Monthly Archives: October 2022

Science Meets (Canadian) Parliament’s call for applications

The Canadian Science Policy Centre (CSPC) is accepting applications for its Science Meets Parliament programme and there’s an online information session coming up on October 26, 2022. Read on, from an October 13, 2022 CSPC announcement received via email,

The application process for Science Meets Parliament 2023 is now open!

Science Meets Parliament (SMP) is a program that works to strengthen the connections between the science and policy communities. This program is open to Tier II Canada Research Chairs, Indigenous faculty members, and Banting Postdoctoral Fellows. The deadline to apply for this program is November 30th, 2022. To apply, click here.

A virtual information session will be held for eligible candidates on October 26th, from 12:00-1:00 pm ET [emphases mine]. For more information, click here.

Sponsorship opportunities are also available! Click on this link here for more information.

I have more from the Science Meets Parliament 2023 webpage on the CSPC website (Note: i have restructured and reformatted the information from the page),

The objective of this initiative is to strengthen the connections between Canada’s scientific and political communities, enable a two-way dialogue, and promote mutual understanding. This initiative aims to help scientists become familiar with policy making at the political level, and for parliamentarians to explore using scientific evidence in policy making. This initiative is not meant to be an advocacy exercise, and will not include any discussion of science funding or other forms of advocacy.

The Science Meets Parliament model is adapted from the successful Australian program held annually since 1999. Similar initiatives exist in the EU, the UK and Spain.

CSPC’s program aims to benefit the parliamentarians, the scientific community and, indirectly, the Canadian public.

The Canadian Science Policy Centre (CSPC) and the Office of the Chief Science Advisor (OCSA) are pleased to announce that registration is open for the 2023 edition of Science Meets Parliament!

This program is scheduled to take place in Ottawa in spring 2023, subject to Parliament being in session and in person.

CSPC and OCSA are pleased to offer this program in 2023 to help strengthen the connection between the science and policy communities. The program provides an excellent opportunity for researchers to learn about the inclusion of scientific evidence in policy making in Parliament.

The Science Meets Parliament program has taken place twice (November 5-6, 2018 & May 9-10, 2022) and brought nearly 60 emerging leaders of the scientific community from across Canada to the Hill. The program has been a great success, receiving positive feedback from both Science Meets Parliament delegates and participating parliamentarians.

A virtual information session will be held on October 26, 2022, 12:00-1:00 pm ET – interested parties may register here.

Before you dash off, here’s who’s eligible and some of the requirements, from the Science Meets Parliament 2023 webpage,

The program will be available to three streams:

  • Researchers who currently hold a Tier II Canada Research Chair position and are affiliated with a Canadian post-secondary institution (Tier II Canada Research Chair status must be announced by November 30th, 2022).
  • Indigenous researchers (priority will be given to researchers who are faculty members affiliated with academic research institutions).
  • Researchers who currently hold a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship and are affiliated with a Canadian post-secondary institution (Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship status must be announced by November 30th, 2022).

Former Science Meets Parliament delegates (from 2018 and 2021) are excluded from application.

About 40 researchers from a diverse range of disciplines will be invited to participate in Science Meets Parliament 2023. In future iterations of this program, we hope to expand the application process further to include researchers from more career stages.

A multi-disciplinary committee will oversee the application and selection process, during which the diversity of disciplines, geography, and identities will be considered.

The application deadline is November 30th, 2022.

  1. Registration fee: Accepted delegates will be required to pay a registration fee of $600 (Canada Research Chairs) or $300 (Banting Postdoctoral Fellows), which includes admission to the program, breakfast, lunch, one dinner and an evening networking reception. All delegates will be responsible for their own travel and accommodation costs.
  2. Scientists who attend this session are required to share their experience and insights from the SMP program through a lecture at their host institution and/or an editorial in a CSPC featured editorial series or the OCSA website.

Delegates are highly encouraged to publish about their experience in academic or news publications. Participants are also encouraged to publish pieces in other media on their research to engage the general public.

For more information, please contact sciencemeetsparliament@sciencepolicy.ca

To apply for this program in English click here, for French click here.

Bonne chance!

Dark Matter Night, hybrid event, on Oct. 26, 2022 at 7:30 pm ET

Free tickets to the event are available as of 9 am ET, today (October 17, 2022). And, if you need more information before you commit, there’s this from the Perimeter Institute’s October 14, 2022 announcement (received via email; Note: I appreciate the wordplay in the title),

An Enlightening Evening of Dark Matter
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 26 at 7:30 pm ET
Katie Mack and Ken Clark

Dark Matter Night is a live webcast brought to you by Perimeter Institute and the McDonald Institute. Starting at 7:30 pm ET, Katie Mack will discuss the theoretical and observational foundations of dark matter at Perimeter Institute, where she holds the Hawking Chair in Cosmology and Science Communication. Next, Ken Clark, an associate professor at the Arthur B. McDonald Canadian Astroparticle Physics Research Institute, will share experimental approaches that could help solve the riddle of dark matter. We’ll also get a guided video tour of SNOLAB, the state-of-the-art underground laboratory two kilometres beneath Sudbury.

Don’t miss out! Free tickets to attend this event in person will become available on Monday, October 17 [2022] at 9 am ET – at either Perimeter Institute or the McDonald Institute

Each speaker’s presentation will be simulcast to the live audience at the other institute, and the whole event will be available via free webcast.

Dark Matter Night is one of many ways you can explore the topic – find lots more at darkmatterday.com.

