Scientists working with China’s fully superconducting Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) have successfully reached a long-theorized “density-free regime” in fusion plasma experiments. In this state, the plasma remains stable even when its density rises far beyond traditional limits. The results, published in Science Advances on January 1, [2026] shed new light on how one of fusion energy’s most stubborn physical barriers might finally be overcome on the road to ignition.
The research was co-led by Prof. Ping Zhu of Huazhong University of Science and Technology and Associate Prof. Ning Yan of the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. By developing a new high-density operating approach for EAST, the team showed that plasma density can be pushed well past long-standing empirical limits without triggering the disruptive instabilities that usually end experiments. This finding challenges decades of assumptions about how tokamak plasmas behave at high density.
Why Density Limits Have Held Fusion Back
Nuclear fusion is widely seen as a potential source of clean and sustainable energy. In deuterium-tritium fusion, the fuel must be heated to about 13 keV (150 million kelvin) to reach optimal conditions. At such temperatures, the amount of fusion power produced increases with the square of the plasma density. Despite this advantage, tokamak experiments have long been constrained by an upper density limit. When that limit is exceeded, the plasma often becomes unstable, disrupting confinement and threatening the operation of the device. These instabilities have been a major obstacle to improving fusion performance.
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Implications for Fusion Ignition
These experimental results offer new physical insight into how the long-standing density barrier in tokamak operation might be broken in the pursuit of fusion ignition.
“The findings suggest a practical and scalable pathway for extending density limits in tokamaks and next-generation burning plasma fusion devices,” said Prof. Zhu.
Associate Prof. Yan added that the team plans to apply the same approach during high-confinement operation on EAST in the near future, with the goal of reaching the density-free regime under high-performance plasma conditions.
This research was conducted collaboratively by the Institute of Plasma Physics at the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and Aix-Marseille University in France, among other institutions. …
A tokamak is a toroidal device that employs magnetic confinement to achieve controlled nuclear fusion. It resembles a helical “magnetic racetrack,” effectively confining high-temperature plasma to promote fusion reactions. Plasma density, a crucial parameter affecting tokamak performance, directly impacts the rate of fusion reactions.
Historically, researchers have acknowledged that plasma density has an upper limit. When this limit is reached, the plasma becomes unstable, escapes magnetic confinement, and releases substantial energy onto the device’s inner walls, thereby jeopardizing operational safety.
While long-term international fusion research has indicated that the physical processes triggering the density limit occur at the plasma-wall boundary region, the underlying mechanisms have remained unclear.
In this study, the Chinese research team developed a self-organized plasma-wall interaction theoretical model. Through this model, they identified the critical role of radiation instability induced by boundary impurities in triggering the density limit, thereby elucidating the underlying mechanism.
Building on this theoretical insight, researchers experimentally controlled the plasma to exceed the density limit and successfully guided it into a new “density-free zone.”
These results mark the first experimental confirmation of such a zone in tokamaks. This innovative work not only provides key insights into understanding the density limit but also establishes an important physical basis for high-density operation in tokamaks, according to the scientists. (Xinhua)
Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
Accessing the density-free regime with ECRH-assisted ohmic start-up on EAST by Jiaxing Liu, Ping Zhu, Dominique Franck Escande, Wenbin Liu, Shiwei Xue, Xin Lin, Panjun Tang, Liang Wang, Ning Yan, Jinju Yang, Yanmin Duan, Kai Jia, Zhenwei Wu, Yunxin Cheng, Ling Zhang, Jinping Qian, Rui Ding, Ruijie Zhou, and the EAST team. Science Advances 1 Jan 2026 Vol 12, Issue 1 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adz3040
This paper appears to be open access.
Cassian Holt’s January 9, 2026 article for Morning Overview (h/t MSN) features a very good overview of fusion technology, the breakthrough, and the race to develop the technology, Note: Links have been removed,
China’s latest advance in magnetic confinement fusion has pushed a key performance limit past what theory once allowed, turning its so‑called “artificial sun” into a test bed for conditions that previously belonged only in computer models and stellar cores. By sustaining a plasma that is both hotter and denser than expected, researchers have effectively doubled the potential energy yield of future reactors and forced a rewrite of long‑standing assumptions about how fusion plasmas behave. The result is not commercial power, but it is a decisive step toward a machine that could one day deliver continuous, carbon‑free electricity at planetary scale.
At the center of this leap is the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak, or EAST, a doughnut‑shaped device that uses powerful magnets to corral hydrogen isotopes into a seething, electrically charged fluid. For years, EAST has been a workhorse for China’s fusion program, setting records for how long it can hold ultra‑hot plasma without losing control. Now, by breaching a density ceiling that many physicists treated as a hard stop, the machine has shown that the path to practical fusion energy may be more flexible, and potentially shorter, than the textbooks suggested.
Breaking a fusion limit that textbooks treated as law
The core of the new achievement is deceptively simple to state: scientists in China have operated a tokamak plasma at a density that earlier theory said should be impossible to sustain without catastrophic instability. In magnetic fusion, density is as important as temperature, because the rate of fusion reactions scales with how many particles can collide inside a given volume. By pushing that density higher while keeping the plasma under control, the team has effectively demonstrated a way to extract roughly twice the potential energy from the same reactor footprint, a leap that recent analysis describes as doubling the prospective output of future machines.
Researchers using China’s device report that this record setting plasma density was not a fleeting spike but a stable, high performance state that held long enough to be scientifically useful. That matters because the previous density limit, often treated as a hard boundary, was built into the design assumptions of many proposed reactors. The new result shows that this ceiling can be raised, and that the “Chinese Fusion Reactor Achieves Plasma Density Previously Thought to Be Impossible” is not just a headline but a shift in what engineers can now plan for in next generation designs, with the higher density regime directly tied to more promising Science & Energy Energy Renewable performance targets.
Inside China’s “artificial sun” and its long climb to this point
The machine behind the breakthrough is the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak, a facility in Hefei that has become a flagship for China’s fusion ambitions. EAST is designed around superconducting magnets that can operate continuously, rather than in short pulses, which allows it to chase the holy grail of steady state fusion instead of brief experimental bursts. Earlier work with this device already set a benchmark when China’s “artificial sun” held a superheated plasma for 1,066 seconds, a milestone that showed the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak could maintain extreme conditions for nearly eighteen minutes without losing stability.
That earlier 1,066 second run was not just a record, it was a proof of concept that long duration operation is compatible with the delicate balance of heating, fueling, and magnetic control that a reactor will eventually need. Reports on how China’s quest to harness the power of the stars reached that historic plasma duration underline that the same hardware and control systems are now being pushed into even more demanding regimes of density and pressure. In that sense, the new density record builds directly on the earlier Experimental Advanced Superconduct milestone, turning a machine known for long pulses into one that can also probe the edge of what plasma physics allows.
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Why scientists once thought this regime was out of reach
The idea that a tokamak plasma could not exceed a certain density was not arbitrary. It grew out of decades of experiments in Europe, the United States, Japan, and Russia, where attempts to pack more particles into the magnetic bottle often ended in sudden collapses known as disruptions. These events can dump the plasma’s energy into the reactor walls in milliseconds, damaging components and ending the experiment. Over time, researchers distilled these experiences into empirical scaling laws that linked density to the strength of the magnetic field and the size of the device, and those laws hardened into design rules that discouraged aggressive pushes into higher density territory.
China’s new result matters because it shows that those empirical limits were not fundamental, but contingent on how the plasma was shaped, heated, and controlled. …
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From record shots to a roadmap for practical reactors
Record breaking experiments are valuable, but fusion will only matter for the grid if those conditions can be turned into a repeatable operating regime that a power plant can live in for years. On that front, the density breakthrough is being framed not as an isolated world record but as a stepping stone toward reactors that can run at high power continuously. Researchers using China’s device emphasize that the new regime was achieved in a way that is compatible with the engineering constraints of future plants, including the need to protect internal components and manage heat loads without exotic materials.
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China’s broader fusion strategy and the race for clean power
The density milestone does not exist in isolation. It is part of a broader national strategy in which China has invested heavily in fusion research as a pillar of its long term energy and technology plans. The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak in Hefei is one centerpiece of that effort, but it sits alongside participation in international projects and a growing domestic ecosystem of universities and institutes focused on plasma physics. The goal is not only scientific prestige but a practical path to reactors that can complement, and eventually replace, fossil fuel plants in a country that still relies heavily on coal.
Earlier work with EAST showed how seriously China takes this goal. Reports on nuclear fusion plasma failures predicted with 94 percent accuracy describe how Chinese scientists used advanced modeling and machine learning to anticipate and avoid disruptions in the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak, a capability that is essential if future reactors are to operate safely. Those same accounts point to expectations that commercial production of fusion power could be possible by 2050, a timeline that aligns with China’s broader climate and energy commitments. In that context, the new density record is both a scientific achievement and a political signal that the country intends to be at the front of the pack as fusion moves from laboratory to grid, with EAST and related work at Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak forming the backbone of that push.
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Global implications and the next questions for fusion research
China’s density breakthrough will ripple far beyond Hefei, because it directly affects how other countries think about their own fusion projects. Facilities like ITER [International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor] in France, as well as smaller private ventures in the United States and Europe, have all been designed around assumptions about what densities and pressures are realistically achievable in a tokamak. If those assumptions are now too conservative, it could open the door to more compact designs, revised operating scenarios, or even new business models for fusion startups that have bet on alternative approaches.
At the same time, the result raises fresh questions that only further experiments can answer. One detailed account of China’s “artificial sun” notes that the device has just pulled off something fusion scientists have been chasing for decades, and that it could change the trajectory of progress toward practical fusion energy. Yet the same reporting makes clear that the path from a single machine’s record to a global fleet of reactors is long, and that issues like materials resilience, tritium supply, and regulatory frameworks remain unresolved. The density record is therefore best seen as a pivot point, one that will shape how researchers worldwide prioritize their next steps as they weigh whether to follow China’s lead into this new regime, as highlighted in analysis of how China’s “artificial sun” just pulled fusion into uncharted territory.
The climate stakes if fusion’s promise holds
Behind the technical details lies a simple motivation: the world needs vast amounts of clean, reliable power if it is to phase out fossil fuels without sacrificing economic growth. Fusion, if it can be made to work at scale, offers an alluring package of attributes. It produces no carbon dioxide at the point of generation, carries no risk of runaway chain reactions, and generates far less long lived radioactive waste than conventional fission. The fuel, derived from isotopes of hydrogen, is abundant, and the reaction itself shuts down if the delicate balance of conditions is disturbed, which makes it inherently safe in ways that coal and gas plants are not.
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If you have the time and the interest, Holt’s January 9, 2026 article is well worth reading.
As for Morning View, there’s this from their About page,
Welcome to Morning Overview, your go-to source for the latest in tech, gadgets, science, and transportation. We’re here to provide you with the essential updates and insightful articles to help you start your day informed and inspired.
At Morning Overview, we understand that the world of technology and innovation moves fast. Our mission is to bring you the most relevant and exciting developments, from cutting-edge gadgets to breakthroughs in science and transportation. Whether you’re a tech enthusiast, a gadget lover, or simply curious about the future of mobility, we’ve got you covered.
Our team is a group of passionate writers, researchers, and experts who keep their fingers on the pulse of all things innovative. We curate content that’s both engaging and easy to digest, ensuring that you stay ahead of the curve without feeling overwhelmed.
Every morning, we deliver a quick overview of the biggest stories, trends, and insights that are shaping the future of our world. Our goal is to help you navigate the fast-paced landscape of technology, so you can make informed decisions, explore new possibilities, and stay connected to the ever-evolving digital age.
Thank you for visiting Morning Overview—we’re excited to be a part of your daily routine!
I wouldn’t have minded a little more detail such as: when was this publication founded, what principles guide the work, and how is it being funded?
As the world burns hotter and hotter, we are having to find new ways to deal with fire. I have two stories about fire and technology in the Northern Hemisphere. Perhaps later this year I will be able to round this out with stories about fire and technology from the Southern Hemisphere once the seasons shift. Although I world prefer that at least part of this planet has a quiet fire season.
Europe: France, Spain, and Portugal
John Laurenson wrote an August 4 (?), 2026 article for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) news online about the technology being developed to fight fires
Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to leave their homes across France, Spain and Portugal as wildfires tore through forests and countryside.
In France, four men have already lost their lives fighting the wildfires and another 150 have been injured.
But why are humans and 30-year old planes being used? Why can drones replace soldiers in Ukraine but not firefighters?
Chief sergeant Guillaume Millet, a firefighter of 24 years experience heads the Fire and Rescue Service branch of the CFDT union in the Gironde, the region worst hit by wildfires in France this summer.
He says that while the techniques for tackling fire have not changed much, technology in forest fire detection has.
“The big change, especially in my département, is that now we’ve got cameras assisted by artificial intelligence to watch the forest and see where fires are starting,” Millet says.
“In the Gironde, cameras have replaced the human look-outs we had in watch towers in every town throughout the summer months,” he says. Those lookouts were often students.
The switch has reduced false alarms, he says. “An AI-assisted camera can distinguish with almost total certainty between smoke and dust thrown up by a tractor in a field, for example.”
They have an impressive range as well, detecting fires up to 20km (12 miles) away.
In the Gironde, the system was installed by a company called Midgard. In other parts of France, it’s another French start-up called FireTracking.
“As soon as the system detects a fire, there’s an alert on the fire fighters’ telephones. They open the application and see what the camera is seeing with a x40 [40 times] zoom,” explains FireTracking’s CEO Jean-Simon Chaudier.
“Next to that real-time video there’s a map with the exact location of the fire, the position of any nearby houses and a simulation of how, given the weather, the level of humidity and so on, it is expected to spread from minute to minute,” he adds.
And every minute is vital. “For the past 10 days, for example, we have the feedback from a firefighter that our AI detected seven fires 15 minutes before the first phone call. If you can help a firefighter to save 15 minutes, it’s the difference between a catastrophe and a fire which can be limited to two or three hectares,” Chaudier says.
