Tag Archives: McMaster University

Collaborative research agreement (CRA) with McMaster University (Canada) for development of catheter coating

I don’t always do as good a job at covering the commercialization of emerging technologies as I’d like, so, this December 13, 2023 news item on Yahoo News was a welcome discovery,

Oakville, Ontario–(Newsfile Corp. – December 13, 2023) – FendX Technologies Inc. (CSE: FNDX) (OTCQB: FDXTF) (FSE: E8D) (the “Company” or “FendX“), a nanotechnology company developing surface protection coatings is pleased to announce it has entered into a Collaborative Research Agreement (“CRA“) dated December 12, 2023 with McMaster University (“McMaster“) which details the research and development plan to create a protective catheter coating using our nanotechnology licensed pursuant to the license agreement dated February 5, 2021, as amended, between the Company and McMaster.

Dr. Carolyn Myers, President and CEO of FendX, stated, “We are excited about the prospect of developing a coating for catheters using our nanotechnology which we believe will reduce catheter blockage caused by either blood clots or bacterial biofilms. Early work conducted at McMaster has demonstrated significant reduction in the adherence of both bacteria and blood which could potentially translate to reduced bacterial biofilm or blood clot formation. [emphasis mine] Our aim is to further this research to tackle the medical need to reduce catheter blockage rates, which can be costly and interfere with patient therapy. We anticipate the development of this coating formulation will also strengthen our overall intellectual property portfolio.”

The CRA outlines more fully the research and development work to be conducted by McMaster on behalf of FendX as well as a payment schedule for the maximum research funding requirements. The term of the CRA is for 24 months commencing on the effective date of December 1, 2023, unless terminated in accordance with the provisions of the CRA. In the first and second year, maximum research funding to McMaster will be $150,547 each year.

About FendX Technologies Inc.

FendX is a Canada-based nanotechnology company focused on developing products to make people’s lives safer by reducing the spread of pathogens. The Company is developing both film and spray products to protect surfaces from contamination. The lead product under development, REPELWRAP™ film, is a protective surface coating film that, due to its repelling properties, prevents the adhesion of pathogens and reduces their transmission on surfaces prone to contamination. The spray nanotechnology is a bifunctional spray coating being developed to reduce contamination on surfaces by repelling and killing pathogens. The Company is conducting research and development activities using its nanotechnology in collaboration with industry-leading partners, including McMaster University. The Company has an exclusive worldwide license to its technology and IP portfolio from McMaster, which encompass both film and spray coating nanotechnology formulations.

For more information, please visit https://fendxtech.com/ and the Company’s profile on SEDAR+ at www.sedarplus.ca.

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor the Market Regulator (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation, including with respect to: the plans of the Company; statements regarding the catheter coating development and anticipated benefits; the Company’s belief that the catheter coating could reduce catheter occlusions caused by either blood clots or bacterial biofilms; statements regarding strengthening the Company’s overall intellectual property portfolio; the Company’s belief that REPELWRAP™ will have applications in healthcare settings and other industries; and products under development and any pathogen reduction benefits related thereto. Although the Company believes that such statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts; they are generally, but not always, identified by the words “expects,” “plans,” “anticipates,” “believes,” “intends,” “estimates,” “projects,” “aims,” “potential,” “goal,” “objective,” “prospective,” and similar expressions, or that events or conditions “will,” “would,” “may,” “can,” “could” or “should” occur, or are those statements, which, by their nature, refer to future events. The Company cautions that forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs, estimates and opinions of the Company’s management on the date the statements are made and involve several risks and uncertainties. Consequently, there can be no assurances that such statements will prove to be accurate and that actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements.

Important factors that could cause future results to differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements include: product candidates only being in formulation/reformulation stages; limited operating history; research and development activities; dependence on collaborative partners, licensors and others; effect of general economic and political conditions; and other risk factors set forth in the Company’s public filings which are available on SEDAR+ at www.sedarplus.ca. Accordingly, the reader is urged to refer to the Company’s such filings for a more complete discussion of such risk factors and their potential effects. Except to the extent required by applicable securities laws and the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange, the Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements if management’s beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors should change.

FendX offers next to no information about their technology or the proposed work with McMaster as seen in this excerpt from the Our Technology webpage on the FendX website,

Our patent-pending licensed nanotechnology works by combining a hierarchical wrinkled molecular structure with chemical functionalization to create nano-surfaces with repelling properties that prevent adhesion of bacteria, viruses and liquids.

Inspired by the water-resistant surface of the lotus leaf

Our nanotechnology causes both high surface tension (e.g., water) and low surface tension (e.g., oil) liquids to form droplets when they come in contact with the nano-surface.

The repelling properties of our nano-surfaces prevents adhesion of bacteria and viruses.

We believe our technology will have numerous applications and opportunities in healthcare and other industries.

That’s it. No technical details and not a single research study is cited.

While McMaster University doesn’t seem to have issued any news releases about their joint research effort with FendX, there are two research papers that I’m reasonably confident are relevant. From the Didar Lab Publications webpage, here are links and citation for both papers,

An omniphobic lubricant-infused coating produced by chemical vapor deposition of hydrophobic organosilanes attenuates clotting on catheter surfaces by Maryam Badv, Iqbal H. Jaffer, Jeffrey I. Weitz & Tohid F. Didar. Scientific Reports volume 7, Article number: 11639 (2017) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-12149-1 Published: 14 September 2017

This paper is open access.

Highly Stable Hierarchically Structured All-Polymeric Lubricant-Infused Films Prevent Thrombosis and Repel Multidrug-Resistant Pathogens by Elisabet Afonso, Fereshteh Bayat, Liane Ladouceur, Shadman Khan, Aránzazu Martínez-Gómez, Jeffrey I. Weitz, Zeinab Hosseinidoust, Pilar Tiemblo, Nuria García, and Tohid F. Didar. CS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2022, 14, 48, 53535–53545 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.2c17309 Publication Date: November 22, 2022 Copyright © 2022 American Chemical Society

This paper is behind a paywall.

Canadian Forum on Innovation and Societal Impact launches at McMaster University on Oct. 12th and 13th 2022

The Canadian Science Policy Centre’s September 22, 2022 announcement (received via email) includes this nugget of information,

The Canadian Forum on Innovation and Societal Impact [CFSI] will launch in the Fall 2022 with a first series of catalyst roundtables, deliberative dialogues and concertation workshops at McMaster University on October 12th and 13th,  2022. A joint-venture of the Canadian Science Policy Centre and The/La Collaborative, CFISI will convene social research and innovation stakeholders across sectors with the purpose of exploring alignment on policies and practices that leverage impact-first training and knowledge mobilisation in the Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts (SSHA) to foster innovation and build capacity in the social and municipal sectors. For more information, please click here.

I went to the CFSI webpage on the McMaster University website and found this,

The objective of the inaugural meeting is to understand how universities can better utilize and mobilize social and human knowledge into their communities, in particular into social sector organizations (non-profit, charities, funders) and municipal governments. What are the knowledge gaps? What are the needs and priorities in social sector organizations and the social innovation ecosystem? Which approaches to cross-sectoral and interdisciplinary collaborations can help address the biggest social and policy challenges?

