Aurelia Butler

Employees who frequently interact with artificial intelligence systems are more likely to experience loneliness that can lead to insomnia and increased after-work drinking, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.
Researchers conducted four experiments in the U.S., Taiwan, Indonesia and Malaysia. Findings were consistent across cultures. The research was published online in the Journal of Applied Psychology.
In a prior career, lead researcher Pok Man Tang, PhD, worked in an investment bank where he used AI systems, which led to his interest in researching the timely issue.
“The rapid advancement in AI systems is sparking a new industrial revolution that is reshaping the workplace with many benefits but also some uncharted dangers, including potentially damaging mental and physical impacts for employees,” said Tang, an assistant professor of management at the University of Georgia. “Humans are social animals, and isolating work with AI systems may have damaging spillover effects into employees’ personal lives.”
At the same time, working with AI systems may have some benefits. The researchers found that employees who frequently used AI systems were more likely to offer help to fellow employees, but that response may have been triggered by their loneliness and need for social contact.
Furthermore, the studies found that participants with higher levels of attachment anxiety — the tendency to feel insecure and worried about social connections — responded more strongly to working on AI systems with both positive reactions, such as helping others, and negative ones, such as loneliness and insomnia.

In one experiment, 166 engineers at a Taiwanese biomedical company who worked with AI systems were surveyed over three weeks about their feelings of loneliness, attachment anxiety and sense of belonging. Coworkers rated individual participants on their helpful behaviors, and family members reported on participants’ insomnia and after-work alcohol consumption. Employees who interacted more frequently with AI systems were more likely to experience loneliness, insomnia and increased after-work alcohol consumption, but also showed some helping behaviors toward fellow employees.
In another experiment with 126 real estate consultants in an Indonesian property management company, half were instructed not to use AI systems for three consecutive days while the other half were told to work with AI systems as much as possible. The findings for the latter group were similar to the previous experiment, except there was no association between the frequency of AI use and after-work alcohol consumption.
There were similar findings from an online experiment with 214 full-time working adults in the U.S. and another with 294 employees at a Malaysian tech company.
The research findings are correlational and don’t prove that work with AI systems causes loneliness or the other responses, just that there is an association among them.
Tang said that moving forward, developers of AI technology should consider equipping AI systems with social features, such as a human voice, to emulate human-like interactions. Employers also could limit the frequency of work with AI systems and offer opportunities for employees to socialize.
Team decision-making and other tasks where social connections are important could be done by people, while AI systems could focus more on tedious and repetitive tasks, Tang added.
“Mindfulness programs and other positive interventions also might help relieve loneliness,” Tang said. “AI will keep expanding so we need to act now to lessen the potentially damaging effects for people who work with these systems.” More

Jamie Paik and her team of researchers at EPFL’s School of Engineering have created an origami-like robot that can change shape, move around and interact with objects and people.
By combining inspiration from the digital world of polygon meshing and the biological world of swarm behavior, the Mori3 robot can morph from 2D triangles into almost any 3D object. The EPFL research, which has been published in Nature Machine Intelligence, shows the promise of modular robotics for space travel. “Our aim with Mori3 is to create a modular, origami-like robot that can be assembled and disassembled at will depending on the environment and task at hand,” says Jamie Paik, director of the Reconfigurable Robotics Lab. “Mori3 can change its size, shape and function.”
A polygon robot
The individual modules of the Mori3 robot are triangular in shape. The modules easily join together to create polygons of different sizes and configurations in a process known as polygon meshing. “We have shown that polygon meshing is a viable robotic strategy,” says Christoph Belke, a Post-doctoral researcher in robotics. To achieve this, the team had to push the boundaries of various aspects of robotics, including the mechanical and electronic design, computer systems and engineering. “We had to rethink the way we understand robotics,” explains Belke. “These robots can change their own shape, attach to each other, communicate and reconfigure to form functional and articulated structures.” This proof of concept is a success as Mori3 robots are good at doing the three things that robots should be able to do: moving around, handling and transporting objects, and interacting with users.
Destined for space
What is the advantage in creating modular and multi-functional robots? Paik explains that, to perform a wide range of tasks, robots need to be able to change their shape or configuration. “Polygonal and polymorphic robots that connect to one another to create articulated structures can be used effectively for a variety of applications,” she says. “Of course, a general-purpose robot like Mori3 will be less effective than specialized robots in certain areas. That said, Mori3’s biggest selling point is its versatility.” Mori3 robots were designed in part to be used in spacecraft, which don’t have the room to store different robots for each individual task that needs to be carried out. The researchers hope that Mori3 robots will be used for communication purposes and external repairs. More

