Student organization hosts event to raise awareness of gun violence campaign

UCLA students signed and stamped their handprints to a mural installation to promote gun control at an event Thursday.

Bruins for a Safer America, a bipartisan student organization that advocates for gun reform, partnered with the shoe company Toms to host the event to raise awareness about their #EndGunViolenceTogether campaign.

Pat Bradley, a co-founder of BSA and fourth-year cognitive science student, said BSA was formed to open a dialogue for college students to discuss gun violence. He added that BSA was founded in March in response to the Parkland, Florida, school shooting in February.

At the event, students signed postcards in support of mandatory universal background checks for the purchase of guns, which Toms said would be mailed to the students’ corresponding representatives.

An installation of abstract murals was also on display at the event, one of which was painted by a UCLA student. Students signed and added their handprints to the murals and, after signing, were given pins in support for gun violence reform.

The event is part of a gun reform campaign in which the company collects murals from various campuses across the U.S., along with postcards signed by advocates for gun reform. A Toms representative said the event is part of a larger effort to address aspects surrounding gun violence, including mental health, research and suicide prevention. Toms will invest $5 million over the next two years into various organizations, including nonprofits and campus organizations.

Sandrine Demathieu, a fourth-year sociology student, said BSA recruited her to paint UCLA’s mural. Demathieu said she hopes the mural will send a message to lawmakers about the need for legislative change.

“I think (it’s) a really good idea, because visuals really get to us and I think that will be a really powerful message,” Demathieu said.

Caspian Brock, a co-founder of BSA and a fourth-year Middle Eastern studies and Arabic language and cultures student, said she was inspired by Parkland high school students’ responses to the shooting at their school and wanted to keep the conversation going.

“We were like ‘Where are the college students on this issue?’” Brock said. “It’s just a huge issue that affects our age group.”

Bradley said he hoped the event would provide a forum to discuss gun violence, but added the club aims to shift to more action-based events in the future, such as rallies and fundraisers for various nonprofit organizations.

“I really hope that we can see some legislative change at least in terms of universal background checks because over 90 percent of Americans believe this is something that should happen,” Bradley said.

Joshua Horita, a second-year psychobiology student who stopped to sign a postcard and the mural at the event, said he thinks there should be legislative action on gun reform.

“We want something to be done, and we’re tired of the inaction,” Horita said.

Fernanda Soto, a second-year sociology and public affairs student who stopped to sign a postcard at the event, said although she is not sure where she personally stands on gun control, she thinks some change must be made.

“I want to help the cause out,” Soto said. “It’s a good cause. … I think all movements, that’s how it starts: the people and the voice.”

Bradley added he thinks UCLA was the perfect location for the event because of the students’ heavy involvement in national issues and the close proximity of the recent shooting in Thousand Oaks, California.

“Most people are always excited by the idea of doing something with this issue because it’s not being addressed well enough in this country and UCLA is such a community … of people that really care about what is going on in their communities, especially with the closeness of what happened in Thousand Oaks,” Bradley said.

Contributing reports from Marilyn Chavez, Daily Bruin contributor, and Anush Arvind, Daily Bruin staff.

UCLA alumni create online encyclopedia powered by cryptocurrency

Four UCLA alumni developed an online, cryptocurrency-driven encyclopedia to increase inclusivity on the internet.

UCLA alumni Sam Kazemian, Travis Moore and Kedar Iyer, along with their friend Mahbod Moghadam, created Everipedia in 2015. The website uses data from Wikipedia for a portion of its own pages and allows any user to create and add their own site to the database as long as it contains proper citations.

Everipedia compensates users who create and edit Everipedia pages using a type of cryptocurrency its founders created called IQ, Moghadam said.

“(The IQ tokens) are used to compensate not just encyclopedia entries, but everything you write on the internet,” Moghadam said.

Kazemian, who graduated in 2015, said the electronic encyclopedia includes a greater breadth of information than other online encyclopedias and includes pages on topics such as singer Cardi B and quantum field theory.

“We wanted to take it one step further and have everything on it, that’s where the name comes from,” Kazemian said.

The founders were able to host their cryptocurrency through Blockchain, a company that serves as a data ledger for many different sites. They said they want to revolutionize monetization on the internet by popularizing their own cryptocurrency and making it compatible with other websites and applications.

