Rice University convenes leaders to tackle urgent water challenges

Rice University

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Conference attendees pose for a group photo (Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University).

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Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University.

Rice University is fostering sustainable water and energy solutions by convening leaders across industry, policy and research to confront one of the most pressing challenges of our time: water scarcity and resilience.

The Rice WaTER Institute, in partnership with Noverram, hosted the Water Nexus Conference 2025 as part of Houston Energy and Climate Week. Held on Rice’s campus Sept. 16, the event brought together voices from across the ecosystem — researchers, entrepreneurs, investors, end users and policymakers — for a full day of discussions on the future of water. With keynote speakers, technical sessions and solution-driven panels, the program highlighted the urgent need for integrated approaches to ensure safe, reliable and sustainable water systems.

The conference opened with a keynote by Sarah Brody, partner at McKinsey & Co., who underscored the economic and infrastructural realities of water in the U.S. She pointed to the growing funding gap in water infrastructure — projected to swell from $110 billion to $195 billion by 2030 — but stressed that nearly half of this gap could be closed through innovative technologies, capital structuring and operational efficiency. Brody also flagged the water demand of Texas’ rapidly expanding data center industry, noting that 43% to 89% of planned sites in the state are in high water-stress regions, raising critical questions about long-term sustainability.

Rice faculty experts provided an overview of some of the technical innovations being developed on campus. Menachem Elimelech, head of the Rice Center for Membrane Excellence, spoke on advances in membrane-based desalination and wastewater reuse, highlighting how new materials can deliver fresh water more efficiently and with lower energy costs. Michael Wong, a leader of the Rice PFAS Abatement and Replacement Center, tackled one of the most urgent challenges facing the water sector: how to destroy per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS or “forever chemicals”) once removed from water. Qilin Li emphasized the opportunities to recover critical elements such as lithium and rare metals from mining wastewater, geothermal brines and industrial effluents — materials vital for the clean energy transition. Rice WaTER Institute director Pedro Alvarez discussed microbial and catalytic approaches for water purification and resilient infrastructure.

For Eric Willman, executive director of the Rice WaTER Institute, the conference was about breaking silos and ensuring collaboration.

“The mission of the Rice WaTER Institute is to bring different members of the water ecosystem and value chain together to communicate,” Willman said. “Usually, one of the greatest needs when it comes to water and sustainability is partnership and communication. This event gave people the chance to speak in their own language but still find common ground on the issues we all need to solve.”

Those issues spanned the spectrum of water’s role in industry and society. Panels examined produced water — the billions of gallons of briny wastewater generated by oil and gas production that can be up to five times saltier than seawater. Experts discussed the mounting risks this poses for both industry and the environment and potential pathways for treatment and reuse. Sessions on industrial water use highlighted the vulnerability of fast-growing sectors like pharmaceuticals, consumer goods and data centers, where operations depend heavily on reliable water access. Conversations on resiliency and risk assessment brought together stakeholders from municipalities and watersheds, including the Edwards Aquifer, to stress the need for localized approaches to solving scarcity.

James Rees, founder of Noverram and co-facilitator of the conference, emphasized that no single entity can solve these problems alone.

“Water is a difficult problem to solve, whether it’s scarcity, contamination or access,” Rees said. “There’s no silver bullet. You have to collaborate, and you have to talk to people with different skill sets. One of the biggest takeaways was how participants valued not just the technical discussions but also the chance to network and form partnerships that can move solutions forward.”

The urgency is particularly acute in Texas, where the state faces a 290 billion gallon water deficit by 2050 and global demand is outpacing supply by nearly 40%, Rees said.

Willman added that industry water use is expanding three times faster than municipal use, further straining resources.

“We need to find creative solutions for industry in particular to find alternate sources of water, reuse water and make investments to satisfy that growing demand,” Willman said. “The first step is assessing risk locally. Every region and every industry faces different challenges, and we have to build solutions that meet those realities.”

“Without water, you don’t have a business,” Rees added. “The conference underscored that whether you’re an energy company, a tech firm or a municipality, resiliency depends on how we access, treat and reuse water. Rice is helping lead the way by ensuring these conversations happen while advancing solutions through world-class research.”

