Rice University synthetic biologists have hacked bacterial sensing with a plug-and-play system that could be used to mix-and-match tens of thousands of sensory inputs and genetic outputs. The technology has wide-ranging implications for medical diagnostics, the study of deadly pathogens, environmental monitoring and more. In a project spanning almost six years, Rice bioengineer Jeff Tabor…

Rice University physicists have created the world’s first laser-cooled neutral plasma, completing a 20-year quest that sets the stage for simulators that re-create exotic states of matter found inside Jupiter and white dwarf stars. The findings are detailed in the journal Science and involve new techniques for laser cooling clouds of rapidly expanding plasma to…

A team of U.S. and Korean physicists has found the first evidence of a two-dimensional material that can become a magnetic topological insulator even when it is not placed in a magnetic field. “Many different quantum and relativistic properties of moving electrons are known in graphene, and people have been interested, ‘Can we see these…

Rice University researchers are probing the physical limits of excited electronic states called plasmons by studying them in organic molecules with fewer than 50 atoms. Plasmons are oscillations in the plasma of free electrons that constantly swirl across the surface of conductive materials like metals. In some nanomaterials, a specific color of light can resonate…

A 2017 theory proposed by Rice University physicists to explain the contradictory behavior of an iron-based high-temperature superconductor is helping solve a puzzle in a different type of unconventional superconductor, the “heavy fermion” compound known as CeCu2Si2. An international team from the U.S., China, Germany, and Canada have reported the findings in the Proceedings of…

Rice University engineers have zeroed in on the optimal architecture for storing hydrogen in “white graphene” nanomaterials — a design like a Lilliputian skyscraper with “floors” of boron nitride sitting one atop another and held precisely 5.2 angstroms apart by boron nitride pillars. The results appear in the journal Small. “The motivation is to create…

Engineers at Rice University’s Nanotechnology Enabled Water Treatment (NEWT) Center have found a catalyst that cleans toxic nitrates from drinking water by converting them into air and water. The research is available online in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Catalysis. “Nitrates come mainly from agricultural runoff, which affects farming communities all over the world,”…

Like a tuning fork struck with a mallet, tiny gold nanodisks can be made to vibrate at resonant frequencies when struck by light. In new research, Rice University researchers showed they can selectively alter those vibrational frequencies by gathering different-sized nanodisks into groups. “In the tuning fork analogy, it would be as if we could…

In their work toward 3D printing transplantable tissues and organs, bioengineers, and scientists from Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine have demonstrated a key step on the path to generate implantable tissues with functioning capillaries. In a paper published online in the journal Biomaterials Science, a team from the laboratories of Rice bioengineer Jordan…

Titanium is the leading material for artificial knee and hip joints because it’s strong, wear-resistant and nontoxic, but an unexpected discovery by Rice University physicists shows that the gold standard for artificial joints can be improved with the addition of some actual gold. “It is about 3-4 times harder than most steels,” says Emilia Morosan,…