The Constitutional Effect of the Ethics of Emerging Technologies

This paper discusses the ethics of emerging technologies by locating the political effects of its problematization. Building on Michel Foucault’s analysis of the problematization of moral behaviors as a problem about the self, it identifies a problem about the stability of the democratic collective within contemporary problematizations of the ethics of science and technology. Defining the problem of ethics is also exploring the modalities of public expertise, the modes of democratic deliberation and the definitions of material entities. Accordingly, ethics is situated particular constitutional arrangements, which constrain the ways in which ethical issues related to emerging technologies are identified. The American and European examples of nanotechnology programs illustrate the constitu-tional effects of the ethics of emerging technologies, and the controversies they foster

De l'incertitude-obstacle à l'incertitude productive, ou comment traiter les risques potentiels des nano-objets ?

National audienceLes risques liés aux nano-objets manufacturés font l'objet de nombreux questionnements dans les sphères administratives. On peut définir les nano-objets comme des assemblages atomiques dont au moins une des dimensions est de l'ordre du nanomètre et qui tirent leur propriété spécifique de leur taille. Ces substances sont aujourd'hui utilisées dans de nombreux procédés et produits industriels (2) : les nanotubes de carbone, les fullerènes, le dioxyde de titane, les nanoparticules d'argent et d'or sont les principales substances concernées. Aux risques liés à la sécurité des travailleurs, s'ajoutent, du fait de la présence de nano-objets dans de nombreux produits de consommation courante, des risques potentiels pour les consommateurs, et des impacts encore incertains pour les milieux naturels

Engaging the public in nanotechnology? Three visions of public engagement

http://www.csi.ensmp.fr/Items/WorkingPapers/Download/DLWP.php?wp=WP_CSI_011.pdfPresents a case study on public participation in controversies on nanotechnologies in France, and proposes an analytical typology

Replicating participatory devices: the consensus conference confronts nanotechnology

http://www.csi.ensmp.fr/Items/WorkingPapers/Download/DLWP.php?wp=WP_CSI_018.pdfDescribes two examples (in France and in the US) of replication of the Danish procedure of the consensus conference for public participation in nanotechnology, and argues that emphasis on the evaluation of the participatory procedure should not be made at the expense of richer analysis of the problematisation of public participation fostered by such policy instruments

Science museums as political places. Representing nanotechnology in European science museums

Article published in an open access journal and also available at http://jcom.sissa.it/archive/11/04/Jcom1104%282012%29C01/Jcom1104%282012%29C02/Jcom1104%282012%29C02.pdfInternational audienceScience museums perform representations of science and that of its publics. They have been called to intervene in nanotechnology within global public policy programs expected to develop the field. This paper discusses the case of European science museums. It starts by examining the case of a European project that involved science museums working on nanotechnology. This example illustrates a "democratic imperative" that European science museums face, and which implies a transformation of their public role. It offers a path for the analysis of the current evolution of European science communication perspective - from "public understanding of science" to "scientific understanding of the public" - and of the political construction this evolution enacts

European Objects

How interventions based on objects—including chemicals, financial products, and consumer goods—offer a path to rethink European integration. Interventions based on objects, Brice Laurent claims, have become a dominant path for European policy-making. In European Objects, Laurent analyzes the political consequences of these interventions and their democratization. He uses the term “European objects” to describe technical entities that are regulated—and thereby transformed—by European policies. To uncover the bureaucratic and regulatory intricacies of European governance, Laurent focuses on a series of these objects, including food products, chemicals, financial products, consumer goods, drinking water, and occupational environments. Laurent argues that taking European objects seriously offers a way to rephrase the dreams of harmonization and, eventually, rethink the constitutional strength of European integration. Laurent doesn't just clarify how European regulation works, but also explores ways to realize long-term objectives for European integration, such as a harmonized market or an objective expertise. Regulation is best understood as “regulatory machinery” bringing together various types of legal constraints, material interventions on objects, and the imagining of desirable futures. Analyzing European objects enables Laurent to explore what regulation has become after years of evolution have made it a central component of the European policy world. He offers practical illustrations of how the regulatory machinery functions today. If Europe succeeds at reinventing the terms of its legitimacy with objects that matter for the European publics, it will provide a telling demonstration that the opposition of expertise and populism is not the unavoidable fate of liberal democracies

Adsorption and strain: The CO2-induced swelling of coal

International audienceEnhanced coal bed methane recovery (ECBM) consists in injecting carbon dioxide in coal bed methane reservoirs in order to facilitate the recovery of the methane. The injected carbon dioxide gets adsorbed at the surface of the coal pores, which causes the coal to swell. This swelling in confined conditions leads to a closure of the coal reservoir cleat system, which hinders further injection. In this work we provide a comprehensive framework to calculate the macroscopic strains induced by adsorption in a porous medium from the molecular level. Using a thermodynamic approach we extend the realm of poromechanics to surface energy and surface stress. We then focus on how the surface stress is modified by adsorption and on how to estimate adsorption behavior with molecular simulations. The developed framework is here applied to the specific case of the swelling of CO2-injected coal, although it is relevant to any problem in which adsorption in a porous medium causes strains

Virtual screening of GPCRs: An in silico chemogenomics approach

International audienceThe G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR) superfamily is currently the largest class of therapeutic targets. In silico prediction of interactions between GPCRs and small molecules in the transmembrane ligand-binding site is therefore a crucial step in the drug discovery process, which remains a daunting task due to the difficulty to characterize the 3D structure of most GPCRs, and to the limited amount of known ligands for some members of the superfamily. Chemogenomics, which attempts to characterize interactions between all members of a target class and all small molecules simultaneously, has recently been proposed as an interesting alternative to traditional docking or ligand-based virtual screening strategies

The Resources of Political and Economic Autonomy: Valuing Natural Resources in Post-Colonial Territory

International audienc