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HOUSTON - (Feb. 22, 2021) - Researchers at Rice University have received funding for up to $1 million to develop a real-time sensor system able to detect minute amounts of the airborne virus that causes COVID-19 infection.
The researchers at Rice s Brown School of Engineering and Wiess School of Natural Sciences chemical and biomolecular engineer Rafael Verduzco, civil and environmental engineer Pedro Alvarez and structural virologist Yizhi Jane Tao will team with William Lawrence, a microbiologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) at Galveston to develop a thin film electronic device that senses as few as eight SARS-CoV-2 viruses in 10 minutes of sampling air flowing at 8 liters per minute.
Rice engineers develop polymer cores that redirect light from any source to solar cells
Rice University engineers have suggested a colorful solution to next-generation energy collection: Luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs) in your windows.
Led by Rafael Verduzco and postdoctoral researcher and lead author Yilin Li of Rice’s Brown School of Engineering, the team designed and built foot-square “windows” that sandwich a conjugated polymer between two clear acrylic panels.
That thin middle layer is the secret sauce. It’s designed to absorb light in a specific wavelength and guide it to panel edges lined with solar cells. Conjugated polymers are chemical compounds that can be tuned with specific chemical or physical properties for a variety of applications, like conductive films or sensors for biomedical devices.
Written by AZoBuildFeb 17 2021
Engineers from Rice University have proposed a colorful solution to futuristic energy collection adding luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs) to windows in buildings.
Rice University engineers designed and built windowpanes that redirect sunlight or illumination from indoors to edge-band solar cells. The central layer is a conjugated polymer that serves as a waveguide. Image Credit: Yilin Li.
The team of researchers headed by Rafael Verduzco and postdoctoral researcher and lead author Yilin Li from Rice’s Brown School of Engineering engineered and developed foot square windows in which a conjugated polymer is interspersed between two clear acrylic panels.
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IMAGE: A Rice University model shows the predicted atmospheric concentration distribution in parts per billion of a downwind diesel plume six hours after Hurricane Harvey. Rice engineers modeled the hypothetical threats. view more
Credit: Rice University
HOUSTON - (Feb. 1, 2021) - When aboveground storage tanks fail during a storm and their toxic contents spread, the threat to human health can and probably will flow downwind of the immediate area.
Rice University engineers have developed a model to quantify what could happen when a hurricane or other natural disaster causes such damage based on data gathered from the Houston Ship Channel, the largest petrochemical complex in the United States, during and after two hurricanes, Ike in 2008 and Harvey in 2017.
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IMAGE: Rice University researchers modeled the relationship between the length of carbon nanotubes and the friction-causing crosslinks between them in a fiber and found the ratio can be used to measure. view more
Credit: Illustration by Evgeni Penev/Rice University
HOUSTON - (Jan. 19, 2021) - Carbon nanotube fibers are not nearly as strong as the nanotubes they contain, but Rice University researchers are working to close the gap.
A computational model by materials theorist Boris Yakobson and his team at Rice s Brown School of Engineering establishes a universal scaling relationship between nanotube length and friction between them in a bundle, parameters that can be used to fine-tune fiber properties for strength.