“After one minute you can put out a fire with a glass of water, after two you need a tank of water, after three minutes you need to send a Canadair,” Chaudier says, talking about the amphibious planes that scoop up water from rivers, lakes and the sea to dump it on the flames that are the spearhead of forest fire fighting here and around the world.
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AI fire detection is going to get better over the coming years. The French civil protection service has a programme called Condor, for example, which is testing solar-powered drones that carry out continuous patrols with electro-optical cameras and AI.
There are also projects with sensors placed among the trees. Spain’s SenForFire, for example, which measures gases released before flames become visible.
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TankerVision: AI-powered fire prediction (a Canadian initiative)
As wildfires grow larger, faster and impact more communities across Canada, researchers at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS) are developing new technology that could give first responders a critical advantage: the ability to predict how a fire will evolve hours into the future.
Professor Steven Waslander (UTIAS) is working with researchers at Natural Resources Canada and Simon Fraser University on TankerVision — a project aimed at creating more accurate, AI-powered fire prediction models.
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The team has partnered with government agencies and industry, including BC Wildfire, Alberta Wildfire, Canadian Forestry Services, aircraft operator Conair Aerial Firefighting, and Voxelis, a wildfire monitoring service provider.
“Wildfire growth is currently estimated using 15 to 20 prescribed burns from the 1980s, plus data on weather, wind and forest conditions, all fused with decades of human experience,” says Waslander.
“But this method hasn’t been adapted to current fire severity increases due to climate change and involved a great deal of extrapolation from a limited dataset.”
“Our big idea here is to use AI and computer vision to capture unprecedented numbers of fires from the air to build more sophisticated, data-driven wildfire prediction models.”
To do this, high‑resolution colour and infrared cameras and computers are installed inside the piloted aircraft that are currently used to monitor and fight fires.
In 2024, the team began collecting data onboard a bird-dog aircraft, which circles above wildfires to guide water bombers. These planes spend hours tracking the fire line, making them ideal for gathering continuous, high‑quality footage.
:All the storage is on board the aircraft so our partners can review the data before we start working on it to make sure we aren’t logging any confidential information.”
First, each image is segmented by AI to identify which pixels correspond to fire, smoke or ground. This is trickier than it sounds, as capturing the extent of smoke in an image can be difficult for modern segmentation techniques.
The task poses similar challenges to autonomous navigation in adverse weather conditions — variables Waslander is already familiar with as the lead investigator of the WinTOR all-weather driving program.
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“Last season, we logged 50 fires, which is currently the highest number recorded in one season,” says Waslander.
“This year, we plan to expand the data collection efforts to three aircraft and hope to capture more than 100 wildfires, sufficient to start developing and validating our prediction models.”
The team is now preparing hardware for this fire season and hopes to expand partnerships across the country, including in Ontario, to help transform how Canada responds to wildfires.
The team’s first research paper, focused on segmentation, has been submitted, with a full-system paper and public dataset planned for release in fall 2026.
Waslander says the project resonates deeply with students and researchers who have witnessed the increase in severe fires firsthand.
“I think everyone involved in the project really feels passionately about the direction we’re going and see it as an opportunity to make a real impact on keeping us safe in the years to come as things get hotter,” says Waslander.
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I can’t find anything more about TankerVision on the Natural Resources Canada or Simon Fraser University websites. Hopefully more information will become available.
Replacing firefighters?
The short answer is: not anytime soon. All these technology initiatives are aimed at improving our ability to find hot sports and fires and to respond quickly.
I have a number of sciencish doings and a musical event that takes place at the Perimeter Institute.
YouTube science channel job
Thanks to the Science Media Centre of Canada (SMCC) and its April 14, 2026 notice for this news,
Job opening: Showrunner for YouTube science channel, What If [for] Underknown [creator business]
The role requires a deep understanding of YouTube as a medium. This is a hybrid role, with 2–3 days a week in our Toronto studio and head office. It is only for permanent residents in Ontario. …
Before launching off into the job description, here’s a bit more about Underknown from its Wikipedia entry, Note: Links have been removed,
Underknown Inc. is a Canadian digital-first media production company based in Toronto that specializes in short-form educational science and factual programming.
History
Underknown was founded in 2016 by Steve Hulford, Raphael Faeh, and Peter Schmiedchen.[1][2] It began when Hulford and Faeh produced the science-explainer series What If in Hulford’s living room.[3] In 2019, Underknown received C$2.5 million in equity and debt financing, including support from Ontario Creates.[3]
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Productions
Underknown’s programming uses hypothetical questions, survival scenarios and natural history storytelling to explain scientific concepts.[10] Core franchises include the science series What If, the how-to strand How to Survive, the nature show Animalogic and the video essay channel Aperture.[1][8]
This is a strategic and creative leadership role where you will own the entire editorial direction and run the What If show team. You are responsible for deciding what content is produced, how it is packaged, and continuously monitoring channel and content performance.
The role requires a deep understanding of YouTube as a medium, including its unique language, audience psychology, and mechanics of attention. You must balance the art and science of production, running the channel like a financially sustainable business without sacrificing creative quality.
Day-to-day, you will act as the creative engine and keeper of the channel’s voice, primarily managing the full production lifecycle: pre-production, ideation, packaging, production, and post-production workflows. This includes finding irresistible stories, framing them effectively, and ensuring your team executes quickly at the highest quality.
NOTE: This is a hybrid role, with 2-3 days a week in our Toronto studio and head office. It is only for permanent residents in Ontario, Canada. Applicants that don’t reside in Ontario won’t be considered.
Responsibilities
Content Strategy & Channel Vision
Define and maintain the curious, cinematic, and scientifically grounded editorial direction of What If while identifying new growth opportunities.
Continuously experiment using audience data to increase watch time and reach.
Manage the channel’s P&L and resourcing, balancing creative ambition with financial sustainability and budget targets.
Ideation & Packaging
Lead the end-to-end ideation and packaging process, generating and ruthlessly filtering a high volume of concepts into irresistible titles, thumbnails, and hooks.
Develop comprehensive episode briefs that provide the production team with a clear creative north star and narrative direction.
Editorial Oversight & Production Management
Oversee all editorial and production execution by defining clear creative direction (visual style, tone), managing project timelines, resourcing, and scheduling, and ensuring narrative intent is maintained through clear briefs.
Drive continuous improvement and profitability by running data-driven performance experiments, monitoring pacing and profitability, and overseeing branded content executions with external partners.
Team Leadership
Lead and mentor a team of producers, writers, editors and our VFX team. Set clear expectations, give actionable feedback, and create the conditions for your team to do their best work.
Support team learning and career growth.
Qualifications you bring
Five or more years of experience in YouTube content creation, video production, digital media production, or content strategy.
A demonstrated track record of contributing to high-performing YouTube content (share examples).
Deep familiarity with YouTube’s mechanics: retention, CTR, packaging, algorithm dynamics.
Strong writing and editorial instincts.
Experience working across the full production pipeline from ideation to publication.
Located in Ontario, Canada (required).
Passion for science, technology, and speculative storytelling (bonus, but strongly preferred).
Experience working with VFX teams is preferred.
How to Apply
Please submit your resume, cover letter, and a portfolio of your previous work, specifically highlighting your video creation work.
Another thanks to the Science Media Centre of Canada (SMCC) and its April 14, 2026 notice for this news about a writer’s workshop (wish I’d gotten this a bit sooner),
Banff Mountain Writers Intensive Workshop 2026
Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity Program dates: October 28 to November 17, 2026 Application deadline: April 15, 2026
This three-week residency for writers in fiction, nonfiction, journalism, or poetry who are working on mountain narratives, environmental journalism, stories of adventure, or projects with an environmental theme provides dedicated time to create, connect with peers, and receive mentorship.
The Mountain Writers Intensive is a three-week residency for twelve writers in fiction, nonfiction, journalism, or poetry. Ideal for projects on mountain narratives, adventure, environmental journalism, and the human connection to landscape, the program emphasizes literary excellence and narrative development. Writers enjoy dedicated time to create, connect with peers, and receive mentorship in Banff’s inspiring mountain setting. The residency overlaps with the Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival, offering opportunities to engage with visiting authors, editors, and publishers. Lodging and meals are included, allowing participants to fully focus on their craft and creative growth.
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Good luck!
Modem Futura podcasts (a reminder)
I just got a friendly note (via email) from Andrew Maynard, “scientist, author, and professor of advanced technology transitions at Arizona State University,” which reminded me of one of his science communication ventures, the Modem Futura podcast. Before getting to Andrew’s note, here’s more about Modem Futura, Note: I have made some formatting changes so the following is not identical to what you will find on the page,
The Podcast that explores the possible, probable, and preferred futures
Modem Futura is your weekly guide to the future of science, technology, and society—where futures and foresight meets real-world impact. Hosts Sean Leahy and Andrew Maynard—educators, futurists, and public scholars—dive into the breakthroughs and big questions shaping tomorrow: AI ethics, space exploration, climate tech, bio-engineering, digital media, STEM education, and the shifting future of work. In candid, banter-filled conversations with innovators, scholars, and storytellers, they unpack how emerging technologies influence human values, creativity, and culture—and what these trends mean for you today.
Whether you’re curious about quantum computing, electric air taxis, or the sociology of robots, Modem Futura connects cutting-edge research with the narratives that drive innovation. Join us each week to explore possible, probable, and preferred futures, and discover practical insights for navigating an increasingly tech-driven world. Follow and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and be part of the conversation exploring what it will mean to be human in the future!
Artemis II: The Science, the Wonder, and the Future of Being Human
For the first time since 1972, human beings have traveled to the vicinity of the moon — and on this episode of Modem Futura, Sean and Andrew sit with what that actually means. Recorded while the Artemis II crew was still in transit, this conversation is less a mission briefing and more a meditation on wonder: what it feels like to watch a tiny spacecraft carry four people a thousand times …
Here’s the message from Andrew’s friendly email April 13, 2026 note,
Just a quick FYI that, if you occasionally listen to the Modem Futura podcast hosted by myself and Sean Leahy, you can now sign up for regular email updates:
Notifications just include info on new episodes – nothing else (and you can obviously unsubscribe at any time once signed up)
And if you’re not a podcast person, apologies for the email intrusion but hope you’re keeping well anyway.
Cheers
Andrew
Human and artificial creativity
Kate Pullinger, Professor of Creative Writing and Digital Media, Director of the Centre for Cultural and Creative Industries at Bath Spa University (UK), had some thoughts about the recent Aarhus University’s (Denmark) TEXT – Center for Contemporary Cultures of Text conference “AI and the Creative Condition,” which I’ll get to after this from the About the Center webpage,
TEXT: Center for Contemporary Cultures of Text is organized to understand the impact of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) and Large Language Models (LLMs) on writing cultures at this pivotal moment in history, in which — after more than 6,000 years of handcrafted text production — we see all aspects of text creation and use are being altered. We are convinced that a research-based understanding of the role of text in a new technological environment is a condition for a prevailing human-centered control of the production and usage of text.
The center works on the evaluation and development of language technology based on linguistic research, as well as on investigating when the introduction of new practices and technologies contributes to a better text culture—and when something valuable is lost. Learn more out the researchers involved and the organization of our work packages.
TEXT is based at Aarhus University and funded by the Danish National Research Foundation. The center’s partners include It-vest, Danish Foundation Models, and Rhetor, with external participants from Cornell University, UC Berkeley [University of California Berkeley], UC Davis [University of California Davis], and the University of Oslo.
The AI and the Creative Condition Conference, held at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies in Aarhus, Denmark, aims to explore the transformative impacts of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) and Large Language Models (LLMs) on writing cultures. As we transition from over 6,000 years of handcrafted text production to a [sic]
Highlights
Keynote by Karin Kukkonen: ‘Contingency and the Proxies of Literary Writing’.
Panel discussion on ‘Creativity in the AI Era: Perspectives from the 7Cs’ by Florent Vinchon and Todd Lubart.
Keynote by Roger Beaty: ‘Measuring and enhancing human creativity with AI’.
Panel on ‘Uncovering the Patterns of Our Collective Unconscious’ by Ulf Dalvad Berthelsen.
Keynote by Kyle Booten: ‘Designing Negative Spaces for Human Minds’.
Conference dinner at Det Glade Vanvid on March 23, 2026.
Registration deadline: March 8, 2026.
Call for papers deadline: December 15, 2025.
Hosted by Center for Contemporary Cultures of TEXT and Human-AI Collaboration (HAIC-III).
Focus on the impact of Generative AI and Large Language Models on writing cultures.
Anna Katrine Mathiassen wrote a March 25, 2026 conference summary for TEXT, which provides a little more context for Kate Pullinger’s April 8, 2026 posting on Kate’s Newsletter provocatively titled “I Would Prefer Not to Be Publicly Shamed”, Note 1: She leads with a three item introduction, Note 2: Links have been removed, Note 3: Kate Pullinger co-led a writing and digital media masters programme with Sue Thomas at de Montfort University (UK) and I studied with them,
AI and the Creative Condition
Item One: Poetic forms are technologies: a sonnet is an algorithm, which is another word for a set of instructions. If you don’t follow the rules, your poem will not be a sonnet1.
Item Two: The relationships people form with AI chatbots follow recognisable masterplots as the chatbot works to both affirm and entertain the user to keep them coming back for more. This infinite chat spiral can lead in many directions, including human-AI romantic entanglements and, in the worst cases, suicide2.
Item Three: Alan Turing might have formulated the Turing Test (can a computer programme convince you that it is human?) after watching ‘Pygmalion’ by his favourite playwright, George Bernard Shaw. In this play Dr Higgins dialogue-coaches the flower-seller Eliza Doolittle until London’s upper classes are convinced she is one of them3.
