An April 17, 2025 Canadian Science Policy Centre (CSPC) briefing (received via email) included this unusually (for them) terse announcement,
Upcoming Virtual Panels – April 25 and May 7 [2025]
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The goal of this panel is to discuss the impacts of digital technology, or screen time, on children and youth and the policy opportunities to address these impacts.
The goal of this panel is to discuss the impacts of digital technology, or screen time, on children and youth and the policy opportunities to address these impacts. More specifically, the panel will explore the following questions:
What does research tell us about the effects of screen time on the developing brain?
What are the benefits and what are the risks?
How can we preserve the benefits and minimize the risks?
Have we reached a threshold of understanding of this topic to inform policy?
Panelists will address these questions at different levels: neuroscience, psychology, technology, policy, and lived experience (youth).
Professor, Psychiatry and Canada Research Chair, Preventative Mental Health and Addiction; Research Chair in Social and Community Pediatrics, Université de Montréal / CHU Sainte-Justine
Presumably this material would be used for clothing worn in much colder climates than what we experience in the Pacific Northwest where even during the winter a hike of 30°C would have you sweating like a pig.
A new type of cloth developed by researchers at the University of Waterloo [Ontario, Canada] can heat up when exposed to the sun thanks to innovative nanoparticles embedded in the fabric’s fibers. This advance represents an innovative and environmentally friendly option for staying warm in the winter.
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A demonstration of how stretchy the smart fabric is. The fabric can stretch out by as much as five times its original shape. (University of Waterloo)
Wearable heated clothing typically relies on metals or ceramic heating elements to heat up and an external power source, which could pose safety risks for users.
This new cloth incorporates conductive polymer nanoparticles that can heat up to 30degrees Celsius when exposed to sunlight. The design requires no external power and can also change colour to visually monitor temperature fluctuations.
“The magic behind the temperature-sensitive colour change lies in the combination of nanoparticles embedded in the polymer fibres,” said Yuning Li, a professor in Waterloo’s Department of Chemical Engineering, and part of the research team that includes Chaoxia Wang and Fangqing Ge from the College of Textile Science and Engineering at Jiangnan University in China.
“The nanoparticles are activated by sunlight, enabling the fabric to absorb heat and convert it into warmth.”
The fibre is created using a scalable wet-spinning process, combining polyaniline and polydopamine nanoparticles to enhance light absorption and improve photothermal conversion. Thermoplastic polyurethane serves as the spinning matrix, while thermochromic dyes enable the reversible color-changing feature. The resultant fiber can be woven into fabric for wearable applications.
n addition to its temperature-changing capability, the Waterloo researcher’s new fabric can stretch out by as much as five times its original shape and withstand as much as two-dozen washings while still maintaining its function and appearance. Its reversible colour-changing ability provides a built-in temperature monitoring feature to ensure the wearer’s safety and convenience.
“We prioritized durability, ensuring the fabric could withstand repeated use and environmental exposure while maintaining its innovative properties,” said Li.
The Waterloo team is exploring more cost-effective alternatives to polydopamine to make the smart fabric technology more accessible. Future developments will focus on scaling the production process and reducing costs without compromising on the fabric’s innovative properties.
The fabric’s potential applications include aiding in cold rescue situations and solar-powered pet clothing to help keep them comfortable when outside during the winter.
The study was recently published in the Journal of Advanced Composites and Hybrid Materials.
Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
Color tunable photo-thermochromic elastic fiber for flexible wearable heater by Fangqing Ge, Jun Peng, Jialing Tan, Weidong Yu, Yuning Li, & Chaoxia Wang. Journal of Advanced Composites and Hybrid Materials Volume 7, article number 173, (2024) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42114-024-00994-4 Published: 11 October 2024
This paper is behind a paywall.
For some earlier work from this international collaboration, I have a November 1, 2024 posting about energy harvesting fabric.
Caption: An illustration of the preparation of goji berries for silver nanoparticle synthesis. Credit: Kamran Alam et al.
A January 7, 2025 news item on Nanowerk announces new research into making silver nanoparticles in a more sustainable fashion, Note: Links have been removed,
As the search for sustainability permeates all fields, researchers are turning to a unique organic source for creating antibacterial silver nanoparticles (Ag-NPs) – the humble goji berry.
Goji berries are a ubiquitous superfood known for a multitude of health benefits, including their antibiotic properties. In research published in AIP Advances (“Ecofriendly synthesis of silver nanoparticles using metallic solution-based goji berry extract for their antibacterial properties”), researcher Kamran Alam from Sapienza University of Rome [Italy] along with others from NED University of Engineering and Technology [Pakistan] and King Saud University [Saudi Arabia] found an effective way to harvest silver nanoparticles from these berries.
“Silver nanoparticles are responsible for disrupting the cell membrane structure, which can generate reactive oxygen species used for inhibiting bacterial growth,” explained Alam.
Silver nanoparticles can be generated using a number of chemical techniques, but green solutions that use biological sources like fruit or leaf extracts are preferred because they save on energy and are nontoxic, nonhazardous, and biologically compatible with humans.
In this interdisciplinary undertaking, Alam and researchers demonstrated a technique for the synthesis of silver nanoparticles using store-bought goji berries.
“Goji berries are easily and locally available in the botanic garden and are rich in bioactive compounds that have natural reducing and stabilizing agents, eliminating the need for additional capping agents during processing,” Alam said.
Alam and the team created silver nanoparticles by drying, grinding, and then filtering the goji berries to create an extract. Then, they added chemical silver nitrate (AgNO3) and reduced the solution.