Details of the evening:

6:45 pm: Dark matter demos in Perimeter’s Atrium
7:30 pm: Public lecture/webcast starts

I have details about the speakers, from ‘An Enlightening Evening of Dark Matter’ event page on the Inside the Perimeter website,

Katie Mack is a theoretical astrophysicist exploring a range of questions in cosmology, the study of the universe from beginning to end. She currently holds the position of Hawking Chair in Cosmology and Science Communication at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, where she carries out research on dark matter and the early universe and works to make physics more accessible to the general public. She is the author of the book The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking) and has written for a number of popular publications, such as Scientific American, Slate, Sky & Telescope, Time, and Cosmos magazine. She can be found on Twitter as @AstroKatie.

Ken Clark is an experimental astroparticle physicist whose research focuses on understanding the universe at the most fundamental level through rare event searches targeting dark matter and neutrinos. He is one of the leads for the Particle Astrophysics group at Queen’s University, a member of the Arthur B. McDonald Canadian Astroparticle Physics Research Institute (McDonald Institute), an affiliated scientist with TRIUMF, and the Canadian spokesperson for the Scintilating Bubble Chamber Collaboration.

Enjoy!

In person at Perimeter: I want to attend this event at Perimeter Institute! Note: It seems the Perimeter event is already full as of 10:15 am PT, October 17, 2022.

In person at McDonald Institute: The McDonald Institute is where I want to be!

It appears the webcast will be available here: https://mcdonaldinstitute.ca/events/an-enlightening-evening-of-dark-matter/

The last Ada Lovelace Day?

[downloaded from https://www.wthub.org/article/happy-ada-lovelace-day-sadly-the-last/]

I love this image. Unfortunately, it heralds what seems to be the last Ada Lovelace Day (ALD) according to the Women’s Tech Hub ~ Bristol,

Posted on by serrie

Happy Ada Lovelace Day – sadly the last!

This year, Ada Lovelace Day was celebrated on October 11, 2022 as Sue Gee notes in her ALD post on programmer.info (Note: Links have been removed),

Last Ever Ada Lovelace Day

Today [October 11, 2022] sees the final ever Ada Lovelace Day, an event which aims to raise the profile of women in science, technology, engineering and maths. The flagship event, combining science and comedy from an all-female line up takes place online starting at 8:00pm London time

Ada Lovelace Day (ALD) was founded by Suw Charman-Anderson in 2009 and became an international event celebrating the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM).

So why was a nineteenth century aristocrat chosen to be the symbol of an effort to inspire women to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and maths, STEM?

The answer is that, due to her involvement with Charles Babbage, she is widely regarded as the person who wrote the first computer program, for more on this theme see our history article, Ada Lovelace, The First Programmer. This achievement has been widely popularized, including in children’s books, making hers a name that girls might recognize.

While the Finding Ada Network, which provides one-to-one mentorship for women in STEM and advocates who work towards gender equality, appears to be continuing, this year’s Ada Lovelace Day is the final such event due to lack of financial backing. Suw Charman-Anderson told the BBC the reason it was now coming to an end was:

“incredibly simple – we just couldn’t raise the funding to continue”. 

The announcement about the last Ada Lovelace Day is here in an October 11, 2022 BBC tech news item. Suw Charman-Anderson’s Finding Ada (Lovelace) website is here, where oddly enough I was not able to find confirmation that 2022 is the last year for ALD.

I have a lot of Ada Lovelace postings here but this October 13, 2015 post stands out for me, ‘Ada Lovelace “… manipulative, aggressive, a drug addict …” and a genius but was she likable?

Farewell Ada Lovelace Day.

Are we spending money on the right research? Government of Canada launches Advisory Panel

it’s a little surprising that this is not being managed by the Council of Canadian Academies (CCA) but perhaps their process is not quite nimble enough (from an October 6, 2022 Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada news release),

Government of Canada launches Advisory Panel on the Federal Research Support System

Members to recommend enhancements to system to position Canadian researchers for success

October 6, 2022 – Ottawa, Ontario

Canada’s success is in large part due to our world-class researchers and their teams who are globally recognized for unleashing bold new ideas, driving technological breakthroughs and addressing complex societal challenges. The Government of Canada recognizes that for Canada to achieve its full potential, support for science and research must evolve as Canadians push beyond what is currently imaginable and continue to find Canadian-made solutions to the world’s toughest problems.

Today [October 6, 2022], the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, and the Honourable Jean-Yves Duclos, Minister of Health, launched the Advisory Panel on the Federal Research Support System. Benefiting from the insights of leaders in the science, research and innovation ecosystem, the panel will provide independent, expert policy advice on the structure, governance and management of the federal system supporting research and talent. This will ensure that Canadian researchers are positioned for even more success now and in the future.

The panel will focus on the relationships among the federal research granting agencies—the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research—and the relationship between these agencies and the Canada Foundation for Innovation.

As the COVID-19 pandemic and climate crisis have shown, addressing the world’s most pressing challenges requires greater collaboration within the Canadian research community, government and industry, as well as with the international community. A cohesive and agile research support system will ensure Canadian researchers can quickly and effectively respond to the questions of today and tomorrow. Optimizing Canada’s research support system will equip researchers to transcend disciplines and borders, seize new opportunities and be responsive to emerging needs and interests to improve Canadians’ health, well-being and prosperity.

Quotes

“Canada is known for world-class research thanks to the enormous capabilities of our researchers. Canadian researchers transform curiosity into bold new ideas that can significantly enhance Canadians’ lives and well-being. With this advisory panel, our government will ensure our support for their research is just as cutting-edge as Canada’s science and research community.”
– The Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry

“Our priority is to support Canada’s world-class scientific community so it can respond effectively to the challenges of today and the future. That’s why we are leveraging the expertise and perspectives of a newly formed advisory panel to maximize the impact of research and downstream innovation, which contributes significantly to Canadians’ well-being and prosperity.”
– The Honourable Jean-Yves Duclos, Minister of Health

Quick facts

The Advisory Panel on the Federal Research Support System has seven members, including the Chair. The members were selected by the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry and the Minister of Health. The panel will consult with experts and stakeholders to draw on their diverse experiences, expertise and opinions. 

