Kids learn about Cesar Chavez
Elementary school students will pick strawberries for a day;
high school students will spruce up a spring; and other children
will help clean the Los Angeles River. Students from seven Los
Angeles-area schools will perform these projects as part of the
Cesar Chavez Day of Service and Learning grant received by
UCLA’s Center for Experiential Education and Service
Learning.
The UCLA center is working with teachers at seven schools to
educate students about Chavez, the prolific farm labor leader, and
inform them about the values he put into action on a daily basis.
The students then will engage in community-based service-learning
projects that embody Chavez’s values, which include service
to others and helping the most needy. The students will also
organize a performance at their school or in the community to
inform others about Chavez. About 600 students are participating in
the project.
New hormone helps small kids
Thousands of children born small for gestational age (SGA) who
fail to catch up to average size by age 2 can now benefit from a
new growth hormone treatment at UCLA’s Mattel
Children’s Hospital.
SGA is defined as a pre-term, term, or post-term newborn who is
below the third percentile for gestational age body weight or
length. In the United States each year, approximately one in 40
babies is born SGA. While some may naturally catch up in size,
about 10 percent fail to attain normal height.
Counter attack to viruses found
In their endless war against the immune system, viruses rapidly
evolve new evasive strategies. But scientists have uncovered the
first genetic evidence of counter attack by the beleaguered immune
defenses: immune proteins that viruses once exploited have
apparently evolved the ability to call in attacks against their
former exploiters.
This case of immune proteins turning the table on the invaders
may be quite common, the researchers think, since genetic evolution
appears to race fastest where the fighting is fiercest ““ in
the give-and take battle between pathogens and the receptors that
encounter them on the surface of immune cells.
The research led by UCSF scientists will be published online
April 11 by Science and will appear in the journal several weeks
later.
The discovery comes from a study of a strain of mice able to
resist infection by a virus known as murine cytomegalovirus, or
MCMV, related to the human cytomegalovirus, smallpox virus,
Epstein-Barr and other human viruses.
Reports from Daily Bruin wire services.