The event is by invitation only [emphasis mine], and will proceed under the Chatham House rules. Sessions will leverage strategic visioning and deliberative dialogue to create stakeholder alignment and deliver a first series of action plans.

Participants will bring individual and organisational perspectives on a range issues including:

The nature and structure of innovation in the social sector.

Campus-community relationship and the challenges of knowledge mobilisation in social innovation ecosystem

The role of municipal governments in fostering innovation in the social space

Needs around policy innovation and talent in the social and municipal sector.

Contribution of Indigenous knowledge to social sector, local policy making

Who are the Participants?

Social sector organisation leaders

Social Innovation stakeholders

Research and higher education policy stakeholders

Decision- and policy-makers from municipal governments

Social and human sciences researchers

Concertation and Action Plan

The event is intended as a concertation and consultation. Sense-making workshops and consultative roundtables will aim at building consensus around key concepts and best-practices. Catalysts panels and reporting sessions will aim to establish a shared vision for an action plan around cross-sectoral strategies for innovation in the social impact ecosystem.

The genuinely cross-sectoral setting will provide an opportunity to learn from a variety of perspectives in an effort to reduce barriers to knowledge-driven collaboration and partnerships and increase the social capital of research institutions to streamline impact.

This is where it got interesting,

SUBMIT A LETTER OF INTENT TO REQUEST PARTICIPATION

The event is by invitation only and will proceed under the Chatham House rules. Those with a demonstrated interest in the theme of the Forum can submit a letter of intent to request participation in the meeting. The number of places is limited.

Please fill out the participation request FORM and return it to:

forum22@mcmaster.ca

The deadline for submitting the form is September 15th [2022; emphases mine].
Applicants will be notified shortly thereafter.

It’s a bit late but perhaps there’s a little space left for more participants?

I’m not able to confirm whether this event is in person (in Hamilton, Ontario), online, or hybrid (in person and online).

Inhaled vaccine delivers broad protection against SARS-CoV-2

The results described in the news release are from a preclinical study, meaning they tested the vaccine on animals. The results were promising enough that there is a phase 1 clinical trial taking place now. On to the news.

A February 9, 2022 news item on ScienceDaily features some exciting research news,

Scientists at McMaster University who have developed an inhaled form of COVID vaccine have confirmed it can provide broad, long-lasting protection against the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 and variants of concern.

The research, recently published in the journal Cell, reveals the immune mechanisms and significant benefits of vaccines being delivered directly into the respiratory tract, rather than by traditional injection.

A February 9, 2022 McMaster University news release (also on EurekAlert) by Michelle Donovan, which originated the news item, provides more detail about the work,

Because inhaled vaccines target the lungs and upper airways where respiratory viruses first enter the body, they are far more effective at inducing a protective immune response, the researchers report.

The reported preclinical study, which was conducted on animal models, has provided the critical proof of concept to enable a Phase 1 clinical trial that is currently under way to evaluate inhaled aerosol vaccines in healthy adults who had already received two doses of a COVID mRNA vaccine.

The tested COVID vaccine strategy was built upon a robust tuberculosis vaccine research program established by Zhou Xing, a co-lead author of the new study and a professor at the McMaster Immunology Research Centre and Department of Medicine. 

“What we’ve discovered from many years’ research is that the vaccine delivered into the lung induces all-around protective respiratory mucosal immunity, a property that the injected vaccine is lacking,” Xing says.

Currently authorized COVID vaccines are all injected.   

“We wanted, first and foremost, to design a vaccine that would work well against any variant,” explains the study’s co-lead author Matthew Miller, an associate professor at McMaster’s Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research.

The McMaster COVID vaccine represents one of only a handful developed in Canada. The urgent work is a critical mission of Canada’s Global Nexus for Pandemics and Biological Threats, which is based at McMaster.

Researchers compared two types of adenovirus platforms for the vaccine. The viruses serve as vectors that can deliver vaccine directly to the lungs without causing illness themselves.

“We can remain ahead of the virus with our vaccine strategy,” says Miller. “Current vaccines are limited because they will need to be updated and will always be chasing the virus.”

Both types of the new McMaster vaccine are effective against highly transmissible variants because they are designed to target three parts of the virus, including two that are highly conserved among coronaviruses and do not mutate as quickly as spike. All COVID vaccines currently approved in Canada target only the spike protein, which has shown a remarkable ability to mutate.

“This vaccine might also provide pre-emptive protection against a future pandemic, and that’s really important because as we’ve seen during this pandemic – and as we saw in 2009 with the swine flu – even when we are able to rapidly make a vaccine for a pandemic virus, it’s already way too late. Millions of people died, even though we were able to make a vaccine in record time,” says Miller.

“We have revealed in our report that besides neutralizing antibodies and T cell immunity, the vaccine delivered into the lungs stimulates a unique form of immunity known as trained innate immunity, which is able to provide very broad protection against many lung pathogens besides SARS-CoV-2,” Xing adds. 

In additional to being needle and pain-free, an inhaled vaccine is so efficient at targeting the lungs and upper airways that it can achieve maximum protection with a small fraction of the dose of current vaccines – possibly as little as 1 per cent – meaning a single batch of vaccine could go 100 times further, the researchers say.

“This pandemic has shown us that vaccine supply can be a huge challenge.  Demonstrating that this alternative delivery method can significantly extend vaccine supply could be a game changer, particularly in a pandemic setting,” says Brian Lichty, an associate professor in the Department of Medicine who co-led the preclinical study along with Miller, Xing and the senior trainees Sam Afkhami and Michael D’Agostino, who are the joint first authors of the study.

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

Respiratory mucosal delivery of next-generation COVID-19 vaccine provides robust protection against both ancestral and variant strains of SARS-CoV-2 by Sam Afkhami, Michael R. D’Agostino, Ali Zhang, Hannah D. Stacey, Art Marzok, Alisha Kang, Ramandeep Singh, Jegarubee Bavananthasivam, Gluke Ye, Xiangqian Luo, Fuan Wang, Jann C. Ang, Anna Zganiacz, Uma Sankar, Natallia Kazhdan, Joshua F.E. Koenig, Allyssa Phelps, Steven F. Gameiro, Shangguo Tang, Manel Jordana, Yonghong Wan, Karen L. Mossman, Mangalakumari Jeyanathan, Amy Gillgrass, Maria Fe C. Medina, Fiona Smaill, Brian D. Lichty, Matthew S. Miller, Zhou Xing. Cell, 2022; DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2022.02.005

This is a ‘pre-proof’ journal paper. It is open access. However, from the PDF of the article, there is this statement from the journal publishers,

This is a PDF file of an article that has undergone enhancements after acceptance, such as the addition of a cover page and metadata, and formatting for readability, but it is not yet the definitive version of record. This version will undergo additional copyediting, typesetting and review before it is published in its final form, but we are providing this version to give early visibility of the article. Please note that, during the production process, errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc.

In short, reader beware!

A better quality of cultivated meat from McMaster University?

This could be a bit stomach-churning for some folks.

Researchers at Canada’s McMaster University have developed and are commercializing a technique for cultivated meat (the first experiment involved mouse meat). (You could call it vat-grown meat.) A January 19, 2021 news item on phys.org makes the announcement (Note: Links have been removed),

McMaster researchers have developed a new form of cultivated meat using a method that promises more natural flavor and texture than other alternatives to traditional meat from animals.

