Repurposing gemstone polishing waste to create smart cement

Instead of ending up in landfills, leftover grit can be reused to reduce environmental impacts from cement manufacturing.

American Institute of Physics

FacebookXLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

A scanning electron microscope image of gemstone processing waste. Researchers are exploring ways to use gemstone processing waste in cement, reducing the environmental impacts of both industries.

view more 

Credit: Xiaowei Ouyang

WASHINGTON, Oct. 7, 2025 – Cement is one of the most-used materials in the world, and one of the highest emitters of global CO2 emissions. As demand for cement continues to grow, researchers are looking for alternatives to help reduce its environmental impacts.

One alternative could be silicon carbide, an inert substance used as a grit in gemstone polishing. It’s used across the industry at every level of processing, including in hobbyist rock tumblers and industrial-scale saws, grinders, sanding belts, and polishing wheels. Large amounts of silicon carbide waste are produced by the industry, including at the gemstone processing hub in Guangdong Province.

In a paper published this week in AIP Advances, by AIP Publishing, researchers at Wuzhou University and Guangzhou University in China explored gemstone polishing waste as a possible additive in cement. Their goal is to keep silicon carbide waste out of landfills and help reduce emissions from the cement industry.

“The study was motivated by the environmental challenges posed by gemstone polishing waste, a nonbiodegradable by-product rich in silicon carbide,” author Xiaowei Ouyang said. “This problem is massive — cement is a major CO2 emitter, and gemstone polishing waste exacerbates landfill issues globally. Our research focuses on low-carbon materials, offering a way to turn waste into functional additives while addressing climate goals.”

Ouyang and colleagues performed a comprehensive series of tests of gemstone polishing waste as an additive in cement. They tested chemical reactions at the molecular level, as well as microscale characteristics, such as microcracks and pore size, and macroscale outcomes, such as material strength and thermal and conductive properties.

“The most interesting part was the multiscale integration — seeing how nanoscale ion interactions directly influenced macroscale properties like conductivity,” Ouyang said. “What surprised us most was that gemstone polishing waste significantly enhances thermal conductivity up to 159% and reduces electrical resistivity by up to 94% in cement, revealing an unexpected potential for ‘smart’ materials.”

Silicon carbide-enhanced cement could be used in smart materials such as energy-efficient panels for walls or floors that conduct heat for passive heating and cooling, or embedded sensors in bridges that indicate damage by detecting changes in the structure’s conductivity.

One key aspect of the study was measuring how well gemstone waste particles attract calcium ions, which is key in the process of cement hardening. They were able to quantify the particles’ weak affinity for the ions most essential to hardening, which will allow optimization and creation of targeted solutions that use gemstone polishing waste to create stronger cement.

To advance their work, the researchers plan to further optimize the gemstone polishing waste-cement blends, introduce long-term durability, perform field tests, and apply the process to other wastes.

###

The article “Effect of gemstone polishing waste on hydration, strength development, and electrical/thermal properties of cement-based materials: A multiscale study” is authored by Xiongfei Yang, Yuge Gao, Junpeng Wang, and Xiaowei Ouyang. It will appear in AIP Advances on Oct. 7, 2025 (DOI: 10.1063/5.0295026). After that date, it can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0295026.

ABOUT THE JOURNAL

AIP Advances is an open access journal publishing in all areas of physical sciences — applied, theoretical, and experimental. The inclusive scope of AIP Advances makes it an essential outlet for scientists across the physical sciences. See https://pubs.aip.org/aip/adv.

###

---

Journal

AIP Advances

DOI

10.1063/5.0295026 

Article Title

Effect of gemstone polishing waste on hydration, strength development, and electrical/thermal properties of cement-based materials: A multiscale study

Article Publication Date

7-Oct-2025

 

Patient-physician messaging by race, ethnicity, insurance type, and preferred language

JAMA Network Open

About The Study:

 In this cross-sectional study of primary care patients in a single health system, there were significant disparities in the responsiveness of primary care teams to asynchronous patient-portal messages by race and ethnicity, insurance type, and language. These were partially attributable to slower response times at practices that treat underserved patients.

Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Lisa S. Rotenstein, MD, MBA, MSc, email lisa.rotenstein@ucsf.edu.

