More than a quarter of a century ago, in the northwest corner of Boelter Hall, there was a powerful device guarded by large concrete walls that were off-limits to most students and faculty.
From 1959 until 1984, UCLA had its very own nuclear reactor, which was housed in the engineering building and utilized by various South Campus departments for research and business. Read more...

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Thomas E. Hicks (right), engineering professor and then-chief supervisor of the UCLA reactor, and Ronald MacLain, his chief assistant, stand on top of the newly built reactor in December 1960. The nuclear reactor, which had the power of 100 toasters, was small and used mostly for research purposes.

CREDIT: UCLA ARCHIVES

On the evening of April 25, 1986, crews prepared for a routine shutdown of a Ukrainian nuclear reactor. Read more...

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UCLA workers load irradiated uranium fuel from Boelter Hall’s nuclear reactor, located on the second floor of the building. From 1959, UCLA possessed a nuclear reactor, but it was decommissioned in 1984 because of protests and lack of use.

Neurobiologists from across the country have discovered that students who are fluent in at least two languages are better at multitasking and less likely to face an early onset of Alzheimer's disease. The findings were presented at a conference in Washington, D.C., last month. "A lot of brain imaging scans have shown that being bilingual has changed the structure of the brain," said Lauren Mason Carris, a doctoral candidate in applied linguistics at UCLA. Read more...

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Second-year neuroscience student Yuta Ebikawa speaks both English and Japanese. A recent study found bilingual people are better able to multitask and are less likely to show early signs of Alzheimer’s.

But the increase could have been caused in part by changes in diagnostic methods, sources said.
In 1994, the criteria for diagnosing autism was broadened to include milder cases of autism. Read more...