Researchers Ravi Selvaganapathy and Alireza Shahin-Shamsabadi, both of the university’s School of Biomedical Engineering, have devised a way to make meat by stacking thin sheets of cultivated muscle and fat cells grown together in a lab setting. The technique is adapted from a method used to grow tissue for human transplants.

A January 19, 2021 McMaster University news release (also on EurekAlert) by Wade Hemsworth, which originated the news item, offers more details,

The sheets of living cells, each about the thickness of a sheet of printer paper, are first grown in culture and then concentrated on growth plates before being peeled off and stacked or folded together. The sheets naturally bond to one another before the cells die.

The layers can be stacked into a solid piece of any thickness, Selvaganapathy says, and “tuned” to replicate the fat content and marbling of any cut of meat – an advantage over other alternatives.

“We are creating slabs of meat,” he says. “Consumers will be able to buy meat with whatever percentage of fat they like – just like they do with milk.”

As they describe in the journal Cells Tissues Organs, the researchers proved the concept by making meat from available lines of mouse cells. Though they did not eat the mouse meat described in the research paper, they later made and cooked a sample of meat they created from rabbit cells.

“It felt and tasted just like meat,” says Selvaganapathy.

There is no reason to think the same technology would not work for growing beef, pork or chicken, and the model would lend itself well to large-scale production, Selvaganapathy says.

The researchers were inspired by the meat-supply crisis in which worldwide demand is growing while current meat consumption is straining land and water resources and generating troubling levels of greenhouse gases.

“Meat production right now is not sustainable,” Selvaganapathy says. “There has to be an alternative way of creating meat.”

Producing viable meat without raising and harvesting animals would be far more sustainable, more sanitary and far less wasteful, the researchers point out. While other forms of cultured meat have previously been developed, the McMaster researchers believe theirs has the best potential for creating products consumers will accept, enjoy and afford.

The researchers have formed a start-up company to begin commercializing the technology.

The researchers have included a picture of the ‘meat’,

Caption: A sample of meat cultivated by researchers at Canada’s McMaster University, using cells from mice. Credit: McMaster University

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

Engineering Murine Adipocytes and Skeletal Muscle Cells in Meat-like Constructs Using Self-Assembled Layer-by-Layer Biofabrication: A Platform for Development of Cultivated Meat by Alireza Shahin-Shamsabadi and P. R. (Ravi) Selvaganapathy. Cells Tissues Organs (2021). DOI: 10.1159/000511764

This paper is behind a paywall.

Replacing nanotechnology-enabled oil spill solutions with dog fur?

Coincidentally or not, this research from Australia was announced a little more than a month after reports of a major oil spill in the Russian Arctic. A July 10, 2020 news item on phys.org announces a new technology for mopping up oil spills (Note: Links have been removed),

Oil spill disasters on land cause long-term damage for communities and the natural environment, polluting soils and sediments and contaminating groundwater.

Current methods using synthetic sorbent materials can be effective for cleaning up oil spills, but these materials are often expensive and generate large volumes of non-biodegradable plastic wastes. Now the first comparison of natural-origin sorbent materials for land-based oil spills, including peat moss, recycled human hair, and dog fur, shows that sustainable, cheaper and biodegradable options can be developed.

The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) project found that dog fur and human hair products—recycled from salon wastes and dog groomers—can be just as good as synthetic fabrics at cleaning up crude oil spills on hard land surfaces like highway roads, pavement, and sealed concrete floors. Polypropylene, a plastic, is a widely-used fabric used to clean up oil spills in aquatic environments.

A July 9, 2020 Univesity of Technology Sydney press release on EurekAlert completes the story,

“Dog fur in particular was surprisingly good at oil spill clean-up, and felted mats from human hair and fur were very easy to apply and remove from the spills.” lead author of the study, UTS Environmental Scientist Dr Megan Murray, said. Dr Murray investigates environmentally-friendly solutions for contamination and leads The Phyto Lab research group at UTS School of Life Sciences.

“This is a very exciting finding for land managers who respond to spilled oil from trucks, storage tanks, or leaking oil pipelines. All of these land scenarios can be treated effectively with sustainable-origin sorbents,” she said.

The sorbents tested included two commercially-available products, propylene and loose peat moss, as well as sustainable-origin prototypes including felted mats made of dog fur and human hair. Prototype oil-spill sorbent booms filled with dog fur and human hair were also tested. Crude oil was used to replicate an oil spill. The results of the study are published in Environments.

The research team simulated three types of land surfaces; non-porous hard surfaces, semi-porous surfaces, and sand, to recreate common oil-spill scenarios.

“We found that loose peat moss is not as effective at cleaning up oil spills on land compared to dog fur and hair products, and it is not useful at all for sandy environments.” Dr Murray said.

“Based on this research, we recommend peat moss is no longer used for this purpose. Given that peat moss is a limited resource and harvesting it requires degrading wetland ecosystems, we think this is a very important finding.” she said.

The research concluded that, for now, sandy environments like coastal beaches can still benefit from the use of polypropylene sorbents, but further exploration of sustainable-origin sorbents is planned.

The researchers say that future applications from the research include investigating felted mats of sustainable-origin sorbents for river bank stabilisation, [emphases mine] as well as the removal of pollutants from flowing polluted waters, similar to existing membrane technology.

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

Decontaminating Terrestrial Oil Spills: A Comparative Assessment of Dog Fur, Human Hair, Peat Moss and Polypropylene Sorbents by Megan L. Murray, Soeren M. Poulsen and Brad R. Murray. Environments 2020, 7(7), 52; DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/environments7070052 Published: 8 July 2020 (This article belongs to the Special Issue Pollution Prevention/Environmental Sustainability for Industry)

This paper is open access.

As for the Russian oil spill

A June 4, 2020 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) news online article outlines the situation regarding the oil spill and the steps being taken to deal with it,

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has declared a state of emergency after 20,000 tonnes of diesel oil leaked into a river within the Arctic Circle.

The spill happened when a fuel tank at a power plant near the Siberian city of Norilsk collapsed last Friday [May 29, 2020].

The power plant’s director Vyacheslav Starostin has been taken into custody until 31 July, but not yet charged.

The plant is owned by a subsidiary of Norilsk Nickel, which is the world’s leading nickel and palladium producer.

The Russian Investigative Committee (SK) has launched a criminal case over the pollution and alleged negligence, as there was reportedly a two-day delay in informing the Moscow authorities about the spill.

Ground subsidence beneath the fuel storage tanks is believed to have caused the spill. Arctic permafrost has been melting in exceptionally warm weather [more information about the weather towards the end of this posting] for this time of year.

Russian Minister for Emergencies Yevgeny Zinichev told Mr Putin that the Norilsk plant had spent two days trying to contain the spill, before alerting his ministry.

The leaked oil drifted some 12km (7.5 miles) from the accident site, turning long stretches of the Ambarnaya river crimson red.

The leaked diesel oil drifted some 12km (7.5 miles) from the site of the accident [downloaded from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52915807]

Getting back to the June 4, 2020 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) news online article,

“Why did government agencies only find out about this two days [May 29, 2020?) after the fact?” he asked the subsidiary’s chief, Sergei Lipin. “Are we going to learn about emergency situations from social media?”

