/p/im-an-awar... 🧪
- New research by UCLA neuroscientists shows that listening to music after an experience or activity can make it more memorable if you have just the right amount of emotional response while listening to it. ucla.in/4mpp0ie 🧪
- UCLA climate scientist Aradhna Tripati told @janecoaston.bsky.social what's at stake when research is used as a political football. 🧪
- When a specific dopamine signal is blocked, threadworms almost completely stop trying to penetrate the skin. “Without NIH funding, there is no way for us to continue this research. The impact of the grant suspensions has been truly devastating,” said Elissa Hallem. 🧪 ucla.in/4lx7zuR