Using visualization techniques such as X-ray diffraction, Ultraviolet-Visible (UV-Vis) Spectroscopy, and Fourier Transform Infrared (FT-IR) Spectroscopy, the team confirmed the presence of silver nanoparticles. The nanoparticles were also viewed under a microscope and tested for their antimicrobial activity against Staphylococcus aureus, a gram-positive bacterium that causes staph infections among other diseases.
In the future, Alam plans to study the cellular toxicity and biocompatibility of the nanoparticles synthesized from these berries, which could positively contribute to biomedical research.
“This is a simple and straightforward synthesis method which does not need additional chemicals or complex equipment and can be scaled up for industrial applications,” he said.
I always appreciate a good acronym and this one is pretty good. (From my perspective, a good acronym is memorable and doesn’t involve tortured terminology such as CRISPR-Cas9, which stands for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats-CRISPR-associated protein 9).
On to ‘SWEET’ and a January 2, 2025 news item on ScienceDaily announcing a new UK study on wearable e-textiles,
A research team led by the University of Southampton and UWE Bristol [University of the West of England Bristol] has shown wearable electronic textiles (e-textiles) can be both sustainable and biodegradable.
A new study, which also involved the universities of Exeter, Cambridge, Leeds and Bath, describes and tests a new sustainable approach for fully inkjet-printed, eco-friendly e-textiles named ‘Smart, Wearable, and Eco-friendly Electronic Textiles’, or ‘SWEET’.
E-textiles are those with embedded electrical components, such as sensors, batteries or lights. They might be used in fashion, for performance sportwear, or for medical purposes as garments that monitor people’s vital signs.
Such textiles need to be durable, safe to wear and comfortable, but also, in an industry which is increasingly concerned with clothing waste, they need to be kind to the environment when no longer required.
Professor Nazmul Karim at the University of Southampton’s Winchester School of Art, who led the study, explains: “Integrating electrical components into conventional textiles complicates the recycling of the material because it often contains metals, such as silver, that don’t easily biodegrade. Our potential ecofriendly approach for selecting sustainable materials and manufacturing overcomes this, enabling the fabric to decompose when it is disposed of.”
The team’s design has three layers, a sensing layer, a layer to interface with the sensors and a base fabric. It uses a textile called Tencel for the base, which is made from renewable wood and is biodegradable. The active electronics in the design are made from graphene, along with a polymer called PEDOT: PSS. These conductive materials are precision inkjet-printed onto the fabric.
The researchers tested samples of the material for continuous monitoring of human physiology using five volunteers. Swatches of the fabric, connected to monitoring equipment, were attached to gloves worn by the participants. Results confirmed the material can effectively and reliably measure both heart rate and temperature at the industry standard level.
Dr Shaila Afroj, an Associate Professor of Sustainable Materials from the University of Exeter and a co-author of the study, highlighted the importance of this performance: “Achieving reliable, industry-standard monitoring with eco-friendly materials is a significant milestone. It demonstrates that sustainability doesn’t have to come at the cost of functionality, especially in critical applications like healthcare.”
The project team then buried the e-textiles in soil to measure its biodegradable properties. After four months, the fabric had lost 48 percent of its weight and 98 percent of its strength, suggesting relatively rapid and also effective decomposition. Furthermore, a life cycle assessment revealed the graphene-based electrodes had up to 40 times less impact on the environment than standard electrodes.
Marzia Dulal from UWE Bristol, a Commonwealth PhD Scholar and the first author of the study, highlighted the environmental impact: “Our life cycle analysis shows that graphene-based e-textiles have a fraction of the environmental footprint compared to traditional electronics. This makes them a more responsible choice for industries looking to reduce their ecological impact.”
The ink-jet printing process is also a more sustainable approach for e-textile fabrications, depositing exact numbers of functional materials on textiles as needed, with almost no material waste and less use of water and energy than conventional screen printing.
Professor Karim concludes: “ Amid rising pollution from landfill sites, our study helps to address a lack of research in the area of biodegradation of e-textiles. These materials will become increasingly more important in our lives, particularly in the area of healthcare, so it’s really important we consider how to make them more eco-friendly, both in their manufacturing and disposal.”
The researchers hope they can now move forward with designing wearable garments made from SWEET for potential use in the healthcare sector, particularly in the area of early detection and prevention of heart-related diseases that 640 million people (source: BHF [British Heart Foundation]) suffer from worldwide.
Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
Sustainable, Wearable, and Eco-Friendly Electronic Textiles by Marzia Dulal, Harsh Rajesh Mansukhlal Modha, Jingqi Liu, Md Rashedul Islam, Chris Carr, Tawfique Hasan, Robin Michael Statham Thorn, Shaila Afroj, Nazmul Karim. Energy & Enviornmental Materials DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/eem2.12854 First published: 18 December 2024
The contest is for undergraduate students at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and the deadline is Wednesday, April 30, 2025 at 6 pm PT. I’ve got more about the contest from an April 23, 2025 Belkin Gallery (The Belkin) newsletter (received via email and it can be seen here for a limited time)
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Ars Scientia Essay Prize: The Art-Science Connection
Deadline: Wednesday, April 30 at 6 pm
$1,000 Prize for the Winning Entry
Ars Scientia, UBC’s interdisciplinary initiative at the intersection of art and science, welcomes all UBC undergraduate students across campus to participate in our 2025 Essay Prize. This is an opportunity to explore the profound and often catalyzing connections between these two fields. If we take the long view, art and science have been considered pursuits comfortably woven together for most of human history. Somehow over the past two centuries we lost sight of that holistic worldview and these disciplines became seemingly incompatible. You are invited to write an essay considering how art and science are inextricably linked in fundamental and generative ways, addressing specific examples you have encountered – in a lab, an experiment; in an exhibition, an artwork; perhaps a thought experiment.
