It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, May 23, 2024
SCI-FI-TEK
New discoveries about the nature of light could improve methods for heating fusion plasma
DOE/PRINCETON PLASMA PHYSICS LABORATORY
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AN ARTIST’S CONCEPTION OF PHOTONS, THE PARTICLES THAT MAKE UP LIGHT, PERTURBING PLASMA
CREDIT: ILLUSTRATION CREDIT: KYLE PALMER / PPPL COMMUNICATIONS DEPARTMENT
Both literally and figuratively, light pervades the world. It banishes darkness, conveys telecommunications signals between continents and makes visible the invisible, from faraway galaxies to the smallest bacterium. Light can also help heat the plasma within ring-shaped devices known as tokamaks as scientists worldwide strive to harness the fusion process to generate green electricity.
Now, scientists have made discoveries about light particles known as photons that could aid the quest for fusion energy. By performing a series of mathematical calculations, the researchers found that one of a photon’s basic properties is topological, meaning that it doesn’t change even as the photon moves through different materials and environments.
This property is polarization, the direction — left or right — that electric fields take as they move around a photon. Because of basic physical laws, a photon’s polarization helps determine the direction the photon travels and limits its movement. Therefore, a beam of light made up of only photons with one type of polarization cannot spread into every part of a given space. These findings demonstrate the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory’s (PPPL) strengths in theoretical physics and fusion research.
“Having a more accurate understanding of the fundamental nature of photons could lead to scientists designing better light beams for heating and measuring plasma,” said Hong Qin, a principal research physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) PPPL and co-author of apaper reporting the results in Physical Review D.
Simplifying a complicated problem
Though the researchers were studying individual photons, they were doing so as a way to solve a larger, more difficult problem — how to use beams of intense light to excite long-lasting perturbations in the plasma that could help maintain the high temperatures needed for fusion.
Known as topological waves, these wiggles often occur on the border of two different regions, like plasma and the vacuum in tokamaks at its outer edge. They are not especially exotic — they occur naturally in Earth’s atmosphere, where they help produce El Niño, a gathering of warm water in the Pacific Ocean that affects weather in North and South America. To produce these waves in plasma, scientists must have a greater understanding of light — specifically, the same sort of radio-frequency wave used in microwave ovens — which physicists already use to heat plasma. With greater understanding comes the greater possibility of control.
“We are trying to find similar waves for fusion,” said Qin. “They are not easily stopped, so if we could create them in plasma, we could increase the efficiency of plasma heating and help create the conditions for fusion.” The technique resembles ringing a bell. Just as using a hammer to hit a bell causes the metal to move in such a way that it creates sound, the scientists want to strike plasma with light so it wiggles in a certain way to create sustained heat.
Solving a problem by simplifying it happens throughout science. “If you’re learning to play a song on the piano, you don’t start by trying to play the whole song at full speed,” said Eric Palmerduca, a graduate student in the Princeton Program in Plasma Physics, which is based at PPPL, and lead author of the paper. “You start playing it at a slower tempo; you break it into small parts; maybe you learn each hand separately. We do this all the time in science — breaking a bigger problem up into smaller problems, solving them one or two at a time, and then putting them back together to solve the big problem.”
Turn, turn, turn
In addition to discovering that a photon’s polarization is topological, the scientists found that the spinning motion of photons could not be separated into internal and external components. Think of Earth: It both spins on its axis, producing day and night, and orbits the sun, producing the seasons. These two types of motion typically do not affect each other; for instance, Earth’s rotation around its axis does not depend on its revolution around the sun. In fact, the turning motion of all objects with mass can be separated this way.
But scientists have not been so sure about particles like photons, which do not have mass. “Most experimentalists assume that the angular momentum of light can be split into spin and orbital angular momentum,” said Palmerduca. “However, among theorists, there has been a long debate about the correct way to do this splitting or whether it is even possible to do this splitting. Our work helps settle this debate, showing that the angular momentum of photons cannot be split into spin and orbital components.”
Moreover, Palmerduca and Qin established that the two movement components can’t be split because of a photon’s topological, unchanging properties, like its polarization. This novel finding has implications for the laboratory. “These results mean that we need a better theoretical explanation of what is going on in our experiments,” Palmerduca said.
All of these findings about photons give the researchers a clearer picture of how light behaves. With a greater understanding of light beams, they hope to figure out how to create topological waves that could be helpful for fusion research.
Insights for theoretical physics
Palmerduca notes that the photon findings demonstrate PPPL’s strengths in theoretical physics. The findings relate to a mathematical result known as the Hairy Ball Theorem. “The theorem states that if you have a ball covered with hairs, you can’t comb all the hairs flat without creating a cowlick somewhere on the ball. Physicists thought this implied that you could not have a light source that sends photons in all directions at the same time,” Palmerduca said. He and Qin found, however, that this is not correct because the theorem does not take into account, mathematically, that photon electric fields can rotate.