Unlike Wikipedia, which Moghadam said limits its pages to those that are considered popular or important enough, anyone and anything can have a page on Everipedia. Moghadam said Wikipedia has repeatedly taken down pages for people like Cardi B who were not deemed popular enough, while Everipedia had hosted the singer’s page a few years before Wikipedia decided to keep her page permanently.

Moghadam said he was motivated to help create Everipedia after a page of himself on Wikipedia kept getting taken down.

Emily Pitcher, a second-year English student, said she might use this website if it gained more popularity, as she was not previously aware of its existence.

“I support inclusivity and I like the effort they’re making,” Pitcher said.

Some students like Pitcher did not know that people like Cardi B had their Wikipedia pages taken down early on.

Maghbod says the company strives to give everyone recognition, even if they are not extremely popular.

“The upcoming Cardi B’s that Wikipedia will delete, we have, and we (also) have the Cardi B’s (of this generation),” Kazemian said.

Kazemian said there are currently 7,000 people who contribute to the editing and creation of the website. While Everipedia does not have a board of editors or an algorithm to review every page published, the users act as editors and are constantly on the lookout for improperly supported materials or biased articles, he added.

“It’s just a decentralized knowledge base upkept by anyone who wants to contribute and I think that helps (avoid biases),” Kazemian said.

However, the site has had a number of controversies over content since its creation, Iyer said.

A published article misnamed the shooter of the 2017 Mandalay Bay Resort shooting in Las Vegas. The team made the correction within 10 minutes of the article’s publishing and tried to clarify the mistake on social media.

This month the site also had to edit its page on Nick Sandman, the student that allegedly mocked a Native American elder in a viral video. Iyer, who graduated in 2013, said a user had written words such as “sexist” and “racist” under Sandman’s biography without citing any sources. The description was taken down because it did not adhere to proper citation procedures.

Moore, who graduated in 2011, said the group hopes Everipedia can provide a fair space for everyone regardless of their background or political stance.

Joe Prusan, a third-year bioengineering student, said he thinks Everipedia appears more user-friendly compared to other online encyclopedias and seems to provide a greater range of information.

He said he would consider using Everipedia instead of Wikipedia if the site became more well-known. Prusan added he thinks Everipedia’s site is more organized than other online encyclopedia sites and that it is easy to navigate.

Kazemian said the Everipedia team is developing more features for the site and is building other applications that use the same cryptocurrency and Blockchain technology as Everipedia.

Kazemian said UCLA students have approached the team for internships and career advice. He added they are very open to networking and building their relationships with the UCLA community.

He added the resources and people at UCLA helped them launch their business while they were students, so he would like to give back to the community by helping students.

Students join county effort to count homeless population in Westwood Village

Local officials and volunteers walked through Westwood to count the homeless population in order to provide governing agencies with data on areas of growth and improvement.

Westwood community members counted 41 homeless people in Westwood Village and UCLA’s campus Wednesday night. The full number of homeless people counted in Westwood will not be available until May when official results are released. Westwood officials and the Los Angeles Homeless Service Authority organized the Westwood Homeless Count as part of a nationwide event.

LAHSA will later compile the numbers to determine funding allocations and services, said Marisa Conner, a LAHSA analyst at the event.

Andrew Thomas, the executive director of Westwood Village Improvement Association, said 33 homeless people were counted in the Westwood Village section of the count, which he said was a decrease from last year.

Michael Skiles, president of the North Westwood Neighborhood Council, and Joshua Baum, a UCLA alumnus, said they counted eight individuals on campus.

In 2018, Los Angeles County recorded 45,043 homeless individuals, 248 of whom were in Westwood, according to the LAHSA website. The county saw a 4 percent reduction in homelessness between 2017 and 2018, while Westwood saw a 7 percent reduction between 2016 and 2018.

Thomas said it is difficult to track the number of homeless individuals during the day because people are constantly moving, but he has noticed a decrease in homelessness in Westwood Village at night.

“During the day people come to panhandle or to get food, which I understand because we have a generous population, and during the night they go elsewhere to sleep,” Thomas said. “There are also people that come into Westwood Village to sleep and they don’t panhandle because its relatively quiet – since we don’t have much nightlife – and it’s relatively safe.”

Thomas said the association conducts daily homeless counts around the Village. They also have a full-time staffer, Donovan Wilkes, who works to provide the homeless with access to services.

Steve Sann, an organizer of the event, said areas with a normally high homeless population such as Westwood Park recorded fewer homeless people than in previous years. He said he thinks the reduction signals an overall decrease in Westwood’s homeless population.