 

Turning plastic waste into fuel

A University of Delaware-led research team has helped pave the way toward energy-efficient methods for plastic upcycling, reducing plastic pollution and promoting sustainable fuel production

University of Delaware

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Ali Kamali, a doctoral candidate in chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Delaware, inspects a sample of liquid fuel created from plastics. He is part of a UD-led research team that has developed a new type of catalyst that enhances conversion of plastic waste into liquid fuels more quickly and with fewer undesired byproducts than current methods. 

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Credit: Kathy F. Atkinson/ University of Delaware

Plastics are valued for their durability, but that quality also makes them difficult to break down. Tiny pieces of debris known as microplastics persist in soil, water and air and threaten ecosystems and human health. Traditional recycling reprocesses plastics to make new products, but each time this is done, the material becomes lower in quality due to contamination and degradation of the polymers in plastics. Moreover, recycling alone cannot keep pace with the growing volume of global plastic waste.

Now, a University of Delaware-led research team has developed a new type of catalyst that enhances conversion of plastic waste into liquid fuels more quickly and with fewer undesired byproducts than current methods. Featured on the cover of the Sept. 18 issue of Chem Catalysis, the pilot-stage work helps pave the way toward energy-efficient methods for plastic upcycling, reducing plastic pollution and promoting sustainable fuel production.

“Instead of letting plastics pile up as waste, upcycling treats them like solid fuels that can be transformed into useful liquid fuels and chemicals, offering a faster, more efficient and environmentally friendly solution,” said senior author Dongxia Liu, the Robert K. Grasseli Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at UD’s College of Engineering.

One promising upcycling approach is hydrogenolysis, which uses hydrogen gas and a catalyst to convert the polymers in plastics into liquid fuels for transportation and industrial use. However, conventional catalysts have limited efficiency because bulky polymer molecules have a hard time interacting with the active sites of the catalyst where the reaction takes place. To address this, the researchers transformed MXenes (pronounced max-eens), a type of nanomaterial, into mesoporous MXenes, a form with larger, more open pores that had not previously been used for plastic upcycling. 

“MXenes form two-dimensional layers, like the pages of a book. These stacked layers in the closed book make it difficult for molten plastic to move through easily, limiting contact with the catalyst,” explained first author Ali Kamali, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. “To improve the design, we inserted silica pillars to open up the space between MXene layers, allowing the polymers and intermediate compounds that form during the reaction to flow more easily.”

They tested their mesoporous MXene-supported ruthenium catalyst with low-density polyethylene (LDPE), a plastic often used in shopping bags and plastic films. In a small pressurized reactor, the team combined LDPE with the catalyst and hydrogen gas and heated the mixture, melting the plastic into a thick syrup. 

Their catalyst achieved reaction rates nearly two times faster than those previously reported for LDPE hydrogenolysis. The catalyst also displayed high selectivity, allowing for targeted production of liquid fuels while minimizing undesired byproducts like the greenhouse gas methane. The researchers attribute this selectivity to stabilization of ruthenium nanoparticles in the mesoporous space between MXene layers.

“We were able to produce a material that not only speeds the conversion but also improves the quality of the fuel products. This advance highlights the potential of nanostructured mesoporous catalysts to enhance plastic upcycling,” Liu said. 

Looking ahead, the research team plans to further refine the catalyst and to develop a broader library of MXene-based catalysts for use with different types of plastics. Ultimately, they hope to collaborate with industry partners to turn plastic waste from a problem into a resource, converting it into fuels and chemicals that not only help the environment but also bring economic value to local communities.

Other coauthors of the paper from UD’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering were postdoctoral researcher Song Luo; graduate students Akash Warty, Antara Bhowmick and Brandon C. Vance; and Dionisios G. Vlachos, the Unidel Dan Rich Chair in Energy Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. The research team also included investigators from the University of Maryland College Park, U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Army Research Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The work was supported as part of the Center for Plastics Innovation, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences under award number DE-SC0021166. 

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Journal

Chem Catalysis

DOI

10.1016/j.checat.2025.101459 

 

Warming climate, not herd size, is biggest threat to rangelands

Cornell University

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ITHACA, N.Y. — Overgrazing has long been seen as a key factor in rangeland degradation – and is the reason for herd-size restrictions or livestock taxes that in some places can limit herders’ ability to make a living. But a new Cornell University study points to another variable: climate change.

Using four decades’ worth of detailed data from Mongolia, where 70% of the land area is rangeland, Cornell SC Johnson College of Business researchers found that while larger herds can slightly reduce rangeland productivity year to year, weather and climate have a much bigger effect. The findings have global implications: more than half of Earth’s terrestrial surface is rangeland, which feeds 50% of the world’s livestock and supports the livelihoods of more than 2 billion people.

