Tag Archives: Venezuela

FrogHeart’s 2025 comes to an end as 2026 comes into view

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Thank you to everyone who took the time to drop in and read and/or comment on this blog, especially in times that grow ever more turbulent for all of us.

It wasn’t all ‘sturm und drang’. Aside: Much to my surprise (see Wikipedia entry) ‘storm and stress’ is a term first associated with an 18th Century German literary movement.

It’s been quite a year for the quantum science community, which appears to be getting more public attention. It’s not quite at the levels experienced by AI (artificial intelligence). but it’s getting there.

This year I’ve had a lot of art/science projects featured here. It makes me wonder if perhaps art/sci is also of rising interest.

Here’s my 2025 roundup, roughly organized by topic with a (to be expected) focus on the Canadian experience. As usual, some projects straddle two or more areas of interest, so, I’ve made some arbitrary decisions. As well, I’m trying to keep this shorter than my standard end-of-year piece. For anyone interested in the ‘nano’ aspect of this blog, either ‘nanoparticle’ or ‘nanotechnology’ searches should reward you amply.

Geopolitical tensions, the US and its science, and science fraud

Who thought Canadians would be threatened with 51st state status? Relatively mild compared to what else Donald Trump and his kakistocracy have been up to domestically and internationally. By the way, my new word of 2025 was kakistocracy, from its Wikipedia entry,

Kakistocracy (/ˌkækɪˈstɒkrəsi/ KAK-ist-OK-rə-see) is government by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous people.[1]: 54 [2][3]

The word was coined as early as the 17th century[4] and derives from two Greek words, kákistos (κάκιστος, ‘worst’) and krátos (κράτος, ‘rule’), together meaning ‘government by the worst people’.[5]

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Usage

The term is generally used by critics of a national government. It has been used variously in the past to describe the Russian governments of Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin,[12] the government of Egypt under Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi,[13] governments in sub-Saharan Africa,[14] the government of the Philippines under Rodrigo Duterte,[15] Brazil under Jair Bolsonaro,[16] and the governments of some presidents of the United States.[17]

The term gained popularity during the first presidency of Donald Trump, going viral in 2017 when used by then-MSNBC host Joy Reid and again following an April 2018 tweet by former CIA director John Brennan.[4][18] The term has been used by commentators at numerous news outlets,[19][20][21] political publications,[22][23] and books to describe the Trump administration.[24][25]

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As noted in a posting earlier in 2025 (see below for link), the Americans are desperate for resources, which can help explain at least some of the threats and hostile action toward us and others. The US signed a deal with Ukraine that featured critical minerals. Both Canada and Greenland offer critical minerals and greater control over the arctic passage .Nigeria and Venezuela are oil rich. As for Panama, presumably the focus is on easy Pacific/Atlantic passage.

The US also has a science problem that predates the current administration’s actions.

Given the well documented issues around US science funding, as well as, concerns that foreign students and researchers may have regarding current immigration policies, the Canadian federal government appears eager to provide an alternative.

I often see material on building ‘trust in science’ and material on the reverse ‘battling misinformation’.

  • This February 28, 2025 posting highlights an event about building trust in science. It also includes my comments about a medical scientific fraud, a bad apple, as it were.

Moving from ‘bad apples’ to an even more disturbing view of scientific fraud,

It’s always good to get a reminder to apply at least a little skepticism when reading about science.

Quantum

It was quite the year for quantum science.

Here’s some of what is going on in Canada.

I have a couple of the items from 2025 but you’ll find more if you search for ‘quantum’ in the blog’s search engine.

Next up is artificial intelligence (AI).

AI

China made itself felt this year.

China’s ex UK ambassador & Canada’s Yoshua Bengio tangle.

Vancouver (Canada) has an AI community and an interesting lineup of topics.

If you are looking to join up or check out Vancouver and/or BC AI communities, search on the web for “Kris Krug” who is the moving force for these initiatives.

The Phoenix Payroll implementation remains as one of the Canadian government’s greatest foul ups.

After almost 10 years, they are hopeful that AI will help them clean up the mess. Let’s hope they’re right.

By the way, do you own your thoughts?

To end this on a less ominous note, AI can be used for good.

Citizen science

This is a sampling of three of the citizen science items here.

  • “‘Extreme’ citizen science” published on January 17, 2025 was really from 2024 but the word ‘extreme’ had me hooked. Here’s what they meant, from the posting,

“Extreme citizen science is the idea that the role of a researcher becomes ever smaller. The unique and ‘extreme’ aspect is that a larger part of the research process, both fieldwork and lab work, is now handed over to high school students. We were excited to see if it would work and have now seen that it does so exceptionally well,” says project leader Anders P. Tøttrup, Associate Professor of Citizen Science at the Natural History Museum of Denmark.

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Interesting, yes? Especially in light of this next one.

And then, never in a million years!

Selection of art/science (art/sci)

Here they are:

Odds & sods

I have two posts featuring cybersecurity in one way or another.

It’s good to see that there’s interest in protecting medical implants from cyberthreats.

I do have one nano story I want to mention.

