Making nano matter: an inquiry into the discourses of governable science

Author's pre-print version dated 2011. Final version published by Sage; available online at http://online.sagepub.com/The paper examines science-policy conversations mediated by social science in attempts to govern, or set up terms for, scientific research. The production of social science research accounts about science faces challenges in the domains of emerging technosciences, such as nano. Constructing notions of success and failure, participants in science actively engage in the interpretation of policy notions, such as the societal relevance of their research. Industrial engagement is one of the prominent themes both in policy renditions of governable science, and in the participants’ attempts to achieve societally relevant research, often oriented into the future. How do we, as researchers, go about collecting, recording, and analysing such future stories? I examine a series of recent interviews conducted in a number of US universities, and in particular at a university campus on the West Coast of the US. The research engages participants through interviews, which can be understood as occasions for testing the interpretive flexibility of nano as ‘good’ scientific practice and of what counts as societal relevance, under what circumstances and in view of what kind of audiences

DEVELOPING PROFESSIONAL ATTITUDES OF PENAL STAFF

The article presents the results of the empirical research, the study of the influence of individual psychological characteristics of the penal staff on the developing of professional attitudes in the process of training at the FPS training centers. The research distinguishes among three groups of penal employees according to individual psychological characteristics. The article shows statistically significant differences in individual psychological characteristics that affect the developing of professional attitudes in the process of training at the FPS training centers. The research results show that the most efficient professional attitudes are most often developed among employees characterized by the following individual psychological characteristics: stress resistance, threats resistance, resoluteness, ability to control their emotions and behavior, ability to cope with a large amount of work and so on. The article also presents the results of the additional study proving that there are no significant differences in the distinguished groups in terms of such indicators as demographic data, socio-psychological climate, service relationships, needs obtained while fulfilling official duties, degree of the regulatory framework development, management style, etc. The empirical study reveals that such personality traits as negligence, excessive trustfulness, inability to control one’s emotions and impulsive drives can exert negative impact on the performance of official tasks by the penal staff. The research results presented in the article can be used in the educational process at the FPS training centers and in the work of the penitentiary psychologist

Invertebrates of Siberia, a potential source of animal protein for innovative food production. 1. The keelback slugs (Gastropoda: Limacidae)

The use of terrestrial invertebrates occurring in Siberia as a source of nutrients is an innovative form of new quality food production in North Asia. The species available for this production should be qualified by necessary criteria; for example, they should be common in the region and easily obtainable, free from restriction or prohibition as rare or protected species, adapted to regional environmental conditions, and their bodies should be free from toxins and allergens. They should also be unpretentious in terms of housing, consumption of cheap and suitable feed which provides a satisfactory increase in biomass and contains necessary nutrients in the required ratio. Several local species of terrestrial molluscs and insects fit these criteria and have been were selected as model species, such as the yellow slug Limacus flavus (Linnaeus, 1758) which has been studied in detail. Individuals of this slug were collected from a subterranean vegetable store in the city of Novosibirsk, and reared for 5 months under laboratory conditions with different lighting, humidity and temperature. Standard vegetables for winter storage, carrot, cabbage and potato (the preferred ingredient), were provided to the slugs. The most effective factors for the development of body weight and size of the slugs were registered in the dark under moderate humidity and temperature. Average weight and length of slugs at the beginning of the experiment in March 2022 were 0.62 gram and 3.42 mm, and at the end of the experiment in August 2022 were 3.67 gram and 5.76 mm (respectively x 5.9 and x 1.7). Therefore, basement and underground cold premises lacking constant lighting and provided with potato waste as a feeding substrate appear to be optimal for raising and rearing this slug species; naturally this would be of particular interest for food production in regions with cold climate conditions

Marketing technologies : an ethnographic study of the performative properties of narratives, and of accountability relations, in hi-tech marketing

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Textured connectivity:An ethnographic approach to understanding the timescape of hyperlinks

