Gold buckyballs, oft-used nanoparticle ‘seeds’ are one and the same
August 14, 2023
Rice chemists have discovered that tiny gold “seed” particles, a key ingredient in one of the most common nanoparticle recipes, are one and the same as gold buckyballs, 32-atom spheres that are cousins of the Nobel Prize-winning carbon buckyballs discovered at Rice in 1985.
Weaker transcription factors are better when they work together
August 14, 2023
Rice bioengineer Caleb Bashor and colleagues have developed a generalizable method to address “off-target” gene activation, a significant problem in the field of synthetic biology. Taking a cue from nature, the researchers showed they could all but eliminate the activation of off-target genes by designing weak transcription factors that cooperatively assemble.
New Rice University students move to campus Aug. 13
August 10, 2023
Rice University will kick off its annual O-Week tradition Aug. 13, welcoming the incoming Class of 2027 with a weeklong orientation program to familiarize incoming students with their new campus, residential colleges and classmates.
Education program tackles race-based cancer health disparities
August 10, 2023
Rice U.’s Carolyn Nichol has won a competitive 5-year, $1,038,544 NIH Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) award to address race-based cancer health disparities by increasing underrepresented minority student populations’ engagement and participation in biosciences education.
Tiny, flexible spinal probe system could lead to better therapies
August 7, 2023
A $6.25 million National Institutes of Health grant supports Rice U. engineers optimizing a neural probe array that can record the activity of spinal cord neurons as bodies move and behave. Scientists would also develop an integrated data-processing and stimulation-feedback system.
Rice study: Children are usually the poorest members of refugee communities
August 4, 2023
Violent conflicts around the world have driven more people from their home countries than ever before. As these individuals and families seek safe havens, new research from Rice University has found that refugee children are up to three times more likely to be poor than adults – even within their own families.
Rice U.’s Kaiyu Hang wins NSF CAREER Award
July 25, 2023
Kaiyu Hang, an assistant professor of computer science at Rice University, has won a National Science Foundation CAREER Award to develop robots that can manipulate unfamiliar objects in high-uncertainty situations.