One more post about the 2026 Canada-Wide Science Fair (my last one was a June 1, 2026 piece highlighting the top prizes) as this work from two high school students fascinates me.
The video shows the announcement of the students’ award and their interview on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) Calgary Eyeopener news show, Note: This segment runs about 7 mins.,
For those who might like to read about the project, a June 2, 2026 article by Kelsea Arnett for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) news online website describes the device (wearable tail) intended to assist people with balance problems,
Allen Guo-Lu and Luotong Shi aren’t your typical Grade 12 students.
While most are either busily preparing for final exams or revelling in the fact that their high school careers are almost over, Guo-Lu and Shi have spent their senior year developing wearable technology to help people battling Parkinson’s disease avoid serious falls.
“It’s our last year in Grade 12, so we were like, ‘Why don’t we try to kind of give back to the community?'” Shi told CBC Radio’s Calgary Eyeopener.
“This was one of the ways that we thought of doing it.”
The technology — a wearable battery-powered tail equipped with built-in sensors — can detect when the wearer may be unstable and act as a counterweight to help them regain their balance, Shi said.
“It essentially works kind of like the idea of a spine where there is several pieces that you can attach and the tubes act as tendons,” Shi said.
In April, [2026] the Western Canada High School students won the University of Calgary Chancellor and Senate Award at the Calgary Youth Science Fair. The project was also a finalist at the Canada-Wide Science Fair in Edmonton last week.
There are at least 120,000 people living with Parkinson’s in Canada, and that number is expected to exceed 150,000 by 2034, according to Ko Currie with Parkinson Canada.
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Tremors and gait features like slowness, difficulty with balance or rigidity are some of the more recognizable symptoms of the disease, Currie said, adding falls are a significant concern.
“It’s one of the most disabling features of Parkinson’s, because they can lead to really serious injuries and sometimes even hospitalizations,” said Currie, who is the organization’s director of research programs and partnerships.
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Why a tail?
Guo-Lu said the project was inspired by his volunteer work in seniors’ homes and witnessing Parkinson’s patients struggling with balance.
He said the tail design comes from witnessing how cats and other mammals use their tails to balance and correct themselves.
Guo-Lu said in testing the belt with several patients, they were able to see how the tail responded to various individual gaits and stages of progression of the disease.
“Learning about those factors and testing really helped us get a good design for the tail,” Guo-Lu said.
He added they can also change the weight of the tail depending on how much support a patient needs and what is most comfortable for them, although the ideal range was between 400 and 1,200 grams.
Users can also tailor the tail’s sensitivity to their body with an app the pair built.
Project’s benefits go beyond Parkinson’s
But the benefits of the tail extend beyond just patients with Parkinson’s, Shi said.
“This tail, because it addresses balance specifically, it honestly should benefit all people who have asymmetric gait,” she said.
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Guo plans to study neuroscience at the University of Calgary and Shi plans to study electrical engineering at the University of Waterloo.
Canada approves pigs resistant to porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome viruses for use in food and feed
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Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome viruses (PRRSV) are one of the most devastating classes of viruses affecting farmed pigs, representing significant losses for Canada’s producers and higher prices at the store for Canadian consumers.
Today, Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) announced the completion of independent, comprehensive safety assessments on pigs resistant to PRRSV following applications from Genus PLC [sic] and PIC [Pig Improvement Company] Canada, Ltd., respectively. Health Canada has concluded that foods made from these pigs are as safe and nutritious for people to eat as pork currently available in Canada. The CFIA has confirmed that these pigs are also safe and effective for use in livestock feeds.
Improving resistance to PRRSV in pigs will help farmers avoid illness in their herds from these viruses, reduce antibiotic use, and improve animal welfare, while supporting a more stable, affordable and sustainable food supply.
Genus PLC’s PRRSV-resistant pigs are already permitted for food use in the U.S., Brazil, Colombia and the Dominican Republic. Genus PLC has indicated that even though Canada has approved the sale of PRRSV resistant pigs, the company does not intend to sell these pigs before further regulatory authorization in other key markets. The company and Health Canada are committed to the highest level of transparency and will communicate to the public when this new technology enters the Canadian market.
While genetically engineered foods are considered as safe and nutritious as conventional foods, the Government of Canada recognizes that information about genetic engineering is important. That is why we have been working with the Canadian General Standards Board since November [2025?] on a public review of the National Standard for labelling and advertising of foods that are, and are not, products of genetic engineering. The CFIA uses this Standard to provide its guidance to companies on the labelling of foods.
Quick facts
In 2024, the swine industry generated over $6.3 billion in farm cash receipts and Canada produced 2.34 million tonnes of pork and exported 1.45 million tonnes of pork.
As of January 1, 2025, there were 13.9M hogs on 6,885 Canadian farms.
PRRSV infections can cause severe symptoms in pigs like breathing problems, fever, the inability to eat, and can lead to stillborn piglets and death.
There are currently no effective treatments, and vaccination has only been partially effective.
In Canada, food labelling is required when there are well-established health risks or significant changes to the nutritional qualities of the food. For example, an allergen in a food must be labelled to alert consumers of the risk.
Because Health Canada found no health and safety concerns, no special labelling is required for foods from these PRRSV-resistant pigs.
In addition to the assessments noted above, in December 2025, the New Substances program—jointly administered by Environment and Climate Change Canada and Health Canada—determined that environmental and human health risks from indirect exposure to these pigs is no different from pigs currently available in Canada.
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Amina Zafar’s January 23, 2026 article of Canadian Broadcasting News (CBC) news online offers, in addition to information from the news release, detail about a previous attempt to introduce genetically modified food to Canadians, Note: Links have been removed,
Food made from pigs engineered to be resistant to a porcine virus are as safe and nutritious to eat as pork currently on the market, Health Canada said Friday.
Federal regulators announced pigs resistant to porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome viruses (PRRSV) — which it called a devastating class of viruses in farmed pigs — are safe to use in food and livestock feeds.
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More than 25 years ago, scientists at Memorial University in Newfoundland developed a salmon that would become the first transgenic food animal approved for sale in Canada. Sold as AquAdvantage Salmon, the DNA came from Pacific salmon and the eel-like ocean pout.
At the time, the Council of Canadians said it was concerned about the amount of water extracted, effluent and transport of eggs between facilities.
Unlike the genetically modified salmon, the PRRSV-resistant pigs were created using CRISPR gene-editing technology that makes precise genetic changes without introducing genetic material from another species, scientists say.
“This is the first gene-edited animal that has been approved for commercial sale in Canada,” said Gwendolyn Blue, a professor in the geography department at the University of Calgary who studies the politics and values surrounding gene editing.
While Blue recognizes the advantages PRRSV-resistant pigs could bring, she’s also notes there are ethical, moral, cultural and political questions surrounding the approval, such as how assessments about safety were made, as well as Canada’s updated biotechnology regulations.
“One of the concerns that people have had within a Canadian context is labeling,” she said. “There is no mandatory labeling and this is something that is currently under review.”
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While there is a Winnipeg-based PIC (Pig Improvement Company) branch, the North American offshoot of the company (UK’s Genus plc) is headquartered in the US state of Tennessee. I quite appreciate the detail offered in the PIC January 23, 2026 news release,
Today Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) approved PIC’s PRRS-resistant pigs for sale as food in Canada after rigorous and thorough review. Additionally, Environment & Climate Change Canada (ECCC) conducted its own review of the research and data and concluded that PRRS-resistant pigs may now be manufactured [?] or imported in Canada.
“We have spent years conducting extensive research, validating our findings and working with the Canadian government to gain approval,” said Matt Culbertson, PIC’s Chief Operating Officer. “Today marks a major milestone for consumers, farmers, and the entire pork industry who have hoped for relief from PRRS for decades.”
Review of Research and Data Confirms Safety
Health Canada and CFIA conducted scientific assessments that ensured the pigs are safe for consumption and do not differ from other pigs available on the market. Their evaluation led them to conclude that aside from the precise deletion of a small part of a gene involved in PRRS infection, the PRRS-resistant pigs are no different than other pigs.
Health Canada and CFIA further concluded that there are no differences in the nutritional value of the pork from PRRS-resistant pigs compared to other pork available for consumption.
How Removing Animal Disease Can Improve Animal Welfare
Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS) is one of the most devastating, global swine diseases. It causes needless suffering and premature death for pigs, negatively impacts animal welfare, exacerbates the need for antibiotics and increases the environmental impact of raising pigs.
“Addressing PRRS can allow us to improve animal welfare, reduce the need for antibiotics and decrease the environmental impact of raising pigs,” said Todd Wilken, PIC Director of North America Sales. “In fact, recent research indicates that PRRS increases the need for antibiotics by more than 2 times compared to pigs without PRRS.”1
PIC Has Earned Regulatory Clearance in a Number of Countries
Canada joins a growing list of countries that have deemed the gene edit safe and effective. The U.S. FDA approved the gene edit in April 2025, while Colombia, Brazil, Dominican Republic and Argentina have issued positive determinations for PRRS-resistant pigs, meaning those countries have recognized that the pigs are not GMO and should be treated the same as any other pigs.
“We are committed to the responsible and intentional introduction of the PRRS-resistant pig around the globe. Gaining approval in Canada is an important step in this process, and we are working with additional countries to gain regulatory approval and protect global trade prior to initiating sales and delivery,” said Culbertson.
PIC is a wholly owned subsidiary of Genus, a UK-based company, publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange.
Canadian consumers indicate above average purchase likelihood for pork from gene-edited pigs
Research conducted by Circana [US market research company] and commissioned by PIC in late 2025 found that there is an above average likelihood that Canadian consumers will purchase pork from gene-edited pigs.
The research polled more than 5,000 pork consumers from eight key countries, representative across genders and ages 18 to 70.
Circana found that 90% of Canadian consumers are open to purchasing pork from gene-edited pigs and that responsibly reducing the need for antibiotics ranked as the top motivator.
PIC (Pig Improvement Company) is the global leader in swine genetics. PIC provides genetically superior breeding stock to pig producers and supports them with technical services to help them realize genetic potential. PIC is a subsidiary of Genus, a UK-based company with a vision to pioneer animal genetic improvement to help nourish the world.www.pic.com
About Genus
Genus is a world-leading animal genetics company, supplying high-quality breeding animals with desirable characteristics to farmers, and enabling them to produce better quality meat and milk more efficiently to feed the world more sustainably. PIC is the porcine division within Genus.www.genusplc.com
Sources:
Isadora Machado, Thomas Petznick, Ana Paula S. Poeta Silva, Chong Wang, Locke Karriker, Daniel C.L. Linhares, Gustavo S. Silva. “Assessment of changes in antibiotic use in grow-finish pigs after the introduction of PRRSV in a naïve farrow-to-finish system.” Preventive Veterinary Medicine, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.prevetmed.2024.106350
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A bit disturbing, the change in terminology, that is. Since when do farmers manufacture pigs? Don’t they breed and/or grow pigs?
As for Canadians, this gene-edited pork will not be labelled under the current rules. Although that could change it may take a while as the government of Canada’s “Canadian General Standards Board conducts, since November [2025?], a public review of the National Standard for labelling and advertising of foods that are, and are not, products of genetic engineering.”
There was a bit of online excitement over the possibility that gene-edited pork would be entering the Canadian market soon. Environment and Climate Change Canada and Health Canada have a public consultation focused on the risk assessment process regarding the entry of gene-edited pigs into Canada’s food system. Before giving a link to the relevant government website, I have some information.
Factual
The best outline I could find was in Hailey Bennett’s July 10, 2025 article “US meat could soon be gene-edited. Here’s what that means” for British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC) Science Focus, Note 1: Bennett seems unaware that gene-edited pork may reach the Canadian market first; Note 2: Links have been removed,
From hot dogs to crispy bacon, US food staples could be made of gene-edited meat as early as 2026. Yes, really: the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved the farming of a specific kind of genetically enhanced pig. And regulators around the world may not be far behind.
So, should we be worried? Will this pork truly be safe to eat? And just how ethical is it to create these pigs?
The first thing you should know: not every gene-edited animal will be directly spawned from a lab. Rather, such livestock are merely bred from animals whose DNA was edited early on – often at the single-cell or fertilised egg stage [also known as germline editing] – to give them beneficial traits.
And no, this gene editing isn’t about making pork taste better –it’s about protecting pigs from disease.
For instance, British company Genus has now farmed pigs with a genetic tweak that makes them resistant to PRRS (Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome), a virus that attacks pigs’ immune cells. PRRS is a major threat: it can kill piglets, trigger miscarriages in pregnant sows, and weaken pigs’ immune systems, leaving them vulnerable to other infections.
These genetically enhanced pigs are even less of a novelty when you consider there is no effective vaccine for PRRS.
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How heavily are these pigs being altered – and at what cost to their welfare? They’re fair questions. But in reality, the change is surprisingly minimal.
To stop the PRRS virus in its tracks, scientists snipped out a small section of pig DNA – part of the CD163 protein, which the virus uses to enter pig cells.
Pigs with the edited gene are resistant to almost all known strains of PRRS but are otherwise, Genus claims, “the same as conventional pigs”. And despite initial concerns that the virus could evolve to recognise and avoid the edited protein, that hasn’t happened so far.
According to Dr Christine Tait-Burkard, a Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute, who worked with Genus to develop the original gene-edited pigs, the natural CD163 protein they edited is “like nine beads on a string.” The edit removes only bead number five.
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As Tait-Burkard explains, the edit is one that could also be naturally present in some pigs. “The chances are that there’s a pig somewhere in the world that’s resistant to this virus,” she says. “But we just don’t have the time to naturally breed this in. That’s where we have to start using biotechnology to integrate it into the breeding herd.”
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In the 1990s and 2000s, genetically modified (GM) crops generated headlines and consumer concern about ‘Frankenfoods’. Ultimately, though, many GM crops were approved and the majority of scientists consider them safe to eat. These modified crops often carry foreign DNA – ‘Bt’ corn, for example, contains a gene from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, enabling it to make a protein that kills insect pests.
The current generation of CRISPR-edited food products, by contrast, only contain changes that could naturally occur within the species. Scientists aren’t inventing entirely new kinds of pigs.
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Bennett’s July 10, 2025 article does a good job of covering the topic but I advise supplementing it with other pieces.
Canada and the gene-edited pig
Sylvain Charlebois’ July 3, 2025 article “Transparency is paramount as gene-edited pork approaches market launch” for Canadian Grocer takes what can seem like abstract questions about gene-edited pigs and applies them to real life issues, Note: I have two “[sic?]’s” as I have been unable to confirm when gene-edited pork is likely to enter the Canadian market. At a guess, Charlebois is saying that Canadian consumers are likely to get the products later in 2025,
In April [2025], the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the commercial distribution of pigs genetically edited with CRISPR technology to resist porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS), a costly and widespread disease in pork production. These pigs are expected to enter the American market in 2026 [sic?]. Yet, Canadian consumers could start seeing gene-edited pork products in stores—unlabeled and unannounced—as early as next year [sic?].
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Canada imported more than US$850 million worth of U.S. pork last year, according to the National Pork Producers Council. So, regardless of Canadian regulatory decisions, gene-edited meat is coming. And yet, no label will tell you whether your pork chop or bacon came from a genetically altered animal.