Lisa Chapman, president of the Westwood Neighborhood Council, said the WWNC began the Westwood Homeless Count in 2010 and has since hosted seven events.

The event was originally hosted every two years, but has become an annual event due to a growing homeless population over the last nine years, Sann said.

Over 100 people volunteered for the Westwood Homeless Count this year, which was a 40 percent increase from previous years, Skiles said.

Skiles added he thinks there were more volunteers this year because both neighborhood councils helped promote the event. He also said he hopes the NWWNC will take a larger role in organizing future homeless counts.

Before going out into Westwood, volunteers were instructed by LAHSA on how to conduct the count. To respect the privacy of the people they tallied, counters were told to avoid engaging with them and to only identify them visually. The LAHSA orientation also told volunteers to record the homeless person’s age, if they have a family with them and how many dwellings they have.

Daniel Fielding, a fourth-year theater student, who participated in the count, said he thinks the event gave students the opportunity to fulfill their civic duty.

“I think being a part of UCLA, sometimes we forget we’re a part of the neighborhood of Westwood,” Fielding said. “But going over to the church and seeing the whole community there, I was amazed to see not just college students.”

City councilmember Paul Koretz, who represents UCLA and Westwood, said 8,000 volunteers are expected to participate in the Los Angeles Homeless Count overall this year. He said the numbers provided have helped the council determine where to focus their resources. Koretz added he is now introducing several motions at city council to combat homelessness, such as Measure HHH, a supportive housing loan program for people at risk of homelessness.

“Around 20 percent fewer veterans were found on the street last year and 20 percent of the chronic homeless are now no longer homeless,” Koretz said. “Although we had a 16 percent increase in new homeless, so we’ll have an entirely new problem if we don’t address it.”

Sann, Chapman and Chantelle Eastman, a NWWNC member and homeless task force chair, worked together to organize the event.

Several UCLA students learned about the event from community service clubs like the Hunger Project and The Building Heroes Project at UCLA.

Donna Wong, a second-year biochemistry student, said she participated in the count with other Building Heroes Project members. The student group aims to provide education for low-income communities, she said.

“We’re here to get an idea of what type of community we’re helping,” Wong said. “I guess I’ve lived a privileged life and it’s nice to go out and see firsthand the community that sleeps out in the streets.”

Jessica Yen, a fourth-year microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics student and co-president of the Hunger Project, said the organization volunteered to learn more about homelessness in the community.

“This was an opportunity for us to contribute by going out there and seeing what the situation is like right now,” Yen said. “We do a lot of work with the homeless, so it’s a way to engage with our immediate community and bring awareness to the issue.”

Chapman and Eastman said the WWNC and the NWWNC will begin working together to address homelessness in Westwood. Chapman said she anticipates meeting with members of the NWWNC homeless task force in February to discuss possible actions.

UCLA researchers discover new limits of machine learning

UCLA researchers found the limits of deep learning networks – distinguishing between an otter and a can opener.

Nicholas Baker, a cognitive psychology graduate student, explored the behaviors of two machine learning networks known as convolutional neural networks, which are well-established machine learning networks capable of visual recognition. The study aimed to test whether the networks are able to visualize automatically in the same way that humans are able to.

“Recognizing by shape is a very abstract task,” Baker said. “There is a lot of symbolic processing between what you initially see in sensation and what you encode in a more durable format, and we think this might be a very hard thing to do for neural networks.”

When humans look at an object, the brain separates it from its background using the outline of the shape and encodes the shape into a representation it can understand. On the other hand, deep learning networks take images and classify them into categories such as “polar bear” and “can opener,” according to how likely they are to fall into those categories, Baker said.

For humans, the process of recognizing objects consists of multiple distinct tasks. However, the deep learning network recognizes objects through only associating their images with a corresponding category.

In addition, the CNNs are not explicitly coded to perceive broader, generalized features as humans do, so they fail to recognize objects that are very easily identified by humans.

Image textures can often override the shape of the object and confuse the networks. When a network is presented a teapot with the texture of a golf ball, the network predicted there was a 38.75 percent chance the object was a golf ball and a 0.41 percent chance it was a teapot. Similar misclassifications occur when testing objects such as a gong-textured vase.

The network focuses heavily on local details of objects instead of the overall shape of objects and frequently fail to recognize “vague” representations of objects that would be obvious to human observers.

