The National Weather Service has issued an excessive heat warning for many parts of the U.S. this week. Parts of LA, like the San Fernando Valley, are headed for triple-digit temperatures this weekend. Heat negatively affects some people more than others — UCLA Heat Lab Director Bharat Venkat looks at it as thermal inequality.
Heat preparedness has generally improved over the years as forecasting has become more accurate, and as meteorologists, journalists and government officials have focused on spreading the word of upcoming danger. Chicago, for example, has expanded its emergency text and email notification system and identified its most vulnerable residents for outreach.
Since the time of the Greek physician Galen, knowing what causes a disease has been taken to be a critical step toward finding its cure (an idea we still hold dear in our time of mysterious syndromes and phantom pains). But a cure that specifically targeted the rod-shaped bacterium that causes tuberculosis was slow to come.
The NY Times published a guest Opinion Essay by ISG faculty Danielle Carr’s article “Mental Health is Political”.
“What if the cure for our current mental health crisis is not more mental health care?”
An ongoing study conducted by [Chase] Niesner, Christopher Kelty and Spencer Robins suggests that the same survival skills that enabled coyotes to outlast federal extermination campaigns during the 19th century has allowed them to flourish in some of the most densely populated urban centers in the world.
Congratulations to ISG Faculty member, Nick Shapiro, who was selected as one of five inaugural faculty members to receive the Mellon “Data, Justice, and Society” grant. The new grant is dedicated to develop new undergraduate or graduate courses to teach in the areas of critical data studies, data and society and digital humanities, using social justice frameworks.