Friday, June 20, 2025

Microbial carbon fixation technology helps CO2 emission reduction in cement industry, and high-value utilization of steel slag ushers in innovative solutions

This study reveals the effect and mechanism of microbial mineralization technology on accelerating CO2 fixation, improving soundness and enhancing hydration activity of steel slag

Higher Education Press

image:
Schematic diagram of the carbon fixation reactor and CO2 transmission pathway.
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Credit: Chunxiang Qian

A recent study published in Engineering has unveiled a novel approach to addressing two critical challenges in the construction materials sector: the efficient utilization of steel slag and the reduction of CO2 emissions from cement production. The research, led by Professor Chunxiang Qian from Southeast University in China, explores the use of microbial technology combined with a rotary kiln process to accelerate the carbonation of steel slag, thereby fixing CO2 from cement kiln flue gas and producing supplementary cementitious materials.

Cement production is a significant contributor to global CO2 emissions, accounting for approximately 8% of the total. Steel slag, a byproduct of the steelmaking process, is an alkaline solid waste with over 400 million metric tons produced globally each year. Despite its potential use in construction, the comprehensive utilization rate of steel slag is less than 30%, leading to substantial accumulation and environmental concerns.

In this study, a combination of microbial technology and a rotary kiln process was employed to expedite the carbonation of steel slag for CO2 fixation from cement kiln flue gas. This approach resulted in a significant increase in the CO2-fixation rate, with a CO2-fixation ratio of approximately 10% achieved within 1 hour and consistent performance across different seasons throughout the year. Investigation revealed that both the CO2-fixation ratio and the particle fineness are pivotal for increasing the soundness and reactivity of steel slag. When the CO2-fixation ratio exceeds 8% and the specific surface area is at least 300 m2/kg, the soundness issue of steel slag can be effectively addressed, facilitating the safe utilization of steel slag. Residual microbes presented in the carbonated steel slag powder act as nucleating sites, increasing the hydration rate of the silicate phases in Portland cement to form more hydration products. Microbial regulation results in the biogenic calcium carbonate having smaller crystal sizes, which facilitates the formation of monocarboaluminate to increase the strength of hardened cement paste. At the same CO2-fixation ratio, microbial mineralized steel slag powder exhibits greater hydration activity than carbonated steel slag powder. With a CO2-fixation ratio of 10% and a specific surface area of 600 m2/kg, replacing 30% of cement clinker with microbial mineralized steel slag powder yields an activity index of 87.7%. This study provides a sustainable solution for reducing carbon emissions and safely and efficiently utilizing steel slag in the construction materials sector, while expanding the application scope of microbial technology.

The paper “Microbial-Enhanced Steel Slag Fixation of CO2 from Cement Kiln Flue Gas for the Production of Supplementary Cementitious Material,” authored by Chunxiang Qian, Yijin Fan, Yafeng Rui, Xiao Zhang, Yangfan Xu. Full text of the open access paper: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eng.2025.03.024. For more information about Engineering, visit the website at https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/engineering.

Journal

Engineering

DOI

10.1016/j.eng.2025.03.024

Article Title

Microbial-Enhanced Steel Slag Fixation of CO2 from Cement Kiln Flue Gas for the Production of Supplementary Cementitious Material

AI medical receptionist modernizing doctor appointments, poised to improve patient care nationwide

Texas A&M teams with Humanate, an NVIDIA Inception company, to advance “Cassie,” which uses facial recognition for more human and empathetic interactions

Texas A&M University

Cassie the AI medical receptionist — video:
Humanate's AI medical receptionist "Cassie," created through research conducted at Texas A&M University.
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Credit: Humanate Digital/Texas A&M University

A virtual medical receptionist named “Cassie,” developed through research at Texas A&M University, is transforming the way patients interact with health care providers.

Cassie is a digital-human assistant created by Humanate Digital, a startup founded by three Aggies, including Dr. Mark Benden, professor in the Texas A&M School of Public Health and director of the Center for Worker Health.

The artificial intelligence-powered avatar can speak more than 100 languages, including American Sign Language, and uses facial recognition to mimic human emotions, making interactions feel more natural and comforting.

Cassie is being tested in several clinics to assist with administrative tasks such as checking in patients, requesting medical records and guiding users through paperwork. “We’re not trying to replace doctors or nurses,” Benden said. “We’re focused on the administrative side — tasks that are repetitive, time-consuming and not the best use of a clinician’s time.”