The region’s governor, Alexander Uss, had earlier told President Putin that he became aware of the oil spill on Sunday [May 31, 2020] after “alarming information appeared in social media”.

The spill has contaminated a 350 sq km (135 sq mile) area, state media report.

The state of emergency means extra forces are going to the area to assist with the clean-up operation.

The accident is believed to be the second largest in modern Russian history in terms of volume, an expert from the World Wildlife Fund, Alexei Knizhnikov, told the AFP [Agence France Presse] news agency.

The incident has prompted stark warnings from environmental groups, who say the scale of the spill and geography of the river mean it will be difficult to clean up.

Greenpeace has compared it to the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska.

Oleg Mitvol, former deputy head of Russia’s environmental watchdog Rosprirodnadzor, said there had “never been such an accident in the Arctic zone”.

He said the clean-up could cost 100bn roubles (£1.2bn; $1.5bn) and take between five and 10 years.

Minister of Natural Resources Dmitry Kobylkin warned against trying to burn off such a vast quantity of fuel oil.

He proposed trying to dilute the oil with reagents. Only the emergencies ministry with military support could deal with the pollution, he said.

Barges with booms could not contain the slick because the Ambarnaya river was too shallow, he warned.

He suggested pumping the oil on to the adjacent tundra, although President Putin added: “The soil there is probably saturated [with oil] already.”

An update of the situation can be found in a July 8, 2020 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) article (issued by Thomson Reuters),

Russia’s environmental watchdog has asked a power subsidiary of Russian mining giant Norilsk Nickel to pay almost 148 billion rubles, or $2.8 billion Cdn, in damages over an Arctic fuel spill in Siberia.

Rosprirodnadzor, the Federal Service for Supervision of Use of Natural Resources, said in a statement on Monday [July 8, 2020] that it had already sent a request for “voluntary compensation” to the subsidiary, NTEK, after calculating the damage caused by the May 29 [2020] fuel spill.

Norilsk Nickel’s Moscow-listed shares fell by 3 per cent after the watchdog’s statement.

A fuel tank at the power plant lost pressure and released 21,000 tonnes of diesel into rivers and subsoil near the city of Norilsk, 2,900 kilometres northeast of Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin subsequently declared a state of emergency in the region, and investigators detained three staff at the power plant.

Norilsk, a remote city of 180,000 people situated 300 kilometres inside the Arctic Circle, is built around Norilsk Nickel, the world’s leading nickel and palladium producer, and has a reputation for its pollution.

Rosprirodnadzor said the damages included the cost for nearby water bodies, estimated at 147.05 billion rubles, $2.8 billion Cdn, and for subsoil, estimated at 738.62 million roubles, $14 million Cdn.

I can’t find any August 2020 updates for the oil spill situation in Russia. (Note: There is now an oil spill in a ecologically sensitive region near Mauritius; see August 13, 2020 news item on CBC news online website.)

Exceptionally warm weather

The oil spill isn’t the only problem in the Arctic.Here’s more from a June 23, 2020 article by Matt Simon for Wired magazine (Note: A link has been removed),

On Saturday [June 20, 2020], the residents of Verkhoyansk, Russia, marked the first day of summer with 100 degree Fahrenheit temperatures. Not that they could enjoy it, really, as Verkhoyansk is in Siberia, hundreds of miles from the nearest beach. That’s much, much hotter than towns inside the Arctic Circle usually get. That 100 degrees appears to be a record, well above the average June high temperature of 68 degrees. Yet it’s likely the people of Verkhoyansk will see that record broken again in their lifetimes: The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet—if not faster—creating ecological chaos for the plants and animals that populate the north.

“The events over the weekend—in the last few weeks, really—with the heatwave in Siberia, all are unprecedented in terms of the magnitude of the extremes in temperature,” says Sophie Wilkinson, a wildfire scientist at McMaster University who studies northern peat fires, which themselves have grown unusually frequent in recent years as temperatures climb.

The Arctic’s extreme warming, known as Arctic amplification or polar amplification, may be due to three factors. One, the region’s reflectivity, or albedo—how much light it bounces back into space—is changing as the world warms. “What we’ve been seeing over the last 30 years is some relatively dramatic declines in sea ice in the summertime,” says University of Edinburgh global change ecologist Isla Myers-Smith, who studies the Arctic.

Since ice is white, it reflects the sun’s energy, something you’re already probably familiar with when it comes to staying cool in the summer. If you had to pick the color of T-shirt to wear when going hiking on a hot day, she says, “most of us would pick the white T-shirt, because that’s going to reflect the sun’s heat off of our back.” Similarly, Myers-Smith says, “If the sea ice melts in the Arctic, that will remove that white surface off of the ocean, and what will be exposed is this darker ocean surface that will absorb more of the sun’s heat.”

If you’re interested in the environmental consequences of the warming of the Arctic, this is a very good article.

Finishing up, I wish the clean-up crews (in Russia and near Mauritius) all the best as they work in the midst of a pandemic, as well as, an environmental disaster (both the oil spill and the warming of the Arctic).

Get your curcumin delivered by nanoparticles

Curcumin is a constituent of turmeric (used in cooking and as a remedy in Ayurvedic medicine). It’s been a while since I’ve stumbled across a curcumin story (scientists have been trying to find a way to exploit its therapeutic qualities for years). The latest news comes from Australia, which is a little unexpected as most of the ‘curcumin research stories’ previously on this blog have come from India.

A March 5, 2020 news item on ScienceDaily announces new research on curcumin therapeutic possibilities,

For years, curry lovers have sworn by the anti-inflammatory properties of turmeric, but its active compound, curcumin, has long frustrated scientists hoping to validate these claims with clinical studies.

The failure of the body to easily absorb curcumin has been a thorn in the side of medical researchers seeking scientific proof that curcumin can successfully treat cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s and many other chronic health conditions.

Now, researchers from the University of South Australia (UniSA), McMaster University in Canada and Texas A&M University have shown that curcumin can be delivered effectively into human cells via tiny nanoparticles.

Over three years ago on December 2, 2016, researchers from McMaster University made this video about Alzheimer’s and curcumin research available,

From the McMaster University, Centre for Health Economics & Policy Analysis, December 2, 2016 news webpage,

This video investigates the therapeutic potential of curcumin, a substance found in turmeric, to prevent Alzheimer’s disease. The information presented in this video has integrated research including in vitro studies that aimed to observe the influence of curcumin based interventions in the neuropathology of Alzheimer’s disease. From mechanisms for neurogenesis to the disintegration of beta amyloid plaques, this video highlights that there are many pathways by which curcumin can elicit its effects. However, there are currently not enough human trials to support the mouse-model studies for turmeric’s ability to prevent Alzheimer’s.

Back to the latest work, a March 5, 2020 UniSA press release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, describes curcumin research that focuses on STI’s (sexually transmitted infections), also mentioned is earlier work on Alzheimer’s Disease,

Sanjay Garg, a professor of pharmaceutical science at UniSA, and his colleague Dr Ankit Parikh are part of an international team that has developed a nano formulation which changes curcumin’s behaviour to increase its oral bioavailability by 117 per cent.