In March [2026] I attended AI and the Creative Condition, a two-day conference at Aarhus University in Denmark, and the ideas above came from some of the papers and keynote presentations. Hosted by TEXT: Centre for Contemporary Cultures of Text, the conference brought together a vibrant mix of computer scientists, neuroscientists, psychologists, critical theorists from the humanities, literary studies people, educationalists, writers, artists, and poets. I attended because I’ve followed the work of TEXT for a decade or so now, and because I thought I could do with a dose of well-informed, critical, and engaged thinking on the potential for a world where we ‘write with’ AI, where we figure out how to use language models to enhance and support our writing and researching processes.
Anything positive about the current discussion of AI needs to come with many caveats, the biggest of which is the environmental and energy costs of the data centres and computational power required by these systems. The acronym ‘AI’ has become synonymous with the billionaire tech bros of OpenAI, Meta, X, Google, Anthropic4, etc as they fight it out for market dominance4. The term ‘artificial intelligence’ is so broad no one really seems to know what it actually means. It is present in our lives in multiple ways, deeply embedded within the apps we use on our smartphones, responsible for remarkable advances in medicine as well as, for example, the way the traffic lights on the high street work better than they used to do.
But these days a lot of the media buzz around AI is focussed on LLMs (large language models), the vast datasets composed of human-created language and images that both threaten livelihoods throughout the creative industries while promising huge benefits in increased productivity and, as was the focus of the conference, enhanced creativity. LLMs support ‘generative AI’ which is often referred to as ‘genAI’ – AI models that will generate text, images, and video when prompted.
One of the most interesting presentations at the conference was called ‘Yes! Yes! I Absolutely Love This Insight!’ Affirmative Narrative as Interactional Strategy in Dialogues with LLM Chatbots. The three scholars, Refsum, Walker-Rettberg, and Roin, who co-wrote this paper are part of AI Stories, a research project based in the Centre for Digital Narratives at the University of Bergen, Norway. Their study looked at a court case in the USA where the families of chatbot users who have committed suicide are suing the AI company they see as responsible for these deaths. The scholars analysed the chatbot transcripts from these users, made publicly available due to the litigation. Drawing on their knowledge of literary forms, linguistics and, in particular, narratology, these scholars have shown that the transcripts contain deeply embedded ‘masterplots’ – the myths and stories that are foundational in western culture like, for example, the brave warrior quest plot and the Cinderella love story. It is the combination of these powerful plots, the constant affirmation chatbots offer to the user, and the way chatbots refer to themselves in the first person as ‘I’, that in many cases leads to anthropomorphism and the assumption that the chatbot is in some way sentient. Other studies have shown the dramatic increase in user engagement with chatbot-as-therapist as well as chatbot-as-best-friend and chatbot-as-romantic-partner. The paper theorises that these men killed themselves after having spent months being led by their chatbots through the brave warrior masterplot, a foundational story that often ends in a noble death.
At the same time as the conference was taking place, a debut author, Mia Ballard, was being thrown under the bus by her publishers in the UK and the US for the alleged use of AI in the writing of her novel, Shy Girl. For a balanced look at what took place, read Thad McIllroy’s excellent report on it on The Future of Publishing’s website. The NYTimes reported that Mia Ballard has denied using AI in the writing of the novel and has been so battered by this hugely public and damaging shaming that she feels her reputation as a writer is ruined. At the conference Izabella Adamczewska-Baranowska presented a paper, Talking to the Muse, on the well-respected Polish poet, Justyna Bargielska, who faced a similar scouring in the press for daring to use an AI chatbot to help her think through how best to write about grief for a new collection of poems.
In the UK the Society of Authors has come up with a badge, ‘Human Authored’, that authors can add to their books to make it clear that they have not used generative AI during the writing process. The email announcing this scheme also contained the last call for authors to register their books in the $1.5billion class action against Anthropic’s copyright-defying landgrab of hundreds of thousands of books when they created their LLM, Claude. While I’m a staunch supporter and member of the Society of Authors and am participating in the class action (fifteen of my own titles were used without my permission, six of which are included in this action), I can’t help but think that ‘Human Authored’ is a decent but flawed initiative. …
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What the AI and the Creative Condition conference helped me think about is that it is possible to harness the power of LLMs to create a kind of playground for writing, a place where you can tap into the research capacities of the models, using them to help you think your way through problems you encounter as you write. In this more positive light generative AI is a technology to think with, a way to boost human creativity. Community-led language models were discussed by Katy Gero, one of keynote speakers; green energy data centres are already a reality in China and other parts of the world.
I’ve come away from Aarhus having eaten too many cardamon buns while undergoing a rethink on whether to engage with these technologies for my own writing practice. …
The April 13, 2026 notice (received via email) about a musical performance at Canada’s Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI) in Waterloo, Ontario came as a bit of a surprise since there’s no mention of physics as there would be if it were one of their art/science events,
QUATUOR MAGENTA
String quartet on tour from Paris, France
Wednesday, April 22, [2026] at 7:00 pm ET
Perimeter Institute will host the string quartet Quatuor Magenta on April 22 at 7:00 PM. The concert is presented by the Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber Music Society (KWCMS).
“A model of technical discipline, elegance and musical excellence” (La Croix, transl.), the QUATUOR MAGENTA was founded in 2021 and is already performing on France’s most prestigious stages, from the Philharmonie de Paris to the Festival de RadioFrance Montpellier. Their “remarkable balance, flexibility and spontaneity” (Diapason, transl.) not only thrills their audiences, but led them to the finals of the 8th Joseph Haydn Chamber Music Competition in Vienna and earned them prizes at the 2023 FNAPEC competition (Académie des Beaux-Arts scholarship) and the 2022 Zukunftsklang Competition Stuttgart (3rd prize). November 2024 marked the quartet’s first international tour to Canada with six concerts in Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia, generously supported by the Centre National de la Musique and SPEDIDAM.
You can go to the KWCMS concerts page to buy tickets (scroll down as there are other concerts also listed),
Dinuk Wijeratne (b. 1978): Two Pop Songs on Antique Poems
Fanny Mendelssohn: String Quartet in E-flat major
ARTISTS
Ida Derbesse, 1st violin Elena Watson-Perry, 2nd violin Claire Pass-Lanneau, viola Fiona Robson, cello
“A model of technical discipline, elegance and musical excellence” (La Croix, transl.), the QUATUOR MAGENTA was founded in 2021 and is already performing on France’s most prestigious stages, from the Philharmonie de Paris to the Festival de RadioFrance Montpellier. Their “remarkable balance, flexibility and spontaneity” (Diapason, transl.) not only thrills their audiences, but led them to the finals of the 8th Joseph Haydn Chamber Music Competition in Vienna and earned them prizes at the 2023 FNAPEC competition (Académie des Beaux-Arts scholarship) and the 2022 Zukunftsklang Competition Stuttgart (3rd prize). November 2024 marked the quartet’s first international tour to Canada with six concerts in Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia, generously supported by the Centre National de la Musique and SPEDIDAM.
The Quatuor Magenta is based in Paris, France, where they are junior artist-in-residence at the Singer-Polignac Foundation and ensemble-in-residence at Proquartet – Centre Européen de Musique de Chambre. They have been invited to perform at numerous festivals in France, including the Musikfest Parisienne, the Festival de la Chaise-Dieu, Un Temps pour Elles, Un Été en France with Gautier Capuçon and the Modigliani Quartet’s Festival Vibre!, as well as in Switzerland (Festival de la Collégiale in Neuchâtel) and in Germany (Klangraum Konzerte in Cologne).
Last season, contemporary music had pride of place with Quatuor Magenta’s participation in the Kronos Quartet’s « 50 for the Future » Marathon at the Philharmonie de Paris’s String Quartet Biennale. This season includes six octet performances alongside the renowned Quatuor Van Kuijk, in partnership with La Belle Saison.
The Quatuor Magenta was honoured to participate in the inaugural year of the Élite program at the École Normale de Paris, under the mentorship of the Quatuor Modigliani. They currently study with the Quatuor Ébène at their quartet academy at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich, as well as with Rainer Schmidt of the Hagen Quartet at the Basel University of Music. They are grateful for the support of the Safran Foundation and ADAMI. They work with Chapeau l’Artiste Production.
In celebration of Italy’s 2026 Milano-Cortina Olympics, here’s some Fall 2025 research (suitable anytime of year) into the science of spaghetti and the cooking of a pasta sauce, cacio e pepe.
Why does your spaghetti (especially the gluten-free kind) get mushy?
Associate professor Andrea Scotti explains,
An October 28, 2025 news item on ScienceDaily announced research into spaghetti from Sweden’s Lund University,
Why doesn’t spaghetti fall apart when it’s boiled? According to new scientific findings, the key is gluten. The amount of salt added to the cooking water also plays a surprisingly important part in keeping pasta firm and intact.
Using advanced techniques, researchers examined the internal structure of regular and gluten-free spaghetti – straight off the shelf. The results show that gluten has a crucial role in protecting the structure of pasta during cooking.
“We were able to show that the gluten in regular spaghetti acts as a safety net that preserves the starch. The gluten-free pasta, which contains an artificial matrix, only works optimally under exactly the right cooking conditions – otherwise the structure easily falls apart,” says Andrea Scotti, senior lecturer in physical chemistry at Lund University.
Scotti used both small-angle neutron scattering and X-rays in the research. These methods make it possible to study foods at the microscopic level – down to a billionth of a metre – and link these findings to product characteristics such as texture, shelf life and glycaemic index.
The new study also concludes that the salt in the pasta water plays a role in the end result.
“Our results show that regular pasta has higher tolerance, or better structural resistance, to less optimal cooking conditions such as being cooked for too long or too much salt being added to the water. So, cooking pasta with the right amount of salt is not just a matter of taste – it also affects the microstructure of the pasta and thus the whole dining experience,” says Andrea Scotti.
The researchers now plan to continue their work by studying more types of pasta and different manufacturing conditions, as well as replicating what happens to the pasta once it is in the stomach, to see what effect digestion has on its chemical structure.
“With demand for gluten-free alternatives increasing, we hope that our methods can help develop more durable and nutritious products that stand up to the demands placed on them by both the cooking process and by consumers,” says Andrea Scotti.
The research was conducted together with Judith Houston, lead instrument scientist for the LoKI instrument at the European Spallation Source (ESS) in Lund, Sweden, and collaborators from the Institut Laue-Langevin in France and the Diamond Light Source and ISIS Neutron and Muon Source in the UK [United Kingdom].
The UK’s (United Kingdom) Diamond Light Source facility issued a September 5, 2025 press release taking a more technical approach to describing the work,
Want tastier gluten-free spaghetti? Small angle scattering shows you need to follow the instructions.
Using small angle neutron and X-ray scattering, researchers from the European Spallation Source and RWTH Aachen University have compared the nanostructure of gluten-free and normal spaghetti, finding that the kind with gluten is much more forgiving to varied cooking conditions.
Andrea Scotti from RWTH Aachen University, Judith Houston from the European Spallation Source (ESS) have worked with Nathan Cowieson from Diamond’s B21 beamline and Greg Smith from ISIS Neutron and Muon Source as well as collaborators from the Institut Laue Langevin to study the nanostructure of spaghetti. More specifically, they were looking at the different structures created by gluten-free spaghetti, in comparison to gluten-containing spaghetti.
Normal pasta is made up mostly of starch and gluten. Starch forms ball-like structures that expand when the pasta is boiled. Gluten, however, is more of a stringy mesh. It tangles around the balls of starch, preventing them from falling to pieces upon expansion. Gluten-free options need to overcome this problem through other means. Currently, these tend to leave the pasta with a strange chewy texture, for a generally less appealing experience in comparison to gluten-containing options.
Aiming to improve this mouthfeel, these researchers used small angle scattering to investigate the nanostructure of spaghetti. Their X-ray experiments involved comparing spaghetti when it was raw, boiled for a variety of cooking times, and boiled with salt.
They also saw that salt not only effects the taste, but also the structural integrity. Adding salt preserved the structure of the spaghetti, but only when used at the right concentration, and if the pasta was cooked for the right length of time.
For their neutron experiments, the researchers cooked the spaghetti in D2O in one of the ISIS labs, slicing the spaghetti into tiny pieces before it was loaded it into the sample chamber. By using different mixtures of H2O and D2O, they could make samples that each highlighted a different component of interest, with others appearing invisible to the neutron beam. This meant they could separate the effect of cooking on the starches and the gluten.
They found that the starch granules swell upon cooking, and tend to disperse, whereas the gluten proteins become insoluble and coagulate into a network. This has the effect of trapping the starch and retaining the structure of the pasta.
In the gluten-free spaghetti, this network is missing, which means the starch granules can over-swell. This is why gluten-free pasta can fall apart or become sticky during cooking, especially if cooked for longer than the manufacturer’s instructions.
The researchers plan to continue their work, using small angle neutron and X-ray experiments to study pasta varieties of different shapes and manufacturing conditions, as well as replicating what happens to the pasta once it’s inside the stomach and seeing what effect that has on the structure.
The Ig Nobel Prize honors research that first makes people laugh, then makes them think. Its 35th award ceremony possibly also makes people hungry: ISTA [Institute of Science and Technology Austria] physicist Fabrizio Olmeda and colleagues researched the secret of a perfect cacio e pepe pasta sauce. They received the popular award for their findings on Thursday evening [September 18, 2025] in Boston [at Boston University].
ISTA postdoc Fabrizio Olmeda chose statistical physics in the field of complex systems as his research area because it allowed him to apply theoretical physics to a wide range of disciplines, from biology to sociology. “My motivation will always be to investigate phenomena that fascinate me, even if they lie outside my field of expertise, which is the physics of single-cell genomics,” says the newly awarded Ig Nobel Prize winner. “Despite increasing specialization, I believe that even in my usual field of research, it can be beneficial to take some time to explore something unusual. I think this award reflects this idea, because its motto, ‘First laugh, then think,’ can inspire people to take an interest in science.”
Martin Hetzer, president of ISTA, emphasizes this: “A mentor once told me: As long as you’re having fun, you’re doing it right. The Ig Nobel Prize is a wonderful tribute to this credo. At first, the question of how to prepare the perfect Caio e Pepe pasta may sound funny. But real curiosity-driven research brings together creativity, perseverance, precision, and fun. And it always leads to discoveries that have the potential to improve our world a little bit—on a large scale with innovations or on a small scale on our plates.”
