media.rice.edu

07/03/2008 - Memorial service for Ruth Whitaker will be held July 6 at Rice

webeditor@rice.edu — 2008-07-03

07/03/2008

Memorial service for Ruth Whitaker will be held July 6 at Rice

Gil and Ruth Whitaker in the Gil and Ruth Whitaker Business Information Center at the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management.

A memorial service for Ruth Whitaker will be held at 2 p.m. July 6 at the Rice Chapel.

Whitaker died July 1 after a long illness. She was the wife of the late Gil Whitaker, former dean of the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management.

"Ruth had been ill for several years but maintained the strength to be an adviser and friend to me and many others at Rice University," said Bill Glick, dean of the Jones School. "She was a great asset and support to Gil for over 50 years and helped him in building the Jones School into the excellent program it is today."

The Whitaker family has requested that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to a charity or to the Ruth and Gilbert Whitaker Endowed Scholarship fund.

07/02/2008 - Berkeley police share details about contents of missing student's car

webeditor@rice.edu — 2008-07-02

07/02/2008

Berkeley police share details about contents of missing student's car

BY B.J. ALMOND
Rice News staff

Police in Berkeley, Calif., reported this week that books and handwritten notes about how to establish a new identity were found in the car that belongs to missing Rice University student Matthew Wilson.

MATTHEW WILSON

Wilson's silver 2004 four-door Dodge Neon was towed as an abandoned vehicle from a residential street in West Berkeley June 10. Local police believe the car had been parked there since early May.

"This information gives us hope that Matthew is alive, and our thoughts and prayers are with him and his family," said Robin Forman, dean of undergraduates.

Wilson, a 21-year-old junior majoring in computer science, has been missing since he was last seen by his roommate Dec. 14 in their off-campus apartment.

The Berkeley police have been in communication with Wilson's family and have released the car to them.

06/27/2008 - Rice engineers help design a pulse-less pump for heart replacement

webeditor@rice.edu — 2008-06-27

06/27/2008

Rice engineers help design a pulse-less pump for heart replacement
Researchers collaborate with Texas Heart Institute, MicroMed Cardiovascular and University of Houston on NIH-funded study

BY B.J. ALMOND
Rice News staff

Rice University engineers are collaborating with researchers at the Texas Heart Institute (THI) at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital and others to develop two heart-assist pumps that individually perform the function of the left and right ventricles.


	MATTEO PASQUALI

Rather than mimic the pulse of the natural heart, the devices for this study pump blood continuously. The device for the left ventricle -- the heart's main pumping chamber -- circulates blood throughout the body; the one for the right ventricle pumps blood to and from the lungs. The continuous-flow pumps are smaller -- about the size of a C battery -- and simpler than their complex predecessors that were programmed to pump with a pulse-like rhythm.

Led by THI, the research team received a $2.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health for this project. In addition to THI and Rice, other members of the team are from MicroMed Cardiovascular Inc. and the University of Houston. Rice's role is to develop a computer model to analyze blood flow and any damage to the blood cells and platelets that might result as blood travels through the pump. Depending on their analysis, the Rice researchers may then suggest modifications to the design before the pumps are tested in animals.

"Because these pumps will be implanted for the long term, we have to make sure that blood damage is minimal," said Matteo Pasquali, Rice professor in chemical and biomolecular engineering and in chemistry.

The engineers will monitor the computer models for two main types of blood damage: excessive release of hemoglobin from the red blood cells, which can be toxic to the kidneys and liver, and the platelet activation process that can lead to formation of white thrombi, or clots of white blood cells, which could cause a blockage in the brain or small blood vessels.

"We are trying to understand why and where these thrombi form so we can suggest how to change the shape of the pump," Pasquali said.

Also of concern to the engineers is how to make the pumps respond to the body's changing needs for blood, such as during exercise, and how to ensure that the left and right ventricles stay in sync with each other.

"The heart has a built-in self-regulating ability," Pasquali said. "Since the two pumps constituting the total artificial heart bypass the whole heart, it's important to build a mechanism for regulation in the devices. Otherwise, you could get an accumulation of blood in the lungs if the left pump is pumping too slow compared to the right pump."


COURTESY PHOTO
Rather than mimic the pulse of the natural heart, the MicroMed-DeBakey VAD (ventricular assist device) pumps blood continuously.

Researchers at the University of Houston are investigating the control mechanism that will mimic the self-regulating function of the heart.

Pasquali is collaborating with Marek Behr on creating computer simulations for the pumps. Behr is the holder of the chair for Computational Analysis of Technical Systems in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at RWTH Aachen University in Aachen, Germany. Previously a professor at Rice, Behr still maintains a close connection here as an adjunct professor in chemical and biomolecular engineering.