At the 2025 Texas A&M New Ventures Competition last month, Humanate took home the grand prize, including $35,000 in funding and multiple investment offers, for its work on the Cassie technology.

Using Facial Recognition To Determine Patient Mood

A key differentiator from early research is that Cassie was developed to be emotionally responsive, using facial recognition to read the user’s expressions and adjust its tone accordingly. “Our goal is to provide a happy digital human to have a conversation with you. She can smile, interact, tell dad jokes — even mimic your mood. But if you’re on a serious topic, like a cancer diagnosis, she can become more serious, more focused,” Benden said.

Unlike traditional kiosks or chatbots, Cassie offers a two-way interaction that feels more like a conversation than a transaction.

Benden said the technology has potential applications in pediatric care — Humanate is developing a cartoon-style avatar named Oliver to help children navigate medical procedures. “Oliver would guide a child through something that might be kind of scary and stay with them throughout, on a mobile device, for comfort and engagement,” Benden said.

An Idea So New, Technology Had To Catch Up

Cassie was conceived during the COVID-19 pandemic as a tool to train remote workers but has since evolved into a sophisticated AI assistant thanks to advances in large language models and a key partnership with AI technology innovator NVIDIA.

“We started this five years ago to figure out a way to train remote office workers with the same confidence and quality we would have if we had a professional trainer in the room,” said Benden, who co-founded Humanate with Carlos Rodriguez, company CEO and an A&M engineering graduate; and Leslie Jebson, who earned his MBA from Mays Business School and serves as company consultant.

“Before large language models, we had to guess what AI assistants might say and manually enter those responses,” Benden said. “Now, Cassie can understand various accents and multiple languages, and provide more flexible and intelligent responses.”

Rodriguez said Humanate Inc. is revolutionizing the patient-to-clinician interaction. “Our agentic AI technology is automating labor intensive work flows to increase access and produce better healthcare outcomes,” he said.

Reducing Administrative Burdens, Empowering Health Care Facilities

Cassie is a potential solution to a growing problem in health care: administrative overload and staffing shortages, especially in rural or underserved areas. “These are jobs that turn over very often — 200 to 300% in a typical year,” Benden said. “They’re lower paying, and most days are pretty much the same; humans don’t necessarily like those kinds of jobs, and that’s why turnover is high.”

Cassie can work 24/7 without breaks, sick days or distractions.

While Cassie may not immediately lower health care costs for patients, the technology can help clinics operate more efficiently — particularly those in financially vulnerable areas.

“A lot of smaller clinics — especially without federal money — don’t make sense to run as a business; you would close them,” Benden said. By reducing administrative burdens and freeing up clinicians to focus on patient care, Cassie could help stretch limited resources further.

“I think we can improve the quality of care, get more doctor-and-nurse time with the patient instead of with paperwork,” he said.

Partnership With NVIDIA

The project advanced when Humanate collaborated with NVIDIA to run large-scale simulations that enhanced Cassie’s capabilities. This partnership helped move the technology from a research prototype to a deployable product. Humanate has licensed the Texas A&M-filed patent for its receptionist-focused AI, one of the early filings in the emerging field of agentic AI.

“If that patent pans out, then we hold something that’s highly significant in the field,” Benden said.

For Texas A&M, Cassie represents more than just a technological achievement — it’s a testament to the university’s role in fostering innovation with real-world impact. “We think health care is primed for this,” Benden said. “They need to be disrupted because they’re struggling to meet the needs.”

Rodriguez hopes Cassie will not only streamline operations but also improve the patient experience — especially for those who find traditional systems confusing or impersonal. “We’ve had an amazing response from patients. Some of the older patients, in particular, have written to us and said, ‘It’s so much easier for me to talk to Cassie than to try to navigate confusing websites and mountains of paperwork,’” Rodriguez said. “That’s been very encouraging.”

About Texas A&M Innovation

Texas A&M Innovation at College Station works with a diverse array of partners – including entrepreneurs, investors, technology incubators, and large enterprises – to improve lives by commercializing innovations from The Texas A&M University System. Texas A&M research generates more than 300 new technologies each year, providing abundant and varied opportunities for industry collaboration. Learn more about the Texas A&M Innovation technology portfolio.

