State Funded Research Annual Report FY06

The University of Maine System is required to submit in January of each year an annual report on the utilization of state research appropriations for operations and state research capital bonds. The report is to cover the most recently completed fiscal year

Going synthetic: how scientists and engineers imagine and build a new biology

Synthetic biology practitioners look through an engineer's lens at the incredibly complex, sensitive and seemingly endless resource of living reproductive material and contemplate turning biology into a substrate – composed of modular, wellcharacterised parts – that can be used to design and build new functional devices and systems. It is often explained that this vision for engineering biology may deliver future forms of efficient drug production, renewable sources of biofuel, methods to sense and remediate toxins and numerous other applications. Yet, synthetic biology remains a field in its infancy, facing a barrage of interconnected challenges across technical, social, ethical, legal and political realms. This multifaceted dynamic makes it a timely and important locus for sociophilosophical investigation. This thesis provides a highly empirical ethnographic account of two research groups as they were challenged to design and build a microbiological machine for the International Genetically Engineered Machine competition (iGEM) in 2009. The work examines forms of knowledge and material production in synthetic biology and, in focusing on iGEM, argues that this field is not only a feat of technical engineering, but also one of social engineering as it educates and indoctrinates a next generation of researchers through this unique contest. In this narrative, one discovers a microsocial sphere in which new ideas and biological entities at the intersection of natural and synthetic kingdoms of life are being constructed. Forms of teaching, tools, practices and processes that make imagining, designing and building new living systems possible are illustrated. The reader is also introduced to some international stakeholders and dynamics at play. With gathering media interest, attention from art and design perspectives, as well as publications across social, philosophical, political and legal studies of this ‘new’ biotechnology, there is a great need for the kind of detailed, insider view that this thesis provides – it contributes to an informed space through which constructive questions may be asked as the debate around engineering synthetic life continues to unfold. As such, this work helps to enable a reflection on the kinds of intervention possible in the process of dreaming up ideas of potential future living machines. Involved collaborators, as well as the resistance of life itself, will ultimately govern the limits of synthetic biology

Feminist Information Activism: Newsletters, Index Cards and the 21st Century Archive

Feminist Information Activism: Newsletters, Index Cards and the 21st-century Archive develops an original approach to studying feminisms media infrastructures, focusing on U.S. lesbian feminism from the early 1970s to the present. The dissertation proposes the concept of feminist information activism, in which engagements with commonplace media facilitate access to marginalized information and networks through purposefully designed interfaces. Newsletter print culture and other activist-oriented information contexts such as bibliographic and indexing projects, and community archives, sought to unite feminist publics with difficult-to-find published materials. In each of these cases, activists worked to collect and parse large amounts of information that would make marginal lesbian lives visible, adopting various information management and compression techniques to do so. These tactics often created anxieties over the effects rationalization procedures might have on information that ultimately attempted to represent messy and politically complex feminist lives. To address these tensions, activists re-worked existing standards in information management through the use of new networks, the design of unique subject-classification schemes, and the appropriation of tools such as index cards and early computer databases. Chapter one investigates 1970s newsletter culture, drawing on a select print archive to argue that these documents imagined a mode of network thinking critical to feminist social movements prior to the web. Chapter two examines indexing and bibliography projects of the 1980s, tracing their critical appropriations of early database computing through interviews, archival research in these projects papers, and historical research on indexing standards gathered from late 20th-century instructional manuals. Chapters three and four draw out connections between these print forms and todays digital feminisms through a study of ongoing digitization practices at the Lesbian Herstory Archives. Through interviews and observation with archives staff, and documentary research in organizational records, these chapters examine feminisms influence on the design and implementation of accessible digitization projects that counter accepted archival standards. Framed by the historical chapters on feminist print activism; this study of feminist digitization re-casts indexing and bibliographic projects of the 1980s, and newsletters of the 1970s as media histories that situate todays digital feminisms in a longer genealogy.Feminist Information Activism: Newsletters, Index Cards and the 21st-century Archive develops an original approach to studying feminisms media infrastructures, focusing on U.S. lesbian feminism from the early 1970s to the present. The dissertation proposes the concept of feminist information activism, in which engagements with commonplace media facilitate access to marginalized information and networks through purposefully designed interfaces. Newsletter print culture and other activist-oriented information contexts such as bibliographic and indexing projects, and community archives, sought to unite feminist publics with difficult-to-find published materials. In each of these cases, activists worked to collect and parse large amounts of information that would make marginal lesbian lives visible, adopting various information management and compression techniques to do so. These tactics often created anxieties over the effects rationalization procedures might have on information that ultimately attempted to represent messy and politically complex feminist lives. To address these tensions, activists re-worked existing standards in information management through the use of new networks, the design of unique subject-classification schemes, and the appropriation of tools such as index cards and early computer databases. Chapter one investigates 1970s newsletter culture, drawing on a select print archive to argue that these documents imagined a mode of network thinking critical to feminist social movements prior to the web. Chapter two examines indexing and bibliography projects of the 1980s, tracing their critical appropriations of early database computing through interviews, archival research in these projects papers, and historical research on indexing standards gathered from late 20th-century instructional manuals. Chapters three and four draw out connections between these print forms and todays digital feminisms through a study of ongoing digitization practices at the Lesbian Herstory Archives. Through interviews and observation with archives staff, and documentary research in organizational records, these chapters examine feminisms influence on the design and implementation of accessible digitization projects that counter accepted archival standards. Framed by the historical chapters on feminist print activism; this study of feminist digitization re-casts indexing and bibliographic projects of the 1980s, and newsletters of the 1970s as media histories that situate todays digital feminisms in a longer genealogy

