StreetLights Residential began leasing for The Langley, a 134-unit, luxury high-rise building at 1717 Bissonnet St. in Houston.
Located between the Museum District and Rice University, The Langley features two- and three-bedroom apartments ranging from 2,165 to 3,401 square feet with 10-foot ceilings, oak flooring, private balconies, walk-in closets, smart-home technology, Wolf cooktops, built-in wine coolers and service kitchens.
Rents start at $9,100 per month. Martha Turner Sotheby’s International Realty is serving as the exclusive listing partner for the project.
“The Langley stands apart for the care taken at every level — from the scale of the residences to the refinement of the finishes,” Paul Kilian, co-president of Martha Turner Sotheby’s International Realty, said in a press release. “We understand what discerning clients look for, and the Langley delivers it all — quality craftsmanship, unparalleled amenities, thoughtful spatial planning and a rare sense of privacy. We’re proud to represent such a distinctive offering.”
On-site amenities at The Langley include a private pool deck with cabanas, fireplaces, grills, walking paths and a pizza oven, plus a fitness center, lounge, dog run, pet wash and bike storage. Private garages are available for rent.
FirstService Residential manages day-to-day operations, including valet, maintenance and concierge services.
Rice University has built its reputation on investments in research and academics rather than athletics and aesthetics, but the $120 million Gateway Project, announced Thursday, has almost everyone on campus excited about change.
The initiative, slated for completion in 2028, will connect the west side of campus with Rice Village, creating opportunities for retail, restaurants, multifamily housing and a grocery store. The greenspace-lined corridor offers a straight shot from the high-end neighborhood to the 75-year-old iconic Rice Stadium, home to John F. Kennedy’s “We choose to go to the moon” speech in 1962 and Super Bowl VIII in 1974.
Upgrades to the athletic complex include a three-level concourse with premium club seating, a shade canopy extending over portions of the lower bowl, a patio for alumni gatherings, an east-side upper deck, expanded amenities, and a new covered practice pavilion.
“Athletics can and should be integrated with every aspect of campus life, and this project is a powerful expression of that goal,” said Leo Costello, speaker of the Rice University faculty senate.
Campus leaders and dignitaries held a ceremonial groundbreaking Thursday, even though construction is already underway. The initiative is designed to strengthen ties between Rice and the surrounding community through thoughtful design, accessibility and shared spaces, officials said.
Dignitaries turn ceremonial dirt at the announcement of Rice University’s Gateway Project on November 6. Credit: April Towery
University president Reginald DesRoches called the project a transformative initiative that would create a seamless pedestrian-friendly corridor linking the Rice campus to the heart of Rice Village and reimagine the historic athletic stadium.
“We are honoring the university’s legacy while paving a way for future growth in connectivity and impact,” he said.
Rice University officials announced the Gateway Project on November 6. Credit: April Towery
Rice has grown from 59 students in 1912 to more than 9,000 today, DesRoches said, noting that it’s about time for an update.
“Rice Village and Rice Stadium have long been beloved destinations,” he said. “By connecting our campus directly to the Village, we are strengthening our ties to Houston while enriching the student experience, advancing our growth and reinforcing Rice’s commitment to innovation and community.”
“And as we reimagine, upgrade and renovate Rice Stadium to match today’s Division 1 football program and fan experience, we are providing an environment and infrastructure to allow our students to thrive and shine while creating an experience for our fans and visitors that is second to none.”
Rice linebacker Andrew Awe shares his excitement about the stadium renovations. Credit: April Towery
Now, about that stadium. Andrew Awe, a senior linebacker for the Rice Owls, said the project would transform the athletic department and provide students with an “incredible space to highlight the university and the city.” Awe won’t get to play in the new stadium, slated to open ahead of the fall 2028 football season, but bet he’ll be back for alumni events.
Athletic Director Tommy McClelland showed a three-dimensional rendered video depicting the walk from Rice Village to the new stadium, which was met with excitement from the crowd at Thursday’s event. People who arrived at the gathering saying, “You’re still going to have to drive to Rice Village,” changed their tune as the pep rally for the Gateway Project went on.
“This is going to be awesome,” guests said as they exited.
A rendering of Rice Stadium was on display at a media event on Thursday. Credit: April Towery
McClelland agreed.
“It’s a great day to be an Owl,” he said. “Today is a defining moment for Rice University and Rice athletics, a day that marks a new era for our students, athletes, fans, alums and our entire community. When you watched that video a few moments ago, you saw more than renderings and a plan. You saw a glimpse of the future.”
“For the first time, you can envision a Rice Stadium that reflects the innovation and the excellence that defines Rice University,” he added. “Rice is serious and intentional about athletics. We are investing in a future where our programs can and will compete at the highest levels.”
McClelland also noted that the new stadium will honor the past but look boldly to the future.
“This is not just a renovation. This is a statement of who we are and where we are going,” he said. “In the spirit of John F. Kennedy, today at Rice University, we choose to move forward. We choose to invest. We choose to compete, and most importantly, we choose to win.”
Kelly Fox, executive vice president for operations, called the Gateway Project “a deliberate effort to remove the boundary” between Rice Village and the university. Amherst Avenue will be extended two blocks east from Morningside through Chaucer to a new campus entrance near Greenbriar.
Demolition is planned for the Greenbriar building, now used for storage, and portions of the athletic stadium, but officials said there would be minimal traffic interruption while construction is underway.
Guests got a glimpse of the walkable corridor planned between Rice University and Rice Village. Credit: April Towery
Emily Oppold, a doctoral student from North Carolina studying statistics, said she was excited about the project.
“Graduate student life at Rice University is profoundly demanding and stimulating, but what makes our experience so exciting is the community, activities and beauty of life on campus,” she said.
Before the federal government shutdown announced last week, the most recent halt in services — also under a Donald Trump administration — lasted 35 days, and the current political climate is much more acrimonious than it was seven years ago, signaling things may get worse before they get better, a Houston economist says.
“We seem to be in a more adversarial world today,” said University of Houston economics professor Vikram Maheshri. “I don’t think we’ve gotten better at getting along today than we were in 2018. I’m not saying everything was amazing then, but we’ve gotten worse at making compromises. If I were going to be a political prognosticator, I’d say I think it’s going to last for a while.”
“This doesn’t strike me as a brief disagreement because it seems to me that both parties think they have something to gain from this,” he added. “In any sort of negotiation or mediation, if both parties think they have something to gain from not agreeing or not compromising, then it’s really hard to do that. My sense is that it’s not going to make either side more popular.”
The latest stoppage was announced October 1 after the U.S. Congress failed to reach a funding agreement for its governmental agencies. Republicans and Democrats are blaming each other, with Dems saying they want to negotiate lower healthcare premiums and the GOP lamenting a failed “continuing resolution” that would have extended funding through late November and avoided the shutdown, at least temporarily.
When the government shut down from December 2018 to January 2019, it caused service delays and temporary financial setbacks for federal employees, but some people, especially those who didn’t work for a government agency, may not have experienced a huge impact, Maheshri says.
A government shutdown occurs because federal institutions like the U.S. military, Environmental Protection Agency, and Veterans Administration lack the legal authority to spend money without an approved budget. So for the government to reopen, Congress has to pass legislation that provides funding for the agencies that have been halted.
The U.S. House passed a continuing resolution that would have extended funding for seven weeks, but the measure failed in the Senate in a 44-48 vote. Most Texas Republicans supported the extension; Democrats voted against it, saying they wanted to negotiate on preserving health care subsidies that expire at the end of the year.
Senate Republicans need 60 votes to pass a spending bill through the upper chamber.
Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are funded separately from other Congress-funded programs and are generally unaffected by government shutdowns, Maheshri says. However, benefit administration could be delayed if workers are furloughed or call in sick.
John Diamond, a financial policy expert at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, says he expects federal employees will be furloughed, some public services will be disrupted, and payments to essential workers and government contractors will be delayed.
Although Diamond sayshe doesn’t know how long the D.C. standoff will last, he estimated it would extend “maybe another week or two.”
“Everything depends on how long it lasts,” Diamond said. “If it ends today, the average Houstonian would be completely unimpacted. If it continues on for a month, the average Houstonian probably won’t notice and they would only notice if they were a federal employee, if they had contracts with the federal government, or if they live in an area that is highly concentrated with federal services and they provide some service to those employees.”
At its onset, the shutdown will be more costly for certain people, and the costs will increase over time, Maheshri says. The process of closing on a new home could be delayed because the buyer can’t get flood insurance through a national program, and a person planning international travel and waiting on a passport will have to cancel their plans, the professor says.
“So for a few people, in these specific kinds of situations, it’s going to be extremely costly, but for most people it might not be such a big deal,” he said. “And then, after a week or two, employees who are counting on paychecks and are basically just getting IOUs, that might start to get costly. This includes the majority of military people and government contractors. And then it will get broader and broader.”
An air traffic controller who is getting paid in IOUs might take days off to try and make money another way, Maheshri added.