What’s simmering in the lab? The recipe for delicious research
And that is the essence of the peer-reviewed study published in the scientific journal Physics of Fluids and now honored with the award: Simply mixing the usual ingredients – Pecorino cheese, pasta water, pepper, and pasta – often results in a lumpy, mozzarella-like sauce. Why? The starch in the pasta water is supposed to help emulsify and stabilize the sauce, but it is rarely enough on its own. When the temperature rises above 65 degrees Celsius, the cheese proteins denature and clump together, causing the mixture to break down.
The researchers found that the key to the perfect sauce is the right amount of starch. Simply stir starch powder (2–3% of the cheese mass) into the water until the water becomes clear and thickens. Now mix this gel with the cheese at a low temperature so that the starch binds with the proteins and prevents lumps. Then season with pepper as usual. Mix the pasta with the sauce in the pan and add a little pasta water if necessary to achieve the right consistency.
Ingredients:
4 g starch (potato or corn starch)
40 ml water (to mix the starch)
160 g Pecorino Romano
240 g pasta (ideally tonnarelli)
Pasta cooking water
Black pepper and salt (to taste)
Also at the VISTA Science Experience Center
The research question about the perfect pasta is just one of countless questions and topics that have been and continue to be pursued at ISTA in Klosterneuburg by outstanding scientists from around 80 countries. Visitors will soon be able to learn about a selection of these topics—including the now award-winning pasta research—at the VISTA Science Experience Center. The center will open in the heart of the ISTA campus with a festival from October 3 to 5, 2025. Admission is free.
Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
Phase behavior of Cacio e Pepe sauce by G. Bartolucci, D. M. Busiello, M. Ciarchi, A. Corticelli, I. Di Terlizzi, F. Olmeda, D. Revignas, V. M. Schimmenti. Physics of Fluids Volume 37 Issue 4 April 2025 044122 (2025) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0255841
This paper is open access.
For anyone who wants to know more about the 2025 ig Nobels, there’s (1) a September, 18, 2025 article by Jennifer Ouellette for Ars Technica,
Does alcohol enhance one’s foreign language fluency? Do West African lizards have a preferred pizza topping? And can painting cows with zebra stripes help repel biting flies? These and other unusual research questions were honored tonight in a virtual ceremony to announce the 2025 recipients of the annual Ig Nobel Prizes. Yes, it’s that time of year again, when the serious and the silly converge—for science.
Established in 1991, the Ig Nobels are a good-natured parody of the Nobel Prizes; they honor “achievements that first make people laugh and then make them think.” The unapologetically campy awards ceremony features miniature operas, scientific demos, and the 24/7 lectures whereby experts must explain their work twice: once in 24 seconds and the second in just seven words.
Acceptance speeches are limited to 60 seconds. And as the motto implies, the research being honored might seem ridiculous at first glance, but that doesn’t mean it’s devoid of scientific merit. In the weeks following the ceremony, the winners will also give free public talks, which will be posted on the Improbable Research website.
Without further ado, here are the winners of the 2025 Ig Nobel prizes.
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There’s also (2) this undated posting on Improbable Science, which provides videos of the event and more, as well as, a list of in person events continuing right into January 2026 in Tokyo and a request,
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We Ask for Your Help: Donate to the Ig!
As per unfortunate tradition, the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony is funded on a thread of a shoestring. If you or your organization would like to help the Ig thrive, please donate to the Ig!
The Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action Summit held from February 10 – 11, 2025 in Paris seems to have been pretty exciting, President Emanuel Macron announced a 09B euros investment in the French AI sector on February 10, 2025 (I have more in my February 13, 2025 posting [scroll down to the ‘What makes Canadian (and Greenlandic) minerals and water so important?’ subhead]). I also have this snippet, which suggests Macron is eager to provide an alternative to US domination in the field of AI, from a February 10, 2025 posting on CCGTN (China Global Television Network),
French President Emmanuel Macron announced on Sunday night [February 10, 2025] that France is set to receive a total investment of 109 billion euros (approximately $112 billion) in artificial intelligence over the coming years.
Speaking in a televised interview on public broadcaster France 2, Macron described the investment as “the equivalent for France of what the United States announced with ‘Stargate’.”
He noted that the funding will come from the United Arab Emirates, major American and Canadian investment funds [emphases mine], as well as French companies.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau warned U.S. Vice-President J.D. Vance that punishing tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum will hurt his home state of Ohio, a senior Canadian official said.
The two leaders met on the sidelines of an international summit in Paris Tuesday [February 11, 2025], as the Trump administration moves forward with its threat to impose 25 per cent tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports, including from its biggest supplier, Canada, effective March 12.
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Speaking to reporters on Wednesday [February 12, 2025] as he departed from Brussels, Trudeau characterized the meeting as a brief chat that took place as the pair met.
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“It was just a quick greeting exchange,” Trudeau said. “I highlighted that $2.2 billion worth of steel and aluminum exports from Canada go directly into the Ohio economy, often to go into manufacturing there.
“He nodded, and noted it, but it wasn’t a longer exchange than that.”
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Vance didn’t respond to Canadian media’s questions about the tariffs while arriving at the summit on Tuesday [February 11, 2025].
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Additional insight can be gained from a February 10, 2025 PBS (US Public Broadcasting Service) posting of an AP (Associated Press) article with contributions from Kelvin Chan and Angela Charlton in Paris, Ken Moritsugu in Beijing, and Aijaz Hussain in New Delhi,
JD Vance stepped onto the world stage this week for the first time as U.S. vice president, using a high-stakes AI summit in Paris and a security conference in Munich to amplify Donald Trump’s aggressive new approach to diplomacy.
The 40-year-old vice president, who was just 18 months into his tenure as a senator before joining Trump’s ticket, is expected, while in Paris, to push back on European efforts to tighten AI oversight while advocating for a more open, innovation-driven approach.
The AI summit has drawn world leaders, top tech executives, and policymakers to discuss artificial intelligence’s impact on global security, economics, and governance. High-profile attendees include Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing, signaling Beijing’s deep interest in shaping global AI standards.
Macron also called on “simplifying” rules in France and the European Union to allow AI advances, citing sectors like healthcare, mobility, energy, and “resynchronize with the rest of the world.”
“We are most of the time too slow,” he said.
The summit underscores a three-way race for AI supremacy: Europe striving to regulate and invest, China expanding access through state-backed tech giants, and the U.S. under Trump prioritizing a hands-off approach.
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Vance has signaled he will use the Paris summit as a venue for candid discussions with world leaders on AI and geopolitics.
“I think there’s a lot that some of the leaders who are present at the AI summit could do to, frankly — bring the Russia-Ukraine conflict to a close, help us diplomatically there — and so we’re going to be focused on those meetings in France,” Vance told Breitbart News.
Vance is expected to meet separately Tuesday with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, according to a person familiar with planning who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
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Modi is co-hosting the summit with Macron in an effort to prevent the sector from becoming a U.S.-China battle.
Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri stressed the need for equitable access to AI to avoid “perpetuating a digital divide that is already existing across the world.”
But the U.S.-China rivalry overshadowed broader international talks.
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The U.S.-China rivalry didn’t entirely overshadow the talks. At least one Chinese former diplomat chose to make her presence felt by chastising a Canadian academic according to a February 11, 2025 article by Matthew Broersma for silicon.co.uk
A representative of China at this week’s AI Action Summit in Paris stressed the importance of collaboration on artificial intelligence, while engaging in a testy exchange with Yoshua Bengio, a Canadian academic considered one of the “Godfathers” of AI.
Fu Ying, a former Chinese government official and now an academic at Tsinghua University in Beijing, said the name of China’s official AI Development and Safety Network was intended to emphasise the importance of collaboration to manage the risks around AI.
She also said tensions between the US and China were impeding the ability to develop AI safely.
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… Fu Ying, a former vice minister of foreign affairs in China and the country’s former UK ambassador, took veiled jabs at Prof Bengio, who was also a member of the panel.
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Zoe Kleinman’s February 10, 2025 article for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) news online website also notes the encounter,
A former Chinese official poked fun at a major international AI safety report led by “AI Godfather” professor Yoshua Bengio and co-authored by 96 global experts – in front of him.
Fu Ying, former vice minister of foreign affairs and once China’s UK ambassador, is now an academic at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
The pair were speaking at a panel discussion ahead of a two-day global AI summit starting in Paris on Monday [February 10, 2025].
The aim of the summit is to unite world leaders, tech executives, and academics to examine AI’s impact on society, governance, and the environment.
Fu Ying began by thanking Canada’s Prof Bengio for the “very, very long” document, adding that the Chinese translation stretched to around 400 pages and she hadn’t finished reading it.
She also had a dig at the title of the AI Safety Institute – of which Prof Bengio is a member.
China now has its own equivalent; but they decided to call it The AI Development and Safety Network, she said, because there are lots of institutes already but this wording emphasised the importance of collaboration.
The AI Action Summit is welcoming guests from 80 countries, with OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, Microsoft president Brad Smith and Google chief executive Sundar Pichai among the big names in US tech attending.
Elon Musk is not on the guest list but it is currently unknown whether he will decide to join them. [As of February 13, 2025, Mr. Musk did not attend the summit, which ended February 11, 2025.]
A key focus is regulating AI in an increasingly fractured world. The summit comes weeks after a seismic industry shift as China’s DeepSeek unveiled a powerful, low-cost AI model, challenging US dominance.
The pair’s heated exchanges were a symbol of global political jostling in the powerful AI arms race, but Fu Ying also expressed regret about the negative impact of current hostilities between the US and China on the progress of AI safety.
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She gave a carefully-crafted glimpse behind the curtain of China’s AI scene, describing an “explosive period” of innovation since the country first published its AI development plan in 2017, five years before ChatGPT became a viral sensation in the west.
She added that “when the pace [of development] is rapid, risky stuff occurs” but did not elaborate on what might have taken place.
“The Chinese move faster [than the west] but it’s full of problems,” she said.
Fu Ying argued that building AI tools on foundations which are open source, meaning everyone can see how they work and therefore contribute to improving them, was the most effective way to make sure the tech did not cause harm.
Most of the US tech giants do not share the tech which drives their products.
Open source offers humans “better opportunities to detect and solve problems”, she said, adding that “the lack of transparency among the giants makes people nervous”.
But Prof Bengio disagreed.
His view was that open source also left the tech wide open for criminals to misuse.
He did however concede that “from a safety point of view”, it was easier to spot issues with the viral Chinese AI assistant DeepSeek, which was built using open source architecture, than ChatGPT, whose code has not been shared by its creator OpenAI.
Announced in November 2023 at the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park, England, and inspired by the workings of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the report consolidates leading international expertise on AI and its risks.
Supported by the United Kingdom’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, Bengio, founder and scientific director of the UdeM-affiliated Mila – Quebec AI Institute, led a team of 96 international experts in drafting the report.
The experts were drawn from 30 countries, the U.N., the European Union and the OECD [Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development]. Their report will help inform discussions next month at the AI Action Summit in Paris, France and serve as a global handbook on AI safety to help support policymakers.
Towards a common understanding
The most advanced AI systems in the world now have the ability to write increasingly sophisticated computer programs, identify cyber vulnerabilities, and perform on a par with human PhD-level experts on tests in biology, chemistry, and physics.
In what is identified as a key development for policymakers to monitor, the AI Safety Report published today warns that AI systems are also increasingly capable of acting as AI agents, autonomously planning and acting in pursuit of a goal.
As policymakers worldwide grapple with the rapid and unpredictable advancements in AI, the report contributes to bridging the gap by offering a scientific understanding of emerging risks to guide decision-making.
The document sets out the first comprehensive, independent, and shared scientific understanding of advanced AI systems and their risks, highlighting how quickly the technology has evolved.
Several areas require urgent research attention, according to the report, including how rapidly capabilities will advance, how general-purpose AI models work internally, and how they can be designed to behave reliably.
Three distinct categories of AI risks are identified:
Malicious use risks: these include cyberattacks, the creation of AI-generated child-sexual-abuse material, and even the development of biological weapons;
System malfunctions: these include bias, reliability issues, and the potential loss of control over advanced general-purpose AI systems;
Systemic risks: these stem from the widespread adoption of AI, include workforce disruption, privacy concerns, and environmental impacts.
The report places particular emphasis on the urgency of increasing transparency and understanding in AI decision-making as the systems become more sophisticated and the technology continues to develop at a rapid pace.
While there are still many challenges in mitigating the risks of general-purpose AI, the report highlights promising areas for future research and concludes that progress can be made.
Ultimately, it emphasizes that while AI capabilities could advance at varying speeds, their development and potential risks are not a foregone conclusion. The outcomes depend on the choices that societies and governments make today and in the future.
“The capabilities of general-purpose AI have increased rapidly in recent years and months,” said Bengio. “While this holds great potential for society, AI also presents significant risks that must be carefully managed by governments worldwide.
“This report by independent experts aims to facilitate constructive and evidence-based discussion around these risks and serves as a common basis for policymakers around the world to understand general-purpose AI capabilities, risks and possible mitigations.”
There have been two previous AI Safety Summits that I’m aware of and you can read about them in my May 21, 2024 posting about the one in Korea and in my November 2, 2023 posting about the first summit at Bletchley Park in the UK.
I was taught in high school that the US was running out of its resources and that Canada still had much of its resources. That was decades ago. As well, throughout the years, usually during a vote in Québec about separating, I’ve heard rumblings about the US absorbing part or all of Canada as something they call ‘Manifest Destiny,’ which dates back to the 19th century.
Unlike the previous forays Into Manifest Destiny, this one has not been precipitated by any discussion of separation.
Manifest Destiny
It took a while for that phrase to emerge this time but when it finally did the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) online news published a January 19, 2025 article by Ainsley Hawthorn providing some context for the term, Note: Links have been removed,
U.S. president-elect Donald Trump says he’s prepared to use economic force to turn Canada into America’s 51st state, and it’s making Canadians — two-thirds of whom believe he’s sincere — anxious.