“When we look really carefully at the equivalent of county scale over the whole country, over 41 years, we find that the longer-run changes in rangeland conditions are entirely attributable to changes in the climate,” said Chris Barrett, professor of applied economics and management and senior author of the paper, published in Science.

Barrett’s team found that Mongolian rangelands are impacted more by collective greenhouse gas-emitting behaviors around the globe than by local herders. They urge policymakers to focus more attention on global mitigation, as well as on international compensation for climate damages, and less on taxing herders in a nation that contributes little to global greenhouse gas emissions.

The Mongolian government does an annual end-of-year census of all livestock in the country, then in June surveys and samples rangeland vegetation to determine conditions. Based on this rich trove of data, in 2021 the government re-instituted a nationwide livestock head tax, aimed at inducing lower herd rates to address perceived adverse rangeland impacts.

Barrett’s team used this data along with a two-stage statistical analysis method, using herd census data at the “soum” level—a soum is similar to a county—along with “dzud” events (extreme winter storms that cause massive livestock mortality) on winter grazing ranges, to predict variation in June herd size.

In the second stage of the study, the researchers used the predicted June herd size to generate causal estimates of the effects of herd size and climate on summer rangeland productivity. To distinguish between climate and short-term variations in weather, the team constructed multi-year averages of each variable and compared them over 10- and 20-year periods.

Analyzing the data, the group found that larger herd sizes have a modest negative effect on rangeland productivity in the short term, but no significant effect over longer periods. Climate, and even year-to-year variations in weather, had a much bigger impact.

“I was surprised by the magnitude of the climate effect as compared to herd size effects, even in the short run,” he said. “Even just year-on-year changes in weather had about 20 times the effect of herd size.”

For additional information, see this Cornell Chronicle story.

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Journal

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adn0005 

Article Title

Climate rather than overgrazing explains most rangeland primary productivity change in Mongolia

Article Publication Date

18-Sep-2025

 

USC study shows the majority of unsheltered Angelenos face critical gaps in meeting basic needs

Keck School of Medicine of USC researchers surveyed people experiencing unsheltered homelessness in Los Angeles County on access to food, water, basic hygiene and medical care.

Keck School of Medicine of USC

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Less than a quarter of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness (PEUH) in Los Angeles report access to a toilet, and about one-third eat less than one meal per day. Access to showers, safe drinking water and medical care is also limited. The findings were just published in the Journal of Primary Care and Community Health.

The study was conducted by the USC Street Medicine team, which delivers on-the-ground primary care to PEUH, and includes responses from 665 adults across Los Angeles County.

Most studies of homelessness look collectively at unsheltered individuals and those living in temporary shelters. Instead, the present study focused specifically on people living in places not intended for habitation, such as a car, tent or sidewalk, in order to gain detailed insights about this group’s needs. 

“Among this population, we found pervasive unmet needs for the most basic things, which are access to a toilet, meals, water and hygiene,” said lead author Alexis Coulourides Kogan, PhD, assistant professor of family medicine and geriatrics at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and director of research for USC Street Medicine.

“If someone cannot meet those very basic needs, there is likely no way to do things like look for a job, get on housing lists or even go to a doctor’s office—hunger and thirst supersede all else,” she said.

The study also revealed geographic differences in how PEUH access food, water and bathroom facilities, such as purchasing water from a business versus using public sources. Kogan said these findings can help tailor support efforts so that urgent needs can be addressed while longer-term solutions are implemented.

“Solutions for housing are in the works, which is fantastic,” she said. “In the meantime, people have basic needs that must be met—or they’re not going to be able to utilize those other services.”

Urgent unmet needs

USC Street Medicine dispatches small teams—typically consisting of a physician assistant, nurse, community health worker, and nursing aid—to offer medical care to PEUH in the places they call home. During a series of visits in 2022 and 2023, they surveyed 665 adults, aged 18 and older, using the HOUSED BEDS assessment tool.

The HOUSED BEDS survey was specifically designed to assess social determinants of health among PEUH. It was developed at the Keck School of Medicine by Brett Feldman, MSPAS, PA-C, clinical associate professor of family medicine and director of USC Street Medicine, and Corinne Feldman, MMS, PA-C, clinical assistant professor of family medicine.