The findings also amend research by former Princeton University Professor of Physics Eugene Wigner, who Palmerduca described as one of the most important theoretical physicists of the 20th century. Wigner realized that using principles derived from Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, he could describe all the possible elementary particles in the universe, even those that hadn’t been discovered yet. But while his classification system is accurate for particles with mass, it produces inaccurate results for massless particles, like photons. “Qin and I showed that using topology,” Palmerduca said, “we can modify Wigner’s classification for massless particles, giving a description of photons that works in all directions at the same time.”
A clearer understanding for the future
In future research, Qin and Palmerduca plan to explore how to create beneficial topological waves that heat plasma without making unhelpful varieties that siphon the heat away. “Some deleterious topological waves can be excited unintentionally, and we want to understand them so that they can be removed from the system,” Qin said. “In this sense, topological waves are like new breeds of insects. Some are beneficial for the garden, and some of them are pests.”
Meanwhile, they are excited about the current findings. “We have a clearer theoretical understanding of the photons that could help excite topological waves,” Qin said. “Now it’s time to build something so we can use them in the quest for fusion energy.”
This research was funded by the DOE award DE-AC02-09CH11466.
PPPL is mastering the art of using plasma — the fourth state of matter — to solve some of the world's toughest science and technology challenges. Nestled on Princeton University’s Forrestal Campus in Plainsboro, New Jersey, our research ignites innovation in a range of applications, including fusion energy, nanoscale fabrication, quantum materials and devices, and sustainability science. The University manages the Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, which is the nation’s single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences. Feel the heat at https://energy.gov/science and http://www.pppl.gov.
JOURNAL
Physical Review D
ARTICLE TITLE
Photon Topology
Iron could be key to less expensive, greener lithium-ion batteries, research finds
OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
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A COLLABORATION CO-LED BY OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY CHEMISTRY RESEARCHER DAVID JI IS HOPING TO SPARK A GREEN BATTERY REVOLUTION BY SHOWING THAT IRON INSTEAD OF COBALT AND NICKEL CAN BE USED AS A CATHODE MATERIAL IN LITHIUM-ION BATTERIES.
CREDIT: IMAGE PROVIDED BY XIULEI "DAVID" JI, OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
CORVALLIS, Ore. – What if a common element rather than scarce, expensive ones was a key component in electric car batteries?
A collaboration co-led by an Oregon State University chemistry researcher is hoping to spark a green battery revolution by showing that iron instead of cobalt and nickel can be used as a cathode material in lithium-ion batteries.
The findings, published today in Science Advances, are important for multiple reasons, Oregon State’s Xiulei “David” Ji notes.
“We’ve transformed the reactivity of iron metal, the cheapest metal commodity,” he said. “Our electrode can offer a higher energy density than the state-of-the-art cathode materials in electric vehicles. And since we use iron, whose cost can be less than a dollar per kilogram – a small fraction of nickel and cobalt, which are indispensable in current high-energy lithium-ion batteries – the cost of our batteries is potentially much lower.”
At present, the cathode represents 50% of the cost in making a lithium-ion battery cell, Ji said. Beyond economics, iron-based cathodes would allow for greater safety and sustainability, he added.
As more and more lithium-ion batteries are manufactured to electrify the transportation sector, global demand for nickel and cobalt has soared. Ji points out that in a matter of a couple of decades, predicted shortages in nickel and cobalt will put the brakes on battery production as it’s currently done.
In addition, those elements’ energy density is already being extended to its ceiling level – if it were pushed further, oxygen released during charging could cause batteries to ignite – plus cobalt is toxic, meaning it can contaminate ecosystems and water sources if it leaches out of landfills.
Put it all together, Ji said, and it’s easy to understand the global quest for new, more sustainable battery chemistries.
A battery stores power in the form of chemical energy and through reactions converts it to the electrical energy needed to power vehicles as well as cellphones, laptops and many other devices and machines. There are multiple types of batteries, but most of them work the same basic way and contain the same basic components.
A battery consists of two electrodes – the anode and cathode, typically made of different materials – as well as a separator and electrolyte, a chemical medium that allows for the flow of electrical charge. During battery discharge, electrons flow from the anode into an external circuit and then collect at the cathode.
In a lithium-ion battery, as its name suggests, a charge is carried via lithium ions as they move through the electrolyte from the anode to the cathode during discharge, and back again during recharging.