"The ventricular assist device (VAD) design is driven by contradictory demands," Behr said. "On one hand, the pumps need to be made smaller to ease implantation and use in children. But on the other hand, the pumps need to deliver adequate blood flow and cause minimal damage to the passing blood cells."

The researchers will apply what they learn from computer simulation to physical models of the pump that are manufactured and tested in laboratories at MicroMed. This Houston-based company makes the MicroMed DeBakey VAD that is being used for this study. The pump, which is already used in human patients in Europe, is named for heart surgeon Michael DeBakey, now chancellor emeritus of Baylor College of Medicine.

DeBakey pioneered the development of heart pumps. In the 1960s, he collaborated with chemical engineering professor Bill Akers, who led the Biomedical Engineering Laboratory at Rice. They produced the first successful left ventricular heart bypass device that was a precursor to the VADs used as the base design in the current research project.

Once the researchers get satisfactory results from the computer simulation and laboratory models, they will test the total artificial heart in calves, which will pave the way for testing in humans.


	DHRUV ARORA
	The engineers will monitor the computer models for two main types of blood damage: excessive release of hemoglobin from the red blood cells, which can be toxic to the kidneys and liver, and activation of the process that causes clots, or thrombi, of white blood cells to form in the pump, from which they can detach and cause a blockage in the brain or small blood vessels.

The engineers will monitor the computer models for two main types of blood damage: excessive release of hemoglobin from the red blood cells, which can be toxic to the kidneys and liver, and activation of the process that causes clots, or thrombi, of white blood cells to form in the pump, from which they can detach and cause a blockage in the brain or small blood vessels.

"We have been working in this field for more than 40 years, and the technical challenges inherent in developing a total artificial heart have, to date, limited its application," said the study's principal investigator, Bud Frazier, who is chief of Cardiopulmonary Transplantation and of the Center for Cardiac Support and director of Surgical Research at the Texas Heart Institute.

With heart failure the leading cause of death in the United States, the research on VADs could save lives and money. More than five million people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with heart failure. The American Heart Association estimates the direct and indirect cost of heart failure in the U.S. for 2008 to be nearly $35 billion.

"The availability of an effective, reliable mechanical replacement for the failing human heart would have an enormous impact on health care," said Denton Cooley, THI president and surgeon-in-chief.

The grant was awarded under the NIH Bioengineering Research Partnership, a special program to encourage collaborations among medical and engineering experts.

06/27/2008 - Rice Readers announces July book choice

webeditor@rice.edu — 2008-06-27

06/27/2008

Rice Readers announces July book choice

Rice Readers will discuss "The Secret Life of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd at noon July 30 in the Humanities Building, Room 226.

Set in South Carolina in 1964, "The Secret Life of Bees" tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted black "stand-in-mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily decides to spring them both free from jail. They escape to Tiburon, S.C. -- a town that holds the secret to her mother's past. Taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters, Lily is introduced to their mesmerizing world of bees and honey -- and the Black Madonna.

For more information about the book club, contact Joyce Bald at 713-348-4024 or joyce@rice.edu.

06/27/2008 - CRC's first brick laid

webeditor@rice.edu — 2008-06-27

06/27/2008

CRC's first brick laid


JEFF FITLOW
The deans of Natural Sciences and Engineering laid the first brick for the Collaborative Research Center Thursday. Pictured from left are Sallie Keller-McNulty, dean of the George R. Brown School of Engineering, and Kathleen Matthews, dean of the Wiess School of Natural Sciences. Located at the corner of University Boulevard and Main Street, the CRC will house and foster joint research between Rice's experts in engineering, computer science, chemistry and the physical, biological and mathematical sciences and Texas Medical Center medical researchers and physicians. The 10-story building is scheduled to be completed in April 2009.

06/27/2008 - Rice wins best-place-to-work trophy

webeditor@rice.edu — 2008-06-27

06/27/2008

Rice wins best-place-to-work trophy

PHOTOS BY JEFF FITLOW

06/27/2008 - The Way I See It: Love of baseball spans several generations

webeditor@rice.edu — 2008-06-27

06/27/2008

The Way I See It
Love of baseball spans three generations

BY JAY ST. CLAIR
Special to the Rice News

I love L.A.

Before the song, before the Dodgers slugged their last Brooklyn walkoff and left their trolley cars, before the Lakers shunned the Minnesotan tundra and made a fast break for the sun, before the Rams were sold to St. Louis by a showgirl, before the obsession of media and celebrity became the message of the place, I loved L.A.