The methods illustrated in this paper address one particular kind of 'trace', the hyperlink, and the use of this trace to help constitute a field of study. We suggest that an ethnographic treatment of hyperlinks can be a useful way to understand the Internet as a space for knowledge production. Via a consideration of hyperlinks as both functional and symbolic, this approach suggests how traditional elements of ethnography might be adapted in order to constitute an online field site for the study of infrastructure. The methods discussed in this paper were elaborated in the course of two projects using virtual ethnography (Hine, 2000). Both focused on new infrastructure for knowledge production (databases) which had a web interface. Common to both projects was the notion that these databases might be involved in shifts in the locus of knowledge production. In other words, the lab as a 'site' may be an increasingly networked, digitised setting. If part of the original motivation for going into the lab for studying science was to visit the place where knowledge was said to originate, the same holds for taking online settings seriously, as a site where knowledge is also arising. Networked knowledge production, however, challenges the traditional approaches to constructing the field for lab studies. The traces chosen as constitutive of the field in our research, hyperlinks, led to a complex, multilayered understanding of interpretive context around the various databases investigated. Paying attention to aspects of connectivity (specificity, origin, timescape, and symbolic and infrastructural dimensions of hyperlinks) may help to build a richer notion of various instantiations of the Internet. The focus in this article is on the notion of time, and on the ways knowledge about various aspects of time may be investigated ethnographically, using hyperlinks as traces

Performing wave in policy and technoscience: developing an STS approach in the sociology of energy

In this paper we explore, through the lens of Science and Technology Studies (STS), in what sense energy can be an object of sociological research. We draw on analysis of renewable energy sector in the UK to gain an understanding of how energy, in particular wave energy, becomes a policy category and an object of scientific inquiry and engineering practices. While admitting and even celebrating possibility of extracting energy from wave in economically viable ways, questions are rarely asked about how ‘wave’ is constructed as an energy resource in the first instance. By being singled out, or singularised, as in Callon et al (2002), converted into data and resource by means of calculation and measurement, inscribed into policy documents, wave becomes an actant constituting technological heterogeneity of renewable energy economies. But how exactly is wave credibly singularised in the renewable energy domain? What kind of representational means are mobilised in science and policy to talk about wave as a source of energy? We analyse wave and wave energy as a policy category and policy object and look at wave energy in scientific discourse. Considering wave as an object of expertise, we examine how measurements, statistical analysis, modelling and visualisation (as well as controversies around them) contribute to production of data used for assessment and legitimisation of wave energy developments. By looking at discourses and practices of utilisation of wave as a resource in the context of contemporary technological developments in the energy sector, we examine credibility-economy of renewable energy. The paper concludes with a discussion of how technoscientific understanding of wave, based on singularisation and abstraction, makes it a resource by virtue of practice, providing grounds for performing wave as a ‘good’ in future economic exchange

How far can we push sceptical reflexivity? : an analysis of marketing ethics and the certification of poverty.

This paper seeks to explore how far we can push sceptical reflexivity to open up new avenues of exploration in the field of marketing, through a study of ethics in Fair Trade clothing. The paper addresses three issues in contemporary studies of marketing. First, ethics are used as a focus for investigating the practices of marketing. Second, attempts to standardise ethics into marketable products are explored. Third, the possibilities offered by a reflexive take on marketing ethics are analysed. The paper addresses these three issues by drawing together and interrogating ideas from Science and Technology Studies (STS) and marketing. A thorough-going reflexive scepticism is adopted which leaves nothing taken for granted, addressing the nature of what might be meant by, for example, products and marketing and the world to which they aspire. Furthermore, an STS-inspired inversion is performed on marketing. In place of a conventional notion that marketing involves "launching" products into the world, comes a notion that marketing could be considered as "launching" a version of the world into the product. This opens up opportunities for exploring possible tensions between reflexive scepticism and ethics. The conclusion of the paper assesses the utility of this sceptical inversion for opening up new questions and new ideas for marketing and for STS