Everyday materials such as paper and plastic could be transformed into electronic “smart devices” by using a simple new method to apply liquid metal to surfaces, according to scientists in Beijing, China. The study, published June 9 in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science, demonstrates a technique for applying a liquid metal coating to surfaces that do not easily bond with liquid metal. The approach is designed to work at a large scale and may have applications in wearable testing platforms, flexible devices, and soft robotics.
“Before, we thought that it was impossible for liquid metal to adhere to non-wetting surfaces so easily, but here it can adhere to various surfaces only by adjusting the pressure, which is very interesting,” said Bo Yuan, a scientist at Tsinghua University and the first author of the study.
Scientists seeking to combine liquid metal with traditional materials have been impeded by liquid metal’s extremely high surface tension, which prevents it from binding with most materials, including paper. To overcome this issue, previous research has mainly focused on a technique called “transfer printing,” which involves using a third material to bind the liquid metal to the surface. But this strategy comes with drawbacks — adding more materials can complicate the process and may weaken the end product’s electrical, thermal, or mechanical performance.
To explore an alternative approach that would allow them to directly print liquid metal on substrates without sacrificing the metal’s properties, Yuan and colleagues applied two different liquid metals (eGaln and BilnSn) to various silicone and silicone polymer stamps, then applied different forces as they rubbed the stamps onto paper surfaces.
“At first, it was hard to realize stable adhesion of the liquid metal coating on the substrate,” said Yuan. “However, after a lot of trial and error, we finally had the right parameters to achieve stable, repeatable adhesion.”
The researchers found that rubbing the liquid metal-covered stamp against the paper with a small amount of force enabled the metal droplets to bind effectively to the surface, while applying larger amounts of force prevented the droplets from staying in place.
Next, the team folded the metal-coated paper into a paper crane, demonstrating that the surface can still be folded as usual after the process is completed. And after doing so, the modified paper still maintains its usual properties.
While the technique appears promising, Yuan noted that the researchers are still figuring out how to guarantee that the liquid metal coating stays in place after it has been applied. For now, a packaging material can be added to the paper’s surface, but the team hopes to figure out a solution that won’t require it.
“Just like wet ink on paper can be wiped off by hand, the liquid metal coating without packaging here also can be wiped off by the object it touches as it is applied,” said Yuan. “The properties of the coating itself will not be greatly affected, but objects in contact may be soiled.”
In the future, the team also plans to build on the method so that it can be used to apply liquid metal to a greater variety of surfaces, including metal and ceramic.
“We also plan to construct smart devices using materials treated by this method,” said Yuan.
This work was supported by China Postdoctoral Science Foundation, the National Nature Science Foundation of China, and the cooperation funding between Nanshan and Tsinghua SIGS in science and technology. More

When we communicate with others over wireless networks, information is sent to data centers where it is collected, stored, processed, and distributed. As computational energy usage continues to grow, it is on pace to potentially become the leading source of energy consumption in this century. Memory and logic are physically separated in most modern computers, and therefore the interaction between these two components is very energy intensive in accessing, manipulating, and re-storing data. A team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and Penn State University is exploring materials that could possibly lead to the integration of the memory directly on top of the transistor. By changing the architecture of the microcircuit, processors could be much more efficient and consume less energy. In addition to creating proximity between these components, the nonvolatile materials studied have the potential to eliminate the need for computer memory systems to be refreshed regularly.
Their recent work published in Science explores materials that are ferroelectric, or have a spontaneous electric polarization that can be reversed by the application of an external electric field. Recently discovered wurtzite ferroelectrics, which are mainly composed of materials that are already incorporated in semiconductor technology for integrated circuits, allow for the integration of new power-efficient devices for applications such as non-volatile memory, electro-optics, and energy harvesting. One of the biggest challenges of wurtzite ferroelectrics is that the gap between the electric fields required for operation and the breakdown field is very small.
“Significant efforts are devoted to increasing this margin, which demands a thorough understanding of the effect of films’ composition, structure, and architecture on the polarization switching ability at practical electric fields,” said Carnegie Mellon post-doctoral researcher Sebastian Calderon, who is the lead author of the paper.
The two institutions were brought together to collaborate on this study through the Center for 3D Ferroelectric Microelectronics (3DFeM), which is an Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) program led by Penn State University through funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) office of Basic Energy Science (BES).
Carnegie Mellon’s materials science and engineering department, led by Professor Elizabeth Dickey, was tapped for this project because of its background in studying the role of the structure of materials in the functional properties at very small scales through electron microscopy.
“Professor Dickey’s group brings a particular topical expertise in measuring the structure of these materials at very small length scales, as well as a focus on the particular electronic materials of interest of this project,” said Jon-Paul Maria, professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Penn State University.
Together, the research team designed an experiment combining the strong expertise of both institutions on the synthesis, characterization and theoretical modeling of wurtzite ferroelectrics. By observing and quantifying real-time polarization switching using scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM), the study resulted in a fundamental understanding of how such novel ferroelectric materials switch at the atomic level. As research in this area progresses, the goal is to scale the materials to a size in which they can be used in modern microelectronics.
This material is based upon work supported by the center for 3D Ferroelectric Microelectronics (3DFeM), an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences Energy Frontier Research Centers program under Award Number DE-SC0021118. More