I was born at Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital. I would return there two years later, shuttling from Children's Hospital of L.A., as I was fully paralyzed with polio, headed for an iron lung. Instead I was treated with experimental drugs and a protocol developed by one Jonas Salk, obtained through my pediatrician, William Mapes, a golfing buddy of my grandfather. Grandpa simply wouldn't stop until he found a way [to cure me], because he wouldn't stand for the thought of me being unable to walk. It was simply unacceptable; we had a ballgame. We would always have a ballgame, Grandpa and me.


	JAY AND COLE ST. CLAIR

My grandfather's name was Cole. Jay Byron Cole.

Now, Grandpa would counsel and occasionally chastise, but he couldn't change the fact that I didn't like Dr. Mapes much at the time; he gave me a lot of shots. "Watch it, buster" was one impertinence I recall issuing in his direction a few years later, as the shots never seemed to stop. He remembered.

Twenty-five years later I walked into my former pediatrician's office at Children's Hospital, this time as a consultant charged with reorganizing the board and top management of the hospital. My Dr. Mapes was now the emeritus chief of staff and knew that the two of us again had serious business to deal with. But that didn't stop him from crying when he saw me stride in. Then he said, "Watch it, buster."

My grandparents raised me in a modest, comfortable home with a ubiquitous, southern colonial fa�ade that was used so often in movies and television (home to "Nanny and the Professor" and "The Hardy Boys") that it was rebuilt as a set about two miles away at 20th Century Fox, down at the end of the street and over Rancho Park Golf Course, as the occasional seagull flies. Everything in L.A. is touched by the movies somehow -- "In 1932 Clark Gable changed a tire at this intersection, while Claudia Colbert stopped traffic."

That house was a movie star. It had a large front yard framed with a white picket fence and squared with a lawn split by a brick walk lined with rose bushes, two huge (to me) sycamores rooted in each half.

For Grandpa and me, that front yard became our first baseball diamond. He taught me to hit -- right-handed at first, as I wanted to swing just like him. But he knew I was left-handed, and he taught me to throw and catch as a lefty. "You'll need to learn how to pitch," he explained, "because lefties are always expected to pitch. You've been given a gift from God, and He expects you to use it."

So I learned, throwing pitches over the roses lining the walk. He explained with a certain reverence how to throw an out drop ("bread and butter to a southpaw"), a screwball ("don't use it until you're grown or it'll make your hand hang inside out") and most importantly, the fastball. I learned to throw a fastball all different ways, because with finger-pressure, you can make it run in or fade away or drop or rise, which is important because a lefty isn't going to pitch much if you can't get right-handed batters out, so you need to work both sides of the plate, up and down. You can't be scared to work inside, and you can't worry about hitting the guy. He'll live. What does he want to do to you? You need to beat that batter for your team. They expect you to be brave.

I learned later that he had once been a lefty too, but in a strict Quaker family and community, where it was considered "sinister," a mark of the devil, and he was changed. He was required to write right-handed on the blackboard at the school for hours each day after class, at first upside down and backwards as his brain processed this prejudicial re-wiring, until he lost awareness of that particular gift from God.

He talked about the days when he and his three brothers would roll up their gloves, stuff them in their hip pockets, ride their bikes (or the cart pulled by the goat) over to the field in the park behind L.A. High School and play ball all day long. They'd start with "one-a-cat" until the others came. When you got three outs and you headed in to bat, you dropped your glove at your position for the guy on the other team, because you needed to share.

Later he would join the Army and train to join the doughboys under L.A.'s own Gen. Blackjack Pershing in the trenches of France. The "War to End All Wars" ended before he was called, but he was ready.

And he would be a Quaker no more. We were now good Presbyterians. He served on a quiet board of elders with Jimmy Stewart and Fred MacMurray, and together he directed little church-building projects (he was a homebuilder) that the two actors would fund, but only under strict anonymity.

In the center of downtown L.A., about three miles from Dodger Stadium, is Pershing Square. Grandpa liked to take me there and point out the names of his friends from L.A. High who didn't return from France or Belgium.

In 1958, the Dodgers came to town. I had no sense of Brooklyn, what it was and why they would surrender a baseball team that was of immediate value to L.A. Somewhere is a pennant I took home as a souvenir from the first regular-season Dodger game in L.A., in the Coliseum, with the famed Chinese Wall, actually an ugly screen hanging in left field.

Eight teams made up the National League then, and you played each team 18 times. And Vin Scully would take you through each of them on the radio with an unsurpassed knowledge of the game, a storyteller's magic and a grandfather's heart. [He was] another L.A. institution who has millions of people who feel like they grew up with [him] in their kitchen or their car. His voice was everywhere, and you loved the Dodgers because you loved him.

