August 2017
California legislators have promised to address the state's housing crisis, and Assistant Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy Nicholas Marantz has some ideas on how to do so.
Most relocating businesses stay local, report shows
Large business relocations may draw splashy headlines and bring jobs and revenue to a city, but a new data analysis shows that such moves are much rarer – and less beneficial – than thought.
Findings detailed in the latest quarterly report from UCI’s Metropolitan Futures Initiative reveal that only a third of company relocations in Southern California cross city borders, just 6 percent cross county borders, and nearly a quarter are to sites less than half a mile away.
July 2017
Candice Odgers, a research professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, is joining the Department of Psychology and Social Behavior as a professor.
Odgers studies how social inequalities and early adversity influence children's future health and well-being. Her current research examines how new technologies, such as mobile phones and web-based tools, can be used to understand and improve young people's lives.
July 2017
Nataly Garcia has been awarded the Dan and Jeanne Stokols Social Ecology Graduate Fellowship Award. Garcia is pursuing her Ph.D. in Social Ecology.
July 2017
The School of Social Ecology has hired Nancy Rodriguez as a professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society. In 2014, Rodriguez was appointed by Barack Obama as the director of the National Institute of Justice, which is the scientific research arm of the U.S. Department of Justice.
July 2017
Vials upon vials of frozen saliva -- from babies exposed to secondhand smoke, from military nurses in training, from captive cheetahs in the zoo -- are stored in the freezers at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Salivary Bioscience Research. The vials, and the lab, form the heart of the fast growing field of salivary research.
Scientists at the School of Social Ecology, across the University of California system and around the world are partnering with the lab to test saliva for markers that reveal stress levels, reproductive hormones, environmental chemicals and many other things.
July 2017
Feelings of life enjoyment and satisfaction can influence physical health according to a new review study, co-authored by Sarah Pressman, associate professor of psychology and social behavior. Researchers found that by cultivating happiness and positive perceptions, individuals can improve their immune and cardiovascular systems, as well as the body’s ability to heal from injuries.
"In our review, we found that greater contentment, optimism, a sense of life purpose, low stress and other indicators of subjective well-being are tied to better health and longevity, including surviving serious diseases, and even avoiding acute illnesses," Pressman said.
July 2017
Saliva testing has come a long ways since the 1980s, when it was first used for HIV screening. Today, advances in the field are being driven by the School of Social Ecology's Institute for Interdisciplinary Salivary Bioscience Research, which is developing new applications for salivary testing.
"We've now standardized how those samples should be collected and analyzed, and saliva just has a tremendous amount of biomarkers that can be used for diagnostics and screenings," Douglas Granger, chancellor's professor of psychology and social behavior, told the Orange County Business Journal.
July 2017
In the 1980s and 1990s, allegations of sexual abuse were rising, and alternative practices such as hypnotherapy and psychotherapy were gaining traction. People undergoing memory visualization techniques and hypnotism believed they were dredging up repressed memories, often of childhood physical and sexual abuse.
Elizabeth Loftus, a distinguished professor of psychology and social behavior, was intrigued by the trend and wondered how accurate the memories really were.
July 2017
Earlier this year after 11 years behind bars, Raymond Lee Jennings, who was convicted of killing an 18-year-old woman in a Palmdale parking lot, was declared innocent.
It took three trials to get that guilty verdict -- the first two trials ended in deadlock -- and the case was based largely on circumstantial evidence. In particular, the prosecution relied on testimony of an FBI profiler. Profilers help detectives predict the likely characteristics of a criminal, but experts are split on how effective profiling actually is -- and whether it's anything more than glorified guesswork.
Profilers can help narrow the list of suspects in an investigation, said Simon Cole, professor of criminology, law and society and director of the National Registry of Exonerations. But there's risk if the profiler is wrong.