Smart clothing coming sooner than you think

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This is a Canadian effort and I gather the recent 2026 news release from Rice University (at the end of this post) is an expression of support and exuberance. First, the early news in a March 19, 2025 University of Alberta news release by Gillian Rutherford, Note: Links have been removed,

Imagine wearing clothing that could change its shape and stiffness to help you recover from a shoulder injury, reduce your risk of falling or assist with muscle weakness so you could be more active in your community.

It sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but an interdisciplinary team led by the University of Alberta has just been given the green light to make it a reality. 

The federal government recently announced that it’s giving the team $24 million over six years to work on technology that could increase independence and quality of life for millions of people. 

“We’re starting a smartwear revolution to create light, washable, affordable assistive technology that will be indistinguishable from your current clothing,” says project lead Vivian Mushahwar, professor of medicine, Canada Research Chair in Functional Restoration and director of the Institute for Smart Augmentative and Restorative Technologies and Health Innovations (iSMART) and Smart Technology (ST) Innovations. 

Mushahwar is a global expert in neural and rehabilitation engineering with a track record of leading successful interdisciplinary teams and commercializing adaptive devices. 

With this project, Mushahwar brings together 64 researchers and collaborators from the U of A [University of Alberta] and across Canada, the United States and Europe. The team includes fashion designers, disability advocates, clothing manufacturers, visual artists, even a choreographer, as well as researchers from eight faculties across the College of Health Sciences, the College of Natural and Applied Sciences, and the College of Social Sciences and Humanities. 

Mushahwar says the U of A’s core facilities, well-equipped laboratories and strong support for interdisciplinary research allowed the project to win one of just six transformation grants from Canada’s New Frontiers in Research Fund for high-risk, high-reward research this year.

“Collectively the time was just right for all of us to come together,” Mushahwar says. “We have the resources, we have the skills, we have the expertise to do this work in a very productive fashion.” 

Putting users at the centre

Twenty-five per cent of Canadians have some form of muscle weakness for a variety of reasons ranging from sprains and broken bones to spinal cord injuries, strokes and aging. Current adaptive technologies such as exoskeletons, braces or electrical stimulation devices are often expensive, uncomfortable and impractical. 

“There really is a lot of need out there,” says Verna Yiu, professor of pediatrics and provost and vice-president (academic) of the U of A. “Smartwear will improve quality of life for those individuals, but also — if we can keep people healthy and out of hospital — then it will also make our health-care system more sustainable.”

The team is taking an innovative co-design approach that puts future users at the centre of development, starting at the concept stage five years ago. Three groups of users — older adults who are at risk of falls and mobility loss, people with disabilities who could use additional support to complete daily activities, and health-care workers at risk of workplace injury — have been included. 

From the conceptual stage onward, the research team has taken an innovative approach to designing the technology, putting future users at the centre of development. (Illustration: Supplied)

This is very different from many research projects that begin with scientists creating prototypes based on their own interests and capacities, says Danielle Peers, associate professor of kinesiology, Canada Research Chair in Disability and Movement Cultures and member of the Women and Children’s Health Research Institute.  

“The timing of user engagement (from the beginning), the depth and impact of our engagement on both process and product, and the purposeful engagement with the broadest possible range of end users are all unusual and transformative approaches to this kind of work,” Peers says. 

The team will share its progress in developing the new technology through two art and technology festivals in year three and year six. 

“It’s about trying to innovate and find new techniques for really centring the people with lived experience in the creation of this technology,” says Marilène Oliver, associate professor of art and design with extensive experience depicting the impact of medical technology on people.

Stretching scientific boundaries

Think of Batman’s cape made of memory cloth in the 2005 hit movie Batman Begins. Lucius Fox shows Bruce Wayne how he can simply touch his power glove to the cape to make it stiff so he can fly around Gotham City. 

The research team has already invented several classes of composite materials that can sense temperature, strain and pressure and change their shape, size and stiffness. The challenge now is to create fibres from those materials to be woven into clothing. Sensors that use artificial intelligence will be embedded to determine user intentions — to move an arm, lift a heavy object or stand — and actuators that change the fabric as needed will make those intentions a reality, all of it powered by tiny batteries that look like buttons.

“Those multi-material fibres will eventually function as artificial muscles or stiffness-switching materials,” explains Dan Sameoto, professor of mechanical engineering. “There’s a lot of things that are technically quite challenging for us to do, but we have a team to pull it off. And hopefully this project will be a springboard for many more transformative projects to come, so we can develop expertise within Alberta for smart manufacturing technologies.”

The project will provide unique training opportunities for 120 undergraduate summer students and nearly 70 graduate and postdoctoral students over the six years.

The other co-principal investigators on the project are Patricia Dolez, associate professor of human ecology; Anastasia Elias, professor of chemical and materials engineering and associate dean of research strategy in the Faculty of Engineering; Chester Ho, professor of medicine; Reisa Klein, adjunct academic colleague in modern languages and cultural studies; Mahdi Tavakoli, professor of electrical and computer engineering and director of mechatronics engineering; Adalberto Loyola-Sanchez, assistant professor of medicine; and Lingzi Sang, assistant professor of chemistry. 

“This meaningful investment underscores the University of Alberta’s commitment to pushing the boundaries of interdisciplinary research. By bringing together experts from diverse fields, we are poised to significantly enhance the quality of life for many people,” says Aminah Robinson Fayek, vice-president (research and innovation). “This project exemplifies our dedication to translating innovative research into real-world solutions that benefit our communities.”

In a September 22, 2025 story “Revolutionary “smartwear”: artificial intelligence-infused fibres will provide support for people with limited mobility” on the Canadian federal government’s New Frontiers in Research Fund webspace is where a local Vancouver project collaborator was mentioned,

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The game-changing potential

One important collaborator on the project is Chloë Angus, a Vancouver-based fashion designer who has been living with a spinal cord injury since 2015.

“The best doctors looked at me and said, ‘you’re never going to walk again.’ It doesn’t matter how it happens or when it happens in your life, it’s shocking,” she says.

After her injury, Angus channelled her energy into learning about assistive devices. She went on to co-design an award-winning exoskeleton that allows her to stand up, walk and even dance.

Angus was excited to join the team to support both the technical and design aspects of the project. While smartwear isn’t a replacement for her exoskeleton, it can offer critical support when she’s in her wheelchair and help to prevent secondary injuries.

“When using a wheelchair, you use your shoulders for mobility, and they burn out really fast. A lot of people end up needing to have one or both shoulders reconstructed through surgery, which takes a long time to recover from. Smartwear could help give that extra bit of power and support when you’re pushing,” she says.

While function comes first, the fashion designer in Angus also likes to imagine new features like colour-changing threads. She’s most excited about designing universal pieces of clothing like a T-shirt or a vest—everyday items that can offer people significant support.

“That’s smart clothing everybody could wear and love, especially if it changed colour.”

A badge of honour

The smartwear team has already demonstrated they can create fibres that change their shape and stiffness. From here, the project will proceed in three phases: supporting posture and injured joints; augmenting arm movements; and augmenting standing and walking. The team will collaborate with industry partners to get smartwear products manufactured and approved for sale in Canada before the end of the funding period. [Mushahwar received the New Frontiers in Research Fund 2024 Transformation grant worth $24 million over six years]

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Chloe Angus was mentioned here in a January 3, 2024 posting about an exoskeleton project in British Columbia (BC). That posting hosts an embedded video featuring Angus and what was then the most advanced exoskeleton in the world or so the Simon Fraser university (SFU) engineering team claimed.