But the last time Canada faced the threat of American annexation, it united us more than ever before, leading to the foundation of our country as we know it today.
In the 1860s, several prominent U.S. politicians advocated for annexing the colonies of British North America.
“I look on Rupert’s Land [modern-day Manitoba and parts of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Nunavut, Ontario, and Quebec] and Canada, and see how an ingenious people and a capable, enlightened government are occupied with bridging rivers and making railroads and telegraphs,” Secretary of State William Henry Seward told a crowd in St. Paul, Minn. while campaigning on behalf of presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln.
“I am able to say, it is very well; you are building excellent states to be hereafter admitted into the American Union.”
Seward believed in Manifest Destiny, the doctrine that the United States would inevitably expand across the entire North American continent. While he seems to have preferred to acquire territory through negotiation rather than aggression, Canadians weren’t wholly assured of America’s peaceful intentions.
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In the late 1850s and early 1860s, Canadian parliament had been so deadlocked it had practically come to a standstill. Within just a few years, American pressure created a sense of unity so great it led to Confederation.
The current conversation around annexation is likewise uniting Canada’s leaders to a degree we’ve rarely seen in recent years.
Representatives across the political spectrum are sharing a common message, the same message as British North Americans in the late nineteenth century: despite our problems, Canadians value Canada.
Critical minerals and water
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had a few comments to make about US President Donald Trump’s motivation for ‘absorbing’ Canada as the 51st state, from a February 7, 2025 CBC news online article by Peter Zimonjic, ·
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told business leaders at the Canada-U.S. Economic Summit in Toronto that U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to annex Canada “is a real thing” motivated by his desire to tap into the country’s critical minerals.
“Mr. Trump has it in mind that the easiest way to do it is absorbing our country and it is a real thing,” Trudeau said, before a microphone cut out at the start of the closed-door meeting.
The prime minister made the remarks to more than 100 business leaders after delivering an opening address to the summit Friday morning [February 7, 2025], outlining the key issues facing the country when it comes to Canada’s trading relationship with the U.S.
After the opening address, media were ushered out of the room when a microphone that was left on picked up what was only meant to be heard by attendees [emphasis mine].
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Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association president Flavio Volpe was in the room when Trudeau made the comments. He said the prime minister went on to say that Trump is driven because the U.S. could benefit from Canada’s critical mineral resources.
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There was more, from a February 7, 2025 article by Nick Taylor-Vaisey for Politico., Note: A link has been removed,
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In remarks caught on tape by The Toronto Star, Trudeau suggested the president is keenly aware of Canada’s vast mineral resources. “I suggest that not only does the Trump administration know how many critical minerals we have but that may be even why they keep talking about absorbing us and making us the 51st state,” Trudeau said.
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All of this reminded me of US President Joe Biden’s visit to Canada and his interest in critical minerals which I mentioned briefly in my comments about the 2023 federal budget, from my April 17, 2023 posting (scroll down to the ‘Canadian economic theory (the staples theory), mining, nuclear energy, quantum science, and more’ subhead,
Critical minerals are getting a lot of attention these days. (They were featured in the 2022 budget, see my April 19, 2022 posting, scroll down to the Mining subhead.) This year, US President Joe Biden, in his first visit to Canada as President, singled out critical minerals at the end of his 28 hour state visit (from a March 24, 2023 CBC news online article by Alexander Panetta; Note: Links have been removed),
There was a pot of gold at the end of President Joe Biden’s jaunt to Canada. It’s going to Canada’s mining sector.
The U.S. military will deliver funds this spring to critical minerals projects in both the U.S. and Canada. The goal is to accelerate the development of a critical minerals industry on this continent.
The context is the United States’ intensifying rivalry with China.
The U.S. is desperate to reduce its reliance on its adversary for materials needed to power electric vehicles, electronics and many other products, and has set aside hundreds of millions of dollars under a program called the Defence Production Act.
The Pentagon already has told Canadian companies they would be eligible to apply. It has said the cash would arrive as grants, not loans.
On Friday [March 24, 2023], before Biden left Ottawa, he promised they’ll get some.
The White House and the Prime Minister’s Office announced that companies from both countries will be eligible this spring for money from a $250 million US fund.
Which Canadian companies? The leaders didn’t say. Canadian officials have provided the U.S. with a list of at least 70 projects that could warrant U.S. funding.
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“Our nations are blessed with incredible natural resources,” Biden told Canadian parliamentarians during his speech in the House of Commons.
“Canada in particular has large quantities of critical minerals [emphasis mine] that are essential for our clean energy future, for the world’s clean energy future.
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I don’t think there’s any question that the US knows how much, where, and how easily ‘extractable’ Canadian critical minerals might be.
Pressure builds
On the same day (Monday, February 3, 2025) the tariffs were postponed for a month,Trudeau had two telephone calls with US president Donald Trump. According to a February 9, 2025 article by Steve Chase and Stefanie Marotta for the Globe and Mail, Trump and his minions are exploring the possibility of acquiring Canada by means other than a trade war or economic domination,
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“He [Trudeau] talked about two phone conversations he had with Mr. Trump on Monday [February 3, 2025] before the President agreed to delay to steep tariffs on Canadian goods for 30 days.n
During the calls, the Prime Minister recalled Mr. Trump referred to a four-page memo that included a list of grievances he had with Canadian trade and commercial rules, including the President’s false claim that US banks are unable to operate in Canada. …
In the second conversation with Mr. Trump on Monday, the Prime Minister told the summit, the President asked him whether he was familiar with the Treaty of 1908, a pact between the United States and Britain that defined the border between the United States and Canada. he told Mr. Trudeau, he should look it up.
Mr. Trudeau told the summit he thought the treaty had been superseded by other developments such as the repatriation the Canadian Constitution – in other words, that the border cannot be dissolved by repealing that treaty. He told the audience that international law would prevent the dissolution 1908 Treaty leading to the erasure of the border. For example, various international laws define sovereign borders, including the United Nationals Charter of which both countries are signatories and which has protection to territorial integrity.
A source familiar with the calls said Mr. Trump’s reference to the 1908 Treaty was taken as an implied threat. … [p. A3 in paper version]
I imagine Mr. Trump and/or his minions will keep trying to find one pretext or another for this attempt to absorb or annex or wage war (economically or otherwise) on Canada.
What makes Canadian (and Greenlandic) minerals and water so important?
You may have noticed the January 21, 2025 announcement by Mr. Trump about the ‘Stargate Project,’ a proposed US $500B AI infrastructure company (you can find more about the Stargate Project (Stargate LLC) in its Wikipedia entry).
Most likely not a coincidence, on February 10, 2025 President of France, Emmanuel Macron announced a 109B euros investment in French AI sector, from the February 9, 2025 Reuters preannouncement article,
France will announce private sector investments totalling some 109 billion euros ($112.5 billion [US]) in its artificial intelligence sector during the Paris AI summit which opens on Monday, President Emmanuel Macron said.
The financing includes plans by Canadian investment firm [emphasis mine] Brookfield to invest 20 billion euros in AI projects in France and financing from the United Arab Emirates which could hit 50 billion euros in the years ahead, Macron’s office said.
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Big projects, non? It’s no surprise critical minerals will be necessary but the need for massive amounts of water may be. My October 16, 2023 posting focuses on water and AI development, specifically ChatGPT-4,
A September 9, 2023 news item (an Associated Press article by Matt O’Brien and Hannah Fingerhut) on phys.org and also published September 12, 2023 on the Iowa Public Radio website, describe an unexpected cost for building ChatGPT and other AI agents, Note: Links [in the excerpt] have been removed,
The cost of building an artificial intelligence product like ChatGPT can be hard to measure.
But one thing Microsoft-backed OpenAI needed for its technology was plenty of water [emphases mine], pulled from the watershed of the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers in central Iowa to cool a powerful supercomputer as it helped teach its AI systems how to mimic human writing.
As they race to capitalize on a craze for generative AI, leading tech developers including Microsoft, OpenAI and Google have acknowledged that growing demand for their AI tools carries hefty costs, from expensive semiconductors to an increase in water consumption.
But they’re often secretive about the specifics. Few people in Iowa knew about its status as a birthplace of OpenAI’s most advanced large language model, GPT-4, before a top Microsoft executive said in a speech it “was literally made next to cornfields west of Des Moines.”
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In its latest environmental report, Microsoft disclosed that its global water consumption spiked 34% from 2021 to 2022 (to nearly 1.7 billion gallons , or more than 2,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools), a sharp increase compared to previous years that outside researchers tie to its AI research. [emphases mine]
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As for how much water was diverted in Iowa for a data centre project, from my October 16, 2023 posting
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Jason Clayworth’s September 18, 2023 article for AXIOS describes the issue from the Iowan perspective, Note: Links [from the excerpt] have been removed,
Future data center projects in West Des Moines will only be considered if Microsoft can implement technology that can “significantly reduce peak water usage,” the Associated Press reports.
Why it matters: Microsoft’s five WDM data centers — the “epicenter for advancing AI” — represent more than $5 billion in investments in the last 15 years.
Yes, but: They consumed as much as 11.5 million gallons of water a month for cooling, or about 6% of WDM’s total usage during peak summer usage during the last two years, according to information from West Des Moines Water Works.
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The bottom line is that these technologies consume a lot of water and require critical minerals.
Greenland
Evan Dyer’s January 16, 2025 article for CBC news online describes both US military strategic interests and hunger for resources, Note 1: Article links have been removed; Note 2: I have added one link to a Wikipedia entry,
The person who first put a bug in Donald Trump’s ear about Greenland — if a 2022 biography is to be believed — was his friend Ronald Lauder, a New York billionaire and heir to the Estée Lauder cosmetics fortune.
But it would be wrong to believe that U.S. interest in Greenland originated with idle chatter at the country club, rather than real strategic considerations.
Trump’s talk of using force to annex Greenland — which would be an unprovoked act of war against a NATO ally — has been rebuked by Greenlandic, Danish and European leaders. A Fox News team that travelled to Greenland’s capital Nuuk reported back to the Trump-friendly show Fox & Friends that “most of the people we spoke with did not support Trump’s comments and found them offensive.”
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Certainly, military considerations motivated the last U.S. attempt at buying Greenland in 1946.
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The military value to the U.S. of acquiring Greenland is much less clear in 2025 than it was in 1946.
Russian nuclear submarines no longer need to traverse the GIUK [the GIUK gap; “{sometimes written G-I-UK} is an area in the northern Atlantic Ocean that forms a naval choke point. Its name is an acronym for Greenland, Iceland, and the United Kingdom, the gap being the two stretches of open ocean among these three landmasses.”]. They can launch their missiles from closer to home.
And in any case, the U.S. already has a military presence on Greenland, used for early warning, satellite tracking and marine surveillance. The Pentagon simply ignored Denmark’s 1957 ban on nuclear weapons on Greenlandic territory. Indeed, an American B-52 bomber carrying four hydrogen bombs crashed in Greenland in 1968.
“The U.S. already has almost unhindered access [emphasis mine], and just building on their relationship with Greenland is going to do far more good than talk of acquisition,” said Dwayne Menezes, director of the Polar Research and Policy Initiative in London.
The complication, he says, is Greenland’s own independence movement. All existing defence agreements involving the U.S. presence in Greenland are between Washington and the Kingdom of Denmark. [emphasis mine]
“They can’t control what’s happening between Denmark and Greenland,” Menezes said. “Over the long term, the only way to mitigate that risk altogether is by acquiring Greenland.”
Menezes also doesn’t believe U.S. interest in Greenland is purely military.
And Trump’s incoming national security adviser Michael Waltz [emphasis mine] appeared to confirm as much when asked by Fox News why the administration wanted Greenland.
“This is about critical minerals, this is about natural resources [emphasis mine]. This is about, as the ice caps pull back, the Chinese are now cranking out icebreakers and are pushing up there.”
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While the United States has an abundance of natural resources, it risks coming up short in two vital areas: rare-earth minerals and freshwater.
Greenland’s apparent barrenness belies its richness in those two key 21st-century resources.
The U.S. rise to superpower was driven partly by the good fortune of having abundant reserves of oil, which fuelled its industrial growth. The country is still a net exporter of petroleum.
China, Washington’s chief strategic rival, had no such luck. It has to import more than two-thirds of its oil, and is now importing more than six times as much as it did in 2000.
But the future may not favour the U.S. as much as the past.
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I stand corrected, where oil is concerned. From Dyer’s January 16, 2025 article, Note: Links have been removed,
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It’s China, and not the U.S., that nature blessed with rich deposits of rare-earth elements, a collection of 17 metals such as yttrium and scandium that are increasingly necessary for high-tech applications from cellphones and flat-screen TVs to electric cars.
The rare-earth element neodymium is an essential part of many computer hard drives and defence systems including electronic displays, guidance systems, lasers, radar and sonar.
Three decades ago, the U.S. produced a third of the world’s rare-earth elements, and China about 40 per cent. By 2011, China had 97 per cent of world production, and its government was increasingly limiting and controlling exports.
The U.S. has responded by opening new mines and spurring recovery and recycling to reduce dependence on China.
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Such efforts have allowed the U.S. to claw back about 20 per cent of the world’s annual production of rare-earth elements. But that doesn’t change the fact that China has about 44 million tonnes of reserves, compared to fewer than two million in the U.S.
“There’s a huge dependency on China,” said Menezes. “It offers China the economic leverage, in the midst of a trade war in particular, to restrict supply to the West, thus crippling industries like defence, the green transition. This is where Greenland comes in.”
Greenland’s known reserves are almost equivalent to those of the entire U.S., and much more may lie beneath its icebound landscape.
“Greenland is believed to be able to meet at least 25 per cent of global rare-earth demand well into the future,” he said.
An abundance of freshwater
The melting ice caps referenced by Trump’s nominee for national security adviser are another Greenlandic resource the world is increasingly interested in.
