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)
Friday, September 05, 2025
Study prompts new theory of human-machine communication
Scholars propose ‘Socio-Technical Exchange’ as contemporary refinement
Hed: Study prompts new theory of human-machine communication
LAWRENCE – In a new paper, two University of Kansas scholars propose a novel theory of communication analysis that takes into better account how people interact with ubiquitous technology in the 21st-century workplace.
In “Socio-Technical Exchange with Machines: Worker Experiences with Complex Work Technologies,” ----- link to https://doi.org/10.30658/hmc.10.3 ----------- in the Human-Machine Communications Journal,Cameron Piercy, associate professor in the Department of Communication Studies, and Reaia Turner-Leatherman, a former McNair Scholar at KU currently pursuing a graduate degree in couple and family therapy at Kansas State University, polled nearly two dozen people from all walks of life about how they relate to the “complex technology” they use to do their work.
Based on the responses they got, the scholars propose “Socio-Technical Exchange” as an improvement upon the well-worn Social Exchange Theory (SET) when it comes to contemporary workplace communication.
“Social exchange theory was formed in the 1960s,” Piercy said. “Probably half a million papers cite some form of it ... because it's a logical argument about how people engage with others: They engage with people who are rewarding, and they avoid people who are costly. Your co-worker might know a lot about a certain subject, but they talk your ear off. And with technologies, it's the same.”
The authors say that people tend to form “machine heuristics,” which are basically beliefs about the relative worth of various forms of tech.
“People like machines because they're objective and consistent,” Piercy said, “but they also see machines as ineffective at subjective judgment. So we don't want a machine hiring us.
“But this paper says it's not just that straightforward. It's not always that we see machines as objective, but not good at subjective judgment. It's also when we use a machine over and over, then we start to form a specific belief about it -- that it's good at certain things and bad at others; that it's suitable for certain tasks and not for others.”
Although there still appears to be a role for what the authors call “human uniqueness,” machines are preferred for certain tasks, they found, writing:
“When they felt expertise was important, people often preferred a human coworker, finding coworkers more efficient and knowledgeable. However, with simple or embarrassing questions, a machine was deemed a superior collaborator.”
For now, anyway, machines don’t make judgments about their human users, which means SET doesn’t truly apply to such relationships. Thus, the proposition of Socio-Technical Exchange, or STE.
Bear in mind, Piercy said, that the study was done in 2022, before the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence tools such as the Large Language Model ChatGPT. Even then, the authors wrote, “our findings suggest that humans still feel interdependence with machines and that they develop stable cognitive representations for both human and machine work partners.”
Piercy has formed and directs KU’s Human-Machine Communication Lab, ----- link to: https://hmc.ku.edu/ ----------- where he is currently using grant funds to expand upon this new theory with a quantitative study.
(Boston)—Compassionate release, or medical parole, describes a legal pathway for people who are incarcerated to be released because of severe illness. Almost every state has policies overseeing the release of individuals who are medically vulnerable, which includes a terminal diagnosis of less than six to 18 months. While these laws are offered as a form of compassion as well as to lessen the burden on the prison system, are they actually working?
In an opinion piece in the Viewpoint section of JAMA Internal Medicine, a researcher from Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine believes these compassionate release policies are not working. “As a physician who spends considerable time reviewing applications for compassionate release, I can attest that very few are approved,” says corresponding author Nicole Mushero, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine at the school.
According to Mushero, the data backs this up. A Massachusetts study showed that in the first five years of medical parole, only 11% of applications were granted. “This results in thousands of individuals eligible for medical parole dying in prisons each year, particularly Black people, who in addition to being more likely to be arrested, convicted and sentenced to life without parole, are less likely to receive compassionate release,” says Mushero who also is a geriatrician at Boston Medical Center.
While not all individuals with terminal illness are older, older people make up the majority of those with advanced illness, and this population is growing. Medical costs of incarcerated patients who are older than 50 years are more than twice as high as their younger counterparts because of increased health conditions.
While some cite public safety, Mushero points out that studies have shown people age out of crime, with those older than 65 approaching a near zero rate of recidivism. “The goal of public safety is not well served by continuing to incarcerate those eligible for medical parole.”
Mushero proposes that compassionate release evaluations be done by an external medical review board instead of those working within the criminal legal system which would allow decisions to be made explicitly on medical criteria and in an expedited fashion. “This board would be comprised of health care professionals, including those with expertise in palliative care, geriatrics, psychiatry and general medicine,” she adds.
