Shaping science with the past : textbooks, history, and the disciplining of genetics

Science is generally not thought of as being deeply historiographical. Although it is clear that scientists frequently write about history in their work — that, for example, they identify the significance of an advance by situating it historically, or refer to a historic source of authority in order to add legitimacy to a position — it is often supposed that the historical claims of scientists are incidental to the scientific. This thesis contests basic assumptions of this view. In a study of the textbooks of twentieth century Anglo-American genetics — of a place where the canon of a science is consolidated, as the heterogeneous approaches and controversies of its practice are rendered unified for its reproduction — I develop a novel taxonomy of the forms in which history can be written, and of the scientific functions that they can serve. Progressing from an analysis of narrative historical accounts, to latent and embedded formulations of the past, I demonstrate the ways in which geneticists used history-writing in the disciplining of the foundations, future practitioners, conceptual order, and boundaries of their science. After an introductory chapter identifying some of the ways in which the textbooks and historical accounts of a science may be contributory, rather than intellectually external and temporally subsequent, to its formation and development, I advance the central argument of this thesis in four chapters. Each examines a different form of historywriting. In the first, I explore the disciplining of the foundations of genetics, with a study of the explicit, narrative histories of hereditary science that were written in three important first-generation genetics textbooks. Identifying radical differences in their accounts of the same nineteenth-century figures, experiments and theories, I argue that these different ways of consolidating history were connected to fundamentally different ideas of the conceptual foundations of the science, and that they were used to advance divergent visions of the science’s future. I then look at the historical case-based and problem-solving method of teaching that was developed in the 1920s-1940s to convey the science of genetics. I argue that this method created 'virtual historical environments' that allowed students to learn and practice not only the principles that were studied by geneticists and were explicitly taught as rules in the text, but also the tacit skills needed to follow, find, and understand these rules. Here, history was used in the disciplining of the mind of the student. In the third chapter, I look at the 'standard historical approach' to teaching in the 1930s-1950s, exploring the establishment of this approach, the functions and consequences of literary devices on which it relied, and the ways in which the meaning of facts and theories were shaped within it. My central contention is that a notion of history was constitutive of the organizational logic, narrative structure, and inner rationality of textbook genetics, thereby performing a powerful function in the disciplining of the conceptual order of the science. The fourth chapter explores the sense of history embodied in the use of the concept of 'classical genetics' in textbooks of the 1960s-1970s. Tracing the semantic development of 'classical' from its first uses in the 1920s, I argue that this term was a politically powerful concept in the language of geneticists: at first used to define and establish sources of scientific authority, it was subsequently developed in arguments about the philosophical and ideological character of genetics, and eventually served to establish the disciplinary identity and boundaries of the science. By differentiating these various uses of 'classical', I show that the disciplinary power of this term — which is derived from the authority of history — relied on the effacement of its historicity and the situations in which it was created and deployed. With this thesis, I push the boundaries on common conceptions of what is involved in, and what should be counted as, the 'history' and 'writing' of history-writing. Advancing a novel taxonomy of the forms in which the historical can appear, I provide a starting point for further historiographical research on the subtle yet powerful ways in which the historicity of our past can make claims upon us

Mechanistic investigation of the effect of endoglucanases related to pulp refining

Endoglucanases are increasingly being touted as the ultimate solution for reducing energy consumption during the refining process in the pulp and paper industry. However, due to the high variety of endoglucanases in different enzyme formulations, these perform heterogeneously when applied to different pulps. In this study, the effect of four endoglucanases on softwood and hardwood pulp was studied using confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) after addition of fluorescently labelled carbohydrate binding modules (CBMs). Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) analysis and high-performance liquid chromatography quantification of released oligo- and monosaccharides was performed for in-depth mechanistical investigation. Changes in the crystallinity levels caused by enzymatic degradation of amorphous regions were monitored by incubation with two different CBMs from Caldicellulosiruptor bescii and from Thermobifida fusca with high preference to either amorphous or crystalline regions of cellulose, respectively. When dosed at identical activity on the endoglucanase specific CellG5 substrate, CLSM analysis indicated the highest decrease of amorphous regions for those endoglucanases which were also most active in laboratory refining trials and which released highest amounts of cellooligomers from pulp. Using 13C-NMR analysis, an increase in para-crystalline cellulose caused by enzyme application was observed. Release of reducing sugars was determined at identical CellG5 dosage, indicating a high variance between the enzymes, especially when complex enzyme formulations were used. Scanning electron microscopy images were obtained for visualization of the endoglucanase activity. The results of mechanistical studies indicate that reduction of amorphous moieties of pulp by endoglucanases is especially beneficial for the refining proces

Initial results from a field campaign of wake steering applied at a commercial wind farm – Part 1

Wake steering is a form of wind farm control in which turbines use yaw offsets to affect wakes in order to yield an increase in total energy production. In this first phase of a study of wake steering at a commercial wind farm, two turbines implement a schedule of offsets. Results exploring the observed performance of wake steering are presented and some first lessons learned. For two closely spaced turbines, an approximate 14&thinsp;% increase in energy was measured on the downstream turbine over a 10∘ sector, with a 4&thinsp;% increase in energy production of the combined upstream–downstream turbine pair. Finally, the influence of atmospheric stability over the results is explored.</p

Deep Eutectic Solvents (DESs) and their applications [forthcoming]

Deep Eutectic Solvents (DESs) and Their Application

Anonymity, the Production of Goods, and Institutional Design

In this Article, I demonstrate that anonymity has been misconceived as an aspect of privacy, and that understanding this mistake reveals a powerful and underutilized set of legal tools for facilitating and controlling the production of information and other social “goods” (ranging from uncorrupted votes and campaign donations to tissue samples and funding for biomedical research). There are three core components to this analysis. First, I offer a taxonomic analysis of existing law, revealing that in areas ranging from contract and copyright to criminal law and constitutional law, the production of information and other goods is being targeted by three types of anonymity rules—rules that make anonymity and non–anonymity into rights, conditions of exercising rights, and most surprisingly, triggers that extinguish rights. Second, I propose a theory that makes sense of our law’s uses of these rules, identifying a cohesive set of functions that they perform across three phases in the production of a good: its creation, evaluation, and allocation. Third, I use my taxonomic and theoretical analysis to develop generally applicable lessons for the design of law and policy. Applying these lessons to a set of difficult and pressing questions concerning the production of specific biomedical and democratic goods, I demonstrate that they reveal innovative solutions that balance a wide variety of important and conflicting interests and concerns