The researchers have shown in animal experiments that nanoparticles containing curcumin not only prevents cognitive deterioration but also reverses the damage. This finding paves the way for clinical development trials for Alzheimer’s.

Co-author Professor Xin-Fu Zhou, a UniSA neuroscientist, says the new formulation offers a potential solution for Alzheimer’s disease.

“Curcumin is a compound that suppresses oxidative stress and inflammation, both key pathological factors for Alzheimer’s, and it also helps remove amyloid plaques, small fragments of protein that clump together in the brains of Alzheimer disease patients,” Prof Zhou says.

The same delivery method is now being tested to show that curcumin can also prevent the spread of genital herpes.

“To treat genital herpes (HSV-2) you need a form of curcumin that is better absorbed, which is why it needs to be encapsulated in a nano formulation,” Prof Garg says.

“Curcumin can stop the genital herpes virus, it helps in reducing the inflammation and makes it less susceptible to HIV and other STIs,” Prof Garg says.

Women are biologically more vulnerable to genital herpes as bacterial and viral infections in the female genital tract (FGT) impair the mucosal barrier. Curcumin, however, can minimize genital inflammation and control against HSV-2 infection, which would assist in the prevention of HIV infection in the FGT.

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

Curcumin Can Decrease Tissue Inflammation and the Severity of HSV-2 Infection in the Female Reproductive Mucosa by Danielle Vitali, Puja Bagri, Jocelyn M. Wessels, Meenakshi Arora, Raghu Ganugula, Ankit Parikh, Talveer Mandur, Allison Felker, Sanjay Garg, M.N.V. Ravi Kumar, and Charu Kaushic. Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2020, 21(1), 337; DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms21010337 Published: 4 January 2020

This is an open access paper and is part of the journal’s Special Issue Curcumin in Health and Disease: New Knowledge)

For anyone interested in the earlier work on Alzheimer’s Disease, here are links to two papers that were published in 2018 by a team led by Sanjay Garg,

Curcumin-loaded self-nanomicellizing solid dispersion system: part I: development, optimization, characterization, and oral bioavailability by Ankit Parikh, Krishna Kathawala, Yunmei Song, Xin-Fu Zhou & Sanjay Garg. Drug Delivery and Translational Research volume 8, pages 1389–1405 (2018) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13346-018-0543-3 Issue Date: October 2018

Curcumin-loaded self-nanomicellizing solid dispersion system: part II: in vivo safety and efficacy assessment against behavior deficit in Alzheimer disease by Ankit Parikh, Krishna Kathawala, Jintao Li, Chi Chen, Zhengnan Shan, Xia Cao, Xin-Fu Zhou & Sanjay Garg. Drug Delivery and Translational Research volume 8, pages 1406–1420 (2018) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13346-018-0570-0 Issue Date: October 2018

Neither of these paper is open access but you can gain access by contacting sanjay.garg@unisa.edu.au

This looks like exciting work, bearing in mind the latest curcumin research on an STI was performed on female mice. As for the Alzheimer’s papers, that curcumin research was also performed on animals, presumably mice. As the press release noted, “This finding paves the way for clinical development trials for Alzheimer’s.” Oddly, there’s no mention of clinical trials for STI’s.

Large Interactive Virtual Environment Laboratory (LIVELab) located in McMaster University’s Institute for Music & the Mind (MIMM) and the MetaCreation Lab at Simon Fraser University

Both of these bits have a music focus but they represent two entirely different science-based approaches to that form of art and one is solely about the music and the other is included as one of the art-making processes being investigated..

Large Interactive Virtual Environment Laboratory (LIVELab) at McMaster University

Laurel Trainor and Dan J. Bosnyak both of McMaster University (Ontario, Canada) have written an October 27, 2019 essay about the LiveLab and their work for The Conversation website (Note: Links have been removed),

The Large Interactive Virtual Environment Laboratory (LIVELab) at McMaster University is a research concert hall. It functions as both a high-tech laboratory and theatre, opening up tremendous opportunities for research and investigation.

As the only facility of its kind in the world, the LIVELab is a 106-seat concert hall equipped with dozens of microphones, speakers and sensors to measure brain responses, physiological responses such as heart rate, breathing rates, perspiration and movements in multiple musicians and audience members at the same time.

Engineers, psychologists and clinician-researchers from many disciplines work alongside musicians, media artists and industry to study performance, perception, neural processing and human interaction.

In the LIVELab, acoustics are digitally controlled so the experience can change instantly from extremely silent with almost no reverberation to a noisy restaurant to a subway platform or to the acoustics of Carnegie Hall.

Real-time physiological data such as heart rate can be synchronized with data from other systems such as motion capture, and monitored and recorded from both performers and audience members. The result is that the reams of data that can now be collected in a few hours in the LIVELab used to take weeks or months to collect in a traditional lab. And having measurements of multiple people simultaneously is pushing forward our understanding of real-time human interactions.

Consider the implications of how music might help people with Parkinson’s disease to walk more smoothly or children with dyslexia to read better.

[…] area of ongoing research is the effectiveness of hearing aids. By the age of 60, nearly 49 per cent of people will suffer from some hearing loss. People who wear hearing aids are often frustrated when listening to music because the hearing aids distort the sound and cannot deal with the dynamic range of the music.

The LIVELab is working with the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra to solve this problem. During a recent concert, researchers evaluated new ways of delivering sound directly to participants’ hearing aids to enhance sounds.

Researchers hope new technologies can not only increase live musical enjoyment but alleviate the social isolation caused by hearing loss.

Imagine the possibilities for understanding music and sound: How it might help to improve cognitive decline, manage social performance anxiety, help children with developmental disorders, aid in treatment of depression or keep the mind focused. Every time we conceive and design a study, we think of new possibilities.

The essay also includes an embedded 12 min. video about LIVELab and details about studies conducted on musicians and live audiences. Apparently, audiences experience live performance differently than recorded performances and musicians use body sway to create cohesive performances. You can find the McMaster Institute for Music & the Mind here and McMaster’s LIVELab here.

Capturing the motions of a string quartet performance. Laurel Trainor, Author provided [McMaster University]

Metacreation Lab at Simon Fraser University (SFU)

I just recently discovered that there’s a Metacreation Lab at Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, Canada), which on its homepage has this ” Metacreation is the idea of endowing machines with creative behavior.” Here’s more from the homepage,

As the contemporary approach to generative art, Metacreation involves using tools and techniques from artificial intelligence, artificial life, and machine learning to develop software that partially or completely automates creative tasks. Through the collaboration between scientists, experts in artificial intelligence, cognitive sciences, designers and artists, the Metacreation Lab for Creative AI is at the forefront of the development of generative systems, be they embedded in interactive experiences or integrated into current creative software. Scientific research in the Metacreation Lab explores how various creative tasks can be automated and enriched. These tasks include music composition [emphasis mine], sound design, video editing, audio/visual effect generation, 3D animation, choreography, and video game design.

Besides scientific research, the team designs interactive and generative artworks that build upon the algorithms and research developed in the Lab. This work often challenges the social and cultural discourse on AI.