The next year, 1959, that team won the World Series against the White Sox, and I saw the fourth game, Roger Craig versus Early Wynn. Around the diamond (I'm rattling off the names from memory, just as you would do with your favorite teams -- forgive any inaccuracies) were John Roseboro, Gil Hodges, Charlie Neal, Maury Wills, Jim Gilliam, Wally Moon, Willie Davis and Duke Snider.

And on the mound were Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Johnny Podres, Roger Craig and Stan Williams. In the bullpen was Larry Sherry, who may have been the first "closer," although he never equaled his feats of that championship year. It was in the early '60s that Dick Radatz, Bob Lee and a few others began to define this role, moving the bullpen from a group of disenfranchised starters toward the current group of specialists. The Dodgers have always been a pitchers' team.

Ordinarily I would begin talking about Sandy Koufax, and I would not be able to stop any time soon. Suffice to say that he was everything I wanted to be in baseball. He would pitch in ways that made it look easy. Dodger fans became used to the idea that other teams should get three hits and strike out 12 times a game, and that a starting pitcher can indeed go 24 and three with 16 complete games, [have] an ERA barely over two and do it every year. After Koufax, Drysdale was just as good. It spoiled us for real baseball, perhaps for real life.

Grandpa had a series of heart problems over the last dozen years of his life, and we lost him in 1983 after a courageous fight he endured so that he could meet his first great granddaughter, Cole's sister Olivia. Cole was born three years later and never met his namesake.

When I watch Cole come in for Rice these days -- now that he is feeling himself again -- the events are surreal. Everything in the game changes. He enters often with the team behind, but when he comes in, the team soon begins to score. I can't justify causality in these events, but they do correlate. Things are under control. Three up, three down -- this is how the game is played. And it does remind me in that narrow way of those hallowed days with Sandy.

So now, here I am, watching my grandfather's namesake perform in his final days at Reckling, which has been his literal home for four years and symbolically the place where he entered as the greenest of rookies in 2004. [He] leaves as someone whom Wayne Graham describes as "Cole was Cole." As a parent it is humbling, the stuff of dreams and the hand of God. And the hand of Grandpa.

Cole heard everything my grandfather taught me and now has taken it for himself. He has achieved more than I dared envision for him, and Cole doubtless will remember his college baseball years as the most deeply moving of his life (as most major leaguers who have experienced Omaha say for themselves).

And now, he will look to the Dodgers for teaching. My Dodgers are now his Dodgers, an L.A. institution (apologies to Brooklyn). Southern California sires more major league ballplayers than anywhere, and I can tell you most young talents there are thinking about playing for the Dodgers. This gives the team a sense of unattainability, as if you could spend your major-league career working your way back to the Dodgers.

But Cole just begins there; he is a Dodger. It is both incomprehensible and the threshold of a dream.

A dream of my grandfather, fulfilled.

-- Jay St. Clair is father of Rice pitcher Cole St. Clair.

Rice's Cole St. Clair earns top honors for all-around excellence

Rice University pitcher Cole St. Clair, who returned for his senior season after being drafted by major league baseball and helped lead the Owls into this year's College World Series, has been selected as the winner of the 2008 Lowe's Senior CLASS Award in the baseball division. The award, chosen by a nationwide vote of coaches, media and fans, is presented annually to college baseball's outstanding NCAA Division I senior student-athlete.

FULL STORY

Some things ARE just meant to be
A reflection on the 2008 CWS and its stars

Tommy LaVergne takes a look back at the the 2008 College World Series and performance and life of pitcher Cole St. Clair and his teammates.

FULL STORY

06/27/2008 - Mail delivery to be halted during summer recess day

webeditor@rice.edu — 2008-06-27

06/27/2008

Mail delivery to be halted during summer recess day

The Rice University Post Office will be closed July 7 because of the summer recess day. Delivery Services will be staffed on that day from 8 a.m. to noon to receive mail and packages. There will be no regular scheduled delivery or pick-up of mail, and no outbound mail will be processed.

Departments that require mail delivery that morning must send an e-mail to umf@rice.edu. Deliveries will be made to these departments between 10 a.m. and noon.

Anyone expecting shipments from the Postal Service, FedEx, UPS or other couriers that require special handling during the recess should send an e-mail to umf@rice.edu. Provide the recipient's name, phone number, department, instructions for handling and the courier name. Unless other arrangements have been made, shipments will be held during the recess and distributed July 8.

06/27/2008 - NuRide offers affordable carpool options and rewards

webeditor@rice.edu — 2008-06-27

06/27/2008

NuRide offers affordable carpool options and rewards

What could be better than saving a few bucks on gas? How about doing so while helping the environment, meeting new people and earning free stuff?