Sustainable development : the reflexive governance of risk

In the face of increase global environmental phenomena such as global warming, social, political and knowledge structures are being reformulated in order to better accommodate these events into governance frameworks. For Ulrich Beck, increased risk has created a World Risk Society which is defined by a state of 'reflexive' modernity (RM) where the central tenets of modernity are re-examined and current developmental patterns are drawn into question. In political and social discourse increased risk has created the need to achieve a sustainable development (SD). In light of criticisms that Beck makes broad and unsubstantiated theoretical assertions, this thesis examines the proposition that the discursive rise of the concept of SD in political and social governance structures is evidence of a reflexive modernity. The above proposition is examined at both the global and the local scales accessing the dimensions of politics, and sub politics outlined by Beck. At the global scale, discursive representations of sustainable development were examined within the United Nations during the 57th United Nations General Assembly. At the local sub political level a partnership governance structure is examined which was designed to enhance sustainable lifestyles. Findings suggest that whilst a significant relationship does exist between SD and RM, this relationship alters considerably from the global to the local scales of analysis. Further, the process of exploring this relationship provides important insights into the way that SD is being articulated in broad governance structures

The Origins of the Transgender Phenomenon: The Challenge and Opportunity for Training Lawyers, Judges and Policy Makers in the Historicity of Alfred Kinsey’s Pansexual Worldview

How has the country gone from a “firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence” to where defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman is condemned as constitutionally irrational,and where the use of sex-separate private spaces by biological sex is subject to federal discrimination lawsuits?The answer can be traced to 1948 when Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey launched what was marketed then--and now--as the first “scientific” study of human sexuality.Indeed, Chief Judge of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, Richard Posner extols Kinsey’s study as the “high-water mark of descriptive sexology.”Influential law professors such as Columbia University’s Herbert Wechslerand Yale University’s William Eskridge have ensured that Kinsey’s world shaking reports on male and female sexuality are entrenched as authoritative scientific research in legal scholarship and mainstream cultural institutions. Yet, Judge Posner, Professors Wechsler and Eskridge and the hundreds of other scholars who have relied upon this alleged “sex science” continue to cover up the facts: Kinsey’s claims are wholly fraudulent despite having ushered in the “sexual revolution” of the 1960s and 1970s. His fame was built on lies, and the massive criminal sexual abuse of children, significantly more damaging than the cover up of child sexual abuse by the Catholic Church and graphically apparent to anyone who reads Chapter Five of his report

