People who can't pass a mirror without checking themselves out and then obsess over any little blemish or out-of-place hair have a name: Angelenos!
Allen Skyy / Flickr
No, really, body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is what describes folks with extreme self-image problems. And UCLA researchers recently discovered that it's all in their head. Literally:
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Used to be if your eyesight went out, your eyesight went out. And maybe you'd end up looking like a pirate, eye patch and all.
UCLA
But UCLA's bioengineering professor Wentai Liu has invented what is being hailed as "the first bionic eye for the blind:"
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Fernando Padilla had to have an oxygen tank at his side everywhere he went. He has pulmonary fibrosis, which turn lungs into cardboard and makes assisted breathing a fact of life.
Still, at least he had that -- life. But the 57-year-old lifelong carpenter, who actually worked on the construction of Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, put it all on the line to be a part of an experiment that would make him the first recipient of breathing lungs in the nation:
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It would appear to most of us Christopher Dorner lost it, blew a fuse, and went on a psychotic rampage unjustified by whatever workplace wrongs he faced.
But, alarmingly, a new study suggests that "psychotic disorder" for cops and other first responders who face traumatic experiences on the job might not be that unusual.
The most interesting thing about this new study out of the Bloomberg School's Department of Mental Health?
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A groundbreaking clinical trial to prevent paralysis and death right after a stroke by cooling the brain is underway, led by Cedars Sinai, that researchers say could change everything.
Alex E. Proimos Paralysis can be halted if you ice the head right away.
The trial has been boosted from 50 to 400 patients with FDA approval, and used both "controlled hypothermia" and a "clot-busting" drug therapy. It is showing solid results in reducing neurological damage that leaves people devastated after a stroke.
Here's how it works:
UCLA this week announced that its researchers have discovered a natural protein that could put the HIV virus out of business.
US Army Africa
They said the protein contains an enzyme, cholesterol-25-hydroxylase (CH25H), that creates an oxysterol called 25-hydroxycholesterol (25HC), that can defeat not only HIV but Ebola, Rift Valley Fever, Nipah and other "priority pathogens."
Complicated. We just want to know if it works:
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Creepy brain tests conducted on Ariel Sharon, who has been in a vegetative state since 2006, show "significant brain activity," UCLA said this week.
UCLA
One bioethicist, however, says that the strange readings from functional MRI scanning conducted by UCLA and Israeli scientists do not suggest, as some in Israel hope, that the beloved one-time prime minister will come back to consciousness.
So is he conscious but unable to express himself -- trapped in his own body?
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If you ever had a boss that gave you a virtual backhanding, you can take solace in new research from USC's Marshall School of Business.
trump.com
Scott Wiltermuth, assistant professor of management and organization, and co-author Francis Flynn of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, discovered that people entrusted with boss-like power suddenly feel much more certain about the difference between right and wrong. And they come down on wrong harder:
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If you watched 48 Hours over the weekend -- it featured Frank O'Connell, a local man convicted of murder and imprisoned for years based on recanted eyewitness testimony and twisted evidence -- you know that what people "see" isn't always reality.
stephane / Flickr
A new UCLA study seems to confirm that.
Researchers asked 54 people who work in the same building to identify the location of a seemingly crucial and outstanding object all of them walk by on workdays:
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You learned in school that the black hole sucks in everything around it. The black hole is like Charlie Sheen's nostrils. No mere particles of matter, no matter how dense and Chris Christie-like, can resist this force.
UCLA
Well, UCLA this week announced that it has found the little star that could.
All of you must bow down to this little choo-choo train in space:
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You might be losing Facebook friends and alienating potential OK Cupid matches based solely on the distance of your face from the camera in photos. 
stuartpilbrow via Flickr What not to do.
Scientists at Cal Tech have found that people judge the subjects of photographs to be less trustworthy, less attractive and less competent in close-up shots than they do in pictures taken from farther away.