By Lesley Henton, Texas A&M University Division of Marketing and Communications

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How a genetic tug-of-war decides the fate of a honey bee

Penn State

Worker bees surround queen bee — image:
Queen bees emit a pheromone that attracts worker bees — the queen's daughters — to her side. The differentiation of bee larvae into either workers or queens has baffled researchers, and now a team led by researchers at Penn State has revealed the molecular mechanism underpinning this genetic mystery.
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Credit: Sean Bresnahan

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Despite having identical genetic instructions, female honey bee larvae can develop into either long-lived reproductive queens or short-lived sterile workers who help rear their sisters rather than laying their own eggs. Now, an interdisciplinary team led by researchers at Penn State has uncovered the molecular mechanisms that control how the conflict between genes inherited from the father and the mother determine the larva’s fate.

They published their findings this week (June 18) in Genome Biology.

“Imagine if your mother's genes and your father's genes were in constant disagreement about how you should develop — that is essentially what genomic imprinting is, and we see that it happens across the tree of life: from honey bees to humans,” said Sean Bresnahan, the lead author of the study who conducted the study as a doctoral candidate in the Interdisciplinary Graduate Degree Program in Molecular, Cellular, and Integrative Biosciences in the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences at Penn State. Supported by a U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship at the time, Bresnahan graduated in 2024 and is now a data scientist at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. “We found that this genetic ‘argument’ can be detected during a critical developmental window where a honey bee larva becomes either a queen or a worker.”

That critical window closes and the bee’s fate becomes irreversible 192 hours after the egg is laid. To distinguish between patrigenes — genes inherited from the father — and matrigenes — genes inherited from the mother, study co-author Kate Anton, a research technologist in the Center for Pollinator Research at Penn State, used instrumental insemination to create specific genetic crosses between selected queens and male bees, known as drones. The researchers worked with the Penn State Genome Research Incubator to analyze the larvae’s RNA, which contains and uses inherited genetic information to create proteins and support cellular activity, and identify the genes that were expressed differently between the two groups. The researchers also sequenced the parents’ genomes and used genetic markers to trace parent-of-origin gene expression in the larvae, meaning they could see how gene expression differed depending on whether the gene was from the mother or father.

“We found patrigenes were expressed at higher levels in queen-destined larvae, and matrigenes were expressed at higher levels in worker-destined larvae,” Bresnahan said.

The researchers then examined cellular and physiological pathways to determine if the genes showing parent-of-origin expression were functioning in the same pathway.

“We saw a striking match between the expression of matrigenes and patrigenes in the same pathway,” Bresnahan said, explaining that if a matrigene had increased expression then a patrigene would have decreased expression in the same pathway, or vice versa, showing that the two genes were working against each other. “If one gene showed parent-specific expression, another gene in the same pathway showed parent-specific expression from the opposite parent.”

Previously, the team examined whether DNA methylation — a process in which protein tags change how a gene is expressed without altering the underlying DNA — was the molecular mechanism underlying these differential gene expression patterns.

“In mammals and plants, differential expression in imprinted genes — genes where only the information inherited from one parent is expressed — is typically mediated by differences in DNA methylation in the regulatory regions, where specific DNA sequences control expression, of these genes,” said study co-author, Christina Grozinger, Publius Vergilius Maro Professor of Entomology and director of the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences. “But our previous work found that DNA methylation does not have this function in honey bees.”

The researchers then turned to the idea that it may not be tags on the DNA that influence gene expression in honey bees, but rather tags on the structures around which DNA packages itself. DNA is wound around histone proteins, in a structure called chromatin. During cellular reproduction, chromatin condenses into chromosomes. Typically developing multicellular organisms inherit equal numbers of chromosomes from each parent, providing the pool of genes from which an organism’s specific genetic composition is made up. The team hypothesized that changes in the structure of histone proteins — due to chemical “tags” placed on the tails of the proteins as the result of cellular processes — could make the patrigenes and matrigenes more or less accessible to other regulatory factors. Such control could potentially change their expression.

To test this hypothesis, the team used a method developed by study co-author, Shaun Mahony, associate professor in the Center for Eukaryotic Gene Regulation and the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Penn State. The process involves fragmenting DNA that is bound to a protein — histone proteins, in this case — and then using antibodies that are specific to the tagged proteins to capture and isolate these from the rest of the chromatin. Researchers can then analyze the DNA crosslinked to the captured protein and determine which genes are involved and whether they are expressed or inhibited.