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

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.34549)

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 

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.34549?guestAccessKey=1b34668e-afe8-4888-aa3d-dd05b3b83eff&utm_source=for_the_media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=100725

About JAMA Network Open: JAMA Network Open is an online-only open access general medical journal from the JAMA Network. On weekdays, the journal publishes peer-reviewed clinical research and commentary in more than 40 medical and health subject areas. Every article is free online from the day of publication. 

---

Journal

JAMA Network Open

 

UT Extension consumer economics specialist receives national award

Chris Sneed recognized for increasing consumer economic literacy and stability

University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture

Facebook

\Email

 

image: 

Chris Sneed, an associate professor and consumer economics specialist in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences, has received the 2025 Excellence in Extension Award. Image courtesy UTIA.

view more 

Credit: Image courtesy UTIA.

Christopher Sneed, an associate professor and consumer economics specialist in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences (FCS) at the University of Tennessee, has received the 2025 Excellence in Extension Award for an individual.

The prestigious national award was presented at the recent Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) Conference by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), Cooperative Extension and the APLU. The award recognizes one Cooperative Extension professional who has demonstrated outstanding scientific programming, visionary leadership and positive community impact. Two additional awards recognize excellence in teamwork and excellence in innovative programming addressing new audiences.

“This awards program recognizes outstanding leadership and program delivery that is a hallmark of the vibrant outreach and education networks of Cooperative Extension across America,” said Dr. Jaye Hamby, NIFA director. “Extension work highlights how knowledge shared through strong university-community partnerships improves lives and communities across the nation.”

Justin Rhinehart, dean of UT Extension, and Janet Fox, assistant dean and professor of FCS, both supported the nomination. “Dr. Sneed works tirelessly to develop and maintain valuable partnerships that address pressing community needs for financial and consumer education as well as workforce development,” said Rhinehart.

A native of Decatur in East Tennessee, Sneed is all Vol. He matriculated through the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, earning a bachelor’s of science in family studies, a master’s of science in human resource development with an emphasis on family and consumer sciences, and a doctorate in retail, hospitality and tourism management. He has served the UT Institute of Agriculture and the people of Tennessee for more than 20 years, first as an FCS agent in two counties; then as a social marketing specialist and acting SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) and EFNEP (Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program) director. In 2019 he joined the FCS faculty as an assistant professor and consumer economics specialist. In 2024 Sneed was promoted to associate professor.

Sneed’s programs address critical needs across a wide range of topics. Among his most notable accomplishments are developing a statewide needs assessment for consumer economics, partnering with state coalitions focusing on financial education and workforce development, and working with Skill Up Tennessee to provide workforce education to rural comminutes. “The Time to Talk” program assists consumers in understanding health care costs and having cost conversations with their health care providers. “The Shop Smart Tennessee” program addresses food access for low-resource families, and “Money Week” was recognized by the State Treasurer and the Tennessee Financial Literacy Commission. Sneed’s “Money Minute” videos have been shared as critical money management tips through social media and YouTube.

Sneed has received more than $42 million in grants and contracts either as a principal investigator or as a co-investigator. He has been published dozens of times in refereed or peer-reviewed publications, and is the recipient of many notable awards, including the National Extension Association of Family and Consumer Sciences (NEAFCS) Internet Technology Award. In 2023 he was named the Educator of the Year by the Association for Financial Counseling and Planning Education (AFCPE). 

Sneed is the third member of the FCS Department to receive this national Excellence in Extension award in the last six years, signifying the strength and vitality of the department’s programs. In 2019 Matthew Devereaux, a human development specialist, was recognized for his research on child and adolescent social and emotional development, and in 2021 Ann Berry, a financial education professor, was honored for her expertise in identifying financial education needs.

The University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture is comprised of the Herbert College of Agriculture, UT College of Veterinary Medicine, UT AgResearch and UT Extension. Through its land-grant mission of teaching, research and outreach, the Institute touches lives and provides Real. Life. Solutions. to Tennesseans and beyond. utia.tennessee.edu.

