Car owners beware! Lessons from the ‘Kia Boys’ crime spree

UCLA research reveals how social media and other factors have amplified auto thefts — and what car owners should know

University of California - Los Angeles

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Key takeaways

• Since 2020, the nation has seen a surge in thefts of certain Kia and Hyundai models. A UCLA-led team studying the crime spree predicts these cars will continue to be stolen through at least 2042.

• The researchers cite a combination of factors: a lack of anti-theft equipment in these models, an increase in unstructured time during COVID, traditional print and cable news coverage that might have encouraged copycats, and viral “Kia Boys” videos that glorified joyrides and showed how easy the cars were to steal.

• Owners of vulnerable models should take advantage of manufacturer recalls, the researchers say, and consumers looking for new cars should verify that engine immobilizers come as standard equipment.

If you live in Los Angeles and own a Hyundai Sonata, Kia Optima or one of 18 other models from these vehicle lines, UCLA anthropologist Jeffrey Brantingham has some advice: Get a steering wheel locking device, take advantage of manufacture recalls or trade your car in for one with an engine immobilizer.

Why? Your ride, Brantingham said, is vulnerable to even the lowest-skilled auto thief — at least until 2042.

Brantingham has studied car theft for two decades and recently led an interdisciplinary team looking at the factors behind the surge in thefts of Kias and Hyundais that began in 2020. The surge started in several U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, and eventually spread nationwide.

Their recent study in the International Journal of Forecasting, “Forecasting the impact of the viral ‘Kia Boys’ social media trend on car thefts to 2050,” found that the rise in thefts is due to an interplay of complex factors. While social media trends amplified the crime spree, COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, production decisions made by car manufacturers, and traditional print and cable news coverage were significant initial factors.

The anthropological study leverages ideas from foraging ecology, social learning, criminology, and methods from mathematical modeling and computer science. 

Using models and data from the Los Angeles Police Department, Brantingham and his colleagues predict the surge in thefts will continue in Los Angeles through at least 2042, and likely through 2050.

The research, funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, provides a better understanding of the role that social media plays in offline crime and advises people on how to protect themselves and their property.

 

An especially ‘low-skilled’ crime

From 2011 to 2022, car manufacturers Kia and Hyundai left out engine immobilizers in 20 car models. Engine immobilizers are standard anti-theft equipment in most cars; without them, theft is a relatively “low-skilled” crime. During the pandemic — when cars were left for long periods on the street and young people had more unstructured time due to school and business closures — even the most inexperienced car thief had time to experiment and learn to steal these vehicles, easily dismantling the steering wheel casing, exposing the starter and turning the ignition with a simple USB cable.

YouTube and TikTok videos soon emerged — tagged “Kia Boys” or “Kia Challenge” — that amplified the criminal activity and provided step-by-step instructions on how to carry out the thefts. Yet even without the explicit instructions, Brantingham said, viral videos showing “Kia Boys” joyriding in stolen vehicles were enough tell “naïve” car thieves that the models were easy to steal within a few minutes. Social media can be good at creating experts when the skill needed is relatively low, he noted.

The research suggests that traditional print media and cable news also played a key role in the uptick in thefts of these vulnerable cars. The evidence from Los Angeles indicates that the vulnerability was initially discovered without the help of social media. This was also true in Milwaukee (the birthplace of the “Kia Boys” viral online posts) and Denver and may have followed in other places without social media. 

Neighborhood impact and the life cycle of cars

To Brantingham, one of the most interesting findings in the study is that crime hotspots move with the underlying new–used car market. New cars tend to be sold in more affluent areas. They are usually held for a couple years and then enter the used car market. As the cars age, their value depreciates, and each time they change hands, they move toward less affluent areas.

That means that cars vulnerable to theft often started life in affluent parts of LA and will end their lives, perhaps 20 to 25 years later, in less affluent areas. This was true for Honda Civics and Toyota Camrys, which were frequently stolen in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s — and will be true for the Kia and Hyundai models, the researchers said.

“For people living in those less affluent areas, the crime hotspot comes to them,” said Brantingham. “Said another way, this is not about criminal offenders moving from one area to another — it is about the ripe criminal targets moving.” 