Since 2016, the Government of Canada has committed more than $14 billion to support research and science across Canada. 

Here’s a list of advisory panel members I’ve assembled from the Advisory Panel on the Federal Research Support System: Member biographies webpage,

  • Frédéric Bouchard (Chair) is Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the Université de Montréal, where he has been a professor of philosophy of science since 2005.
  • Janet Rossant is a Senior Scientist Emeritus in the Developmental and Stem Cell Biology Program, the Hospital for Sick Children and a Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto’s Department of Molecular Genetics.
  • [Gilles Patry] is Professor Emeritus and President Emeritus at the University of Ottawa. Following a distinguished career as a consulting engineer, researcher and university administrator, Gilles Patry is now a consultant and board director [Royal Canadian Mint].
  • Yolande E. Chan joined McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management as Dean and James McGill Professor in 2021. Her research focuses on innovation, knowledge strategy, digital strategy, digital entrepreneurship, and business-IT alignment.
  • Laurel Schafer is a Professor at the Department of Chemistry at the University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on developing novel organometallic catalysts to carry out difficult transformations in small molecule organic chemistry.
  • Vianne Timmons is the President and Vice-Chancellor of Memorial University of Newfoundland since 2020. She is a nationally and internationally recognized researcher and advocate in the field of inclusive education.
  • Dr. Baljit Singh is a highly accomplished researcher, … . He began his role as Vice-President Research at the University of Saskatchewan in 2021, after serving as Dean of the University of Calgary Faculty of Veterinary Medicine (2016 – 2020), and as Associate Dean of Research at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan (2010 – 2016).

Nobody from the North. Nobody who’s worked there or lived there or researched there. It’s not the first time I’ve noticed a lack of representation for the North.

Canada’s golden triangle (Montréal, Toronto, Ottawa) is well represented and, as is often the case, there’s representation for other regions: one member from the Prairies, one member from the Maritimes or Atlantic provinces, and one member from the West.

The mandate indicates they could have five to eight members. With seven spots filled, they could include one more member, one from the North.

Even if they don’t add an eighth member, I’m not ready to abandon all hope for involvement from the North when there’s this, from the mandate,

Communications and deliverables

In pursuing its mandate, and to strengthen its advice, the panel may engage with experts and stakeholders to expand access [emphasis mine] to diverse experience, expertise and opinion, and enhance members’ understanding of the topics at hand.

To allow for frank and open discussion, internal panel deliberations among members will be closed.

The panel will deliver a final confidential report by December 2022 [emphasis mine] to the Ministers including recommendations and considerations regarding the modernization of the research support system. A summary of the panel’s observations on the state of the federal research support system may be made public once its deliberations have concluded. The Ministers may also choose to seek confidential advice and/or feedback from the panel on other issues related to the research system.

The panel may also be asked to deliver an interim confidential report to the Ministers by November 2022 [emphases mine], which will provide the panel’s preliminary observations up to that point.

it seems odd there’s no mention of the Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy. It’s my understanding that the funding goes directly from the federal government to the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), which then distributes the funds. There are other unmentioned science funding agencies, e.g., the National Research Council of Canada and Genome Canada, which (as far as I know) also receive direct funding. It seems that the panel will not be involved in a comprehensive review of Canada’s research support ecosystem.

Plus, I wonder why everything is being kept ‘confidential’. According the government news release, the panel is tasked with finding ways of “optimizing Canada’s research support system.” Do they have security concerns or is this a temporary state of affairs while the government analysts examine the panel’s report?

Even AI can make mistakes. So, how do you fix an AI neural network?

It seems that not only can an artificial neural network be mistaken but that we should figure out how to ‘change its mind’. From a February 10, 2022 Singapore Management University (SMU) press release (also on EurekAlert but published on April 12, 2022) by Alvin Lee announces how one researcher’s project will tackle the problem (Note: Links have been removed),

For the longest time, owners of Tesla cars have complained about “phantom braking”, the phenomenon of their vehicles suddenly stopping in response to imagined hazards of oncoming traffic or stationary objects on the roads. Yet when the company recalled a version of its Full Self-Driving software in October 2021, complaints over “phantom braking” jumped to 107 over the next three months compared to just 34 in the preceding 22 months.

Tesla’s troubles, which included the recent 54,000-vehicle recall over disobeying ‘Stop’ signs, underline the difficulty in fixing the neural networks that power the self-driving artificial intelligence (AI) systems. At their core, neural networks are fundamentally unlike human-written if-then-else computer programs that can be picked apart and fixed, line by line.

“Neural networks don’t work that way,” observes Sun Jun, Professor of Computer Science at Singapore Management University (SMU). “Even if we see a wrong result, you have no idea what’s going on. Furthermore, if I see that there’s a security threat, how do I patch the system so that it’s secure?”

The project                                                              

That issue forms the core of Professor Sun’s project “The Science of Certified AI Systems”, for which he has secured an MOE [Ministry of Education] Academic Research Funding Tier 3 grant. The project aims to develop:

A scientific foundation for analysing AI systems;

A set of effective tools for analysing and repairing neural networks; and

Certification standards which provide actionable guidelines.

One area the project seeks to address is the robustness of AI systems, which Professor Sun illustrates with a simple example.

“If I have a face recognition software, and we feed it a picture of Barack Obama, the AI system should identify it as Barack Obama. If I change just one or two pixels on an image, to the human eye it doesn’t change anything. But to the neural network, suddenly it might identify the image as that of Donald Trump, nothing like the original picture.

“Just by the difference of one pixel, you can change the label. That’s a problem of robustness.”

