In a milestone moment for science education and collaboration, Rice University hosted its first DUNE-TECH (DUNE Training ExperienCe Hub) camp this June, drawing students, researchers and scientists from across the country into the world of neutrino physics and computing. The weeklong event held on Rice’s campus was designed to prepare participants for meaningful engagement with the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) — the most ambitious neutrino experiment ever undertaken in the United States.

Researchers from Brown University and Morgan State University have developed a smartphone-based method to measure skin tone using color analysis, offering a more accessible way to address racial bias in pulse oximetry. By capturing images of the skin and calculating a standardized color metric known as the individual typology angle (ITA), the team showed that smartphones can produce accurate skin-tone readings comparable to those of expensive clinical devices. The approach works best under controlled lighting conditions and could help improve the accuracy of oxygen level monitoring in patients with darker skin tones. This technique may support more equitable healthcare practices by providing clinicians with a standardized, low-cost tool for skin-tone assessment.

A research team led by Rice University has introduced an innovative strategy that uses enzymes to convert one terpenoid structure into many different forms, streamlining synthetic pathways and redefining the approach to natural product synthesis.

Physicists from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) have, in collaboration with colleagues from Darmstadt and Dresden, examined the movement in clusters of active, self-propelled, flexible polymer chains. In the process, they identified new physical laws, with which they also can describe living clusters of worms and tentacles. In the journal Nature Communications, they describe that the active movement of living individuals causes novel internal entanglements to arise, which can stiffen such a dynamic cluster to the extent that it practically becomes a solid.