And now, Rice University’s 2026 contribution

The latest news about the international effort to realize assistive smart clothing and bring it to the marketplace is in a January 20, 2026 Rice University news release (also on EurekAlert), Note: Links have been removed,

When everyday clothes can quietly support your back during a long work shift, help you rise from a chair or steady your balance on a crowded bus, assistive technology stops looking like a medical device and starts feeling like life. That’s the vision driving a new multimillion dollar grant supported by the Canadian government called the New Frontiers in Research Fund.

Rice University professors of mechanical engineering Daniel J. Preston and Vanessa Sanchez are core partners in the project led by the University of Alberta, bringing breakthrough materials, soft-robotic actuation and human-centered design to the team.

Rice contributes two complementary strengths to the initiative. Sanchez, a researcher trained in fiber science, materials engineering and robotics, brings expertise in textile-native manufacturing for wearable robotic technologies. Her team at texlab develops smart fibers and knitted and woven structures that act as robotic materials, actuating, sensing and routing power and data for innovative garment designs that fit diverse body types and movements.

“Our goal is to create clothing that looks and feels like what people already love to wear,” Sanchez said. “If we can embed intelligence and comfort into everyday garments, we can change how people experience mobility assistance.”

Meanwhile, the Preston Innovation Laboratory specializes in control and power in compliant devices and systems. Its work emphasizes reliability, washability and all-day comfort for the proposed assistive garments, along with embedded logic and control systems that keep computation local to the garment for enhanced privacy and power efficiency.

“The challenge,” Preston said, “is to make the assistance we provide feel as natural as fabric itself — responsive but unobtrusive and almost imperceptible. We want these garments to move with people, not on them.”

Globally, billions stand to benefit from rehabilitation or mobility assistance, yet many cannot access or tolerate existing devices. Braces can be bulky and nonadaptive, powered exoskeletons are expensive and rigid and most “smart” garments today only monitor rather than assist. By moving both sensing and actuation into the fabric itself, the research team hopes to create assistive clothing that is light, washable, attractive, affordable and scalable.

Together, the Rice researchers will advise two doctoral trainees working on the project over six years, with additional undergraduate and master’s students contributing through Rice’s extensive ecosystem in design, biomechanics and health care collaborations across the Texas Medical Center.

In the near term, the Rice teams will fabricate and characterize fiber-level actuators and wash-durable sensors compatible with standard knitting and weaving processes. They will also build control prototypes that keep computation on the garment itself, ensuring both efficiency and privacy. In parallel, the groups will contribute to fit and patterning studies to guarantee comfort across a wide range of sizes, genders and mobility profiles and will leverage Rice’s partnerships with clinicians for biomechanics testing, usability studies and feedback on real-world performance.

The larger consortium aims to create garments whose fibers perform the work themselves — changing stiffness, applying gentle forces and sensing motion without bulky add-ons. The researchers’ road map focuses on three escalating use cases developed directly from end-user workshops: posture support for caregivers and older adults, smart sleeves that aid arm movement for daily tasks and leggings or shorts that assist with balance, gait and sit-to-stand transitions. Core technologies include electrostatic actuators miniaturized into fibers for safe, low-voltage assistance; textile-embedded EMG and strain sensors to detect user intent; and on-garment control systems that blend rapid, rule-based stabilization with machine learning-driven personalization, all with safety-first fallbacks.

A hallmark of the $24 million Canadian dollar award is its co-design framework with people who have lived experience of mobility limitations. Rather than try to fit finalized devices to bodies at the end of the project, the team invites these individuals, alongside clinicians, industrial partners and artists, into continuous cycles of discovery, prototyping and feedback. Public art-and-technology festivals midway and at the project’s end will showcase progress, gather input and celebrate inclusive design.

Preston and Sanchez traveled to Alberta in 2025 for the kickoff alongside their graduate students. Over the six-year award, students in the Rice cohort will also have the opportunity to rotate through partner labs via visiting positions while the Preston and Sanchez labs will host visitors from the University of Alberta and other participating institutions, building a pipeline of talent at the intersection of materials, apparel engineering and human-machine interaction.

It’s nice to be reminded every once in a while that collaboration is an important aspect of research.

I wish Rice University gave bylines for the news release writers so I could acknowledge the person responsible for the nice work in the January 20, 2026 Rice University news release.

Your voice gives away valuable data, so how do you keep it ‘data safe’?

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I am curious as to just what kind of data is being revealed by someone’s voice; it seems that the real problem is how the information can be used, from a December 29, 2025 Aalto University (Finland) press release (also on EurekAlert but published January 14, 2026, Note: A link has been removed,

You can probably quickly tell from a friend’s tone of voice whether they’re feeling happy or sad, energetic or exhausted. Computers can already do a similar analysis, and soon they’ll be able to extract a lot more information. It’s something we should all be concerned about, according to Associate Professor in Speech and Language Technology, Tom Bäckström. Personal information encoded in your voice could lead to increased insurance premiums [emphasis mine] or to advertising that exploits your emotional state [emphasis mine]. Private information could also be used for harassment, stalking or even extortion. 

‘When someone talks, a lot of information about their health, cultural background, education level and so on is embedded in the speech signal. That information gets transmitted with the speech, even though people don’t realise it,’ says Bäckström, an engineering researcher at Aalto University. For example, even subtle patterns of intonation or word choice can be a giveaway as to your political preferences, while clues in breathing or voice quality may correlate with certain health conditions. 

One important risk is that medical information inferred from voice recordings could affect insurance prices or be used to market medication. Yet Bäckström also highlights the potential for indirect harm. ‘The fear of monitoring or the loss of dignity if people feel like they’re constantly monitored—that’s already psychologically damaging,’ he says. For example, employers might extract personal information from voice recordings which could be used against employees or to screen candidates, or exes might use such tools for stalking or harassment.

While Bäckström says that the technology to get access to all that information is ‘not quite there yet’, researchers are working to develop protective measures before the problem becomes too big. 

So how can engineers such as Bäckström tackle these problems?

Protecting against abuses means ensuring that only the information that’s strictly necessary is transmitted and that this information is securely delivered to the intended recipient. One approach is to separate out the private information and only transmit the information needed to provide a service. Speech can also be processed locally on a phone or computer rather than sent to the cloud, and acoustic technologies can be used to make sure that sounds are only recorded from (or audible in) a specific place.

These are relatively new challenges, driven by rapid technological changes and the growth of large data collections. In 2019, Bäckström and a few others established an international research network on privacy and security in speech technology. The team just published a tool that can address one of the field’s fundamental questions: how much information is there in a recording of speech?

‘To ensure privacy, you decide that only a certain amount of information is allowed to leak, and then you build a tool which guarantees that,’ he explains. ‘But with speech, we don’t really know how much information there is. It’s really hard to build tools when you don’t know what you’re protecting, so the first thing is to measure that information.’

