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Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has named Larry Frank, director of the UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education, as deputy mayor for neighborhood and community services. Frank, an attorney, will work with neighborhood councils and other community groups....

The new mayor has also appointed Fernando Torres-Gil, acting dean of the School of Public Affairs, to the city’s Board of Airport Commissioners, along with five other new members. “In selecting my team, I looked for people who brought with them a passion for public service, the highest ethical standards, a commitment to aviation security and safety and a shared view that we must expand our regional aviation system, rather than relying on LAX alone,” Villaraigosa said....

Ernest Wright, professor of physiology and Melinkoff Professor in Medicine, has been named a 2005 Fellow to the Royal Society, one of the highest honors a scientist can achieve next to the Nobel Prize. The lifetime award pays tribute to the society’s most distinguished members who have demonstrated excellence in research and advanced understanding in their fields of science, medicine, engineering or mathematics....

PBS viewers were treated last month to a three-part series on Jared Diamond’s encyclopedic analysis of geography’s impact on world history, the focus of his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.” National Geographic and PBS teamed up to produce the series and filmed Diamond and 193 actors in eight countries across five continents. Diamond, professor of geography, helped guide the production of the series, which took more than three years to make....

Leonard Apt, professor of ophthalmology and founding director of the Division of Pediatric Ophthalmology, and Dean Bok, Dolly Green Professor of Ophthalmology, received the S. Rodman Irvine, M.D., Prize at the recent Clinical and Research Seminar held at UCLA’s Jules Stein Eye Institute. The annual award, established by the Department of Ophthalmology, recognizes faculty members whose careers illustrate the finest in doctor-patient or doctor-student relationships; whose actions represent the highest traditions of the medical or vision science professions; and whose teaching exemplifies dedication to the transmission of knowledge to future generations.