“We found that, in honey bees, parent-of-origin expression is regulated by histone modifications,” Bresnahan said.

He explained that the chemical tags modifying the histone proteins appears to mediate whether patrigenes or matrigenes are expressed and, ultimately, whether a honey bee becomes a queen or a worker. While the underpinning mechanism is not DNA methylation like the researchers initially thought, Bresnahan said it’s not a surprising finding.

“What we're seeing in honey bees isn't actually that unusual when you take a step back — histone-based mechanisms for parent-of-origin effects are more widely utilized across the tree of life than DNA methylation-based systems,” Bresnahan said. “We see these chromatin-mediated imprinting mechanisms in flowering plants and in placental mammals as well. So, honey bees, and maybe other social insects, might be using the more ancestral toolkit for mediating these genetic conflicts.”

This understanding could potentially help selectively breed for honey bees with different behaviors and traits, which could help produce more productive and resilient bee colonies, according to Grozinger, who said her lab plans to study how intragenomic conflict influences how well a subset of honey bees, called nurse bees, rear young bees, among other traits.

Bresnahan said the project expands beyond honey bees, as the skills learned for this project translate to his current work. In his new role, Bresnahan continues to explore how genetic conflicts shape complex traits and social systems — but he’s now focused on how the placenta mediates traits for maternal-child health in humans.

“The skills I developed studying parent-of-origin effects translate directly to my current studies of maternal-child health mediated through the placenta,” Bresnahan said. “I am particularly interested in parent-of-origin gene expression associated with placenta-mediated traits, like early-life programming of metabolic and neuropsychiatric disease risk, that could help us better understand pregnancy complications and offspring health outcomes.”

Brock Harpur, associate professor of entomology at Purdue University also contributed to this study. The U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture and Hatch Appropriations, the Publius Maro Professorship and the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences supported this work.

Journal

Genome Biology

DOI

10.1186/s13059-025-03628-0

Article Title

Intragenomic confict associated with extreme phenotypic plasticity in queen-worker caste determination in honey bees (Apis mellifera)

L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science International Award for Claudia Felser

Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids

She is honored for her pioneering work on topological quantum materials and novel magnetic compounds, which have promising applications in green energy and data technologies. Her research bridges fundamental science and practical innovation, and has led to the emergence of the field of “topological quantum chemistry.”

“Science has always been a driving force for progress. It can help protect our societies, strengthen democracy, and ensure a livable future for generations.” — Claudia Felser

A passionate advocate for diversity in science, Professor Felser is Vice President of the Max Planck Society and founder of the NAT School Lab initiative, which fosters scientific curiosity in young students, especially girls. Her commitment to education and equity continues to inspire a new generation of scientists.

Cancer burden in neighborhoods with greater racial diversity and environmental burden

JAMA Network Open

About The Study:

This cohort study found that cancer incidence rates were associated with environmental burden and with racial and ethnic composition, suggesting the need for sustained community interventions in minoritized census regions with high environmental burden.

Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Jennifer Cullen, PhD, MPH, email jcullen@houstonmethodist.org.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.16740)

Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

Embed this link to provide your readers free access to the full-text article T

http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.16740?utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_term=062025

Journal

JAMA Network Open

Clear understanding of social connections propels strivers up the social ladder

When it comes to social influence, knowing how people are connected matters more than simply knowing lots of people, found researchers from Brown University’s Carney Institute for Brain Science

Brown University

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Climbing the social ladder isn’t simply a matter of popularity. Rather, people in positions of influence are particularly adept at forming “maps” of their social connections, which they navigate to become prominent in their social network, new research shows.

It’s like having a “social superpower,” according to study author Oriel FeldmanHall, an associate professor of cognitive and psychological sciences at Brown University who is affiliated with the University’s Carney Institute for Brain Science.

“People vary considerably in how accurately they understand the structure of their communities,” FeldmanHall said. “Our research establishes for the first time that people who excel at mapping out their social network — determining who belongs to which communities and cliques — are the ones who will go on to become the most influential in the social network.”

The National Science Foundation-funded study was published in Science Advances.

Contrary to popular belief, being influential isn’t determined by the number of friends a person has, according to the research team.