Much to my surprise I received the Metacreation Lab’s inaugural email newsletter (received via email on Friday, November 15, 2019),

Greetings,

We decided to start a mailing list for disseminating news, updates, and announcements regarding generative art, creative AI and New Media. In this newsletter: 

  1. ISEA 2020: The International Symposium on Electronic Art. ISEA return to Montreal, check the CFP bellow and contribute!
  2. ISEA 2015: A transcription of Sara Diamond’s keynote address “Action Agenda: Vancouver’s Prescient Media Arts” is now available for download. 
  3. Brain Art, the book: we are happy to announce the release of the first comprehensive volume on Brain Art. Edited by Anton Nijholt, and published by Springer.

Here are more details from the newsletter,

ISEA2020 – 26th International Symposium on Electronic Arts

Montreal, September 24, 2019
Montreal Digital Spring (Printemps numérique) is launching a call for participation as part of ISEA2020 / MTL connect to be held from May 19 to 24, 2020 in Montreal, Canada. Founded in 1990, ISEA is one of the world’s most prominent international arts and technology events, bringing together scholarly, artistic, and scientific domains in an interdisciplinary discussion and showcase of creative productions applying new technologies in art, interactivity, and electronic and digital media. For 2020, ISEA Montreal turns towards the theme of sentience.

ISEA2020 will be fully dedicated to examining the resurgence of sentience—feeling-sensing-making sense—in recent art and design, media studies, science and technology studies, philosophy, anthropology, history of science and the natural scientific realm—notably biology, neuroscience and computing. We ask: why sentience? Why and how does sentience matter? Why have artists and scholars become interested in sensing and feeling beyond, with and around our strictly human bodies and selves? Why has this notion been brought to the fore in an array of disciplines in the 21st century?
CALL FOR PARTICIPATION: WHY SENTIENCE? ISEA2020 invites artists, designers, scholars, researchers, innovators and creators to participate in the various activities deployed from May 19 to 24, 2020. To complete an application, please fill in the forms and follow the instructions.

The final submissions deadline is NOVEMBER 25, 2019. Submit your application for WORKSHOP and TUTORIAL Submit your application for ARTISTIC WORK Submit your application for FULL / SHORT PAPER Submit your application for PANEL Submit your application for POSTER Submit your application for ARTIST TALK Submit your application for INSTITUTIONAL PRESENTATION
Find Out More
You can apply for several categories. All profiles are welcome. Notifications of acceptance will be sent around January 13, 2020.

Important: please note that the Call for participation for MTL connect is not yet launched, but you can also apply to participate in the programming of the other Pavilions (4 other themes) when registrations are open (coming soon): mtlconnecte.ca/en TICKETS

Registration is now available to assist to ISEA2020 / MTL connect, from May 19 to 24, 2020. Book today your Full Pass and get the early-bird rate!
Buy Now

More from the newsletter,

ISEA 2015 was in Vancouver, Canada, and the proceedings and art catalog are still online. The news is that Sara Diamond released her 2015 keynote address as a paper: Action Agenda: Vancouver’s Prescient Media Arts. It is never too late so we thought we would let you know about this great read. See The 2015 Proceedings Here

The last item from the inaugural newsletter,

The first book that surveys how brain activity can be monitored and manipulated for artistic purposes, with contributions by interactive media artists, brain-computer interface researchers, and neuroscientists. View the Book Here

As per the Leonardo review from Cristina Albu:

“Another seminal contribution of the volume is the presentation of multiple taxonomies of “brain art,” which can help art critics develop better criteria for assessing this genre. Mirjana Prpa and Philippe Pasquier’s meticulous classification shows how diverse such works have become as artists consider a whole range of variables of neurofeedback.” Read the Review

For anyone not familiar with the ‘Leonardo’ cited in the above, it’s Leonardo; the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology.

Should this kind of information excite and motivate you do start metacreating, you can get in touch with the lab,

Our mailing address is:
Metacreation Lab for Creative AI
School of Interactive Arts & Technology
Simon Fraser University
250-13450 102 Ave.
Surrey, BC V3T 0A3
Web: http://metacreation.net/
Email: metacreation_admin (at) sfu (dot) ca

September 2019’s science’ish’ events in Toronto and Vancouver (Canada)

There are movies, plays, a multimedia installation experience all in Vancouver, and the ‘CHAOSMOSIS mAchInesexhibition/performance/discussion/panel/in-situ experiments/art/ science/ techne/ philosophy’ event in Toronto. But first, there’s a a Vancouver talk about engaging scientists in the upcoming federal election. .

Science in the Age of Misinformation (and the upcoming federal election) in Vancouver

Dr. Katie Gibbs, co-founder and executive director of Evidence for Democracy, will be giving a talk today (Sept. 4, 2019) at the University of British Columbia (UBC; Vancouver). From the Eventbrite webpage for Science in the Age of Misinformation,

Science in the Age of Misinformation, with Katie Gibbs, Evidence for Democracy
In the lead up to the federal election, it is more important than ever to understand the role that researchers play in shaping policy. Join us in this special Policy in Practice event with Dr. Katie Gibbs, Executive Director of Evidence for Democracy, Canada’s leading, national, non-partisan, and not-for-profit organization promoting science and the transparent use of evidence in government decision making. A Musqueam land acknowledgement, welcome remarks and moderation of this event will be provided by MPPGA students Joshua Tafel, and Chengkun Lv.

Wednesday, September 4, 2019
12:30 pm – 1:50 pm (Doors will open at noon)
Liu Institute for Global Issues – xʷθəθiqətəm (Place of Many Trees), 1st floor
Pizza will be provided starting at noon on first come, first serve basis. Please RSVP.

What role do researchers play in a political environment that is increasingly polarized and influenced by misinformation? Dr. Katie Gibbs, Executive Director of Evidence for Democracy, will give an overview of the current state of science integrity and science policy in Canada highlighting progress made over the past four years and what this means in a context of growing anti-expert movements in Canada and around the world. Dr. Gibbs will share concrete ways for researchers to engage heading into a critical federal election [emphasis mine], and how they can have lasting policy impact.

Bio: Katie Gibbs is a scientist, organizer and advocate for science and evidence-based policies. While completing her Ph.D. at the University of Ottawa in Biology, she was one of the lead organizers of the ‘Death of Evidence’—one of the largest science rallies in Canadian history. Katie co-founded Evidence for Democracy, Canada’s leading, national, non-partisan, and not-for-profit organization promoting science and the transparent use of evidence in government decision making. Her ongoing success in advocating for the restoration of public science in Canada has made Katie a go-to resource for national and international media outlets including Science, The Guardian and the Globe and Mail.

Katie has also been involved in international efforts to increase evidence-based decision-making and advises science integrity movements in other countries and is a member of the Open Government Partnership Multi-stakeholder Forum.

Disclaimer: Please note that by registering via Eventbrite, your information will be stored on the Eventbrite server, which is located outside Canada. If you do not wish to use this service, please email Joelle.Lee@ubc.ca directly to register. Thank you.

Location
Liu Institute for Global Issues – Place of Many Trees
6476 NW Marine Drive
Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z2

Sadly I was not able to post the information about Dr. Gibbs’s more informal talk last night (Sept. 3, 2019) which was a special event with Café Scientifique but I do have a link to a website encouraging anyone who wants to help get science on the 2019 federal election agenda, Vote Science. P.S. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to post this in a more timely fashion.