That lack of transparency is precisely what Quebec-based duBreton, North America’s leading organic pork producer, is warning against. The company argues that gene editing is incompatible with organic and humane production standards—and more importantly, with informed consumer choice. Whether or not gene-edited meat poses a food safety risk isn’t the central issue. The issue is whether consumers have the right to know how their food was produced.
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… GM [genetic modification] technology has long been accepted in grain production. Genetically modified ingredients—largely from corn, canola and soy—are now commonplace in processed foods. These technologies have contributed to yield stability and lower input costs for farmers. But even in grains, labeling remains inconsistent, and the average consumer still doesn’t know which products contain modified ingredients.
What’s different in livestock is the emotional and ethical connection people have with animals and meat. A pork chop isn’t just a commodity—it represents values tied to animal welfare, sustainability and trust in the food system. That’s why gene editing in livestock raises more scrutiny than it has in crop science.
To be clear, gene editing isn’t inherently a bad thing. …
The failure isn’t scientific—it’s strategic. Rather than building a transparent narrative around innovation, the industry has often opted for silence, leaving the public to fill in the blanks. That vacuum has been seized by special interest groups, some of which traffic in fear and misinformation. The “Frankenfood” rhetoric may have been overblown, but it did shine a light on an ethical principle we should not ignore: consumers deserve to know.
Labeling gene-edited products is not about fear—it’s about trust. Informed choice is the cornerstone of any credible food policy. Consumers don’t need to be protected from innovation, but they do need to be respected. The question is not whether gene-edited meat should exist, it’s whether its presence should be hidden.
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Public engagement/consultation
Gwendolyn Blue’s (professor, University of Calgary) July 10, 2025 essay for The Conversation suggested more and better public consultation should be part of the process, Note: Links have been removed,
The Canadian government is currently considering approving the entry of gene-edited pigs into the food system.
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These pigs are resistant to porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS), a horrible and sometimes fatal disease that affects pigs worldwide. PRRS has significant economic, food security and animal welfare implications.
The United States Food and Drug Administration [FDA] recently greenlit the commercial production of gene-edited pigs. Will the Canadian government follow suit?
AquAdvantage and EnviroPig
In 2016, Canada approved the first transgenic animal for human consumption — an Atlantic salmon called AquAdvantage salmon that contains DNA from other species of fish.
This approval came more than 25 years after the genetically modified fish was created by scientists at Memorial University in Newfoundland. The approval and commercialization of AquAdvantage salmon faced strong public opposition on both sides of the border, including protests, supermarket boycotts and court battles. In 2024, the company that produced AquAdvantage salmon announced that it was shutting down its operations [emphases mine].
In 2012, the Canadian government approved the manufacture of a transgenic pig known by its trade name, EnviroPig. Created by scientists at the University of Guelph, EnviroPigs released less phosphorus than conventionally bred pigs.
EnviroPig did not make it to market; the same year, the University of Guelph ended the EnviroPig project. Funding for the project had been suspended, in part because of consumer concerns.
Government regulation
Some researchers argue that government regulation of gene-edited animals should be less restrictive than for transgenic techniques. Gene editing introduces genetic changes that can occur with conventional animal breeding that is not subject to regulation. Gene-edited crops in Canada are treated the same as conventionally bred crops.
Others insist that stringent government regulation is necessary for gene editing to identify potential problems and ensure that laws keep up with industry and scientific ambition. Regulation plays a vital role in minimizing risk, encouraging public involvement and building trust.
Social science research has, for decades, demonstrated that resistance to biotechnology is not because of the public’s lack of knowledge [emphasis mine], as is often argued by biotechnology proponents. Public resistance to biotechnology is better understood as a rejection of potential harms imposed by governments and industry without public input and consent [emphasis mine].
Ethical, moral, cultural and political concerns
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Similar to the U.S., Canada does not have specific gene technology regulation. Rather, the federal government relies on pre-existing environmental and food safety legislation. Canadian regulatory agencies use a risk, novelty and product-based approach to assess animal biotechnology. From a regulatory standpoint, distinctions between technical processes — like transgenic modification versus gene editing — are less important than the safety of the final product.
The Canadian government has recently updated its federal environmental and health regulations. This includes introducing mandatory public consultations for animals (vertebrates, specifically) created using biotechnology.
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… regulatory and academic debates about the gene editing of animals are largely informed by scientists and industry proponents with considerably less input from the public, Indigenous communities and social sciences and humanities researchers.
Consulting the public
From a social standpoint, the process by which gene editing is assessed matters as much as the safety of the final product. Inclusive public engagement is essential to ensure that the production of gene-edited food animals aligns with societal needs and values.
Reactions to gene technologies are based on underlying values and beliefs, and sustained opportunities for public reflection and deliberation are vital for responsible innovation.
Important questions should be addressed: Who will reap the benefits of gene-editing techniques? Who will bear the costs and harms? What are the potential implications, including hard-to-anticipate social and political changes? How should decision-making proceed to ensure that Canadians have sufficient opportunities for input?
Currently, for the gene-edited pigs, members of the public can submit comments to the government until July 20, 2025.
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Measured optimism and a lot of enthusiasm (two articles)
Geralyn Wichers’s April 3, 2025 article for The Western Producer provided more details and measured optimism,
Canadian consumers are largely fine with pork from gene-edited pigs — at least once the science and benefits are explained to them.
That’s according to new research from genetic development company PIC (Pig Improvement Company), which is using gene editing technology to develop a pig resistant to porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS).
A survey found that, after consumers read a description of gene editing in food and the PRRS-resistant pig, 49 per cent indicated positive or very positive sentiments, 38 per cent were neutral while 14 per cent were negative or very negative.
“Even though we’ve seen a lot of investments in things like vaccines and improved biosecurity, the problem is getting worse, not better,” said Banks Baker, PIC’s global director of product sustainability.
North America’s pork producers have been dealing with PRRS since the late 1980s. The viral disease causes respiratory issues in all ages of pigs. In breeding animals, though, it can derail reproductive performance.
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A 2024 study by University of Guelph researcher Lynn Marchand estimated the annual cost of PRRS to a benchmark Manitoban 1,200-sow farrow-to-finish farm could be $588,709 to $631,602 [Manitoba is a province in Canada].
In January 2024, Ontario saw more severe cases of PRRS than it had in two years, veterinarian Dr. Ryan Tenbergen recently told attendees at the South Western Ontario Pork Conference. New strains of the disease, infecting more easily and severely, were also popping up in the United States.
The industry argues that genetically modified organisms have garnered a reputation for being unsafe and unhealthy, despite scientific evidence to the contrary. Further, they argue, gene editing is different.
Genetic modification typically refers to adding genetic information from an outside source, whereas gene editing generally involves making small changes to the organism’s existing genome.
“GMO has had a long shadow,” said Marisa Pooley, PIC’s director of communications.
“We have used it as a case study to make sure that we’re putting the consumer at the centre of this.”
Consumers identified reducing animal illness and antibiotic use reduction as factors that would motivate them to purchase gene-edited pork.
They seemed to like the idea that gene editing could help farmers raise healthier animals more sustainably and to grow crops better able to withstand climate change. The idea that gene editing can be used to cure human diseases such as sickle cell anemia and cancer also improved feelings.
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John Greig’s May 29, 20s5 article had details not in the other articles and presented a more impatient attitude,
The approval in the United States for food use of pigs gene edited to resist Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome, or PRRS, will be a good test for Canada’s year-old approval process for gene editing.
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I’ve talked to farmers who have dealt with PRRS outbreaks, and many herds in Canada have battled it over the past 35 years. The level of abortion and respiratory stress the disease causes is hard to watch for the people who care for the pigs every day.
The Canadian industry is now skilled at managing and eliminating the disease once it’s in a production system, but it takes one biosecurity break before it is back again.
A gene-edited solution to reducing PRRS would be a tremendous win for animal welfare, the mental health of farm workers, and farm business productivity and profitability [emphasis mine].
I’m interested to see how quickly the gene-edited pigs are approved for food use in Canada [emphasis mine]. It will be an interesting test case, as genetic modification of livestock is something the public has not accepted, despite the potential improvements in animal welfare and food safety.
Canada created a process that follows much of the rest of the world in approving gene editing through conventional approval processes when the expression of the gene is not novel. Gene editing works by turning on and off already-existing genes within an organism.
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There’s momentum in Canada to catch up to the rest of the world in speed of approval of new agriculture technologies [emphasis mine], as government and industry push to improve the country’s lagging productivity.
The successful discovery of the gene edit is a win for a swine genetics sector that has undergone significant consolidation in the past decade to the point where there are only a handful of swine genetics companies.
The consolidation was driven by the rise of big data analytics and the need to invest in technologies like gene editing.
The PRRS resistance gene editing process was developed by GenusPIC, itself a merger of two large breeding companies, Genus and Pig Improvement Corporation (PIC). Unfortunately, unlike the dairy sector where Semex, a Canadian company, is one of the major players in genetics, there are no more Canadian swine genetics companies of any scale. Alliance Genetics was acquired by Danbred in 2022 and Genesus, the last independent Canadian swine genetics company has been through a receivership process and is now under new ownership.
Regarding approval for new agricultural technologies, I wish Greig had specified or given examples. The gene-edited pork that was the topic of his article raises the question: how could Canada be trailing the rest of the world where gene-edited pork is concerned since no other country (to my knowledge) has approved it for the consumer market? Assuming it’s approved.
Share your thoughts: Participate in the risk assessment process for four lines of Gene Edited Pigs [emphasis mine]
The New Substances program, is seeking comments, including scientific information and test data that could inform the risk assessment process for four lines of gene edited pigs notified by Genus PLC on April 22nd, 2025. This consultation is open from June 20, 2025, to July 20, 2025 [emphasis mine]
NSN Numbers: 22051, 22196-22198
Substance designation of the organisms:
A gene edited Sus scrofa domesticus, Landrace descended from the L02 line, lacking a binding site for Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome Virus (PRRSV)
A gene edited Sus scrofa domesticus, Large White descended from the L03 line, lacking a binding site for Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome Virus (PRRSV)
A gene edited Sus scrofa domesticus, mix breed of Pietrain, Large White, Hampshire and Durocs descended from the L65 line, lacking a binding site for Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome Virus (PRRSV)
A gene edited Sus scrofa domesticus, Duroc descended from the L800 line, lacking a binding site for Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome Virus (PRRSV)
Subject to consultation requirements under section 108.1 of CEPA: Yes, the organism is a vertebrate.
Activity: The notified organisms are four genetically edited domestic breeds of pigs (scientific name, Sus scrofa domesticus) which include:
Landrace
Large White
Mix of Pietrain, Large White, Hampshire and Duroc
Duroc
They are notified for use in breeding with commercially raised pigs used for pork production.
Genetic modifications: All four lines of pigs have had their genomes edited to remove a binding site for the virus that causes porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome PRRS. No new genetic material has been introduced to the notified organisms.
The gene editing is intended to remove the binding site for PRRS. Without this binding site, the virus is unable to bind and infect the host organism. PRRS is a highly contagious viral infection that is considered to be one of the most significant diseases in commercially raised pigs around the world. Currently, there is no effective treatment program for acute PRRS. The removal of the binding site for the PRRS virus from the notified organisms makes these pigs resistant to infection by the virus.
Exposure: According to the notifier, the pigs will be used for conventional breeding in commercial pig production systems in the same manner as non-edited pigs, to generate PRRS virus-resistant pig offspring for food and feed product use. The usage includes the import of animals derived from the edited pigs into production facilities in Canada. The notifier plans to maintain the animals under confinement and have described the biosafety and biosecurity procedures to be used at these facilities. There are no plans for any introduction into the environment outside production facilities
Waiver of information requirement: No waiver was requested.
Privacy Act Notice Statement
The personal information is collected under the authority of section 5 of the Department of the Environment Act and subsection 7(1) of the Financial Administration Act.
The New Substances Program, jointly administered by ECCC and Health Canada, is undertaking public consultation that could inform the risk assessment process for the four lines gene edited pigs. The information is collected, used and disclosed for the purpose of evaluating the potential risks posed by the gene edited organisms to the environment and human health. Information collected by ECCC will be retained by the department and shared with Health Canada for the purposes of the evaluation. Your participation and decision to provide any information is voluntary.
The personal information created, held or collected by Environment and Climate Change Canada is protected under the Privacy Act. Information from this consultation will be used, disclosed and retained in accordance with the conditions listed in the Personal Information Bank Outreach Activities PSU 938.
Any questions or comments regarding this privacy notice may be directed to ECCC’s Access to Information and Privacy Division at ECATIP-ECAIPRP@ec.gc.ca. If you are not satisfied that your privacy has been adequately respected, you have the right to file a complaint. You may contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada by calling their information center at 1-800-282-1376 or by visiting their contact page.
Request for Confidentiality under CEPA
Please provide information in English or French. Your information may be summarized and published in part or in full. Pursuant to section 313 of CEPA, any person who provides information in response to New Substance Notification 22051, 22196, 22197, and 22198 may submit, with the information, a request that it be treated as confidential. A request for confidentiality must indicate which specific information or data should be treated as confidential, and it must be submitted with reasons taking into account the criteria referred to in subsection 313(2) of CEPA.
Include your name, affiliation, telephone number, e-mail and mailing address and use the following format in the title of your submission: Public Participation: [NSN number(s)] – [Substance Designation].
Join in: how to participate
All interested parties are invited to provide comments, including scientific information and test data related to potential risks to the environment or human health from the four lines of gene edited pigs. This information will be considered as part of the department’s assessment of the organism’s potential risks to the environment or human health, which is ongoing. A summary of the public comments received as well as the New Substances Program’s responses will be published once the evaluation has been completed.
By mail
Send us a letter with your comments and input to the address in the contact information below.
All people in Canada are invited to provide comments, including scientific information and test data that could inform the risk assessment process. Information that may inform the risk assessment process could include:
environmental fate information
ecological effects information
human health effects information or
exposure information (including sources and routes of exposure)
Science and Technology Branch Environment and Climate Change Canada Place Vincent Massey, 351 St. Joseph Blvd Gatineau QC K1A 0H3 Telephone: 1-800-567-1999 (Toll Free in Canada) or 1-819-938-3232 (Outside of Canada) E-mail: substances@ec.gc.ca
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Odds and sods
The Canadian Science Policy Centre (CSPC) ran an online panel “Navigating Geopolitical Shifts: Canada’s Innovation Strategy for Agriculture and Agrifood Sector” on May 21, 2025, which may or may not have included discussion of gene-editing. They have posted the video of the May 21, 2025 session (1.5 hours) online (or, should you be interested in some other session, you can check here)..
An April 17, 2025 Canadian Science Policy Centre (CSPC) briefing (received via email) included this unusually (for them) terse announcement,
Upcoming Virtual Panels – April 25 and May 7 [2025]
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The goal of this panel is to discuss the impacts of digital technology, or screen time, on children and youth and the policy opportunities to address these impacts.
The goal of this panel is to discuss the impacts of digital technology, or screen time, on children and youth and the policy opportunities to address these impacts. More specifically, the panel will explore the following questions:
What does research tell us about the effects of screen time on the developing brain?
What are the benefits and what are the risks?
How can we preserve the benefits and minimize the risks?