Publication: The best essay will be published on the Ars Scientia website, featured in the Quantum Matter Institute’s newsletter, and shared through other relevant online platforms.
Length: 1000-word limit
Deadline: 6 PM PDT, Wednesday, 30 April, 2025
How to Submit: email your essay as a PDF attachment to: arsscientia@ubc.ca
As part of Ars Scientia’s mission to foster dialogue between artistic and scientific inquiry, this competition is an invitation for you to explore, challenge, and celebrate creative intersections of art and science. We look forward to your insights!
Good luck.
For anyone who’s curious about Ars Scientia, I have a lot more about this partnership between the University of British Columbia’s (UBC; Vancouver, Canada) Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute (Blusson QMI), Morris & Helen Belkin Art Gallery (the Belkin), and its Department of Physics and Astronomy (UBC PHAS). Just search ‘Ars Scientia’ in this blog’s search engine.
There’s a local (Vancouver, Canada) event coming up, as well as, a call for papers, an opportunity to watch a workshop presented in Toronto, Montréal, and Berlin and more in these highlights from the April 2025 issue of the Metacreation Lab for Creative AI newsletter (received via email). The first items are being listed in date order.
Ars Electronica and Vancouver AI [artificial intelligence] Community Meetup
From the April 2025 Metacreation Lab newsletter,
Call for Papers – EXPANDED 2025 at Ars Electronica
The 13th edition of the EXPANDED Conference, focusing on animation and interactive art, will be held from September 3–5, 2025, at the Ars Electronica Center in Linz, Austria, as part of the Ars Electronica Festival.
Organized in cooperation with ACM [Association for Computing Machinery], the conference invites submissions in categories of Research Papers and Art Papers. Topics of interest include AI-generated images, generative art, virtual production, human-AI collaboration, XR, and more.
Vancouver AI – April 30 [2025] at the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre
Metacreation Lab has proudly supported the Vancouver AI Community Meetup since the beginning. This time, Mission #16 of BC’s vibrant AI community meetup series. This edition features a talk by Philippe Pasquier, exploring the latest in generative and creative AI systems.
Also on the lineup is a special performance by K-PHI-A, a live trio featuring Philippe, PhD student Keon Ju Maverick Lee, and VJ Amagi (Jun Yuri). Their piece, Revival, is an improvisational audiovisual performance where human musicians and AI agents co-create in real time. It blends percussion, electronics, and AI-driven visuals using Autolume and other systems developed at the Metacreation Lab.
Ars Electronica started life as a festival in 1979 still being produced annually and is now a larger enterprise. From the Ars Electronica About webpage,.Note Links have been removed
Art, Technology, Society
We have been analyzing and commenting on the Digital Revolution since 1979. Since then, we have been developing projects, strategies and competencies for the Digital Transformation. Together with artists, scientists, technologists, designers, developers, entrepreneurs and activists from all over the world, we address the central questions of our future. The focus is on new technologies and how they change the way we live and work together.
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A new festival. The first Ars Electronica begins on September 18, 1979. 20 artists and scientists from all over the world gather at this new “Festival for Art, Technology and Society” in Linz to discuss the Digital Revolution and its possible consequences. This Ars Electronica is small, but groundbreaking. The initiative for this came from Hannes Leopoldseder (AT), director of the Upper Austria regional studio of the Austrian Broadcasting Company (ORF), who is passionate about everything that has to do with the future. Together with the electronic musician Hubert Bognermayr (AT), the music producer Ulli A. Rützel (DE) and the cyberneticist and physicist Herbert W. Franke (AT), he lays the foundation stone for a festival that will become the world’s largest and most important of its kind.
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Between art, technology and society. Over the past four decades, a number of pioneers have turned Ars Electronica into a creative ecosystem that now enjoys a worldwide reputation.
Since 1979 we celebrate once a year the Ars Electronica Festival. More than 1,000 artists, scientists, developers, designers, entrepreneurs and activists are coming to Linz, Austria, to address central questions of our future. For five days, everything revolves around groundbreaking ideas and grand visions, unusual prototypes and innovative collaborations, inspiring art and groundbreaking research, extraordinary performances and irritating interventions, touching sounds and rousing concerts.
Since 1987 we have been awarding the Prix Ars Electronica every year. With several competition categories, we search for groundbreaking projects that revolve around questions of our digital society and rehearse the innovative use of technologies, promising strategies of collaboration and new forms of artistic expression. The best submissions will receive a Golden Nica, considered by the global media art scene to be the most traditional and prestigious award ever.
Since 1996 we have been working at the Ars Electronica Center year after year with tens of thousands of kindergarten children, pupils, apprentices and students on questions concerning the ever-increasing digitalization of our world. The focus is on the potential of the next Game Changer: Artificial Intelligence.
Also since 1996 we operate the Ars Electronica Futurelab, whose international and interdisciplinary team of artists and scientists is researching the future. With interactive scenarios, we prepare central aspects of the Digital Revolution for the general public in order to initiate a democratic discourse.
1998 we initiated create your world. The year-round programme is developed together with young people and includes a competition for under 19 year olds, a festival of its own and a tour through the region. We see create your world as an invitation and challenge at the same time and want to encourage young people to leave the role as mere users of technology behind, to discover new possibilities of acting and designing and to implement their own ideas.
