Rice University (Texas, US) has a pretty image illustrating the process of making 2D nanoflakes, Caption: The image displays the exfoliation of hexagonal boron nitride into atomically thin nanosheets aided by surfactants, a process refined by chemists at Rice University. Credit: Ella Maru Studio A January 27, 2021 news item on Nanowerk announces the Rice University news, Just a little soap helps clean up the challenging process of preparing two-dimensional hexagonal boron nitride (hBN).Rice University…

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Before launching into my critique, here’s the news about Canada’s artificial intelligence (AI) dialogues as I found it on the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) AI dialogues event page, Open Dialogue:Artificial Intelligence (AI) in CanadaTell us what you think about Artificial Intelligence (AI). March 30-April 30, 2021The Government of Canada’s Advisory Council on Artificial Intelligence Public Awareness Working Group is hosting regional virtual workshops to hear what you and members of your community think about…

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This event is taking place at 7 am PDT. Should you still be interested, here are more details from a March 17, 2021 ArtSci Salon announcement (received via email; you can also find the information on the artscisalon.com/dogmalab/ webpage) provides descriptions of the talk and the artists after the registration and viewing information, Benjamin Bacon & Vivian Xu –  Inside Dogma Lab – exploring new mediaecologiesThursday, March 25 [2021]10 am EDT, 4 pm GST, 10…

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What a great bit of work, publicity-wise, from either or both the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto (Canada) and artist/scientist Radha Chaddah. IAM (ee-yam): Dance of the Molecules, a virtual performance installation featuring COVID-19 and molecular dance, has been profiled in the Toronto Star, on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) website, and in the Globe and Mail within the last couple of weeks. From a Canadian perspective, that’s major coverage and much of it national.…

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My first quantum brain posting! (Well, I do have something that seems loosely related in a July 5, 2017 posting about quantum entanglement and machine learning and more. Also, I have lots of item on brainlike or neuromorphic computing.) Getting to the latest news, a February 1, 2021 news item on Nanowerk announces research in to new intelligent materials that could lead to a ‘quantum brain’, An intelligent material that learns by physically changing itself,…

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The Antikythera Mechanism is fascinating and a March 12, 2021 University College London (UCL) press release (also on EurekAlert) reveals the reason for the fascination before announcing the latest research into this ‘celestial’ object, Known to many as the world’s first analogue computer, the Antikythera Mechanism is the most complex piece of engineering to have survived from the ancient world. The 2,000-year-old device was used to predict the positions of the Sun, Moon and the…

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I sometimes get notices from unexpected sources for science and technology events. On Tuesday, March 9, 2021, I received a notice from an agency about Urania Day (March 16, 2021) celebrating women in the arts and sciences during (US) Women’s History Month. What made the notice unusual is that the agency was representing Ophira and Tali Edut of AstroStyle, an astrology website. Astrologers like Galileo, Kepler, Tycho and others I realize that for a lot…

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The Mutant Project is both a book (The Mutant Project: Inside the Global Race to Genetically Modify Humans) and an event about gene editing with special reference to the CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) twins, Lulu and Nana. The event is being held by Toronto’s ArtSci Salon. Here’s more from their March 3, 2021 announcement (received via email), The Mutant ProjectA talk and discussion with Eben KirkseyDiscussants:Dr. Elizabeth Koester, Postdoctoral fellow, Department of…

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“Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought AI to Google, Facebook, and the World” is being released on March 16, 2021. The day before the book’s release date, March 15, 2021 at 12 pm, author Cade Metz will be having a ‘fireside chat’ with Graham Taylor, associate professor at the University of Guelph and Canada CIFAR (Canadian Institute for Advanced Research) AI (artificial intelligence) chair and Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence at the University of Toronto…

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It seems that I’m not the only one wondering if the European Union’s gamble (1B Euros paid out over 10 years through a research initiative known as the Graphene Flagship) will pay off. A January 25, 2021 news item on Nanowerk announced a study on that topic (Note: A link has been removed), What happened to the promised applications of graphene and related materials? Thanks to initiatives like the European Union’s Graphene Flagship and heavy…

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