The paper offers a metric which can be used to tell how precisely a speaker’s identity can be narrowed down based on the features of a recording, such as the pitch of their speech or its linguistic content. Existing metrics provide measurements in terms of recognition risk, giving an estimate of whether the speaker in a recording can be matched with a specific feature—for example, the likelihood of being able to tell if the speaker has Parkinson’s disease. Bäckström says those approaches are more difficult to understand and generalize. The new metric is the first to capture how much information is contained in an audio clip.

Better science means better tools

Bäckström sees the research as a step towards informing people about the privacy of different speech technologies. ‘I dream of being able to say that, for example, if you give a recording to whatever service, then at a cost of 10 euros, that company will be able to narrow your identity down to, let’s say, a thousand people. That’s something people understand, so it could be reflected in the user interface. Then we can start to discuss things in concrete terms,’ he says.

Having useful metrics isn’t just needed for communicating with the public. It’s also important for designing and evaluating tools to protect privacy. In a paper just published in the Proceedings of IEEE [Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers], Bäckström’s team provided the first comprehensive overview of different threats and possible protection strategies, as well as highlighting paths for further research. The paper also covers privacy risks to people who aren’t using speech services, for example, when data from your voice might be captured as background noise in a recording.

The study highlights that preserving privacy isn’t just a technical issue but also a question of the user’s psychology and perceptions, as well as user interface design. 

‘The interface should have ways of communicating how private an interaction is,’ says Bäckström. It should also communicate the system’s competence or confidence to help prevent accidental information leaks or incorrect actions. ‘Communicating those things in the appropriate way helps build long-term trust in a service,’ he adds. 

For Bäckström, addressing privacy concerns doesn’t have to be burdensome but can actually mean improving a product or service. For example, stripping out private information from speech would mean less data is transmitted, bringing down network traffic and reducing costs. 

‘We often see privacy and utility as somehow contradictory forces, but many privacy technologies have utility benefits as well,’ he concludes.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Privacy in Speech Technology by Tom Backstrom. Proceedings of the IEEE >Volume: 113 Issue: 7 Print ISSN: 0018-9219 Electronic ISSN: 1558-2256 Date of Publication: 19 November 2025

This paper is open access.

Light energy can charge gold nanorods

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This January 15, 2026 news item on Nanowerk, offers news that is more exciting than it first appears, Note: Links have been removed,

Gold nanorods are promising photocatalysts that can use light energy to drive chemical reactions—such as converting CO₂ into usable fuels or producing hydrogen from water. In this process, the nanorods act like tiny antennas that capture light and convert it into collective oscillations of their electrons. During the reaction, the particles can become electrically charged.

A research team at the University of Potsdam [Netherlands] led by physicist Dr. Wouter Koopman has now, for the first time, directly observed how this charging process occurs and developed a model that describes the underlying mechanisms.

The results (Nature Communications, “Capacitive photocharging of gold nanorods”) pave the way for the targeted control of light-driven chemical reactions and catalytic systems. In the long term, these systems have a wide range of potential applications – from solar-powered chemical reactors to novel energy storage technologies.

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Caption: Gold nanorods surrounded by water and ethanol molecules. Illuminating the nanorods generates a photovoltage. This allows the rods to extract electrons from the surrounding ethanol and water, resulting in electron accumulation on the rods (blue spheres). Credit: Dr. Felix Stete

A January 15, 2026 University of Potsdam press release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, provides more detail about the work,

Photocharging is a central but previously elusive process in photocatalysis with nanoscale metal particles: under illumination, excess charge can accumulate, significantly influencing catalytic properties. In an in-situ study, the team was able to observe this effect directly and demonstrate that gold nanorods behave like “photochemical capacitors” under light exposure: they store electrons at their surface. Owing to the large surface-to-volume ratio, a substantial amount of charge can accumulate in an extremely small space, leading to pronounced changes in their optical and chemical properties.

“We were able to directly demonstrate that light alone is sufficient to generate electric potentials between a single nanoparticle and its environment,” explains Dr. Felix Stete, the study’s lead author. When light is absorbed, electron–hole pairs are created. The holes are transferred to surrounding molecules – such as ethanol – while the electrons remain on the particle. “Our particles essentially behave like nanometer-sized electrolyzers, devices that split water into H2 and O2 with the help of electricity,” says Wouter Koopman, “except that they do not require an external electric voltage source.” In doing so, the researchers provide a new physical framework for better understanding and optimizing light-driven chemical reactions.

The work was carried out within the framework of the Collaborative Research Center SFB 1636 “Elementary Processes of Light-Driven Reactions at Nanoscale Metals” funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Capacitive photocharging of gold nanorods by Felix Stete, Matias Bargheer & Wouter Koopman. Nature Communications volume 17, Article number: 139 (2026) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-67130-8 Published online: 03 December 2025 Version of record: 06 January 2026

This paper is open access.

A Nikola Tesla-designed turbine that harvests electricity from compressed air

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Magnifying transmitter [downloaded from https://teslauniverse.com/nikola-tesla/inventions/magnifying-transmitter] Note: This is the closest I could find to an image of Tesla’s turbine.

Michael Berger’s January 9, 2926 Nanowerk Spotlight article highlights some intriguing research into generating power,

Most factories, auto shops, and assembly plants run on compressed air. This invisible utility powers pneumatic tools, actuates robotic arms, and drives automated systems across virtually every industrial sector. But compressed air carries a hidden problem that engineers have struggled to solve. Fine particles of dust and water molecules suspended in pressurized airstreams develop intense electrical charges when they collide with pipe walls and equipment surfaces at high speeds.

This is the triboelectric effect, the same phenomenon that makes a balloon cling to a wall after you rub it on your hair. In industrial settings, triboelectric charging can generate electric potentials reaching several thousand volts, with serious consequences: sparks that ignite combustible dust, sudden discharges that destroy sensitive electronics, and persistent static buildup that disrupts precision manufacturing.

Most solutions focus purely on mitigation, treating static charges as waste to be eliminated rather than energy to be captured. Previous attempts to harvest electricity from airborne particles required adding extra materials like plastic beads, silica particles, or sand grains with diameters exceeding several hundred micrometers. Some systems sprayed water into the airstream.

These approaches remained confined to laboratory settings or highly specific environments such as desert sandstorms. They produced modest power outputs. And they ignored the core safety concern: high voltages from particulate charging still posed ignition and discharge risks.

A study published in Advanced Energy Materials (“Particulate Static Effect Induced Electricity Generation Inspired by Tesla Turbine”) takes a different approach. Researchers from Chung-Ang University, Kumoh National Institute of Technology, MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology], and National Taiwan University developed a device that generates substantial electrical power using only ordinary compressed air. No additional particles, water sprays, or specialized conditions required.

The system draws inspiration from the Tesla turbine, a bladeless rotary design patented by Nikola Tesla in 1913. Unlike conventional turbines with angled blades that deflect fluid flow, Tesla’s elegant design uses viscous drag to spin smooth, closely spaced discs. Air clings to the disc surfaces and transfers momentum as it spirals inward.

The new device combines this century-old turbine concept with modern triboelectric materials. It consists of a rotating disc assembly, triboelectric layers made from opposing materials, bearings, and an acrylic housing. Compressed air enters through an inlet and creates a high-speed swirling flow reaching 300 m/s. This airflow spins the rotator through surface friction alone. At 0.2 MPa of pressure, the rotator achieves 8472 revolutions per minute.