“The response to that is not going to be to fly the same number of planes and just have crashes,” he said. “It’s going to be that airlines are going to fly fewer and fewer flights. The longer it goes, the more people are going to be affected by it. And I think more people will be affected more acutely. We all interact with the federal government in some way or another. Eventually it’s going to affect all of us.”
The EPA reported last week that about 90 percent of its workforce will be furloughed during the shutdown. This could be a devastating blow to the agency responsible for overseeing toxic pollution and cleaning up contaminated sites like the cancer cluster at Harris County’s San Jacinto River. It also gives Trump leeway to pursue layoffs and dismantle institutions that his political adversaries support, critics say.
The Department of Homeland Security has said it plans to keep the vast majority of its Immigration and Customs Enforcement on the job, so raids on Houston laborers aren’t expected to slow down.
Members of the Houston Democracy Project protest once a week outside U.S. Sen. John Cornyn’s office. Credit: Neil Aquino
Neil Aquino, founder of the Houston Democracy Project, protests outside of U.S. Sen. John Cornyn’s office once a week and opposes Trump’s policies on immigration but said he hasn’t gotten involved in any organized effort to speak out on the government shutdown.
“It’s all a stream of lousy news, and I don’t know that people differentiate it from the other lousy news,” he said. “You’re really just trying to manage trauma, and here’s one more, essentially, assault by [Republicans] who have made it clear they want to hurt us. So they’re going after these agencies because they think it will inflict hurt rather than it being about public policy.”
Jobs and funding have already been cut at the Texas Medical Center, NASA, National Weather Service and FEMA, with little action at the local level to stand up to Trump, Aquino said.
Although President Trump has threatened to dismantle FEMA after this hurricane season, shifting the burden of natural disaster response to states, the Department of Homeland Security indicated most of its emergency management officials are considered essential and will continue working through the shutdown.
Diamond says that in the short term, only government workers and people planning trips will be affected, but the big picture is that fiscal reform is needed at the federal level.
“The indirect effects are, to the extent that this lasts long enough and this nudges the [Gross Domestic Product] down enough, if we’re in an economy that’s very weak and this causes the economy to flip into a recession, then the average citizen may feel that,” he said.
Healthcare Debate
The future of enhanced premium tax credits under the Affordable Care Act is at the core of the shutdown negotiations. The measure, first approved in 2020, allows households above 400 percent of the federal poverty line to become eligible for tax credits, and it lowers the percentage of income households are expected to contribute, Diamond says. The federal poverty line for a family of four is $31,200.
“Obviously, reducing subsidies for premium tax credits would increase the costs that households are required to pay, but extending the credits will increase spending through the tax code and the deficit,” Diamond said. “The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that an extension for 10 years would cost $300 [billion] to $400 billion, depending on how broad the subsidy eligibility is.”
The credits were approved during the COVID-19 pandemic and extended by the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022. Democrats want to make them permanent to prevent rising premiums, and Republicans say they were only intended to be in place temporarily.
A likely scenario to end the shutdown would be that a few Democrats switch their votes, and if that happens, there may be a negotiation scenario in which the Republicans agree to reconsider tax credits at the end of the year. But something has to give, Diamond says.
When COVID hit in 2020, people lost jobs, income, and health insurance. The government responded by providing temporary relief, but it can’t go on subsidizing health insurance forever, particularly while the country’s debt is in the trillions, Diamond says.
“Here’s the thing about federal programs. Once people have them, it’s very hard to take them away,” he said. “Once a benefit is on the books, the political pain of taking it away often outweighs the cost of keeping it.”
“It’s a symptom of America’s broken budget process,” he added. “Instead of deliberate long-term planning, we get crisis-driven policymaking where programs are born in emergencies, patched through short-term extensions, and eventually calcify into permanent spending.”
Democrats appear to genuinely want their constituents to be able to access affordable healthcare, and some Republicans want that, too, Maheshri says.
“It seems like a lot of Democrats are worried about being perceived as, ‘We’re not fighters. We’re rolling over.’ You have to do some symbolic stuff to show that you’re a fighter,” he said. “If you’re a little kid in the lunchroom and you want to not get picked on, you might pick a fight with someone stronger than you even though it’s not going to go so well for you. It could change the perception.”
“I think on the Republican side, one thing that’s different about this shutdown versus any others that I can think of over the last 10 or 15 years, I feel like the administration is trying to use this as a way to kind of punish people that it doesn’t like or restrict money to blue states or use this opportunity to reduce the size of government.”
Diamond says historically during a standoff, the party seeking the policy change has almost always lost.
“The party that just wants a clean resolution usually wins,” he said. “My hunch is that eventually the Democrats will have to abandon this political ploy and move on to a continuing resolution. The Democrats don’t have the votes. You can’t force it to pass now by holding the government hostage.”
Federal Workers Won’t Be Paid
In the meantime, thousands of Texas workers will go to their jobs knowing they won’t get a paycheck right away.
Transportation Security Administration employees at George Bush Intercontinental Airport were among those essential employees expected to show up despite the shutdown, an airport employee told The Houston Press last week. They’re guaranteed back pay once the funding is restored — the IOUs professor Maheshri mentioned — but there will undoubtedly be a stall in service.
VA hospital providers, active-duty service members and most civilian personnel at military installations are also expected to work without pay. The economy and labor market have softened lately, and a shutdown isn’t going to help, Maheshri says.
“It’s not like we’re in a really robust place right now, economically,” he said. “Imagine if everyone has to skip a paycheck. We’re not going to go to as many restaurants. We’re not going to buy as much stuff, and we’re not going to do as much stuff. If things were going really strongly in the economy, it might not be that much of a concern but if things are a bit more fragile, it’s not going to help.”
Thousands of Texans employed by federal agencies will be furloughed or have to work without a paycheck during the shutdown. Credit: AFL-CIO
Texas AFL-CIO president Rick Levy says the shutdown will lock out hundreds of thousands of federal employees from doing their jobs while forcing hundreds of thousands more — like TSA officers, VA caregivers, and border patrol agents — to work without pay.
“That reduces access to services and pulls billions out of local economies,” Levy said in a press release. “Trump and his billionaire buddies have taken our government hostage until their demands are met — and Texas families will pay the price.”
Financial Pressure
Those who rely on government benefits like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the WIC food and immunization program for postpartum mothers and children can still use their debit cards and attend appointments, but that could change if the shutdown extends for a long period of time, government officials have said.
It’s a recurring theme since Trump took office, Aquino says. The policies hurt the lower- and middle-class residents while the rich stay wealthy.
Diamond says a takeaway from the current situation is that the government shouldn’t pass an extension or increase on a temporary basis because people expect it to be permanent.
“That goes for tax cuts and spending,” he said. “We saw that in July with the Republicans’ tax cuts, claiming that temporary tax cuts were really meant to be permanent. Now we’re seeing it with Democrats on the spending side. If we continue like this we will be bankrupt. You can’t increase spending and always reduce taxes. Those two things never work out well in the end.”
If the health insurance premiums are extended, something has to be cut or an additional revenue stream must be identified, he added.
“My suggestion would be to broaden the tax base,” he said. “It involves cutting spending or raising taxes. The problem is it’s very hard to get everybody to agree politically on which route you should take.”
Maheshri agreed that the big fiscal picture for the United States is “not great.”
“We have a lot of debt,” he said. “Our debt is bigger than our [Gross Domestic Product], and it’s growing. We’re not moving in the right direction. This is not to say you should have zero debt. You have to do one of two things. The government has to spend less or make more. In all likelihood, it’s going to take some combination of both.”
Newswise — Quantum materials hold the key to a future of lightning-speed, energy-efficient information systems. The problem with tapping their transformative potential is that, in solids, the vast number of atoms often drowns out the exotic quantum properties electrons carry.
Rice University researchers in the lab of quantum materials scientist Hanyu Zhu found that when they move in circles, atoms can also work wonders: When the atomic lattice in a rare-earth crystal becomes animated with a corkscrew-shaped vibration known as a chiral phonon, the crystal is transformed into a magnet.
According to a study published in Science, exposing cerium fluoride to ultrafast pulses of light sends its atoms into a dance that momentarily enlists the spins of electrons, causing them to align with the atomic rotation. This alignment would otherwise require a powerful magnetic field to activate, since cerium fluoride is naturally paramagnetic with randomly oriented spins even at zero temperature.
“Each electron possesses a magnetic spin that acts like a tiny compass needle embedded in the material, reacting to the local magnetic field,” said Rice materials scientist and co-author Boris Yakobson. “Chirality ⎯ also called handedness because of the way in which left and right hands mirror each other without being superimposable ⎯ should not affect the energies of the electrons’ spin. But in this instance, the chiral movement of the atomic lattice polarizes the spins inside the material as if a large magnetic field were applied.”
Though short-lived, the force that aligns the spins outlasts the duration of the light pulse by a significant margin. Since atoms only rotate in particular frequencies and move for a longer time at lower temperatures, additional frequency- and temperature-dependent measurements further confirm that magnetization occurs as a result of the atoms’ collective chiral dance.