Have we reached a threshold of understanding of this topic to inform policy?
Panelists will address these questions at different levels: neuroscience, psychology, technology, policy, and lived experience (youth).
Professor, Psychiatry and Canada Research Chair, Preventative Mental Health and Addiction; Research Chair in Social and Community Pediatrics, Université de Montréal / CHU Sainte-Justine
This is old news and it’s an excuse to take a walk down memory lane. First, a February 6, 2025 Canadian Science Policy Centre (CSPC) notice (received via email) contained an event announcement,
Reports of research fraud and mass retractions have combined with populist distrust of expertise to contribute to widespread mistrust of scientific research. This session, composed of panelists with backgrounds in research, ethics, and publishing, will explore some of the many ways that allies within the research ecosystem can rebuild readers’ trust in science, including readers in within [sic] the research community itself, policymakers, and the public. Key topics will include research fraud, ethics education, peer review, open science practices, and research assessment reform.
I’ve occasionally written about problematic science research with the most extraordinary case I can recall being that of Paolo Macchiarini. Like a lot of other people, he fooled me. Once I realized that his work was deeply problematic, I started digging. The results can be seen in my April 19. 2016 postings (part one) and (part two). I also provided an update in my December 31, 2023 posting, where I note consequences for Macchiarini under the ‘A long time coming, a nanomedicine comeuppance’ subhead and provide more details under the ‘Other players in the Macchiarini story’ subhead.
Getting back to the panel on February 26, 2025, the event description seemed more focused on how problems with scientific research have fused with current ‘populist’ mistrust of science rather than on scientific malfeasance per se.
David Moher is a clinical epidemiologist, and Senior Scientist at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, where he directs the Centre for Journalology (publication science). He is also a full Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Ottawa and full Professor, Institute of Health Policy, Management & Evaluation, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. Professor Moher spends his time trying to help improve academic scholarship.
Panelist: Natasha McDonald
Natasha McDonald is responsible for advancing the system of peer review at Canadian Science Publishing to yield a more inclusive, transparent, and rigorous research output. She is passionate about Open Science and is a proponent of challenging long-held narratives in scientific publishing that have led to the underrepresentation of researchers from a number of communities and regions. Before moving into scholarly publishing, she held a career as a researcher in the field of marine biogeochemistry. She currently serves as a Higher Education Sustainability Initiative (HESI) UN SDG [sustainable development goals] Publishers Compact Fellow.
Panelist: Sarah Elaine Eaton
Sarah Elaine Eaton is a professor and research chair at the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary (Canada). Dr. Eaton leads transdisciplinary research teams focused on integrity and ethics in educational contexts. Dr. Eaton also holds a concurrent appointment as an Honorary Associate Professor, Deakin University, Australia.
Panelist: Juan Pablo Alperin
Juan Pablo Alperin is an associate professor in the School of Publishing, scientific director of the Public Knowledge Project, and the co-director of the Scholarly Communications Lab at Simon Fraser University, Canada. He is a multi-disciplinary scholar who uses a combination of computational techniques and traditional qualitative methods to investigate ways of raising the scientific quality, global impact, and public use of scholarly work.
Panelist: Kaia Motter
Kaia Motter is Head of Academic Affairs, North America at Springer Nature where she leads academic affairs activities in the US and Canada, building relationships and collaborating with funders, institutions, and other non-profit organizations in the region. Kaia has a background in publishing, having held editorial positions at Elsevier and Wiley. In recent years, her work has been centered on open science development, policy, and outreach with a topical focus on research assessment reform, research integrity, AI, and other issues impacting the research community.
That was a lot more (three panelists?) focus about publishing than I was expecting.
Asphaltene (or asphaltenes are) is waste material that can be turned into graphene according to scientists at Rice University (Texas, US), from a November 18, 2022 news item on ScienceDaily,
Asphaltenes, a byproduct of crude oil production, are a waste material with potential. Rice University scientists are determined to find it by converting the carbon-rich resource into useful graphene.
Muhammad Rahman, an assistant research professor of materials science and nanoengineering, is employing Rice’s unique flash Joule heating process to convert asphaltenes instantly into turbostratic (loosely aligned) graphene and mix it into composites for thermal, anti-corrosion and 3D-printing applications.
The process makes good use of material otherwise burned for reuse as fuel or discarded into tailing ponds and landfills. Using at least some of the world’s reserve of more than 1 trillion barrels of asphaltene as a feedstock for graphene would be good for the environment as well.
“Asphaltene is a big headache for the oil industry, and I think there will be a lot of interest in this,” said Rahman, who characterized the process as both a scalable and sustainable way to reduce carbon emissions from burning asphaltene.
Rahman is a lead corresponding author of the paper in Science Advances co-led by Rice chemist James Tour, whose lab developed flash Joule heating, materials scientist Pulickel Ajayan and Md Golam Kibria, an assistant professor of chemical and petroleum engineering at the University of Calgary, Canada.
Asphaltenes are 70% to 80% carbon already. The Rice lab combines it with about 20% of carbon black to add conductivity and flashes it with a jolt of electricity, turning it into graphene in less than a second. Other elements in the feedstock, including hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and sulfur, are vented away as gases.
“We try to keep the carbon black content as low as possible because we want to maximize the utilization of asphaltene,” Rahman said.
“The government has been putting pressure on the petroleum industries to take care of this,” said Rice graduate student and co-lead author M.A.S.R. Saadi. “There are billions of barrels of asphaltene available, so we began working on this project primarily to see if we could make carbon fiber. That led us to think maybe we should try making graphene with flash Joule heating.”
Assured that Tour’s process worked as well on asphaltene as it did on various other feedstocks, including plastic, electronic waste, tires, coal fly ash and even car parts, the researchers set about making things with their graphene.
Saadi, who works with Rahman and Ajayan, mixed the graphene into composites, and then into polymer inks bound for 3D printers. “We’ve optimized the ink rheology to show that it is printable,” he said, noting the inks have no more than 10% of graphene mixed in. Mechanical testing of printed objects is forthcoming, he said.
Rice graduate student Paul Advincula, a member of the Tour lab, is co-lead author of the paper. Co-authors are Rice graduate students Md Shajedul Hoque Thakur, Ali Khater, Jacob Beckham and Minghe Lou, undergraduate Aasha Zinke and postdoctoral researcher Soumyabrata Roy; research fellow Shabab Saad, alumnus Ali Shayesteh Zeraati, graduate student Shariful Kibria Nabil and postdoctoral associate Md Abdullah Al Bari of the University of Calgary; graduate student Sravani Bheemasetti and Venkataramana Gadhamshetty, an associate professor, at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and its 2D Materials of Biofilm Engineering Science and Technology Center; and research assistant Yiwen Zheng and Aniruddh Vashisth, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, of the University of Washington.
The research was funded by the Alberta Innovates for Carbon Fiber Grand Challenge programs, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (FA9550-19-1-0296), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (W912HZ-21-2-0050) and the National Science Foundation (1849206, 1920954).
Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
Sustainable valorization of asphaltenes via flash joule heating by M.A.S.R. Saadi, Paul A. Advincula, Md Shajedul Hoque Thakur, Ali Zein Khater, Shabab Saad, Ali Shayesteh Zeraati, Shariful Kibria Nabil, Aasha Zinke, Soumyabrata Roy, Minghe Lou, Sravani N. Bheemasetti, Md Abdullah Al Bari, Yiwen Zheng, Jacob L. Beckham, Venkataramana Gadhamshetty, Aniruddh Vashisth, Md Golam Kibria, James M. Tour, Pulickel M. Ajayan, and Muhammad M. Rahman. Science Advances 18 Nov 2022 Vol 8, Issue 46 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.add3555
I received (via email) a December 8, 2022 Canadian Science Policy Centre (CSPC) announcement about their various doings when this event, which seems a little short on information, caught my attention,
[Building Transdisciplinary Research Paths towards a more Sustainable and Inclusive Future]
Upcoming Virtual Event
With this workshop, Belmont Forum and IAI aim to open a collective reflection on the ideas and practices around ‘Transdisciplinarity’ (TD) to foster participatory knowledge production. Our goal is to create a safe environment for people to share their impressions about TD, as a form of experimental lab based on a culture of collaboration.
Building Transdisciplinary Research Paths towards a more Sustainable and Inclusive Future
Global environmental change and sustainability require engagement with civil society and wide participation to gain social legitimacy, also, it is necessary to open cooperation among different scientific disciplines, borderless collaboration, and collaborative learning processes, among other crucial issues.
Those efforts have been recurrently encompassed by the idea of ‘Transdisciplinarity’ (TD), which is a fairly new word and evolving concept. Several of those characteristics are daily practices in academic and non-academic communities, sometimes under different words or conceptions.
With this workshop, Belmont Forum and IAI [Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research?] aim to open a collective reflection on the ideas and practices around ‘Transdisciplinarity’ (TD) to foster participatory knowledge production. Our goal is to create a safe environment for people to share their impressions about TD, as a form of experimental lab based on a culture of collaboration.
For the curious, here’s more about the Belmont Forum from their About page, Note: Links have been removed,
Established in 2009, the Belmont Forum is a partnership of funding organizations, international science councils, and regional consortia committed to the advancement of transdisciplinary science. Forum operations are guided by the Belmont Challenge, a vision document that encourages:
International transdisciplinary research providing knowledge for understanding, mitigating and adapting to global environmental change.
Forum members and partner organizations work collaboratively to meet this Challenge by issuing international calls for proposals, committing to best practices for open data access, and providing transdisciplinary training. To that end, the Belmont Forum is also working to enhance the broader capacity to conduct transnational environmental change research through its e-Infrastructure and Data Management initiative.
Since its establishment, the Forum has successfully led 19 calls for proposals, supporting 134 projects and more than 1,000 scientists and stakeholders, representing over 90 countries. Themes addressed by CRAs have included Freshwater Security, Coastal Vulnerability, Food Security and Land Use Change, Climate Predictability and Inter-Regional Linkages, Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, Arctic Observing and Science for Sustainability, and Mountains as Sentinels of Change. New themes are developed through a scoping process and made available for proposals through the Belmont Forum website and its BF Grant Operations site.
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If you keep scrolling down the Bellmont Forum’s About page, you’ll find an impressive list of partners including the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).
I’m pretty sure IAI is Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research, given that two of the panelists come from that organization. Here’s more about the IAI from their About Us page, Note: Links have been removed,
Humans have affected practically all ecosystems on earth. Over the past 200 years, mankind’s emissions of greenhouse gases into the Earth’s atmosphere have changed its radiative properties and are causing a rise in global temperatures which is now modifying Earth system functions globally. As a result, the 21st-century is faced with environmental changes from local to global scales that require large efforts of mitigation and adaptation by societies and ecosystems. The causes and effects, problems and solutions of global change interlink biogeochemistry, Earth system functions and socio-economic conditions in increasingly complex ways. To guide efforts of mitigation and adaptation to global change and aid policy decisions, scientific knowledge now needs to be generated in broad transdisciplinary ways that address the needs of knowledge users and also provide profound understanding of complex socio-environmental systems.
To address these knowledge needs, 12 nations of the American continent came together in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1992 to establish the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI). The 12 governments, in the Declaration of Montevideo, called for the Institute to develop the best possible international coordination of scientific and economic research on the extent, causes, and consequences of global change in the Americas.
Sixteen governments signed the resulting Agreement Establishing the IAI which laid the foundation for the IAI’s function as a regional intergovernmental organization that promotes interdisciplinary scientific research and capacity building to inform decision-makers on the continent and beyond. Since the establishment of the Agreement in 1992, 3 additional nations have acceded the treaty, and the IAI has now 19 Parties in the Americas, which come together once every year in the Conference of the Parties to monitor and direct the IAI’s activities.
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Now onto the best part, reading about the panelists (from CSPC event page, scroll down and click on the See bio button), Note: I have made some rough changes to the formatting so that the bios match each other more closely,
Dr. Lily House-Peters is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at California State University, Long Beach. Dr. House-Peters is a broadly trained human-environment geographer with experience in qualitative and quantitative approaches to human dimensions of environmental change, water security, mining and extraction, and natural resource conservation policy. She has a decade of experience and expertise in transdisciplinary research for action-oriented solutions to global environmental change. She is currently part of a team creating a curriculum for global change researchers in the Americas focused on the drivers and barriers of effective transdisciplinary collaboration and processes of integration and convergence in diverse teams.
Dr. Gabriela Alonso Yanez, Associate Professor, Werklund School of Education University of Calgary. Learning and education in the context of sustainability and global change are the focus of my work. Over the last ten years, I have participated in several collaborative research projects with multiple aims, including building researchers’ and organizations’ capacity for collaboration and engaging networks that include knowledge keepers, local community members and academics in co-designing and co-producing solutions-oriented knowledge.
Marshalee Valentine, MSc, BTech. Marshalee Valentine is Co-founder and Vice President of the International Women’s Coffee Alliance Jamaica (IWCA), a charitable organization responsible for the development and implementation of social impact and community development projects geared towards improving the livelihoods of women along the coffee value chain in Jamaica. In addition, she also owns and operates a Quality, Food Safety and Environmental Management Systems Consultancy. Her areas of expertise include; Process improvement, technology and Innovation transfer methods, capacity building and community-based research.
With a background in Agriculture, she holds a Bachelor of Technology in Environmental Sciences and a Master’s Degree in Environmental Management. Marshalee offers a unique perspective for regional authenticity bringing deep sensibility to issues of gender, equity and inclusion, in particular related to GEC issues in small countries.
Fany Ramos Quispe, Science Technology and Policy Fellow, Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research. Fany Ramos Quispe holds a B.S. in Environmental Engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Mexico, and an MSc. in Environmental Change and International Development from the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom. She worked with a variety of private and public organizations at the national and international levels. She has experience on projects related to renewable energies, waste and water management, environmental education, climate change, and inter and transdisciplinary research, among others. After her postgraduate studies, she joined the Bolivian government mainly to support international affairs related to climate change at the Plurinational Authority of Mother Earth, afterwards, she joined the Centre for Social Research of the Vicepresidency as a Climate Change Specialist.
For several years now she combined academic and professional activities with side projects and activism for environmental and educational issues. She is a founder and former chair (2019-2020) of the environmental engineers’ society of La Paz and collaborates with different grassroots organizations.
Fany is a member of OWSD Bolivia [Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World {OWSD}] and current IAI Science, Technology and Policy fellow at the Belmont Forum.
Dr. Laila Sandroni, Science Technology and Policy Fellow, InterAmerican Institute for Global Change Research. Laila Sandroni is an Anthropologist and Geographer with experience in transdisciplinary research in social sciences. Her research interests lie in the field of transformations to sustainability and the role of different kinds of knowledge in defining the best paths to achieve biodiversity conservation and forest management. She has particular expertise in epistemology, power-knowledge relations, and evidence-based policy in environmental issues.
Laila has a longstanding involvement with stakeholders working on different paths towards biodiversity conservation. She has experience in transdisciplinary science and participatory methodologies to encompass plural knowledge on the management of protected areas in tropical rainforests in Brazil.
This event seems to be free and it looks like an exciting panel.