2004 we started Ars Electronica Export with a big exhibition in New York. Since then we have been to Abuja, Athens, Bangkok, Beijing, Berlin, Bilbao, Brussels, Buenos Aires, Doha, Florence, Kiev, London, Madrid, Mexico City, Moscow, Mumbai, Osaka, Sao Paulo, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Tokyo, Tunis, Venice and Zaragoza. Together with partners from art and culture, science and education, business and industry, we organize exhibitions and presentations, conferences and workshops, performances and interventions at all these locations.
Since 2013 our team at Ars Electronica Solutions has been developing market-ready products inspired by visions and prototypes from the artistic cosmos of Ars Electronica. We develop innovative, individual and interactive products and services for exhibitions, brands, trade fairs and events.
Since 2016 we are active all year round in Japan. Especially in Tokyo and Osaka we work together with leading Japanese universities, museums and companies, develop and present artistic projects, design workshop series and Open Labs and dedicate ourselves to the future of our digital society in conferences.
In order to actively shape the digital revolution, people are needed who have a feel for change and recognize connections, develop new strategies and set a course. This is precisely where the 2019 created Future Thinking School aims to support companies and institutions.
Whether at home in the living room or in the office, whether in the classroom or in the lecture hall, in the streetcar or subway, on the train – from everywhere Home Delivery accompanies our virtual visitors on an artistic-scientific journey into our future since 2020.
All our activities since September 18, 1979 have been documented in the form of texts, images and videos and stored in the Ars Electronica Archive. This archive provides us with a unique collection of descriptions and documentations of more than 75,000 projects from four decades of Ars Electronica.
The Expanded Conference (Expanded 2025) will take place from September 3rd to 5th as part of the Ars Electronica Festival 2025. This call for paper focuses on academic papers in the field of Expanded Animation and Interactive Art that explore and experiment with visual expression at the intersection of art, technology, and society. We will have two categories (Research Paper and Art Paper), where submissions will undergo a rigorous review process. All selected speakers will be given a free pass to the Ars Electronica Festival (September 3rd to 7th).
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
3D Scanning
AI-generated Images
AI-based artworks
Artistic Computer Animation
Art & Science collaboration projects
Audio-visual Experiments
Data Journalism and Animated Documentary
Data Visualizations
Digital Media Art History
Digital, Hybrid, and Expanded Theater
Expanded Animation
Generative Art
Human-AI interaction and Human-AI collaboration
Hybrids between Animation and Game
Media Facades
Music Visualization
New approaches to artistic research and practice-based methodologies
Participatory art projects
Performance Projects
Playful Interactions and Experiences
Projection Mapping
Projects using NFT, Metaverse, Social Media
Reactive and Interactive audio/visual Work
Real-time CG
Scientific Visualizations
Site-specific Installations
Sound Art and Soundscapes
Tangible Interfaces and New Forms of Experiences
Transmedia Narratives
Virtual Humans and Environments
Virtual Production
VR, AR, MR, XR
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Again, the submission date for your paper is April 27, 2025. Good luck!
Vancouver AI Community Meetup
Prepare yourself for some sticker shock. Tickets for the meetup are listed at $63.00. As noted earlier, there will be a “talk by Philippe Pasquier, exploring the latest in generative and creative AI systems.and a special performance by K-PHI-A, a live trio featuring Philippe, PhD student Keon Ju Maverick Lee, and VJ Amagi (Jun Yuri). Their piece, Revival, is an improvisational audiovisual performance where human musicians and AI agents co-create in real time.”
Here’s more about Vancouver AI meetups in a video, which appears to have been excerpted from the March 2025 meetup,
We Don’t Do Panels. We Do Portals. Vancouver AI: March 2025 Recap
This wasn’t a meetup. It was a lightning strike. A 3-hour detonation of mind, matter, and machine where open-source fire met ancestral spirit, and the UFO building lit up like a neural rave.
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⚡ What Went Down:
Damian George (Steloston) & his son Ethan kicked the night off with a warrior’s welcome—Indigenous songs from Tsleil-Waututh territory that cracked open the veil and set the frequency.
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Cai & Charlie spun lo-fi beats with a side of C++ sorcery. DIY synths, live visuals, and analog rebellion powered by AI hacks and imagination. This is what machine-human symbiosis sounds like.
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Michael Tippett dropped cinematic subversion with Mr. Canada, a gonzo AI-generated political series where satire meets social critique and deepfakes become truth bombs. (The king has a button that disables the F-35 fleet—yeah, that happened.)
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Cian Whalley, Zen priest & CTO, took us beyond the binary—teaching us how emotion, code, and consciousness intersect like neural lace. Toyota factory metaphors and Digital Buddha hotlines included.
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Philippe Pasquier, the SFU professor we don’t deserve, taught us how to train your own AI models on your art. No scraping, no stealing. Just artists owning their data and their destiny. Bonus: transparent LED cubes and a revival performance next month with AI-powered music agents. 🔮🎶
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Michelle from Women X AI showed us what a real grassroots intelligence network looks like: 45+ women in tech meeting monthly, giving back to the DTES, and building equity into the foundation of AI.
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Niels showed us what radical vulnerability looks like—raw stories of startup survival, burnout, almost crashing (literally), and choosing sustainable hustle over hypergrowth hype.
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Loki Jorgensen repped the new Mind, AI, and Consciousness crew—channeling 2,000 years of philosophical grind into one big ontological jam session. Curious cats only.
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Patrick Pennefather & Kevin the Pixel Wizard rolled out UBC’s AI video lab with student creators turning prompts into art and AI into cinema. Kevin’s mentorship = 🔥.