“What matters are your connections to other well-connected peers,” said study author Isabella Aslarus, who conducted the research as a manager in FeldmanHall’s lab. “These more powerful social ties give you a number of benefits that together add up to what we call influence.”

Those benefits can range from being perceived more positively to influencing positive outcomes for others, according to Aslarus, who is now a Ph.D. student in psychology at Stanford University.

“Influential individuals hold sway over others’ actions and are better at spreading information through their networks — a power that’s been harnessed by interventions to reduce bullying and promote public health,” Aslarus said.

Measuring influence

To understand how people ascend to influential positions, the researchers focused on a real-world, complex and evolving social network: first-year undergraduate students at Brown University.

“When students arrive on campus, they have no friends,” FeldmanHall said. “But by winter break, they have a rich social world where many friendships have been created and other ties have dissolved.By studying members of the Class of 2026 living in three first-year dorms, my team was able to observe a brand-new social network as it developed.”

Over the course of the academic year, the team conducted six assessments with approximately 200 participants who opted to join the study. At each check-in, they gave the students a “friendship survey” where each identified their friends within the study group. To track the evolving social network, the researchers created graphs of these developing connections.

People in the center of the graphs had the largest number of connections to other well-connected peers. At the edges of the graphs were those with fewer friends who also had fewer ties. By the end of the academic year, the researchers found that the students in the “influential” center spots were different from those who had held those positions in the beginning of the year.

How did those individuals move into positions of influence? The answer has to do with how they conceptualized their network, researchers found.

The research team gave students a second survey called a “network knowledge task.” Participants were shown pairs of photos of fellow students and asked to identify whether they were friends. The responses helped the researchers measure the participants’ knowledge about other friendships in the network, including those far removed from their own inner circles.

The researchers found that those who were “influential” by the end of the academic year had demonstrated the strongest knowledge of the network’s evolving structure. They had a bird’s-eye view of the communities and cliques within the network, above and beyond their knowledge of individual friendships.

“Participants often told us that it felt like they were just guessing who is friends with whom,” Aslarus said. “But in reality, some individuals are remarkably perceptive of the structure of their social world, and over time, this knowledge enables them to end up at its center.”

By Gretchen Schrafft, Science Communications Specialist, Carney Institute for Brain Science

Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.ads2133

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Early insight into social network structure predicts climbing the social ladder

Article Publication Date

20-Jun-2025

Clear understanding of social connections propels strivers up the social ladder

When it comes to social influence, knowing how people are connected matters more than simply knowing lots of people, found researchers from Brown University’s Carney Institute for Brain Science

Brown University

The National Science Foundation-funded study was published in Science Advances.

Contrary to popular belief, being influential isn’t determined by the number of friends a person has, according to the research team.

Those benefits can range from being perceived more positively to influencing positive outcomes for others, according to Aslarus, who is now a Ph.D. student in psychology at Stanford University.

Measuring influence

To understand how people ascend to influential positions, the researchers focused on a real-world, complex and evolving social network: first-year undergraduate students at Brown University.

How did those individuals move into positions of influence? The answer has to do with how they conceptualized their network, researchers found.

By Gretchen Schrafft, Science Communications Specialist, Carney Institute for Brain Science

Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.ads2133

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Early insight into social network structure predicts climbing the social ladder

Article Publication Date

20-Jun-2025

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Friday, June 20, 2025

Microbial carbon fixation technology helps CO2 emission reduction in cement industry, and high-value utilization of steel slag ushers in innovative solutions

Journal

DOI

Article Title

AI medical receptionist modernizing doctor appointments, poised to improve patient care nationwide

Using Facial Recognition To Determine Patient Mood

An Idea So New, Technology Had To Catch Up

Reducing Administrative Burdens, Empowering Health Care Facilities

Partnership With NVIDIA

How a genetic tug-of-war decides the fate of a honey bee

Journal

DOI

Article Title

L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science International Award for Claudia Felser

Cancer burden in neighborhoods with greater racial diversity and environmental burden

Journal

Clear understanding of social connections propels strivers up the social ladder

Measuring influence

Journal

DOI

Method of Research

Subject of Research

Article Title

Article Publication Date

Clear understanding of social connections propels strivers up the social ladder

Measuring influence

Journal

DOI

Method of Research

Subject of Research

Article Title

Article Publication Date

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