Unexpectedly, they don’t have a male participant amongst the panelists. Outside of groups that are explicitly exploring women’s issues in the sciences, I’ve never before seen a science panel composed entirely of women. As well, the organizers seem to have broadened the range of geographies represented at a Canadian event with a researcher who has experience in Brazil, another with experience in Bolivia, a panelist who works in Jamaica, and two academics who focus on the Americas (South, Central, and North).
Transdisciplinarity and other disciplinarities
There are so many: crossdisciplinarity, multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, and transdisciplinarity, that the whole subject gets a little confusing. Jeffrey Evans’ July 29, 2014 post on the Purdue University (Indiana, US) Polytechnic Institute blog answers questions about three (trans-, multi-, and inter-) of the disciplinarities,
Learners entering the Polytechnic Incubator’s new program will no doubt hear the terms “multidisciplinary (arity)” and “interdisciplinary (arity)” thrown about somewhat indiscriminately. Interestingly, we administrators, faculty, and staff also use these terms rather loosely and too often without carefully considering their underlying meaning.
Recently I gave a talk about yet another disciplinarity: “transdisciplinarity.” The purpose of the talk was to share with colleagues from around the country the opportunities and challenges associated with developing a truly transdisciplinary environment in an institution of higher education. During a meeting after I returned, the terms “multi”, “inter”, and “trans” disciplinary(arity) were being thrown around, and it was clear that the meanings of the terms were not clearly understood. Hopefully this blog entry will help shed some light on the subject. …
First, I am not an expert in the various “disciplinarities.” The ideas and descriptions that follow are not mine and have been around for decades, with many books and articles written on the subject. Yet my Polytechnic Incubator colleagues and I believe in these ideas and in their advantages and constraints, and they serve to motivate the design of the Incubator’s transdisciplinary environment.
In 1992, Hugh G. Petrie wrote a seminal article1 for the American Educational Research Association that articulates the meaning of these ideas. Later, in 2007, A. Wendy Russell, Fern Wickson, and Anna L. Carew contributed an article2 discussing the context of transdisciplinarity, prescriptions for transdisciplinary knowledge production and the contradictions that arise, and suggestions for universities to develop capacity for transdisciplinarity, rather than simply investing in knowledge “products.” …
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Multidisciplinarity
Petrie1 discusses multidisciplinarity as “the idea of a number of disciplines working together on a problem, an educational program, or a research study. The effect is additive rather than integrative. The project is usually short-lived, and there is seldom any long-term change in the ways in which the disciplinary participants in a multidisciplinary project view their own work.”
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Interdisciplinarity
Moving to extend the idea of multidisciplinarity to include more integration, rather than just addition, Petrie writes about interdisciplinarity in this way:
“Interdisciplinary research or education typically refers to those situations in which the integration of the work goes beyond the mere concatenation of disciplinary contributions. Some key elements of disciplinarians’ use of their concepts and tools change. There is a level of integration. Interdisciplinary subjects in university curricula such as physical chemistry or social psychology, which by now have, perhaps,themselves become disciplines, are good examples. A newer one might be the field of immunopharmocology, which combines the work of bacteriology, chemistry, physiology, and immunology. Another instance of interdisciplinarity might be the emerging notion of a core curriculum that goes considerably beyond simple distribution requirements in undergraduate programs of general education.”
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Transdisciplinarity
Petrie1 writes about transdisciplinarity in this way: “The notion of transdisciplinarity exemplifies one of the historically important driving forces in the area of interdisciplinarity, namely, the idea of the desirability of the integration of knowledge into some meaningful whole. The best example, perhaps, of the drive to transdisciplinarity might be the early discussions of general systems theory when it was being held forward as a grand synthesis of knowledge. Marxism, structuralism, and feminist theory are sometimes cited as examples of a transdisciplinary approach. Essentially, this kind of interdisciplinarity represents the impetus to integrate knowledge, and, hence, is often characterized by a denigration and repudiation of the disciplines and disciplinary work as essentially fragmented and incomplete.
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It seems multidisciplinarity could be viewed as an ad hoc approach whereas interdsciplinarity and transdisciplinarity are intimately related with ‘inter-‘ being a subset of ‘trans-‘.
I think that’s enough for now. Should I ever stumble across a definition for crossdisciplinarity, I will endeavour to add it here.
Sougwen Chung, Omnia per Omnia, 2018, video (excerpt), Courtesy of the Artist
*A Roomba is a robot vacuum cleaner produced and sold by iRobot.
As far as I know, this is the Vancouver Art Gallery’s first art/science or art/technology exhibit and it is an alternately fascinating, exciting, and frustrating take on artificial intelligence and its impact on the visual arts. Curated by Bruce Grenville, VAG Senior Curator, and Glenn Entis, Guest Curator, the show features 20 ‘objects’ designed to both introduce viewers to the ‘imitation game’ and to challenge them. From the VAG Imitation Game webpage,
The Imitation Game surveys the extraordinary uses (and abuses) of artificial intelligence (AI) in the production of modern and contemporary visual culture around the world. The exhibition follows a chronological narrative that first examines the development of artificial intelligence, from the 1950s to the present [emphasis mine], through a precise historical lens. Building on this foundation, it emphasizes the explosive growth of AI across disciplines, including animation, architecture, art, fashion, graphic design, urban design and video games, over the past decade. Revolving around the important roles of machine learning and computer vision in AI research and experimentation, The Imitation Game reveals the complex nature of this new tool and demonstrates its importance for cultural production.
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And now …
As you’ve probably guessed, my friend, you’ll find a combination of both background information and commentary on the show.
I’ve initially focused on two people (a scientist and a mathematician) who were seminal thinkers about machines, intelligence, creativity, and humanity. I’ve also provided some information about the curators, which hopefully gives you some insight into the show.
As for the show itself, you’ll find a few of the ‘objects’ highlighted with one of them being investigated at more length. The curators devoted some of the show to ethical and social justice issues, accordingly, the Vancouver Art Gallery hosted the University of British Columbia’s “Speculative Futures: Artificial Intelligence Symposium” on April 7, 2022,
Presented in conjunction with the exhibition The Imitation Game: Visual Culture in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, the Speculative Futures Symposium examines artificial intelligence and the specific uses of technology in its multifarious dimensions. Across four different panel conversations, leading thinkers of today will explore the ethical implications of technology and discuss how they are working to address these issues in cultural production.”
So, you’ll find more on these topics here too.
And for anyone else reading this (not you, my friend who is ‘strong’ AI and not similar to the ‘weak’ AI found in this show), there is a description of ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ AI on the avtsim.com/weak-ai-strong-ai webpage, Note: A link has been removed,
There are two types of AI: weak AI and strong AI.
Weak, sometimes called narrow, AI is less intelligent as it cannot work without human interaction and focuses on a more narrow, specific, or niched purpose. …
Strong AI on the other hand is in fact comparable to the fictitious AIs we see in media like the terminator. The theoretical Strong AI would be equivalent or greater to human intelligence.
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My dear friend, I hope you will enjoy.
The Imitation Game and ‘mad, bad, and dangerous to know’
In some circles, it’s better known as ‘The Turing Test;” the Vancouver Art Gallery’s ‘Imitation Game’ hosts a copy of Alan Turing’s foundational paper for establishing whether artificial intelligence is possible (I thought this was pretty exciting).
Here’s more from The Turing Test essay by Graham Oppy and David Dowe for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
The phrase “The Turing Test” is most properly used to refer to a proposal made by Turing (1950) as a way of dealing with the question whether machines can think. According to Turing, the question whether machines can think is itself “too meaningless” to deserve discussion (442). However, if we consider the more precise—and somehow related—question whether a digital computer can do well in a certain kind of game that Turing describes (“The Imitation Game”), then—at least in Turing’s eyes—we do have a question that admits of precise discussion. Moreover, as we shall see, Turing himself thought that it would not be too long before we did have digital computers that could “do well” in the Imitation Game.
The phrase “The Turing Test” is sometimes used more generally to refer to some kinds of behavioural tests for the presence of mind, or thought, or intelligence in putatively minded entities. …
Next to the display holding Turing’s paper, is another display with an excerpt of an explanation from Turing about how he believed Ada Lovelace would have responded to the idea that machines could think based on a copy of some of her writing (also on display). She proposed that creativity, not thinking, is what set people apart from machines. (See the April 17, 2020 article “Thinking Machines? Has the Lovelace Test Been Passed?’ on mindmatters.ai.)
It’s like a dialogue between two seminal thinkers who lived about 100 years apart; Lovelace, born in 1815 and dead in 1852, and Turing, born in 1912 and dead in 1954. Both have fascinating back stories (more about those later) and both played roles in how computers and artificial intelligence are viewed.
Adding some interest to this walk down memory lane is a 3rd display, an illustration of the ‘Mechanical Turk‘, a chess playing machine that made the rounds in Europe from 1770 until it was destroyed in 1854. A hoax that fooled people for quite a while it is a reminder that we’ve been interested in intelligent machines for centuries. (Friend, Turing and Lovelace and the Mechanical Turk are found in Pod 1.)
Back story: Turing and the apple
Turing is credited with being instrumental in breaking the German ENIGMA code during World War II and helping to end the war. I find it odd that he ended up at the University of Manchester in the post-war years. One would expect him to have been at Oxford or Cambridge. At any rate, he died in 1954 of cyanide poisoning two years after he was arrested for being homosexual and convicted of indecency. Given the choice of incarceration or chemical castration, he chose the latter. There is, to this day, debate about whether or not it was suicide. Here’s how his death is described in this Wikipedia entry (Note: Links have been removed),
On 8 June 1954, at his house at 43 Adlington Road, Wilmslow,[150] Turing’s housekeeper found him dead. He had died the previous day at the age of 41. Cyanide poisoning was established as the cause of death.[151] When his body was discovered, an apple lay half-eaten beside his bed, and although the apple was not tested for cyanide,[152] it was speculated that this was the means by which Turing had consumed a fatal dose. An inquest determined that he had committed suicide. Andrew Hodges and another biographer, David Leavitt, have both speculated that Turing was re-enacting a scene from the Walt Disney film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), his favourite fairy tale. Both men noted that (in Leavitt’s words) he took “an especially keen pleasure in the scene where the Wicked Queen immerses her apple in the poisonous brew”.[153] Turing’s remains were cremated at Woking Crematorium on 12 June 1954,[154] and his ashes were scattered in the gardens of the crematorium, just as his father’s had been.[155]
Philosopher Jack Copeland has questioned various aspects of the coroner’s historical verdict. He suggested an alternative explanation for the cause of Turing’s death: the accidental inhalation of cyanide fumes from an apparatus used to electroplate gold onto spoons. The potassium cyanide was used to dissolve the gold. Turing had such an apparatus set up in his tiny spare room. Copeland noted that the autopsy findings were more consistent with inhalation than with ingestion of the poison. Turing also habitually ate an apple before going to bed, and it was not unusual for the apple to be discarded half-eaten.[156] Furthermore, Turing had reportedly borne his legal setbacks and hormone treatment (which had been discontinued a year previously) “with good humour” and had shown no sign of despondency prior to his death. He even set down a list of tasks that he intended to complete upon returning to his office after the holiday weekend.[156] Turing’s mother believed that the ingestion was accidental, resulting from her son’s careless storage of laboratory chemicals.[157] Biographer Andrew Hodges theorised that Turing arranged the delivery of the equipment to deliberately allow his mother plausible deniability with regard to any suicide claims.[158]
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The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) also has an entry for Alan Turing dated April 10, 2015 it’s titled, The Enigma of Alan Turing.
Back story: Ada Byron Lovelace, the 2nd generation of ‘mad, bad, and dangerous to know’
A mathematician and genius in her own right, Ada Lovelace’s father George Gordon Byron, better known as the poet Lord Byron, was notoriously described as ‘mad, bad, and dangerous to know’.
Lovelace too could have been been ‘mad, bad, …’ but she is described less memorably as “… manipulative and aggressive, a drug addict, a gambler and an adulteress, …” as mentioned in my October 13, 20215 posting. It marked the 200th anniversary of her birth, which was celebrated with a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) documentary and an exhibit at the Science Museum in London, UK.
She belongs in the Vancouver Art Gallery’s show along with Alan Turing due to her prediction that computers could be made to create music. She also published the first computer program. Her feat is astonishing when you know only one working model {1/7th of the proposed final size) of a computer was ever produced. (The machine invented by Charles Babbage was known as a difference engine. You can find out more about the Difference engine on Wikipedia and about Babbage’s proposed second invention, the Analytical engine.)
(Byron had almost nothing to do with his daughter although his reputation seems to have dogged her. You can find out more about Lord Byron here.)
Bruce Grenville, VAG Chief/Senior Curator, seems to specialize in pulling together diverse materials to illustrate ‘big’ topics. His profile for Emily Carr University of Art + Design (where Grenville teaches) mentions these shows ,
… He has organized many thematic group exhibitions including, MashUp: The Birth of Modern Culture [emphasis mine], a massive survey documenting the emergence of a mode of creativity that materialized in the late 1800s and has grown to become the dominant model of cultural production in the 21st century; KRAZY! The Delirious World [emphasis mine] of Anime + Manga + Video Games + Art, a timely and important survey of modern and contemporary visual culture from around the world;Home and Away: Crossing Cultures on the Pacific Rim [emphasis mine] a look at the work of six artists from Vancouver, Beijing, Ho Chi Minh City, Seoul and Los Angeles, who share a history of emigration and diaspora. …
Glenn Entis, Guest Curator and founding faculty member of Vancouver’s Centre for Digital Media (CDM) is Grenville’s co-curator, from Entis’ CDM profile,
“… an Academy Award-winning animation pioneer and games industry veteran. The former CEO of Dreamworks Interactive, Glenn worked with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg on a number of video games …,”
Steve Newton in his March 4, 2022 preview does a good job of describing the show although I strongly disagree with the title of his article which proclaims “The Vancouver Art Gallery takes a deep dive into artificial intelligence with The Imitation Game.” I think it’s more of a shallow dive meant to cover more distance than depth,
… The exhibition kicks off with an interactive introduction inviting visitors to actively identify diverse areas of cultural production influenced by AI.
“That was actually one of the pieces that we produced in collaboration with the Centre for Digital Media,” Grenville notes, “so we worked with some graduate-student teams that had actually helped us to design that software. It was the beginning of COVID when we started to design this, so we actually wanted a no-touch interactive. So, really, the idea was to say, ‘Okay, this is the very entrance to the exhibition, and artificial intelligence, this is something I’ve heard about, but I’m not really sure how it’s utilized in ways. But maybe I know something about architecture; maybe I know something about video games; maybe I know something about the history of film.
“So you point to these 10 categories of visual culture [emphasis mine]–video games, architecture, fashion design, graphic design, industrial design, urban design–so you point to one of those, and you might point to ‘film’, and then when you point at it that opens up into five different examples of what’s in the show, so it could be 2001: A Space Odyssey, or Bladerunner, or World on a Wire.”
After the exhibition’s introduction—which Grenville equates to “opening the door to your curiosity” about artificial intelligence–visitors encounter one of its main categories, Objects of Wonder, which speaks to the history of AI and the critical advances the technology has made over the years.