The traditional way of addressing such a problem in computer programs would be through looking at each line of code to find a causal chain to establish causality, and then fix the code. In neural networks, because countless neurons or nodes interact with one another to produce the final result, it is near impossible to accurately identify a single neuron as the cause for a wrong result.

“In the case of neural networks, every neuron participated in producing a result. So you can basically say, ‘With this wrong result, every neuron is responsible.’ explains Professor Sun, who is also the Deputy Director of SMU’s Research Lab for Intelligent Software Engineering.

“[In this project] We try to measure which neurons are more responsible for producing this outcome, and then trace back to the ones that are impacting the final probability distribution more. In the end I could say, ‘These neurons are consistently and significantly contributing to the wrong results’ and that might be the most important neurons that we should look at. If you change these neurons, maybe it will somehow fix the output.”

Solving problems

While more organisations are using or exploring to use AI and neural networks to enhance their performance, the costs involved often lead decision makers to adopt an open-source solution instead of building it from scratch.

Professor Sun notes that it is “pretty easy to basically embed some malicious neurons into a neural network (i.e., a Trojan horse)”. In the case of facial recognition software, it could be easily tricked with what is known as a ‘backdoor’ to recognise an unauthorised person as someone within the organisation.

How then can the project help address such issues and challenges?

“We’ll be producing a set of software toolkits to tell you whether your neural network is robust, whether it may potentially contain backdoors,” Professor Sun tells the Office of Research and Tech Transfer. “Or we can certify your neural network is free of certain attacks.

“Another way would be fixing neural networks. We could produce software such that if you give me a neural network and suspected security problems it might have, I could make your neural network more robust and secure.”

Professor Sun reveals that a global technology company has been in touch with him to fix its neural networks. The dream, he says, is to create a “whole framework for developing neural networks and AI systems in general so that you can build your robust, secure AI systems on top of our fundamental framework”.

People matter

Despite the newfangled technology attracting all the attention, Professor Sun singled out the human aspect that often gets lost in such discussions.

“All these neural networks are trained on data collected by humans,” Professor Sun points out. “If we want to be able to develop the AI systems which are indeed secure, we have to look at the process as well. We must tell our human experts how to collect data, clean data, test the system, follow rigid protocols. This will help us to eliminate human errors.”

I’m fascinated by the inclusion of this image with the press release,

Caption: How do you identify which neurons are responsible for a neural network’s wrong outputs? SMU Professor Sun Jun’s latest project aims to address that issue and fix it. Credit: Singapore Management University

Why is Professor Sun Jun in front of the Louvre? Is there something about this image that hearkens back to errors in an artificial neural network? Or, perhaps it was just a nice picture.

Happy (belated) US National Nanotechnology Day (October 9, 2022)

H/t to Lynn L. Bergeson’s and Carla N. Hutton’s October 8, 2022 posting on The National Law Review website for the news about the US National Nanotechnology Day on October 9, 2022.

Here’s more from the US National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) October 6, 2022 posting by Adrienne Eastlake, Gary Roth, and Nicole Neu-Baker on the NIOSH Science blog (Note: Links and footnotes have been removed),

Every year on October 9th we celebrate National Nanotechnology Day. The date 10-9 pays homage to the nanometer scale: 10–9 (one billionth of a meter). Anything that can be measured in nanometers is extremely small! For instance, the width of a strand of human hair is about 90,000 nanometers, bacteria are between 300–5,000 nanometers, viruses are 5–300 nanometers, the diameter of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is 2.5 nanometers, and a single atom is 0.1–0.5 nanometers. A healthy young adult’s fingernail grows an average of just over 1 nanometer per second (3.47 millimeters per month on average)!1 National Nanotechnology Day was created to help raise awareness of nanotechnology, to show how it is currently used in products that enrich our daily lives and to consider future challenges and opportunities.

Engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) are materials intentionally produced to have particle sizes between 1 and 100 nanometers in at least one dimension. These materials can be nanoparticles, nanotubes, or nanoplates, depending on their shape. ENMs typically have new or unique properties different from those of larger forms of the same material, making them desirable for specific product applications. These properties can contribute to increased elasticity, tensile strength, electrical conduction, and reactivity. Increasingly, they are added into existing materials to give these properties to bulk materials (such as plastics or metals). Consumer products using ENMs include cosmetics, sunscreen, food storage products, appliances, clothing, electronics, computers, sporting goods, and coatings. ENMs are also used in state-of-the-art sensors and biomedical technologies. COVID-19 research and the development of vaccines depend heavily on nanotechnology, and many vaccines use nanotechnology to improve their effectiveness. You probably are interacting with nanotechnology-enabled products every day!

Since the early 2000s, NIOSH has been at the forefront of efforts to characterize potential workplace hazards for those working with ENMs and to ensure safe and healthy workplaces, including the creation of the NIOSH Nanotechnology Research Center in 2004. Since then, NIOSH has published a quantitative risk assessment and an elemental mass-based recommended exposure limit (REL) for each of the following: carbon nanotubes/nanofibers,4 nanoscale titanium dioxide, 5 and silver nanomaterials.6 In addition, the poster Controlling Health Hazards When Working With Nanomaterials: Questions to Ask Before You Start is a helpful and easy-to-use visual resource for the workplace.

In collaboration with RTI International, NIOSH administered a survey developed by the RAND Corporation to North American companies working with nanomaterials to assess health and safety practices and the impact of efforts made by NIOSH to protect worker health and safety.9 Forty-five companies in the United States and Canada that fabricate, manufacture, handle, dispose, or otherwise use nanomaterials completed the online survey in 2019. The survey included research questions about nanomaterials in use and the overall occupational health and safety culture at the companies. Additionally, other questions asked about whether the companies interacted with NIOSH or used NIOSH resources to inform their health and safety practices and policies. More than a third (37.8%) of the 45 respondents reported using at least one NIOSH resource for information about safe handling of nanomaterials. Larger companies were more likely to report using NIOSH resources than companies employing fewer than 50 employees. While the survey was limited by the small sample size, it provided valuable insight, including that future NIOSH outreach should specifically target small businesses that use or handle nanomaterials.

