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Pasadena City College students are the top users in the entire country of a free online textbook resource called OpenStax. At PCC, over 46,000 students are using a free OpenStax textbook instead of the print editions, leading to an estimated savings of $4.2 million. OpenStax, a nonprofit based at Rice University in Texas, said PCC topped the list of schools nationwide where students take advantage of the free textbook technology for the 2017-2018 academic year. OpenStax textbooks are in use at 48 percent of colleges and universities in the U.S....

Rice University is hosting a forum with political leaders and scholars to discuss one of the hottest social issues of the year—immigration—on Wednesday, April 19, at 6:30 p.m. in the Grand Hall of the Rice Memorial Center. Titled “USA Immigration: Truths and Myths,” the forum will seek to inform and shed light on the complicated issue of Hispanic immigration. “It is imperative that the community at large be better informed on immigration issues and have an opportunity, in a nonpartisan setting, to participate in the formulation of future U.S. Immigration policy,” says Dr. Dorothy Caram, co-chair of the event. The...

Houston schools take in displaced college students Aubrey Phillips scanned the large hall for familiar faces Saturday morning. In almost no time, she spotted someone from a Spanish class and a guy who took math with her last year. Phillips expected to see people she knew while registering for classes at Rice University, but it still seemed a bit odd, she said. Two weeks ago, they were moving into dormitory rooms at Tulane University in anticipation of a new school year. Now they are at a university they did not want but seemed grateful to have in the wake of...

Company says security glitch in search tool is fixed A security flaw that could have caused big trouble for Google and its new Desktop Search tool has been fixed, thanks to a Rice University professor and two of his graduate students. Left unchanged, the glitch could have made accessible via the Internet private data stored on personal computers. Dan Wallach, an assistant computer science professor at Rice University, and students Seth Nielson and Seth Fogarty, were doing a project for a computer security class designed to see if Google's Desktop Search tool was safe for users. They discovered that an...

Hi Hugh, I am a Professor of Computer Science at Rice University who has followed the evolution of word processing technology over the past 30 years. A cursory glance at the "Killian documents" shows that they are forgeries, the product of a modern word processing system. Even the most powerful word processing systems available in the early 70's were not designed to produce propotionally spaced documents. Moreover, no mechanical typewriter, even with variable letter widths like the IBM Executive typewriter, could produce precise propotional spacing comparable to a modern word processor. Precise proportional type-setting is a very demanding computational problem....

Rice to open resource center for gays - Transgender, bisexual students can also get help Daniel Lenhoff wants to put Rice University on the map as a college that is openly welcoming to gays and lesbians. This fall, the private school will open its new lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender resource center, making Rice one of only a few U.S. colleges to house such an office. "We wanted a place that was confidential, a place people could go to deal with questions about sexuality and not be afraid of being stigmatized," said Lenhoff, 21, a senior and co-president of Pride,...

Rice University will resume considering race and ethnicity in admissions decisions beginning in fall 2004 and the University of Texas-Austin is proposing to follow suit in fall 2005, the schools announced Monday. The announcements come five months after a divided Supreme Court ruled that universities can give minority students a boost in admissions, in effect overturning the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' 1996 Hopwood decision, which banned racial preference in Texas. "We have thoroughly studied the matter through the summer and into the fall," said Rice President Malcolm Gillis. "Since 1996, we have tried race-neutral means, but these alone...

Monday was a tough day for another Florida school. Notre Dame's Chris Niesel pitched a six-hit gem to lead the Irish to a 3-1 win over top-seeded Florida State and complete the field for the 2002 College World Series. The Seminoles beat the Irish 12-5 on Sunday to force Monday's Game 3. South Carolina stunned defending champion Miami on Sunday with five runs in the 9th inning to eliminate the 'Canes and advance to Omaha. • Horns humble Houston | Tigers take out Razorbacks • Rice, Stanford and Georgia Tech advance on Saturday