Mushero believes by choosing compassion for those nearing the end of their lives, society can better define justice by reorienting the punitive lens toward one of care and repair. “As physicians, we remain steadfast in a belief that everyone should be afforded the opportunity to die with dignity and recognize any death in prison as a policy failure. We can, and must, imagine a more just future for all our patients.”
The sPHENIX detector is the newest experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and is designed to precisely measure products of high-speed particle collisions. This image shows the installation of the inner hadronic calorimeter within the core of the sPHENIX superconducting solenoid magnet.
A new and powerful particle detector just passed a critical test in its goal to decipher the ingredients of the early universe.
The sPHENIX detector is the newest experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and is designed to precisely measure products of high-speed particle collisions. From the aftermath, scientists hope to reconstruct the properties of quark-gluon plasma (QGP) — a white-hot soup of subatomic particles known as quarks and gluons that is thought to have sprung into existence in the few microseconds following the Big Bang. Just as quickly, the mysterious plasma disappeared, cooling and combining to form the protons and neutrons that make up today’s ordinary matter.
Now, the sPHENIX detector has made a key measurement that proves it has the precision to help piece together the primordial properties of quark-gluon plasma.
In a paper in the Journal of High Energy Physics, scientists including physicists at MIT report that sPHENIX precisely measured the number and energy of particles that streamed out from gold ions that collided at close to the speed of light.
Straight ahead
This test is considered in physics to be a “standard candle,” meaning that the measurement is a well-established constant that can be used to gauge a detector’s precision.
In particular, sPHENIX successfully measured the number of charged particles that are produced when two gold ions collide, and determined how this number changes when the ions collide head-on, versus just glancing by. The detector’s measurements revealed that head-on collisions produced 10 times more charged particles, which were also 10 times more energetic, compared to less straight-on collisions.
“This indicates the detector works as it should,” says Gunther Roland, professor of physics at MIT, who is a member and former spokesperson for the sPHENIX Collaboration. “It’s as if you sent a new telescope up in space after you’ve spent 10 years building it, and it snaps the first picture. It’s not necessarily a picture of something completely new, but it proves that it’s now ready to start doing new science.”
“With this strong foundation, sPHENIX is well-positioned to advance the study of the quark-gluon plasma with greater precision and improved resolution,” adds Hao-Ren Jheng, a graduate student in physics at MIT and a lead co-author of the new paper. “Probing the evolution, structure, and properties of the QGP will help us reconstruct the conditions of the early universe.”
The paper’s co-authors are all members of the sPHENIX Collaboration, which comprises over 300 scientists from multiple institutions around the world, including Roland, Jheng, and physicists at MIT’s Bates Research and Engineering Center.
“Gone in an instant”
Particle colliders such as Brookhaven’s RHIC are designed to accelerate particles at “relativistic” speeds, meaning close to the speed of light. When these particles are flung around in opposite, circulating beams and brought back together, any smash-ups that occur can release an enormous amount of energy. In the right conditions, this energy can very briefly exist in the form of quark-gluon plasma — the same stuff that sprung out of the Big Bang.
Just as in the early universe, quark-gluon plasma doesn’t hang around for very long in particle colliders. If and when QGP is produced, it exists for just 10 to the minus 22, or about a sextillionth, of a second. In this moment, quark-gluon plasma is incredibly hot, up to several trillion degrees Celsius, and behaves as a “perfect fluid,” moving as one entity rather than as a collection of random particles. Almost immediately, this exotic behavior disappears, and the plasma cools and transitions into more ordinary particles such as protons and neutrons, which stream out from the main collision.
“You never see the QGP itself — you just see its ashes, so to speak, in the form of the particles that come from its decay,” Roland says. “With sPHENIX, we want to measure these particles to reconstruct the properties of the QGP, which is essentially gone in an instant.”
“One in a billion”
The sPHENIX detector is the next generation of Brookhaven’s original Pioneering High Energy Nuclear Interaction eXperiment, or PHENIX, which measured collisions of heavy ions generated by RHIC. In 2021, sPHENIX was installed in place of its predecessor, as a faster and more powerful version, designed to detect quark-gluon plasma’s more subtle and ephemeral signatures.
The detector itself is about the size of a two-story house and weighs around 1,000 tons. It sits at the intersection of RHIC’s two main collider beams, where relativistic particles, accelerated from opposite directions, meet and collide, producing particles that fly out into the detector. The sPHENIX detector is able to catch and measure 15,000 particle collisions per second, thanks to its novel, layered components, including the MVTX, or micro-vertex — a subdetector that was designed, built, and nstalled by scientists at MIT’s Bates Research and Engineering Center.