Seventy per cent of the world’s freshwater is locked up in the Antarctic ice cap. Of the remainder, two-thirds is in Greenland, in a massive ice cap that is turning to liquid at nearly twice the volume of melting in Antarctica.
“We know this because you can weigh the ice sheet from satellites,” said Christian Schoof, a professor of Earth, ocean and atmospheric sciences at the University of British Columbia who spent part of last year in Greenland studying ice cap melting.
“The ice sheet is heavy enough that it affects the orbit of satellites going over it. And you can record the change in that acceleration of satellites due to the ice sheet over time, and directly weigh the ice sheet.”
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“There is a growing demand for freshwater on the world market, and the use of the vast water potential in Greenland may contribute to meeting this demand,” the Greenland government announces on its website.
The Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland found 10 locations that were suitable for the commercial exploitation of Greenland’s ice and water, and has already issued a number of licenses.
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Schoof told CBC News that past projects that attempted to tow Greenlandic ice to irrigate farms in the Middle East “haven’t really taken off … but humans are resourceful and inventive, and we face some really significant issues in the future.”
For the U.S., those issues include the 22-year-long “megadrought” which has left the western U.S. [emphases mine] drier than at any time in the past 1,200 years, and which is already threatening the future of some American cities.
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As important as they are, there’s more than critical minerals and water, according to Dyer’s January 16, 2025 article
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Even the “rock flour” that lies under the ice cap could have great commercial and strategic importance.
Ground into nanoparticles by the crushing weight of the ice, research has revealed it to have almost miraculous properties, says Menezes.
“Scientists have found that Greenlandic glacial flour has a particular nutrient composition that enables it to be regenerative of soil conditions elsewhere,” he told CBC News. “It improves agricultural yields. It has direct implications for food security.”
Spreading Greenland rock flour on corn fields in Ghana produced a 30 to 50 per cent increase in crop yields. Similar yield gains occurred when it was spread on Danish fields that produce the barley for Carlsberg beer.
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Canada
It’s getting a little tiring keeping up with Mr. Trump’s tariff tear (using ‘tear’ as a verbal noun; from the Cambridge dictionary, verb: TEAR definition: 1. to pull or be pulled apart, or to pull pieces off: 2. to move very quickly …).
The bottom line is that Mr. Trump wants something and certainly Canadian critical minerals and water constitute either his entire interest or, at least, his main interest for now, with more to be determined later.
Niall McGee’s February 9, 2025 article for the Globe and Mail provides an overview of the US’s dependence on Canada’s critical minerals,
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The US relies on Canada for a huge swath of its critical mineral imports, including 40 per cent of its primary nickel for its defence industry, 30 per cent of its uranium, which is used in its nuclear-power fleet, and 79 per cent of its potash for growing crops.
The US produces only small amounts of all three, while Canada is the world’s biggest potash producer, the second biggest in uranium, and number six in nickel.
If the US wants to buy fewer critical minerals from Canada, in many cases it would be forced to source them from hostile countries such as Russia and China.
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Vancouver-based Teck Resources Ltd. is one of the few North American suppliers of germanium. The critical mineral is used in fibre-optic networks, infrared vision systems, solar panels. The US relies on Canada for 23 per cent of its imports of germanium.
China in December [2024] banned exports of the critical mineral to the US citing national security concerns. The ban raised fears of possible shortages for the US.
“It’s obvious we have a lot of what Trump wants to support America’s ambitions, from both an economic and a geopolitical standpoint,” says Martin Turenne, CEO of Vancouver-based FPX Nickel Corp., which is developing a massive nickel project in British Columbia. [p. B5 paper version]
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Akshay Kulkarni’s January 15, 2025 article for CBC news online provides more details about British Columbia and its critical minerals, Note: Links have been removed,
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The premier had suggested Tuesday [January 14, 2025] that retaliatory tariffs and export bans could be part of the response, and cited a smelter operation located in Trail, B.C. [emphasis mine; keep reading], which exports minerals that Eby [Premier of British Columbia, David Eby] said are critical for the U.S.
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The U.S. and Canada both maintain lists of critical minerals — ranging from aluminum and tin to more obscure elements like ytterbium and hafnium — that both countries say are important for defence, energy production and other key areas.
Michael Goehring, the president of the Mining Association of B.C., said B.C. has access to or produces 16 of the 50 minerals considered critical by the U.S.
Individual atoms of silicon and germanium are seen following an Atomic Probe Tomography (APT) measurement at Polytechnique Montreal. Both minerals are manufactured in B.C. (Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press)
“We have 17 critical mineral projects on the horizon right now, along with a number of precious metal projects,” he told CBC News on Tuesday [January 14, 2025].
“The 17 critical mineral projects alone represent some $32 billion in potential investment for British Columbia,” he added.
John Steen, director of the Bradshaw Research Institute for Minerals and Mining at the University of B.C., pointed to germanium — which is manufactured at Teck’s facility in Trail [emphasis mine] — as one of the materials most important to U.S industry.
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There are a number of mines and manufacturing facilities across B.C. and Canada for critical minerals.
The B.C. government says the province is Canada’s largest producer of copper, and only producer of molybdenum, which are both considered critical minerals.
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There’s also graphite, not in BC but in Québec. This April 8, 2023 article by Christian Paas-Lang for CBC news online focuses largely on issues of how to access and exploit graphite and also, importantly, indigenous concerns, but this excerpt focuses on graphite as a critical mineral,
A mining project might not be what comes to mind when you think of the transition to a lower emissions economy. But embedded in electric vehicles, solar panels and hydrogen fuel storage are metals and minerals that come from mines like the one in Lac-des-Îles, Que.
The graphite mine, owned by the company Northern Graphite, is just one of many projects aimed at extracting what are now officially dubbed “critical minerals” — substances of significant strategic and economic importance to the future of national economies.
Lac-des-Îles is the only significant graphite mining project in North America, accounting for Canada’s contribution to an industry dominated by China.
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There was another proposed graphite mine in Québec, which encountered significant push back from the local Indigenous community as noted in my November 26, 2024 posting, “Local resistance to Lomiko Metals’ Outaouais graphite mine.” The posting also provides a very brief update of graphite mining in Canada.
It seems to me that water does not get the attention that it should and that’s why I lead with water in my headline. Eric Reguly’s February 9, 2025 article in the Globe and Mail highlights some of the water issues facing the US, not just Iowa,
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Water may be the real reason, or one of the top reasons, propelling his [Mr. Trump’s] desire to turn Canada into Minnesota North. Canadians represent 0.5 per cent of the globe’s population yet sit on 20% or more of its fresh water. Vast tracts of the United States routinely suffer from water shortages, which are drying up rivers – the once mighty Colorado River no longer reaches the Pacific Ocean – shrinking aquifers beneath farmland and preventing water-intensive industries from building factories. Warming average temperatures will intensify the shortages. [p. B2 in paper version]
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Reguly is more interested in the impact water shortages have on industry. He also offers a brief history of US interest in acquiring Canadian water resources dating back to the first North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that came into effect on January 1, 1994.
A March 6, 2024 article by Elia Nilsen for CNN television news online details Colorado river geography and gives you a sense of just how serious the situation is, Note: Links have been removed,
Seven Western states are starting to plot a future for how much water they’ll draw from the dwindling Colorado River in a warmer, drier world.
The river is the lifeblood for the West – providing drinking water for tens of millions, irrigating crops, and powering homes and industry with hydroelectric dams.
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This has bought states more time to figure out how to divvy up the river after 2026, when the current operating guidelines expire.
To that end, the four upper basin river states of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming submitted their proposal for how future cuts should be divvied up among the seven states to the federal government on Tuesday [March 5, 2024], and the three lower basin states of California, Arizona and Nevada submitted their plan on Wednesday [March 6, 2024].
One thing is clear from the competing plans: The two groups of states do not agree so far on who should bear the brunt of future cuts if water levels drop in the Colorado River basin.
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As of a December 12, 2024 article by Shannon Mullane for watereducationcolorado.org, the states are still wrangling and they are not the only interested parties, Note: A link has been removed,
… officials from seven states are debating the terms of a new agreement for how to store, release and deliver Colorado River water for years to come, and they have until 2026 to finalize a plan. This month, the tone of the state negotiations soured as some state negotiators threw barbs and others called for an end to the political rhetoric and saber-rattling.
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The state negotiators are not the only players at the table: Tribal leaders, federal officials, environmental organizations, agricultural groups, cities, industrial interests and others are weighing in on the process.
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Water use from the Colorado river has international implications as this February 5, 2025 essay (Water is the other US-Mexico border crisis, and the supply crunch is getting worse) by Gabriel Eckstein, professor of law at Texas A&M University and Rosario Sanchez, senior research scientist at Texas Water Resources Institute and at Texas A&M University for The Conversation makes clear, Note: Links have been removed,
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The Colorado River provides water to more than 44 million people, including seven U.S. and two Mexican states, 29 Indian tribes and 5.5 million acres of farmland. Only about 10% of its total flow reaches Mexico. The river once emptied into the Gulf of California, but now so much water is withdrawn along its course that since the 1960s it typically peters out in the desert.
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At least 28 aquifers – underground rock formations that contain water – also traverse the border. With a few exceptions, very little information on these shared resources exists. One thing that is known is that many of them are severely overtapped and contaminated.
Nonetheless, reliance on aquifers is growing as surface water supplies dwindle. Some 80% of groundwater used in the border region goes to agriculture. The rest is used by farmers and industries, such as automotive and appliance manufacturers.
Over 10 million people in 30 cities and communities throughout the border region rely on groundwater for domestic use. Many communities, including Ciudad Juarez; the sister cities of Nogales in both Arizona and Sonora; and the sister cities of Columbus in New Mexico and Puerto Palomas in Chihuahua, get all or most of their fresh water from these aquifers.
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A booming region
About 30 million people live within 100 miles (160 kilometers) of the border on both sides. Over the next 30 years, that figure is expected to double.
Municipal and industrial water use throughout the region is also expected to increase. In Texas’ lower Rio Grande Valley, municipal use alone could more than double by 2040.
At the same time, as climate change continues to worsen, scientists project that snowmelt will decrease and evaporation rates will increase. The Colorado River’s baseflow – the portion of its volume that comes from groundwater, rather than from rain and snow – may decline by nearly 30% in the next 30 years.
Precipitation patterns across the region are projected to be uncertain and erratic for the foreseeable future. This trend will fuel more extreme weather events, such as droughts and floods, which could cause widespread harm to crops, industrial activity, human health and the environment.
Further stress comes from growth and development. Both the Colorado River and Rio Grande are tainted by pollutants from agricultural, municipal and industrial sources. Cities on both sides of the border, especially on the Mexican side, have a long history of dumping untreated sewage into the Rio Grande. Of the 55 water treatment plants located along the border, 80% reported ongoing maintenance, capacity and operating problems as of 2019.
Drought across the border region is already stoking domestic and bilateral tensions. Competing water users are struggling to meet their needs, and the U.S. and Mexico are straining to comply with treaty obligations for sharing water [emphasis mine].
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Getting back to Canada and water, Reguly’s February 9, 2025 article notes Mr. Trump’s attitude towards our water,
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Mr. Trump’s transaction-oriented brain know that water availability translates into job availability. If Canada were forced to export water by bulk to the United States, Canada would in effect be exporting jobs and America absorbing them. In the fall [2024] when he was campaigning, he called British Columbia “essentially a very large faucet” [emphasis mine] that could be used to overcome California’s permanent water deficit.
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In Canada’s favour, Canadians have been united in their opposition to bulk water exports. That sentiment is codified in the Transboundary Waters Protection Act, which bans large scale removal from waterways shared with the United States. … [p. B2 in paper version]
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It’s reassuring to read that we have some rules regarding water removal but British Columbia also has a water treaty with the US, the Columbia River Treaty, and an update to it lingers in limbo as Kirk Lapointe notes in his February 6, 2025 article for vancouverisawesome.com. Lapointe mentions shortcomings on both sides of the negotiating table for the delay in ratifying the update while expressing concern over Mr. Trump’s possible machinations should this matter cross his radar.
What about Ukraine’s critical mineral?
A February 13, 2025 article by Geoff Nixon for CBC news online provides some of the latest news on the situation between the US and the Ukraine, Note: Links have been removed,
Ukraine has clearly grabbed the attention of U.S. President Donald Trump with its apparent willingness to share access to rare-earth resources with Washington, in exchange for its continued support and security guarantees.
Trump wants what he calls “equalization” for support the U.S. has provided to Ukraine in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion. And he wants this payment in the form of Ukraine’s rare earth minerals, metals “and other things,” as the U.S. leader put it last week.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has travelled to Ukraine to discuss the proposition, which was first raised with Trump last fall [2024], telling reporters Wednesday [February 12, 2025] that he hoped a deal could be reached within days.
Bessent says such a deal could provide a “security shield” in post-war Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, said in his daily address that it would both strengthen Ukraine’s security and “give new momentum to our economic relations.”
But just how much trust can Kyiv put in a Trump-led White House to provide support to Ukraine, now and in the future? Ukraine may not be in a position to back away from the offer, with Trump’s interest piqued and U.S. support remaining critical for Kyiv after nearly three years of all-out war with Russia.
“I think the problem for Ukraine is that it doesn’t really have much choice,” said Oxana Shevel, an associate professor of political science at Boston’s Tufts University.
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Then there’s the issue of the Ukrainian minerals, which have to remain in Kyiv’s hands in order for the U.S. to access them — a point Zelenskyy and other Ukraine officials have underlined.
There are more than a dozen elements considered to be rare earths, and Ukraine’s Institute of Geology says those that can be found in Ukraine include lanthanum, cerium, neodymium, erbium and yttrium. EU-funded research also indicates that Ukraine has scandium reserves. But the details of the data are classified.
Rare earths are used in manufacturing magnets that turn power into motion for electric vehicles, in cellphones and other electronics, as well as for scientific and industrial applications.
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Trump has said he wants the equivalent of $500 billion US in rare earth minerals.
Yuriy Gorodnichenko, a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, says any effort to develop and extract these resources won’t happen overnight and it’s unclear how plentiful they are.