 

Children’s diet quality linked to distance from protected conservation areas

Penn State

FacebookXLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

Researchers at Penn State found that children’s diet quality peaks about 80 kilometers from protected areas, with vitamin A-rich foods most likely at that mid-distance in Indigenous population areas. The team reports the associations from Cambodia and Myanmar in the journal People and Nature. 

view more 

Credit: US Mission to the United Nations Agencies in Rome

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Protected areas of defined geographic zones can slow biodiversity loss and bolster conversation efforts, but they may have unintended impacts on the diets of children who live nearby, according to new research from scientists at Penn State.

Published in the British Ecological Society’s journal People and Nature, the researchers analyzed children’s diets in Cambodia and Myanmar by distance from the nearest protected area. They found that diet quality increased the farther from the protected area the child lived up to about 80 kilometers and then declined at greater distances. The researchers also found that, in Indigenous population areas, the odds that children ate vitamin A-rich fruits and vegetables were highest around 80 kilometers and lower both nearer and farther away. The same association did not persist in non-Indigenous areas.  

Vitamin A supports growth and immune defenses in children; too little can cause night blindness and increase the risk of illness and death from infections such as measles and diarrheal disease, according to the World Health Organization. Understanding how proximity to protected areas relates to vitamin A-rich foods can help conservation and public health planners align strategies as nations expand protection goals, said Lilly Zeitler, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Geography at Penn State who led the study.

“In some places, local communities rely directly on nearby lands and ecosystems for food,” she said. “They manage these food systems under customary tenure — local rules enforced by tradition and social norms rather than formal laws. Creating protected areas can disrupt that customary tenure, with negative effects on how people get food. Alternatively, tourism can boost local incomes near protected areas in ways that alter households’ food purchasing patterns. Despite these clear conceptual links between protected areas and local diets, these relationships remain poorly understood.”

A large share of protected land overlaps with Indigenous territories in Cambodia and Myanmar, the researchers said, explaining that this allowed them to compare patterns across two countries with contrasting approaches to Indigenous rights.

“A cross-country comparison is interesting to see whether there are different relationships between protected areas, diets and Indigeneity in these two very different contexts,” Zeitler said.

Researchers analyzed demographic and health surveys collected from rural Cambodia and Myanmar in 2014 and 2015-16, respectively, that asked caregivers of 2,899 children ages 6 to 59 months what the child ate the previous day. They matched each surveyed community to the nearest protected area and measured distance to its boundary.

The team then examined dietary diversity and whether the children ate pulses — dry, edible seeds of legumes — or vitamin A-rich fruits and vegetables across the distance gradient and by Indigenous status, adjusting for household wealth, maternal education, breastfeeding, season, market access, rainfall, elevation and proximity to water and forest cover.

The analysis showed a non-linear pattern: the highest predicted dietary diversity occurred around 80 kilometers from protected areas, where landscapes commonly mix forests and agriculture.

“For our analytic sample, mid-distances from protected areas had about a third of forest cover,” Zeitler said. “One-third forest cover indicates a mix of different land uses at an 80-kilometer distance, including forest cover and agriculture, in what other researchers call an ‘agroecological matrix.’ These mixed landscapes appear to be associated with higher dietary diversity among young children.”

They also found food-group differences by distance. In Indigenous population areas, children were most likely to eat vitamin A-rich fruits and vegetables at about 80 kilometers from protected areas, with different distance patterns for pulses. In non-Indigenous population areas, however, this association disappeared.

“We think this is because common vitamin-A rich fruits and vegetables in the region, such as mango, passionfruit, sweet potato and squash, are often grown in mixed landscapes," Zeitler said. "Mixed landscapes with swiddens and home gardens might be more important sources of vitamin-A rich fruits and vegetables for Indigenous populations in the region.”  

According to Zeitler, the findings offer insight for conservation planning as countries pursue the United Nations’ Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework’s 30-by-30 target, a goal to conserve at least 30% of land, inland waters and oceans by 2030 with emphasis on effective management and Indigenous rights. The results point to the potential benefits of conservation approaches that recognize mixed land uses in some contexts rather than strict separation of farms and forests.

“Our results can inform conservation efforts seeking to minimize negative relationships between protected areas and local populations’ health and diet quality,” Zeitler said. “The results indicate that an ‘agroecological matrix’ approach to conservation, rather than the binary ‘land sparing’ model that separates people and agriculture from forests, could support local diet quality in some contexts.”

