Rice Research Review

Flood disasters like Hurricane Harvey lead some people to move far from the places they had called home. But a study from Rice University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison finds that middle-class people who made long-term plans to stay in their neighborhoods before they flooded are less likely to relocate even if they suffered significant damage. The study’s findings are outlined in “Best Laid Plans: How the Middle Class Make Residential Decisions Post-Disaster,” which appears in the journal Social Problems. Learn More

The U.S. Army has backed research being done by Rice University, Houston Methodist and Baylor College of Medicine that involves the development of a “sleeping cap” to analyze the cleansing flow of fluid that drains the brain of common metabolic waste during sleep.  The primary goal is to noninvasively measure and modulate the flow of cerebrospinal fluid as it circulates through the brain and clears waste. Ultimately, the team aims to develop a lightweight, portable skullcap that can analyze and stimulate proper flow to treat sleep disorders in real time. Learn More

Rice University computer scientists created a new method that cut indexing time for genomic researchers who sometimes wait days or weeks for search results from enormous DNA databases. RAMBO, which is short for "repeated and merged bloom filter," is a new method that trims indexing times for such databases from weeks to hours and search times from hours to seconds. Learn More