Mark Torres wins Geochemical Society’s Clarke Award
Mark Torres with water samples collected from Iceland's Efri Haukadalsá River in 2016. (Photo by Woodward Fisher)
The game’s afoot in virtual chemistry lab
Members of Rice's Department of Chemistry put forth a video “choose-your-own-adventure” strategy to help undergraduate students conduct virtual experiments.
New CRISPR tech targets human genome’s complex code
Rice bioengineers harness the CRISPR/Cas9 system to program histones, the support proteins that wrap up and control human DNA, to manipulate gene activation and phosphorylation. The new technology enables innovative ways to find and manipulate genes and pathways responsible for diseases.
‘Defective’ carbon simplifies hydrogen peroxide production
Rice scientists introduce a new catalyst to reduce oxygen to widely used hydrogen peroxide.
Study shows why anesthetic stops cell’s walkers in their tracks
Researchers detail the mechanism that allows propofol, a common anesthetic, to halt the movement of kinesin proteins that deliver cargoes to the far reaches of cells.
A little soap simplifies making 2D nanoflakes
The right combination of surfactant, water and processing can maximize the quality of 2D hexagonal boron nitride for such products as antibacterial films.
Rice ‘flashes’ new 2D materials.
Rice scientists extend their technique to produce graphene in a flash to tailor the properties of 2D dichalcogenides, quickly turning them into metastable metallics for electronic and optical applications.
Fermi space telescope offers 'best look ever' at giant flare
Intense light from the April 2020 eruption of a neutron star in a nearby galaxy has given astronomers their first clear look at a type of gamma-ray burst known as a magnetar giant flare.
‘Soft’ nanoparticles give plasmons new potential
Bigger is not always better, but here’s something that starts small and gets better as it gets bigger.
Sheets of carbon nanotubes come in a rainbow of colors
Nanomaterials researchers in Finland, the United States and China have created a color atlas for 466 unique varieties of single-walled carbon nanotubes.
Vitamin boosts essential synthetic chemistry
Inspired by light-sensing bacteria that thrive near hot oceanic vents, synthetic chemists use vitamin B12 to catalyze valuable hydrocarbons known as olefins, or alkenes, useful precursor molecules for the manufacture of drugs and agrochemicals.
Hidden structure found in essential metabolic machinery
Rice University biochemists have discovered membrane-divided subcompartments within organelles called peroxisomes, essential pieces of metabolic machinery for all higher order life from yeast to humans. The research appears this week in Nature Communications.