Zeitler emphasized that more research is needed to fully elucidate the identified patterns of children’s diet quality near protected areas.

“Because this study is based on secondary pre-existing anonymized datasets, we could not interview people in Indigenous and non-Indigenous population areas on why their consumption of some food groups differed at different distances from protected areas, for instance,” Zeitler said, explaining that they could not draw causal inferences from the study, either, because the data are snapshots in time rather than tracking changes over time. The team was also unable to link country-level differences between Cambodia and Myanmar to specific policies without longitudinal data and additional analyses.

Zeitler said she hopes the findings inform conservation and health discussions as protected areas expand.

“I hope this research will stimulate debate and dialogue among conservationists and policymakers on the relationships between protected areas and local diets,” Zeitler said. “The perceived need to separate forest and agriculture for conservation can be challenged by recognizing the importance of mixed land use systems for local diets, especially among Indigenous populations in some parts of the world.”

Bronwen Powell, associate professor of geography, of African studies and of anthropology, co-authored the paper and serves as Zeitler’s adviser. Heather Randell of the University of Minnesota’s Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs also contributed to the study.

---

Journal

People and Nature

DOI

10.1002/pan3.70145 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Protected areas and Indigenous diets in Southeast Asia: Does proximity and level of protection matter?

 

University of Houston professor awarded $3.9 million to fight deadly parasites that threaten children and immunocompromised adults

UH-led team advancing enzyme-targeting science toward first effective therapies for life-threatening infection with no existing cure

University of Houston

FacebookXLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

Gregory Cuny, University of Houston Joseph P. & Shirley Shipman Buckley Endowed Professor of Drug Discovery, is leading a team to advance enzyme-targeting science to fight deadly parasites.

view more 

Credit: University of Houston

A University of Houston professor has received nearly $4 million in new support from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to lead a translational effort turning enzyme-targeting science into urgently needed treatments for Cryptosporidium infections – which are caused by a life-threatening pathogen and have no existing cure.  

Cryptosporidium protozoan parasites are among the world’s most dangerous waterborne pathogens. Yearly these water-borne parasites (primarily C. hominis and C. parvum) claim the lives of over 50,000 children under five years old, who die of severe diarrhea. They are the second leading cause of diarrhea-related death after rotavirus and can also be fatal for immunocompromised adults. 

Also frightening, these parasites have the potential to be deliberately introduced into the water supply, making them a Center for Disease Control Class B bioterrorism agent.  

Cryptosporidium stands alone among the top four diarrheal pathogens with no effective treatments or vaccines. 

To address this urgent global health challenge, University of Houston's Joseph P. & Shirley Shipman Buckley Endowed Professor of Drug Discovery, Gregory Cuny, will lead a multi-institutional team to develop effective drugs that are urgently needed to manage cryptosporidiosis in young children, immunocompromised adults and as a countermeasure to epidemic outbreaks. 

A drug target emerges 

An essential enzyme for Cryptosporidium survival – CDPK1 or Calcium dependent protein kinase 1 – has emerged as an attractive target for cryptosporidiosis as scientists find that silencing CDPK1 significantly reduces parasite growth.   

“Our long-term goal is to identify clinical candidates that can be advanced in our effort to establish CDPK1 as a validated drug target for treatment of Cryptosporidium-induced infections,” said Cuny.  

Cuny and team plan to design the drug candidates to be recyclable to stay in the system longer, absorbed through the liver and then sent to the intestine, instead of being eliminated. It’s a process called enterohepatic recycling.   

To minimize systemic exposure, they are also designing the drugs to go directly to the gastrointestinal tract, where Cryptosporidium infections primarily occur.  

“CDPK1 has structural features that present opportunities for selective inhibitor design targeting the parasite kinase enzyme without harming similar human enzymes,” said Cuny. “Demonstrating GI-targeting would also be highly significant to drug design strategies for other GI conditions, such as colonic cancers and inflammatory bowel diseases.”  

Cuny’s team includes Ming Hu, Diana Shu-Lian Chow Endowed Professor of Drug Discovery and Development at UH; Kevin Garey, Robert L. Boblitt Endowed Professor of Drug Discovery at UH; Wesley Van Voorhis, University of Washington; and Saul Tzipori, Tufts University.