Linguistics is a social science and it’s been observed that Canadians speak their own kind of English.

One of the more unusual communication projects that I’ve seen.

This is abut our food.

A quick internet search did not turn up any new information about gene-edited pork and its entrance into the Canadian market.

Goodbye 2025 and hello 2026

At this point I’ve decided to give in and accept that thee will always be a backlog of material from the previous year (this time, 2025) bleeding into the next (this time, 2026). In my defence, there is so much material out there I am overwhelmed with riches.

Moving on …

I see that 2025 was chock-a-block with stories about artificial intelligence, just like 2024. I don’t anticipate that will change much, just as I imagine that quantum science and quantum computing stories will continue to proliferate 2026.

While I didn’t highlight them this year, there were a lot of stories about agriculture and regenerative medicine with enabling nanotechnology. It’ll be interesting to see if that continues.

One area that offers some hope with regard to energy and to the environment and I think will become more prominent in 2026 is fusion energy (nuclear energy). For anyone not familiar with fusion energy, here’s a description from the Wikipedia entry for the largest fusion energy project in the world (ITER); Note: Links have been removed,

ITER (originally an acronym for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, and also meaning “the way” or “the path” in Latin)[1][2][3] is an international nuclear fusion research and engineering project designed to demonstrate the feasibility of fusion power.

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Fusion aims to replicate the process that takes place in stars where the intense heat at the core fuses together nuclei and produces large amounts of energy in the form of heat and light. Harnessing fusion power in terrestrial conditions would provide sufficient energy to satisfy mounting demand, and to do so in a sustainable manner that has a relatively small impact on the environment. One gram of deuterium-tritium fuel mixture in the process of nuclear fusion produces 90,000-kilowatt hours of energy, or the equivalent of 11 tonnes of coal.[30]

Nuclear fusion uses a different approach from traditional nuclear energy. Current nuclear power stations rely on nuclear fission with the nucleus of an atom being split to release energy. Nuclear fusion takes multiple nuclei and uses intense heat to fuse them together, a process that also releases energy.[31]

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Thank you all and may you have a lovely New Year.

South American countries and others visit Iran’s Nanotechnology Initiative Council

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The Iran Nanotechnology Initiative Council (INIC) news release states eight South American countries visited. By my count there were six South American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Uruguay,), one North American country (Mexico), and one Caribbean country (Cuba). All eight can be described as Latin American countries.

An easy to understand error (I once forgot Mexico is part of North America and, for heaven sakes, I live in Canada and really should know better) as the designations can be confusing. That cleared up, here’s what the June 15, 2015 INIC news release had to say about the visit,

The ambassadors and charge d’affaires of 8 South American countries of Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, Cuba, Venezuela, Uruguay and Mexico paid a visit to Iran Nanotechnology Initiative Council (INIC) to become familiar with its activities.

Among the objectives of the visit, which was requested by the abovementioned countries, mention can be made of introduction with INIC and its activities, presentation of nanotechnology achievements and products in the country by the INIC, creation and modification of international cooperation and creation of appropriate environment for exporting nanotechnology-based products to these countries.

In this visit, the programs, achievements and objectives of nanotechnology development in Iran were explained by the authorities of INIC. In addition and due to the needs of the countries whose representatives were present in the visit, a number of experts from the Iranian knowledge-based companies presented their nanotechnology products in the fields of packaging of agricultural products with long durability and water purification.

As usual with something from INIC, I long for more detail, e.g., when did the visit take place?

H/t to Nanotechnology Now June 15, 2015 news item.

Venezuela, oil production, and reducing its environmental footprint

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The Nov. 14, 2012 article by Humberto Marquez for AlertNet; a Thompson Reuters Foundation Service, provides a context for why Venezuela is so interested in reducing the environmental footprint left by oil production,

Venezuela, a founding member of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), extracts close to three million barrels of oil a day and has over two billion barrels of heavy crude oil reserves.

There are six refineries in the South American country that process a total of 1.1 million barrels daily.

Meanwhile, according to OPEC figures, the country consumes 742,000 barrels of different types of fuel daily, of which 300,000 barrels correspond to the gasoline used by more than six million motor vehicles.

The Ministry of the Environment reports that Venezuela is responsible for 0.48 percent of worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases and 0.56 percent of one of these “villains”, carbon dioxide.

Here are a few details about the research they are currently pursuing,

“We are seeking to use nanoparticles of metallic salts, such as iron, nickel or cobalt nitrates, as catalysts in oil-related processes that produce greenhouse gas emissions,” said Sarah Briceño, a researcher at the Centre for Physics at the Venezuelan Institute of Scientific Research (IVIC).

Catalysts are substances used to speed up chemical processes, “and our goal is to develop catalysts adapted to Venezuelan industry that will make it possible to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from activities such as oil refining and fuel consumption by motor vehicles by up to 50 percent,” Briceño told Tierramérica*.

Apparently, they are expecting this research to yield results in 2013 although it’s unclear whether that means laboratory results or practical applications. Interesting article and this is the first time I’ve found an opportunity to post about Venezuela and its nanotechnology efforts.