“The effect of atomic motion on electrons is surprising because electrons are so much lighter and faster than atoms,” said Zhu, Rice’s William Marsh Rice Chair and an assistant professor of materials science and nanoengineering. “Electrons can usually adapt to a new atomic position immediately, forgetting their prior trajectory. Material properties would remain unchanged if atoms went clockwise or counterclockwise, i.e., traveled forward or backward in time ⎯ a phenomenon that physicists refer to as time-reversal symmetry.”
The idea that the collective motion of atoms breaks time-reversal symmetry is relatively recent. Chiral phonons have now been experimentally demonstrated in a few different materials, but exactly how they impact material properties is not well understood.
“We wanted to quantitatively measure the effect of chiral phonons on a material’s electrical, optical and magnetic properties,” Zhu said. “Because spin refers to electrons’ rotation while phonons describe atomic rotation, there is a naive expectation that the two might talk with each other. So we decided to focus on a fascinating phenomenon called spin-phonon coupling.”
Spin-phonon coupling plays an important part in real-world applications like writing data on a hard disk. Earlier this year, Zhu’s group demonstrated a new instance of spin-phonon coupling in single molecular layers with atoms moving linearly and shaking spins.
In their new experiments, Zhu and the team members had to find a way to drive a lattice of atoms to move in a chiral fashion. This required both that they pick the right material and that they create light at the right frequency to send its atomic lattice aswirl with the help of theoretical computation from the collaborators.
“There is no off-the-shelf light source for our phonon frequencies at about 10 terahertz,” explained Jiaming Luo, an applied physics graduate student and the lead author of the study. “We created our light pulses by mixing intense infrared lights and twisting the electric field to ‘talk’ to the chiral phonons. Furthermore, we took another two infrared light pulses to monitor the spin and atomic motion, respectively.”
In addition to the insights into spin-phonon coupling derived from the research findings, the experimental design and setup will help inform future research on magnetic and quantum materials.
“We hope that quantitatively measuring the magnetic field from chiral phonons can help us develop experiment protocols to study novel physics in dynamic materials,” Zhu said. “Our goal is to engineer materials that do not exist in nature through external fields ⎯ such as light or quantum fluctuations.”
The research was supported by the National Science Foundation (2005096, 1842494, 2240106), the Welch Foundation (C-2128) and the Army Research Office (W911NF-16-1-0255).
Newswise — HOUSTON – (June 1, 2023) –A group of marine biologists from various countries has made a remarkable finding, uncovering the traces of ancient RNA viruses integrated into the DNA of symbiotic organisms residing within coral reefs.
In a groundbreaking revelation, it has been revealed that the RNA fragments derived from viruses had infected the symbiotic organisms as far back as 160 million years. The astonishing discovery, highlighted in a recent open-access publication in the journal Communications Biology by Nature, holds immense potential for enhancing our understanding of the ongoing battle against viral infections in corals and their associated organisms. This finding has taken scientists by surprise since the integration of RNA viruses into the DNA of their host organisms is an uncommon phenomenon.
Through the study, it has been revealed that endogenous viral elements (EVEs) are prevalent in the genetic makeup of coral symbionts. These symbionts, known as dinoflagellates, are single-celled algae residing within corals, imparting vibrant colors to their hosts. The identification of EVEs reinforces recent findings that viruses, not limited to retroviruses, have the ability to incorporate fragments of their genetic material into the genomes of their host organisms.
“Then how did it happen?” inquired Adrienne Correa, one of the co-authors of the study from Rice University. She further explained, “While it might seem accidental, researchers are increasingly discovering that such occurrences are more common than previously thought. These ‘accidents’ have been identified in various hosts, ranging from bats and ants to plants and algae.”
The presence of an RNA virus within coral symbionts came as an unexpected revelation.
“I found this project particularly intriguing,” expressed Alex Veglia, the lead author of the study and a graduate student in Correa’s research team. Veglia continued, “Based on our current understanding, there is truly no logical explanation for the presence of this virus within the genome of the symbionts.”
The research, funded by the Tara Ocean Foundation and the National Science Foundation, was spearheaded by Correa, Veglia, along with two scientists from Oregon State University: postdoctoral scholar Kalia Bistolas and marine ecologist Rebecca Vega Thurber. By unraveling crucial insights, this study offers valuable clues for scientists to enhance their comprehension of the ecological and economic ramifications of viruses on reef well-being.
During their investigation, the researchers did not detect any endogenous viral elements (EVEs) derived from RNA viruses in the samples of filtered seawater or within the genomes of dinoflagellate-free stony corals, hydrocorals, or jellyfish. However, EVEs were found extensively in coral symbionts gathered from numerous coral reef locations. This indicates that the pathogenic viruses were, and likely still are, selective in their choice of target hosts.
Correa, an assistant professor of biosciences, emphasized the vast diversity of viruses that exist on our planet. She explained, “While we have extensive knowledge about certain viruses, the majority of viruses remain uncharacterized. We may be able to detect their presence, but we are still unaware of their host organisms.”
Correa highlighted the various methods by which viruses, including retroviruses, can replicate through host infections. She stated, “One intriguing aspect of our study is that this RNA virus is not classified as a retrovirus. Considering this, one wouldn’t anticipate it to integrate into the host’s DNA.”
Correa remarked, “Over the past several years, we have observed a multitude of viruses within coral colonies, but it has been challenging to definitively determine their specific targets.” She further stated, “Therefore, this discovery provides us with the most reliable and conclusive data regarding the actual host of a virus associated with coral colonies. With this knowledge in hand, we can now delve into understanding why the symbiont retains that DNA or a portion of the genome. The question arises: Why hasn’t it been lost over time?”
The revelation that the endogenous viral elements (EVEs) have been preserved over millions of years implies that they might hold some advantageous role for the coral symbionts. It also suggests the existence of a mechanism that actively promotes the genomic integration of EVEs.
Veglia expressed the multitude of possibilities for further exploration, such as investigating whether these elements serve as antiviral mechanisms within dinoflagellates and assessing their potential impact on reef health, particularly in the context of rising ocean temperatures.
Veglia raised important questions related to the potential influence of rising seawater temperatures on the presence of endogenous viral elements (EVEs) within Symbiodiniaceae species. He pondered whether the presence of EVEs in their genomes enhances their ability to combat infections caused by present-day RNA viruses. These queries emphasize the need for further research to unravel the intricate connections between EVEs, symbiont genomes, and the response to viral infections under changing environmental conditions.
“In another study, we demonstrated that there is a rise in RNA viral infections during episodes of thermal stress in corals. Hence, there are numerous interconnected factors at play. The current discovery provides another valuable piece to complete the puzzle,” Veglia explained. The intricate relationship between thermal stress, viral infections, and coral health requires comprehensive examination to gain a holistic understanding of the dynamics involved.
Correa cautioned against making assumptions about the virus having a negative impact, but she also noted that there is evidence suggesting its increased productivity under conditions of temperature stress. This highlights the complexity of the situation and the need for further investigation to better understand the potential effects of the virus on coral health.
Thurber holds the distinguished position of Emile F. Pernot Professor in the Department of Microbiology at Oregon State University.
The study included more than 20 co-authors from the University of Konstanz, Germany; the Institute of Microbiology and Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Zürich; the University of Perpignan, France; the Scientific Center of Monaco; the Université Paris-Saclay, Evry, France; the Tara Ocean Foundation, Paris; the University of Maine; Sorbonne University, France; the University of Tsukuba, Japan; Paris Science and Letters University, France; the University of Paris-Saclay; the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel; Côte d’Azur University, Nice, France; the European Bioinformatics Institute, University of Cambridge, England; Ohio State University; and the National University of Ireland, Galway.
National Science Foundation support was provided by three grants (2145472, 2025457, 1907184).
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Peer-reviewed paper:
“Endogenous viral elements reveal associations between a non-retroviral RNA virus and symbiotic dinoflagellate genomes” | Communications Biology | DOI: 10.1038/s42003-023-04917-9
Authors: Alex J. Veglia, Kalia S.I. Bistolas, Christian R, Voolstra, Benjamin C. C. Hume, Hans-Joachim Ruscheweyh, Serge Planes, Denis Allemand, Emilie Boissin, Patrick Wincker, Julie Poulain, Clémentine Moulin, Guillaume Bourdin, Guillaume Iwankow, Sarah Romac, Sylvain Agostini, Bernard Banaigs, Emmanuel Boss, Chris Bowler, Colomban de Varga, Eric Douville, Michel Flores, Didier Forcioli, Paola Furla, Pierre Galand, Eric Gilson, Fabien Lombard, Stéphane Pesant, Stéphanie Reynaud, Matthew B. Sullivan, Shinichi Sunagawa, Olivier Thomas, Romain Troublé, Didier Zoccola, Adrienne M.S. Correa, and Rebecca L. Vega Thurber
Newswise — Traditional implantable medical devices intended for brain stimulation frequently possess a rigidity and bulkiness that is incongruous with one of the human body’s most supple and fragile tissues.
In response to this issue, engineers at Rice University have created nanoelectrodes that are minimally invasive and exceptionally flexible. These nanoelectrodes have the potential to function as an implanted platform, enabling long-term, high-resolution stimulation therapy.