“Our iron-based cathode will not be limited by a shortage of resources,” said Ji, explaining that iron, in addition to being the most common element on Earth as measured by mass, is the fourth-most abundant element in the Earth’s crust. “We will not run out of iron till the sun turns into a red giant.”
Ji and collaborators from multiple universities and national laboratories increased the reactivity of iron in their cathode by designing a chemical environment based on a blend of fluorine and phosphate anions – ions that are negatively charged.
The blend, thoroughly mixed as a solid solution, allows for the reversible conversion – meaning the battery can be recharged – of a fine mixture of iron powder, lithium fluoride and lithium phosphate into iron salts.
“We’ve demonstrated that the materials design with anions can break the ceiling of energy density for batteries that are more sustainable and cost less,” Ji said. “We’re not using some more expensive salt in conjunction with iron – just those the battery industry has been using and then iron powder. To put this new cathode in applications, one needs to change nothing else – no new anodes, no new production lines, no new design of the battery. We are just replacing one thing, the cathode.”
Storage efficiency still needs to be improved, Ji said. Right now, not all of the electricity put into the battery during charging is available for use upon discharge. When those improvements are made, and Ji expects they will be, the result will be a battery that works much better than ones currently in use while costing less and being greener.
“If there is investment in this technology, it shouldn’t take long for it to be commercially available,” Ji said. “We need the visionaries of the industry to allocate resources to this emerging field. The world can have a cathode industry based on a metal that’s almost free compared to cobalt and nickel. And while you have to work really hard to recycle cobalt and nickel, you don’t even have to recycle iron – it just turns into rust if you let it go.”
The Basic Energy Sciences program of the U.S. Department of Energy funded this research, which was co-led by Tongchao Liu of Argonne National Laboratory and also included Oregon State’s Mingliang Yu, Min Soo Jung and Sean Sandstrom. Scientists from Vanderbilt University, Stanford University, the University of Maryland, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory contributed as well.
Closing in on the theoretical maximum efficiency, devices for turning heat into electricity are edging closer to being practical for use on the grid, according to University of Michigan research.
Heat batteries could store intermittent renewable energy during peak production hours, relying on a thermal version of solar cells to convert it into electricity later.
"As we include higher fractions of renewables on the grid to reach decarbonization goals, we need lower costs and longer durations of energy storage as the energy generated by solar and wind does not match when the energy is used," Andrej Lenert, U-M associate professor of chemical engineering and corresponding author of the study recently published in Joule.
Thermophotovoltaic cells work similarly to photovoltaic cells, commonly known as solar cells. Both convert electromagnetic radiation into electricity, but thermophotovoltaics use the lower energy infrared photons rather than the higher energy photons of visible light.
The team reports that their new device has a power conversion efficiency of 44% at 1435°C, within the target range for existing high-temperature energy storage (1200°C-1600°C). It surpasses the 37% achieved by previous designs within this range of temperatures.
"It's a form of battery, but one that's very passive. You don't have to mine lithium as you do with electrochemical cells, which means you don't have to compete with the electric vehicle market. Unlike pumped water for hydroelectric energy storage, you can put it anywhere and don't need a water source nearby," said Stephen Forrest, the Peter A. Franken Distinguished University Professor of Electrical Engineering at U-M and contributing author of the study.
In a heat battery, thermophotovoltaics would surround a block of heated material at a temperature of at least 1000°C. It might reach that temperature by passing electricity from a wind or solar farm through a resistor or by absorbing excess heat from solar thermal energy or steel, glass or concrete production.
"Essentially, using electricity to heat something up is a very simple and inexpensive method to store energy relative to lithium ion batteries. It gives you access to many different materials to use as a storage medium for thermal batteries," Lenert said.
The heated storage material radiates thermal photons with a range of energies. At 1435°C, about 20-30% of those have enough energy to generate electricity in the team's thermophotovoltaic cells. The key to this study was optimizing the semiconductor material, which captures the photons, to broaden its preferred photon energies while aligning with the dominant energies produced by the heat source.
But the heat source also produces photons above and below the energies that the semiconductor can convert to electricity. Without careful engineering, those would be lost.
To solve this problem, the researchers built a thin layer of air into the thermophotovoltaic cell just beyond the semiconductor and added a gold reflector beyond the air gap—a structure they call an air bridge. This cavity helped trap photons with the right energies so that they entered the semiconductor and sent the rest back into the heat storage material, where the energy had another chance to be re-emitted as a photon the semiconductor could capture.
"Unlike solar cells, thermophotovoltaic cells can recuperate or recycle photons that are not useful," said Bosun Roy-Layinde, U-M doctoral student of chemical engineering and first author of the study.
A recent study found stacking two air bridges improves the design, increasing both the range of photons converted to electricity and the useful temperature range for heat batteries.
