The Empire of Love: review of Elizabeth Povinelli

A review of Povinelli, Elizabeth (2006) The Empire of Love: Toward a Theory of Intimacy, Genealogy and Carnality, Durham and London: Duke University Press

Progettare una strategia. Italo Insolera: Balma

La convivenza tra città antica e città nuova è un tema costante della storia urbana italiana moderna e contemporanea. Gustavo Giovannoni solleva il caso già nel 1913 anche se è dal secondo dopoguerra in poi che il problema appare nella sua importanza, anche operativa. Il tema inizia ad essere studiato e dibattuto negli anni ’50 da Ernesto N. Rogers, Roberto Pane e Antonio Cederna ma il periodo in cui si definiscono le posizioni, che poi accompagneranno il dibattito nei decenni successivi, è quello degli anni ’60. Nel 1967 viene indetto il Concorso per l'ampliamento della Camera dei Deputati a Roma. Uno dei partecipanti è Italo Insolera; egli consegna una proposta che è una riflessione sulle modalità di intervento nei centri storici. L'articolo presenta ed analizza questa proposta

Curating a Nation: The Interplay of Museums and Muslim Nationalism in Modern Turkey

Over the past two decades, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) has held power in Turkey through five different governments, with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at the helm throughout. This AKP has brought about significant changes for both the Turkish State and society, including the emergence of a new national ideology that Jenny White epitomized Muslim Nationalism. Muslim Nationalism in its Turkish specificity brought forth a new Turkey and “new Turks”, with state-sponsored institutions playing a key role, largely driven by top-down efforts to build a cohesive national identity. Museums have played a significant role in the process of nation-building with many new institutions featuring stories of sultans, Islamic scientists, and Ottoman warriors while neglecting other equally important symbols and heritages of Turkey, such as the Greek, Roman, and Byzantine heritages. These museums are important state-sponsored rituals that promote the vision of the "new Turkey" envisioned by the ruling class. This study focuses on four museums: the Istanbul Museum of the History of Science and Technology in Islam, the Panorama Museum 1453, the Kabatepe Simulation Centre and Museum, and the newly renovated Topkapı Museum. By examining the connections between these museums, we can gain a better understanding of how this ideology is exhibited and perpetuated through cultural institutions, and what image of Turkey and Turks emerges from them

Archives, promises, values: forensic infrastructures in times of austerity

This article analyses the role of infrastructures in the ‘bioinformational turn’ in forensic science and examines processes through which evidence is constituted, validated, or challenged in and through domains of expertise that engage different techniques, data, objects and knowledges through infrastructural arrangements. While the digitisation of the infrastructures that underpin forensic service delivery promised connectivity, prosperity and wellbeing, in reality it also brought forward new levels of risk and vulnerability, generating new tensions and frictions in the body politic. As genetic science reaches post-archival horizons through new genetic sequencing technologies, forensic science in postarchival times raises questions concerning the differential impact of the fragmentation of analytical and archival infrastructures and increasingly asynchronous bureaucracies whose role is displaced by the relative autonomy of datasets and computational architectures that elude governance oversight and citizens’ scrutiny

Promoting Muslim Nationalism in Turkish Museums: A study of visitors’ responses to the Panorama Museum 1453

In recent years, studies have shown that the institutional representation of Turkey’s national history and identity has undergone a shift closely linked to the rise of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), led by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Since the AKP came to power, the government supported the building of new state-sponsored museums reflecting the party’s national ideology, which recent literature dubbed “Turkish Muslim Nationalism.” These museums prioritize the Ottoman Empire’s past and its Islamic heritage as the grand narrative of Turkey’s national history, putting other equally important narratives in the background, e.g. the Roman, Byzantine, Greek, and the more recent Kemalist past of the country. One such museum is the Panorama Museum 1453, which has become a popular tourist attraction in Istanbul. This article examines how the visitors respond to the national identity promoted by the Panorama. It draws on fifty video-based interviews as well as visual elements of the museum. The data collected in this study has been analysed using a theoretical framework based on theories of nationalism. This research findings provide material supporting the thesis that the museum is successful in promoting a distinct version of Turkish Muslim Nationalism. It effectively conveys a national identity that emphasizes the characteristics of a Muslim Turk whose identity can be (and is) still influenced by the Ottoman Empire’s historical legacy. This legacy drives Turkish identity as an identity inextricably linked to Islam as the religion of the state, connected with other characteristics such as military power and technological progress. The museum’s presentation of this identity in the Panorama is compelling and immersive, which helps to solidify visitors’ understanding and acceptance

