Research published this week in Science offers the clearest picture yet of the reverberating consequences of land mammal declines on food webs over the past 130,000 years. It’s not a pretty picture. “While about 6% of land mammals have gone extinct in that time, we estimate that more than 50% of mammal food web links […]
Rice University
Posted inUS
Mississippi River and Climate Change: Duel between deluge and drought will impact more than 25% of US population
HOUSTON, (April 4, 2022) – A Rice University-led team of climate scientists and engineers is studying how climate change will impact the frequency and severity of flooding on the Mississippi River thanks to a new grant awarded by the National Science Foundation. “The real question motivating our research is: How will climate change alter the frequency […]
Posted inSci/Tech
Gas flares tied to premature deaths
HOUSTON, (Feb. 28, 2022) – Newly published research by Rice University environmental engineers suggests flaring of natural gas from oil and gas fields in the United States, primarily in North Dakota and Texas, contributed to dozens of premature deaths in 2019. Satellite observations and computer models can link gas flares to air pollution and health, […]
Posted inEnviro
Houston flooding polluted reefs more than 100 miles offshore
HOUSTON, April 7, 2021 – Runoff from Houston’s 2016 Tax Day flood and 2017’s Hurricane Harvey flood carried human waste onto coral reefs more than 100 miles offshore in the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary, according to a Rice University study. “We were pretty shocked,” said marine biologist Adrienne Correa, co-author of the study in Frontiers in Marine Science. “One […]
Posted inWorld
Campaign promises more likely to be kept by governments run by women, research shows
HOUSTON, February 22, 2021 – Governments with strong female representation are more likely to deliver on campaign promises, according to new research from Rice University. “The Effects of Women’s Descriptive Representation on Government Behavior” by author Jonathan Homola, an assistant professor of political science at Rice, examines campaign promises and subsequent policymaking by parties in […]
Posted inSci/Tech
Study: Link between education, income inequality has existed in the U.S. for a century
HOUSTON, July 27, 2020 – Income is inextricably linked to access to education in America and it has been for a century, according to a new study from researchers at Stanford University and Rice University. “A century of educational inequality in the United States,” published July 27 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, […]
Posted inSci/Tech
Rice U. study highlights danger of vitamin B12 deficiency
HOUSTON, March 13, 2019 – Using roundworms, one of Earth’s simplest animals, Rice University bioscientists have found the first direct link between a diet with too little vitamin B12 and an increased risk of infection by two potentially deadly pathogens. Despite their simplicity, 1-millimeter-long nematodes called Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) share an important limitation with humans: […]
Posted inSci/Tech
Planetary collision that formed the moon made life possible on Earth
Jan. 23, 2019 – Most of Earth’s essential elements for life — including most of the carbon and nitrogen in you — probably came from another planet. Earth most likely received the bulk of its carbon, nitrogen and other life-essential volatile elements from the planetary collision that created the moon more than 4.4 billion years […]
Posted inSci/Tech
Decade of data shows FEMA flood maps missed 3 in 4 claims
Sept. 13, 2017 – An analysis of flood claims in several southeast Houston suburbs from 1999-2009 found that the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s 100-year flood plain maps — the tool that U.S. officials use to determine both flood risk and insurance premiums — failed to capture 75 percent of flood damages from five serious floods, […]
Posted inCalifornia
Warmer, wetter climate would impair California grasslands
HOUSTON, Sept. 6, 2016 — Results from one of the longest-running and most extensive experiments to examine how climate change will affect agricultural productivity show that California grasslands will become less productive if the temperature or precipitation increases substantially above average conditions from the past 40 years. That’s one conclusion from a new study in […]