"We're not yet at the efficiency limit of this technology. I am confident that we will get higher than 44% and be pushing 50% in the not-too-distant future," said Forrest, who also is the Paul G. Goebel Professor of Engineering and professor of electrical engineering and computer science, materials science and engineering, and physics.
The team has applied for patent protection with the assistance of U-M Innovation Partnerships and is seeking partners to bring the technology to market.
This research is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation (grant numbers 2018572 and 2144662) and the Army Research Office (grant number W911-NF-17-0312).
With Ontario’s eight species of turtles considered at risk, a new nest designed by researchers has the potential to significantly bolster their struggling populations.
The habitat is the first designed for turtles in rock barren landscapes, such as the research site around Georgian Bay. It uses moss and lichen. The researchers found that the design provided a more stable environment for incubating eggs compared to natural sites, where the probability of an egg hatching was only 10 per cent compared to 41 per cent in the created site.
“The number 1 threat to freshwater turtles in Ontario is habitat loss and degradation from urbanization,” said Dr. Chantel Markle, a professor in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Waterloo and lead author of the study. “Georgian Bay is one of the last remaining strongholds for some at-risk turtles in Ontario, so this new design is a step towards the survival of the species.”
Pressures from extensive road networks, suppression of cultural burning practices by Indigenous peoples, and the effects of climate change make it increasingly difficult for turtles to find an appropriate location in which to lay their eggs within the rocky landscape. Characteristics of nesting sites are crucial to the future of the population. In certain species, eggs incubated in cooler environments hatch into male turtles while warmer environments produce females, potentially skewing an entire generation.
The researchers strategically chose locations that would help ensure the nests would remain warm and drain well after rain. They paid close attention to cracks in the bedrock, soil depth and sloping of the landscape.
“Taking an interdisciplinary approach to assessing the success of habitat created for animal reproduction is critical,” Markle said. “In this study we evaluated the physical, ecohydrological and ecological success of the created nesting habitat—a combination not often seen in a single study.”
The team created the nesting sites in 2019 and monitored them for five years, with no changes necessary during that time. These promising results suggest that the design doesn’t need much oversight for years.
The researchers’ goal will be to replicate and scale up the nest design in other rocky landscapes in the province. They note that the design is specifically for any rocky barren landscapes, including other parts of Canada and the United States. The methods are publicly available with the paper so that turtle conservation groups could support their local turtle species.
Creating landscape-appropriate habitat restoration strategies: success of a novel nesting habitat design for imperiled freshwater turtles
Architecture as a product of and impetus for collective processes
New research training group at Goethe University Frankfurt investigates the built environment from an interdisciplinary perspective
GOETHE UNIVERSITY FRANKFURT
Examining architecture as a product of as well as an impetus for collective processes – this is the focus of the new Research Training Group at Goethe University Frankfurt’s Institute of Art History, which the German Research Foundation [Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG] recently approved. This dual role also finds expression in the title: "Organizing Architectures" – which can refer both to the architectures being organized and to architectures themselves organizing something. The doctoral theses emanating from the research group do not consider architecture solely as a product of planning and construction, but also in terms of the multi-layered social processes associated with it.
"Organizing Architectures" focuses on the tension between organized and organizing architectures. "In so doing, we are shifting the focus from the architectural concepts and dispositives that have dominated to date (the creative subject, the individual artistic work, the built structure marking the conclusion of planning) towards a consideration of their processual conditions. In line with recent interdisciplinary approaches, the research training group also examines architectures as their own triggers and catalysts," explains Prof. Carsten Ruhl, who teaches architectural history at Goethe University Frankfurt and serves as the group’s spokesperson.
The group views architectures as spaces in which dynamic negotiation processes take place, which are directly and inextricably linked to organizational forms like institutions, networks and discourses – fields of work that structure the research training group’s program. Its members include twelve academics from Goethe University Frankfurt, TU Darmstadt, the University of Kassel and the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory, whose academic backgrounds span architectural history, social sciences, cultural studies, law, history, architecture, and urban planning. Prof. Sybille Frank, professor for urban and spatial sociology at TU Darmstadt’s Institute of Sociology, serves as the research training group’s co-spokesperson. Starting November 1, 2024, the DFG will fund the group’s research for an initial five-year period with a grant of some €8.1 million.
Caption: The new research training group focuses on who determines architecture’s production and perception and what power relations this reveals – including, for example, in this prison in Breda, the Netherlands, which is designed as a panopticon. G.Lanting, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Further information Prof. Dr. Carsten Ruhl Professor of Architectural History and Spokesperson of Research Training Group 3022 Institute of Art History
Psychedelic drug-induced hyperconnectivity in the brain helps clarify altered subjective experiences
A first of its kind imaging study in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging provides insights into how the brain works on psychedelic drugs and their potential use to treat psychiatric disorders
HEY MAN AM I IN YOUR HEAD OR ARE YOU IN MINE?!