“You wouldn’t record all individual wisps of the cloud,” Baker said. “You would encode the ‘global shapes’ of the cloud, the big features.”

A simplified bear silhouette, in which the outline of the bear is reduced to piecewise straight lines and curves, would confuse the networks. The networks would likewise experience the same effect with a roughly sketched representation of a piano and other simple silhouettes of objects that are typically identified by humans.

The CNNs are also confused by silhouettes of objects whose contours were destroyed and changed into zigzagged lines.

Experiments show, however, the deep learning networks’ focus on local features can help them correctly classify scrambled images. When parts of the objects are randomly moved around, the networks can still often provide correct predictions. For example, when an image of a camel is changed to show one leg horizontally attached to its back and its tail flying in front of its head, the network can still correctly identify the object as a camel.

Hongjing Lu, a professor of psychology and author of the paper, said the deep learning network is not as reliable as human visual recognition.

“What is missing there, is this robust system of recognition,” Lu said.

A small change in a local feature of the object that a human observer could easily ignore could completely change the prediction of the deep learning networks. Lu said the network can be used for constrained and specific tasks but currently should not be solely relied on for more complicated tasks such as decision-making in self-driving cars.

The results of this study suggest that breaking the image recognition process into multiple tasks could improve the deep learning algorithms, Lu said.

Jonathan Kao, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering who studies deep learning, said it is crucial to know how the networks can be tricked.

“It is important to know the vulnerabilities of neural networks so that the networks can be improved,” he said.

UCLA students to display personal art styles in pop-up show

Live music, digital illustrations, photographs and clothing all feature in Bruin ArtPop.

The pop-up art show, which will take place Friday at the Kerckhoff Art Gallery, is the first in a series of exhibitions curator Neha Dhiman said she hopes to plan. The second-year pre-sociology student said most o]f the 12 creators involved in the show are pursuing degrees in fields outside of art, and the pop-up is intended to give them an avenue to present their passions. The Daily Bruin talked to a few of the artists about their works featured in Bruin ArtPop.

Neha Dhiman: Ethics

Dhiman founded an agency centered around models of color.

She took some of the photos for her agency, Ethics, and said they will be part of the exhibition. Dhiman said the company inspired Bruin ArtPop because she wanted a way to spread the word about her project alongside other works created by minorities at UCLA.

None of the models in her photos are Caucasian and she said she intends for the photo shoots to parallel popular fashion magazines that largely feature Caucasian models. She said that her high-fashion shoots sometimes play with props like hair curlers and feel reminiscent of older eras, like the 1950s.

“I try taking pictures you’d find in Vogue, or I try to recreate things I see all the time with the models I use in my pictures,” she said. “It’s to show people of color in the same instances we’ve seen Caucasian models our whole life.”

Ryan Weber: glitch art

Ryan Weber put images through audio software to distort the final appearance of his artwork.

The third-year aerospace engineering student creates “glitch art,” or a form of art produced by manipulating electronics physically or digitally in ways they are not originally intended to be used. For example, he said punching a television may result in a form of glitch art if the pixels malfunction.

One of the formats Weber said he uses is “sonification,” or the filtering of images through audio programs like Audacity and playing with echoes, reverberations and the equalizer to give an image distorted waves. Dhiman, who met Weber as a floormate last year, said he introduced her to the art style and she feels like the effects of using programs to glitch images create a sort of augmented reality that makes viewers stop to process the image. One glitch piece involves the image of an astronaut floating in space outside of the Gemini 4, which he said combines both his area of study and his artistic passion.

“I like creating digital art, and I’ve never presented it on a public platform before through a physical medium,” Weber said. “(Glitch art) is, in theory, irreproducible because it comes out as a fault of the program.”

Elisa Ciappi: female photography

Photography can help the subject – and the photographer – gain confidence, said Elisa Ciappi.

A collection of around 10 female portraits, taken by the second-year global studies student, are also part of Bruin ArtPop. Ciappi said taking photos began as a way to collect memories of her travels, but eventually she turned her camera toward human subjects, starting with her brother. While taking photos, she said she works to make her models feel confident by connecting with them and asking them what type of image they hope to present, rather than simply making them pose. Being social with the girls she photographs helps her remove herself from her own issues with confidence, she said, because the art becomes a collection of her being social with others.

“I have to be very social with the model, I have to make her feel comfortable, and through photography, I go past my insecurities,” Ciappi said. “But I also help other girls get away from theirs, I make them feel powerful, I make them feel confident with their image.”

