HOUSTON - (March 9, 2016) - Rice University bioengineers have introduced a fast computational method to model tissue-specific metabolic pathways. Their algorithm may help researchers find new therapeutic targets for cancer and other diseases.

Metabolic pathways are immense networks of biochemical reactions that keep organisms functioning and are also implicated in many diseases.

They present the kind of challenges "big data" projects are designed to address. In recent years, computer scientists have built many ways to model these networks in humans, particularly since the 2007 introduction of the first genome-scale model of human metabolic pathways.

Damaging cyberattacks on a global scale continue to surface every day. Some nations are better prepared than others to deal with online threats from criminals, terrorists and rogue nations.

Data-mining experts from the University of Maryland and Virginia Tech recently co-authored a book that ranked the vulnerability of 44 nations to cyberattacks. Lead author V.S. Subrahmanian discussed this research on Wednesday, March 9 at a panel discussion hosted by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C.

The United States ranked 11th safest, while several Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Norway and Finland) ranked the safest. China, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia and South Korea ranked among the most vulnerable.

How much time and effort do you spend chewing?

Although you probably enjoy a few leisurely meals every day, chances are that you spend very little time and muscular effort chewing your food. That kind of easy eating is very unusual. For perspective, our closest relatives, chimpanzees, spend almost half their day chewing, and with much greater force.

When and how did eating become so easy? And what were its consequences?

Using natural gas instead of coal or oil in electricity generation could have a significant effect on net carbon emissions into the atmosphere. By contrast, the benefits of using natural gas instead of petroleum products to drive vehicles are negligible, according to research published in the International Journal of Global Warming.

ESA astronaut Tim Peake took this image circling Earth 400 km up in the International Space Station. He commented: “Sometimes looking down on Earth at night can be kinda spooky.”

Video games are a favorite activity of children, yet any affect on their health is often perceived to be negative.

A new paper in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology looked for an association between the amount of time spent playing video games and children's mental health and cognitive and social skills, and found that playing video games may have positive effects on young children.