We hope you find a way to celebrate National Nanotechnology Day! The National Nanotechnology Initiative (nano.gov) suggests running a 100 Billion Nanometer Dash. Sounds like quite a distance, but it is just 100 meters (328 feet) or 6.2% of a mile. As we continue to provide guidance and recommendations to keep workers safe when working with ENMs, we will be right there with you until you cross the finish line… one nanometer at a time. Good luck!

You can find other activities to celebrate the day (even belatedly) at nano.gov here on their National Nanotechnology Day webpage.

Science Communication Executive Certificate Program at Seneca College (Toronto, Canada)

H/t to the Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology (SCWIST) for an October 5, 2022 tweet about a new science communication programme at Seneca College (Ontario, Canada).

From the Information Session on Seneca’s Science Communication Executive Certificate Program registration page on eventbrite (Note: SCWIST is an organizer of Seneca’s Science Communication Executive Certificate Program),

Seneca’s Science Communication Executive Certificate program is the only one of its kind in Ontario. Learn about it in this info session.

Date and time
Thu, 20 October 2022, 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM EDT

Location
Online

FREE

Join Dr. Burke Cullen from Seneca to learn about their brand new program designed to enhance the communication skills of scientists and science professionals in leadership roles.

Seneca’s Science Communication Executive Certificate program is the only one of its kind in Ontario. It will equip you with the key knowledge and skills you need for effective science communication across a variety of platforms.

This program is for research scientists, managers in science-based fields or for those with a background in research science, regulatory affairs or other science-based fields. It will also be of interest to you if you’re a scientist working at a hospital and want to become a better writer, storyteller or digitally-engaged communicator.

Learn more on their registration page here.

SPEAKER

Dr. Burke Cullen, PhD

Dr. Burke Cullen has been involved in Seneca’s Science Communication initiatives for the past 10 years. He remains an active member of the Science Writers and Communicators of Canada Association. At Seneca, Burke has served as Academic Liaison for the York-Seneca Professional Writing program. He has also written six different science and technical communication courses in four separate disciplines, including software development, informatics and security, bioinformatics, and most recently, clinical research. Burke holds a BA (Honours) from Carleton University, an MA from the University of British Columbia, and a PhD from the University of Toronto.

Photo and Video Consent

By registering for the event, you understand that the session may be video recorded and/ or photos will be taken for use in SCWIST digital communication platforms, including but not limited to the SCWIST website, e-newsletter, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and others. You therefore are providing consent for your image and voice to be used by SCWIST for free and in perpetuity.

If you do not want your image to be captured in video or photographically, please ensure that your camera is off during the session.

Questions and Feedback

For questions about the event, or to sign up as a speaker, please contact the Communications and Events team, by email at marketing_events@scwist.ca.

If you’re curious about the instructors/professors for the programme, check out Seneca College’s Centre for Executive & Professional Learning Executive Certificates Science Communication webpage,

Antikythera: a new Berggruen Institute program and a 2,000 year old computer

Starting with the new Antikythera program at the Berggruen Institute before moving onto the Antikythera itself, one of my favourite scientific mysteries.

Antikythera program at the Berggruen Institute

An October 5, 2022 Berggruen Institute news release (also received via email) announces a program exploring the impact of planetary-scale computation and invites applications for the program’s first ‘studio’,

Antikythera is convening over 75 philosophers, technologists, designers, and scientists in seminars, design research studios, and global salons to create new models that shift computation toward more viable long-term futures: https://antikythera.xyz/

Applications are now open for researchers to join Antikythera’s fully-funded five month Studio in 2023, launching at the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles: https://antikythera.xyz/apply/

Today [October 5, 2022] the Berggruen Institute announced that it will incubate Antikythera, an initiative focused on understanding and shaping the impact of computation on philosophy, global society, and planetary systems. Antikythera will engage a wide range of thinkers at the intersections of software, speculative thought, governance, and design to explore computation’s ultimate pitfalls and potentials. Research will range from the significance of machine intelligence and the geopolitics of AI to new economic models and the long-term project of composing a healthy planetary society.

“Against a background of rising geopolitical tensions and an accelerating climate crisis, technology has outpaced our theory. As such, we are less interested in applying philosophy to the topic of computation than generating new ideas from a direct encounter with it.” said Benjamin Bratton, Professor at the University of California, San Diego, and director of the new program. “The purpose of Antikythera is to reorient the question “what is computation for?” and to model what it may become. That is a project that is not only technological but also philosophical, political, and ecological.”

Antikythera will begin this exploration with its Studio program, applications for which are now open at antikythera.xyz/apply/. The Studio program will take place over five months in spring 2023 and bring together researchers from across the world to work in multidisciplinary teams. These teams will work on speculative design proposals, and join 75+ Affiliate Researchers for workshops, talks, and design sprints that inform thinking and propositions around Antikythera’s core research topics. Affiliate Researchers will include philosophers, technologists, designers, scientists, and other thinkers and practitioners. Applications for the program are due November 11, 2022.

Program project outcomes will include new combinations of theory, cinema, software, and policy. The five initial research themes animating this work are:

Synthetic Intelligence: the longer-term implications of machine intelligence, particularly as seen through the lens of artificial language

Hemispherical Stacks: the multipolar geopolitics of planetary computation

Recursive Simulations: the emergence of simulation as an epistemological technology, from scientific simulation to VR/AR

Synthetic Catallaxy: the ongoing organization of computational economics, pricing, and planning

Planetary Sapience: the evolutionary emergence of natural/artificial intelligence, and its role in composing a viable planetary condition

The program is named after the Antikythera Mechanism, the world’s first known computer, used more than 2,000 years ago to predict the movements of constellations and eclipses decades in advance. As an origin point for computation, it combined calculation, orientation and cosmology, dimensions of practice whose synergies may be crucial in setting our planetary future on a better course than it is on today.