ELSEVIER
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A NEW STUDY FINDS A PATTERN OF PSILOCYBIN-INDUCED DYNAMIC HYPERCONNECTIVITY IN THE BRAIN, WHICH IS LINKED TO OCEANIC BOUNDLESSNESS.
CREDIT: BIOLOGICAL PSYCHIATRY: COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE AND NEUROIMAGING
Philadelphia, May 23, 2024 – A new study shows that the use of psilocybin, a compound found in the widely known “magic mushrooms,” initiates a pattern of hyperconnectivity in the brain linked to the ego-modifying effects and feelings of oceanic boundlessness. The findings, appearing in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, published by Elsevier, help explain the so-called mystical experiences people report during the use of psychedelics and are pertinent to the psychotherapeutic applications of psychedelic drugs to treat psychiatric disorders such as depression.
The concept of oceanic boundlessness refers to a sense of unity, blissfulness, insightfulness, and spiritual experience often associated with psychedelic sessions.
In one of the first brain imaging studies in psychedelic research, investigators found a specific association between the experiential, psychedelic state and whole-brain dynamic connectivity changes. While previous research has shown increases in static global brain connectivity under psychedelics, the current study shows that this state of hyperconnectivity is dynamic (changing over time) and its transition rate coincides with the feeling of oceanic boundlessness, a hallmark dimension of the psychedelic state.
Lead investigator Johannes G. Ramaekers, PhD, Department of Neuropsychology and Psychopharmacology, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, says, "Psilocybin has been one of the most studied psychedelics, possibly due to its potential contribution in treating different disorders, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, death-related anxiety, depression, treatment-resistant depression, major depressive disorder, terminal cancer-associated anxiety, demoralization, smoking, and alcohol and tobacco addiction. What was not fully understood is what brain activity is associated with these profound experiences."
Psilocybin generates profound alterations both at the brain and the experiential level. The brain's tendency to enter a hyperconnected-hyperarousal pattern under psilocybin represents the potential to entertain variant mental perspectives. The findings of the new study illuminate the intricate interplay between brain dynamics and subjective experience under psilocybin, providing insights into the neurophysiology and neuro-experiential qualities of the psychedelic state.
Dr. Ramaekers adds, "Taken together, averaged and dynamic connectivity analyses suggest that psilocybin alters brain function such that the overall neurobiological pattern becomes functionally more connected, more fluid, and less modular."
Previously acquired functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data were analyzed for two groups of people; one group of 22 individuals received a single dose of psilocybin, the other 27 participants received a placebo. During the drug's peak effects, participants who received psilocybin reported substantial phenomenological changes compared to placebo. Also, brain connectivity analysis showed that a pattern characterized by global region-to-region connectivity was re-appearing across the acquisition time in the psilocybin group, potentially accounting for the variant mental associations that participants experience.
Moreover, this hyperconnected pattern was linked to oceanic boundlessness and unity, which indicates an important mapping between brain dynamics and subjective experience, pointing towards “egotropic effects” (vs hallucinergic) of the drug.
PhD candidate and co-author of the paper Larry Fort, University of Liège, emphasizes: “Psychedelic drugs like psilocybin are often referred to as hallucinogens both scientifically and colloquially. As such, we expected that the hallucinatory dimensions of experience would correlate the highest with psilocybin’s hyperconnected pattern. However, hallucinatory experience had a strong, but weaker correlation with this pattern than ego-modifying experiences. This led us to formulate the term ‘egotropic’ to draw attention to these ego-modifying effects as important, perhaps even more so than their hallucinogenic counterparts.”
Editor-in-Chief of Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging Cameron S. Carter, MD, University of California Irvine, comments, “This study uses readily available resting state fMRI images acquired after psilocybin ingestion to provide new insights into the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the subjective and clinical effects of the drug. It sets the stage for future studies using other psychedelic agents to examine whether the dynamic connectivity effects reflect a general mechanism for the therapeutic effects of these compounds.
Lead investigator Athena Demertzi, PhD, Physiology of Cognition, GIGA-CRC In Vivo Imaging Center, University of Liège, adds, "We were pleasantly surprised to learn that the brain pattern of hyperconnected regions was further characterized by lower global signal amplitude, which works as a proxy to heightened cortical arousal. So far, this is the first time that such approximation of arousal levels using fMRI was attempted in psychedelic research. This might be an important correlation as we move towards a full characterization of brain states under psychedelics."