As reported in Cell Reports, a study revealed that these minute implantable devices established stable and enduring tissue-electrode interfaces in rodents with minimal scarring or deterioration. The devices were capable of delivering electrical pulses that closely resembled neuronal signaling patterns and amplitudes, surpassing the capabilities of traditional intracortical electrodes.
Due to their exceptional biocompatibility and precise spatiotemporal stimulus control, these devices have the potential to facilitate the advancement of novel brain stimulation therapies. These therapies, such as neuronal prostheses, could greatly benefit individuals with impaired sensory or motor functions.
Lan Luan, a corresponding author on the study and an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, explained that the research paper utilizes imaging, behavioral, and histological methods to demonstrate the enhanced effectiveness of stimulation achieved by these tissue-integrated electrodes. The electrodes have the capability to administer precise and minute electrical pulses, thereby facilitating controlled neural activity excitation.
The team of researchers successfully achieved a significant reduction in the required current for neuronal activation, surpassing an order of magnitude. This means that the electrical pulses delivered by the electrodes can be as subtle as a duration of a couple hundred microseconds and an amplitude of one or two microamps. Such precise and low-intensity stimulation holds great potential for advancing the field of brain stimulation therapies.
The recently developed electrode design by the researchers at the Rice Neuroengineering Initiative marks a substantial advancement compared to traditional implantable electrodes utilized for treating conditions like Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Conventional electrodes often lead to adverse tissue reactions and unintended alterations in neural activity. The new electrode design aims to address these challenges and offers a promising solution for enhancing the effectiveness and safety of treatments for such neurological conditions.
Chong Xie, a corresponding author of the study and an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, stated that traditional electrodes are highly invasive in nature. These electrodes typically activate thousands or even millions of neurons simultaneously.
“When all these neurons are stimulated simultaneously, their individual functions and coordination, which are supposed to follow specific patterns, get disrupted,” explained Chong Xie. “While this simultaneous stimulation may have the desired therapeutic effect in certain cases, it lacks the necessary precision and control, especially when it comes to encoding sensory information. To achieve more precise and effective outcomes, greater control over the stimuli is essential.”
Xie drew a comparison between the stimulation provided by traditional electrodes and the disruptive impact of “blowing an airhorn in everyone’s ear or having a loudspeaker blaring” in a room filled with people. This analogy emphasizes the lack of specificity and precision in conventional electrode stimulation, which can lead to a generalized and disruptive effect on neural activity.
“We used to have this very big loudspeaker, and now everyone has an earpiece,” he said.
Xie drew a comparison between the stimulation provided by traditional electrodes and the disruptive impact of “blowing an airhorn in everyone’s ear or having a loudspeaker blaring” in a room filled with people. This analogy emphasizes the lack of specificity and precision in conventional electrode stimulation, which can lead to a generalized and disruptive effect on neural activity.
The capacity to modify the frequency, duration, and intensity of the signals holds the potential for the advancement of innovative sensory prosthetic devices.
Luan stated, “When a larger current is employed, neuron activation becomes more widespread and diffuse. However, we successfully reduced the current and demonstrated a significantly more focused activation. This achievement can pave the way for the development of higher-resolution stimulation devices.”
Both Luan and Xie are integral members of the Rice Neuroengineering Initiative, and their respective laboratories are engaged in a collaborative effort to develop an implantable visual prosthetic device aimed at assisting visually impaired patients.
Luan envisions a future where electrode arrays can be implanted to restore impaired sensory function. He highlights that the precision and specificity of neuron activation play a crucial role in generating accurate and precise sensations. Luan emphasizes that the more focused and deliberate the activation of neurons, the higher the level of precision in the generated sensation.
Luan, who will be assuming the position of associate professor starting from July 1, expressed the significance of their electrode’s ultraflexible design in achieving enhanced tissue integration. They have published a series of research papers demonstrating the electrode’s capability to facilitate improved recording of brain activity over extended periods, yielding superior signal-to-noise ratios.
The study has been led by Roy Lycke, a postdoctoral associate in electrical and computer engineering, and Robin Kim, a graduate student. Both Lycke and Kim have played crucial roles as lead authors in conducting the research.
The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (R01NS109361, U01 NS115588) and Rice internal funds supported the research.
Newswise — HOUSTON – (Feb. 9, 2023) – When it comes to DNA, one pesky mosquito turns out to be a rebel among species.
Researchers at Rice University’s Center for Theoretical Biological Physics (CTBP) are among the pioneers of a new approach to studying DNA. Instead of focusing on chromosomes as linear sequences of genetic code, they’re looking for clues on how their folded 3D shapes might determine gene expression and regulation.
For most living things, their threadlike chromosomes fold to fit inside the nuclei of cells in one of two ways. But the chromosomes of the Aedes aegypti mosquito — which is responsible for the transmission of tropical diseases such as dengue, chikungunya, zika, mayaro and yellow fever — defy this dichotomy, taking researchers at the CTBP by surprise.
The Aedes aegypti’s chromosomes organize as fluid-yet-oriented “liquid crystals,” different from all other species, according to their study published in Nature Communications.
“Understanding DNA is a key to understanding how life works,” said Rice theoretical physicist Peter Wolynes, a co-author on the study. “We are only just beginning to learn how the 3D architecture of chromosomes influences the functioning of genomes.”
A 2021 collaborative study co-led by a team from the CTBP and published in Science reported that chromosomes display one of two structural patterns when cells are not dividing, the stage in the cell life cycle known as interphase.
“In a ‘type two’ genome architecture — like that found in humans and chickens, for instance — chromosomes form territories and don’t mix together that much,” said Vinícius Contessoto, a CTBP research scientist who is a lead co-author on the latest study and was also a co-author on the 2021 study.
The still-unknown forces that keep active and inactive parts of “type two” chromosomes separate from each other during interphase behave like those that prevent oil and water from mixing together.
“In a ‘type one’ architecture, like that found in yeast or in many plants, the regions of the chromosomes known as centromeres come together, folding them into an intermeshed, hairpin-like structure, polarized with telomeres ” said José Onuchic, Rice’s Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor of Physics and Astronomy, and a professor of chemistry and biosciences.
“Something that’s surprising to me is that even though so many different species have been mapped, they still largely fall into one of these two different classes,” Wolynes said. “The Aedes aegypti mosquito is the first real outlier.”
The genome of the Aedes aegypti is roughly half the length of the human genome and is organized into six large chromosomes, as opposed to humans’ 46. “We used to think that the chromosomes of the mosquito did not form territories, but in fact they do form these elongated territories,” Contessoto said.
“During interphase, ‘type two’ chromosomes are really very fluid, disordered things balled up into droplet-shaped territories,” said Wolynes, Rice’s Bullard-Welch Foundation Professor of Science and a professor of chemistry, of biochemistry and cell biology, of physics and astronomy, and of materials science and nanoengineering and co-director of the CTBP.
The chromosomes of the Aedes aegypti mosquito display fluid characteristics, separating from one another like liquid droplets of oil and water. At the same time, they are partially condensed by compaction forces, which gives them an unusual shape, oriented like an overlong football, suggesting their consistency is also similar to that of a crystal.
Moreover, if force is applied to a regular “type two” nucleus and it is deformed, the organization of the chromosomes inside remains unaffected. “It’s like poking a water balloon — it reverts to its prior shape. But when we poke the nucleus of the mosquito cells, the chromosomes’ patterns inside change dramatically,” said Onuchic.
“This is an intriguing feature of ‘type one’ chromosome architecture that suggests there is a possible mechanism linking gene regulation to mechanical inputs on the cell,” said Onuchic. In 2020, he and collaborators confirmed the existence of a mechanism connecting genome structure to gene expression.
Other co-authors of the new study are Erez Lieberman Aiden, a Rice adjunct assistant professor of computer science and an assistant professor of computational and applied mathematics, an associate professor of molecular and human genetics and a principal investigator in the joint Rice/Baylor College of Medicine Center for Genome Architecture; Olga Dudchenko, an assistant professor in the Center for Genome Architecture and former CTBP postdoctoral fellow; and Michele Di Pierro, an assistant professor of physics at Northeastern University. All are CTBP members.
The research was supported by the National Science Foundation (2019745, 2210291, 2019276, 2021795); the Welch Foundation (C-1792, Q-1866); the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas; the São Paulo State Research Foundation and Higher Education Personnel, and Higher Education Personnel Improvement Coordination (2016/13998-8, 2017/09662-7); the D.R. Bullard-Welch Chair at Rice (C-0016); the McNair Medical Institute Scholar Award; the National Institutes of Health (UM1HG009375, RM1HG011016-01A1, R35GM146852); and the AMD HPC Fund.
Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.
Peer-reviewed paper:
Interphase chromosomes of the Aedes aegypti mosquito are liquid crystalline and can sense mechanical cues | Nature Communications | DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-35909-2
CAPTION: 3D simulation of the genome structure of the Aedes aegypti mosquito. The elongated territories formed by each of the six chromosomes are color-coded and shown separately (bottom) and together as part of the whole genome (top). (Image adapted from Nature Communications, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-35909-2, under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.)
https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2023/02/CTBP_NatureCommunications_image2_LG.jpg CAPTION: The image shows the effects of applying tension to cell nuclei on contacts between the chromosomes of both the human and mosquito genomes (red and white squares), with corresponding 3D simulations (colorful stringlike structures). The human interphase chromosome is less sensitive to mechanical cues than the mosquito interphase chromosome. (Image adapted from Nature Communications, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-35909-2, under aCreative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.)