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Brittany Smila, our resident poet laureate, slayed the crowd with a poem that read like a bootleg instruction manual for being human. Typos included. Plum cake recipes too.
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Darby stepped up with real UX [user experience design] energy—running card sorts and mapping our collective brain to build a proper web infrastructure for the VAI [Vancouver artificial intelligence] hive mind. Web3 who?
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Rival Technologies’ Julia & Dale announced our first-ever Data Storytelling Hackathon. $2,500 prize, survey data that slaps, and a chance to show how AI can amplify truth instead of burying it. (Brittany wrote the hot dog prompt, you’re welcome.)
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Cloud Summit’s YK Sugi, Bibi Souza & Andre made waves repping an all-volunteer, all-heart community cloud event coming in hot during Web Summit week. Code meets care. Sponsors fund causes. Real ones only. Fergus dropped serious policy weight—WOSK Centre for Dialogue BC AI report now live. If you want a seat at the government table, this is your guy.
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Kushal closed the night with a flamethrower. Called out UBC’s xenophobic DeepSeek ban. Defended open-source warriors from China and France (💥shoutout Mistral). No prisoners. No apologies. Just truth. –
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Khayyam Wakil wrapped it all up with the keynote of the night: a design rebel’s journey from Saskatoon boats to LA VR labs to immersive media Emmys. Lessons in surrender, reinvention, and the real art of quitting right. 🔥
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📍Location: H.R. MacMillan Space Centre — Vancouver, BC (aka the UFO mothership)
🪐 Astronomers on deck. Observatories open till 11. Community stays weird till 10. 🎧 Full audio, speaker list & projects: vancouver.bc-ai.net
🎟️ Next portal opens May 28: lu.ma/VAI17 🖤❤️✊🔥🏴
We don’t do TED Talks. We host real-time cultural reckonings. This is AI for the people—and it’s only getting louder. Bring your edge. Bring your stickers. Bring your weird.
You can go here to get your ticket for the April 30, 2025 Vancouver AI Community Meetup and to find out about more about some of the AI events in Vancouver. You may want to check out the possibility of getting an annual pass or membership in the hope of making attendance more affordable.
Two papers and two workshop recordings from the Metacreation Lab
From the April 2025 Metacreation Lab newsletter,
Missed the Autolume Workshop? Watch It Online Now
After holding Autolume workshops in Toronto, Montreal, and Berlin, we brought the Autolume workshop online earlier in April, and the recordings are now available.
Whether you’re new to Autolume or want a refresher, this hands-on session walks you through training your own generative models, creating real-time visuals, and exploring interactive art, all without writing a single line of code.
The Metacreation Lab will be at ISEA 2025 with both a paper presentation and a live performance.
PhD student Arshia Sobhan, with Dr. Philippe Pasquier and Dr. Gabriela Aceves-Sepúlveda, will present “Broken Letters, Broken Narratives: A Case Study on Arabic Script in DALL-E 3”. This critical case study examines how text-to-image generative AI systems, such as DALL-E 3, misrepresent Arabic calligraphy, linking these failures to historical biases and Orientalist aesthetics.
In collaboration with sound artist Joshua Rodenberg, Arshia will also present “Reprising Elements,” an audiovisual performance combining Persian calligraphy, sound art, and generative AI powered by Autolume. This performance is an artistic endeavour that celebrates the fusion of time-honoured techniques with modern advancements.
Our paper “MIDI-GPT: A Controllable Generative Model for Computer-Assisted Multitrack Music Composition” is now officially published in the proceedings of the 39th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence.
MIDI-GPT leverages Transformer architecture to infill musical material at both track and bar levels, with controls for instrument type, style, note density, polyphony, and more. Our experiments show it generates original, stylistically coherent compositions while avoiding duplication from its training data. The system is already making waves through industry collaborations and artistic projects.
This February 4, 2025 news item is essentially a book announcement but what makes it exceptionally interesting is how one of history’s great mathematicians had some of his work preserved in an Arabic manuscript, Note: Links have been removed,
Scientists say that the two lost, but extremely important books by Apollonius, the Greek mathematician known to the ancient world as “The Great Geometer,” have survived in an Arabic manuscript kept under lock and key as part of the prized possessions of the Leiden University Libraries in Holland.
The revelation is made in a new volume of 50 chapters titled “Prophets, Poets and Scholars” and published recently by Leiden University Press.
Apollonius (262 BC–190 BC) is believed to be one of Greece’s greatest mathematicians and is renowned for his hugely influential book, “The Conics of Apollonius” in which he introduces the terms hyperbola, ellipse, and parabola.
According to the volume, “The Conics of Apollonius (c. 2.00 BCE) was one of the most profound works of ancient Greek mathematics. The work deals with the theory of ellipses, parabolas, and hyperbolas – the curves which you can see if you shine a flashlight on a wall.” Apollonius’s work comprises eight books, but only the first four were available to European scholars during the Renaissance.
The lost books – 5 and 7 – were brought to the Leiden University by the famous Dutch orientalist and mathematician Jacob Golius who had bought them for the university as part of a collection of nearly 200 manuscripts during his various voyages to the Middle East.
The 50 chapters in the book touch on the history of the Netherlands’ relationships with the orient, particularly the Middle East and North Africa, emphasizing that the first encounters with Arabic manuscripts occurred in the early 17th century.
The 17th century saw the first Dutchman, Thomas Erpenius, gaining pre-eminence in oriental studies. “He concentrated on Arabic text editions, primers for students and most importantly an Arabic grammar that would remain in use as a standard work for more than two centuries,” the volume’s editors write in their introductory chapter.