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Practical demonstrations confirmed real-world utility. The device illuminated 1000 LEDs arranged in four parallel strings and powered four 2.5 W commercial lamps simultaneously. A commercial thermo-hygrometer operated solely on harvested electricity after the device charged a storage capacitor.

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Compressed air systems already exist in industrial facilities everywhere. This research demonstrates they could serve dual purposes: performing their pneumatic functions while generating useful power and controlling airborne particulates. Rather than grounding away hazardous static charges, that energy could be captured and charged particles neutralized through ion emission. What has long been an industrial nuisance may prove to be a practical resource..

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Particulate Static Effect Induced Electricity Generation Inspired by Tesla Turbine by Seh-Hoon Chung, Dongwon Seo, Chanui Lee, Hyungseok Yong, Sunghan Kim, Zong-Hong Lin, Sangmin Lee, Jihoon Chung. Advanced Energy Materials Volume 16, Issue 9 4 March 2026 e06275 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/aenm.202506275 First published online: 28 December 2025

This paper is behind a paywall.

Regenerative farming: nature as a meaningful partner in professional decision-​making

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It’s been a while since I’ve stumbled across something from the University of Eastern Finland and it’s always a treat. This January 7, 2026 University of Eastern Finland press release (also on EurekAlert)) announces agricultural research into regenerative farming,

In Finland, farmers who have transitioned to regenerative agriculture are forming a regenerative professional partnership with nature in their decision-making, a new study from the University of Eastern Finland shows.

Published in Agriculture and Human Values, the study explored the framework of the professional partnership in decision-making between Finnish regenerative farmers and nature. The study involved 86 farmers participating in the Carbon Action Project.

Regenerative agriculture is grounded in maximising soil cover, photosynthesis and microbial activity, while minimising disturbance. This enables food production that revitalises ecosystems and comprehensively strengthens their resilience in a changing climate and operational environment. Regenerative agriculture takes a holistic approach to well-being, encompassing ecological, economic, social and spiritual dimensions. Previous studies have shown that regenerative agriculture is more about a farmer-led social movement and personal journey than about specific farming practices.

“Regenerative agriculture is, fundamentally speaking, a way of living and expressing oneself in the world, co-creating with nature. Each farmer’s farm is their own creation,” Doctoral Researcher and lead author Soja Sädeharju of the University of Eastern Finland says.

Partnership with nature sets a framework and stands at the core of regenerative decision-making

Professional decision-making by farmers is intertwined with their connection with nature. Farmers participating in the study reported a deep connection with nature that guided their professional decisions, while also acknowledging the need to utilise nature to earn a living. To resolve this conflict, farmers developed a regenerative professional partnership with nature, as conceptualised in the study. This framework includes, as components contributing to decision-making, the farmer’s connection and relationship with nature, the roles of both the farmer and nature within this relationship, and communication and interaction between them.

The study examined this farmer–nature partnership in decision-making not only at the level of individual farms but also from a planetary perspective, paying particular attention to its ethical dimension. The study highlights a relational approach between humans and the world that transcends humanity.

“In the heart of regenerative thinking and regenerative practices is acknowledging nature’s agency and including it in deliberation and decision-making. However, this kind of thinking remains unfamiliar in Western cultures, where nature is traditionally viewed as a resource that is devoid of reason, and the property of humans,” Sädeharju notes.

Empirical research into the professional partnership between humans and nature remains limited. The present study offers a new perspective on the internal dimensions of decision-making among farmers practising regenerative agriculture. The study also deepens our understanding of nature’s agency by verbalising the tacit interactions between humans and nature.

“This understanding enables the genuine inclusion of tacit partners such as nature and future generations, and the adoption of a multidimensional perspective in decision-making.”

The study was funded by the Maj and Tor Nessling Foundation and by the Research Council of Finland.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

“Nature is my tacit partner”: professional partnership in decision-making between Finnish regenerative farmers and nature by Soja Sädeharju, Maria Höyssä & Arto O. Salonen. Agric Hum Values 43, Volume 43, article number 2, (2026) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-025-10817-x Published: 18 December 2025 Version of record: 18 December 2025

This paper is open access.

New treatments for drug-resistant fungal infections from McMaster University (Ontario, Canada)

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A January 7, 2026 McMaster University news release also on EurekAlert announced a promising approach to fungal infections, Note: Links have been removed,

Fungal infections kill millions of people each year, and modern medicine is struggling to keep up. But researchers at McMaster University have identified a molecule that may help turn the tide — butyrolactol A, a chemical compound that targets a deadly, disease-causing fungi called Cryptococcus neoformans. 

Infections caused by Cryptococcus are extremely dangerous. The pathogen, which can cause pneuomia-like symptoms, is notoriously drug-resistant, and it often preys on people with weakened immune systems, like cancer patients or those living with HIV. And the same can be said about other fungal pathogens, like Candida auris or Aspergillus fumigatus — both of which, like Cryptococcus, have been declared priority pathogens by the World Health Organization.  

Despite the threat, though, doctors have only three treatment options for fungal infections.  

The gold standard is a drug class called amphotericin — though Gerry Wright, a professor in McMaster’s Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences, jokes that it’s often called “amphoterrible,” because of the major toxic side-effects that it has on humans.  

“Fungal cells are a lot like human cells, so the drugs that hurt them tend to hurt us too,” he says. “That’s why there are so few options available to patients.”  

The other two antifungal drug classes that are available — azoles and echinocandins — are much less effective treatment options, especially against Cryptococcus. Wright says azoles merely stop fungi from growing rather than outright killing them, while Cryptococcus and other fungi have become totally resistant to echinocandins, rendering them completely ineffective.  

So, with a stagnant antifungal drug pipeline, a limited arsenal of approved medicines, and rising rates of drug resistance, scientists are now betting on something called “adjuvants” as a solution to the growing health threat.  

“Adjuvants are helper molecules that don’t actually kill pathogens like drugs do, but instead make them extremely susceptible to existing medicine,” explains Wright, a member of the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research (IIDR). 

Looking for adjuvants that might better sensitize Cryptococcus to existing antifungal drugs, Wright’s lab screened McMaster’s vast chemical collection for candidate molecules.  

Quickly, his team found a hit: butyrolactol A, a known-but-previously understudied molecule produced by certain Streptomyces bacteria. The researchers found that the molecule could synergize with echinocandin drugs to kill fungi that the drugs alone could not.

But they had no idea how it worked — and almost didn’t bother to find out.

“This molecule was first discovered in the early 1990s, and nobody has ever really looked at it since,” Wright says. “So, when it showed up in our screens, my first instinct was to walk away from it. I thought, ‘it’s a known compound, it kind of looks like amphotericin, it’s just another toxic molecule — not worth our time.’”

But he credits the determination of postdoctoral fellow Xuefei Chen for changing his mind.

“Early on, this molecule’s activity appeared to be quite good,” says Chen, who works in Wright’s lab. “I felt that if there was even a small chance that it could revive an entire class of antifungal medicine, we had to explore it.”

After years of what Wright calls “painstaking sleuthing and detective work” led by Chen, the research team revealed exactly how the adjuvant worked.

Chen discovered that butyrolactol A acts as a plug that clogs up an important protein complex that’s “mission critical” for Cryptococcus — “when it’s jammed, all hell breaks loose,” Wright says. This disturbance renders the fungus completely vulnerable to the drugs that it once resisted.