“So there are 20 Objects of Wonder [emphasis mine],” Grenville says, “which go from 1949 to 2022, and they kind of plot out the history of artificial intelligence over that period of time, focusing on a specific object. Like [mathematician and philosopher] Norbert Wiener made this cybernetic creature, he called it a ‘Moth’, in 1949. So there’s a section that looks at this idea of kind of using animals–well, machine animals–and thinking about cybernetics, this idea of communication as feedback, early thinking around neuroscience and how neuroscience starts to imagine this idea of a thinking machine.
“It’s interesting,” Grenville ponders, “artificial intelligence is virtually unregulated. [emphasis mine] You know, if you think about the regulatory bodies that govern TV or radio or all the types of telecommunications, there’s no equivalent for artificial intelligence, which really doesn’t make any sense. And so what happens is, sometimes with the best intentions [emphasis mine]—sometimes not with the best intentions—choices are made about how artificial intelligence develops. So one of the big ones is facial-recognition software [emphasis mine], and any body-detection software that’s being utilized.
In addition to it being the best overview of the show I’ve seen so far, this is the only one where you get a little insight into what the curators were thinking when they were developing it.
A deep dive into AI?
it was only while searching for a little information before the show that I realized I don’t have any definitions for artificial intelligence! What is AI? Sadly, there are no definitions of AI in the exhibit.
It seems even experts don’t have a good definition. Take a look at this,
The definition of AI is fluid [emphasis mine] and reflects a constantly shifting landscape marked by technological advancements and growing areas of application. Indeed, it has frequently been observed that once AI becomes capable of solving a particular problem or accomplishing a certain task, it is often no longer considered to be “real” intelligence [emphasis mine] (Haenlein & Kaplan, 2019). A firm definition was not applied for this report [emphasis mine], given the variety of implementations described above. However, for the purposes of deliberation, the Panel chose to interpret AI as a collection of statistical and software techniques, as well as the associated data and the social context in which they evolve — this allows for a broader and more inclusive interpretation of AI technologies and forms of agency. The Panel uses the term AI interchangeably to describe various implementations of machine-assisted design and discovery, including those based on machine learning, deep learning, and reinforcement learning, except for specific examples where the choice of implementation is salient. [p. 6 print version; p. 34 PDF version]
Sometimes a show will take you in an unexpected direction. I feel a lot better ‘not knowing’. Still, I wish the curators had acknowledged somewhere in the show that artificial intelligence is a slippery concept. Especially when you add in robots and automatons. (more about them later)
21st century technology in a 19th/20th century building
Void stairs inside the building. Completed in 1906, the building was later designated as a National Historic Site in 1980 [downloaded from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancouver_Art_Gallery#cite_note-canen-7]
Just barely making it into the 20th century, the building where the Vancouver Art Gallery currently resides was for many years the provincial courthouse (1911 – 1978). In some ways, it’s a disconcerting setting for this show.
They’ve done their best to make the upstairs where the exhibit is displayed look like today’s galleries with their ‘white cube aesthetic’ and strong resemblance to the scientific laboratories seen in movies.
(For more about the dominance, since the 1930s, of the ‘white cube aesthetic’ in art galleries around the world, see my July 26, 2021 posting; scroll down about 50% of the way.)
It makes for an interesting tension, the contrast between the grand staircase, the cupola, and other architectural elements and the sterile, ‘laboratory’ environment of the modern art gallery.
20 Objects of Wonder and the flow of the show
It was flummoxing. Where are the 20 objects? Why does it feel like a maze in a laboratory? Loved the bees, but why? Eeeek Creepers! What is visual culture anyway? Where am I?
The objects of the show
It turns out that the curators have a more refined concept for ‘object’ than I do. There weren’t 20 material objects, there were 20 numbered ‘pods’ with perhaps a screen or a couple of screens or a screen and a material object or two illustrating the pod’s topic.
Looking up a definition for the word (accessed from a June 9, 2022 duckduckgo.com search). yielded this, (the second one seems à propos),
objectŏb′jĭkt, -jĕkt″
noun
1. Something perceptible by one or more of the senses, especially by vision or touch; a material thing.
2. A focus of attention, feeling, thought, or action.
3. A limiting factor that must be considered.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
Each pod = a focus of attention.
The show’s flow is a maze. Am I a rat?
The pods are defined by a number and by temporary walls. So if you look up, you’ll see a number and a space partly enclosed by a temporary wall or two.
It’s a very choppy experience. For example, one minute you can be in pod 1 and, when you turn the corner, you’re in pod 4 or 5 or ? There are pods I’ve not seen, despite my two visits, because I kept losing my way. This led to an existential crisis on my second visit. “Had I missed the greater meaning of this show? Was there some sort of logic to how it was organized? Was there meaning to my life? Was I a rat being nudged around in a maze?” I didn’t know.
Thankfully, I have since recovered. But, I will return to my existential crisis later, with a special mention for “Creepers.”
The fascinating
My friend, you know I appreciated the history and in addition to Alan Turing, Ada Lovelace and the Mechanical Turk, at the beginning of the show, they included a reference to Ovid (or Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō), a Roman poet who lived from 43 BCE – 17/18 CE in one of the double digit (17? or 10? or …) in one of the pods featuring a robot on screen. As to why Ovid might be included, this excerpt from a February 12, 2018 posting on the cosmolocal.org website provides a clue (Note. Links have been removed),
The University of King’s College [Halifax, Nova Scotia] presents Automatons! From Ovid to AI, a nine-lecture series examining the history, issues and relationships between humans, robots, and artificial intelligence [emphasis mine]. The series runs from January 10 to April 4 [2018], and features leading scholars, performers and critics from Canada, the US and Britain.
“Drawing from theatre, literature, art, science and philosophy, our 2018 King’s College Lecture Series features leading international authorities exploring our intimate relationships with machines,” says Dr. Gordon McOuat, professor in the King’s History of Science and Technology (HOST) and Contemporary Studies Programs.
…
“From the myths of Ovid [emphasis mine] and the automatons [emphasis mine] of the early modern period to the rise of robots, cyborgs, AI and artificial living things in the modern world, the 2018 King’s College Lecture Series examines the historical, cultural, scientific and philosophical place of automatons in our lives—and our future,” adds McOuat.
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I loved the way the curators managed to integrate the historical roots for artificial intelligence and, by extension, the world of automatons, robots, cyborgs, and androids. Yes, starting the show with Alan Turing and Ada Lovelace could be expected but Norbert Wiener’s Moth (1949) acts as a sort of preview for Sougwen Chung’s “Omnia per Omnia, 2018” (GIF seen at the beginning of this post). Take a look for yourself (from the cyberneticzoo.com September 19, 2009 posting by cyberne1. Do you see the similarity or am I the only one?
[sourced from Google images, Source:life) & downloaded from https://cyberneticzoo.com/cyberneticanimals/1949-wieners-moth-wiener-wiesner-singleton/]
Sculpture
This is the first time I’ve come across an AI/sculpture project. The VAG show features Scott Eaton’s sculptures on screens in a room devoted to his work.
Scott Eaton: Entangled II, 2019
4k video (still) Courtesy of the Artist [downloaded from https://www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/exhibitions/the-imitation-game]
This looks like an image of a piece of ginger root and It’s fascinating to watch the process as the AI agent ‘evolves’ Eaton’s drawings into onscreen sculptures. It would have enhanced the experience if at least one of Eaton’s ‘evolved’ and physically realized sculptures had been present in the room but perhaps there were financial and/or logistical reasons for the absence.
Both Chung and Eaton are collaborating with an AI agent. In Chung’s case the AI is integrated into the paintbots with which she interacts and paints alongside and in Eaton’s case, it’s via a computer screen. In both cases, the work is mildly hypnotizing in a way that reminds me of lava lamps.
One last note about Chung and her work. She was one of the artists invited to present new work at an invite-only April 22, 2022 Embodied Futures workshop at the “What will life become?” event held by the Berrgruen Institute and the University of Southern California (USC),
Embodied Futures invites participants to imagine novel forms of life, mind, and being through artistic and intellectual provocations on April 22 [2022].
Beginning at 1 p.m., together we will experience the launch of five artworks commissioned by the Berggruen Institute. We asked these artists: How does your work inflect how we think about “the human” in relation to alternative “embodiments” such as machines, AIs, plants, animals, the planet, and possible alien life forms in the cosmos? [emphases mine] Later in the afternoon, we will take provocations generated by the morning’s panels and the art premieres in small breakout groups that will sketch futures worlds, and lively entities that might dwell there, in 2049.
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This leads to (and my friend, while I too am taking a shallow dive, for this bit I’m going a little deeper):
Bees and architecture
Neri Oxman’s contribution (Golden Bee Cube, Synthetic Apiary II [2020]) is an exhibit featuring three honeycomb structures and a video featuring the bees in her synthetic apiary.
Neri Oxman and the MIT Mediated Matter Group, Golden Bee Cube, Synthetic Apiary II, 2020, beeswax, acrylic, gold particles, gold powder Courtesy of Neri Oxman and the MIT Mediated Matter Group
Neri Oxman (then a faculty member of the Mediated Matter Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) described the basis for the first and all other iterations of her synthetic apiary in Patrick Lynch’s October 5, 2016 article for ‘ArchDaily; Broadcasting Architecture Worldwide’, Note: Links have been removed,
Designer and architect Neri Oxman and the Mediated Matter group have announced their latest design project: the Synthetic Apiary. Aimed at combating the massive bee colony losses that have occurred in recent years, the Synthetic Apiary explores the possibility of constructing controlled, indoor environments that would allow honeybee populations to thrive year-round.
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“It is time that the inclusion of apiaries—natural or synthetic—for this “keystone species” be considered a basic requirement of any sustainability program,” says Oxman.
In developing the Synthetic Apiary, Mediated Matter studied the habits and needs of honeybees, determining the precise amounts of light, humidity and temperature required to simulate a perpetual spring environment. [emphasis mine] They then engineered an undisturbed space where bees are provided with synthetic pollen and sugared water and could be evaluated regularly for health.
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In the initial experiment, the honeybees’ natural cycle proved to adapt to the new environment, as the Queen was able to successfully lay eggs in the apiary. The bees showed the ability to function normally in the environment, suggesting that natural cultivation in artificial spaces may be possible across scales, “from organism- to building-scale.”
“At the core of this project is the creation of an entirely synthetic environment enabling controlled, large-scale investigations of hives,” explain the designers.
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Mediated Matter chose to research into honeybees not just because of their recent loss of habitat, but also because of their ability to work together to create their own architecture, [emphasis mine] a topic the group has explored in their ongoing research on biologically augmented digital fabrication, including employing silkworms to create objects and environments at product, architectural, and possibly urban, scales.
“The Synthetic Apiary bridges the organism- and building-scale by exploring a “keystone species”: bees. Many insect communities present collective behavior known as “swarming,” prioritizing group over individual survival, while constantly working to achieve common goals. Often, groups of these eusocial organisms leverage collaborative behavior for relatively large-scale construction. For example, ants create extremely complex networks by tunneling, wasps generate intricate paper nests with materials sourced from local areas, and bees deposit wax to build intricate hive structures.”
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This January 19, 2022 article by Crown Honey for its eponymous blog updates Oxman’s work (Note 1: All emphases are mine; Note 2: A link has been removed),
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Synthetic Apiary II investigates co-fabrication between humans and honey bees through the use of designed environments in which Apis mellifera colonies construct comb. These designed environments serve as a means by which to convey information to the colony. The comb that the bees construct within these environments comprises their response to the input information, enabling a form of communication through which we can begin to understand the hive’s collective actions from their perspective.
Some environments are embedded with chemical cues created through a novel pheromone 3D-printing process, while others generate magnetic fields of varying strength and direction. Others still contain geometries of varying complexity or designs that alter their form over time.
When offered wax augmented with synthetic biomarkers, bees appear to readily incorporate it into their construction process, likely due to the high energy cost of producing fresh wax. This suggests that comb construction is a responsive and dynamic process involving complex adaptations to perturbations from environmental stimuli, not merely a set of predefined behaviors building toward specific constructed forms. Each environment therefore acts as a signal that can be sent to the colony to initiate a process of co-fabrication.
Characterization of constructed comb morphology generally involves visual observation and physical measurements of structural features—methods which are limited in scale of analysis and blind to internal architecture. In contrast, the wax structures built by the colonies in Synthetic Apiary II are analyzed through high-throughput X-ray computed tomography (CT) scans that enable a more holistic digital reconstruction of the hive’s structure.
Geometric analysis of these forms provides information about the hive’s design process, preferences, and limitations when tied to the inputs, and thereby yields insights into the invisible mediations between bees and their environment. Developing computational tools to learn from bees can facilitate the very beginnings of a dialogue with them. Refined by evolution over hundreds of thousands of years, their comb-building behaviors and social organizations may reveal new forms and methods of formation that can be applied across our human endeavors in architecture, design, engineering, and culture.
Further, with a basic understanding and language established, methods of co-fabrication together with bees may be developed, enabling the use of new biocompatible materials and the creation of more efficient structural geometries that modern technology alone cannot achieve.
In this way, we also move our built environment toward a more synergistic embodiment, able to be more seamlessly integrated into natural environments through material and form, even providing habitats of benefit to both humans and nonhumans. It is essential to our mutual survival for us to not only protect but moreover to empower these critical pollinators – whose intrinsic behaviors and ecosystems we have altered through our industrial processes and practices of human-centric design – to thrive without human intervention once again.
In order to design our way out of the environmental crisis that we ourselves created, we must first learn to speak nature’s language. …
The three (natural, gold nanoparticle, and silver nanoparticle) honeycombs in the exhibit are among the few physical objects (the others being the historical documents and the paintbots with their canvasses) in the show and it’s almost a relief after the parade of screens. It’s the accompanying video that’s eerie. Everything is in white, as befits a science laboratory, in this synthetic apiary where bees are fed sugar water and fooled into a spring that is eternal.
Courtesy: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Copyright: Mediated Matter [downloaded from https://www.media.mit.edu/projects/synthetic-apiary/overview/]
(You may want to check out Lynch’s October 5, 2016 article or Crown Honey’s January 19, 2022 article as both have embedded images and the Lynch article includes a Synthetic Apiary video. The image above is a still from the video.)
As I asked a friend, where are the flowers? Ron Miksha, a bee ecologist working at the University of Calgary, details some of the problems with Oxman’s Synthetic Apiary this way in his October 7, 2016 posting on his Bad Beekeeping Blog,
In a practical sense, the synthetic apiary fails on many fronts: Bees will survive a few months on concoctions of sugar syrup and substitute pollen, but they need a natural variety of amino acids and minerals to actually thrive. They need propolis and floral pollen. They need a ceiling 100 metres high and a 2-kilometre hallway if drone and queen will mate, or they’ll die after the old queen dies. They need an artificial sun that travels across the sky, otherwise, the bees will be attracted to artificial lights and won’t return to their hive. They need flowery meadows, fresh water, open skies. [emphasis mine] They need a better holodeck.
Dorothy Woodend’s March 10, 2022 review of the VAG show for The Tyee poses other issues with the bees and the honeycombs,
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When AI messes about with other species, there is something even more unsettling about the process. American-Israeli artist Neri Oxman’s Golden Bee Cube, Synthetic Apiary II, 2020 uses real bees who are proffered silver and gold [nanoparticles] to create their comb structures. While the resulting hives are indeed beautiful, rendered in shades of burnished metal, there is a quality of unease imbued in them. Is the piece akin to apiary torture chambers? I wonder how the bees feel about this collaboration and whether they’d like to renegotiate the deal.