Rice commuters can do so through NuRide, the nation�s largest online ride-sharing community where members are rewarded for sharing rides.

Free to join and free to use, NuRide combines features from eBay and online airline reservations. Employees use their Rice e-mail address to join the online community of commuters, create a user name and set their travel criteria, such as a preference for nonsmokers or a particular gender. Once they're in the system, they can list their date, departure and return times and destination and search for other drivers/riders going the same way at the same time.

If they find a matching trip and join it, both drivers and riders are notified via an e-mail from NuRide. Because participants get to rate the people they ride or drive with -- much like buyers and sellers on eBay leave feedback for each other -- users can check out someone's rating before agreeing to share a ride with them.

After a set number of miles of carpooling, participants start earning reward points that can be redeemed for store gift cards, discounts and other rewards from businesses that sponsor NuRide, such as Green Mountain Coffee Roasters and Jamba Juice.

To learn more or to join and start sharing rides, register at www.nuride.com. For additional information, contact the Rice University Transportation Department at 713-349-5223 or 713-348-5996.

06/26/2008 - Leadership Rice sends students to India

webeditor@rice.edu — 2008-06-26

06/26/2008

Leadership Rice sends students to India
Rice students learn cross-cultural leadership

BY JESSICA STARK
Rice News staff

This weekend, four Rice students will embark on a six-week, cross-continent, cross-cultural journey that promises to equip them for leadership in their classrooms and careers. As part of Leadership Rice's Summer Mentorship Experience (SME), the students are traveling to Pune, India, where two will work in a hospital and two will work at Virgo Engineers, a leading manufacturer of industrial valves.

The SME program is a competitive summer internship opportunity that enables Rice undergraduates to work with recognized leaders in public, private or nonprofit organizations, introducing students to prospective career paths and helping them understand what it takes to lead and succeed in different professions.


	COURTESY PHOTO

Before starting their internships, students attend intensive training sessions that focus on essential leadership concepts, prepare students to recognize and learn from effective leaders, and encourage them to influence up and across organizations even as interns. The students then apply this training on the job, benefiting the organizations that employ them and the mentors who oversee their learning and growth.

"The SME program is a segue to professional life," said Brad Smith, director of Leadership Rice. "It�s an opportunity for students to observe and practice leadership in a professional context, and also begin to discern what leadership roles they are best suited for."

More than 30 students are participating in this year's program at a variety of organizations in Houston, New York, Washington, D.C., and Pune. This is the first year the SME program has included mentorships in India, an expansion that fits well with Leadership Rice�s desire to help students become global leaders.

The placements in India have been facilitated by Mahesh Desai, chairman and CEO of Virgo Engineers and father of recent Rice graduate Sanya Desai. Impressed by the quality of education and experience his daughter enjoyed at Rice, Desai wanted to partner with the university in educating students to be global citizens. More specifically, he wanted to expose future leaders to India�s cultural, intellectual and professional resources, with the hope that as student participants become leaders in various sectors, they will continue to engage India both personally and professionally.

Through Leadership Rice, part of Rice�s Center for Civic Engagement, Desai was able to involve his company and a local charity hospital with which he is affiliated. At the hospital, two premed students, working with the hospital�s medical director and the head of the pediatric/neonatal ward, will compose a report about the Indian health-care system, shadow doctors, conduct research and make recommendations about medical information technology in India and participate in medical education programs such as antitobacco campaigns.

The two students at Virgo Engineers will work directly with Desai and the general manager of Virgo, Pune, to design a companywide financial information system, an investor relations Web site and a business plan for one of Virgo�s business units.

Alongside their work responsibilities, the students will complete written assignments that link the lessons learned during the classroom component of their training with their work experiences. They will also work together to prepare and deliver upon their return to campus a presentation that explores the nature of leadership in India and how it compares with leadership in American contexts. Through this presentation, the students traveling to India will be able to share their learning with the SME students working in other locations.

"A summer mentorship is much more than a standard internship," Smith explained. "Students are paired with high-level leaders, work on substantive projects and collaborate with peers and mentors to develop their capacity for leadership."

In India, the students will live together near their places of work and meet periodically to discuss their experiences and provide feedback to one another. Leadership Rice staff communicate regularly with all of the SME students and, in fact, visit each participating organization during the summer to ensure that students and mentors have the best possible experience.

�Students routinely emerge from the SME program excited about their potential and their future, and this year should be no exception,� Smith said. �The students headed to India, in particular, are thrilled about this opportunity. I can�t wait to see how much they learn and accomplish.