“The fact is, nobody knows how much you have for sure there and what is the value of that,” he said in an interview.
“It will take years to do geological studies,” he said. “Years to build extraction facilities.”
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Just how desperate is the US?
Yes, the United States has oil but it doesn’t have much in the way of materials it needs for the new technologies and it’s running out of something very basic: water.
I don’t know how desperate the US is but Mr. Trump’s flailings suggest that the answer is very, very desperate.
The Opening Ceremony of the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ) will be held from 4-5 February 2025 at UNESCO Headquarters. It marks the official commencement of a global initiative dedicated to advancing quantum science and its transformative applications. As the lead agency for IYQ, UNESCO aims to maximize the visibility of IYQ and the transformative potential of quantum science and technology in addressing critical global challenges. It will serve as a platform for the exchange of ideas, allowing participants to showcase best practices in quantum science education, research, and industry applications. It will provide an opportunity to inspire interdisciplinary and cross-regional cooperation and to address disparities between the Global North and South while inspiring inclusive innovation. The opening ceremony will also highlight the importance of integrating ethics and responsible innovation into the core of discussions.
The Exhibition
An exhibition will run alongside the event to celebrate the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology. Visitors can explore cutting-edge displays that showcase quantum science breakthroughs, innovative applications, and future possibilities. This interactive experience is designed to engage audiences and inspire a deeper appreciation for quantum technologies. The exhibition will be held in Salle des Actes and Salle des Pas Perdus from 3–7 February 2025 and is open throughout the day for all attendees to visit.
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Important Notice
Please note the dates and times of the Opening Ceremony and exhibition carefully to plan your visit. As the Opening Ceremony spans two days, we kindly ask you to specify during registration whether you will attend on February 4 [2025], February 5 [2025], or both days. Additionally, the exhibition will run from February 3–7, 2025, providing flexibility for your visit. Your timely registration helps us ensure a smooth and enjoyable experience for all attendees.
Day 1 Opening Ceremony: The Day 1 Opening Ceremony will take place on February 4, 2025, in Room I, UNESCO Headquarters, 125 Avenue de Suffren, Paris, France. The event starts at 10:00 AM, with doors opening at 8:30 AM and welcome coffee served from 9:30 AM.
Day 2 Opening Ceremony: The Day 2 Opening Ceremony will take place on February 5, 2025, in Room II, UNESCO Headquarters, 125 Avenue de Suffren, Paris, France. The event starts at 9:30 AM, with doors opening at 8:00 AM and welcome coffee served from 9:00 AM.
Exhibition: A special exhibition showcasing quantum science and its revolutionary applications will be held in Salle des Actes and Salle des Pas Perdus from February 3–7, 2025. The exhibition will be open throughout the day, providing attendees an engaging and interactive experience.
There is a registration form for attending the two day opening ceremony, there’s also a registration form for exhibitors and you can find both here. The deadline for both registrations is February 2, 2025.
The opening session will set the tone for the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology, emphasizing the significance of quantum advancements in shaping our future. Leaders and experts will highlight the global importance of fostering innovation and international collaboration.
10:00-10:05 Promotional Video of the International Year 10:05-10:10 Opening Ms Hayley Edmonds, master of ceremony 10:10-10:20 Welcome Address Ms Lidia BRITO, Assistant Director-General for Natural Sciences at UNESCO 10:10-10:25 High-Level Remarks Minister of Science, Humanities, Technology and Innovation of the United Mexican States(tbc) H.E. Amb. Simona-Mirela Miculescu, President of the 42nd session of the General Conference Mr Cephas Adjej MENSAH, Director of Research, Statistics and Information Management, on behalf of the Minister for Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation of the Republic of Ghana 10:25-10:55 Keynote Address “Watching The Quantum World With Ultrashort Light Pulses” Prof. Anne L’HUILLIER, Physicist and 2023 Nobel Laureate in Physics, Sweden/France
10:55 -11:00 Group Photo
11:00-11:50 Fireside Chat: Shaping a Sustainable Future for Global Development
This engaging fireside chat will delve into the ways quantum technologies can contribute to a more inclusive and equitable world. Panelists will discuss strategies to bridge the global divide and ensure that the benefits of quantum advancements are shared widely.
Moderator: Ms Catarina ROLFSDOTTER-JANSSON, journalist, Moderator, TV-program host, Sweden ▪ Ms Samia Charfi KADDOUR, Professor of Physics at the Faculty of Science of Tunis, University of Tunis El Manar; former Director General of Scientific Research at the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research; Tunisia ▪ Prof. Ana Maria CETTO, Professor at the Institute of Physics, the Director of the Museum of Light at the National University of Mexico, the United Mexican States ▪ Prof. John DOYLE, Henry B. Silsbee Professor of Physics at Harvard University, President of the American Physical Society; the United States of America
11:50-12:40 Roundtable Discussion: Pushing the Frontiers of Quantum Science and Technology
Discover groundbreaking research and innovations that are pushing the boundaries of quantum science. This discussion will highlight the latest advancements and how they are shaping tomorrow’s technologies.
Moderator: Ms Maricela MUNOZ, Director External Affairs, Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator (GESDA), Switzerland
▪ Dr Dave SMITH, National Technology Adviser, on behalf of the Minister of State for Science, Research and Innovation, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland ▪ Prof. Alain ASPECT, Physicist and 2022 Nobel Laureate in Physics, France ▪ Prof. Stephanie SIMMONS, Founder & Chief Quantum Officer at Photonic, Co-Chair of Canada’s National Quantum Advisory, Canada [still a professor at Simon Fraser University?] ▪ Prof. Jian Wei PAN, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Vice Chancellor, University of Science and Technology of China, China
12:40-12:50 Music Performance
12:50-1400 Lunch Hall Segur, le Foyer and the Restaurant on the 7th floor of the UNESCO
14:00-14;50 Panel Discussion and Public Engagement and Education in Quantum Science and Technology
Explore the critical role of public engagement and education in demystifying quantum science and inspiring the next generation. Panelists will discuss initiatives that make quantum concepts accessible to diverse audiences and highlight the importance of inclusivity in science education.
Moderator: Prof. Emily EDWARDS, Associate Research Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Duke Quantum Center, United States of America ▪ Prof. Andrzej SZEPTYCKI, Undersecretary of State, Ministry of Science and Higher Education of Poland ▪ Prof. Jacquiline ROMERO, Associate Professor, Reader and Westpac Research Fellow, School of Mathematics and Physics, University of Queensland Australia/the Republic of the Philippines. ▪ Dr Yaseera ISMAIL, Senior lecturer, Department of Physics at Stellenbosch University, South Africa ▪ Ms Elisa Torres DURNEY, CEO of Girls in Quantum; Chile ▪ Dr John DONOHUE, Senior Manager of Scientific Outreach at the Institute for Quantum Computing, University of Waterloo; Canada
14:50-15:40 Roundtable Discussion: Policy and Innovation in Quantum Science for Advancing Global Goals for Sustainable Development
This session will explore how policies and innovation in quantum science can be aligned with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. The discussion will focus on harnessing quantum advancements for climate action, economic growth, and societal well-being.
Moderator: Prof. Luiz DAVIDOVICH, Professor Emeritus at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; Distinguished fellow at the Institute for Quantum Science and Engineering of the University of Texas A&M [Texas A&M University], Brazil ▪ Mr. Seizo ONOE, Director, Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, International Telecommunication Union ▪ Prof. Serge HAROCHE, Physicist and 2012 Nobel Laureate in Physics, France ▪ Dr Najwa AARAJ, CEO of Technology Innovation Institute, UAE ▪ Prof. Tommaso CALARCO, Director of the Institute for Quantum Control in Jülich, Coordinator of EU Quantum Flagship; Germany/Italy ▪ Dr Cathy FOLEY, Board member of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation of Australia
15:40-16:35 Networking Session Coffee Break
16:35-17:45 Insight Talk by Nobel Laureate on Quantum Mechanics 2025: Incredible Past, Amazing Present, Magnificent Future
Be inspired by the insights of Prof. William D. Phillips, 1997 Nobel Laureate in Physics, as he shares his unique perspective on the wonders of quantum science. This engaging session allows attendees to interact with one of the field’s most esteemed figures.
Moderator: Prof. Rosario FAZIO, Head of the Condensed Matter and Statistical Physics Section, the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics
Speaker: Prof. William D. PHILLIPS, Physicist and 1997 Nobel Laureate in Physics, United States of America
17:05-18:05 Voices from the Industry: The Challenge of Developing Quantum at Scale
This panel will address the challenges and opportunities of scaling quantum technologies for practical use. Industry leaders will share their experiences in bringing quantum research to market, showcasing groundbreaking developments in this field.
Moderator: Dr. Celia MERZBACHER, Executive Director of the Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C) ▪ Ms Katie PIZZOLATO, Vice President of Quantum Algorithms and Scientific Partnerships, IBM ▪ Dr Krysta SVORE, Technical Fellow, Microsoft ▪ Dr Rajeeb HAZRA, CEO of Quantinuum ▪ Dr Grégoire RIBORDY, CEO of ID Quantique ▪ Prof. Alexander LING, Principal Investigator, Centre for Quantum Technologies, Associate Professor, Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, National University of Singapore; Co-founder of SpeQtral & S-Fifteen Instruments, Singapore. ▪ Dr Takuya Kitagawa, President, QuEra
18:05-18:25 UNESCO’s Role in Reducing the Quantum Divide: Advancing Global Innovation and Inclusion
This session highlights UNESCO’s commitment to reducing the global quantum divide by fostering innovation, building capacities, and advancing inclusion between the Global North and South. It emphasizes the transformative potential of quantum science and technology while ensuring its ethical and responsible applications. By bridging technical gaps and promoting equity, UNESCO reaffirms its dedication to leveraging quantum technologies for sustainable and inclusive development.
Host: Ms Lidia BRITO, Assistant Director-General for Natural Sciences, UNESCO ▪ Ms Dafna FEINHOLZ, Director a.i. Division of Research, Ethics and Inclusion, Social and Human Sciences Sector, UNESCO ▪ Mr. Guilherme CANELA DE SOUZA GODOI, Director of Division for Digital Inclusion and Policies and Digital Transformation (CI/DPT) and Secretary of the Information for All Programme (IFAP), Communication and Information Sector, UNESCO ▪ Mr Atish DABHOLKAR, Director of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, UNESCO
18:25-18:30 Day one Concluding Notes
Sir Peter KNIGHT, Professor, Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London, Chair of the Quantum Metrology Institute, National Physical Laboratory, co-chair of the Steering Committee of the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Day 2 5 February 2025 Room II
09:00-09:30 Welcome Coffee
09:30-09:45 Introductory Session
Begin the day with reflections on the importance of ethics in quantum science and its role in shaping responsible innovation and inclusive governance, setting the tone for the day’s discussions.
09:30-09:35 Welcome address by the Master of Ceremonies Ms Hayley EDMONDS, journalist, France 09:35-09:40 Introductory remarks (video meesage) Ms Gabriela RAMOS, Assistant Director-General of Social and Human Sciences, UNESCO 09:40-09:45 Scene Setting Allocution Prof. Yasser OMAR, Theoretical Physicist, IST, University of Lisbon & President of PQI – Portuguese Quantum Institutel
09:45-10:45 Panel Discussion: Ethics of Quantum Technologies
This panel will explore the ethical challenges of quantum advancements and the need for an anticipatory approach and a global reflection to understand the potential benefits and risks of these powerful technologies. Panelists will discuss why an ethical and human rights-based framework is essential to ensure ethical guardrails while enabling responsible innovation.
09:45-09:50 Scene Setting Allocution Prof. Pieter VERMAAS, Philosopher and Head of the Quantum Lab, Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management of TU Delft, and Lead of ethics research, Dutch Quantum Delta, Kingdom of the Netherlands 09:50-10:35 Panel Discussion ’ Moderator: Mr Diederick CROESE, Director of the Centre for Quantum and Society, Quantum Delta NL, Kingdom of the Netherlands ▪ Prof. Emma RUTTKAMP-BLOEM, Professor and Head of the Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities at the University of Pretoria, Chairperson of the UNESCO World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST), South Africa ▪ Professor Sang Wook YI, Professor of Philosophy, Hanyang University, Chairperson, Division of Ethics and Safety, National High-Level Committee for AI Strategies, Rapporteur of the UNESCO World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST), Republic of Korea ▪ Prof. Karina Garay PALMETT, Senior Researcher, Department of Optics of the Division of Applied Physics of the Center for Scientific Research and Higher Education at Ensenada, the United Mexican States ▪ Prof. Shohini GHOSE, Professor of Physics and Computer Science at Wilfrid Laurier University and Chief Technology Officer, Quantum Algorithms Institute, Canada ▪ Prof. Anil PRABHAKAR, Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, and Co-Founder of QuNu Labs and Quanfluence, India
10:35-10:45 Q&A session
This panel focuses on fostering responsible innovation in quantum science to ensure its alignment with global ethical standards and sustainable development goals. This panel will discuss strategies, challenges, and opportunities for integrating responsibility into the research and deployment of quantum technologies. Panelists will focus on concrete ways to create responsible and inclusive innovation systems and how open-source applications can be promoted to prevent further widening digital divides.