The Effect of Training upon Faculty Stages of Concern about Making Color Vision Deficiency Adaptations

Although color vision deficiency affects an appreciable portion of the human race, those with the condition do not enjoy mandatory educational accommodations. The purpose of this quasi-experimental investigation was to quantify the effect of professional development training on university faculty concerns about adapting their instruction for color vision deficiency. This investigation used a static-group comparison design with a professional development intervention for the experimental group at a liberal arts university (N = 98) in the Southeast of the United States, collecting data through an online fielding of the Stages of Concern Questionnaire. Independent Samples t Tests between the two groups revealed no statistically significant differences in means of raw scores (alpha level of .014) for the stages 0 through 5 concerns. However, the results did show a statistically significant increase (p \u3c .001) for stage 6 concerns, suggesting that the training did change the concerns of the experimental group participants about exploring and desiring other options for adjusting their instruction for color vision deficiency. Such responses are suggestive that the training may have raised resistance to implementing instructional adaptations for color vision deficiency. These results provide research-based knowledge to guide collegiate leadership in making policy about these optional adaptations, and suggest that future research about making instruction more accessible for color deficient students should focus on institutionally-based, rather than instructor-based, initiatives

Protecting the Integrity of Organic Food in the Face of Genetic Engineering: The Case of Roundup Ready Alfalfa

Genetically engineered (GE) seeds are central to the debates around agricultural biotechnology, and continue to be rapidly adopted across the globe. At the same time that GE crops increase in acreage, the organic market has become one of the fastest growing sectors of the American food industry. While biotechnology companies claim there is a successful “coexistence” of GE crop technologies and organic crops, many organic producers are already challenged by keeping unwanted GE traits out of their fields. Still, little attention has been given to the role of regulations in the face of organic contamination by genetically engineered material. This paper looks at the National Organic Program (NOP) and Coordinated Framework for the Regulation of Biotechnology, and analyzes whether they are adequate for protecting the integrity of organic food in the face of genetic engineering, using a relatively new GE crop, Roundup Ready (RR) alfalfa, as a case study. Alfalfa is an essential component to the organic livestock industry, especially to organic dairy, where the demand has grown faster than the supply. This paper reveals that the organic alfalfa industry is at risk of contamination by RR alfalfa, and that part of the risk can be attributed to the inadequacy of the two regulatory frameworks, as both do not go far enough to keep GE crops contained and the integrity of organic products protected. These findings resulted from an extensive review of the pertinent laws and regulations, a review of the U.S.’s experience with GE crop technology, and research into the potential implications of introducing RR alfalfa. Recommendations include making changes to the two frameworks’ approach to regulation, including: making improvements to the regulation of GE crops both before and after they enter the marketplace; encouraging discussion within the organic industry about current threats to the integrity of organic, and the pros and cons of establishing a tolerance level and testing system; and taking a precautionary approach to RR alfalfa by performing a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), and pulling it from the market until all risks are addressed

Intellectual Property Management in Health and Agricultural Innovation: Executive Guide

Prepared by and for policy-makers, leaders of public sector research establishments, technology transfer professionals, licensing executives, and scientists, this online resource offers up-to-date information and strategies for utilizing the power of both intellectual property and the public domain. Emphasis is placed on advancing innovation in health and agriculture, though many of the principles outlined here are broadly applicable across technology fields. Eschewing ideological debates and general proclamations, the authors always keep their eye on the practical side of IP management. The site is based on a comprehensive Handbook and Executive Guide that provide substantive discussions and analysis of the opportunities awaiting anyone in the field who wants to put intellectual property to work. This multi-volume work contains 153 chapters on a full range of IP topics and over 50 case studies, composed by over 200 authors from North, South, East, and West. If you are a policymaker, a senior administrator, a technology transfer manager, or a scientist, we invite you to use the companion site guide available at http://www.iphandbook.org/index.html The site guide distills the key points of each IP topic covered by the Handbook into simple language and places it in the context of evolving best practices specific to your professional role within the overall picture of IP management