While higher-income areas of Los Angeles will have long forgotten about the “Kia Boys” vulnerability, lower-income areas will continue to absorb vulnerable cars as they move toward their end of their life cycles.

What can consumers do?

Brantingham said that electronic engine immobilizers have been a huge success in reducing car theft, pointing to Toyota and Honda, who introduced the immobilizers in Camrys in 1992 and Civics in 2001.

His advice is to make sure that the car you buy has an immobilizer, or, if it’s an older model that doesn’t come equipped with one, to buy a steering wheel lock and use it correctly.

Likewise, he said, “If your car manufacturer has a recall to improve anti-theft technology, make sure to take advantage of it.”

A class action lawsuit brought by 36 states against car manufacturers Kia and Hyundai led to a settlement in 2025 where both companies agreed to equip all future cars with industry-standard, engine immobilizer anti-theft technology, as well as provide ignition cylinder protectors and some monetary compensation for cars damaged by thieves.

‘Kia Boys,’ crime and the human condition

“We live in one of the safest times ever recorded, yet crime is still incredibly common,” Brantingham said. “Documenting how people behave in complex online and offline environments is core to a better understanding of the human condition.

 

New light-emitting nanoparticles can detect subtle chemical differences to enhance pharmaceutical manufacturing, pollution prevention and more

Innovative diamond-shaped nanoparticles can absorb low-energy photons and convert them to high-energy photons, enabling highly sensitive chemical sensing

University of Toronto Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

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Weixiang Ben, Jiaze Wu, and Professor Kai Huang are three members of the team who designed a new type of nanoparticle that can upconvert light from low-energy photons into high-energy ones. (photo by Tyler Irving / University of Toronto Engineering)

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Credit: photo by Tyler Irving / University of Toronto Engineering

A team of researchers from University of Toronto Engineering has created a new type of dye-sensitized nanoparticle that can detect target chemicals at very low concentrations, while also distinguishing between molecules with very similar shapes. 

When bound to their target molecules, the nanoparticles absorb light in the form of low-energy photons and use it to emit a high-energy photon. This chemical sensing ability could help pharmaceutical manufacturers detect impurities or enable researchers to find tiny traces of chemical pollutants in groundwater. 

“Organic molecules called flurophores have been used for decades to absorb light and convert it into colorful emissions, but the process only works in one direction,” says Professor Kai Huang, senior author on a paper published in Journal of the American Chemical Society that describes the new particles. 

“With fluorophores, the excitation frequency has to be higher than the emission frequency, which means that they convert high-energy photons into low-energy photons. What makes our dye-sensitized nanoparticles special is that they are capable of upconversion, meaning that they can absorb light in the form of low-energy photons and emit higher-energy ones. 

“For example, you could excite them with near-infrared light, which can easily be produced with low-cost lasers, and they would glow bright green in response.”

Huang says that the difference between the excitation and emission frequencies makes it easier to sort the signal from the noise. 

“It’s like the difference between stargazing at night versus the daytime,” he says. 

“The stars shine the same brightness all the time, but during the day the sun is so powerful that it overwhelms them. Shifting the excitation frequency lower produces zero-autofluorescence background in the samples you are analyzing, while the luminescent nanoprobes keep shining; it is like turning off the sun, so you can see the stars better.”  

In the nanoparticles, the upconversion is made possible by ions of ytterbium and erbium, part of the chemical family of elements known lanthanides. 

Previously, the typical approach to making these chemical-sensing agents resulted in nanoparticles shaped like flat hexagons. In these particles, ytterbium and erbium ions were embedded in a host matrix made of sodium, yttrium and fluorine, like chocolate chips in a cookie. The dyes are organic molecules coated on the outside, analogous to the icing. 

When infrared light is shined on the particles, the dyes absorb the light energy and pass it on to the ytterbium ions, which act as an energy relay to pass it on to the erbium ions. The erbium ions do the upconversion, with the energy then getting re-emitted as green light. 

“But there’s a problem: if you pack the ytterbium atoms in too densely, they start to absorb not only the energy coming in, but also the energy coming out,” says Jiaze Wu, a PhD student in Huang’s lab and lead author on the new paper. 

