This ‘mousetrap’ may save lives
Instead of building a better mousetrap, a team of Rice University freshmen took a mousetrap and built a better way to treat dehydration among children in the developing world. "The goal was to regulate the amount of fluid delivered to  more...

The Challenge of “Simulation” Parachute Design Support for Manned Spacecraft
There are a number of difficulties in numerical simulations of parachutes. The aerodynamics of the parachute depends on the canopy shape and the deformation of the canopy depends on the aerodynamics forces, and the two systems need to be solved in a coupled fashion. Such computations are called fluid–structure interaction (FSI) simulations. Professor Tayfun Tezduyar (Rice University, Houston) pioneered the modern computer modeling of parachutes. His team started 3D FSI modeling of parachutes in 1999 and spacecraft parachutes for NASA in 2006. The team from Waseda University is now an equal partner in the spacecraft parachute research and is playing a key role.  more...

Flat boron may take many forms
Rice University researchers find two-dimensional boron has potential advantages over graphene. When is nothing really something? When it leads to a revelation about boron, an element with worlds of unexplored potential. Theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson and his team at Rice University have taken an unusual approach to analyzing the possible configurations of two-dimensional sheets of boron, as reported this week in the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters.  more...

LinDi a stretch for student engineers
Rice University seniors automate process of lengthening children’s limbs. Another day, another four turns of the screw. That’s just a part of life for people, primarily children, undergoing the long and difficult process of distraction osteogenesis, a method to correct bone deformities that leave one limb shorter than the other.  more...