Together, the detector’s systems enable sPHENIX to act as a giant 3D camera that can track the number, energy, and paths of individual particles during an explosion of particles generated by a single collision.
“SPHENIX takes advantage of developments in detector technology since RHIC switched on 25 years ago, to collect data at the fastest possible rate,” says MIT postdoc Cameron Dean, who was a main contributor to the new study’s analysis. “This allows us to probe incredibly rare processes for the first time.”
In the fall of 2024, scientists ran the detector through the “standard candle” test to gauge its speed and precision. Over three weeks, they gathered data from sPHENIX as the main collider accelerated and smashed together beams of gold ions traveling at the speed of light. Their analysis of the data showed that sPHENIX accurately measured the number of charged particles produced in individual gold ion collisions, as well as the particles’ energies. What’s more, the detector was sensitive to a collision’s “head-on-ness,” and could observe that head-on collisions produced more particles with greater energy, compared to less direct collisions.
“This measurement provides clear evidence that the detector is functioning as intended,” Jheng says.
“The fun for sPHENIX is just beginning,” Dean adds. “We are currently back colliding particles and expect to do so for several more months. With all our data, we can look for the one-in-a-billion rare process that could give us insights on things like the density of QGP, the diffusion of particles through ultra-dense matter, and how much energy it takes to bind different particles together.”
This work was supported, in part, by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, and the National Science Foundation.
###
Written by Jennifer Chu, MIT News
Paper: “Measurement of charged hadron multiplicity in Au+Au collisions at√sNN = 200 GeV with the sPHENIX detector”
A schematic of sPHENIX, a detector with precision particle tracking capabilities that will build on discoveries made at STAR and the original PHENIX detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). Key components include outer and inner hadronic calorimeters, an electromagnetic calorimeter, tracking systems, and a superconducting solenoid magnet.
As we get older, our muscle strength slowly declines – increasing our risk of falls, injuries, and loss of independence. In particular, we rely on our lower body strength for many essential daily activities such as walking and climbing stairs. Strength training can help offset the weakening of muscles, but not everyone has the means (or even the desire) to hit the gym for weightlifting sessions.
Researchers at Tohoku University have discovered a solution that requires no equipment, only demands five minutes of your day, and has been shown to improve measures of lower body strength. This promising treatment is new, and yet old – drawing on the centuries-old practice of Rei-ho, a type of daily etiquette originally practiced by samurai.
The findings were published in The Tohoku Journal of Experimental Medicine on August 18, 2025.
In Japan, traditional lifestyles provide numerous opportunities to strengthen the legs through daily activities. Sitting in seiza posture (kneeling on the floor with the legs folded under the body) on tatami mats and using squat toilets are such examples. However, tatami mats are going out of style, and Western-style chairs and toilets are becoming more popular.
One cultural tradition that preserves these behaviors and movements is Rei-ho. Rei-ho emphasizes slow, deliberate, and controlled motions in daily actions such as standing, sitting, and walking. Rei-ho’s health benefits had never been scientifically tested until now.
A research team at Tohoku University led by Professor Ryoichi Nagatomi conducted a randomized controlled trial to determine the effects of a Rei-ho training routine. The training group performed a five-minute Rei-ho routine, at least four days a week for three months, consisting of controlled Rei-ho style squats and sit-to-stand movements from a chair. The control group continued their usual routines without new exercise. After three months, the training group increased their knee extension strength by an average of 25.9%, compared with only 2.5% in the control group.
“In particular, knee extension strength—the force used to straighten knees—is a key measure of mobility and daily functioning,” says Ayaka Ogasawara, first author of the paper, “These exciting results suggest that Rei-ho may help seniors maintain their independence.”
These findings suggest that Rei-ho is more than just cultural heritage—it can also serve as a way to stay fit. Since it just alters how we perform simple daily actions, it can be easily incorporated into modern life without equipment or long training sessions.
“We think it’s also valuable that those outside of Japan who want to try Rei-ho would also be able to experience a unique aspect of ancient Japanese tradition in addition to the health benefits” says Lecturer Akira Sato.
While a fall means just getting back up for a young person, it can lead to severe injuries or even mortality in the elderly. This is why it is so important for early interventions that seek to offset the muscle weakening that inevitably happens to each and every one of us as we age.
Rei-ho training by sitting down and standing up (a, c). Unlike a regular squat (b, d), it involves slowly lowering without leaning forward.
SINGAPORE — A comprehensive study led by researchers from the A*STAR Institute for Human Development and Potential (A*STAR IHDP) has found that more than one in four healthy-weight Chinese women in their 20s and 30s already have low muscle mass and weaker bones — hidden risks for fractures and metabolic diseases that standard BMI measurements cannot identify.