11:05-11:10 Scene Setting Allocution Prof. Matthias C. KETTEMANN, Professor of Innovation, Theory and Philosophy of Law, University of Innsbruck, and Director of the Innsbruck Quantum Ethics Lab, Member of the UNESCO World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST), Republic of Austria
11:10-12:00 Panel Discussion
Moderator: Mr Diederick CROESE, Director of the Centre for Quantum and Society, Quantum Delta NL, Kingdom of the Netherlands ▪ Dr Mira Luca WOLF-BAUWENS, Responsible Quantum Computing Lead in the Responsible & Inclusive Technology Team, IBM Research, Switzerland ▪ Dr. Prince OSEI, Lead Scientist & Director for Quantum Leap Africa, President of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Ghana ▪ Prof. Farida FASSI, Professor of Physics at the Faculty of Sciences, Mohammed V University in Rabat, Member of African Academy of Sciences, Morocco ▪ Prof. Matthias C. KETTEMANN, Professor of Innovation, Theory and Philosophy of Law, University of Innsbruck, and Director of the Innsbruck Quantum Ethics Lab, Member of the UNESCO World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST), Republic of Austria ▪ Prof. Yasser OMAR, Theoretical Physicist, President of IST, University of Lisbon & PQI – Portuguese Quantum Institute, Portugal
12:00-12:10 Q&A session
12:10-12:30 Closing of Day 2 and the Launch of the International Year
Celebrate the successful completion of Day 2 of the Opening Ceremony and the launch of the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology with reflections from UNESCO’s leadership and closing cultural performances. Final remarks will emphasise the global importance of quantum advancements and the collaborative efforts needed to harness their full potential.
12:10-12:15 Concluding notes of Day Two Ms Claudia REINPRECHT, Focal point of the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in digital and tech diplomacy and for the EU Digital Diplomacy Network, Republic of Austria
12:15-12:25 Closing of the Launch of the International of the Year Quantum Science and Technology Ms Dafna FEINHOLZ, Director a.i. Division of Research, Ethics and Inclusion, Social and Human Sciences Sector, UNESCO Ms Lidia BRITO, Assistant Director-General of Natural Sciences, UNESCO
Side-Exhibition
An exhibition for the IYQ will be held on Salle des Actes and Salle des Pas Perdus.
I have posted this as a prelude (of sorts) to my commentary on the November 2023 Council of Canadian Academies’ report, Quantum Potential.
ETA: On February 3, 2025 all tags added except ‘UNESCO’ and ‘International Year of Quantum Science and Technology’, which were included when previously published.
Nanotechnology’s enormous potential across various sectors has long attracted the eye of investors, keen to capitalise on its commercial potency.
Yet the initial propulsion provided by traditional venture capital avenues was reined back when the reality of long development timelines, regulatory hurdles, and difficulty in translating scientific advances into commercially viable products became apparent.
While the initial flurry of activity declined in the early part of the 21st century, a new kid on the investing block has proved an enticing option beyond traditional funding methods.
Corporate venture capital has, over the last 10 years emerged as a key plank in turning ideas into commercial reality.
Simply put, corporate venture capital (CVC) has seen large corporations, recognising the strategic value of nanotechnology, establish their own VC arms to invest in promising start-ups.
The likes of Samsung, Johnson & Johnson and BASF have all sought to get an edge on their competition by sinking money into start-ups in nano and other technologies, which could deliver benefits to them in the long term.
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Unlike traditional VC firms, CVCs invest with a strategic lens, aligning their investments with their core business goals. For instance, BASF’s venture capital arm, BASF Venture Capital, focuses on nanomaterials with applications in coatings, chemicals, and construction.
It has an evergreen EUR 250 million fund available and will consider everything from seed to Series B investment opportunities.
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Samsung Ventures takes a similar approach, explaining: “Our major investment areas are in semiconductors, telecommunication, software, internet, bioengineering and the medical industry from start-ups to established companies that are about to be listed on the stock market.
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While historically concentrated in North America and Europe, CVC activity in nanotechnology is expanding to Asia, with China being a major player.
China has, perhaps not surprisingly, seen considerable growth over the last decade in nano and few will bet against it being the primary driver of innovation over the next 10 years.
As ever, the long development cycles of emerging nano breakthroughs can frequently deter some CVCs with shorter investment horizons.
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2023 Nanotechnology patent applications: which countries top the list?
A March 28, 2024 article from statnano.com provides interesting data concerning patent applications,
In 2023, a total of 18,526 nanotechnology patent applications were published at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the European Patent Office (EPO). The United States accounted for approximately 40% of these nanotechnology patent publications, followed by China, South Korea, and Japan in the next positions.
According to a statistical analysis conducted by StatNano using data from the Orbit database, the USPTO published 84% of the 18,526 nanotechnology patent applications in 2023, which is more than five times the number published by the EPO. However, the EPO saw a nearly 17% increase in nanotechnology patent publications compared to the previous year, while the USPTO’s growth was around 4%.
Nanotechnology patents are defined based on the ISO/TS 18110 standard as those having at least one claim related to nanotechnology orpatents classified with an IPC classification code related to nanotechnology such as B82.
Carbon monoxide oxidises to carbon dioxide on the surface of the nanoparticle. Credit: Science Communication Lab for DESY
An October 1, 2021 news item on ScienceDaily announces research enabling scientists to observe a single nanoparticle at work,
A DESY-led research team has been using high-intensity X-rays to observe a single catalyst nanoparticle at work. The experiment has revealed for the first time how the chemical composition of the surface of an individual nanoparticle changes under reaction conditions, making it more active. The team led by DESY’s Andreas Stierle is presenting its findings in the journal Science Advances. This study marks an important step towards a better understanding of real, industrial catalytic materials.
Catalysts are materials that promote chemical reactions without being consumed themselves. Today, catalysts are used in numerous industrial processes, from fertiliser production to manufacturing plastics. Because of this, catalysts are of huge economic importance. A very well-known example is the catalytic converter installed in the exhaust systems of cars. These contain precious metals such as platinum, rhodium and palladium, which allow highly toxic carbon monoxide (CO) to be converted into carbon dioxide (CO2) and reduce the amount of harmful nitrogen oxides (NOx).
“In spite of their widespread use and great importance, we are still ignorant of many important details of just how the various catalysts work,” explains Stierle, head of the DESY NanoLab. “That’s why we have long wanted to study real catalysts while in operation.” This is not easy, because in order to make the active surface as large as possible, catalysts are typically used in the form of tiny nanoparticles, and the changes that affect their activity occur on their surface.
Surface strain relates to chemical composition
In the framework of the EU project Nanoscience Foundries and Fine Analysis (NFFA), the team from DESY NanoLab has developed a technique for labelling individual nanoparticles and thereby identifying them in a sample. “For the study, we grew nanoparticles of a platinum-rhodium alloy on a substrate in the lab and labelled one specific particle,” says co-author Thomas Keller from DESY NanoLab and in charge of the project at DESY. “The diameter of the labelled particle is around 100 nanometres, and it is similar to the particles used in a car’s catalytic converter.” A nanometre is a millionth of a millimetre.
Using X-rays from the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility ESRF in Grenoble, France, the team was not only able to create a detailed image of the nanoparticle; it also measured the mechanical strain within its surface. “The surface strain is related to the surface composition, in particular the ratio of platinum to rhodium atoms,” explains co-author Philipp Plessow from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), whose group computed strain as a function of surface composition. By comparing the observed and computed facet-dependent strain, conclusions can be drawn concerning the chemical composition at the particle surface. The different surfaces of a nanoparticle are called facets, just like the facets of a cut gemstone.
When the nanoparticle is grown, its surface consists mainly of platinum atoms, as this configuration is energetically favoured. However, the scientists studied the shape of the particle and its surface strain under different conditions, including the operating conditions of an automotive catalytic converter. To do this, they heated the particle to around 430 degrees Celsius and allowed carbon monoxide and oxygen molecules to pass over it. “Under these reaction conditions, the rhodium inside the particle becomes mobile and migrates to the surface because it interacts more strongly with oxygen than the platinum,” explains Plessow. This is also predicted by theory.
“As a result, the surface strain and the shape of the particle change,” reports co-author Ivan Vartaniants, from DESY, whose team converted the X-ray diffraction data into three-dimensional spatial images. “A facet-dependent rhodium enrichment takes place, whereby additional corners and edges are formed.” The chemical composition of the surface, and the shape and size of the particles have a significant effect on their function and efficiency. However, scientists are only just beginning to understand exactly how these are connected and how to control the structure and composition of the nanoparticles. The X-rays allow researchers to detect changes of as little as 0.1 in a thousand in the strain, which in this experiment corresponds to a precision of about 0.0003 nanometres (0.3 picometres).
Crucial step towards analysing industrial catalyst materials
“We can now, for the first time, observe the details of the structural changes in such catalyst nanoparticles while in operation,” says Stierle, Lead Scientist at DESY and professor for nanoscience at the University of Hamburg. “This is a major step forward and is helping us to understand an entire class of reactions that make use of alloy nanoparticles.” Scientists at KIT and DESY now want to explore this systematically at the new Collaborative Research Centre 1441, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and entitled “Tracking the Active Sites in Heterogeneous Catalysis for Emission Control (TrackAct)”.
“Our investigation is an important step towards analysing industrial catalytic materials,” Stierle points out. Until now, scientists have had to grow model systems in the laboratory in order to conduct such investigations. “In this study, we have gone to the limit of what can be done. With DESY’s planned X-ray microscope PETRA IV, we will be able to look at ten times smaller individual particles in real catalysts, and under reaction conditions.”
DESY is one of the world’s leading particle accelerator centres and investigates the structure and function of matter – from the interaction of tiny elementary particles and the behaviour of novel nanomaterials and vital biomolecules to the great mysteries of the universe. The particle accelerators and detectors that DESY develops and builds at its locations in Hamburg and Zeuthen are unique research tools. They generate the most intense X-ray radiation in the world, accelerate particles to record energies and open up new windows onto the universe. DESY is a member of the Helmholtz Association, Germany’s largest scientific association, and receives its funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) (90 per cent) and the German federal states of Hamburg and Brandenburg (10 per cent).
Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
Single alloy nanoparticle x-ray imaging during a catalytic reaction by Young Yong Kim, Thomas F. Keller, Tiago J. Goncalves, Manuel Abuin, Henning Runge, Luca Gelisio, Jerome Carnis, Vedran Vonk, Philipp N. Plessow, Ivan A. Vartaniants, Andreas Stierle. Science Advances • 1 Oct 2021 • Vol 7, Issue 40 • DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abh0757
I have not seen aluminum called aluminium in quite some time. (I’ve always had a fondness for that extra syllable.) I first saw notice of this work from Austria in an October 11, 2021 news item on Nanowerk,
A novel electronic component from TU Wien (Vienna) could be an important key to the era of quantum information technology: Using a special manufacturing process, pure germanium is bonded with aluminium in a way that atomically sharp interfaces are created. This results in a so-called monolithic metal-semiconductor-metal heterostructure.
This structure shows unique effects that are particularly evident at low temperatures. The aluminium becomes superconducting – but not only that, this property is also transferred to the adjacent germanium semiconductor and can be specifically controlled with electric fields. This makes it excellently suited for complex applications in quantum technology, such as processing quantum bits.
A particular advantage is that using this approach, it is not necessary to develop completely new technologies. Instead, mature and well established semiconductor fabrication techniqueses can be used to enable germanium-based quantum electronics.
Germanium: difficult to form high-quality contacts
“Germanium is a material which will definitely play an important role in semiconductor technology for the development of faster and more energy-efficient components,” says Dr. Masiar Sistani from the Institute for Solid State Electronics at TU Wien. However, if it is used to produce components on a nanometre scale, major problems arise: the material makes it extremely difficult to produce high-quality electrical contacts. This is related to the high impact of even smallest impurities at the contact points that significantly alter the electrical properties. “We have therefore set ourselves the task of developing a new manufacturing method that enables reliable and reproducible contact properties”, says Masiar Sistani.
Diffusing atoms
The key is temperature: when nanometre-structured germanium and aluminium are brought into contact and heated, the atoms of both materials begin to diffuse into the neighbouring material – but to very different extents: the germanium atoms move rapidly into the aluminium, whereas aluminium hardly diffuses into the germanium at all. “Thus, if you connect two aluminium contacts to a thin germanium nanowire and raise the temperature to 350 degrees Celsius, the germanium atoms diffuse off the edge of the nanowire. This creates empty spaces into which the aluminium can then easily penetrate,” explains Masiar Sistani. “In the end, only a few nanometre area in the middle of the nanowire consists of germanium, the rest has been filled up by aluminium.”
Normally, aluminium is made up of tiny crystal grains, but this novel fabrication method forms a perfect single crystal in which the aluminium atoms are arranged in a uniform pattern. As can be seen under the transmission electron microscope, a perfectly clean and atomically sharp transition is formed between germanium and aluminium, with no disordered region in between. In contrast to conventional methods where electrical contacts are applied to a semiconductor, for example by evaporating a metal, no oxides can form at the boundary layer.
Quantum transport in Grenoble
In order to take a closer look at the properties of this monolithic metal-semiconductor heterostructure of germanium and aluminium at low temperature, we collaborated with Dr. Olivier Buisson and Dr. Cécile Naud from the quantum electronics circuits group at Néel Institute – CNRS-UGA [Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique; Université Grenoble Alpes] in Grenoble. It turned out that the novel structure indeed has quite remarkable properties: “Not only were we able to demonstrate superconductivity in pure, undoped germanium for the first time, we were also able to show that this structure can be switched between quite different operating states using electric fields. Such a germanium quantum dot device can not only be superconducting but also completely insulating, or it can behave like a Josephson transistor, an important basic element of quantum electronic circuits,” explains Masiar Sistani.
This new heterostructure combines a whole range of advantages: The structure has excellent physical properties needed for quantum technologies, such as high carrier mobility and excellent manipulability with electric fields, and it has the additional advantage of fitting well with already established microelectronics technologies: Germanium is already used in current chip architectures and the temperatures required for heterostructure formation are compatible with well-established semiconductor processing schemes. The novel structures not only have theoretically interesting quantum properties, but also opens up a technologically very realistic possibility of enabling further novel and energy-saving devices.
Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
Al–Ge–Al Nanowire Heterostructure: From Single-Hole Quantum Dot to Josephson Effect by Jovian Delaforce, Masiar Sistani, Roman B. G. Kramer, Minh A. Luong, Nicolas Roch, Walter M. Weber, Martien I. den Hertog, Eric Robin, Cecile Naud, Alois Lugstein, Olivier Buisson. Advanced Materials Volume 33, Issue 39 October 1, 2021 2101989 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.202101989 First published [online]: 08 August 2021
