Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 4,240 undergraduates and 3,972 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for lots of race/class interaction and No. 1 for quality of life by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance.
Our expedition drilled into the recently discovered underwater continent of Zealandia, revealing a new picture of the violent geological forces that created it.
Modern cars are safer than this – but not because auto companies got more ethical.
Richard Thornton/Shutterstock.com
Of course people need ethics. But the current troubles in the technology industry are not evidence of an ethics crisis; it is a public-policy crisis.
Mural at Rockaway Brewing Company in Long Island City, Queens, New York, a longtime industrial and transportation hub that now is rapidly redeveloping.
AP Photo/Mark Lennihan
Many homes, parks and businesses in US cities stand on former manufacturing sites that may have left legacy hazardous wastes behind. A new book calls for more research into our urban industrial past.
The Big Brown coal plant in Fairfield is among the Texas power stations that have been shut down.
AP Photo/David J. Phillip
A study of the social cost of carbon emitted by the shrinking fleet of Texan coal plants suggests that closing more of them down would be good for the climate and public health.
One historic handshake in Helsinki.
AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais
Not only does U.S. law bar price-fixing, there are bipartisan efforts underway to make it possible to sue OPEC members in American courts for antitrust violations.
Vladimir Putin, autographing a natural gas pipeline in Vladivostok.
AP Photo/RIA Novosti, Alexei Druzhinin
Even if Asia buys most of the natural gas the U.S. will be exporting soon, America’s growing role in that market could wind up reducing Russia’s political influence in Europe.
Should the future of voting look more like the past?
AP Photo/Alex Brandon
Three atmospheric scientists from Texas say Hurricane Harvey shows how the country needs to adapt to the effects of climate change and cut carbon emissions.
Where are all the people in this factory?
AP Photo/Jeff Chiu
The Industrial Revolution led to centuries of social and economic upheaval. Are economists telling us not to worry about workplace automation because things will be better in a couple hundred years?
Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck, left, and Mayor Eric Garcetti pose next to an all-electric car in this 2015 photo.
AP Photo/Nick Ut
More than 200 mayors have committed their cities to stick with the Paris climate deal no matter what the US does. Electric vehicles offer a promising route to making good on that pledge.
Couple using in-home blood pressure monitor.
From www.shuttertock.com
Digital devices can make a real difference in treating chronic diseases. But many who have these conditions are poor, and they often cannot afford the devices.
Who’s in the driver’s seat?
Matthew Jude Brown, Alexander Torrenegra
New research from Vanderbilt University looks at the effects of mass incarceration on a little studied population: formerly imprisoned African-American men.
U.S. states need to put in place new ozone air quality standards, but how they are measured – based on peak ozone – doesn’t always best reflect a city’s overall air quality.
Is this a vision of the future?
Robot worker image via shutterstock.com
In the past, technology both destroyed and created jobs. Is that trend ending?
Real hot: the Ivanpah solar power plant and others like it use mirrors to produce heat to make steam and drive an electricity turbine.
BrightSource Energy
The massive Ivanpah solar power plant uses natural gas – even more than it expected last year. It’s not ideal, but solar power and natural gas are a powerful, and relatively ‘green,’ combination.
Hurricane Patricia as it made landfall on the Pacific coast of Mexico.
NASA/NOAA
False complacency: Hurricane Patricia didn’t devastate Mexico as feared, but provides more evidence that warming waters raise the chances of more intense storms.
Let’s not forget what the history of this abandoned school tells us.
Terence Faircloth
If you’re a teetotaller, your friends have likely tried to convince you to taste red wine by swearing on its multiple health benefits. These benefits have been credited to a compound found in red wine…