A research team headed by Dr. Gary Small, associate professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the UCLA School of Medicine, has found that people who inherit apolipoprotein-E4, a gene associated with Alzheimer's disease, show reduced brain function before experiencing clinical symptoms of the disease. The findings suggest that combining genetic testing with positron emission tomography (PET) scanning may eventually enable doctors to identify patients in the very early stages of the progressive disease. The nation's "safety net" — the federal and state benefits and services providing aid to indigents — is shrinking, placing increasing pressure on financially strapped counties to support the unemployed and persons with disabilities, according to a study by Professor Emeritus Leonard Schneiderman and Assistant Professor Ailee Moon of UCLA's School of Public Policy and Social Research. California is the only large-population state that finances General Assistance entirely through its counties, a situation, UCLA researchers warned, that is placing an enormous burden on local budgets. Since 1850, fewer major earthquakes have jolted California in general, and Southern California in particular, than scientific models predict for the region. David Jackson, professor of geophysics at UCLA, has analyzed earthquake data going back to 1850 — the time of the earliest reliable records — and theorizes that the region may experience fewer "moderately strong" earthquakes of 7.0 magnitude than forecast by models because of the occurrence every few centuries of 8.0-magnitude quakes, each of which do the work of about 30 7.0's. UCLA School of Dentistry and Sepulveda VA Medical Center researchers have found that routine panoramic X-ray exams can reveal stroke-causing plaques. Using a series of X-rays that would typically be taken in a dental office, the researchers were able to detect calcification in the carotid arteries of the necks of 10 patients, all of whom were 55 and older and had shown no symptoms of a stroke. Though physiologists cannot yet say for certain what energy levels in cellular phones are safe, UCLA electrical engineering professor Yahya Rahmat-Samii has developed a method of determining what levels of energy are being absorbed by the brain during cellular-phone use. Using a computer model of the human head and accurate measurements of radio emissions from a variety of antenna types, Rahmat-Samii has quantified the specific amount of energy absorbed by the head and hand. UCLA's Center for Afro-American Studies, in accordance with its 25th anniversary, has published Residential Apartheid: The American Legacy, a collection of essays sanctioned by the Commission on Racial Justice to examine institutional racism, fair housing and urban issues. The book's editors include J. Eugene Grigsby III, associate professor of urban planning at UCLA's School of Public Policy and Social Research. Nearly 20 years after first describing the rare metabolic disease, Dr. Edward R.B. McCabe, executive chair of the Department of Pediatrics at the UCLA School of Medicine, has isolated the gene responsible for adrenal hypoplasia congenita (AHC), an X-linked adrenal disorder that results in profound hormonal deficiencies and can be fatal if left untreated. In 1976, McCabe, after treating two Colorado brothers, described an inborn error of metabolism affecting the function of the adrenal glands. Continued laboratory study of the brothers' chromosomes enabled the researcher to map the location of the defective gene, clone and sequence it, and identify the mutations. Giant, gaseous planets such as Jupiter and Saturn appear to be rare in the Milky Way galaxy — a finding suggesting that Earth holds a "privileged position" in the universe, according to research reported in Nature by Benjamin Zuckerman, UCLA professor of astronomy. Using a large radio telescope to examine more than a dozen stars thought to be between 3 million and 10 million years old, Zuckerman con-cluded they did not have enough molecular gas surrounding them to produce the gaseous core of a giant planet such as Jupiter. The gravitational pull of Jupiter-like planets is believed to protect smaller, "rocky" planets such as Earth from being barraged by devastating storms of debris that would prevent advanced life from developing. UCLA historian Joyce Appleby has published a "history of the study of history," which examines views spanning the political spectrum and offers its own thoughts on how history should be taught. In Telling the Truth About History, Appleby and two other leading historians show how approaches to the subject have changed over time and how history has often been distorted and misused by professors and scholars. Prior sexual abuse appears to put women at higher risk of sexual harassment later in life and influences how they react to that harassment, according to researchers at UCLA's Neuropsychiatric Institute. The study, headed by Dr. Gail E. Wyatt, professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences, suggests that survivors of childhood sexual abuse may subconsciously engage in behaviors perceived as vulnerable by their harassers. Researchers at UCLA's Borun Center for Gerontological Research have developed a safety assessment for the frail elderly that measures behavioral factors associated with falls. The assessment was designed to help nursing-staff members identify restrained residents who are likely to benefit from restraint-reduction programs, which proliferated in recent years in response to federal legislation. But, says John Schnelle, director of the center and the study's principal investigator, restraint-reduction programs have given little consideration to post-restraint follow-up interventions designed to improve a resident's freedom of mobility. What works should K-12 teachers assign future students of American literature? Different ones from those assigned to their parents, suggests Eric Sundquist, professor and chair of UCLA's Department of English. In To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature, Sundquist calls for devoting considerably more attention to authors who, he says, deserve "more extended serious treatment," such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Charles Chestnutt. He further argues that white literature and black literature form a single, interwoven tradition of national literature. Return to Front Page || RESEARCH@UCLA Copyright 1996 Regents of the University of California - All Rights Reserved.