Thank you to everyone who took the time to drop in and read and/or comment on this blog, especially in times that grow ever more turbulent for all of us.
It wasn’t all ‘sturm und drang’. Aside: Much to my surprise (see Wikipedia entry) ‘storm and stress’ is a term first associated with an 18th Century German literary movement.
It’s been quite a year for the quantum science community, which appears to be getting more public attention. It’s not quite at the levels experienced by AI (artificial intelligence). but it’s getting there.
This year I’ve had a lot of art/science projects featured here. It makes me wonder if perhaps art/sci is also of rising interest.
Here’s my 2025 roundup, roughly organized by topic with a (to be expected) focus on the Canadian experience. As usual, some projects straddle two or more areas of interest, so, I’ve made some arbitrary decisions. As well, I’m trying to keep this shorter than my standard end-of-year piece. For anyone interested in the ‘nano’ aspect of this blog, either ‘nanoparticle’ or ‘nanotechnology’ searches should reward you amply.
Geopolitical tensions, the US and its science, and science fraud
Who thought Canadians would be threatened with 51st state status? Relatively mild compared to what else Donald Trump and his kakistocracy have been up to domestically and internationally. By the way, my new word of 2025 was kakistocracy, from its Wikipedia entry,
Kakistocracy (/ˌkækɪˈstɒkrəsi/ KAK-ist-OK-rə-see) is government by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous people.[1]: 54 [2][3]
The word was coined as early as the 17th century[4] and derives from two Greek words, kákistos (κάκιστος, ‘worst’) and krátos (κράτος, ‘rule’), together meaning ‘government by the worst people’.[5]
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Usage
The term is generally used by critics of a national government. It has been used variously in the past to describe the Russian governments of Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin,[12] the government of Egypt under Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi,[13] governments in sub-Saharan Africa,[14] the government of the Philippines under Rodrigo Duterte,[15] Brazil under Jair Bolsonaro,[16] and the governments of some presidents of the United States.[17]
The term gained popularity during the first presidency of Donald Trump, going viral in 2017 when used by then-MSNBC host Joy Reid and again following an April 2018 tweet by former CIA director John Brennan.[4][18] The term has been used by commentators at numerous news outlets,[19][20][21] political publications,[22][23] and books to describe the Trump administration.[24][25]
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As noted in a posting earlier in 2025 (see below for link), the Americans are desperate for resources, which can help explain at least some of the threats and hostile action toward us and others. The US signed a deal with Ukraine that featured critical minerals. Both Canada and Greenland offer critical minerals and greater control over the arctic passage .Nigeria and Venezuela are oil rich. As for Panama, presumably the focus is on easy Pacific/Atlantic passage.
- Here’s my February 13, 2025 posting “Water, critical minerals, technology and US expansionist ambitions (Manifest Destiny).” This is a long read as I cover a lot of ground. Since writing it up and in light of the aggression towards Venezuela, in particular, I’ve come to suspect that my assumption that the US has adequate oil reserves was incorrect. *ETA January 5, 2026: ON January 3, 2026 US military forces set foot on Venezuelan soil, captured/kidnapped President Nicolás Maduro, and announced plans to take over its oil industry. Read more: January 4, 2026 article “Experts say Trump’s plan to seize and revitalize Venezuela’s oil industry faces major hurdles” by Josh Funk for Associated Press on the PBS website.*
- This November 18, 2025 posting “Canada and the United Kingdom (UK) work together to improve critical minerals mining and supply chains” highlights our maneuvers where resources and trade are concerned.
The US also has a science problem that predates the current administration’s actions.
Given the well documented issues around US science funding, as well as, concerns that foreign students and researchers may have regarding current immigration policies, the Canadian federal government appears eager to provide an alternative.
I often see material on building ‘trust in science’ and material on the reverse ‘battling misinformation’.
- This February 28, 2025 posting highlights an event about building trust in science. It also includes my comments about a medical scientific fraud, a bad apple, as it were.
Moving from ‘bad apples’ to an even more disturbing view of scientific fraud,
It’s always good to get a reminder to apply at least a little skepticism when reading about science.
Quantum
It was quite the year for quantum science.
Here’s some of what is going on in Canada.
- This September 10, 2025 posting highlights how Canada celebrated the international year of quantum.
- The Council of Canadian Academies published, in late 2024, a report for the government titled: Quantum Potential. I produced a two-part commentary. On February 3, 2025, “… Part one of two: The expert panel, the Canadian quantum scene and more” and on February 19, 2025, “… Part two of two: Comments on the report.”
- An August 8, 2025 posting features Canadian quantum companies in a US competition for funding and some sad news, “Canadian quantum companies chase US DARPA’s (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) $$$ and RIP Raymond Laflamme.” Chairperson for the expert panel on Quantum Potential, Raymond Laflamme died about 18 months after it was published. By the way, the Canadian companies all made it to the next stage for funding from DARPA. I should have a posting about that published in the new year.