“This is called back-energy transfer: it means that the energy that would have been emitted by the erbium ions as green light instead gets bounced back to the ytterbium relay and never reaches the surface.” 

Wu, Huang and the team overcame this trade-off by changing the recipe. Instead of using sodium, yttrium and fluorine for the host matrix, they design a new matrix made of lithium, lutetium and fluorine. 

They also altered the shape of the particles, from flat hexagons to a more diamond-shaped 3D structure, and gave them multiple layers: a dense core, surrounded by an inner shell, which in turn is surrounded by an outer shell.

“We were able to create nice gradient: the concentration of embedded ytterbium ions gets denser as you go through each layer, with the core being the most dense,” says Wu. 

“This arrangement enabled us to pack in much more ytterbium. In our particles, the light energy coming in flows almost entirely in one direction, inward toward the erbium ions.” 

These design changes were not simply lucky guesses; the team arrived at them after doing extensive computer simulations. In this way, they were able to virtually test out dozens of formulations and geometries before actually manufacturing the nanoparticles in the lab. 

“We used Monte Carlo simulations and density functional theory to simulate how the energy would interact between different parts of the nanoparticle, right down to the atomic or even subatomic level,” says undergraduate student Weixiang Ben, who led the computational work.  

“That’s how we showed that this core-shell-shell structure could actually function as a one-directional energy tunnel for incoming light.” 

Wu says that the new nanoparticles are much brighter than what came before; he estimates that the light being emitted is roughly 150 times brighter than upconversion nanoparticles that haven’t been dye-sensitized, and about 50 times brighter than some of the most optimized conventional structures previously reported under same excitation condition. 

This high sensitivity enables the nanoparticles to detect target molecules at very low concentrations — even a small number of bonded nanoparticles will glow brightly enough to be detected. 

They are also able to easily distinguish between molecules that are structural isomers of each other, that is, that they are made of the exact same set of atoms, but arranged slightly differently. 

“Let’s say you’re making a drug molecule, and your manufacturing process works fine, except that 10% of the batch is the wrong structural isomer,” says Wu. 

“That’s a huge problem: it can make the drug less effective, or worse, lead to side effects that you definitely don’t want. The current process for detecting this relies on very expensive analytical tests, but with these nanoparticles, you could do it using low-cost lasers and a very small sample.” 

Huang says that the next step toward commercial development will be work out a technique for mass-producing the nanoparticles.  

“We’re working on this already, in fact. We think it’s feasible, but it requires a very long roadmap,” says Huang. 

“In the meantime, this model serves as proof-of-concept; with this technique, we can produce a very high-performance upconversion nanoparticle that could be customized to any molecule you might want to detect. That’s something entirely new.”

When a near-infrared laser is shined on these nanoparticles suspended in a liquid, they upconvert the light energy into bright green luminescence. (photo by Tyler Irving / University of Toronto Engineering)

Credit

photo by Tyler Irving / University of Toronto Engineering

This transmission electron microscope image shows the 3D diamond shape of the new nanoparticles created by Huang, Wu, Ben and the rest of the team. The change in geometry, along with some chemical changes, enabled much brighter luminescence than was previously possible. (image by Jiaze Wu / University of Toronto Engineering)

Credit

image by Jiaze Wu / University of Toronto Engineering

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Journal

Journal of the American Chemical Society

DOI

10.1021/jacs.6c07018 

 

Q&A: Is decentralized finance truly independent from traditional markets?

Penn State

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UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — With the rise in popularity of the digital assets known as cryptocurrencies over the last decade, the idea of a decentralized financial system that operates outside of traditional markets is gaining mainstream appeal. A new analysis from a Penn State researcher, however, suggests that the traditional and decentralized markets are more connected than they might seem. 

Siddharth Bhambhwani, assistant clinical professor of accounting at Penn State’s Smeal College of Business, compared borrowing and deposit rates from Aave, a popular decentralized finance platform that offers peer-to-peer cryptocurrency lending, to U.S. Treasury yields between January 2023 and March 2026. He found that Treasury yields significantly influence rates on cryptocurrency lending markets, despite the fact that there is no direct link between the two markets. 

