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campus briefs

HUMAN RIGHTS EDUCATION

Using Asian case studies to help teachers bring worldwide human rights issues into the classroom, staff and faculty from the UCLA Asia Institute, the Center for Southeast Asian Studies and the International Institute held a human rights workshop Feb. 7-8 for 41 K-12 teachers from public schools throughout the Los Angeles region. The workshop addressed issues such as the trafficking of women, child labor and prisoners’ rights. Teachers heard from representatives from various organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Doctors without Borders and the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking. “The workshop was incredibly valuable,” said Linda Truong, program officer for Asia Institute, who organized the workshop. “Teachers went away feeling inspired to continue learning about and advocating for human rights and to pass on what they learned to their students.”

PROMISING TREATMENT

A new UCLA study provides the first evidence that patients with heart failure may benefit from statin drug treatment. The finding may lead to a novel therapy for the 5 million Americans who suffer from this life-threatening condition. The study, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, demonstrated that statin usage reduced the mortality rate of heart-failure patients by 55%. Heart-failure patients benefited irrespective of the cause of their heart failure and their blood cholesterol levels. “Our results were dramatic,” said Gregg Fonarow, principal investigator and Eliot Corday Chair in Cardiovascular Medicine and Science. He is also director of the Ahmanson-UCLA Cardiomyopathy Center. “We were surprised by the magnitude of the additional benefits of statins in patients who were already on standard medications to treat heart failure,” said Fonarow.

UC, CSU TO CUT ENERGY USE

The California Public Utilities Commission has awarded the University of California and the California State University $12 million to implement energy-efficiency programs, reduce costs and move UC and CSU toward greater environmental sustainability. The funding will be split equally by the two systems. Working with utility companies, UC and CSU will alleviate more than 2.5 MW of peak electric demand, plus another 15 million kWh per year from California’s congested electrical grid. The programs will also conserve natural gas use by almost 700,000 therms per year. Among the programs to be implemented this year are retrofits for lighting, heating and air conditioning systems.