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 4,552 undergraduates and 3,998 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.
Eric Enriquez is a determined student. But some days, his mental-health challenges make it difficult for him to participate in class.
“There are some days for me, personally, where I’ve struggled with mental health and it’s hard to get out of bed,” said the junior psychological-sciences major at the University of California at Irvine. “My anxiety is so bad.”
When he’s feeling overwhelmed, he appreciates instructors who are flexible with attendance and assignments, or who provide remote-learning options.
Enriquez is one of many students who believe that colleges should scale up such accommodations for academic-related distress.
Across higher ed, there’s a growing recognition of the connection between students’ well-being and their success in the classroom. “Mental health affects how students perform academically, and the stress of academics, and certainly disappointments academically, affect students’ mental health,” said Sarah Lipson, an assistant professor at the Boston University School of Public Health.
Some colleges and faculty members are creating or considering new policies to support students when they need a day to tend to their mental health. But providing the kinds of academic accommodations that many students are calling for –– such as reforms to extension and attendance guidelines –– requires instructors to shoulder new responsibilities and change old habits and standards that some of them value.
Lipson said she’s happy to see that colleges and professors are thinking about ways to make academics more accommodating to those experiencing mental-health challenges, but landing on the right solution is complicated. She recommended that colleges form their plans with student feedback.
“There’s going to be different solutions for different institutions,” Lipson said.
‘I Was Worrying the Entire Day’
Last summer, Northeastern University started a new program, in response to student advocacy, that gives students two excused absences per semester for any reason. But some students say the program doesn’t go far enough.
The idea for the program, called Wellness Days, came from the campus chapter of Active Minds, a mental-health awareness group. “The importance of a wellness day is if you’re having a mental-health crisis, you should probably be taking the time to come back from that,” said Jack Ognibene, a junior and psychology major who’s vice president of the group. “It’s a similar thing to if you are sick.”
Ed Gavaghan, a spokesperson for Northeastern, wrote in an email that student feedback in a recent university survey was “overwhelmingly positive.”
While Ognibene is pleased that Northeastern officials have embraced the program, he said that Active Minds had to make compromises on its design. The group conducted its own student survey about wellness days, and one common issue students brought up was a lack of accompanying accommodations, according to Ognibene.
“There isn’t much of a difference between taking a wellness day and skipping class,” Ognibene said. “All your assignments are still due on the same day, so you don’t really have the time to rest. You also have to play catch-up because you’re missing class, and professors aren’t really providing students with the notes from class that day.”
“Thinking about all the assignments I would miss started getting me really nervous,” Umansky-Castro said in an interview. “I was worrying the entire day.”
Ognibene and Umansky-Castro said some instructors at Northeastern provide accommodations for students taking a wellness day, but others don’t.
But Ognibene said Active Minds pushed hard for students to be able to choose their days off.
“You can’t really choose a day to have a mental-health crisis,” Ognibene said.
He said Active Minds would ask university officials to consider requiring professors to offer deadline extensions and to send copies of class notes when students take a wellness day, so all students have access to the same accommodations, regardless of their instructor.
Traditional grading … focuses on sorting and ranking students. This type of approach tends to both produce enormous amounts of stress and anxiety for students.
Weighing Accommodations
At Rice University, students have advocated for a rule that would require faculty members to spell out a mental-health-accommodation policy in their course syllabi. The change would provide clarity and ensure that students in the same class received the same flexibility, said Alison Qiu, a computer-science major and student-government leader at Rice.
Faculty, however, worry that the measure would force them to make decisions they don’t feel qualified to make.
Last fall, Qiu helped author a student-government resolution recommending a mandatory-accommodation policy, as well as two other additions to the syllabi: a mental-health statement and a list of campus resources. Those two measures were endorsed by Rice’s Faculty Senate, but the accommodation policy was omitted.
An editorial in The Rice Thresher, Rice’s student newspaper, criticized the Faculty Senate’s decision and argued that explicit policies would “reduce the stigma around students asking for accommodations.”
Qiu said she believes including policies in the syllabus would hold instructors accountable. Lipson agrees.
“There’s also a lot of evidence that if a policy isn’t made explicit to students –– like how to request an extension or what the protocols are for accommodations –– there’s systematically certain students who do not feel comfortable asking those questions,” Lipson said.
Alexandra Kieffer, an associate professor of musicology and speaker of Rice’s Faculty Senate, said faculty care about their students’ mental health. But they’re concerned, Kieffer said, that requiring mental-health-accommodation policies in syllabi would put instructors in a position where they’d need to make their own assessments about students’ mental health.
“That would have required the instructor of a course to essentially make a determination in a particular case as to whether or not the student met some kind of criteria for the mental-health accommodation, as opposed to some kind of other blanket attendance policy or extension policy,” Kieffer said in an interview.
Kieffer wrote in a follow-up email that if students experience mental-health challenges, the Faculty Senate encourages them to seek resources at Rice’s counseling center and to request formal academic accommodations through the disability-resource center.
Qiu said she’ll continue to advocate for accommodation policies. “My goal is to continue to communicate with the Faculty Senate about either passing the third requirement or modifying it in a way that makes the most sense for both faculty and students,” Qiu said.
Lipson said that although most instructors aren’t trained mental-health professionals, they have a responsibility to understand campus protocols and resources and how they can best support students.
The University of California at Irvine hired someone last year to help faculty do just that.
‘Flexibility With Guardrails’
Called a pedagogical wellness specialist, the UC-Irvine position involves training instructors to incorporate wellness into their classroom policies and procedures. Theresa Duong, who was hired for the role, said her responsibilities include creating workshops, consulting with professors, and doing research.
“My job involves supporting faculty wellness through pedagogy, but also supporting students’ wellness through the practice of pedagogy,” Duong said. “So that means training the faculty to think about wellness in their courses and to integrate well-being strategies into their course design.”
Duong said she encourages instructors to apply a mind-set she calls “flexibility with guardrails.” Duong created a digital guide that includes advice on rethinking high-stakes exams, assessing workloads, clarifying deadlines, and providing assignment choices, among other things.
During her workshops, Duong has instructors brainstorm how their class could be a barrier or facilitator to their students’ wellness and then create an action plan.
Angela Jenks, an associate professor of teaching in anthropology at UC-Irvine and the vice associate dean of faculty development and diversity in the School of Social Sciences, works with Duong to help professors revamp their courses. In her own classes, Jenks said she has created “menus” that allow students to choose assignments, with a reduced emphasis on traditional-grading practices.
“By traditional grading, I think about an approach to grading that really focuses on sorting and ranking students,” Jenks said. “This type of approach tends to both produce enormous amounts of stress and anxiety for students.”
Instead of high-stakes assignments that receive letter grades, Jenks focuses on feedback, self-reflection, and opportunities to resubmit. “In my everyday job,” Jenks said, “nobody grades me.”
Newswise — HOUSTON – (Jan. 27, 2023) – On Oct. 5, 2020, the rapidly rotating corpse of a long-dead star about 30,000 light years from Earth changed speeds. In a cosmic instant, its spinning slowed. And a few days later, it abruptly started emitting radio waves.
Thanks to timely measurements from specialized orbiting telescopes, Rice University astrophysicist Matthew Baring and colleagues were able to test a new theory about a possible cause for the rare slowdown, or “anti-glitch,” of SGR 1935+2154, a highly magnetic type of neutron star known as a magnetar.
In a study published this month in Nature Astronomy, Baring and co-authors used X-ray data from the European Space Agency’s X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission (XMM-Newton) and NASA’s Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) to analyze the magnetar’s rotation. They showed the sudden slowdown could have been caused by a volcano-like rupture on the surface of the star that spewed a “wind” of massive particles into space. The research identified how such a wind could alter the star’s magnetic fields, seeding conditions that would be likely to switch on the radio emissions that were subsequently measured by China’s Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST).
“People have speculated that neutron stars could have the equivalent of volcanoes on their surface,” said Baring, a professor of physics and astronomy. “Our findings suggest that could be the case and that on this occasion, the rupture was most likely at or near the star’s magnetic pole.”
SGR 1935+2154 and other magnetars are a type of neutron star, the compact remains of a dead star that collapsed under intense gravity. About a dozen miles wide and as dense as the nucleus of an atom, magnetars rotate once every few seconds and feature the most intense magnetic fields in the universe.
Magnetars emit intense radiation, including X-rays and occasional radio waves and gamma rays. Astronomers can decipher much about the unusual stars from those emissions. By counting pulses of X-rays, for example, physicists can calculate a magnetar’s rotational period, or the amount of time it takes to make one complete rotation, as the Earth does in one day. The rotational periods of magnetars typically change slowly, taking tens of thousands of years to slow by a single rotation per second.