- A quantum art/science project is highlighted in this October 10, 2025 posting “Ars Scientia’s Quantum Studio Art/Science Residency with Nadia Lichtig at the University of British Columbia (UBC).”
I have a couple of the items from 2025 but you’ll find more if you search for ‘quantum’ in the blog’s search engine.
Next up is artificial intelligence (AI).
AI
China made itself felt this year.
China’s ex UK ambassador & Canada’s Yoshua Bengio tangle.
Vancouver (Canada) has an AI community and an interesting lineup of topics.
If you are looking to join up or check out Vancouver and/or BC AI communities, search on the web for “Kris Krug” who is the moving force for these initiatives.
The Phoenix Payroll implementation remains as one of the Canadian government’s greatest foul ups.
After almost 10 years, they are hopeful that AI will help them clean up the mess. Let’s hope they’re right.
By the way, do you own your thoughts?
To end this on a less ominous note, AI can be used for good.
Citizen science
This is a sampling of three of the citizen science items here.
- “‘Extreme’ citizen science” published on January 17, 2025 was really from 2024 but the word ‘extreme’ had me hooked. Here’s what they meant, from the posting,
“Extreme citizen science is the idea that the role of a researcher becomes ever smaller. The unique and ‘extreme’ aspect is that a larger part of the research process, both fieldwork and lab work, is now handed over to high school students. We were excited to see if it would work and have now seen that it does so exceptionally well,” says project leader Anders P. Tøttrup, Associate Professor of Citizen Science at the Natural History Museum of Denmark.
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Interesting, yes? Especially in light of this next one.
And then, never in a million years!
Selection of art/science (art/sci)
Here they are:
- “Physicists study Bach, Mozart, and jazz” published January 21, 2025.
- :”Is there a difference between human-written poetry and AI-generated poetry and which one do people like better?” Strictly speaking this piece published on February 27, 2025 is not an art/sci project but it’s close enough for me.
- “Trees, mathematics, and art (from Piet Mondrian to Leonardo da Vinci)” published on May 22, 2025.
- “Biomusicality: a sea lion who’s got that swing,” which introduced me to a new word (biomusicality) was published on May 2, 2025.
- This could be said to include citizen science, “Tracing charismatic river porpoises’ 1,400 year decline with ancient poems.” It was published on July 14, 2025.
- “Puppetry (and other creative methods) can effectively communicate complex scientific topics” was published on July 3, 2025.
- This August 21, 2025 posting has some Canadian content, “The art of building material that lives and stores carbon (Canada House).”
Odds & sods
I have two posts featuring cybersecurity in one way or another.
It’s good to see that there’s interest in protecting medical implants from cyberthreats.
I do have one nano story I want to mention.
Linguistics is a social science and it’s been observed that Canadians speak their own kind of English.
One of the more unusual communication projects that I’ve seen.
This is abut our food.
A quick internet search did not turn up any new information about gene-edited pork and its entrance into the Canadian market.
Goodbye 2025 and hello 2026
At this point I’ve decided to give in and accept that thee will always be a backlog of material from the previous year (this time, 2025) bleeding into the next (this time, 2026). In my defence, there is so much material out there I am overwhelmed with riches.
Moving on …
I see that 2025 was chock-a-block with stories about artificial intelligence, just like 2024. I don’t anticipate that will change much, just as I imagine that quantum science and quantum computing stories will continue to proliferate 2026.
While I didn’t highlight them this year, there were a lot of stories about agriculture and regenerative medicine with enabling nanotechnology. It’ll be interesting to see if that continues.
One area that offers some hope with regard to energy and to the environment and I think will become more prominent in 2026 is fusion energy (nuclear energy). For anyone not familiar with fusion energy, here’s a description from the Wikipedia entry for the largest fusion energy project in the world (ITER); Note: Links have been removed,
ITER (originally an acronym for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, and also meaning “the way” or “the path” in Latin)[1][2][3] is an international nuclear fusion research and engineering project designed to demonstrate the feasibility of fusion power.
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Fusion aims to replicate the process that takes place in stars where the intense heat at the core fuses together nuclei and produces large amounts of energy in the form of heat and light. Harnessing fusion power in terrestrial conditions would provide sufficient energy to satisfy mounting demand, and to do so in a sustainable manner that has a relatively small impact on the environment. One gram of deuterium-tritium fuel mixture in the process of nuclear fusion produces 90,000-kilowatt hours of energy, or the equivalent of 11 tonnes of coal.[30]
Nuclear fusion uses a different approach from traditional nuclear energy. Current nuclear power stations rely on nuclear fission with the nucleus of an atom being split to release energy. Nuclear fusion takes multiple nuclei and uses intense heat to fuse them together, a process that also releases energy.[31]
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Thank you all and may you have a lovely New Year.