Working with researchers in the laboratory of McMaster Professor Brian Coombes, also a member of the IIDR, the research team has since shown that butyrolactol A also functions similarly in Candida auris, which gives it broad clinical potential.  

Wright says the findings, published recently in the prestigious journal Cell, are more than a decade in the making.  

“That first screen that put butyrolactol A on our radar took place in 2014,” he notes. “More than eleven years later, thanks almost entirely to Chen, we have identified a legitimate drug candidate and an entirely new target to attack with other new drugs.”  

The discovery marks the second antifungal compound and the third new antimicrobial found by Wright’s lab in the past year.  

Here’s a citation for and a link to the paper,

Butyrolactol A enhances caspofungin efficacy via flippase inhibition in drug-resistant fungi by
Xuefei Chen, H. Diessel Duan, Michael J. Hoy, Kalinka Koteva, Michaela Spitzer, Allison K. Guitor, Emily Puumala, Aline A. Fiebig, Guanggan Hu, Bonnie Yiu, Sommer Chou, Zhuyun Bian, Yeseul Choi, Amelia Bing Ya Guo, Wenliang Wang, Sheng Sun, Nicole Robbins, Anna Floyd Averette, Michael A. Cook, Ray Truant, Lesley T. MacNeil, Eric D. Brown, James W. Kronstad, Brian K. Coombes, Leah E. Cowen, Joseph Heitman, Huilin Li, Gerard D. Wright. Cell Volume 189, Issue 2 p620-639.e28 January 22, 2026 DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2025.11.036 Published online: December 31, 2025

This paper is behind a paywall.

University of British Columbia (UBC) and technology for tree planting in cities

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After a summer of wildfires and outstandingly poor air quality, it seems we in the Northern Hemisphere will be facing an even hotter year in 2027. On that basis, it is heartening to see that there are efforts to mitigate the increasingly hot condition of this planet; here’s an August 25, 2026 University of British Columbia (UBC) news release (also received via email) describing one such project, Note: Links have been removed,

UBC researchers and municipal partners have developed a modelling tool to help cities adapt to rising temperatures by mapping where new trees offer the greatest cooling impact.

First piloted in Kelowna and now expanding to Vancouver, CanopyFit accounts for urban constraints like underground utilities, overhead wires and infrastructure that often hinder planting.

“Creating and sustaining extensive canopy cover, by protecting mature trees and planting trees that can grow to large sizes, is one of the most effective investments cities can make to reduce exposure to extreme heat,” said Dr. Melissa McHale, a professor in UBC’s faculty of forestry and environmental stewardship and lead of the Urban Ecology and Sustainability Lab. “The challenge is making space for those trees and helping them thrive where they’re needed most.”

Turning heat maps into action

“A site can look empty on a map and still be impossible to plant,” said Dr. McHale. “CanopyFit accounts for the hidden barriers that determine where trees can realistically go and how large they can grow.”

By combining CanopyFit data with heat maps, shade models and demographic data, researchers can pinpoint priority zones. In Kelowna, the team identified neighbourhoods like Rutland as high priorities for heat relief and equity, while others, like Midtown, faced significant constraints despite high cooling needs.

“Trees are no less important there — overcoming barriers, choosing suitable species and investing in long-term care may just require more resources,” said Dr. McHale.

The analysis found that about half of Kelowna’s new-canopy potential was concentrated in roughly 20 per cent of its highest-opportunity planting sites, suggesting cities can maximize limited budgets by targeting areas where cooling benefits and planting opportunities align.

The team also used satellite imagery and machine learning to improve the city’s heat map resolution from 30 metres to 10 metres, helping planners pinpoint exact locations for cooling interventions.

Researchers found that every 10 per cent increase in tree canopy can reduce mean radiant temperature — the heat people feel from their surroundings — by roughly 1 C.

Science developed with cities

The UBC-Kelowna partnership began in 2022, developing tools for municipal planning needs.

“Our goal is to support the planting and long-term success of more trees across Kelowna, growing a stronger urban canopy for future generations,” said Todd Cashin, urban forestry supervisor with Kelowna. “These partnerships are incredibly valuable because they allow us to accomplish so much more together than we could on our own.”

Cashin noted that recent wildfires and extreme heat have heightened public awareness of the role of urban forests in climate adaptation.

“We’ve known about heat effects in desert-style communities like ours, but sharing that message is easier now,” he said. “After experiencing wildfires and extreme heat events in recent years, more people recognize the important role trees play in creating cooler, healthier and more resilient communities.”

“Cities move faster than academic publishing,” said Dr. McHale. “We develop tools on municipal timelines, test them against real planning decisions and publish once we prove that they are genuinely useful.”

From Kelowna to Vancouver and beyond

While researchers refine the tool through further study, its core methodology is reproducible. Diamond Head Consulting has integrated CanopyFit into its spatial forecasting tools to evaluate Vancouver’s future canopy growth and guide urban planning.

“We saw real alignment between the research methods and the questions cities are trying to answer,” said Amelia Needoba, principal and senior urban forester at Diamond Head Consulting. “It’s been a powerful example of research and practice informing each other.”

For Reg Eddy, arborist and urban forest planner with the Vancouver Park Board, the project supports more strategic canopy planning.

“While results are early, this project aims to improve tree canopy decision-making,” said Eddy. “It will help us identify strategic actions to boost canopy cover in the highest-priority areas.”

The Kelowna research was supported by grants from Canada’s Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council. Dr. McHale’s broader research partnership with the City of Kelowna was supported by a UBC Wall Fellowship.

Dale Boyd’s August 27, 2026 article for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) news online website includes a CanopyFit heat map, presumably of Kelowna, Note: A link has been removed,

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Roots in Kelowna, growing in Vancouver

The pilot project is a collaboration between UBC researchers, Vancouver-based Diamond Head Consulting and the City of Kelowna, with the partnership starting in 2022.

It is now expanding to Vancouver. Diamond Head Consulting will be incorporating CanopyFit into their work evaluating Vancouver’s future canopy growth.

…

The Vancouver-based company advises cities on how to protect green spaces and balance urban development with tree preservation, recently developing the City of Kelowna’s Sustainable Urban Forest Strategy, which was adopted by city council in 2024.

A data map showing priority areas in Kelowna for trees, with coloured squares indicating where trees will have the most impact over a satellite map.
CanopyFit integrates multiple sets of data including solar radiation and the tree equity score to produce a prioritization map. (Submitted by Melissa McHale)

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I have more about Diamond Head Consulting “Science-based solutions for healthy trees and resilient ecosystems,” from the company’s homepage,

Diamond Head Consulting Ltd. (DHC) is a leading Vancouver-based environmental consulting firm specializing in integrated services across environmental planning, wildfire management, arboriculture, and ecosystem restoration. Since our incorporation in 2001, we’ve grown to a team of over 40 professionals—including registered planners, foresters, biologists, designers, arborists, and GIS specialists.

We work on a wide range of projects across North America, from residential and commercial developments to major infrastructure initiatives, wildfire risk assessments, and city-wide environmental strategies. Our ecosystem restoration division also delivers hands-on project implementation, ensuring that our plans are rooted in real-world results.