Bhambhwani published his findings in the journal Finance Research Letters. 

In the following Q&A, Bhambhwani explained how decentralized finance lending typically operates and how the connection to traditional financial systems might shape investors’ perceptions of this growing market. 

Q: What is decentralized finance lending? 

Bhambhwani: Decentralized finance, or DeFi, allows people to borrow and lend digital assets without going through a traditional financial institution such as a bank. Instead, transactions are handled through computer programs called “smart contracts” that operate on a blockchain, which is a shared ledger that many computers maintain at once, with no single owner.  

A simple way to think about it is as a marketplace with pools of digital assets. Some users deposit assets into those pools and earn interest, while other users borrow from the pools and pay interest. Unlike a conventional bank loan, though, DeFi borrowing generally requires borrowers to put up cryptocurrency worth more than the amount they borrow as collateral. To borrow eighty dollars, we might have to lock up one hundred dollars of another asset. If our collateral falls close to the borrowed amount plus accrued interest, the software sells it automatically and repays the loan.  

Q: Why might someone choose to deposit with or borrow money from DeFi rather than traditional lenders? 

Bhambhwani: One attraction is accessibility. A DeFi program, known as a protocol, generally does not evaluate a borrower’s credit score, income or employment history in the way a bank might. If a user has the necessary digital assets and meets the protocol’s collateral requirements, the transaction can occur automatically. DeFi markets also operate around the clock and can be accessed from many parts of the world without opening a conventional bank account. 

For depositors, the main attractions are yield and access. Deposits based on stablecoins — cryptocurrencies that are designed to maintain a steady price by being tied to a traditional asset, most often the U.S. dollar — have often paid substantially more than traditional bank savings accounts, while users can participate without many of the account requirements associated with conventional banking.  

Transactions can also settle quickly, and the rules governing major DeFi protocols are encoded in smart contracts that anyone can inspect as the code behind them is public. But these benefits come with substantial risks. Smart contracts can contain vulnerabilities and have been exploited. Users also generally do not have deposit insurance, and recovering funds after a hack or failure can be difficult.  

Q: How are DeFi interest rates set compared to those in a traditional savings account or a Treasury yield? 

Bhambhwani: A bank generally decides what rate it will pay on savings accounts based on factors such as market interest rates, competition for deposits and its own funding needs. Treasury yields, meanwhile, are determined in financial markets as investors buy and sell U.S. government securities, and they respond to broader expectations about inflation, economic growth and monetary policy. 

On a DeFi platform, the process is mechanical. Rates are determined by utilization, which is calculated using the ratio of assets borrowed from a pool to assets deposited into the pool. If relatively little is being borrowed, rates tend to be lower, and vice versa. While this system is not directly linked to traditional markets by design, my study found that Treasury yields and DeFi rates are nevertheless connected. 

Q: What is the connection between DeFi lending rates and Treasury yields? 

Bhambhwani: For stablecoins, Treasury yields and DeFi rates move together in a systematic way. When Treasury yields rise, stablecoin borrowing and deposit rates tend to rise with them. I found that a quarter-point move in the U.S. 10-year yield is associated with about a one-point move in stablecoin borrowing rates. 

The connection is strong, though somewhat indirect. A stablecoin is designed to track the U.S. dollar, so a stablecoin depositor is making a direct comparison: I can hold this token and earn the DeFi rate, or I can hold Treasury securities and earn the Treasury rate. When the outside opportunity changes, capital reallocates, utilization shifts and the DeFi rate adjusts even though nothing in the protocol’s code references the Treasury market.  

The findings do not hold for volatile crypto assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum, though, as someone depositing Bitcoin is not really making that comparison. They’re primarily looking at Bitcoin’s expected return, and a percentage point change in Treasury yields is just noise compared to the often large and rapid changes in the price of Bitcoin, which can sometimes rise or fall by over 10% in a single day. 

Q: What is the significance of the connection to the 10-year yield specifically, and what might these findings mean for someone interested in DeFi lending? 