Bratton continues, “The evolution of planetary intelligence has also meant centuries of destruction; its future must be radically different. We must ask, what future would make this past worth it? Taking the question seriously demands a different sort of speculative and practical philosophy and a corresponding sort of computation.”

Bratton is a philosopher of technology and Professor at the University of California, San Diego, and author of many books including The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty (MIT Press). His most recent book is The Revenge of the Real: Politics for a Post-Pandemic World (Verso Books), exploring the implications for political philosophy of COVID-19. Associate directors are Ben Cerveny, technologist, speculative designer, and director of the Amsterdam-based Foundation for Public Code, and Stephanie Sherman, strategist, writer, and director of the MA Narrative Environments program at Central St. Martins, London. The Studio is directed by architect and creative director Nicolay Boyadjiev.

In addition to the Studio, program activities will include a series of invitation-only planning salons inviting philosophers, designers, technologists, strategists, and others to discuss how to best interpret and intervene in the future of planetary-scale computation, and the historic philosophical and geopolitical force that it represents. These salons began in London in October 2022 and will continue in locations across the world including in Berlin; Amsterdam; Los Angeles; San Francisco; New York; Mexico City; Seoul; and Venice.

The announcement of Antikythera at the Berggruen Institute follows the recent spinoff of the Transformations of the Human school, successfully incubated at the Institute from 2017-2021.

“Computational technology covering the planet represents one of the largest and most urgent philosophical opportunities of our time,” said Nicolas Berggruen, Chairman and Co-Founder of the Berggruen Institute. “It is with great pleasure that we invite Antikythera to join our work at the Institute. Together, we can develop new ways of thinking to support planetary flourishing in the years to come.”

Web: Antikythera.xyz
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Email: contact@antikythera.xyz

Applications were opened on October, 4, 2022, the deadline is November 11, 2022 followed by interviews. Participants will be confirmed by December 11, 2022. Here are a few more details from the application portal,

Who should apply to the Studio?

Antikythera hopes to bring together a diverse cohort of researchers from different backgrounds, disciplines, perspectives, and levels of experience. The Antikythera research themes engage with global challenges that necessitate harnessing a diversity of thought and expertise. Anyone who is passionate about the research themes of the Antikythera program is strongly encouraged to apply. We accept applications from every discipline and background, from established to emerging researchers. Applicants do not need to meet any specific set of educational or professional experience.

Is the program free?

Yes, the program is free. You will be supported to cover the cost of housing, living expenses, and all program-related fieldwork travel along with a monthly stipend. Any other associated program costs will also be covered by the program.

Is the program in person and full-time?

Yes, the Studio program requires a full-time commitment (PhD students must also be on leave to participate). There is no part-time participation option. Though we understand this commitment may be challenging logistically for some individuals, we believe it is important for the Studio’s success. We will do our best to enable an environment that is comfortable and safe for participants from all backgrounds. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you may require any accommodations or have questions regarding the full-time, in-person nature of the program.

Do I need a Visa?

The Studio is a traveling program with time spent between the USA, Mexico, and South Korea. Applicable visa requirements set by these countries will apply and will vary depending on your nationality. We are aware that current visa appointment wait times may preclude some individuals who would require a brand new visa from being able to enter the US by January, and we are working to ensure access to the program for all (if not for January 2023, then for future Studio cohorts). We will therefore ask you to identify your country of origin and passport/visa status in the application form so we can work to enable your participation. Anyone who is passionate about the research themes of the Antikythera program is strongly encouraged to apply.

For those who like to put a face to a name, you can find out more about the program and the people behind it on this page.

Antikythera, a 2000 year old computer & 100 year old mystery

As noted in the Berggruen Institute news release, the Antikythera Mechanism is considered the world’s first computer (as far as we know). The image below is one of the best known illustrations of the device as visualized by researchers,

Exploded model of the Cosmos gearing of the Antikythera Mechanism. ©2020 Tony Freeth.

Briefly, the Antikythera mechanism was discovered at the turn of the twentieth century in 1901 by sponge divers off the coast of Greece. Philip Chrysopoulos’s September 21, 2022 article for The Greek Reporter gives more details in an exuberant style (Note: Links have been removed),

… now—more than 120 years later—the astounding machine has been recreated once again, using 3-D imagery, by a brilliant group of researchers from University College London (UCL).

Not only is the recreation a thing of great beauty and amazing genius, but it has also made possible a new understanding of how it worked.

Since only eighty-two fragments of the original mechanism are extant—comprising only one-third of the entire calculator—this left researchers stymied as to its full capabilities.

Until this moment [in 2020 according to the copyright for the image], the front of the mechanism, containing most of the gears, has been a bit of a Holy Grail for marine archeologists and astronomers.

Professor Tony Freeth says in an article published in the periodical Scientific Reports: “Ours is the first model that conforms to all the physical evidence and matches the descriptions in the scientific inscriptions engraved on the mechanism itself.”

“The sun, moon and planets are displayed in an impressive tour de force of ancient Greek brilliance,” Freeth said.

The largest surviving piece of the mechanism, referred to by researchers as “Fragment A,” has bearings, pillars, and a block. Another piece, known as “Fragment D,” has a mysterious disk along with an extraordinarily intricate 63-toothed gear and a plate.

The inscriptions—just discovered recently by researchers—on the back cover of the mechanism have a description of the cosmos and the planets, shown by beads of various colors, and move on rings set around the inscriptions.