Our trusted, collaborative services and high quality products have earned us the loyalty of hundreds of clients including municipalities, government agencies, commercial and residential developers, First Nations, and private landowners. We are proud of our diverse portfolio of experience and our award winning projects. Our reputation stems from an outstanding team of professionals and their dedication to innovation and client care.

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Back in 2022 when Diamond Head Consulting started its partnership with Kelowna, the company also produced a 2022 Vancouver Tree Canopy assessment (PDF).

Finally, here’s a link to and a citation for the academic team’s research paper, Note: The researchers studied Fort Collins, Colorado.

From canopy to comfort: The impact of residential landscape choices on thermal dynamics in a semi-arid city by Aubrey Benson, Bianca N.I. Eskelson, Travis Warziniack, Melissa R. McHale. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening Volume 112, October 2025, 128992 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2025.128992 Available online: 5 August 2025 Version of Record: 6 August 2025

This paper is open access.

MUTEK Festival: August 25 -30, 2025 and its MUTEK Forum: August 26-28, 2026 in Montréal, Canada

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MUTEK = musique/c technologie/y That seems a pretty safe guess given this from MUTEK’s Mission page,

Launched in the year 2000, MUTEK is dedicating itself to the presentation of live electronic music and real-time audiovisual performance, making it one of the rare outlets in North America for such innovations. After 20 years, the festival’s future-seeking mandate has matured—and while the promise has in many ways caught up with the present—its commitment to the ongoing mutations and variations of contemporary digital creativity remain, with its eyes and ears still fixated on what comes next.

The festival extends now to 6 days and nights—and integrates the professional Forum into the architecture of the week to enrich conversations and encounters with current technologically driven practices and philosophies. Plugged into a global circuit since inception, creating an international rendezvous for artists and publics alike, the festival thrives on creating a context for discovery and exchange. Faithful to its values of inclusion and accessibility, MUTEK is committed to a more equitable and representative programming of all diversities, in particular through the Amplify initiative.

It also magnifies Montréal, not just as its urban backdrop, but as the source of so much of its creative soul; the local is always elevated in dialogue with exceptional artists from around the world.

MUTEK has built a unique model over the years that has proven seductively exportable. Tentacles stretch across 4 continents, to 6 other cities now, with each satellite adapting the festival’s template of values as a means to inspire new ways of engaging with the richness of electronic and digital artistry.

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I have two Wikipedia entries for MUTEK. Bear with me, the contrast is striking, first the English language version, Note: Links have been removed,

MUTEK is a Montreal-based festival dedicated to the promotion of electronic music and the digital arts.[1] Its central platform is an annual six-day event in Montreal that takes place in late August.[2] Alongside the Montreal edition, MUTEK also hosts international versions of its festival.

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Now, the French language version, Note: Links have been removed,

MUTEK est un festival de musique électronique et de créativité numérique qui a lieu annuellement à Montréal depuis 2000. La plateforme centrale de l’organisme constitue le festival qui se tient chaque année à la fin du mois d’août dans le Quartier des spectacles à Montréal[1].

La mission principale du festival est d’offrir aux artistes les plus originaux et visionnaires du domaine, un tremplin visant à les faire connaître et les propulser le plus loin possible dans leur concept de création tout en visant la sensibilisation et le développement de nouveaux publics. L’engagement continu envers l’innovation et la promotion de la créativité contemporaine fait de MUTEK une organisation majeure dans le monde de la musique électronique en direct et de la performance audiovisuelle en temps réel[2].

I especially like the part where the festival offers artists, who are the most imaginary and visionary in their domains, a springboard … . So much more ebullient than the English language version, which collapses two paragraphs into one.

MUTEK Montréal Festival 2026

From the Montréal MUTEK organization Welcome homepage,

Edition 27: Amplify & Resonate

MUTEK Montréal Festival returns to the Quartier des spectacles from August 25 to 30, 2026, for six days and nights dedicated to electronic music, audiovisual performances and digital creativity.

This 27th edition brings together international artists, leading figures of the current scene and emerging voices in a program focused on live performance, sonic experimentation and immersive audiovisual experiences. In the heart of downtown Montréal, the festival unfolds across a network of venues connecting concert halls, immersive spaces and outdoor stages.

Over five distinct series, the Festival moves through different energies, aesthetics, and ways of experiencing sound, image, and space.

Explore the Schedule

Artists

A Guy Called Gerald | Abulzooz | Ah! Kosmos and Hainbach | Alan Harman | Arbor and Tzu Ni | aria | ArtSaves | Barker | BelleyFERRIS | Ben UFO | chiquitamagic | Cleo Leigh | con secuencias + Milo Reinhardt | Cry (Kilbourne & Relaxer) | CUERPOS | Dana Ruh | Dave Huismans (ex_libris) | Debit | dustbunny | ebb | El Ángel Exterminador & Anastasiia Vorobiova | ELECTRONICOS FANTASTICOS! | Elsewhere in India ft. Murthovic & Thiruda | Estelle Schorpp & charline dally | Evicshen | Facta | Fennesz & Lillevan | Florence-Delphine Roux | gyrofield | Hermanos Riffo Gómez | Honeydrip | Hot Sleepers | Ida Toninato | Istanbul Ghetto Club | JakoJako | jamvvis + YFBOB | Jeff Mills | Jenn Mong & Trevor Van de Velde | Jordan Gardner | JS Baillat & Mateo Murphy | Julian Sartorius | Jump Source | Kali Malone | Kara-Lis Coverdale | Korea Town Acid & Ajeebsir | M Salaciak | Marc-Antoine Barbier | Marie Delprat | Matt & Mark Thibideau | Matthew Herbert | Matthew Herbert & Julian Sartorius | Mia Koden | Monsieurmadam | MOORE + SALAS | Nazar | Nelly-Eve Rajotte | NGL Flounce | Noémi Büchi | NVST | Patche | Paul Vivien | Pick a Piper | pliq | Poirier | Polygonia | Purelink with Mika Oki | Rival Consoles | Sara Persico & Mika Oki | Sarah Rossy | shn shn | Super Galaxy Meow Meow | Tristan Perich & James McVinnie | Violent Magic Orchestra | Voices From The Lake | wetdogg | Zora Jones | 16:9 ratio

[Note: I apologize to the artists but with such a large number of names {over 50 of them} I will not be adding their names to the tagging for this posting.]

Discover the artists

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If you go to the Montréal MUTEK organization Welcome homepage and scroll down past the excerpts included here, you’ll find a a SoundCloud playlist for Edition 27. Enjoy!

MUTEK Forum 2026: Symbiotic Frequencies

Here’s a description from the MUTEK website’s forum page,

For 26 years, MUTEK has supported Montréal’s leadership in digital arts by promoting its culture, creators, and fostering local and international collaborations, as one of the world’s first festivals native to digital culture.

Within this context, MUTEK Forum serves as a dynamic platform bridging digital art, electronic music, and cutting-edge technology. Through its curated programs, the Forum addresses critical global challenges and supports artists, thinkers, and innovators in developing transformative ideas and projects. By partnering with leading research institutions, cultural organizations, and industry leaders, the Forum is a recognized marketplace for experimentation and exchange, nurturing new (and existing) alliances and collaborations within the digital arts.