Among those surveyed, 22.5% of participants reported access to a toilet, and 43.9% had access to a shower. Participants ate an average of 8.25 meals per week, with 32.7% of them eating less than one meal per day. While 72.4% had access to clean drinking water, 35.4% reported having concerns about unsafe water. Just 7% of participants had seen a primary care provider in the past year.

The researchers found significant geographic differences on multiple factors, including participants’ primary source of food, water and bathroom facilities. For example, PEUH in Hollywood relied heavily on local businesses to purchase water or use a toilet. In other parts of the city, public parks were more likely to provide a source of safe drinking water.

“Given the geographic variation in how needs are met, there’s not one solution that fits all,” Kogan said. “We really need to be thoughtful about how we target solutions and triage resources to different areas.”

Finding targeted solutions

Kogan applauds the efforts of Los Angeles County and the state of California to build both temporary shelters and long-term housing for people experiencing homelessness.

“At the same time, if people cannot eat or drink today, they’re not going to be well or alive to get into those housing solutions, which will take some time to develop,” she said.

The study shows that urgent help is needed to ensure PEUH across Los Angeles can access basic resources. It also points to the effectiveness of a street medicine approach in reaching people who are unable to visit a doctor’s office.\

The street medicine model, as well as the HOUSED BEDS survey, can both be applied outside of Los Angeles to help PEUH in other states or countries, Kogan said.

She and her team have several related studies underway. One effort aims to develop profiles of PEUH to determine which groups face the most urgent unmet needs. Another involves analyzing whether people who receive care from USC Street Medicine have better access to essential resources than those who are not engaged in care.

“When going without the basics for survival like food, showers, or healthcare, it’s almost impossible to self-resolve your own homelessness. This underscores the need to take resources to the people through programs like street medicine,” said Brett Feldman, who was one of the study’s coauthors.

About this research

In addition to Kogan, Feldman and Feldman, the study’s other authors are Camilo Zaks and Jehni Robinson from the Department of Family Medicine and Geriatrics, Keck School of Medicine of USC, University of Southern California; and Jersey Chen from Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.

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Journal

Journal of Primary Care & Community Health

DOI

10.1177/21501319251356768 

Method of Research

Survey

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Access to Basic Needs and Healthcare by People Experiencing Unsheltered Homelessness

Article Publication Date

20-Sep-2025

Deaths rose after hospitals were acquired by private equity

Staffing, salary cuts linked to higher emergency room mortality

Harvard Medical School

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At a glance:

• Patient deaths increased in the emergency departments of hospitals acquired by private equity firms compared to similar hospitals, a nationwide study has found.
• Researchers linked the increase in mortality to cuts in salary and staffing levels.
• The findings amplify concerns about the growth of this for-profit ownership model in health care delivery.

Patient death rates increased in the emergency departments of U.S. hospitals after the hospitals were acquired by private equity firms compared to similar hospitals not acquired by private equity, according to a nationwide study of hundreds of hospitals conducted by researchers at Harvard Medical School, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Chicago.

The results, published Sept. 23 in Annals of Internal Medicine, offer more concrete evidence that this for-profit ownership model of health care has led to higher patient mortality.

The federally funded study also found that private equity hospitals experienced large cuts in staffing and salaries, which the researchers propose is the likely explanation for the increase in patient deaths.

“Staffing cuts are one of the common strategies used to generate financial returns for the firm and its investors,” said senior author Zirui Song, associate professor of health care policy in the Blavatnik Institute at HMS and HMS associate professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, who has published extensively on the implications of private equity in health care.

“Among Medicare patients, who are often older and more vulnerable, this study shows that those financial strategies may lead to potentially dangerous, even deadly consequences,” Song said.

The researchers further found that transfers of patients to other hospitals increased and stays in intensive care units shortened after hospitals were acquired by private equity. These findings also suggest that likely because of staffing cuts, hospitals had reduced capacity to care for high-risk patients after being acquired by private equity firms.

Private equity in health care

Private equity is one form of investor-based, private ownership in health care. Private equity firms use funds from investors and lenders to buy health care facilities. The acquired providers take on the obligation to repay that new debt. Hundreds of hospitals and nursing homes, along with thousands of physician practices, have been acquired this way in the United States.