By employing the information gleaned from recent x-rays of the computer and their knowledge of ancient Greek mathematics, the UCL researchers have now shown that they can demonstrate how the mechanism determined the cycles of the planets Venus and Saturn.

Evaggelos Vallianatos, author of many books on the Antikythera Mechanism writing at Greek Reporter said that it was much more than a mere mechanism. It was a sophisticated, mind-bogglingly complex astronomical computer, he said “and Greeks made it.”

They employed advanced astronomy, mathematics, metallurgy, and engineering to do so, constructing the astronomical device 2,200 years ago. These scientific facts of the computer’s age and its flowless high-tech nature profoundly disturbed some of the scientists who studied it.

A few Western scientists of the twentieth century were shocked by the Antikythera Mechanism, Vallianatos said. They called it an astrolabe for several decades and refused to call it a computer. The astrolabe, a Greek invention, is a useful instrument for calculating the position of the Sun and other prominent stars. Yet, its technology is rudimentary compared to that of the Antikythera device.

In 2015, Kyriakos Efstathiou, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and head of the group which studied the Antikythera Mechanism said: “All of our research has shown that our ancestors used their deep knowledge of astronomy and technology to construct such mechanisms, and based only on this conclusion, the history of technology should be re-written because it sets its start many centuries back.”

The professor further explained that the Antikythera Mechanism is undoubtedly the first machine of antiquity which can be classified by the scientific term “computer,” because “it is a machine with an entry where we can import data, and this machine can bring and create results based on a scientific mathematical scale.

In 2016, yet another astounding discovery was made when an inscription on the device was revealed—something like a label or a user’s manual for the device.

It included a discussion of the colors of eclipses, details used at the time in the making of astrological predictions, including the ability to see exact times of eclipses of the moon and the sun, as well as the correct movements of celestial bodies.

Inscribed numbers 76, 19 and 223 show maker “was a Pythagorean”

On one side of the device lies a handle that begins the movement of the whole system. By turning the handle and rotating the gauges in the front and rear of the mechanism, the user could set a date that would reveal the astronomical phenomena that would potentially occur around the Earth.

Physicist Yiannis Bitsakis has said that today the NASA [US National Aeronautics and Space Adiministration] website can detail all the eclipses of the past and those that are to occur in the future. However, “what we do with computers today, was done with the Antikythera Mechanism about 2000 years ago,” he said.

The stars and night heavens have been important to peoples around the world. (This September 18, 2020 posting highlights millennia old astronomy as practiced by indigenous peoples in North America, Australia, and elsewhere. There’s also this March 17, 2022 article “How did ancient civilizations make sense of the cosmos, and what did they get right?” by Susan Bell of University of Southern California on phys.org.)

I have covered the Antikythera in three previous postings (March 17, 2021, August 3, 2016, and October 2, 2012) with the 2021 posting being the most comprehensive and the one featuring Professor Tony Freeth’s latest breakthrough.

However, 2022 has blessed us with more as this April 11, 2022 article by Jennifer Ouellette for Ars Technica reveals (Note: Links have been removed)

The mysterious Antikythera mechanism—an ancient device believed to have been used for tracking the heavens—has fascinated scientists and the public alike since it was first recovered from a shipwreck over a century ago. Much progress has been made in recent years to reconstruct the surviving fragments and learn more about how the mechanism might have been used. And now, members of a team of Greek researchers believe they have pinpointed the start date for the Antikythera mechanism, according to a preprint posted to the physics arXiv repository. Knowing that “day zero” is critical to ensuring the accuracy of the device.

“Any measuring system, from a thermometer to the Antikythera mechanism, needs a calibration in order to [perform] its calculations correctly,” co-author Aristeidis Voulgaris of the Thessaloniki Directorate of Culture and Tourism in Greece told New Scientist. “Of course it wouldn’t have been perfect—it’s not a digital computer, it’s gears—but it would have been very good at predicting solar and lunar eclipses.”

Last year, an interdisciplinary team at University College London (UCL) led by mechanical engineer Tony Freeth made global headlines with their computational model, revealing a dazzling display of the ancient Greek cosmos. The team is currently building a replica mechanism, moving gears and all, using modern machinery. The display is described in the inscriptions on the mechanism’s back cover, featuring planets moving on concentric rings with marker beads as indicators. X-rays of the front cover accurately represent the cycles of Venus and Saturn—462 and 442 years, respectively. 

The Antikythera mechanism was likely built sometime between 200 BCE and 60 BCE. However, in February 2022, Freeth suggested that the famous Greek mathematician and inventor Archimedes (sometimes referred to as the Leonardo da Vinci of antiquity) may have actually designed the mechanism, even if he didn’t personally build it. (Archimedes died in 212 BCE at the hands of a Roman soldier during the siege of Syracuse.) There are references in the writings of Cicero (106-43 BCE) to a device built by Archimedes for tracking the movement of the Sun, Moon, and five planets; it was a prized possession of the Roman general Marcus Claudius Marcellus. According to Freeth, that description is remarkably similar to the Antikythera mechanism, suggesting it was not a one-of-a-kind device.

Voulgaris and his co-authors based their new analysis on a 223-month cycle called a Saros, represented by a spiral inset on the back of the device. The cycle covers the time it takes for the Sun, Moon, and Earth to return to their same positions and includes associated solar and lunar eclipses. Given our current knowledge about how the device likely functioned, as well as the inscriptions, the team believed the start date would coincide with an annular solar eclipse.

“This is a very specific and unique date [December 22, 178 BCE],” Voulgaris said. “In one day, there occurred too many astronomical events for it to be coincidence. This date was a new moon, the new moon was at apogee, there was a solar eclipse, the Sun entered into the constellation Capricorn, it was the winter solstice.”

Others have made independent calculations and arrived at a different conclusion: the calibration date would more likely fall sometime in the summer of 204 BCE, although Voulgaris countered that this doesn’t explain why the winter solstice is engraved so prominently on the device.