Bhambhwani: The 10-year Treasury yield is one of the most closely watched interest rates in the world. It reflects investors’ views about economic conditions over a relatively long horizon and serves as an important benchmark throughout financial markets. Changes in the 10-year yield are associated with changes in borrowing costs and asset valuations across areas ranging from mortgages and corporate debt to stocks and other investments. 

That makes its relationship with DeFi particularly interesting. DeFi loans do not have a conventional contractual maturity as they are active as long as a borrower’s collateral is greater than the borrowed amount. Yet among the Treasury maturities I examine, the 10-year yield provides the most consistent additional information about stablecoin rates.  

These results suggest that DeFi stablecoin markets are responding to some of the same broader financial conditions captured by this major traditional-market benchmark. That is important because DeFi is sometimes viewed as a largely separate financial ecosystem driven primarily by cryptocurrency-specific factors. 

For someone lending or borrowing stablecoins through DeFi, traditional interest rates may therefore provide useful context for understanding where DeFi rates are heading. More broadly, as decentralized finance develops, we may increasingly find that traditional and decentralized markets are not two completely separate financial systems, but interconnected parts of a larger market for capital.  

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Journal

Finance Research Letters

DOI

10.1016/j.frl.2026.110678

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

DeFi interest rates and treasury yields

Article Publication Date

1-Sep-2026

 

Immunization to prevent RSV in infants reduced ICU admissions by 97 per cent

SPRINT-KIDS study measures how well Nirsevimab protected infants against severe disease

University of Calgary

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Stephen Freedman, MD, senior author and SPRINT-KIDS project lead

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Credit: Riley Brandt, University of Calgary

A new immunization, offered free to all infants through universal programs in two Canadian provinces, provided strong protection against respiratory syncytial virus, commonly referred to as RSV, sharply reducing hospitalizations and intensive care unit (ICU) admissions in infants. The findings, published in JAMA Network Open, evaluated the real-world effectiveness of nirsevimab, a long-acting monoclonal antibody that gives infants ready-made antibodies to prevent severe RSV illness. The research was conducted by the University of Calgary–led Surveillance Program for the Rapid identification and tracking of Infectious Diseases in kids (SPRINT-KIDS).

"RSV is a leading cause of hospitalization among infants. We wanted to understand the effectiveness of nirsevimab against severe RSV in infants during their first RSV season,” says Dr. Sarah Buchan, PhD, first author on the study and scientific lead, Communicable Disease Control, Public Health Ontario. “The results were dramatic, nirsevimab effectiveness against hospitalizations was 79 per cent, and 97 per cent against ICU admissions.”

The study analyzed 2024-2025 RSV season data from seven pediatric hospitals located in Ontario and Quebec.

“One of the most important findings is that most infants with RSV infection were otherwise healthy children. Only three per cent of infants who tested positive for RSV had a comorbidity,” says Dr. Stephen Freedman, MD, senior author and SPRINT-KIDS project lead. “This reinforces the value of a universal approach to RSV prevention. Rather than trying to predict which infants will develop severe disease, nirsevimab provides an opportunity to protect all infants during a period when they are particularly vulnerable.”

Research indicates up to two per cent of infants born in Canada are hospitalized with RSV each year. Health Canada authorized nirsevimab in 2023 for the prevention of RSV lower respiratory tract disease in newborns and infants entering or during their first RSV season. In the fall of 2024, Ontario and Quebec introduced publicly funded universal programs offering nirsevimab to all infants.

The SPRINT-KIDS Network conducts surveillance activities with funding provided by the Public Health Agency of Canada. The network includes 14 pediatric hospitals across eight provinces and provides real-time surveillance of respiratory viruses and vaccine effectiveness in children. These activities help identify changing patterns of virus activity and provides timely information to support public health policy and clinical care. The information is publicly available here and is included on the Government of Canada’s respiratory virus surveillance report.

 

Study shows nirsevimab was highly effective in preventing severe RSV disease in infants.

Credit

Riley Brandt, University of Calgary

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Journal

JAMA Network Open

DOI

10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2026.33621

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Respiratory Syncytial Virus–Related Hospitalizations Among Infants Receiving Nirsevimab

Article Publication Date

14-Sep-2026