Potential for profits gives Rice lab’s plastic waste project promise
Rice University scientists create carbon nanotubes and other hybrid nanomaterials out of plastic waste using an energy-efficient, low-cost, low-emissions process that could also be profitable.
Rice scientists reengineer cancer drugs to be more versatile
Rice University scientists enlist widely used cancer therapy systems to control gene expression in mammalian cells, a feat of synthetic biology that could change how diseases are treated.
Rice grad students bring Latin America to special needs community
In the most recent class in the Global Rice Empowers Academics and Training (GREAT) Project Feb. 11, local young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities were treated to a fun-filled afternoon where international graduate students and Rice staff with the Office of International Students and Scholars (OISS) hosted a “Walk Through Latin America.”
Scientific AI’s ‘black box’ is no match for 200-year-old method
Rice engineers discovered a 200-year-old technique called Fourier analysis can reveal crucial information about how a form of artificial intelligence called a deep neural network learns to perform tasks involving complex physics.
Bite this! Mosquito feeding chamber uses fake skin, real blood
Rice bioengineers teamed up with tropical medicine experts from Tulane to invent a high-tech way to study the feeding behavior of mosquitoes. To eliminate the need for live volunteers, the system uses patches of "synthetic skin" made with a 3D bioprinter.
People are more critical of government when family and friends are hit by natural disasters
Whether they’re personally struck by or spared from natural disasters, people are more likely to distrust the government when their family and friends are victims, according to new research from Rice University.
Molecular machines could treat fungal infections
Rice scientists show that light-activated nanoscale drills can kill pathogenic fungi.
Rice lab uncovers dynamics behind protein crucial in breast cancer
Just as a puppeteer moves a puppet by manipulating its strings, estrogen receptors, which play a crucial role in breast cancer, work in similar ways when they facilitate the interaction between hormones and DNA, according to Rice scientists.
Researchers can ‘see’ crystals perform their dance moves
Rice University researchers already knew the atoms in perovskites react favorably to light. Now they’ve seen precisely how the atoms move when the 2D materials are excited with light. Their study this week in Nature Physics details the first direct measurement of structural dynamics under light-induced excitation in 2D perovskites.
Inner ear has a need for speed
Rice bioengineers and applied physicists, together with and colleagues at the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois Chicago, have unlocked the mechanism of the fastest synapses in the human body. A previously hidden mechanism in the inner ear that helps mammals balance via the fastest-known signal in the brain, and researchers from Rice University, the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois Chicago have modeled a hidden mechanism in the inner ear that helps mammals balance via the fastest-known signal in the brain.
Nanoparticles make it easier to turn light into solvated electrons
Chemists from Rice, UT Austin and Stanford have uncovered the long-sought mechanism of a light-driven process that creates solvated electrons, inherently clean chemical reactants that are attractive for green chemistry.
Christian Harvey named 2022-2023 Shepherd School-Houston Symphony Community Embedded Fellow
Christian Harvey, a first-year graduate student studying double bass performance, is the 2022-2023 Shepherd School-Houston Symphony Brown Foundation Community Embedded Fellow.
Rice University scientists get fungi to spill their secrets
As anyone who has ever attended a cocktail party can tell you, shedding inhibitions makes you more talkative and possibly more prone to divulging secrets. Fungi, it turns out, are no different from humans in this respect.
DNA repair scheme gets closer look for cancer therapy
Rice bioscientists took a close look at one of the ways cells repair broken DNA and made a discovery about a promising target for cancer therapy.
Lab lights way to simple chemical synthesis
Rice University scientists have developed a photochemical process to simplify the synthesis of drug and chemical precursors known as diamines.