Transmissions; a multimedia installation in Vancouver, September 6 -28, 2019

Here’s a description for the multimedia installation, Transmissions, in the August 28, 2019 Georgia Straight article by Janet Smith,

Lisa Jackson is a filmmaker, but she’s never allowed that job description to limit what she creates or where and how she screens her works.

The Anishinaabe artist’s breakout piece was last year’s haunting virtual-reality animation Biidaaban: First Light. In its eerie world, one that won a Canadian Screen Award, nature has overtaken a near-empty, future Toronto, with trees growing through cracks in the sidewalks, vines enveloping skyscrapers, and people commuting by canoe.

All that and more has brought her here, to Transmissions, a 6,000-square-foot, immersive film installation that invites visitors to wander through windy coastal forests, by hauntingly empty glass towers, into soundscapes of ancient languages, and more.

Through the labyrinthine multimedia work at SFU [Simon Fraser University] Woodward’s, Jackson asks big questions—about Earth’s future, about humanity’s relationship to it, and about time and Indigeneity.

Simultaneously, she mashes up not just disciplines like film and sculpture, but concepts of science, storytelling, and linguistics [emphasis mine].

“The tag lines I’m working with now are ‘the roots of meaning’ and ‘knitting the world together’,” she explains. “In western society, we tend to hive things off into ‘That’s culture. That’s science.’ But from an Indigenous point of view, it’s all connected.”

Transmissions is split into three parts, with what Jackson describes as a beginning, a middle, and an end. Like Biidaaban, it’s also visually stunning: the artist admits she’s playing with Hollywood spectacle.

Without giving too much away—a big part of the appeal of Jackson’s work is the sense of surprise—Vancouver audiences will first enter a 48-foot-long, six-foot-wide tunnel, surrounded by projections that morph from empty urban streets to a forest and a river. Further engulfing them is a soundscape that features strong winds, while black mirrors along the floor skew perspective and play with what’s above and below ground.

“You feel out of time and space,” says Jackson, who wants to challenge western society’s linear notions of minutes and hours. “I want the audience to have a physical response and an emotional response. To me, that gets closer to the Indigenous understanding. Because the Eurocentric way is more rational, where the intellectual is put ahead of everything else.”

Viewers then enter a room, where the highly collaborative Jackson has worked with artist Alan Storey, who’s helped create Plexiglas towers that look like the ghost high-rises of an abandoned city. (Storey has also designed other components of the installation.) As audience members wander through them on foot, projections make their shadows dance on the structures. Like Biidaaban, the section hints at a postapocalyptic or posthuman world. Jackson operates in an emerging realm of Indigenous futurism.

The words “science, storytelling, and linguistics” were emphasized due to a minor problem I have with terminology. Linguistics is defined as the scientific study of language combining elements from the natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. I wish either Jackson or Smith had discussed the scientific element of Transmissions at more length and perhaps reconnected linguistics to science along with the physics of time and space, as well as, storytelling, film, and sculpture. It would have been helpful since it’s my understanding, Transmissions is designed to showcase all of those connections and more in ways that may not be obvious to everyone. On the plus side, perhaps the tour, which is part of this installation experience includes that information.

I have a bit .more detail (including logistics for the tours) from the SFU Events webpage for Transmissions,

Transmissions
September 6 – September 28, 2019

The Roots of Meaning
World Premiere
September 6 – 28, 2019

Fei & Milton Wong Experimental Theatre
SFU Woodward’s, 149 West Hastings
Tuesday to Friday, 1pm to 7pm
Saturday and Sunday, 1pm to 5pm
FREE

In partnership with SFU Woodward’s Cultural Programs and produced by Electric Company Theatre and Violator Films.

TRANSMISSIONS is a three-part, 6000 square foot multimedia installation by award-winning Anishinaabe filmmaker and artist Lisa Jackson. It extends her investigation into the connections between land, language, and people, most recently with her virtual reality work Biidaaban: First Light.

Projections, sculpture, and film combine to create urban and natural landscapes that are eerie and beautiful, familiar and foreign, concrete and magical. Past and future collide in a visceral and thought-provoking journey that questions our current moment and opens up the complexity of thought systems embedded in Indigenous languages. Radically different from European languages, they embody sets of relationships to the land, to each other, and to time itself.

Transmissions invites us to untether from our day-to-day world and imagine a possible future. It provides a platform to activate and cross-pollinate knowledge systems, from science to storytelling, ecology to linguistics, art to commerce. To begin conversations, to listen deeply, to engage varied perspectives and expertise, to knit the world together and find our place within the circle of all our relations.

Produced in association with McMaster University Socrates Project, Moving Images Distribution and Cobalt Connects Creativity.

….

Admission:  Free Public Tours
Tuesday through Sunday
Reservations accepted from 1pm to 3pm.  Reservations are booked in 15 minute increments.  Individuals and groups up to 10 welcome.
Please email: sfuw@sfu.ca for more information or to book groups of 10 or more.

Her Story: Canadian Women Scientists (short film subjects); Sept. 13 – 14, 2019

Curiosity Collider, producer of art/science events in Vancouver, is presenting a film series featuring Canadian women scientists, according to an August 27 ,2019 press release (received via email),

Her Story: Canadian Women Scientists,” a film series dedicated to sharing the stories of Canadian women scientists, will premiere on September 13th and 14th at the Annex theatre. Four pairs of local filmmakers and Canadian women scientists collaborated to create 5-6 minute videos; for each film in the series, a scientist tells her own story, interwoven with the story of an inspiring Canadian women scientist who came before her in her field of study.

Produced by Vancouver-based non-profit organization Curiosity Collider, this project was developed to address the lack of storytelling videos showcasing remarkable women scientists and their work available via popular online platforms. “Her Story reveals the lives of women working in science,” said Larissa Blokhuis, curator for Her Story. “This project acts as a beacon to girls and women who want to see themselves in the scientific community. The intergenerational nature of the project highlights the fact that women have always worked in and contributed to science.

This sentiment was reflected by Samantha Baglot as well, a PhD student in neuroscience who collaborated with filmmaker/science cartoonist Armin Mortazavi in Her Story. “It is empowering to share stories of previous Canadian female scientists… it is empowering for myself as a current female scientist to learn about other stories of success, and gain perspective of how these women fought through various hardships and inequality.”

When asked why seeing better representation of women in scientific work is important, artist/filmmaker Michael Markowsky shared his thoughts. “It’s important for women — and their male allies — to question and push back against these perceived social norms, and to occupy space which rightfully belongs to them.” In fact, his wife just gave birth to their first child, a daughter; “It’s personally very important to me that she has strong female role models to look up to.” His film will feature collaborating scientist Jade Shiller, and Kathleen Conlan – who was named one of Canada’s greatest explorers by Canadian Geographic in 2015.

Other participating filmmakers and collaborating scientists include: Leslie Kennah (Filmmaker), Kimberly Girling (scientist, Research and Policy Director at Evidence for Democracy), Lucas Kavanagh and Jesse Lupini (Filmmakers, Avocado Video), and Jessica Pilarczyk (SFU Assistant Professor, Department of Earth Sciences).