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There’s no question the honeycombs are fascinating and disturbing but I don’t understand how artificial intelligence was a key factor in either version of Oxman’s synthetic apiary. In the 2022 article by Crown Honey, there’s this “Developing computational tools to learn from bees can facilitate the very beginnings of a dialogue with them [honeybees].” It’s probable that the computational tools being referenced include AI and the Crown Honey article seems to suggest those computational tools are being used to analyze the bees behaviour after the fact.
Yes, I can imagine a future where ‘strong’ AI (such as you, my friend) is in ‘dialogue’ with the bees and making suggestions and running the experiments but it’s not clear that this is the case currently. The Oxman exhibit contribution would seem to be about the future and its possibilities whereas many of the other ‘objects’ concern the past and/or the present.
Friend, let’s take a break, shall we? Part 2 is coming up.
I received (via email) a July 21, 2022 news release about the launch of a quantum science initiative in Vancouver (BTW, I have more about the Canadian quantum scene later in this post),
World’s top physicists unite to tackle one of Science’s greatest mysteries
Vancouver-based Quantum Gravity Society leads international quest to discover Theory of Quantum Gravity
Vancouver, B.C. (July 21, 2022): More than two dozen of the world’s top physicists, including three Nobel Prize winners, will gather in Vancouver this August for a Quantum Gravity Conference that will host the launch a Vancouver-based Quantum Gravity Institute (QGI) and a new global research collaboration that could significantly advance our understanding of physics and gravity and profoundly change the world as we know it.
For roughly 100 years, the world’s understanding of physics has been based on Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity (GR), which explored the theory of space, time and gravity, and quantum mechanics (QM), which focuses on the behaviour of matter and light on the atomic and subatomic scale. GR has given us a deep understanding of the cosmos, leading to space travel and technology like atomic clocks, which govern global GPS systems. QM is responsible for most of the equipment that runs our world today, including the electronics, lasers, computers, cell phones, plastics, and other technologies that support modern transportation, communications, medicine, agriculture, energy systems and more.
While each theory has led to countless scientific breakthroughs, in many cases, they are incompatible and seemingly contradictory. Discovering a unifying connection between these two fundamental theories, the elusive Theory of Quantum Gravity, could provide the world with a deeper understanding of time, gravity and matter and how to potentially control them. It could also lead to new technologies that would affect most aspects of daily life, including how we communicate, grow food, deliver health care, transport people and goods, and produce energy.
“Discovering the Theory of Quantum Gravity could lead to the possibility of time travel, new quantum devices, or even massive new energy resources that produce clean energy and help us address climate change,” said Philip Stamp, Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia, and Visiting Associate in Theoretical Astrophysics at Caltech [California Institute of Technology]. “The potential long-term ramifications of this discovery are so incredible that life on earth 100 years from now could look as miraculous to us now as today’s technology would have seemed to people living 100 years ago.”
The new Quantum Gravity Institute and the conference were founded by the Quantum Gravity Society, which was created in 2022 by a group of Canadian technology, business and community leaders, and leading physicists. Among its goals are to advance the science of physics and facilitate research on the Theory of Quantum Gravity through initiatives such as the conference and assembling the world’s leading archive of scientific papers and lectures associated with the attempts to reconcile these two theories over the past century.
Attending the Quantum Gravity Conference in Vancouver (August 15-19 [2022]) will be two dozen of the world’s top physicists, including Nobel Laureates Kip Thorne, Jim Peebles and Sir Roger Penrose, as well as physicists Baron Martin Rees, Markus Aspelmeyer, Viatcheslav Mukhanov and Paul Steinhardt. On Wednesday, August 17, the conference will be open to the public, providing them with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to attend keynote addresses from the world’s pre-eminent physicists. … A noon-hour discussion on the importance of the research will be delivered by Kip Thorne, the former Feynman Professor of physics at Caltech. Thorne is well known for his popular books, and for developing the original idea for the 2014 film “Interstellar.” He was also crucial to the development of the book “Contact” by Carl Sagan, which was also made into a motion picture.
“We look forward to welcoming many of the world’s brightest minds to Vancouver for our first Quantum Gravity Conference,” said Frank Giustra, CEO Fiore Group and Co-Founder, Quantum Gravity Society. “One of the goals of our Society will be to establish Vancouver as a supportive home base for research and facilitate the scientific collaboration that will be required to unlock this mystery that has eluded some of the world’s most brilliant physicists for so long.”
“The format is key,” explains Terry Hui, UC Berkley Physics alumnus and Co-Founder, Quantum Gravity Society [and CEO of Concord Pacific]. “Like the Solvay Conference nearly 100 years ago, the Quantum Gravity Conference will bring top scientists together in salon-style gatherings. The relaxed evening format following the conference will reduce barriers and allow these great minds to freely exchange ideas. I hope this will help accelerate the solution of this hundred-year bottleneck between theories relatively soon.”
“As amazing as our journey of scientific discovery has been over the past century, we still have so much to learn about how the universe works on a macro, atomic and subatomic level,” added Paul Lee, Managing Partner, Vanedge Capital, and Co-Founder, Quantum Gravity Society. “New experiments and observations capable of advancing work on this scientific challenge are becoming increasingly possible in today’s physics labs and using new astronomical tools. The Quantum Gravity Society looks forward to leveraging that growing technical capacity with joint theory and experimental work that harnesses the collective expertise of the world’s great physicists.”
About Quantum Gravity Society
Quantum Gravity Society was founded in Vancouver, Canada in 2020 by a group of Canadian business, technology and community leaders, and leading international physicists. The Society’s founding members include Frank Giustra (Fiore Group), Terry Hui (Concord Pacific), Paul Lee and Moe Kermani (Vanedge Capital) and Markus Frind (Frind Estate Winery), along with renowned physicists Abhay Ashtekar, Sir Roger Penrose, Philip Stamp, Bill Unruh and Birgitta Whaley. For more information, visit Quantum Gravity Society. About the Quantum Gravity Conference (Vancouver 2022)
The inaugural Quantum Gravity Conference (August 15-19 [2022]) is presented by Quantum Gravity Society, Fiore Group, Vanedge Capital, Concord Pacific, The Westin Bayshore, Vancouver and Frind Estate Winery. For conference information, visit conference.quantumgravityinstitute.ca. To register to attend the conference, visit Eventbrite.com.
Viatcheslav Mukhanov – Theoretical Physicist and Cosmologist, University of Munich
Paul Steinhardt – Theoretical Physicist, Princeton University
Session 2: History of the Universe
Jim Peebles, 2019 Nobel Laureate, Princeton University
Baron Martin Rees – Cosmologist and Astrophysicist, University of Cambridge
Sir Roger Penrose, 2020 Nobel Laureate, University of Oxford (via zoom)
12:30 p.m. VIP Lunch Session: Quantum Gravity — Why Should We Care?
Kip Thorne – 2017 Nobel Laureate, Executive Producer of blockbuster film “Interstellar”
2:30 p.m. Session 3: What do Experiments Say?
Markus Aspelmeyer – Experimental Physicist, Quantum Optics and Optomechanics Leader, University of Vienna
Sir Roger Penrose – 2020 Nobel Laureate (via zoom)
Session 4: Time Travel
Kip Thorne – 2017 Nobel Laureate, Executive Producer of blockbuster film “Interstellar”
Event Partners
Quantum Gravity Society
Westin Bayshore
Fiore Group
Concord Pacific
VanEdge Capital
Frind Estate Winery
Marketing Partners
BC Business Council
Greater Vancouver Board of Trade
Please note that Sir Roger Penrose will be present via Zoom but all the others will be there in the room with you.
Given that Kip Thorne won his 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics (with Rainer Weiss and Barry Barish) for work on gravitational waves, it’s surprising there’s no mention of this in the publicity for a conference on quantum gravity. Finding gravitational waves in 2016 was a very big deal (see Josh Fischman’s and Steve Mirsky’s February 11, 2016 interview with Kip Thorne for Scientific American).
Some thoughts on this conference and the Canadian quantum scene
This conference has a fascinating collection of players. Even I recognized some of the names, e.g., Penrose, Rees, Thorne.
The academics were to be expected and every presenter is an academic, often with their own Wikipedia page. Weirdly, there’s no one from the Perimeter Institute Institute for Theoretical Physics or TRIUMF (a national physics laboratory and centre for particle acceleration) or from anywhere else in Canada, which may be due to their academic specialty rather than an attempt to freeze out Canadian physicists. In any event, the conference academics are largely from the US (a lot of them from CalTech and Stanford) and from the UK.
The business people are a bit of a surprise. The BC Business Council and the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade? Frank Giustra who first made his money with gold mines, then with Lionsgate Entertainment, and who continues to make a great deal of money with his equity investment company, Fiore Group? Terry Hui, Chief Executive Office of Concord Pacific, a real estate development company? VanEdge Capital, an early stage venture capital fund? A winery? Missing from this list is D-Wave Systems, Canada’s quantum calling card and local company. While their area of expertise is quantum computing, I’d still expect to see them present as sponsors. *ETA December 6, 2022: I just looked at the conference page again and D-Wave is now listed as a sponsor.*
The academics? These people are not cheap dates (flights, speaker’s fees, a room at the Bayshore, meals). This is a very expensive conference and $129 for lunch and a daypass is likely a heavily subsidized ticket.
Another surprise? No government money/sponsorship. I don’t recall seeing another academic conference held in Canada without any government participation.
As evidence of action, the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) announced new grant programmes made possible by the National Quantum Strategy in a March 15, 2022 news release,
Quantum science and innovation are giving rise to promising advances in communications, computing, materials, sensing, health care, navigation and other key areas. The Government of Canada is committed to helping shape the future of quantum technology by supporting Canada’s quantum sector and establishing leadership in this emerging and transformative domain.
Today [March 15, 2022], the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, is announcing an investment of $137.9 million through the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada’s (NSERC) Collaborative Research and Training Experience (CREATE) grants and Alliance grants. These grants are an important next step in advancing the National Quantum Strategy and will reinforce Canada’s research strengths in quantum science while also helping to develop a talent pipeline to support the growth of a strong quantum community.
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Quick facts
Budget 2021 committed $360 million to build the foundation for a National Quantum Strategy, enabling the Government of Canada to build on previous investments in the sector to advance the emerging field of quantum technologies. The quantum sector is key to fuelling Canada’s economy, long-term resilience and growth, especially as technologies mature and more sectors harness quantum capabilities.
Development of quantum technologies offers job opportunities in research and science, software and hardware engineering and development, manufacturing, technical support, sales and marketing, business operations and other fields.
The Government of Canada also invested more than $1 billion in quantum research and science from 2009 to 2020—mainly through competitive granting agency programs, including Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada programs and the Canada First Research Excellence Fund—to help establish Canada as a global leader in quantum science.
In addition, the government has invested in bringing new quantum technologies to market, including investments through Canada’s regional development agencies, the Strategic Innovation Fund and the National Research Council of Canada’s Industrial Research Assistance Program.
Bank of Canada, cryptocurrency, and quantum computing
Multiverse Computing, a global leader in quantum computing solutions for the financial industry and beyond with offices in Toronto and Spain, today announced it has completed a proof-of-concept project with the Bank of Canada through which the parties used quantum computing to simulate the adoption of cryptocurrency as a method of payment by non-financial firms.
“We are proud to be a trusted partner of the first G7 central bank to explore modelling of complex networks and cryptocurrencies through the use of quantum computing,” said Sam Mugel, CTO [Chief Technical Officer] at Multiverse Computing. “The results of the simulation are very intriguing and insightful as stakeholders consider further research in the domain. Thanks to the algorithm we developed together with our partners at the Bank of Canada, we have been able to model a complex system reliably and accurately given the current state of quantum computing capabilities.”
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Multiverse Computing conducted its innovative work related to applying quantum computing for modelling complex economic interactions in a research project with the Bank of Canada. The project explored quantum computing technology as a way to simulate complex economic behaviour that is otherwise very difficult to simulate using traditional computational techniques.
By implementing this solution using D-Wave’s annealing quantum computer, the simulation was able to tackle financial networks as large as 8-10 players, with up to 2^90 possible network configurations. Note that classical computing approaches cannot solve large networks of practical relevance as a 15-player network requires as many resources as there are atoms in the universe.
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Quantum Technologies and the Council of Canadian Academies (CCA)
In a May 26, 2022 blog posting the CCA announced its Expert Panel on Quantum Technologies (they will be issuing a Quantum Technologies report),
The emergence of quantum technologies will impact all sectors of the Canadian economy, presenting significant opportunities but also risks. At the request of the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED), the Council of Canadian Academies (CCA) has formed an Expert Panel to examine the impacts, opportunities, and challenges quantum technologies present for Canadian industry, governments, and Canadians. Raymond Laflamme, O.C., FRSC, Canada Research Chair in Quantum Information and Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Waterloo, will serve as Chair of the Expert Panel.
“Quantum technologies have the potential to transform computing, sensing, communications, healthcare, navigation and many other areas,” said Dr. Laflamme. “But a close examination of the risks and vulnerabilities of these technologies is critical, and I look forward to undertaking this crucial work with the panel.”
As Chair, Dr. Laflamme will lead a multidisciplinary group with expertise in quantum technologies, economics, innovation, ethics, and legal and regulatory frameworks. The Panel will answer the following question:
In light of current trends affecting the evolution of quantum technologies, what impacts, opportunities and challenges do these present for Canadian industry, governments and Canadians more broadly?
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The Expert Panel on Quantum Technologies:
Raymond Laflamme, O.C., FRSC (Chair), Canada Research Chair in Quantum Information; the Mike and Ophelia Lazaridis John von Neumann Chair in Quantum Information; Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Waterloo
Sally Daub, Founder and Managing Partner, Pool Global Partners
Shohini Ghose, Professor, Physics and Computer Science, Wilfrid Laurier University; NSERC Chair for Women in Science and Engineering
Paul Gulyas, Senior Innovation Executive, IBM Canada
Mark W. Johnson, Senior Vice-President, Quantum Technologies and Systems Products, D-Wave Systems
Elham Kashefi, Professor of Quantum Computing, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh; Directeur de recherche au CNRS, LIP6 Sorbonne Université
Mauritz Kop, Fellow and Visiting Scholar, Stanford Law School, Stanford University
Dominic Martin, Professor, Département d’organisation et de ressources humaines, École des sciences de la gestion, Université du Québec à Montréal
Darius Ornston, Associate Professor, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto
Barry Sanders, FRSC, Director, Institute for Quantum Science and Technology, University of Calgary
Eric Santor, Advisor to the Governor, Bank of Canada
Christian Sarra-Bournet, Quantum Strategy Director and Executive Director, Institut quantique, Université de Sherbrooke
Stephanie Simmons, Associate Professor, Canada Research Chair in Quantum Nanoelectronics, and CIFAR Quantum Information Science Fellow, Department of Physics, Simon Fraser University
Jacqueline Walsh, Instructor; Director, initio Technology & Innovation Law Clinic, Dalhousie University
You’ll note that both the Bank of Canada and D-Wave Systems are represented on this expert panel.