Glitches are abrupt increases in rotational speed that are most often caused by sudden shifts deep within the star, Baring said.
“In most glitches, the pulsation period gets shorter, meaning the star spins a bit faster than it had been,” he said. “The textbook explanation is that over time, the outer, magnetized layers of the star slow down, but the inner, non-magnetized core does not. This leads to a buildup of stress at the boundary between these two regions, and a glitch signals a sudden transfer of rotational energy from the faster spinning core to the slower spinning crust.”
Abrupt rotational slowdowns of magnetars are very rare. Astronomers have only recorded three of the “anti-glitches,” including the October 2020 event.
While glitches can be routinely explained by changes inside the star, anti-glitches likely cannot. Baring’s theory is based on the assumption that they are caused by changes on the surface of the star and in the space around it. In the new paper, he and his co-authors constructed a volcano-driven wind model to explain the measured results from the October 2020 anti-glitch.
Baring said the model uses only standard physics, specifically changes in angular momentum and conservation of energy, to account for the rotational slowdown.
“A strong, massive particle wind emanating from the star for a few hours could establish the conditions for the drop in rotational period,” he said. “Our calculations showed such a wind would also have the power to change the geometry of the magnetic field outside the neutron star.”
The rupture could be a volcano-like formation, because “the general properties of the X-ray pulsation likely require the wind to be launched from a localized region on the surface,” he said.
“What makes the October 2020 event unique is that there was a fast radio burst from the magnetar just a few days after the anti-glitch, as well as a switch-on of pulsed, ephemeral radio emission shortly thereafter,” he said. “We’ve seen only a handful of transient pulsed radio magnetars, and this is the first time we’ve seen a radio switch-on of a magnetar almost contemporaneous with an anti-glitch.”
Baring argued this timing coincidence suggests the anti-glitch and radio emissions were caused by the same event, and he’s hopeful that additional studies of the volcanism model will provide more answers.
“The wind interpretation provides a path to understanding why the radio emission switches on,” he said. “It provides new insight we have not had before.”
The research was supported by the National Science Foundation (1813649), NASA (80NSSC22K0397), Japan’s RIKEN Advanced Science Institute and Taiwan’s Ministry of Science and Technology.
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Peer-reviewed study:
“’Magnetar spin-down glitch clearing the way for FRB-like bursts and a pulsed radio episode” | Nature Astronomy | DOI: 10.1038/s41550-022-01865-y
Authors: G. Younes, M.G. Baring, A.K. Harding, T. Enoto, Z. Wadiasingh, A.B. Pearlman, W.C.G. Ho, S. Guillot, Z. Arzoumanian, A. Borghese, K. Gendreau, E. Göğüş, T. Güver, A.J. van der Horst, C.-P. Hu, G. K. Jaisawal, C. Kouveliotou, L. Lin and W. A. Majid
Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.
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.
Newswise — HOUSTON – (Jan. 6, 2023) – Inexpensive iron salts are a key to simplifying the manufacture of essential precursors for drugs and other chemicals, according to scientists at Rice University.
They’ve refined the process of producing diazides, building-block molecules in the production of drugs and agricultural chemicals. Iron salts along with processes called radical ligand transfer and ligand-to-metal charge transfer (LMCT) make it affordable and environmentally friendly.
Rice synthetic chemist Julian West and co-lead authors Kang-Jie (Harry) Bian and Shih-Chieh Kao, both graduate students in his lab, report in Nature Communicationsthat illuminating their reagents with visible light allows them to form diazides in conditions that are far more gentle than current industrial processes that usually involve high heat and corrosive acids.
Diazides are molecules with two amine groups that can be functionalized, meaning they can easily react with other molecules. Depending on how they’re constructed, they can be the basis of many useful compounds.
In a recent study, West and his group used radical ligand transfer (or “radical rebound”) to add two functional groups to a single alkene, organic molecules drawn from petrochemicals that contain at least one carbon-carbon double bond.
The technique, along with iron-mediated ligand-to-metal charge transfer, came in handy as they built similar precursors called vicinal diazides out of common feedstocks.
“It only uses two reagents, iron nitrate and TMS azide, which every synthetic lab will have,” said West, an assistant professor of chemistry whose lab strives to simplify drug manufacturing. “Basically, you mix them together in a common solvent and shine light on it. Most every pharmaceutical lab will have LED lights. So basically they’ll just pull things off the shelf.”
West said radical ligand transfer was inspired by biology, “including the enzymes in our own livers. There are enzymes in nature that transfer atoms or fragments of molecules to a radical to make a new bond that can help build up bigger molecules. We were excited to explore the potential of that one step in the last study.
“In this project, now that we’ve established how that works, we can start to combine it with new steps to make something different,” he said. “The funny thing is, like with everything in organic chemistry, nature appreciated a long time ago that this can be really useful.”
Both LMCT and radical ligand transfer happen, one after the other, when the reagents and solution are illuminated in ambient conditions. The lab learned to maximize the process through flow chemistry, running the solution through a looping tube and lighting just that tube.
“The reaction happens in the part where you shine the light,” West said. “That way we can process more than a single batch, and also have much more control over the amount of light it’s getting by speeding up or slowing down the flow.
“It’s dead easy to dump the salts in the flask and shine a light on it, but if you want to make a lot, or make it better, flow works really well,” he said.
“We think it will be helpful for labs that want an easy way to make this kind of product, especially if they don’t have the time to fine tune and fight with getting these other methods to work well,” West said.
Study co-authors include Rice undergraduates David Nemoto Jr. and Xiaowei Chen.
The research was supported by Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (RR190025), the National Institutes of Health (GM142738) and the Welch Foundation (C-2085).
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Peer-reviewed paper:
“Photochemical diazidation of alkenes enabled by ligand-to-metal charge transfer and radical ligand transfer” | Nature Communications | DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-35560-3
Kang-Jie Bian, Shih-Chieh Kao, David Nemoto Jr., Xiao-Wei Chen and Julian G. West
https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2022/12/1212_DIAMINES-1-web.jpg CAPTION: A mild solution containing reagents passes through an illuminated loop in a Rice University laboratory. The lab has developed a photochemical process to simplify the synthesis of drug and chemical precursors known as diamines. (Credit: West Research Lab/Rice University)
https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2022/12/1212_DIAMINES-2-web.jpg CAPTION: This illuminated loop rig helps Rice University chemists use flow photochemistry to produce diamines, building-block molecules in the production of drugs and agricultural chemicals. (Credit: West Research Lab/Rice University)
https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2022/12/1212_DIAMINES-3-web.jpg CAPTION: The synergistic cooperation of ligand-to-metal charge transfer and radical ligand transfer produces diamines, building-block molecules in the production of drugs and agricultural chemicals. Rice University chemists introduced their light-driven process in Nature Communications. (Credit: West Research Lab/Rice University)
https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2022/12/1212_DIAMINES-4a-web.jpg CAPTION: From left, Rice University graduate students Kang-Jie (Harry) Bian and Shih-Chieh Kao and undergraduate student David Nemoto Jr. who, along with undergraduate Xiaowei Chen (inset), developed a light-driven method to synthesize diamines to simplify drug and chemical design. (Credit: Rice University)
Securing the next generation of accountants won’t be easy. It may take some grassroots campaigning by mentors and family members to influence their loved ones to go that path, a technology boost, and a “CPA Evolution.”
“There’s definitely an accountant shortage out there,” says Ben Lansford, an accounting professor and director of the Master of Accounting program at the Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University. “I hear it from the firms.” And in talking with colleagues at universities nationwide, “we see the declining enrollment in graduate accounting programs,” Lansford says.
In 2021, there was a 17% drop in employed accountants and auditors from a 2019 peak, according to a Bloomberg Tax analysis. But the number of companies trying to hire accountants hasn’t slowed one bit.
Between 2021 and 2031, on average, about 136,400 openings for accountants and auditors are projected each year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) occupational outlook handbook. The openings are due to workers leaving the field for different occupations or retiring.
“In general, employment growth of accountants and auditors is expected to be closely tied to the health of the overall economy,” BLS states in the handbook.
The next generation of accountants and auditors is in demand, but Lansford explained why some are hesitant. “Accounting is difficult,” he says. “It’s just a tough subject area, and you need a fifth year of college education to qualify to sit for the CPA exam. It makes a major less appealing to a lot of people.”
But what needs to be communicated to students and young professionals is the time and energy is worth it, Lansford says. “It’s still a good path,” he says. “A rock-solid foundation.” The Big Four accounting firms are even reaching out to high school students to share that message and creating more flexible work environments, Lansford says.
But it may take a village to get a student interested in accounting.
“I find that often those students have an older family member, parent, aunt, or uncle, or friend of the family who took that same path and counseled the student about the benefits of accounting,” Lansford says.
Over the past three years, Lansford has observed more students in graduate accounting programs choosing consulting jobs because they pay more than being entry-level accountants at a firm, he says. According to the BLS, the median annual wage for accountants and auditors was $77,250 in May 2021.