3D integrated circuits are a key part of improving the efficiency of electronics to meet the considerable demands of consumers. They are constantly being developed, but translating theoretical findings into actual devices is not easy. Now, a new design by a research team from Japan can turn these theories into reality.
In a study recently published for the VLSI Symposium 2023, researchers from Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo have reported a deposition process for nanosheet oxide semiconductor. The oxide semiconductor resulting from this process has high carrier mobility and reliability in transistors.
3D integrated circuits are made up of multiple layers that each play a role in the overall function. Oxide semiconductors are attracting a lot of attention as materials for various circuit components because they can be processed at low temperature, while still having high carrier mobility and low charge leakage, and are able to withstand high voltages.
There are also advantages to using oxides rather than metals in processes where electrodes may be exposed to oxygen during the integration process and become oxidized.
However, developing the processes needed to reliably deposit very thin layers of oxide semiconductor materials in the manufacture of devices is challenging and has not been fully established to date. Recently, the researchers have reported an atomic layer deposition (ALD) technique that produces layers appropriate for large-scale integration.
“Using our process, we carried out a systematic study of field effect transistors (FETs) to establish their limitations and optimize their properties,” explains lead author of the study, Kaito Hikake. FETs control the current flow in a semiconductor. “We tuned the ratio of the components and adjusted the preparation conditions and our findings led to the development of a multi-gate nanosheet FET for normally-off operation and high reliability.”
The findings revealed that a FET made from the chosen oxide semiconductor by ALD had the best performance. The multi-gate nanosheet FET is believed to be the first to combine high carrier mobility and reliability characteristics with normally-off operation.
“In rapidly moving areas such as electronics, it is important to translate proof of concept findings into industrially relevant processes,” says Masaharu Kobayashi, senior author. “We believe that our study provides a robust technique that can be used to produce devices that meet the market’s need for manufacturable 3D integrated circuits with high function.”
The findings in this study have provided a solution to one of the big obstacles in the manufacturing of electronic devices with semiconductors. Hopefully, this will bring more designs of electronics with high functionality to actual products. More

A group of researchers from Tohoku University has unveiled a new material that exhibits enormous magnetoresistance, paving the way for developments in non-volatile magnetoresistive memory (MRAM).
Details of their unique discovery were published in the Journal of Alloys and Compounds on May 29, 2023.
Today, the demand for advancements in hardware that can efficiently process large amounts of digital information and in sensors has never been greater, especially with governments deploying technological innovations to achieve smarter societies.
Much of this hardware and sensors rely on MRAM and magnetic sensors, and tunnel magnetoresistive devices make up the majority of such devices.
Tunnel magnetoresistive devices exploit the tunnel magnetoresistance effect to detect and measure magnetic fields. This is tied to the magnetization of ferromagnetic layers in magnetic tunnel junctions. When the magnets are aligned, a low resistance state is observed, and electrons can easily tunnel through the thin insulating barrier between them. When the magnets are not aligned, the tunneling of electrons becomes less efficient and leads to higher resistance. This change in resistance is expressed as the magnetoresistive ratio, a key figure in determining the efficiency of tunneling magnetoresistive devices. The higher the magnetoresistance ratio, the better the device is.
Current tunnel magnetoresistive devices comprise magnesium oxide and iron-based magnetic alloys, like iron-cobalt. Iron-based alloys have a body-centered cubic crystal structure in ambient conditions and exhibit a huge tunnel magnetoresistance effect in devices with a rock salt-type magnesium oxide.