“The eclipse predictions on the [device’s back] contain enough astronomical information to demonstrate conclusively that the 18-year series of lunar and solar eclipse predictions started in 204 BCE,” Alexander Jones of New York University told New Scientist, adding that there have been four independent calculations of this. “The reason such a dating is possible is because the Saros period is not a highly accurate equation of lunar and solar periodicities, so every time you push forward by 223 lunar months… the quality of the prediction degrades.”

Read Ouellette’s April 11, 2022 article for a pretty accessible description of the work involved in establishing the date. Here’s a link to and a citation for the latest attempt to date the Antikythera,

The Initial Calibration Date of the Antikythera Mechanism after the Saros spiral mechanical Apokatastasis by Aristeidis Voulgaris, Christophoros Mouratidis, Andreas Vossinakis. arXiv > physics > arXiv:2203.15045 Submission history: From: Aristeidis Voulgaris Mr [view email] [v1] Mon, 28 Mar 2022 19:17:57 UTC (1,545 KB)

It’s open access. The calculations are beyond me otherwise, it’s quite readable.

Getting back to the Berggruen Institute and its Antikythera program/studio, good luck to all the applicants (the Antikythera application portal).

Ancient Namibian gemstone could be key to new light-based quantum computers

Researchers in Scotland, the US, Australia, and Denmark have a found a solution to a problem with creating light-based computers according to an April 15, 2022 news item on phys.org,

A special form of light made using an ancient Namibian gemstone could be the key to new light-based quantum computers, which could solve long-held scientific mysteries, according to new research led by the University of St Andrews.

The research, conducted in collaboration with scientists at Harvard University in the US, Macquarie University in Australia and Aarhus University in Denmark and published in Nature Materials, used a naturally mined cuprous oxide (Cu2O) gemstone from Namibia to produce Rydberg polaritons, the largest hybrid particles of light and matter ever created.

Cuprous oxide – the mined crystal from Namibia used for making Rydberg polaritons. Courtesy: University of St. Andrews

An April 15, 2022 University of St. Andrews press release, which originated the news item, describes Rydberg polaritons and explains why they could be the key to light-based quantum computing,

Rydberg polaritons switch continually from light to matter and back again. In Rydberg polaritons, light and matter are like two sides of a coin, and the matter side is what makes polaritons interact with each other.

This interaction is crucial because this is what allows the creation of quantum simulators, a special type of quantum computer, where information is stored in quantum bits. These quantum bits [qubits], unlike the binary bits in classical computers that can only be 0 or 1, can take any value between 0 and 1. They can therefore store much more information and perform several processes simultaneously.

This capability could allow quantum simulators to solve important mysteries of physics, chemistry and biology, for example, how to make high-temperature superconductors for highspeed trains, how cheaper fertilisers could be made potentially solving global hunger, or how proteins fold making it easier to produce more effective drugs.

Project lead Dr Hamid Ohadi, of the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of St Andrews, said: “Making a quantum simulator with light is the holy grail of science. We have taken a huge leap towards this by creating Rydberg polaritons, the key ingredient of it.”

To create Rydberg polaritons, the researchers trapped light between two highly reflective mirrors. A cuprous oxide crystal from a stone mined in Namibia was then thinned and polished to a 30-micrometer thick slab (thinner than a strand of human hair) and sandwiched between the two mirrors to make Rydberg polaritons 100 times larger than ever demonstrated before.

One of the leading authors Dr Sai Kiran Rajendran, of the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of St Andrews, said: “Purchasing the stone on eBay was easy. The challenge was to make Rydberg polaritons that exist in an extremely narrow colour range.”

The team is currently further refining these methods in order to explore the possibility of making quantum circuits, which are the next ingredient for quantum simulators.

The research was funded by UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

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

Rydberg exciton–polaritons in a Cu2O microcavity by Konstantinos Orfanakis, Sai Kiran Rajendran, Valentin Walther, Thomas Volz, Thomas Pohl & Hamid Ohadi. Nature Materials (2022) DOI: DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-022-01230-4 Published: 14 April 2022

This paper is behind a paywall.

A final SNUR (from the US Environmental Protection Agency) for MWCNTs (multiwalled carbon nanotubes)

SNUR means ‘significant new use rules’ and it’s been a long while since I’ve stumbled across any rulings from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which concern nanomaterials. From a September 30, 2022 news item on Nanotechnology News by Lynn L. Bergeson,

On September 29, 2022, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued final significant new use rules (SNUR) under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) for certain chemical substances that were the subject of premanufacture notices (PMN), including multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) (generic). 87 Fed. Reg. 58999. See https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/09/29/2022-21042/significant-new-use-rules-on-certain-chemical-substances-21-25e The SNUR requires persons who intend to manufacture (defined by statute to include import) or process the chemical substance identified generically as MWCNTs (PMN P-20-72) for an activity that is designated as a significant new use to notify EPA at least 90 days before commencing that activity. Persons may not commence manufacture or processing for the significant new use until EPA has conducted a review of the notice, made an appropriate determination on the notice, and taken such actions as are required by that determination. The SNUR will be effective on November 28, 2022.

Hazard communication: Requirements as specified in 40 C.F.R. Section 721.72(a) through (d), (f), (g)(1), (g)(3), and (g)(5). For purposes of Section 721.72(g)(1), this substance may cause: eye irritation; respiratory sensitization; skin sensitization; carcinogenicity; and specific target organ toxicity. For purposes of Section 721.72(g)(3), this substance may cause unknown aquatic toxicity. Alternative hazard and warning statements that meet the criteria of the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals (GHS) and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Hazard Communication Standard (HCS) may be used.

The September 30, 2022 news item lists more significant new uses.