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.
To put the $370 billion in subsidies to work, the US needs to build new infrastructure and manage a lot of regulatory hurdles.
Maywood Riverfront Park was built on the site of eight former industrial properties in Los Angeles County.
Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Climate change is colliding with old factory sites where soil or water contamination still exist, and the most vulnerable populations are particularly at risk.
Many Americans reacted with outrage to the Supreme Court’s decision to dismantle the constitutional right to abortion.
AP Photo/Rick Bowmer
In contrast to their reaction to gay rights or the war in Ukraine, relatively few companies have openly criticized the Supreme Court ruling ending a constitutional right to abortion.
President Joe Biden authorized use of the Defense Production Act to ramp up production of several climate-friendly technologies.
Werner Slocum/NREL
Other presidents used the Defense Production Act to boost fossil fuel supplies. Biden is now using it to boost clean energy. But just ramping up production isn’t enough to succeed.
Muscovites rushed to buy furniture and other goods from IKEA before it closed its Russian stores.
AP Photo/Vladimir Kondrashov
The world’s largest energy companies are used to doing business in risky places with difficult partners. But with war in Ukraine, preserving their reputations outweighs profits.
Together with artifacts from the past, ancient DNA can fill in details about our ancient ancestors.
Nina R/Wikimedia Commons
A new study doubles the age of ancient DNA in sub-Saharan Africa, revealing how people moved, mingled and had children together over the last 50,000 years.
Guy Stewart Callendar connected carbon dioxide concentrations with rising temperatures.
GS Callendar Archive, University of East Anglia
The social cost helps regulators factor in harm from climate change when they consider new rules and purchases, like buying electric- vs. gas-powered trucks for the Postal Service.
A Bohemian waxwing eating mountain ash berries.
Lisa Hupp, USFWS/Flickr
Forests around the world will need to shift their ranges to adapt to climate change. But many trees and plants rely on animals to spread their seeds widely, and those partners are declining.
The public often assumes that scientists are atheists. The reality, however, is more complex.
SIphotography/iStock via Getty Images
Two sociologists conducted interviews with atheist scientists and found that their views on religion are not as strident as the public perceives. Some even go to church.
Eunice Foote described the greenhouse gas effects of carbon dioxide in 1856.
Carlyn Iverson/NOAA Climate.gov
The results of Foote’s simple experiments were confirmed through hundreds of tests by scientists in the US and Europe. It happened more than a century ago.
In 1872, John Gast painted ‘American Progress,’ showing trains and roads spreading across the American West.
John Gast, Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons
Disasters highlight the cost of society’s love of efficiency. Nature, in contrast, favors resilience. Being more like nature offers benefits for society, especially in the face of the climate crisis.
Maker spaces give engineers and designers the tools to build low-cost medical equipment using locally available materials.
Brandon Martin, Rice University
Engineering students in Malawi and Tanzania have used the materials and tools available to them to build ventilators, personal protective equipment and UV disinfection systems.
Price gouging during disasters further shuts out those living in poverty.
AP Photo/Eric Gay
Some economists have defended price gouging, saying it helps increase supply and prevent against hoarding. An ethicist suggests this might be missing the point.
Single and happy on Valentine’s Day/
anandaBGD via Getty Images Collections E+
From Nairobi to Los Angeles, pandemic lockdowns have cleared pollution from the skies. But those blue vistas may be temporary, and shutdowns aren’t slowing climate change.