This film series is supported by Westcoast Women in Engineering, Science and Technology (WWEST) and Eng.Cite. The venue for the events is provided by Vancouver Civic Theatres.

Event Information

Screening events will be hosted at Annex (823 Seymour St, Vancouver) on September 13th and 14th [2019]. Events will also include a talkback with filmmakers and collab scientists on the 13th, and a panel discussion on representations of women in science and culture on the 14th. Visit http://bit.ly/HerStoryTickets2019 for tickets ($14.99-19.99) and http://bit.ly/HerStoryWomenScientists for project information.

I have a film collage,

Courtesy: Curiosity Collider

I looks like they’re presenting films with a diversity of styles. You can find out more about Curiosity Collider and its various programmes and events here.

Vancouver Fringe Festival September 5 – 16, 2019

I found two plays in this year’s fringe festival programme that feature science in one way or another. Not having seen either play I make no guarantees as to content. First up is,

AI Love You
Exit Productions
London, UK
Playwright: Melanie Anne Ball
exitproductionsltd.com

Adam and April are a regular 20-something couple, very nearly blissfully generic, aside from one important detail: one of the pair is an “artificially intelligent companion.” Their joyful veneer has begun to crack and they need YOU to decide the future of their relationship. Is the freedom of a robot or the will of a human more important?
For AI Love You: 

***** “Magnificent, complex and beautifully addictive.” —Spy in the Stalls 
**** “Emotionally charged, deeply moving piece … I was left with goosebumps.” —West End Wilma 
**** —London City Nights 
Past shows: 
***** “The perfect show.” —Theatre Box

Intellectual / Intimate / Shocking / 14+ / 75 minutes

The first show is on Friday, September 6, 2019 at 5 pm. There are another five showings being presented. You can get tickets and more information here.

The second play is this,

Red Glimmer
Dusty Foot Productions
Vancouver, Canada
Written & Directed by Patricia Trinh

Abstract Sci-Fi dramedy. An interdimensional science experiment! Woman involuntarily takes an all inclusive internal trip after falling into a deep depression. A scientist is hired to navigate her neurological pathways from inside her mind – tackling the fact that humans cannot physically re-experience somatosensory sensation, like pain. What if that were the case for traumatic emotional pain? A creepy little girl is heard running by. What happens next?

Weird / Poetic / Intellectual / LGBTQ+ / Multicultural / 14+ / Sexual Content / 50 minutes

This show is created by an underrepresented Artist.
Written, directed, and produced by local theatre Artist Patricia Trinh, a Queer, Asian-Canadian female.

The first showing is tonight, September 5, 2019 at 8:30 pm. There are another six showings being presented. You can get tickets and more information here.

CHAOSMOSIS mAchInes exhibition/performance/discussion/panel/in-situ experiments/art/ science/ techne/ philosophy, 28 September, 2019 in Toronto

An Art/Sci Salon September 2, 2019 announcement (received via email), Note: I have made some formatting changes,

CHAOSMOSIS mAchInes

28 September, 2019 
7pm-11pm.
Helen-Gardiner-Phelan Theatre, 2nd floor
University of Toronto. 79 St. George St.

A playful co-presentation by the Topological Media Lab (Concordia U-Montreal) and The Digital Dramaturgy Labsquared (U of T-Toronto). This event is part of our collaboration with DDLsquared lab, the Topological Lab and the Leonardo LASER network


7pm-9.30pm, Installation-performances, 
9.30pm-11pm, Reception and cash bar, Front and Long Room, Ground floor


Description:
From responsive sculptures to atmosphere-creating machines; from sensorial machines to affective autonomous robots, Chaosmosis mAchInes is an eclectic series of installations and performances reflecting on today’s complex symbiotic relations between humans, machines and the environment.


This will be the first encounter between Montreal-based Topological Media Lab (Concordia University) and the Toronto-based Digital Dramaturgy Labsquared (U of T) to co-present current process-based and experimental works. Both labs have a history of notorious playfulness, conceptual abysmal depth, human-machine interplays, Art&Science speculations (what if?), collaborative messes, and a knack for A/I as in Artistic Intelligence.


Thanks to  Nina Czegledy (Laser series, Leonardo network) for inspiring the event and for initiating the collaboration


Visit our Facebook event page 
Register through Evenbrite


Supported by


Main sponsor: Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies, U of T
Sponsors: Computational Arts Program (York U.), Cognitive Science Program (U of T), Knowledge Media Design Institute (U of T), Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (IHPST)Fonds de Recherche du Québec – Société et culture (FRQSC)The Centre for Comparative Literature (U of T)
A collaboration between
Laser events, Leonardo networks – Science Artist, Nina Czegledy
ArtsSci Salon – Artistic Director, Roberta Buiani
Digital Dramaturgy Labsquared – Creative Research Director, Antje Budde
Topological Media Lab – Artistic-Research Co-directors, Michael Montanaro | Navid Navab


Project presentations will include:
Topological Media Lab
tangibleFlux φ plenumorphic ∴ chaosmosis
SPIEL
On Air
The Sound That Severs Now from Now
Cloud Chamber (2018) | Caustic Scenography, Responsive Cloud Formation
Liquid Light
Robots: Machine Menagerie
Phaze
Phase
Passing Light
Info projects
Digital Dramaturgy Labsquared
Btw Lf & Dth – interFACING disappearance
Info project

This is a very active September.

ETA September 4, 2019 at 1607 hours PDT: That last comment is even truer than I knew when I published earlier. I missed a Vancouver event, Maker Faire Vancouver will be hosted at Science World on Saturday, September 14. Here’s a little more about it from a Sept. 3, 2019 at Science World at Telus Science World blog posting,

Earlier last month [August 2019?], surgeons at St Paul’s Hospital performed an ankle replacement for a Cloverdale resident using a 3D printed bone. The first procedure of its kind in Western Canada, it saved the patient all of his ten toes — something doctors had originally decided to amputate due to the severity of the motorcycle accident.

Maker Faire Vancouver Co-producer, John Biehler, may not be using his 3D printer for medical breakthroughs, but he does see a subtle connection between his home 3D printer and the Health Canada-approved bone.

“I got into 3D printing to make fun stuff and gadgets,” John says of the box-sized machine that started as a hobby and turned into a side business. “But the fact that the very same technology can have life-changing and life-saving applications is amazing.”

When John showed up to Maker Faire Vancouver seven years ago, opportunities to access this hobby were limited. Armed with a 3D printer he had just finished assembling the night before, John was hoping to meet others in the community with similar interests to build, experiment and create. Much like the increase in accessibility to these portable machines has changed over the years—with universities, libraries and makerspaces making them readily available alongside CNC Machines, laser cutters and more — John says the excitement around crafting and tinkering has skyrocketed as well.

“The kind of technology that inspires people to print a bone or spinal insert all starts at ground zero in places like a Maker Faire where people get exposed to STEAM,” John says …

… From 3D printing enthusiasts like John to knitters, metal artists and roboticists, this full one-day event [Maker Faire Vancouver on Saturday, September 14, 2019] will facilitate cross-pollination between hobbyists, small businesses, artists and tinkerers. Described as part science fair, part county fair and part something entirely new, Maker Faire Vancouver hopes to facilitate discovery and what John calls “pure joy moments.”

Hopefully that’s it.