The study compared more than 1 million emergency department visits and 121,000 ICU hospitalizations across 49 private equity hospitals to over 6 million emergency department visits and 760,000 ICU hospitalizations across 293 matched control hospitals. It used 100 percent Medicare Part A and Part B claims and cost report data from 2009 through 2019, which contain the universe of hospitalizations and ED visits for traditional Medicare patients nationwide.

Medicare beneficiaries in the emergency departments of private equity hospitals experienced seven additional deaths per 10,000 visits after acquisition relative to hospitals that were not acquired by private equity, the team found. This rise represented a 13 percent increase from a baseline of 52 deaths per 10,000 visits.

The data showed that after acquisition, the private equity hospitals reduced salary expenditures in the emergency department by 18 percent and in the ICU by 16 percent compared to hospitals not acquired by private equity. They also reduced hospital-wide full-time employees by an average of 11.6 percent and salary expenditures by 16.6 percent relative to non-private-equity hospitals.

One reason these cuts are concerning is that care delivered in emergency departments and intensive care units remains mostly human, face-to-face interactions at the patient’s bedside, Song said.

“These are places where cutting staffing often means cutting the capacity to take care of people,” Song said. This work builds on a prior study in JAMA that revealed a 25 percent increase in preventable adverse events, including infections, in hospital inpatient wards after private equity acquisition, which were also likely related to these staffing cuts.

Private equity acquisitions in health care are often marketed as an effort to shore up struggling hospitals by providing needed capital investments to improve care. However, in a 2024 study in JAMA Internal Medicine, Song and colleagues found that private equity firms are more likely to buy financially healthier hospitals, which are more capable of taking on the new debt while still generating revenue. While purchasing a struggling facility for the purpose of turning it around can happen, private equity has on average targeted more financially stable hospitals, Song said.

State and federal policymakers have begun to study or regulate private equity buyouts in health care, often involving hospitals. Early efforts have focused on more transparency and oversight of acquisitions, separating corporate influence from clinical practice, regulating some transactions, and related policy levers that aim to retain a role for private capital while protecting patients and clinicians from harm.

Authorship, funding, disclosures

Sneha Kannan, assistant professor of critical care medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, is first author of the study. Additional authors include Joseph Dov Bruch, José R. Zubizarreta, and Jennifer Stevens.

This work was supported by the National Institute on Aging and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health (grants 3P01AG032952-14S1 and T32HL15502-03) and by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (R01HS029467).

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Journal

Annals of Internal Medicine

DOI

10.7326/ANNALS-24-03471 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Hospital Staffing and Patient Outcomes After Private Equity Acquisition

Article Publication Date

23-Sep-2025

CONSERVATIVE AUSTERITY

16-Year study indicates rising patient complexity and fewer patients seen per day in Alberta primary care

Changes in family physicians over time in Alberta, Canada: A 16-year population-based cohort study

American Academy of Family Physicians

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Original Research

16-Year Study Indicates Rising Patient Complexity and Fewer Patients Seen Per Day in Alberta Primary Care

Background and goal: In this study, researchers examined changes over time in characteristics of adults cared for by family physicians from 2004 to 2020 in Alberta, Canada, along with trends in family physicians and their practice patterns for adults over 18 years old. 

Study approach: Using linked administrative health data, including physician billing claims and hospital/ambulatory data, the researchers created annual, population-based snapshots from 2004 to 2020 of adults seeing family physicians providing comprehensive care. They tracked patient mix (age, number of chronic conditions, mental health and substance-use conditions) and physician workload (number of clinic days providing primary care, patient contacts per clinic day, and unique adult patients cared for per year).

Main results

• The number of female physicians increased from 39% in 2004 to 46.7% in 2020, and graduates trained in low- and middle-income countries rose from 6.3% to 17.2%.

• The proportion of individuals aged 61-80 grew from 16.1% to 22.1%, and those with more than five chronic conditions nearly doubled.

• There were changes in physician practice over time including decreases in average days worked each year (167 in 2004, 156 in 2020), and the average number of adult visits per clinic day fell from 23 to 20.

Why It Matters: These system level shifts help explain access pressures in primary care and offer a clear signal for health systems to use in workforce planning and resource allocation to meet rising patient complexity.  

Permanent link: Changes in Family Physicians Over Time in Alberta, Canada: A 16-Year Population-Based Cohort Study

Braden J. Manns, MD, Msc, et al

Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

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Journal

The Annals of Family Medicine