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Now, from the MUTEK Forum website’s Symbiotic Frequencies webpage,

MUTEK Forum returns for its 12th edition with a renewed sense of ambition. New venues, an expanded program, and a theme that sets the tone for three days of radical imagination and curated exchange.

This opening session welcomes attendees, introduces the week’s trajectory, and unpacks the ideas at the heart of Symbiotic Frequencies, a theme exploring the entangled relationship between technology, creativity, ecology, and human connection. Expect an overview of the key moments to catch, the people shaping them, and the threads that will run through it all.

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The Symbiotic Frequencies for MUTEK Forum 2026 has an Acttivities Schedule page, which lists a number of intriguing presentations. Here are a few that particularly interest me,

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Does an AI God Have an Ass?

From Wednesday, August 26, 2026
2:15 pm_3:00 pm

Zach Blas is an artist, writer, filmmaker, and Associate Professor at the University of Toronto whose practice contends with computational technologies, their industries, and the powers that that constitute and animate them. In this lecture performance, he traces an intriguing arc from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to the techno-religiosity of Silicon Valley, exposing the religious unconscious lurking beneath contemporary AI fantasy and the systematic erasure of embodiment it requires. Through encounters with AI gods, Blas reveals what the divine machine mythology conceals: the bodies, labour and invisible workers who actually make the system run.

Part of his Silicon Traces trilogy which contends with the histories, beliefs, and fantasies shaping Silicon Valley’s visions of domination, the performance connects to CULTUS (2023), a moving image installation probing tech industry belief systems, and the artist book Ass of God (2024), published by the Vienna Secession and Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König. Irreverent, meticulous and pointedly in tune with Symbiotic Frequencies: a reminder that every network has a body and every god has a supply chain.

Content warning: for adult audiences and contains explicit sexual material, including graphic descriptions of sexuality and AI-generated images of nudity.

Please note: this activity will be in English, with live transcription available.

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Cosmos to Quanta in 10 Terms: Curators’ Take

From Thursday, August 27, 2026
10:00 am_10:30 am

Opening the day, curatorial duo Auronda Scalera and Alfredo Cramerotti, known for projects including Art Dubai Digital, Noor Riyadh, Web to Verse at Manchester Metropolitan University/MODAL, and Cosmotechnics at Fondazione Querini Stampalia in occasion of the Venice Biennale, deliver a keynote that traces how curatorial practice has been fundamentally transformed over the last decade by technology, co-creation, and new modes of perception and knowledge production.

The talk unfolds as a constellation of ten key concepts that have shaped and continue to shape our thinking and practice : some drawn from thinkers including Yuk Hui, Donna Haraway, Félix Guattari, and Hito Steyerl; others coined within their own practice, among them Hyper-Imaging, Oneironaut, Quantum Curating and Nachleben Digitalis.

Each term marks a moment where curatorial thinking expanded and reinvented itself in dialogue with art, technology, and philosophy. Together, they form the vocabulary of a practice built on co-inhabiting, co-imagining, and co-becoming with artists, machines, and publics.

Please note: this activity will be in English, with live transcription available.

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Brainless : How the World Thinks

From Thursday, August 27, 2026
1:00 pm_1:30 pm

What if intelligence was never located in the brain to begin with?

Claire L. Evans is a writer, artist, and cultural critic whose work sits at the intersection of technology, science and human imagination – best known as the author of Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet and as a member of pop group YACHT.

In this keynote, Evans invites us to look beyond the human brain to explore purely embodied modes of intelligence. Drawing on diverse manifestations of intelligence in the natural world, she considers the potential of biological computing and asks what nature’s own systems grown rather than mined can teach us about the future of AI and the many shapes intelligence can take.

This talks sits close to the heart of Symbiotic Frequencies, a reminder that the most sophisticated networks on Earth predate the silicon chip by billions of years.

Please note: this activity will be in English, with live transcription available.

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Build it Or Buy it? Creativity and Intellectual Property (IP)

From Thursday, August 27, 2026
3:30 pm_4:20 pm

Immersive creation moves in both directions. Sometimes it starts as something specific, built by a team of collaborators chasing an idea, and only later has to figure out how to scale, tour, or license without losing what made it worth experiencing in the first place. Other times, it starts from an existing intellectual property (IP), a story, a universe, a character, and the challenge is the opposite: how do you adapt something that already exists into a memorable immersive experience, rather than just repackaging it?

Either direction raises the same underlying question: what makes original IP a real strategic asset, not just a single work, but a universe, a clear authorship, a concept with enough depth to open doors to financing, partnerships, adaptations, and wider audience reach?

This panel brings together IP specialists, performing arts centers, LBE venues, and creative studios, including The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, PHI, Mance Communications, and Supply + Demand, to talk about that pressure point. Can you adapt interdisciplinary, experimental work into something that travels and sustains itself without sanding off its edges? Can an adaptation of an existing IP still feel like a genuine immersive creation, rather than a licensing exercise? Is there a version of “successful” that doesn’t mean “safe,” especially now, when AI can generate a thousand versions of “safe” in seconds?

Rather than treating scale and commercial viability as the enemy of creativity, this conversation looks at how the best studios build IP, adapted or original, as a foundation for long-term creative and business development, without losing the strangeness, and the human point of view, that made the work worth building in the first place.

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Symbiotic Frequencies / Symbiotic Futures : A Worldbuilding Workshop presented by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB)

From Friday, August 28, 2026
10:00 am_1:00 pm

Advance registration is sold out. Extra spots available 15 min before, first come first served.

Calling all artists, musicians, designers, writers, filmmakers, creative technologists, and curious future-builders.

What kind of world would give rise to entirely new forms of music, instruments, and creative expression?

In this collaborative 3-hour workshop, participants will use worldbuilding as a creative design process to imagine and build a shared future civilization. Together, we’ll explore how values, technologies, ecologies, cultures and social systems shape everyday life—and how changing one part of a world transforms everything else.

Inspired by MUTEK’s 2026 theme, Symbiotic Frequencies, the workshop invites participants to question our evolving relationships with artificial intelligence, living systems, artistic practice and technological infrastructures. Rather than predicting the future, we’ll collectively imagine one that is guided by curiosity, care and creativity.

Working with natural and found materials, participants will craft a physical artifact from this imagined world—an experimental musical instrument that reflects the world’s cultural identity, a tangible expression of the world’s history, values and way of life.

As the world evolves through conversation and collaboration, facilitator-led AI visualization will create an evolving visual backdrop that brings the participants’ ideas to life in real time. These visual interpretations serve as a shared environment for reflection and discussion, while participants remain focused on the collaborative process of worldbuilding and hands-on making.

By the end of the workshop, participants will have co-created a richly imagined world, contributed to its visual identity, and leave with a handcrafted artifact from the future—a unique piece of the civilization they built together.

This workshop is a collaboration between worldbuilding facilitator Paisley Smith and Vincent McCurley, Designer, Creative Technologies at the National Film Board of Canada’s Innovation Lab.

No prior technical knowledge required.

Visual references are created by the facilitators using locally run, open-source AI tools. Participants do not use AI directly; they create their artifacts by hand using physical materials. AI is used only to visualize the group’s evolving world and support discussion.

Please note: This activity will be in English only, without live transcription nor translation. During the event, no interpreter for the Deaf will be present.

