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Research News

Historian's book on 19th-century US-Arab encounter wins Franklin Prize

The first encounters between Americans and Arabs were disastrous, but they led eventually to a mutually beneficial outcome. Rice historian Ussama Makdisi's chronicle of those encounters, "Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East," received the John Hope Franklin Publication Prize from the American Studies Association Nov. 6.

The National Institutes of Health has awarded researchers in Rice University's new BioScience Research Collaborative a $2 million Grand Opportunity grant to develop a fast, inexpensive test for oral cancer that a dentist could perform simply by using a brush to collect a small sample of cells from a patient's mouth.

Rice pioneers method for processing carbon nanotubes in bulk fluids

Rice University scientists this week unveiled a method for the industrial-scale processing of pure carbon-nanotube fibers that could lead to revolutionary advances in materials science, power distribution and nanoelectronics.

Rice evolutionary biologists Queller, Strassmann redefine the meaning of 'one'

What if your foot refused to work with your leg? Or your heart just wouldn't play well with your liver? All kinds of bad things could happen, but the fact that all your parts mesh is no accident. The cooperative of cells that makes up our bodies makes us whole.

Rice professor's first book nabs top prize

In his book, "Captives and Voyagers," Rice's Alexander Byrd tells the story of British colonialism by examining the colonial world's intersection with the African diaspora. When others tell the story of the book, they'll have another plot point to add: It was awarded the 2009 American Historical Association Wesley-Logan Book Prize.