‘CPA Evolution’
But changes to the CPA are coming—with the hope of attracting tech workers to the profession. “The AICPA is calling it a CPA Evolution, and it’s really an overhaul of the CPA exam,” Lansford explains. Starting in 2024, “everyone will take the same three sections, but for the fourth exam section, you can specialize in financial reporting, auditing, tax, or you can specialize in IT. The goal of the change is to make the tent bigger, so to speak.” That’s an interesting addition, since CFOs are increasingly finding themselves at the center of major IT projects.
But one drawback under the new CPA exam model is everyone still gets the same CPA certification, Lansford says. There’s no special designation that you took the IT exam area, he says. “So, we as academics are interested in seeing how things play out,” he says.
An increase in customer expectations for e-commerce is placing “intense pressure” on retailers to rebuild their supply chains. That’s one of the key findings of “Increase your pace in the e-commerce race,” a new study conducted by the CMO Council and Business Performance Innovation Network, in cooperation with Attabotics, a robotics and software company. Executives are acutely aware of the need for supply chain and fulfillment transformation and looking for innovative and economically-sound ways to drive change. But they face significant financial and technological hurdles. Legacy systems (70%) and infrastructure in addition to the cost of replacement (61%), were listed as the top barriers to supply chain transformation. The findings are based on a survey of more than 150 executives and professionals across retail, e-commerce, consumer products, distribution, and consulting firms involved in consumer supply chains.
Courtesy of the CMO Council
Going deeper
“San Francisco died so the Bay Area could thrive: What the 10 fastest-growing metro areas reveal about the world of remote work,” a new Fortune report, delves into the findings of research by the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise, which points to the metro areas experiencing the most growth as business establishes a new normal after the pandemic.
Leaderboard
Deborah Thomas, EVP, and CFO at Hasbro, Inc. (Nasdaq: HAS), a global entertainment company, plans to retire. Hasbro is conducting an internal and external search for a successor. Thomas will remain as CFO until her successor is in place. She joined the company in 1998.
Michael W. Kalb was named EVP and CFO at CinCor Pharma, Inc., effective Nov. 4. He succeeded Terry Coelho who has retired. Kalb was previously CFO for Amarin Corporation, a cardiovascular-focused pharmaceutical company. Before Amarin, he worked at Taro Pharmaceuticals where he was the CFO and chief accounting officer. His experience also includes a director in the Accounting and Financial Consulting Group of Huron Consulting Group Inc., and over 10 years at Ernst & Young, LLP.
Overheard
“I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here. I know this is tough for everyone, and I’m especially sorry to those impacted.”
—Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote a letter to employees on Wednesday announcing the company was reducing its workforce and letting go of more than 11,000 employees, Fortune reported.
This is the web version ofCFO Daily, a newsletter on the trends and individuals shaping corporate finance. Sign up to get it delivered free to your inbox.
Newswise — HOUSTON – (Nov. 9, 2022) – Like a giraffe stretching for leaves on a tall tree, making carbon nanotubes reach for food as they grow may lead to a long-sought breakthrough.
Their paper inScience Advances describes a strategy by which constraining the carbon feedstock in a furnace would help control the “kite” growth of nanotubes. In this method, the nanotube begins to form at the metal catalyst on a substrate, but lifts the catalyst as it grows, resembling a kite on a string.
Carbon nanotube walls are basically graphene, its hexagonal lattice of atoms rolled into a tube. Chirality refers to how the hexagons are angled within the lattice, between 0 and 30 degrees. That determines whether the nanotubes are metallic or semiconductors. The ability to grow long nanotubes in a single chirality could, for instance, enable the manufacture of highly conductive nanotube fibers or semiconductor channels of transistors.
Normally, nanotubes grow in random fashion with single and multiple walls and various chiralities. That’s fine for some applications, but many need “purified” batches that require centrifugation or other costly strategies to separate the nanotubes.
The researchers suggested hot carbon feedstock gas fed through moving nozzles could effectively lead nanotubes to grow for as long as the catalyst remains active. Because tubes with different chiralities grow at different speeds, they could then be separated by length, and slower-growing types could be completely eliminated.
One additional step that involves etching away some of the nanotubes could then allow specific chiralities to be harvested, they determined.
The lab’s work to define the mechanisms of nanotube growth led them to think about whether the speed of growth as a function of individual tubes’ chirality could be useful. The angle of “kinks” in the growing nanotubes’ edges determines how energetically amenable they are to adding new carbon atoms.
“The catalyst particles are moving as the nanotubes grow, and that’s principally important,” said lead author Bets, a researcher in Yakobson’s group. “If your feedstock keeps moving away, you get a moving window where you’re feeding some tubes and not the others.”
The paper’s reference to Lamarck giraffes — a 19th-century theory of how they evolved such long necks — isn’t entirely out of left field, Bets said.
“It works as a metaphor because you move your ‘leaves’ away and the tubes that can reach it continue growing fast, and those that cannot just die out,” she said. “Eventually, all the nanotubes that are just a tiny bit slow will ‘die.’”
Speed is only part of the strategy. In fact, they suggest nanotubes that are a little slower should be the target to assure a harvest of single chiralities.
Because nanotubes of different chiralities grow at their own rates, a batch would likely exhibit tiers. Chemically etching the longest nanotubes would degrade them, preserving the next level of tubes. Restoring the feedstock could then allow the second-tier nanotubes to continue growing until they are ready to be culled, Bets said.
“There are three or four laboratory studies that show nanotube growth can be reversed, and we also know it can be restarted after etching,” she said. “So all the parts of our idea already exist, even if some of them are tricky. Close to equilibrium, you will have the same proportionality between growth and etching speeds for the same tubes. If it’s all nice and clean, then you can absolutely, precisely pick the tubes you target.”
The Yakobson lab won’t make them, as it focuses on theory, not experimentation. But other labs have turned past Rice theories into products like boron buckyballs.
“I’m pretty sure every single one of our reviewers were experimentalists, and they didn’t see any contradictions to it working,” Bets said. “Their only complaint, of course, was that they would like experimental results right now, but that’s not what we do.”
She hopes more than a few labs will pick up the challenge. “In terms of science, it’s usually more beneficial to give ideas to the crowd,” Bets said. “That way, those who have interest can do it in 100 different variations and see which one works. One guy trying it might take 100 years.”
Yakobson added, “We don’t want to be that ‘guy.’ We don’t have that much time.”
Yakobson is the Karl F. Hasselmann Professor of Engineering and a professor of materials science and nanoengineering and of chemistry.
The National Science Foundation (1605848) and the Robert Welch Foundation (C-1490) supported the research.
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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.
Newswise — HOUSTON – (Nov. 2, 2022) – When you hit your finger with a hammer, you feel the pain immediately. And you react immediately.
But what if the pain comes 20 minutes after the hit? By then, the injury might be harder to heal.
Scientists and engineers at Rice University say the same is true for the environment. If a chemical spill in a river goes unnoticed for 20 minutes, it might be too late to remediate.
Their living bioelectronic sensors can help. A team led by Rice synthetic biologists Caroline Ajo-Franklin andJonathan (Joff) Silberg and lead authors Josh Atkinson and Lin Su, both Rice alumni, have engineered bacteria to quickly sense and report on the presence of a variety of contaminants.
Their study in Nature shows the cells can be programmed to identify chemical invaders and report within minutes by releasing a detectable electrical current.
Such “smart” devices could power themselves by scavenging energy in the environment as they monitor conditions in settings like rivers, farms, industry and wastewater treatment plants and to ensure water security, according to the researchers.
The environmental information communicated by these self-replicating bacteria can be customized by replacing a single protein in the eight-component, synthetic electron transport chain that gives rise to the sensor signal.
“I think it’s the most complex protein pathway for real-time signaling that has been built to date,” said Silberg, director of Rice’s Systems, Synthetic and Physical Biology Ph.D. Program. “To put it simply, imagine a wire that directs electrons to flow from a cellular chemical to an electrode, but we’ve broken the wire in the middle. When the target molecule hits, it reconnects and electrifies the full pathway.”
“It’s literally a miniature electrical switch,” Ajo-Franklin said.
“You put the probes into the water and measure the current,” she said. “It’s that simple. Our devices are different because the microbes are encapsulated. We’re not releasing them into the environment.”
The researchers’ proof-of-concept bacteria was Escherichia coli, and their first target was thiosulfate, a dichlorination agent used in water treatment that can cause algae blooms. And there were convenient sources of water to test: Galveston Beach and Houston’s Brays and Buffalo bayous.
They collected water from each. At first, they attached their E. coli to electrodes, but the microbes refused to stay put. “They don’t naturally stick to an electrode,” Ajo-Franklin said. “We’re using strains that don’t form biofilms, so when we added water, they’d fall off.”
When that happened, the electrodes delivered more noise than signal.
Enlisting co-author Xu Zhang, a postdoctoral researcher in Ajo-Franklin’s lab, they encapsulated sensors into agarosein the shape of a lollipop that allowed contaminants in but held the sensors in place, reducing the noise.
“Xu’s background is in environmental engineering,” Ajo-Franklin said. “She didn’t come in and say, ‘Oh, we have to fix the biology.’ She said, ‘What can we do with the materials?’ It took great, innovative work on the materials side to make the synthetic biology shine.”