But the first Dutch “to have ever set foot in the Middle east or North Africa was … Jacobus Golius (1596-1667). On his travels he bought more than 200 Middle Eastern manuscripts for Leiden University,” say the editors. However, “Golius’s fame rests mainly on his lexicon Arabian-Latinum, a large folio volume printed by the then firm of Elzevier in 1653. The work is based on the Arabic lexicographical manuscripts that he had acquired on his travels.”
It is the manuscripts which Golius purchased for the Leiden University Libraries that attract the attention of numerous scholars who have contributed to the volume. For instance, a chapter focuses on an 11th century Arabic manuscript, which is a translation of the lost mathematical works attributed to Apollonius. In the meantime, the essay dwells on four other Arabic manuscripts bought by Golius to present some aspects of the scientific traditions prevalent in the heyday of Arab and Muslims civilization.
The Arabic translation of Apollonius is fascinating, Dutch mathematician and historian of science, Jan Pieter Hogendijk, says in an email interview, adding that besides its exact science, it is adorned with colored images and written in skillful Arabic calligraphy. “The calligraphy in some of these manuscripts is wonderful and also the geometrical figures were written with extreme care.
“They (manuscripts) are a witness of the mental abilities, discipline, power of concentration, will power and so on which the scientists and also the scribes possessed, and which modern people, spoiled by their gadgets, mobile phones, and so on, do not possess anymore.”
The volume, according to the editors, “serves as an introduction to more than fifty contributions of scholars and librarians who are intimately familiar with diverse aspects of the collections (of Leiden University Libraries), both ancient and modern.”
The volume is a nice read as it is written for the public. It is luxuriously illustrated with ancient maps, images, and extracts from Arabic, Turkish and Persian manuscripts. Besides accounts and analyses of scientific traditions prevalent among Arabs and Muslims in the Middle Ages, the volume narrates some fantasy tales from Arabic travel literature, which still captivate the mind.
In their studies and analyses, the scientists find that their authors would often add an entertaining touch mingled with fantasy to their narrative. “They (the texts) were often mixed with legendary accounts, especially in reports about the outer edges of the known world, where the laws of nature were no longer fixed and strange things might occur.
“There women might grow on trees, people might have arms where we have our ears, and might come across islands exclusively inhabited either by women or by men. All this has left its traces in the Middle Eastern written heritage, and also in the accompanying pictorial tradition.”
In the section dedicated to Arabic manuscripts and titled “The Great Arabic Heritage,” there is emphasis on cosmography besides astronomy, mathematics, zoology, botany, planetology, among other sciences.
There is emphasis on a renowned Muslim cosmographer Ibn Muhammad al-Qazwini’s “Ajaib al-Makhluqat wa Khraib al-Mawjudat (Wonders of Creations and Rarities of Extant Beings), an encyclopedic work which, according to the volume tackles “the humble creatures such as fleas, worms and lice to exotic animals surrounded by mystery and legends.”
Some creatures can be merely fantasy beings like the turtle which “sailors moored their ship on it, taking the motionless animal that had become overgrown with vegetation for an island” – reminiscent of the creatures one comes across in the famous Travels of Sindbad the Sailor.
However, as one of the fascinating chapters in the volume underscores, “sometimes one has to rid oneself of preconceived ideas to understand the descriptions. Such a case is a sea creature described by Qazwini, … its face is like that of man, it has a white beard, its body looks like that of a frog, its hair is like a cow’s and its size like that of a calf. It takes us a moment to see that this is a perfectly adequate description of some kind of seal.”
Mostafa Zahri, University of Sharjah Professor of numerical analysis and mathematical modeling, says the prized possessions of “Arabic manuscripts in Western libraries like Leiden University Libraries serve as invaluable records of Islamic civilization’s intellectual achievements, especially in mathematics and geometry.
“Western institutions, besides Leiden University, namely the British Library, and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, house thousands of Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman manuscripts containing rare geometric treatises. These collections bridge historical and modern scholarships.”
However, and despite the wealth of knowledge they hold, many manuscripts remain understudied and only greater collaboration, digitization, and accessibility between Western and Arab scholars could unlock their full historical and mathematical value, says Prof. Zahri.
In an email interview, Wilfred de Graaf, Education Coordinator at Utrecht University concurs, emphasizing that only a small portion of collections of Arabic and Islamic manuscript texts have been studied. He attributes the scarcity of studies in this sphere to the lack of scholars in the West who are fluent in oriental language like Arabic, Persian and Turkish, in which most Islamic manuscripts are written.
Nonetheless, he adds that more and more ancient texts are unraveled assisting scholars to obtain “a general view of the development of science in the Islamic tradition. “In the West, there is an interest in the Islamic scientific tradition, not only because of it being crucial for the development of science in Europe between the 11th and 14th century, but also because of the intrinsic nature of its contributions.”
Mesut Idriz, Sharjah University’s Professor of Islamic civilization, says bringing Arabic and Islamic manuscripts to life is among the hardest labors social science researchers face. “Islamic manuscript studies require a nuanced understanding of both the textual and scientific traditions they encapsulate.
“The study of Islamic manuscripts demands specialized knowledge, encompassing paleography, historical context, linguistic expertise, and scientific specialization—areas that are often underdeveloped among contemporary researchers and academics.”
Drawing on Leiden University Libraries’ Arabic manuscripts, a team of Western scientists held a workshop at the University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates in January 2025 to teach participants the method by which Arab and Muslim scientists wrote numbers in a numeral system called abjad, in reference to the Arabic alphabet, a right-to-left script.