She concludes, "Given the resurgence in research regarding the psychotherapeutic applications of psychedelic drugs, our results are pertinent to understanding how subjective experience under psychedelics influences beneficial clinical outcomes. Is the effect driven by ego-dissolution? By hallucinations? As such, our work exemplifies how the strong inter-relatedness between egotropic effects of moderate dose psilocybin and its hyperconnected brain pattern can inform clinical focus on specific aspects of phenomenology, such as ego-dissolutions. With this information, healthcare professionals may learn how to best engineer psychedelic therapy sessions to produce the best clinical outcomes."
JOURNAL
Biological Psychiatry Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging
Dynamic Functional Hyperconnectivity after Psilocybin Intake Is Primarily Associated with Oceanic Boundlessness
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
6-Apr-2024
COI STATEMENT
The authors’ affiliations and disclosures of financial and conflicts of interests are available in the article. Cameron S. Carter, MD, is Chair of the Department of Psychiatry & Human Behavior at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine. His disclosures of financial and conflicts of interests are available at http://www.biologicalpsychiatrycnni.org/bpsc-editorial-disclosures.
A.I.
AI poised to usher in new level of concierge services to the public
Researchers explore how intelligent systems can upgrade hospitality sector
OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Concierge services built on artificial intelligence have the potential to improve how hotels and other service businesses interact with customers, a new paper suggests.
In the first work to introduce the concept, researchers have outlined the role an AI concierge, a technologically advanced assistant, may play in various areas of the service sector as well as the different forms such a helper might embody.
Their paper envisions a virtual caretaker that, by combining natural language processing, behavioral data and predictive analytics, would anticipate a customer’s needs, suggest certain actions, and automate routine tasks without having to be explicitly commanded to do so.
Though such a skilled assistant is still years away, Stephanie Liu, lead author of the paper and an associate professor of hospitality management at The Ohio State University, and her colleagues drew insight from several contemporary fields, including service management, psychology, human-computer interaction and ethics research, to detail what opportunities and challenges might arise from having an AI concierge manage human encounters.
“The traditional service industry uses concierges for high-end clients, meaning that only a few people have access to them,” Liu said. “Now with the assistance of AI technology, everybody can have access to a concierge providing superior experiences.”
On that premise, the benefits of incorporating AI into customer service are twofold: It would allow companies to offer around-the-clock availability and consistency in their operations as well as improve how individuals engage with professional service organizations, she said.
Moreover, as the younger workforce gravitates to more tech-oriented jobs and global travel becomes more common, generative AI could be an apt solution to deal with the escalating demands of evolving hospitality trends, said Liu.
“The development of AI technology for hotels, restaurants, health care, retail and tourism has a lot of potential,” she said.
Despite the social and economic benefits associated with implementing such machines, how effective AI concierges may be at completing a task is dependent on both the specific situation and the type of interface consumers use, said Liu.
There are four primary forms a smart aide might take, each with distinctive attributes that would provide consumers with different levels of convenience, according to Liu.
The first type is a dialogue interface that uses only text or speech to communicate, such as ChatGPT, a conversational agent often used to make inquiries and garner real-time assistance. Many of these interactive devices are already used in hotels and medical buildings for contactless booking or to connect consumers with other services and resources.
The second is a virtual avatar that employs a vivid digital appearance and a fully formed persona to foster a deeper emotional connection with the consumer. This method is often utilized for telehealth consultations and online learning programs.
The third iteration is a holographic projection wherein a simulated 3D image is brought into the physical world. According to the paper, this is ideally suited for scenarios where the visual impact is desired, but physical assistance itself is not necessary.
The paper rounds out the list by suggesting an AI concierge that would present as a tangible, or touchable robot. This form would offer the most human-like sensory experiences and would likely be able to execute multiple physical tasks, like transporting heavy luggage.
Some international companies have already developed these cutting-edge tools for use in a limited capacity. One robotic concierge,known as Sam, was designed to aid those in senior living communities by helping them check in, make fall risk assessments and support staff with non-medical tasks. Another deployed at South Korea’s Incheon International Airport helped consumers navigate paths to their destination and offered premier shopping and dining recommendations.
Yet as advanced computing algorithms become more intertwined in our daily lives, industry experts will likely have to consider consumer privacy concerns when deciding when and where to implement these AI systems. One way to deal with these issues would be to create the AI concierge with limited memory or other safewalls to protect stored personal data, such as identity and financial information, said Liu.
“Different companies are at different stages with this technology,” said Liu. “Some have robots that can detect customers’ emotions or take biometric inputs and others have really basic ones. It opens up a totally different level of service that we have to think critically about.”
What’s more, the paper notes that having a diversity of concierge options available for consumers to choose from is also advantageous from a mental health standpoint.