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Listening at the Edge: Sound, Quantum Physics, and the Act of Attention

From Friday, August 28, 2026
1:30 pm_2:15 pm

Pauline Oliveros’ Deep Listening practice asked us to expand our awareness to include all sounds, inner and outer. Quantum physics, in a strange parallel, describes a universe where observation itself changes what is observed. This session brings those two ideas into dialogue, gathering quantum physicists, composers, sonic healers, and curators to ask: what is listening? and does the physics of uncertainty change the answer?

The conversation moves between registers. Alexandre Blais, professor at Universite de Sherbrooke and co-creator of circuit quantum electrodynamics, brings the science that underlies these institutions, while sound artist and composer France Jobin finds ways to make that science felt rather than simply understood, most recently with Lueurs quantiques and The Fluctuation of Emptiness. Composer and performer Kara-Lis Coverdale approaches the same territory from a different angle, working across electronic music and pipe organ to build sonic environments that dissolve the boundaries between musical systems and languages. And Rena Anakwe, interdisciplinary artist and NEW INC [New Museum’s cultural incubator] cohort member, grounds the conversation in the body, weaving sound, scent, and traditional healing to ask how reconnecting to nature, and to one another might itself be a form of listening.

Moderated by Eva Fischer of CIVA [Contemporary Immersive Visual Art] Festival and presented by NEW INC

Please note: this activity will be in English, with live transcription available.

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That first one about whether or not an AI god has an ass reminded me of a programme (Culturama) I watched on RadioCanada, Les fesses (although I remembered the title as L’univers des fesses),

Les fesses

Accompagnée d’Elkahna Talbi, Catherine Trudeau et de Thomas Leblanc, Chantal Lamarre se penche sur la représentation des fesses dans la culture. De l’oeuvre de Spencer Tunick à la Vénus de Willendorf, en passant par Deux femmes en or et le French cancan, nombreuses sont les fesses qui ont marqué notre imaginaire.

The rest of the items relate to one or other of topics covered here: brains, quantum science, sound, intellectual property, etc.

h/t to Kris Krüg for mention of MUTEK in one of his communications to the community.

Finally, If you happen to be in Montréal, perhaps you’ll be able to catch some of presentations..

Vote for your favorite nanoart entry in an atomic-scale microscopy competition

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The SPM Pro Tips (scanning probe microscopy) competition is accepting submissions until August 31, 2026 but you can vote from now until September 30, 2026.

Top row left to right: “Nano Teddy-Bear” by Gema Navarro Marín, Department of Physics, University of Basel. “Nano-Botanics” by Bruno Schuler, nanotech@surfaces Lab, Empa. “Blooming molecules” by Paul Greule, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Bottom row left to right: “Gummy bears @ Surfaces” by Marco Finger, nanotech@surfaces Lab, Empa. “Atom Invaders”, by Oleksandr Stetsovych, Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences. “Little Bees and Their Combs” by Lukas Grossmann, Deutsches Museum Munich [downloaded from https://www.nanowerk.com/nanotechnology-news3/newsid=70096.php]

An August 25, 2026 news item on Nanowerk provides more information about the competition,

A teddy bear thousands of times smaller than the width of a human hair, flower-like molecules, and even a working QR code assembled from individual atoms are among the images featured in a new competition celebrating the visual side of scanning probe microscopy.

The SPM Pro Tips competition brings together images produced with techniques such as scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM), both of which can reveal matter down to the level of individual atoms. The goal is to give researchers a place to share images that are scientifically interesting but might otherwise never leave the laboratory.

Seeing matter atom by atom

Scanning probe microscopes build images by moving a very sharp probe across a surface and measuring extremely small interactions between the probe and the sample.

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In STM, electrons tunnel across the tiny gap between the probe and a conductive sample, generating a current that can be used to map the surface. AFM instead detects minute forces between the probe and the sample through tiny deflections of the tip. Both approaches can achieve atomic-scale resolution.

That resolution makes scanning probe microscopy valuable for studying the structural, electronic and magnetic properties of materials and for identifying products formed during chemical reactions. But the resulting data can also produce images with an unexpected visual appeal.

The competition was created to highlight that less formal side of microscopy. Researchers routinely produce hundreds of images during experiments, yet only a small fraction appear in scientific papers or presentations. The organizers want to provide an outlet for particularly striking images that may have scientific or aesthetic value even when they never become part of a publication.

From molecular flowers to atomic arcade games

Entries so far span a wide range of scales, materials and imaging techniques.

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Some researchers have drawn playful comparisons between nanoscale structures and familiar objects. Submitted images resemble teddy bears, flowers, honeycombs and gummy bears, while another entry recreates the look of a classic arcade game using atoms. Other images focus more directly on unusual material structures, measurement methods, defects or distinctive physical properties.

Each submission is accompanied by a short explanation describing what the image shows and the research behind it, allowing the competition to serve as both an image gallery and a form of science communication.

One of the most unusual demonstrations associated with the competition is a functional QR code created by positioning individual atoms.

Using STM, atoms were manipulated into precise locations corresponding to the dots of the code. The completed structure was then imaged with the same microscope. Despite its atomic-scale construction, the resulting image can be scanned with a conventional smartphone and links directly to the competition website.

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You can find the QR code and more such as the judging criteria in the August 25, 2026 news item.

Here’s about SPM Prot Tips from the organization’s About page,

What is SPM Pro Tips?

Got some great data that didn’t quite make the paper? Had a great sample that you only saw once? Or was your tip strangely beautiful just for one image? The SPM Pro Tips image competition is intended to be a fun and friendly way to celebrate scanning probe microscopy. Only a tiny fraction of data collected is usually published — SPM Pro Tips hopes to get some more images off the hard drives and into the community!

The competition is also intended to be a fun means for the SPM community to share information about their science with the broader community. Each submission should include a non-expert description helping provide context to the image and its significance.

The competition includes a People’s Choice Award selected by public vote and an Expert’s Choice Award selected by the judging panel, with custom trophies and digital prizes for both winners.

Awards & prizes

Two major awards recognise the community favourite and the expert panel’s choice.Public vote

People’s Choice Award

AUD $350 digital voucher

Plus the custom CNC-machined SPM Pro Tips People’s Choice perpetual trophy.Expert panel

Expert’s Choice Award

AUD $500 digital voucher

Plus the custom CNC-machined SPM Pro Tips Expert’s Choice perpetual trophy.

A trophy that travels. Each winner’s name is engraved on the relevant trophy. The trophies are passed from winner to winner each year, creating a permanent record of SPM Pro Tips champions.

Voters can win too. Verified voters go in the draw to win one of several AUD $50 digital vouchers.

Digital voucher values are listed in Australian dollars and will be converted into the winner’s currency of choice at the prevailing exchange rate when the prize is issued. Vouchers can be used internationally.

Awards kindly sponsored by [Monash University]

Contact the organisers

Have a question, want to get involved, or interested in partnering with us? Reach out to the team directly.

SPM Pro Tips Team

General enquiries, sponsorship, judging panel, and everything else: spmprotips@gmail.com

Julian Ceddia, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia: julian.ceddia@monash.edu

Benjamin Lowe, Institute of Physics, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic: lowe@fzu.cz

Anyone interesting if looking at the entries and, perhaps, voting can visit: SPM Pro Tips (scanning probe microscopy) competition.