The abjad is a numeral system in which the first of the 28-letter Arabic alphabet ‘alif’ represents 1, and the second letter ‘baa’ is 2 up to 9. The other letters stand for nine intervals of 10s and then those of 100s ending with 1000.
“The scientists in the Islamic tradition used abjad in combination with the sexagesimal system which is still used today for time (hours, minutes and seconds) and angles (degrees, arc minutes and arc seconds),” Wilfred, who organized the workshop, said.
This is the second workshop in nearly two months Western scientists hold [sic] at the University of Sharjah to present Arabic manuscripts to the Arab academic community and demonstrate the uses Arab and Muslim scientific instruments were put to in the Middle Ages. In them, the participants were made to read in detail the abjad numbers on an early astrolabe, an Arabic astronomical instrument.
Besides the Arabic manuscript in which the two lost works of Apollonius were found, there are extracts and studies in the volume tackling a variety of scientific traditions prevalent among the Arabs in the Middle Ages.
One chapter analyzes a figure from an 11th century manuscript attributed to al-Mu’taman ibn Hud, King of Saragossa between 1081 and 1085. The chapter shows how Muslim scientists managed to solve an ancient Greek geometry puzzle nearly half a millennium before a solution to the same problem was found in Europe. Muslim scientists’ solution of the puzzle, according to the chapter, “is part of a huge mathematical encyclopedia called the Book of Perfections of which a small fragment has been preserved.”
Quoting from yet another 14th century Arabic manuscript, the chapter shows how Muslim scientists could determine the geographical coordinates of no less than 160 cities with a high degree of accuracy and minimum error margin.
“The names of the cities appear in black and the numbers in red are the longitudes in degrees and minutes, and the latitude in degrees and minutes,” says Prof. Hogendijk. “The numbers are written in the alphabetical abjad system used by most astronomers, in which a numerical value is attributed to each letter. The first column begins with localities in the two provinces of Western and Eastern Azerbaijan in modern Iran.”
The book, “Prophets, Poets and Scholars; The Collections of the Middle Eastern Library of Leiden University” Editor: Arnoud Vrolijk, Kasper van Ommen, Karin Scheper & Tijmen Baarda, can be found on its Leiden University Press publication order page.
Scientific research explores the potential of DNNs [deep neural networks] in transforming fragrance design. By analyzing the sensing data of 180 essential oils, the DNN was trained using the odor descriptor data from 94 essential oils to generate fragrance profiles, validated through sensory evaluations to align with human olfactory perceptions. The study underscores the technological ability to streamline fragrance creation, reduce costs, and foster innovation, opening up exciting possibilities for personalized and scalable scent development.
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Caption: DNNs can transform fragrance design by predicting and creating novel scents from chemical data, ushering in a new era of digital scent creation. Credit: Institute of Science Tokyo
Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) have become an essential driver of innovation across various industries, from healthcare to manufacturing. By analyzing large datasets, identifying patterns, and making precise predictions, DNNs are transforming the way we approach complex tasks. One such area where DNNs are making a remarkable impact is in the digitalization of smell, a field traditionally dominated by human expertise and sensory evaluations. However, a recent study aims to revolutionize this practice by exploring how DNNs can assist in fragrance design.
Moreover, an odor reproduction technique has been developed, enabling a wide variety of scents to be generated by varying the mixing ratio of a small set of odor components. These odor components are prepared by blending essential oils used in the analysis.
A research team led by Professor Takamichi Nakamoto from the Laboratory for Future Interdisciplinary Research of Science and Technology (FIRST), Institute of Integrated Research (IIR), Institute of Science Tokyo, Japan, published their research in Scientific Reports on December 28. This study was driven by the growing need for more efficient and innovative methods of fragrance creation. The study aimed to quickly make the intended scent without trial and error, leveraging DNNs to predict odor profiles based on multidimensional sensing data.
Nakamoto explains “We hypothesized that the DNNs when integrated with chemistry and sensory science could offer new insights into fragrance development. We conducted the study by analyzing mass spectrometry data from 180 essential oils, providing a comprehensive understanding of their odor components. These data were then used to train a DNN designed to predict odor descriptors from the odor-component composition. The DNN employed multiple layers optimized to capture the intricate relationships between its compositions and the resulting scents.” To improve the model’s accuracy and generalization, the team augmented the data with random mixtures of essential oil spectra and introduced noise, ensuring the model could adapt to real-world complexities. Once the DNN model generated the odor-component compositions, human evaluators assessed the DNN- generated scents alongside reference oils.
The DNN achieved the highest accuracy in predicting the odor descriptor “floral” and lower accuracy for the descriptor “woody”. Sensory testing further confirmed the effectiveness of the model, as human panelists found that the DNN-generated oils using odor components were more similar to the reference oils than those with added odor descriptors. These findings highlight the system capability to accurately replicate existing fragrance profiles and, in some cases, generate entirely new combinations.
The study demonstrates numerous benefits, like DNN can significantly reduce the time and costs involved in fragrance development by streamlining both chemical analysis and sensory evaluations. Additionally, DNN makes fragrance creation scalable, allowing it to adapt to diverse market preferences and consumer demands. Most notably, the use of DNN opens up innovative possibilities by enabling the generation of new and unique scent profiles that might not have been discovered through traditional methods.
Looking to the future, the implications of this study are profound. “As DNN models continue to evolve, they could enable the creation of personalized fragrances tailored to individual preferences. Additionally, this approach could be extended to other sensory domains, such as taste, where similar methods could be used to craft personalized flavor profiles,” shares Nakamoto.