Because AI is viewed as having less agency than their human counterparts, it might help mitigate psychologically uncomfortable service situations that could arise because of how consumers feel they might be perceived by a human concierge. This reduced apprehension regarding the opinion of a machine may encourage heightened comfort levels and result in more favorable responses about the success of the AI concierge, said Liu.
Ultimately, there’s still much multidisciplinary testing to be done to ensure these technologies can be applied in a widespread and equitable manner. Liu adds that future research should seek to determine how certain design elements, such as the perceived gender, ethnicity or voice of these robotic assistants, would impact overall consumer satisfaction.
AI concierge in the customer journey: what is it and how can it add value to the customer?
Artificial intelligence resolves conflicts impeding animal behavior research
Algorithm automates research and reconciles differing results that often arise between various studies.
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON SCHOOL OF MEDICINE/UW MEDICINE
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NEUROBIOLOGY RESEARCHERS SAM GOLDEN AND NASTACIA GOODWIN REVIEW LIGHT SHEET FLUORESCENT MICROSCOPY BRAIN IMAGES REVEALING THE ACTIVITY OF INDIVIDUAL NEURONS DURING DIFFERENT BEHAVIORS. THEY ARE IN A RESEARCH LABORATORY IN THE DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGICAL STRUCTURE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON SCHOOL OF MEDICINE IN SEATTLE.
Artificial intelligence software has been developed to rapidly analyze animal behavior so that behaviors can be more precisely linked to the activity of individual brain circuits and neurons, researchers in Seattle report.
The program promises not only to speed research into the neurobiology of behavior, but also to enable comparison and reconcile results that disagree due to differences in how individual laboratories observe, analyze and classify behaviors, said Sam Golden, assistant professor of biological structure at the University of Washington School of Medicine.
“The approach allows labs to develop behavioral procedures however they want and makes it possible to draw general comparisons between the results of studies that use different behavioral approaches,” he said.
A paper describing the program appears in the journal Nature Neuroscience. Golden and Simon Nilsson, a postdoctoral fellow in the Golden lab, are the paper’s senior authors. The first author is Nastacia Goodwin, a graduate student in the lab.
The study of the neural activity behind animal behavior has led to major advances in the understanding and treatment of such human disorders as addiction, anxiety and depression.
Much of this work is based on observations painstakingly recorded by individual researchers who watch animals in the lab and note their physical responses to different situations, then correlate that behavior with changes in brain activity.
For example, to study the neurobiology of aggression, researchers might place two mice in an enclosed space and record signs of aggression. These would typically include observations of the animals’ physical proximity to one another, their posture, and physical displays such as rapid twitching, or rattling, of the tail.
Annotating and classifying such behaviors is an exacting, protracted task. It can be difficult to accurately recognize and chronicle important details, Golden said. “Social behavior is very complicated, happens very fast and often is nuanced, so a lot of its components can be lost when an individual is observing it.”
To automate this process, researchers have developed AI-based systems to track components of an animal’s behavior and automatically classify the behavior, for example, as aggressive or submissive.
Because these programs can also record details more rapidly than a human, it is much more likely that an action can be closely correlated with neural activity, which typically occurs in milliseconds.
One such program, developed by Nilsson and Goodwin, is called SimBA, for Simple Behavioral Analysis. The open-source program features an easy-to-use graphical interface and requires no special computer skills to use. It has been widely adopted by behavioral scientists.
“Although we built SimBA for a rodent lab, we immediately started getting emails from all kinds of labs: wasp labs, moth labs, zebrafish labs,” Goodwin said.
But as more labs used these programs, the researchers found that similar experiments were yielding vastly different results.
“It became apparent that how any one lab or any one person defines behavior is pretty subjective, even when attempting to replicate well-known procedures,” Golden said.
Moreover, accounting for these differences was difficult because it is often unclear how AI systems arrive at their results, their calculations occurring in what is often characterized as “a black box.”
Hoping to explain these differences, Goodwin and Nilsson incorporated into SimBA a machine-learning explainability approach that produces what is called the Shapely Additive exPlanations (SHAP) score.
Essentially what this explainability approach does is determine how removing one feature used to classify a behavior, say tail rattling, changes the probability of an accurate prediction by the computer.
By removing different features from thousands of different combinations, SHAP can determine how much predictive strength is provided by any individual feature used in the algorithm that is classifying the behavior. The combination of these SHAP values then quantitatively defines the behavior, removing the subjectivity in behavioral descriptions.
“Now we can compare (different labs’) respective behavioral protocols using SimBA and see whether we’re looking, objectively, at the same or different behavior,” Golden said.
