Ucla Study

For two months Stephanie Aldana's son complained of intense pain in his back and tremors in his legs. Doctors visits revealed nothing. She could do little but try to comfort 10-year-old Isaac as his feet swelled and his mobility deteriorated. Then Isaac lost sensation below his waist and an emergency MRI led to stark news: The fourth-grader had Ewing's sarcoma, a rare cancer that can attack the bones. Aldana and her husband were at a loss. How would they combat a grave illness within a vast medical system that had already proved frustrating and confusing?

Every so often, Chon Noriega wakes up in the middle of the night and thinks, "I agreed to do what ?" Maybe he signed on to teach another UCLA graduate seminar in avant-garde cinema. Or curate an exhibition of new Chicano art. Or write a biography. Or lead a walking tour of East L.A.'s historic murals. Or co-host a segment of TCM's "Race and Hollywood: Latino Images in Film. " Or ... well, you get the drift. Noriega's list of cultural IOU's is long and - insomnia be damned - getting longer.

Re "Study Doubts Charter School Success Claims," Dec. 4: The UCLA charter school study is misleading and inaccurate. There have been numerous in-depth studies of charter schools conducted nationally and locally over the last several years. WestEd Policy and USC evaluated LAUSD in 1998, the U.S. Department of Education sponsored a national study in 1997 and 1998 and in 1996 the Little Hoover Commission examined California charter schools. Each of these studies identified positive results from the charter school movement.

For two months Stephanie Aldana's son complained of intense pain in his back and tremors in his legs. Doctors visits revealed nothing. She could do little but try to comfort 10-year-old Isaac as his feet swelled and his mobility deteriorated. Then Isaac lost sensation below his waist and an emergency MRI led to stark news: The fourth-grader had Ewing's sarcoma, a rare cancer that can attack the bones. Aldana and her husband were at a loss. How would they combat a grave illness within a vast medical system that had already proved frustrating and confusing?

Researchers at the UCLA School of Medicine are seeking volunteers for a study of the role of hormone replacement therapy in preventing disease in postmenopausal women. Women between the ages of 45 and 64, who are in good health and have had either a natural or surgical menopause, are being sought for a clinical trial of four different hormone replacement regimens.

Contrary to claims by Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the Lone Star State isn't stealing California's jobs, workers or prosperity, according to a UCLA study. The study, part of UCLA's quarterly forecast Wednesday, tries to put the kibosh on a rivalry between the states. Perry, for instance, has boasted about "hunting trips" to California to recruit companies from the state. Texas is one of many Western states trying to capitalize on the perception that California is a difficult place for business.

The recession is taking a toll on union jobs, which are disappearing in California at a faster rate than anywhere else in the country, according to a UCLA study published Monday. In the 12 months ending in June, the union membership rate dropped from 18.3% to 17.6% in California and from 12.4% to 12.1% nationwide, the study found. The drop was most acute in the counties of Los Angeles, Riverside, Orange, Ventura and San Bernardino, where unionization rates fell from 17.5% to 16.5%.

STEPHEN COX once thought of his Van Nuys backyard as a private retreat for his family. "I was adamant we had to have a pool because I love the idea of sitting in a pool with a glass of wine or a beer. But the number of times I have done that I could count on one hand." Mary Deyden would like to hang out in her diamond-shaped backyard in Westchester. But with her three children competing in soccer, volleyball and basketball, "we're always someplace else," she says via cellphone from her car.

Low-wage workers in the Los Angeles area are even more likely than their counterparts in New York and Chicago to suffer violations of minimum wage, overtime and other labor laws, according to a new UCLA study being released today. The study found that almost nine out of 10 low-wage workers surveyed in Los Angeles County had recently experienced some form of pay-related workplace violation, or "wage theft." Almost one in three reported being paid less than the minimum wage and nearly 80% said they had not received legally mandated overtime.

At the age of 80, Exaltacion Divinagracia thought that life would be easier. The petite widow still works part time at a nursery school. To keep the house she rented with her late husband, she has taken six roommates, all over 75. After church on Saturdays and Sundays, she drags a beat-up suitcase from one food pantry to the next in search of enough to eat for the coming week. Divinagracia takes home less than $13,000 a year, including public benefits. But according to the government's income standards, she is not impoverished.

A new UCLA economic analysis ofJapan'sShinkansen bullet train and its impact on the growth of cities along its route calls into question claims by state officials that California's high-speed rail project will create up to 400,000 permanent jobs. Construction ofJapan'svaunted bullet train began in the mid-1960s, and it did not generate higher economic growth or additional jobs, according to the study. Written by Jerry Nickelsburg, senior economist with the UCLA Anderson Forecast, the study said there may be other justifications for bullet train service between Los Angeles and San Francisco, but the $68-billion project as an engine of economic growth "will have only a marginal impact at best.