By combining DNNs, chemical analysis, and sensory testing, the study emphasizes the potential to replicate and innovate within the fragrance industry. With its ability to enhance efficiency and creativity, a revolution in fragrance design is expected, ushering in a new era of innovation.
About Institute of Science Tokyo (Science Tokyo)
Institute of Science Tokyo (Science Tokyo) was established on October 1, 2024, following the merger between Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) and Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech), with the mission of “Advancing science and human wellbeing to create value for and with society.”
Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
Automatic scent creation by cheminformatics method by Manuel Aleixandre, Dani Prasetyawan & Takamichi Nakamoto. Scientific Reports volume 14, Article number: 31284 (2024) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-82654-7 Published: 28 December 2024
I don’t often get a chance to mention superstar authors such as George RR Martin here but it does happen when science fiction authors and physics are concerned.
Caption: A coordinate system for the polar model of the Wild Cards system and an example of the viral vector trajectories. Credit: Ian Tregillis
Many science fiction authors try to incorporate scientific principles into their work, but Ian Tregillis, who is a contributing author of the Wild Cards book series when he’s not working as a physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, took it one step further: He derived a formula to describe the dynamics of the fictional universe’s viral system.
In independent research published in the American Journal of Physics, from AIP Publishing, Tregillis and George R.R. Martin derive a formula for viral behavior in the Wild Cards universe.
Wild Cards is a science fiction series written by a collection of authors and edited by Martin and Melinda M. Snodgrass. Sitting at over 30 volumes, the books are about an alien virus called the Wild Card that mutates human DNA. Martin is credited as a co-author of the paper, making it his first peer-reviewed physics publication.
The idea to explore the science behind the fictional virus came from a series of blog posts on the Wild Cards website.
“Like any physicist, I started with back-of-the-envelope estimates, but then I went off the deep end. Eventually I suggested, only half-jokingly, that it might be easier to write a genuine physics paper than another blog post,” Tregillis said. “Being a theoretician, I couldn’t help but wonder if a simple underlying model might tidy up the canon.”
The formula he derived is a Lagrangian formulation, which considers the different ways a system can evolve. It’s also a fundamental physics principle, which also makes the fictional example a powerful teaching tool.
Tregillis shared that deriving this physical model was a fun but open-ended puzzle. After some trial and error of models based on fractals or thermodynamic analogies, he and Martin settled on the Lagrangian approach.
“We translated the abstract problem of Wild Card viral outcomes into a simple, concrete dynamical system. The time-averaged behavior of this system generates the statistical distribution of outcomes,” he said.
While the Wild Card virus can be modeled by physics, Tregillis emphasized that it isn’t a hard-and-fast rule in the canon.
“Good storytelling is about characters: their wants, needs, obstacles, challenges, and how they interact with their world,” Tregillis said. “The fictional virus is really just an excuse to justify the world of Wild Cards, the characters who inhabit it, and the plot lines that spin out from their actions.”
One other thing, Wild Cards, a current television programme which has nothing to do with George RR Martin or physics, stars Vanessa Morgan and Giacomo Gianniotti in a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) production about a con artist and a police officer solving crimes toghether can be seen here.
An April 17, 2025 Canadian Science Policy Centre (CSPC) notice (received via email) announced an upcoming Zoom panel discussion, “Innovating for a Digital Future: Navigating Economic Shifts and Global Challenges,”
Upcoming Virtual Panels – April 25 [2025 and May 7 [More about the May 7, 2025 panel in a future posting]
The global economy is at a crossroads, shaped by profound shifts in economic structures, evolving geopolitical dynamics, and the relentless advancement of digital technologies. How can governments and businesses adapt to the acceleration of digital transformation while ensuring economic stability, security, and a shared digital future?
The Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC) is a neutral, not-for-profit national centre of expertise with the mission of strengthening Canada’s digital advantage in the global economy. For over 30 years, and with a team of 100 experts, we have delivered forward-looking research, practical policy advice, and capacity building solutions for individuals and businesses. Our goal is to ensure that technology is utilized to drive economic growth and innovation and that Canada’s workforce remains competitive on a global scale.
Abstract:
The global economy is at a crossroads, shaped by profound shifts in economic structures, evolving geopolitical dynamics, and the relentless advancement of digital technologies. From artificial intelligence and quantum computing to Digital IDs, blockchain and cybersecurity, these innovations are redefining industries, altering labour markets, and transforming the way nations compete and collaborate. This virtual panel will bring together industry leaders and key policymakers from Canada and Europe to explore the challenges and opportunities presented by this changing landscape and discuss issues including:
How can governments and businesses adapt to the acceleration of digital transformation while ensuring economic stability, security, and a shared digital future?
What policies and frameworks are needed to foster innovation, enhance global trade, and build resilient economies in the face of uncertainty?
Through an insightful discussion, this session will examine strategies to harness digital advancements for sustainable growth, strengthen transnational cooperation, and ensure that the evolving global paradigm works for all. Join us as we shape the future of the digital economy and define pathways for shared prosperity in an interconnected world.
Our journey began in 1992 as the Software Human Resources Council, a vital player in a network of sector councils supported by the Government of Canada’s Sectoral Council Program. In 2006, we recognized our potential to shape Canada’s digital destiny on a global scale. We underwent a significant transformation, becoming an independent, national, non-profit centre of expertise and renamed to the Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC).
Rooted in government-backed origins, we now extend our reach to every province, supporting policymakers, driving practical research, and innovating solutions for the workforce and businesses.
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I cannot find any kind of annual report, which might give an indication of how the ICTC is funded. Is it strictly ‘fee for services’, government or foundation funding, or a combination of some kind? It’s always interesting to know where the money is coming from.