“This approach allows labs to design experiments however they like, but because you can now directly compare behavioral results from labs that are using different behavioral definitions, you can draw clearer conclusions between their results. Previously, inconsistent neural data could have been attributed to many confounds, and now we can cleanly rule out behavioral differences as we strive for cross-lab reproducibility and interpretability” Golden said.
This research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (K08MH123791), the National Institute on Drug Abuse (R00DA045662, R01DA059374, P30DA048736), National Institute of Mental Health (1F31MH125587, F31AA025827, F32MH125634), National Institute of General Medicine Sciences (R35GM146751), Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, Burroughs Wellcome Fund, Simons Foundation, and Washington Research Foundation.
A video frame of two mice whose behavior is being analyzed by SimBA. The dots represent the body parts being tracked by the program.
A UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON TEAM HAS DEVELOPED AN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SYSTEM THAT LETS A USER WEARING HEADPHONES LOOK AT A PERSON SPEAKING FOR THREE TO FIVE SECONDS AND THEN HEAR JUST THE ENROLLED SPEAKER’S VOICE IN REAL TIME EVEN AS THE LISTENER MOVES AROUND IN NOISY PLACES AND NO LONGER FACES THE SPEAKER. PICTURED IS A PROTOTYPE OF THE HEADPHONE SYSTEM: BINAURAL MICROPHONES ATTACHED TO OFF-THE-SHELF NOISE CANCELING HEADPHONES.
Noise-canceling headphones have gotten very good at creating an auditory blank slate. But allowing certain sounds from a wearer’s environment through the erasure still challenges researchers. The latest edition of Apple’s AirPods Pro, for instance, automatically adjusts sound levels for wearers — sensing when they’re in conversation, for instance — but the user has little control over whom to listen to or when this happens.
A University of Washington team has developed an artificial intelligence system that lets a user wearing headphones look at a person speaking for three to five seconds to “enroll” them. The system, called “Target Speech Hearing,” then cancels all other sounds in the environment and plays just the enrolled speaker’s voice in real time even as the listener moves around in noisy places and no longer faces the speaker.
The team presented its findings May 14 in Honolulu at the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. The code for the proof-of-concept device is available for others to build on. The system is not commercially available.
“We tend to think of AI now as web-based chatbots that answer questions,” said senior author Shyam Gollakota, a UW professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. “But in this project, we develop AI to modify the auditory perception of anyone wearing headphones, given their preferences. With our devices you can now hear a single speaker clearly even if you are in a noisy environment with lots of other people talking.”
To use the system, a person wearing off-the-shelf headphones fitted with microphones taps a button while directing their head at someone talking. The sound waves from that speaker’s voice then should reach the microphones on both sides of the headset simultaneously; there’s a 16-degree margin of error. The headphones send that signal to an on-board embedded computer, where the team’s machine learning software learns the desired speaker’s vocal patterns. The system latches onto that speaker’s voice and continues to play it back to the listener, even as the pair moves around. The system’s ability to focus on the enrolled voice improves as the speaker keeps talking, giving the system more training data.
The team tested its system on 21 subjects, who rated the clarity of the enrolled speaker’s voice nearly twice as high as the unfiltered audio on average.
This work builds on the team’s previous “semantic hearing” research, which allowed users to select specific sound classes — such as birds or voices — that they wanted to hear and canceled other sounds in the environment.
Currently the TSH system can enroll only one speaker at a time, and it’s only able to enroll a speaker when there is not another loud voice coming from the same direction as the target speaker’s voice. If a user isn’t happy with the sound quality, they can run another enrollment on the speaker to improve the clarity.
The team is working to expand the system to earbuds and hearing aids in the future.
A University of Washington team has developed an artificial intelligence system that lets a user wearing headphones look at a person speaking for three to five seconds and then hear just the enrolled speaker’s voice in real time even as the listener moves around in noisy places and no longer faces the speaker. In this video, co-lead authors Malek Itani, a UW doctoral student in the electrical and computer engineering department, and Bandhav Veluri, a UW doctoral student in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, demonstrate the system.
CREDIT: CREATED WITH IMAGES BY JACKIE DILORENZO/UNSPLASH (PLANT PHOTO) AND ALEXANDRA KOCH/PIXABAY (ELECTRONIC BRAIN ILLUSTRATION) (CC-BY 4.0, HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/)
Artificial intelligence approaches demonstrate how plant science has evolved
Machine learning also reveals how model systems have changed and how countries differ in terms of research focus and impact
Article Title: Assessing the evolution of research topics in a biological field using plant science as an example
Author Countries: United States
Funding: This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (IOS-2107215 and MCB-2210431 to MDL and SHS; DGE-1828149 and IOS-2218206 to SHS), Department of Energy grant Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (DE-SC0018409 to SHS). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
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