Molecular Features for Probing Small Amphiphilic Molecules with Self-Assembled Monolayer Protected Nanoparticles

The sensing of small molecules poses the challenge to develop devices able to discriminate between compounds that may be structurally very similar. Here, attention has been paid to the use of self-assembled monolayer (SAM)-protected gold nanoparticles since they enable a modular approach to tune single-molecule affinity and selectivity simply by changing functional moieties (i.e. covering ligands), alongside with multivalent molecular recognition. To date, the discovery of monolayers suitable for a specific molecular target relies on trial-and-error approaches, with ligand chemistry being the main criteria used to modulate selectivity and sensitivity. By using molecular dynamics, we showcase that either individual molecular characteristics and/or collective features such as ligand flexibility, monolayer organization, ligand local ordering, and interfacial solvent properties can also be exploited conveniently. The knowledge of the molecular mechanisms that drive the recognition of small molecules on SAM covered nanoparticles will critically expand our ability to manipulate and control such supramolecular systems

Forensic Apophenia: Sensing the Bioinformation Archive

This article draws on intersecting debates on archives, infrastructures and knowledge in anthropology to analyse a ‘bioinformational turn’ in forensic science. Focussing on transformations in forensic science provision in England and Wales apparent in the history of a forensic archive, the article frames frictions between ways of making knowledge across scientific cultures, law enforcement, and a legal system that aims to create facts and certainty, against forensic scientists’ concern with process and context across disparate realms of practice. Following scientists’ descriptions of the changing conditions under which forensic science is currently practiced and the erosion of forensic provision as a public service, we argue that forensic practitioners interrogate positivist projections of forensic science by thinking with complexity as they follow evidence through multiple registers, infrastructures and datasets

Cationic carbosilane dendrimers and oligonucleotide binding: an energetic affair

GENERATION 2 CATIONIC CARBOSILANE DENDRIMERS HOLD GREAT PROMISE AS INTERNALIZING AGENTS FOR GENE THERAPY AS THEY PRESENT LOW TOXICITY AND RETAIN AND INTERNALIZE GENETIC MATERIAL AS OLIGONUCLEOTIDE OR SIRNA. IN THIS WORK WE CARRIED OUT A COMPLETE IN SILICO STRUCTURAL AND ENERGETICAL CHARACTERIZATION OF THE INTERACTIONS OF A SET OF 2G CARBOSILANE DENDRIMERS, SHOWING DIFFERENT AFFINITY TOWARDS TWO SINGLE STRAND OLIGONUCLEOTIDE (ODN) SEQUENCES IN VITRO. OUR SIMULATIONS PREDICT THAT THESE FOUR DENDRIMERS AND THE RELEVANT ODN COMPLEXES ARE CHARACTERIZED BY SIMILAR SIZE AND SHAPE, AND THAT THE MOLECULE-SPECIFIC ODN BINDING ABILITY CAN BE RATIONALIZED ONLY CONSIDERING A CRITICAL MOLECULAR DESIGN PARAMETER: THE NORMALIZED EFFECTIVE BINDING ENERGY \u394GBIND,EFF/NEFF I.E., THE PERFORMANCE OF EACH ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL DENDRIMER BRANCH DIRECTLY INVOLVED IN A BINDING INTERACTIO