Dhiman said Ciappi has taken photos of her before and made an effort to get to know her during the session. She said Ciappi’s photos capture facial expressions that show the effort she puts in to make the models feel comfortable.

“She’ll get on the ground and do whatever she needs to do to get the pictures,” Dhiman said. “ She’s just very genuine and her photography is very intimate.”

Jennie Wang: digital illustrations

A three-part art series in Bruin ArtPop will focus on a fictional society that uses human souls as currency.

The “Soul Society” is a construct of second-year design media arts student Jennie Wang’s digital art project from a class assignment about a fictional group of people. One of the three parts depicts a man wearing a mask used during the harvesting of souls, while the other two focus on a physical charm and a device used for extraction.

Wang, who is also a Daily Bruin illustrator, said she used Adobe Illustrator CC to create the three digital illustrations because the paint bucket tool made it easier to create the pieces. In the resulting image, she filled the outlined design with large areas of primary colors to make the piece more bold and reminiscent of a cartoon style, she said, as opposed to the pastel tones that characterize her previous works. She said the colors often reflect her mood while creating art. Tired states of mind create darker images, for example. Dhiman said Wang’s use of colors stands out in comparison to the eclectic set of art styles represented at Bruin ArtPop.

“I’ve seen a few pieces of what everyone is planning on bringing, and everyone is bringing very different things,” Dhiman said. “Her art is very clean, very modern-looking, very, very aesthetic.”

Alumna takes lead role in play about intersections of love, science, identity

“Paradise” features an intellectual Muslim student to illuminate stories that are often ignored in theater, said actor Jeff Marlow.

The play makes its West Coast debut at the Odyssey Theatre on Saturday and will run through Feb. 17. “Paradise” is centered around Yasmeen Al-Hamadi, a high school senior played by UCLA alumna Medalion Rahimi, and Dr. Guy Royston, her teacher, played by Marlow. Directed by Vicangelo Bulluck, the play follows the two seemingly disparate characters as they unite to conduct a neurological study in hopes of earning Yasmeen a scholarship. While the play may stir up political topics, it doesn’t provide simple solutions to the issues it presents, Marlow said.

“I fell in love with it, because it dealt with a young woman in STEM and I know how important that initiative is. And then it was a fully realized three-dimensional young Muslim woman,” Bulluck said. “I felt that was really important and timely, especially in our current political environment, that it’s a human being that we end up caring for and understanding.”

As a Muslim Iranian-American herself, Rahimi said her portrayal of a positive Muslim character is of note, as they are often relegated to small roles as extras or harmfully stereotypical roles as terrorists. Contrarily, Yasmeen is a hopeful, optimistic girl who may not know everything about the world but wishes to learn through science, logic and her culture, Rahimi said.

“I think it’s nice to show that there’s humanity in everybody regardless of their background,” Rahimi said. “It’s just a play about an intelligent young woman discovering herself and her identity and sort of ascending her male mentor, which I love.”

The illumination of diverse cultural identities also lends itself to highlighting the role of women in science, Marlow said. Featuring this young woman in STEM accents an important cause, Bulluck said. Yasmeen serves as a source of hope and inspiration for the tired science teacher, Marlow said, and the uplifting character may prove inspiring to the audience as well.

“The issues of race, culture and class are things that we deal with every day in our lives,” Bulluck said. “We may not address them, but we can look and see what happens as politicians use them to either unite or divide us.”

“Paradise” is inspired by the work of Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist and the author of “WHY WE LOVE: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love.” Similarly, the play explores the idea of love as a biological process, an idea that fuels the neurological research done by the pair. As Yasmeen and Dr. Royston conduct their scientific experiment, they discover the different ways love is expressed in their own lives from the sheer love of learning to love of one’s culture, Bulluck said.

Despite the large overarching concepts of race and religion, “Paradise” remains lighthearted and cheerful, Rahimi said. For example, she said Yasmeen and Dr. Royston often riff off each other’s excitement over neurobiology, adding humor and laughter to the otherwise dramatic play. The innocence and curiosity of young Yasmeen makes for wholesome discoveries as the two main characters impart their distinct wisdoms to help teach one another and grow, Rahimi said.

“I think that’s what everybody does from day to day: We try to make sense of the world with the resources that we’re given,” Rahimi said. “So I just want people to leave the play with that feeling of hopefulness, that lightheartedness and maybe just look at their neighbors a different way.”