Just before noon on a December morning in 1988, a magnitude 6.8 earthquake shook over 40% of the territory of Armenia, centered in the northern city of Spitak. The temblor leveled entire towns and cities, killed an estimated 25,000 Armenians - two-thirds of them children trapped and crushed in their crumbling schools - and hastened the dissolution of the Soviet Union, of which Armenia was then a part. But the Spitak disaster was more than a geopolitical milestone. The earthquake was, in the words of one researcher, a "psychiatric calamity" that has yielded a trove of knowledge aboutpost-traumatic stress disorder.

The national economy is in "far worse" shape than it was just three months ago, but neither the U.S. nor California is expected to slip back into recession, according to UCLA researchers. The U.S. economy has "stalled," the job market is "horrible," and even a "modest shock" could trigger a full-blown recession, according to a quarterly economic forecast released Tuesday by UCLA's Anderson School of Management. But in a nuance that only an economist could appreciate, a recession is unlikely because the forces that normally spur downturns, such as a falloff in home construction, are already so weak that further deterioration won't do that much additional damage.

Contrary to claims by Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the Lone Star State isn't stealing California's jobs, workers or prosperity, according to a UCLA study. The study, part of UCLA's quarterly forecast Wednesday, tries to put the kibosh on a rivalry between the states. Perry, for instance, has boasted about "hunting trips" to California to recruit companies from the state. Texas is one of many Western states trying to capitalize on the perception that California is a difficult place for business.

This year's college freshmen report feeling higher levels of emotional and financial stress than their predecessors did, according to a national survey conducted by UCLA researchers. The annual "American Freshman" report, released Thursday, showed that only about half of current first-year students, 51.9%, rated their emotional health above average or higher, down from 55.3% last year and the lowest since the question was first asked 25 years ago. Just 45.9% of women in the class described themselves as emotionally strong, compared with 59.1% of the men. In addition, nearly two-thirds of this year's freshmen, 62.1%, said the recession had affected their choice of college, and 73.4%, up from 70% last year, are depending on grants and scholarships to help them through.

At the age of 80, Exaltacion Divinagracia thought that life would be easier. The petite widow still works part time at a nursery school. To keep the house she rented with her late husband, she has taken six roommates, all over 75. After church on Saturdays and Sundays, she drags a beat-up suitcase from one food pantry to the next in search of enough to eat for the coming week. Divinagracia takes home less than $13,000 a year, including public benefits. But according to the government's income standards, she is not impoverished.

Wolf delisting: An article in Friday's Section A about wolves being taken off the endangered species list said a UCLA study found about four years ago that the population of gray wolves in the Yellowstone area was genetically isolated and not breeding with other reintroduced populations in the northern Rockies area. The research was commissioned four years ago, but the findings were published last year.

Re Brian Lowry's article on the UCLA television violence study ("Study Finds Improvement in Handling of On-Air Violence," Jan. 14): Although Lowry regularly reports on television, he obviously is caught in this archaic notion that journalism is supposed to be objective and fair. The "real" truth about the UCLA study was reported Tuesday night on KTLA-TV Channel 5. Trusted journalist Hal Fishman shared with me and my fellow Angelenos the fantastic news that KTLA, through its affiliation with the WB Network, was contributing to a lessening of violent programming on TV. In an exciting and exclusive video clip, KTLA's beaming station manager backed up Hal's newsworthy proclamation, noting that WB's programming had received complimentary mention in the UCLA study.

The recession is taking a toll on union jobs, which are disappearing in California at a faster rate than anywhere else in the country, according to a UCLA study published Monday. In the 12 months ending in June, the union membership rate dropped from 18.3% to 17.6% in California and from 12.4% to 12.1% nationwide, the study found. The drop was most acute in the counties of Los Angeles, Riverside, Orange, Ventura and San Bernardino, where unionization rates fell from 17.5% to 16.5%.

Robert Bartlett Haas, a longtime UCLA educator who spent years immersed in the writings of Gertrude Stein, has died. He was 94. Haas died April 20 in a hospital in Nuertingen, Germany, after a brief illness, said his son, Peter. He had spent most of his retirement years in Germany. Haas' interest in Stein, the experimental American writer and poet, dated to his years as an undergraduate student at UC Berkeley. They started corresponding and finally met in 1946, shortly before her death in France at age 72. Haas "was one of the young men who sought out Gertrude Stein as a mentor and was rewarded with years of encouragement and friendship and who, in turn, devoted a measure of his academic life to bolstering Stein's reputation," Timothy Young, curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts at Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, told The Times in an e-mail.