There have been two notable studies using these iron-based alloys that produced magnetoresistive devices displaying high magnetoresistance ratios. The first in 2004 was by the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Japan and IBM; and the second came in 2008, when researchers from Tohoku University reported on a magnetoresistance ratio exceeding 600% at room temperature, something that jumped to 1000% with temperatures near zero kelvin.
Since those breakthroughs, various institutes and companies have invested considerable effort in honing device physics, materials, and processes. Yet aside from iron-based alloys, only some Heusler-type ordered magnetic alloys have displayed such enormous magnetoresistance.
Dr. Tomohiro Ichinose and Professor Shigemi Mizukami from Tohoku University recently began exploring thermodynamically metastable materials to develop a new material capable of demonstrating similar magnetoresistance ratios. To do so, they focused on the strong magnetic properties of cobalt-manganese alloys, which have a body-centered cubic metastable crystal structure.
“Cobalt-manganese alloys have face-centered cubic or hexagonal crystal structures as thermodynamically stable phases. Because this stable phase exhibits weak magnetism, it has never been studied as a practical material for tunnel magnetoresistive devices,” said Mizukami.
Back in 2020, the group reported on a device that used a cobalt-manganese alloy with metastable body-centered cubic crystal structure.
Using data science and/or high-throughput experimental methods, they built upon this discovery, and succeeded in obtaining huge magnetoresistance in devices by adding a small amount of iron to the metastable body-centered cubic cobalt-manganese alloy. The magnetoresistance ratio was 350% at room temperature and also exceeded 1000% at a low temperature. Additionally, the device fabrication employed the sputtering method and a heating process, something compatible with current industries.
“We have produced the third instance of a new magnetic alloy for tunneling magnetoresistive devices showing huge magnetoresistance, and it sets an alternative direction of travel for future improvements,” adds Mizukami. More

The patterns of light hold tremendous promise for a large encoding alphabet in optical communications, but progress is hindered by their susceptibility to distortion, such as in atmospheric turbulence or in bent optical fibre.  Now researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) have outlined a new optical communication protocol that exploits spatial patterns of light for multi-dimensional encoding in a manner that does not require the patterns to be recognised, thus overcoming the prior limitation of modal distortion in noisy channels.  The result is a new encoding state-of-the-art of over 50 vectorial patterns of light sent virtually noise-free across a turbulent atmosphere, opening a new approach to high-bit-rate optical communication.  Published this week in Laser & Photonics Reviews, the Wits team from the Structured Light Laboratory in the Wits School of Physics used a new invariant property of vectorial light to encode information.  This quantity, which the team call “vectorness”, scales from 0 to 1 and remains unchanged when passing through a noisy channel.  Unlike traditional amplitude modulation which is 0 or 1 (only a two-letter alphabet), the team used the invariance to partition the 0 to 1 vectorness range into more than 50 parts (0, 0.02, 0.04 and so on up to 1) for a 50-letter alphabet.  Because the channel over which the information is sent does not distort the vectorness, both sender and received will always agree on the value, hence noise-free information transfer.  The critical hurdle that the team overcame is to use patterns of light in a manner that does not require them to be “recognised”, so that the natural distortion of noisy channels can be ignored.  Instead, the invariant quantity just “adds up” light in specialised measurements, revealing a quantity that doesn’t see the distortion at all.“This is a very exciting advance because we can finally exploit the many patterns of light as an encoding alphabet without worrying about how noisy the channel is,” says Professor Andrew Forbes, from the Wits School of Physics. “In fact, the only limit to how big the alphabet can be is how good the detectors are and not at all influenced by the noise of the channel.”Lead author and PhD candidate Keshaan Singh adds: “To create and detect the vectorness modulation requires nothing more than conventional communications technology, allowing our modal (pattern) based protocol to be deployed immediately in real-world settings.”The team have already started demonstrations in optical fibre and in fast links across free-space, and believe that the approach can work in other noisy channels, including underwater. More