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Dear zit-having, computer-programming, getting-your-asses-kicked-at-school teens: Sorry. We know life sucks, but just think, the geeks shall inherit the Earth. Someday you will be rolling deep in Apple stock and you'll have to use motherboards just to pry the chicks off you.
Proactiv / YouTube
And science, she's breaking your way. This revenge life we speak of might come sooner than expected.
UCLA scientists announced this week that ...
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Are there creatures underground we don't know about?
'Tremors'
If you remember the 1990 film Tremors, starring one Kevin Bacon, then you know they exist, and they're out to get us, at least on-screen.
Now USC professor Jan Amend and his team have set out to prove or disprove the existence of "subsurface" life forms (hopefully forms without teeth and fangs):
One more reason for dudes to walk around like they're hoarding the Eighth World Wonder in their boxer-briefs:
Wikipedia Surprise: Team USA is hibernating in your ball sack.
UCLA has revealed that human sperm can swim in a gorgeous, nature-perfect, three-dimensional spiral -- not unlike the helix formed by human DNA, aesthetically -- instead of just squiggling along in a desperate, haphazard route to the finish line.
Well, they still do that, too. But scientists discovered that...
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The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requires that any project which "may have a significant effect on the environment" be prefaced by an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) -- an often lengthy document investigating the project's possible effects on both the natural environment and on the urban environment humans have created.
Which Way LA? via Facebook Sacrificed in the name of science.
So the bulldozing of a 268 full-grown trees in L.A. and Inglewood, to make way for the California Science Center's prized new space shuttle Endeavour, seems an obvious candidate.
Yet the Science Center, obsessed with its setting up its new NASA exhibit as soon as possible...
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"Space exploration events are like the Olympics; everyone just feels good," Inglewood Mayor James Butts said at a triumphant press conference on the September 20 arrival of the space shuttle Endeavour.
The LA Beat A gorgeous old pine on Crenshaw that's tagged for removal.
And the spacecraft's 12-mile trip from LAX to the California Science Center on October 13, added L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, would "be a marvel of wonder and ingenuity."
But one ingenious path-clearing tactic has residents along the shuttle route, as well as local environmentalists, feeling not so good:
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If you think space is the final frontier, you might be in for a disappointment.
NASA Mars needs women.
While NASA's Curiosity rover is snapping shots of a crater and hoping to find earth-like life on the Red Planet, UCLA scientists have discovered it has a lot in common with Southern California.
It turns out Mars has tectonic plates. And that means ...
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As is tradition after big American achievements or tragedies (such as, earlier this month, Michael Phelps' 19th Olympic medal and the Sikh community's tragic loss), President Obama reached out to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory this morning over telephone.
NASA.gov Paging Mr. President...
You'd think the big White House phone call could have upgraded to Skype technology by now, seeing as we just landed on Mars. But in the end, the crackly 1950s-era telephone reception and Godlike omnipresence of Obama's voice over the enraptured laboratory (video below) only amplified the sense of heart-warming and history-making in the room. "You guys should be remarkably proud," said the president. "It's really what makes us best as a species..."
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The nation's most glamorous space shuttle is coming home! California Science Center President Jeffrey Rudolph just announced that the Endeavour, a gorgeous Palmdale native with a 78-foot wingspan, will be returning to its area of birth on September 20, barring weather or other issues.
Wikipedia Endeavour incoming.
To give Endeavour a proper, SNL-style California welcome after all those years adventuring the universe with Gabby Giffords' husband (but mostly just chilling patiently at the International Space Station)...
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As live shots of Mars rover Curiosity's Pasadena-area control room went viral, America was in awe ... over one guy's mohawk or, maybe, fauxhawk, depending on your point of view.
@tweetsoutloud Bobak.
Yes, as NASA and Jet Propulsion Laboratory celebrated the unprecedented move of setting a car-sized rover on the red planet with more technology than has ever been in space, jaws dropped over this guy.
His name is Bobak Ferdowsi, and ...
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