The CCA Quantum Technologies report (in progress) page can be found here.
Does it mean anything?
Since I only skim the top layer of information (disparagingly described as ‘high level’ by the technology types I used to work with), all I can say is there’s a remarkable level of interest from various groups who are self-organizing. (The interest is international as well. I found the International Society for Quantum Gravity [ISQG], which had its first meeting in 2021.)
I don’t know what the purpose is other than it seems the Canadian focus seems to be on money. The board of trade and business council have no interest in primary research and the federal government’s national quantum strategy is part of Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED) Canada’s mandate. You’ll notice ‘science’ is sandwiched between ‘innovation’, which is often code for business, and economic development.
The Bank of Canada’s monetary interests are quite obvious.
The Perimeter Institute mentioned earlier was founded by Mike Lazaridis (from his Wikipedia entry) Note: Links have been removed,
… a Canadian businessman [emphasis mine], investor in quantum computing technologies, and founder of BlackBerry, which created and manufactured the BlackBerry wireless handheld device. With an estimated net worth of US$800 million (as of June 2011), Lazaridis was ranked by Forbes as the 17th wealthiest Canadian and 651st in the world.[4]
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In 2000, Lazaridis founded and donated more than $170 million to the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.[11][12] He and his wife Ophelia founded and donated more than $100 million to the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo in 2002.[8]
That Institute for Quantum Computing? There’s an interesting connection. Raymond Laflamme, the chair for the CCA expert panel, was its director for a number of years and he’s closely affiliated with the Perimeter Institute. (I’m not suggesting anything nefarious or dodgy. It’s a small community in Canada and relationships tend to be tightly interlaced.) I’m surprised he’s not part of the quantum mechanics and gravity conference but that could have something to do with scheduling.
One last interesting bit about Laflamme, from his Wikipedia entry, Note: Links have been removed)
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As Stephen Hawking’s PhD student, he first became famous for convincing Hawking that time does not reverse in a contracting universe, along with Don Page. Hawking told the story of how this happened in his famous book A Brief History of Time in the chapter The Arrow of Time.[3] Later on Laflamme made a name for himself in quantum computing and quantum information theory, which is what he is famous for today.
This story got me to thinking about what happens when any kind of implant company (pacemaker, deep brain stimulator, etc.) goes bankrupt or is acquired by another company with a different business model.
As I worked on this piece, more issues were raised and the scope expanded to include prosthetics along with implants while the focus narrowed to neuro as in, neural implants and neuroprosthetics. At the same time, I found salient examples for this posting in other medical advances such as gene editing.
In sum, all references to implants and prosthetics are to neural devices and some issues are illustrated with salient examples from other medical advances (specifically, gene editing).
Medical implants are devices or tissues that are placed inside or on the surface of the body. Many implants are prosthetics, intended to replace missing body parts. Other implants deliver medication, monitor body functions, or provide support to organs and tissues.
As for what constitutes a neural implant/neuroprosthetic, there’s this from Emily Waltz’s January 20, 2020 article (How Do Neural Implants Work? Neural implants are used for deep brain stimulation, vagus nerve stimulation, and mind-controlled prostheses) for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Spectrum magazine,
A neural implant, then, is a device—typically an electrode of some kind—that’s inserted into the body, comes into contact with tissues that contain neurons, and interacts with those neurons in some way.
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Now, let’s start with the recent near bankruptcy of a retinal implant company.
Barbara Campbell was walking through a New York City subway station during rush hour when her world abruptly went dark. For four years, Campbell had been using a high-tech implant in her left eye that gave her a crude kind of bionic vision, partially compensating for the genetic disease that had rendered her completely blind in her 30s. “I remember exactly where I was: I was switching from the 6 train to the F train,” Campbell tells IEEE Spectrum. “I was about to go down the stairs, and all of a sudden I heard a little ‘beep, beep, beep’ sound.’”
It wasn’t her phone battery running out. It was her Argus II retinal implant system powering down. The patches of light and dark that she’d been able to see with the implant’s help vanished.
Terry Byland is the only person to have received this kind of implant in both eyes. He got the first-generation Argus I implant, made by the company Second Sight Medical Products, in his right eye in 2004, and the subsequent Argus II implant in his left 11 years later. He helped the company test the technology, spoke to the press movingly about his experiences, and even met Stevie Wonder at a conference. “[I] went from being just a person that was doing the testing to being a spokesman,” he remembers.
Yet in 2020, Byland had to find out secondhand that the company had abandoned the technology and was on the verge of going bankrupt. While his two-implant system is still working, he doesn’t know how long that will be the case. “As long as nothing goes wrong, I’m fine,” he says. “But if something does go wrong with it, well, I’m screwed. Because there’s no way of getting it fixed.”
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Science Friday and the IEEE [Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers] Spectrum magazine collaborated to produce this story. You’ll find the audio files and the transcript of interviews with the authors and one of the implant patients in this February 25, 2022 Science Friday (a National Public Radio program) posting.
Ross Doerr, another Second Sight patient, doesn’t mince words: “It is fantastic technology and a lousy company,” he says. He received an implant in one eye in 2019 and remembers seeing the shining lights of Christmas trees that holiday season. He was thrilled to learn in early 2020 that he was eligible for software upgrades that could further improve his vision. Yet in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, he heard troubling rumors about the company and called his Second Sight vision-rehab therapist. “She said, ‘Well, funny you should call. We all just got laid off,’ ” he remembers. “She said, ‘By the way, you’re not getting your upgrades.’ ”
These three patients, and more than 350 other blind people around the world with Second Sight’s implants in their eyes, find themselves in a world in which the technology that transformed their lives is just another obsolete gadget. One technical hiccup, one broken wire, and they lose their artificial vision, possibly forever. To add injury to insult: A defunct Argus system in the eye could cause medical complications or interfere with procedures such as MRI scans, and it could be painful or expensive to remove.
After Second Sight discontinued its retinal implant in 2019 and nearly went out of business in 2020, a public offering in June 2021 raised US $57.5 million at $5 per share. The company promised to focus on its ongoing clinical trial of a brain implant, called Orion, that also provides artificial vision. But its stock price plunged to around $1.50, and in February 2022, just before this article was published, the company announced a proposed merger with an early-stage biopharmaceutical company called Nano Precision Medical (NPM). None of Second Sight’s executives will be on the leadership team of the new company, which will focus on developing NPM’s novel implant for drug delivery.The company’s current leadership declined to be interviewed for this article but did provide an emailed statement prior to the merger announcement. It said, in part: “We are a recognized global leader in neuromodulation devices for blindness and are committed to developing new technologies to treat the broadest population of sight-impaired individuals.”
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It’s unclear what Second Sight’s proposed merger means for Argus patients. The day after the merger was announced, Adam Mendelsohn, CEO of Nano Precision Medical, told Spectrum that he doesn’t yet know what contractual obligations the combined company will have to Argus and Orion patients. But, he says, NPM will try to do what’s “right from an ethical perspective.” The past, he added in an email, is “simply not relevant to the new future.”
Second Sight may have given up on its retinal implant, but other companies still see a need—and a market—for bionic vision without brain surgery. Paris-based Pixium Vision is conducting European and U.S. feasibility trials to see if its Prima system can help patients with age-related macular degeneration, a much more common condition than retinitis pigmentosa.
Daniel Palanker, a professor of ophthalmology at Stanford University who licensed his technology to Pixium, says the Prima implant is smaller, simpler, and cheaper than the Argus II. But he argues that Prima’s superior image resolution has the potential to make Pixium Vision a success. “If you provide excellent vision, there will be lots of patients,” he tells Spectrum. “If you provide crappy vision, there will be very few.”
Some clinicians involved in the Argus II work are trying to salvage what they can from the technology. Gislin Dagnelie, an associate professor of ophthalmology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, has set up a network of clinicians who are still working with Argus II patients. The researchers are experimenting with a thermal camera to help users see faces, a stereo camera to filter out the background, and AI-powered object recognition. These upgrades are unlikely to result in commercial hardware today but could help future vision prostheses.
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The writers have carefully balanced this piece so it is not an outright condemnation of the companies (Second Sight and Nano Precision), from the February 15, 2022 IEEE Spectrum article,
Failure is an inevitable part of innovation. The Argus II was an innovative technology, and progress made by Second Sight may pave the way for other companies that are developing bionic vision systems. But for people considering such an implant in the future, the cautionary tale of Argus patients left in the lurch may make a tough decision even tougher. Should they take a chance on a novel technology? If they do get an implant and find that it helps them navigate the world, should they allow themselves to depend upon it?
Abandoning the Argus II technology—and the people who use it—might have made short-term financial sense for Second Sight, but it’s a decision that could come back to bite the merged company if it does decide to commercialize a brain implant, believes Doerr.
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For anyone curious about retinal implant technology (specifically the Argus II), I have a description in a June 30, 2015 posting.
Speculations and hopes for neuroprosthetics
The field of neuroprosthetics is very active. Dr Arthur Saniotis and Prof Maciej Henneberg have written an article where they speculate about the possibilities of a neuroprosthetic that may one day merge with neurons in a February 21, 2022 Nanowerk Spotlight article,
For over a generation several types of medical neuroprosthetics have been developed, which have improved the lives of thousands of individuals. For instance, cochlear implants have restored functional hearing in individuals with severe hearing impairment.
Further advances in motor neuroprosthetics are attempting to restore motor functions in tetraplegic, limb loss and brain stem stroke paralysis subjects.
Currently, scientists are working on various kinds of brain/machine interfaces [BMI] in order to restore movement and partial sensory function. One such device is the ‘Ipsihand’ that enables movement of a paralyzed hand. The device works by detecting the recipient’s intention in the form of electrical signals, thereby triggering hand movement.
Another recent development is the 12 month BMI gait neurohabilitation program that uses a visual-tactile feedback system in combination with a physical exoskeleton and EEG operated AI actuators while walking. This program has been tried on eight patients with reported improvements in lower limb movement and somatic sensation.
Surgically placed electrode implants have also reduced tremor symptoms in individuals with Parkinson’s disease.
Although neuroprosthetics have provided various benefits they do have their problems. Firstly, electrode implants to the brain are prone to degradation, necessitating new implants after a few years. Secondly, as in any kind of surgery, implanted electrodes can cause post-operative infection and glial scarring. Furthermore, one study showed that the neurobiological efficacy of an implant is dependent on the rate of speed of its insertion.
But what if humans designed a neuroprosthetic, which could bypass the medical glitches of invasive neuroprosthetics? However, instead of connecting devices to neural networks, this neuroprosthetic would directly merge with neurons – a novel step. Such a neuroprosthetic could radically optimize treatments for neurodegenerative disorders and brain injuries, and possibly cognitive enhancement [emphasis mine].
An interesting feature of their nanobot neuroprosthetic is that it has been inspired from nature by way of endomyccorhizae – a type of plant/fungus symbiosis, which is over four hundred million years old. During endomyccorhizae, fungi use numerous threadlike projections called mycelium that penetrate plant roots, forming colossal underground networks with nearby root systems. During this process fungi take up vital nutrients while protecting plant roots from infections – a win-win relationship. Consequently, the nano-neuroprosthetic has been named ‘endomyccorhizae ligand interface’, or ‘ELI’ for short.
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The Spotlight article goes on to describe how these nanobots might function. As for the possibility of cognitive enhancement, I wonder if that might come to be described as a form of ‘artificial intelligence’.
(Dr Arthur Saniotis and Prof Maciej Henneberg are both from the Department of Anthropology, Ludwik Hirszfeld Institute of Immunology and Experimental Therapy, Polish Academy of Sciences; and Biological Anthropology and Comparative Anatomy Research Unit, Adelaide Medical School, University of Adelaide. Abdul-Rahman Sawalma who’s listed as an author on the 2018 paper is from the Palestinian Neuroscience Initiative, Al-Quds University, Beit Hanina, Palestine.)
Saniotis and Henneberg’s Spotlight article presents an optimistic view of neuroprosthetics. It seems telling that they cite cochlear implants as a success story when it is viewed by many as ethically fraught (see the Cochlear implant Wikipedia entry; scroll down to ‘Criticism and controversy’).
Technologist: What are the potential consequences of accepting the “augmented human” in society?
Gregor Wolbring: There are many that we might not even envision now. But let me focus on failure and obsolescence [emphasis mine], two issues that are rarely discussed. What happens when the mechanisms fails in the middle of an action? Failure has hazardous consequences, but obsolescence has psychological ones. …. The constant surgical intervention needed to update the hardware may not be feasible. A person might feel obsolete if she cohabits with others using a newer version.
T. Are researchers working on prosthetics sometimes disconnected from reality?
G. W. Students engaged in the development of prosthetics have to learn how to think in societal terms and develop a broader perspective. Our education system provides them with a fascination for clever solutions to technological challenges but not with tools aiming at understanding the consequences, such as whether their product might increase or decrease social justice.
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Wolbring is a professor at the University of Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine (profile page) who writes on social issues to do with human enhancement/ augmentation. As well,
Some of his areas of engagement are: ability studies including governance of ability expectations, disability studies, governance of emerging and existing sciences and technologies (e.g. nanoscale science and technology, molecular manufacturing, aging, longevity and immortality, cognitive sciences, neuromorphic engineering, genetics, synthetic biology, robotics, artificial intelligence, automatization, brain machine interfaces, sensors), impact of science and technology on marginalized populations, especially people with disabilities he governance of bodily enhancement, sustainability issues, EcoHealth, resilience, ethics issues, health policy issues, human rights and sport.
I’d classify Second Sight as a tech startup company and they have a high rate of failure, which may not have been clear to the patients who had the implants. Clinical trials can present problems too as this excerpt from my September 17, 2020 posting notes,
“In 2003, neurologist Helen Mayberg of Emory University in Atlanta began to test a bold, experimental treatment for people with severe depression, which involved implanting metal electrodes deep in the brain in a region called area 25 [emphases mine]. The initial data were promising; eventually, they convinced a device company, St. Jude Medical in Saint Paul, to sponsor a 200-person clinical trial dubbed BROADEN.
This month [October 2017], however, Lancet Psychiatry reported the first published data on the trial’s failure. The study stopped recruiting participants in 2012, after a 6-month study in 90 people failed to show statistically significant improvements between those receiving active stimulation and a control group, in which the device was implanted but switched off.
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… a tricky dilemma for companies and research teams involved in deep brain stimulation (DBS) research: If trial participants want to keep their implants [emphases mine], who will take responsibility—and pay—for their ongoing care? And participants in last week’s meeting said it underscores the need for the growing corps of DBS researchers to think long-term about their planned studies.”
“It becomes part of you,” Patient 6 said, describing the technology that enabled her, after 45 years of severe epilepsy, to halt her disabling seizures. Electrodes had been implanted on the surface of her brain that would send a signal to a hand-held device when they detected signs of impending epileptic activity. On hearing a warning from the device, Patient 6 knew to take a dose of medication to halt the coming seizure.
