Entries by Carrie Masiello

Earth Science Students Participate in Rice University’s 90 Second Thesis Competition

The Earth Science Ph.D. program fielded its first team of student participants in the university-wide 90 second thesis competition this spring.  Students Tamunoisoala LongJohn, Harsha Vora, Tuo Zhang, Zuolin Liu, and Lacey Pyle had 90 seconds to describe their Ph.D. thesis topics to a diverse panel of judges.  Follow this link here to see their […]

Charcoal Disrupts Soil Microbial Communication Through a Combination of Signal Sorption and Hydrolysis

Charcoal Disrupts Soil Microbial Communication Through a Combination of Signal Sorption and Hydrolysis http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acsomega.6b00085 The presence of charcoal in soil triggers a range of biological effects that are not yet predictable, in part because it interferes with the functioning of chemical signals that microbes release into their environment to communicate. We do not fully understand […]

New methods to track microbes’ behavior in the environment

Volatile Gas Production by Methyl Halide Transferase: An In-situ Reporter of Gene Expression in Soil http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.6b01415 Traditional visual reporters of gene expression have only very limited use in soils because their outputs are challenging to detect through the soil matrix. This severely restricts our ability to study time-dependent microbial gene expression in one of the […]

Chemical and Isotopic Thresholds in Charring: Implications for the Interpretation of Charcoal Mass and Isotopic Data

Chemical and Isotopic Thresholds in Charring: Implications for the Interpretation of Charcoal Mass and Isotopic Data Lacey A. Pyle, William C. Hockaday, Thomas Boutton, Kyriacos Zygourakis, Timothy J. Kinney, and Caroline A. Masiello Charcoal plays a significant role in the long-term carbon cycle, and its use as a soil amendment is promoted as a C […]