“Smart clothing” developed by a Rice University lab employs its conductive nanotube thread to weave functionality into regular apparel. The Brown School of Engineering lab of chemical and biomolecular engineer Matteo Pasquali reported in the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters that it sewed nanotube fibers into athletic wear to monitor the heart rate and take a continual electrocardiogram (EKG) of the wearer. The fibers gathered accurate EKG and heart rates without the fuss of smartwatches or chest monitors. Learn More 

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

One hundred fifty years ago, Dmitri Mendeleev created the periodic table, a system for classifying atoms based on the properties of their nuclei. In 2021, a team of biologists studying the tree of life has unveiled a new classification system for cell nuclei, and discovered a method for transmuting one type of cell nucleus into another. The study, which appeared in the journal Science, emerged from several once-separate efforts involving dozens of institutions including Baylor College of Medicine, the National Science Foundation-supported Center for Theoretical Biological Physics (CTBP) at Rice University, the University of Western Australia and SeaWorld. Learn More

Research shows executives are likely to overestimate the financial benefits of strategy planning — as conducted by an overwhelming majority of large companies — by a factor of five. Executives at 88% of large companies engage in strategy planning, according to the research featured in a chapter of "Focus: How to Plan Strategy and Improve Execution to Achieve Growth," a book co-authored by Vikas Mittal, professor of marketing at the Rice's Jones Graduate School of Business, and Shrihari Sridhar, professor of marketing at Texas A&M University's Mays Business School. The objectives of the practice are setting goals, assigning resources, defining major initiatives, and creating and adjusting budgets, all with the hope of improving financial performance. Most of the time, it doesn’t work. Learn More 

Rice University bioengineers collaborated on a six-year study that systematically analyzed how the surface architecture of breast implants influences the development of adverse effects, including an unusual type of lymphoma. The study’s findings, published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, show the surface topography of an implant can drastically affect how the immune response perceives it, which has important ramifications for an implant’s design. 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

Scientists at Rice and Northwestern universities worked together to produce the exotic material bilayer borophene, a high-strength material with excellent conductivity, which makes it a good candidate for use in quantum electronics, energy storage and sensors. The first-of-its-kind experiment is detailed in Nature Materials. 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 

If identical versions of 20 people lived out their lives in dozens of different worlds, would the same people be popular in each world? If you substitute "fruit flies" for "people" in that question, you have a fair description of a Rice University study showing that the evolution of social structures and the positions of individuals within those structures are based partly on genetics. Cloned fruit flies played a starring role in the study published in Nature Communications and that researchers jokingly likened to "The Truman Show," with video cameras observing how the flies behaved in a controlled environment. Learn More

Researchers from Rice University and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center created a new microscope that can quickly and inexpensively image large tissue sections, potentially during surgery, to determine whether an entire tumor has been removed. The microscope can rapidly image relatively thick pieces of tissue with cellular resolution, and could allow surgeons to inspect the margins of tumors within minutes of their removal. Learn More 

Rice University bioengineers are using 3D printing and smart biomaterials to create an insulin-producing implant for Type 1 diabetics. The three-year project between the laboratories of Omid Veiseh and Jordan Miller will use insulin-producing beta cells made from human stem cells to create an implant that senses and regulates blood glucose levels by responding with the correct amount of insulin at a given time.  Learn More

A unique study done by the lab of mechanical engineer Fred Higgs incorporates fluid dynamics and more to evaluate and enhance future hip implants. The team’s computational model could eventually help clinicians personalize hip joints for patients depending on gender, weight, age and gait variations. Learn More