“You grow gradually into it and get used to it, so it then becomes a part of every day,” she told Frederic Gilbert, an ethicist who studies brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) at the University of Tasmania in Hobart, Australia. “It became me,” she said. [emphasis mine]
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Symbiosis is a term, borrowed from ecology, that means an intimate co-existence of two species for mutual advantage. As technologists work towards directly connecting the human brain to computers, it is increasingly being used to describe humans’ potential relationship with artificial intelligence. [emphasis mine]
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It’s complicated
For a lot of people these devices are or could be life-changing. At the same time, there are a number of different issues related to implants/prosthetics; the following is not an exhaustive list. As Wolbring notes, issues that we can’t begin to imagine now are likely to emerge as these medical advances become more ubiquitous.
Ability/disability?
Assistive technologies are almost always portrayed as helpful. For example, a cochlear implant gives people without hearing the ability to hear. The assumption is that this is always a good thing—unless you’re a deaf person who wants to define the problem a little differently. Who gets to decide what is good and ‘normal’ and what is desirable?
While the cochlear implant is the most extreme example I can think of, there are variations of these questions throughout the ‘disability’ communities.
Also, as Wolbring notes in his interview with the Technologist.eu, the education system tends to favour technological solutions which don’t take social issues into account. Wolbring cites social justice issues when he mentions failure and obsolescence.
Technical failures and obsolescence
The story, excerpted earlier in this posting, opened with a striking example of a technical failure at an awkward moment; a blind woman depending on her retinal implant loses all sight as she maneuvers through a subway station in New York City.
Aside from being an awful way to find out the company supplying and supporting your implant is in serious financial trouble and can’t offer assistance or repair, the failure offers a preview of what could happen as implants and prosthetics become more commonly used.
Keeping up/fomo (fear of missing out)/obsolescence
It used to be called ‘keeping up with the Joneses, it’s the practice of comparing yourself and your worldly goods to someone else(‘s) and then trying to equal what they have or do better. Usually, people want to have more and better than the mythical Joneses.
These days, the phenomenon (which has been expanded to include social networking) is better known as ‘fomo’ or fear of missing out (see the Fear of missing out Wikipedia entry).
Whatever you want to call it, humanity’s competitive nature can be seen where technology is concerned. When I worked in technology companies, I noticed that hardware and software were sometimes purchased for features that were effectively useless to us. But, not upgrading to a newer version was unthinkable.
Call it fomo or ‘keeping up with the Joneses’, it’s a powerful force and when people (and even companies) miss out or can’t keep up, it can lead to a sense of inferiority in the same way that having an obsolete implant or prosthetic could.
Social consequences
Could there be a neural implant/neuroprosthetic divide? There is already a digital divide (from its Wikipedia entry),
The digital divide is a gap between those who have access to new technology and those who do not … people without access to the Internet and other ICTs [information and communication technologies] are at a socio-economic disadvantage because they are unable or less able to find and apply for jobs, shop and sell online, participate democratically, or research and learn.
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After reading Wolbring’s comments, it’s not hard to imagine a neural implant/neuroprosthetic divide with its attendant psychological and social consequences.
What kind of human am I?
There are other issues as noted in my September 17, 2020 posting. I’ve already mentioned ‘patient 6’, the woman who developed a symbiotic relationship with her brain/computer interface. This is how the relationship ended,
… He [Frederic Gilbert, ethicist] is now preparing a follow-up report on Patient 6. The company that implanted the device in her brain to help free her from seizures went bankrupt. The device had to be removed.
… Patient 6 cried as she told Gilbert about losing the device. … “I lost myself,” she said.
“It was more than a device,” Gilbert says. “The company owned the existence of this new person.”
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Above human
The possibility that implants will not merely restore or endow someone with ‘standard’ sight or hearing or motion or … but will augment or improve on nature was broached in this May 2, 2013 posting, More than human—a bionic ear that extends hearing beyond the usual frequencies and is one of many in the ‘Human Enhancement’ category on this blog.
More recently, Hugh Herr, an Associate Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), leader of the Biomechatronics research group at MIT’s Media Lab, a double amputee, and prosthetic enthusiast, starred in the recent (February 23, 2022) broadcast of ‘Augmented‘ on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) science programme, Nova.
I found ‘Augmented’ a little offputting as it gave every indication of being an advertisement for Herr’s work in the form of a hero’s journey. I was not able to watch more than 10 mins. This preview gives you a pretty good idea of what it was like although the part in ‘Augmented, where he says he’d like to be a cyborg hasn’t been included,
At a guess, there were a few talking heads (taking up from 10%-20% of the running time) who provided some cautionary words to counterbalance the enthusiasm in the rest of the programme. It’s a standard approach designed to give the impression that both sides of a question are being recognized. The cautionary material is usually inserted past the 1/2 way mark while leaving several minutes at the end for returning to the more optimistic material.
In a February 2, 2010 posting I have excerpts from an article featuring quotes from Herr that I still find startling,
Written by Paul Hochman for Fast Company, Bionic Legs, iLimbs, and Other Super-Human Prostheses [ETA March 23, 2022: an updated version of the article is now on Genius.com] delves further into the world where people may be willing to trade a healthy limb for a prosthetic. From the article,
There are many advantages to having your leg amputated.
Pedicure costs drop 50% overnight. A pair of socks lasts twice as long. But Hugh Herr, the director of the Biomechatronics Group at the MIT Media Lab, goes a step further. “It’s actually unfair,” Herr says about amputees’ advantages over the able-bodied. “As tech advancements in prosthetics come along, amputees can exploit those improvements. They can get upgrades. A person with a natural body can’t.”
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Herr is not the only one who favours prosthetics (also from the Hochman article),
This influx of R&D cash, combined with breakthroughs in materials science and processor speed, has had a striking visual and social result: an emblem of hurt and loss has become a paradigm of the sleek, modern, and powerful. Which is why Michael Bailey, a 24-year-old student in Duluth, Georgia, is looking forward to the day when he can amputate the last two fingers on his left hand.
“I don’t think I would have said this if it had never happened,” says Bailey, referring to the accident that tore off his pinkie, ring, and middle fingers. “But I told Touch Bionics I’d cut the rest of my hand off if I could make all five of my fingers robotic.”
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But Bailey is most surprised by his own reaction. “When I’m wearing it, I do feel different: I feel stronger. As weird as that sounds, having a piece of machinery incorporated into your body, as a part of you, well, it makes you feel above human.[emphasis mine] It’s a very powerful thing.”
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My September 17, 2020 posting touches on more ethical and social issues including some of those surrounding consumer neurotechnologies or brain-computer interfaces (BCI). Unfortunately, I don’t have space for these issues here.
In the IEEE Spectrum article, a tech start-up company, Second Sight, ran into financial trouble and is acquired by a company that has no plans to develop Second Sight’s core technology. The people implanted with the Argus II technology have been stranded as were ‘patient 6’ and others participating in the clinical trial described in the July 24, 2019 article by Liam Drew for Nature Outlook: The brain mentioned earlier in this posting.
I don’t know anything about the business bankruptcy mentioned in the Drew article but one of the business problems described in the IEEE Spectrum article suggests that Second Sight was founded before answering a basic question, “What is the market size for this product?”
On 18 July 2019, Second Sight sent Argus patients a letter saying it would be phasing out the retinal implant technology to clear the way for the development of its next-generation brain implant for blindness, Orion, which had begun a clinical trial with six patients the previous year. …
“The leadership at the time didn’t believe they could make [the Argus retinal implant] part of the business profitable,” Greenberg [Robert Greenberg, Second Sight co-founder] says. “I understood the decision, because I think the size of the market turned out to be smaller than we had thought.”
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The question of whether a medical procedure or medicine can be profitable (or should the question be sufficiently profitable?) was referenced in my April 26, 2019 posting in the context of gene editing and personalized medicine
Edward Abrahams, president of the Personalized Medicine Coalition (US-based), advocates for personalized medicine while noting in passing, market forces as represented by Goldman Sachs in his May 23, 2018 piece for statnews.com (Note: A link has been removed),
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Goldman Sachs, for example, issued a report titled “The Genome Revolution.” It argues that while “genome medicine” offers “tremendous value for patients and society,” curing patients may not be “a sustainable business model.” [emphasis mine] The analysis underlines that the health system is not set up to reap the benefits of new scientific discoveries and technologies. Just as we are on the precipice of an era in which gene therapies, gene-editing, and immunotherapies promise to address the root causes of disease, Goldman Sachs says that these therapies have a “very different outlook with regard to recurring revenue versus chronic therapies.”
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The ‘Glybera’ story in my July 4, 2019 posting (scroll down about 40% of the way) highlights the issue with “recurring revenue versus chronic therapies,”
Kelly Crowe in a November 17, 2018 article for the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) news writes about Glybera,
It is one of this country’s great scientific achievements.
“The first drug ever approved that can fix a faulty gene.
It’s called Glybera, and it can treat a painful and potentially deadly genetic disorder with a single dose — a genuine made-in-Canada medical breakthrough.
It cost $1M for a single treatment and that single treatment is good for at least 10 years.
Pharmaceutical companies make their money from repeated use of their medicaments and Glybera required only one treatment so the company priced it according to how much they would have gotten for repeated use, $100,000 per year over a 10 year period. The company was not able to persuade governments and/or individuals to pay the cost
In the end, 31 people got the treatment, most of them received it for free through clinical trials.
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For rich people only?
Megan Devlin’s March 8, 2022 article for the Daily Hive announces a major research investment into medical research (Note: A link has been removed),
Vancouver [Canada] billionaire Chip Wilson revealed Tuesday [March 8, 2022] that he has a rare genetic condition that causes his muscles to waste away, and announced he’s spending $100 million on research to find a cure.
His condition is called facio-scapulo-humeral muscular dystrophy, or FSHD for short. It progresses rapidly in some people and more slowly in others, but is characterized by progressive muscle weakness starting the the face, the neck, shoulders, and later the lower body.
“I’m out for survival of my own life,” Wilson said.
“I also have the resources to do something about this which affects so many people in the world.”
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Wilson hopes the $100 million will produce a cure or muscle-regenerating treatment by 2027.
“This could be one of the biggest discoveries of all time, for humankind,” Wilson said. “Most people lose muscle, they fall, and they die. If we can keep muscle as we age this can be a longevity drug like we’ve never seen before.”
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According to rarediseases.org, FSHD affects between four and 10 people out of every 100,000 [emphasis mine], Right now, therapies are limited to exercise and pain management. There is no way to stall or reverse the disease’s course.
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Wilson is best known for founding athleisure clothing company Lululemon. He also owns the most expensive home in British Columbia, a $73 million mansion in Vancouver’s Kitsilano neighbourhood.
Let’s see what the numbers add up to,
4 – 10 people out of 100,000
40 – 100 people out of 1M
1200 – 3,000 people out of 30M (let’s say this is Canada’s population)\
12,000 – 30,000 people out of 300M (let’s say this is the US’s population)
42,000 – 105,000 out of 1.115B (let’s say this is China’s population)
The rough total comes to 55,200 to 138,000 people between three countries with a combined population total of 1.445B. Given how business currently operates, it seems unlikely that any company will want to offer Wilson’s hoped for medical therapy although he and possibly others may benefit from a clinical trial.
Should profit or wealth be considerations?
The stories about the patients with the implants and the patients who need Glybera are heartbreaking and point to a question not often asked when medical therapies and medications are developed. Is the profit model the best choice and, if so, how much profit?
I have no answer to that question but I wish it was asked by medical researchers and policy makers.
As for wealthy people dictating the direction for medical research, I don’t have answers there either. I hope the research will yield applications and/or valuable information for more than Wilson’s disease.
It’s his money after all
Wilson calls his new venture, SolveFSHD. It doesn’t seem to be affiliated with any university or biomedical science organization and it’s not clear how the money will be awarded (no programmes, no application procedure, no panel of experts). There are three people on the team, Eva R. Chin, scientist and executive director, Chip Wilson, SolveFSHD founder/funder, and FSHD patient, and Neil Camarta, engineer, executive (fossil fuels and clean energy), and FSHD patient. There’s also a Twitter feed (presumably for the latest updates): https://twitter.com/SOLVEFSHD.
Low Tide Properties, the real estate arm of Lululemon founder Chip Wilson [emphasis mine], has submitted a new development permit application to build a 148-ft-tall, eight-storey, mixed-use commercial building in the False Creek Flats of Vancouver.
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The proposal, designed by local architectural firm Musson Cattell Mackey Partnership, calls for 236,000 sq ft of total floor area, including 105,000 sq ft of general office space, 102,000 sq ft of laboratory space [emphasis mine], and 5,000 sq ft of ground-level retail space. An outdoor amenity space for building workers will be provided on the rooftop.
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[next door] The 2001-built, five-storey building at 1618 Station Street immediately to the west of the development site is also owned by Low Tide Properties [emphasis mine]. The Ferguson, the name of the existing building, contains about 79,000 sq ft of total floor area, including 47,000 sq ft of laboratory space and 32,000 sq ft of general office space. Biotechnology company Stemcell technologies [STEMCELL] Technologies] is the anchor tenant [emphasis mine].
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I wonder if this proposed new building will house SolveFSHD and perhaps other FSHD-focused enterprises. The proximity of STEMCELL Technologies could be quite convenient. In any event, $100M will buy a lot (pun intended).
The end
Issues I’ve described here in the context of neural implants/neuroprosthetics and cutting edge medical advances are standard problems not specific to these technologies/treatments:
What happens when the technology fails (hopefully not at a critical moment)?
What happens when your supplier goes out of business or discontinues the products you purchase from them?
How much does it cost?
Who can afford the treatment/product? Will it only be for rich people?
Will this technology/procedure/etc. exacerbate or create new social tensions between social classes, cultural groups, religious groups, races, etc.?
Of course, having your neural implant fail suddenly in the middle of a New York City subway station seems a substantively different experience than having your car break down on the road.
There are, of course, there are the issues we can’t yet envision (as Wolbring notes) and there are issues such as symbiotic relationships with our implants and/or feeling that you are “above human.” Whether symbiosis and ‘implant/prosthetic superiority’ will affect more than a small number of people or become major issues is still to be determined.
There’s a lot to be optimistic about where new medical research and advances are concerned but I would like to see more thoughtful coverage in the media (e.g., news programmes and documentaries like ‘Augmented’) and more thoughtful comments from medical researchers.
Of course, the biggest issue I’ve raised here is about the current business models for health care products where profit is valued over people’s health and well-being. it’s a big question and I don’t see any definitive answers but the question put me in mind of this quote (from a September 22, 2020 obituary for US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Irene Monroe for Curve),
Ginsburg’s advocacy for justice was unwavering and showed it, especially with each oral dissent. In another oral dissent, Ginsburg quoted a familiar Martin Luther King Jr. line, adding her coda:” ‘The arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice,’” but only “if there is a steadfast commitment to see the task through to completion.” …
Martin Luther King Jr. popularized and paraphrased the quote (from a January 18, 2018 article by Mychal Denzel Smith for Huffington Post),
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His use of the quote is best understood by considering his source material. “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” is King’s clever paraphrasing of a portion of a sermon delivered in 1853 by the abolitionist minister Theodore Parker. Born in Lexington, Massachusetts, in 1810, Parker studied at Harvard Divinity School and eventually became an influential transcendentalist and minister in the Unitarian church. In that sermon, Parker said: “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe. The arc is a long one. My eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by experience of sight. I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends toward justice.”
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I choose to keep faith that people will get the healthcare products they need and that all of us need to keep working at making access more fair.