With the physical constraints in place, the labs first encoded E. coli to express a synthetic pathway that only generates current when it encounters thiosulfate. This living sensor was able to sense this chemical at levels less than 0.25 millimoles per liter, far lower than levels toxic to fish.
In another experiment, E. coli was recoded to sense an endocrine disruptor. This also worked well, and the signals were greatly enhanced when conductive nanoparticles custom-synthesized by Su were encapsulated with the cells in the agarose lollipop. The researchers reported these encapsulated sensors detect this contaminant up to 10 times faster than the previous state-of-the-art devices.
The study began by chance when Atkinson and Moshe Baruch of Ajo-Franklin’s group at Berkeley Lawrence National Laboratory set up next to each other at a 2015 synthetic biology conference in Chicago, with posters they quickly realized outlined different aspects of the same idea.
“We had neighboring posters because of our last names,” said Atkinson. “We spent most of the poster session chatting about each other’s projects and how there were clear synergies in our interests in interfacing cells with electrodes and electrons as an information carrier.”
“Josh’s poster had our first module: how to take chemical information and turn it into biochemical information,” Ajo-Franklin recalled. “Moshe had the third module: How to take biochemical information and turn it into an electrical signal.
“The catch was how to link these together,” she said. “The biochemical signals were a little different.”
“We said, ‘We need to get together and talk about this!’” Silberg recalled. Within six months, the new collaborators won seed funding from the Office of Naval Research, followed by a grant, to develop the idea.
“Joff’s group brought in the protein engineering and half of the electron transfer pathway,” Ajo-Franklin said. “My group brought the other half of the electron transport pathway and some of the materials efforts.” The collaboration ultimately brought Ajo-Franklin herself to Rice in 2019 as a CPRIT Scholar.
“We have to give so much credit to Lin and Josh,” she said. “They never gave up on this project, and it was incredibly synergistic. They would bounce ideas back and forth and through that interchange solved a lot of problems.”
“Each of which another student could spend years on,” Silberg added.
“Both Josh and I spent several years of our Ph.D.s working on this, with the pressure of graduating and moving on to the next stage of our careers,” said Su, a visiting graduate student in Ajo-Franklin’s lab after graduating from Southeast University in China. “I had to extend my visa multiple times to stay and finish the research.”
Silberg said the design’s complexity goes far beyond the signaling pathway. “The chain has eight components that control electron flow, but there are other components that build the wires that go into the molecules,” he said. “There are a dozen-and-a-half components with almost 30 metal or organic cofactors. This thing’s massive compared to something like our mitochondrial respiratory chains.”
All credited the invaluable assistance of co-author George Bennett, Rice’s E. Dell Butcher Professor Emeritus and a research professor in biosciences, in making the necessary connections.
Silberg said he sees engineered microbes performing many tasks in the future, from monitoring the gut microbiome to sensing contaminants like viruses, improving upon the successful strategy of testing wastewater plants for SARS-CoV-19 during the pandemic.
“Real-time monitoring becomes pretty important with those transient pulses,” he said. “And because we grow these sensors, they’re potentially pretty cheap to make.”
To that end, the team is collaborating with Rafael Verduzco, a Rice professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and of materials science and nanoengineering who leads a recent $2 million National Science Foundation grant with Ajo-Franklin, Silberg, bioscientist Kirstin Matthews and civil and environmental engineer Lauren Stadler to develop real-time wastewater monitoring.
“The type of materials we can make with Raphael takes this to a whole new level,” Ajo-Franklin said.
Silberg said the Rice labs are working on design rules to develop a library of modular sensors. “I hope that when people read this, they recognize the opportunities,” he said.
Silberg is the Stewart Memorial Professor of BioSciences and a professor of bioengineering at Rice. Ajo-Franklin is a professor of biosciences. Atkinson is a visiting National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at Aarhus University, Denmark, and has an affiliation with the University of Southern California. Su is a postdoctoral research associate and a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Cambridge.
The research was supported by the Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences of the U.S. Department of Energy (DE-SC0014462), the Office of Naval Research (0001418IP00037, N00014-17-1-2639, N00014-20-1-2274), the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (RR190063), the National Science Foundation (1843556), the Department of Energy Office of Science Graduate Student Research Program (DE SC0014664), the Lodieska Stockbridge Vaughn Fellowship and the China Scholarship Council Fellowship (CSC-201606090098).
Newswise — HOUSTON – (Oct. 19, 2022) – It’s a mystery how human thoughts and dreams emerge from electrical pulses in the brain’s estimated 100 trillion synapses, and Rice University neuroengineer Chong Xie dreams of changing that by creating a system that can record all the electrical activity in a living brain.
In a recently published study in Nature Biomedical Engineering, Xie and colleagues described their latest achievement toward that goal, a 3D electrode array that allows them to map the locations and activity of up to 1 million potential synaptic links in a living brain based on recordings of the millisecond-scale evolution of electrical pulses in tens of thousands of neurons in a cubic millimeter of brain tissue.
“The thing that is novel about this work is the recording density,” said Xie, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice and a core member of the Rice Neuroengineering Initiative. “Microcircuits in the brain are very mysterious. We don’t have many ways to map their activity, especially volumetrically. We want to deliver very dense recordings of the cortex because those are important, scientifically, for understanding how brain circuits work.”
Xie collaborated on the study with colleagues from Rice and the University of California, San Francisco, including Loren Frank of UCSF and co-corresponding author Lan Luan of Rice.
Neurons are small. Each cubic millimeter of brain tissue contains about 100,000. That density is roughly the same for humans and other mammals, including the rodents that are the subject of experiments in Xie’s lab. The processing power of the brain arises from synaptic connections between neurons. Synaptically linked neuron pairs are connected by narrow bridges of tissue called axons, which are just a few millionths of a meter in diameter.
Xie’s team has spent years developing a material called nanoelectronic thread (NET) that is thin, ultraflexible and biocompatible, a trifecta of properties for making minimally invasive electrode implants. In previous studies, Xie’s team has demonstrated techniques for emplanting tightly packed NET arrays of up to 128 electrodes. The researchers also showed their arrays could stay in place for up to 10 months, recording the pulsed spikes of electricity, or action potentials, in nearby neurons.
“When neurons fire action potentials, there are very faint electrical signals coming out of them,” Xie said. “You have to place the electrodes very close to each neuron in order to capture that signal. Usually, that means a distance less than 100 microns.”
Using electrodes to record neuronal spikes has been a primary technique in neuroscience for decades, but the evolution of electrode materials has gradually transformed the implantation of neural electrodes from highly invasive procedures that damaged the very brain tissue the electrodes were meant to measure to procedures that result in no measurable tissue damage.
One of the primary focuses of Xie’s lab is scaling up the size of its implant arrays. In the new study, Xie and colleagues, including Hanlin Zhu, one of the lead graduate students on the project, implanted arrays of 1,024 NET electrodes in a 1 cubic millimeter volume of brain tissue.
“The primary signals we try to measure are the electrical spikes coming from neurons,” Xie said. “That’s how they communicate. And one thing we care a lot about and really want to understand is how neurons are connected.”
Xie said there is no straightforward way to probe synaptic connections
“Axons can be very long, and each neuron can be connected by many thousands of others,” he said. “It’s a very, very, very messy network. And probing it is an extremely challenging task, especially while the brain is working.”
The density of the new electrode array, together with its ability to capture millisecond-by-millisecond changes in the electrical spikes of individual neurons allowed Xie and co-authors to decipher potential synaptic links between neuron pairs.
“When the synapse works, you usually see a typical pattern when you look at the firing activity of the two neurons,” Xie said.
It takes a bit of time for the electrical impulse that starts in the presynaptic neurons to propagate down the axon and activate the postsynaptic neuron, he said.
“We record many, many spikes, and then we need to sort the spikes and attribute each of them to individual neurons,” he said. “We know the location of each electrode, or channel. And each channel records no more than a few neurons at a time. Each neuron is also typically recorded by more than one contact as well. So, you can do something akin to triangulation to identify the location of individual neurons.”
Once the neurons are mapped, it’s relatively easy to calculate the distance between them and from that, the propagation time for synaptic activation.
The 1,024-electrode array gave Xie’s team a ratio of approximately one electrode per 100 neurons in the cubic millimeter volume of brain tissue under study. The lab is working to create denser arrays that pack more electrodes into the same volume.
The vast majority of neurons in people’s brains are unused, despite the fact that our brains typically consume about as much energy as can be supplied by the body. Neuroscientists don’t fully understand why the brain has so many unused neurons, and Xie said that’s a factor his team considers in the design of their electrode arrays.
“I want to capture as much of the interactivity as possible,” he said. “I would argue that we don’t need a 1-to-1 ratio of electrodes to neurons to capture all of it, and it is indeed my dream to capture all the interactivity.”
The research was supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (R01NS102917, U01NS115588, R01NS109361, UF1NS107667), the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (K25HL140153), the Welch Foundation (F-1941-20170325) and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