The study, part of the Singapore Preconception Study of Long-Term Maternal and Child Outcomes (S-PRESTO), followed 191 Singaporean women aged 18-45 years and revealed important findings about body composition in young Asian women. Published in JBMR Plus, the research found that 26% of normal-weight Chinese women had low muscle mass combined with high body fat — a "thin outside, fat inside" phenotype.
Ethnic Differences Reveal Important Patterns
The research uncovered significant ethnic variations in bone health among young Singaporean women. Chinese women showed the lowest bone density despite appearing healthiest by BMI standards, while other ethnic groups in Singapore demonstrated markedly stronger bones. Only one in three young Chinese women had healthy muscle and body fat composition, with key differentiating factors including physical activity levels and dairy consumption patterns.
These findings are particularly concerning given that Singapore ranks among the top countries worldwide for hip fracture rates, with Chinese women — who comprise 74% of the population — bearing a disproportionate burden of fractures compared to men and other ethnic groups.
"Most research targets bone health after mid-life, but our study focuses on young adulthood when prevention strategies can be most beneficial," said lead author Dr Mya Thway Tint, Principal Investigator from A*STAR IHDP. "We found that women with low muscle mass had significantly lower bone density at all measured sites, regardless of their body fat levels."
Prevention and Screening Strategies
While BMI remains a useful screening tool for population health, it has limitations in identifying specific body composition risks. The study demonstrates that muscle mass, not just weight, plays a crucial role in predicting fracture risk long before menopause occurs.
Senior author Prof Johan Eriksson, Executive Director at A*STAR IHDP, emphasised the clinical implications: "These findings highlight that 'healthy BMI' is insufficient to identify chronic disease risk among Asian women. Body composition screening could identify at-risk individuals who might otherwise be overlooked due to their seemingly healthy appearance. By identifying these risks early, we can implement targeted interventions to prevent serious health complications later in life."
The study suggests that vigorous physical activity and adequate dairy consumption are key prevention strategies, with early intervention during peak bone-building years being most effective. For identifying at-risk individuals, screening approaches include DXA scans, bioelectrical impedance analysis used in national health programs, and simple handgrip strength tests.
The findings underscore the need for healthcare approaches that consider body composition beyond simple weight measurements, especially for young Asian women who may carry higher metabolic risks at similar BMI levels compared to Western populations.
The study was conducted by researchers from A*STAR IHDP, NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University Health System (NUHS), KK Women's and Children's Hospital (KKH), and international collaborators from the University of Southampton and University of Helsinki.
Study citation: Tint, M.T., Cremaschi, A., Leow, M.K.S. et al. Differential contributions of lean and fat mass on bone mineral density in Asian women of reproductive age: the Singapore Preconception Study of Long-Term Maternal and Child Outcomes study. JBMR Plus 9, ziaf054 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1093/jbmrpl/ziaf054
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About the A*STAR Institute for Human Development and Potential
The A*STAR Institute for Human Development and Potential (A*STAR IHDP) is host to a range of research activities that emphasise human potential and opportunities to improve health and well-being across the life course. We enable this through our research, as well as the support and participation of multiple ecosystem partners within and beyond A*STAR.
Through our work, we hope to enable communities and societies to be better versions of themselves, through opportunities to understand and access ladders for improved health and well-being. These include observational studies, pilot interventions, and evidence recommendations to practitioners and policy makers.
Our aim is to be a lead institute contributing to Singapore's vision to build human capital and potential, as part of the Human Health and Potential domain in RIE2025. Our strong foundational capabilities in translational research, renewed focus areas and commitment to supporting Singapore’s needs in population health will help advance human potential, health and well-being. Find out more at www.a-star.edu.sg/ihdp.
About the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR)
The Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) is Singapore's lead public sector R&D agency. Through open innovation, we collaborate with our partners in both the public and private sectors to benefit the economy and society. As a Science and Technology Organisation, A*STAR bridges the gap between academia and industry. Our research creates economic growth and jobs for Singapore, and enhances lives by improving societal outcomes in healthcare, urban living, and sustainability. A*STAR plays a key role in nurturing scientific talent and leaders for the wider research community and industry. A*STAR’s R&D activities span biomedical sciences to physical sciences and engineering, with research entities primarily located in Biopolis and Fusionopolis. For ongoing news, visit www.a-star.edu.sg.
Journal
JBMR Plus
Article Title
Differential contributions of lean and fat mass on bone mineral density in Asian women of reproductive age: the Singapore Preconception Study of Long-Term Maternal and Child Outcomes study
