GMOs and their contexts: A comparison of potential and actual performance of GM crops in a local agricultural setting

In this paper, I argue that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have inherent potential to contribute to socially and environmentally sustainable agriculture by virtue of their ‘biological embeddedness’. Their actual ‘performance’ and how this contributes to sustainability depends on the ‘mutual shaping’ of technology and context. While much attention has been given to the design context of GMOs, this paper considers the influence of the application context and of users. A case study investigating the use of insect-resistant and herbicide-tolerant GM cotton in the cotton-growing region of New South Wales in Australia is presented. The study was based on focus groups with farmers and other stakeholders in a cotton-growing community. It demonstrated a range of direct and indirect effects of GM cotton use, both positive and negative for sustainability, and the ways in which these effects were influenced by the local social context. The influences of the biotechnology industry context, in limiting the contributions that gene technologies can make to sustainability, were also considered, and remedies suggested. I argue that the polarity of the GM debate is hindering progress on these issues, and that a more balanced approach to our analysis of GMOs is necessary in order to fully understand, and to influence, their role in the future of rural spaces.     

Abbau von Monochlornitrobenzolen durch Pseudomonas acidovorans CA50

Degradation of Monochloronitrobenzenes by Pseudomonas acidovorans CA50 Pseudomonas acidovorans strain CA50 was used for degradation experiments with monochloronitrobenzenes in aerobic batch culture. The monochloronitrobenzenes were reduced to the corresponding monochloroanilines. The reduction only occurred with an additional carbon and nitrogen source. Chlorocatechols were found to be present. 3-Chlorocatechol accumulated in the presence of 2-chloroaniline, whereas 4-chlorocatechol was an intermediate metabolite of 3- and 4-chloroaniline. Contrary to the degradation of monochloronitrobenzenes, Pseudomonas acidovorans strain CA50 used the monochloroanilines as a sole source of carbon, energy, and nitrogen for growth. The oxidation of monochloroanilines was not repressed by the additional substrates. 2-Chloronitrobenzene was degraded with the lowest rate because of the low turnover of the intermediate metabolite 2-chloroaniline. 3-Chloronitrobenzene was completely degraded also in a mixture. A complete degradation of 4-chloronitrobenzene was achieved only when it was the sole chloronitrobenzene. The results suggest that a dechlorination and mineralization of monochlornitrobenzenes is possible, but for a final proof, further investigations will be necessary.     

The contested spaces of Cuban development: Post-socialism, post-colonialism and the geography of transition

The experience of the (post)socialist South has been marginal to the study of transition, despite the many similarities between processes of transition and development. This paper tries to better understand this overlap by exploring some empirical and conceptual connections between processes of development and processes of transition in Cuba. In doing so it makes two sets of arguments. The first set of arguments concerns the nature of ‘transition’ itself. I use the ‘contested spaces’ of the Cuban (socialist) biotech sector, and specifically its attempts to attract foreign (capitalist) investment as a case study. As a high profile industry, biotechnology functioned in Cuba as a political space within which questions of transition and development could be reconfigured by blurring the boundaries between them. In turn, this has enabled the Cuban State to legitimise responses to transition that would otherwise have appeared contradictory. The second set of arguments try to explain how this was possible. I argue that the slippage between nationalist and socialist visions of development allowed biotechnology (as a specifically developmentalist project) to be variously understood as, for example, a post-colonial socialist, or anti-colonial nationalist project in ways that suited the needs of transition at any one time. Such recombinations in many ways account for the non-linear and reversible nature of transition in Cuba. I speculate as to whether Bruno Latour’s work on the way capitalist societies understand themselves to be ‘modern’, helps explain how, in (post)socialist countries, processees of transition can be shaped through different historical constructions of modernisation and development.     

Situated knowledges and the spaces of consent

Informed consent has often been presented as a kind of ethical panacea, the best way of guarding against medical and scientific abuses of human rights. However recent empirical research has led bioethicists to question both the feasibility and the value of informed consent procedures. This paper also seeks to critique informed consent, but focuses less on its empirical shortcomings. Instead, this paper questions the assumption that ethics involves engaging in the kind of rational, distanced, objective reflection traditionally considered the basis of both scientific observation and ethical decision making. Drawing on recent insights from ethical geography and geographers studying the biotechnology industry, I wish to argue that ethical reflection is a relational and situated process, less about being distanced and objective, and more about recognizing how our ethical decisions are shaped by our social and material environment.     

Biosorption of Nickel from Synthetic and Electroplating Industrial Solutions using a Green Marine Algae Ulva reticulata

The present work investigated the biosorption of nickel from synthetic and electroplating industrial effluents using a green marine algae Ulva reticulata. Preliminary batch results imply that pH 4.5 was optimum for nickel uptake and the isotherm experiments conducted at this pH condition indicated that U. reticulata can biosorb 62.3 mg g^–1 nickel ions from synthetic solutions, according to the Langmuir model. Desorption was effective and practical using 0.1 M CaCl₂ (pH 2.5, HCl) and the biomass was regenerated and reused for three cycles. Continuous biosorption experiments were performed in an upflow packed column (2 cm I.D and 35 cm height). Among the two electroplating effluents used, effluent‐1 is characterized by excess co‐ions and high nickel ion content. This influenced the column nickel uptake with U. reticulata exhibiting 52.1 mg g^–1 in the case of effluent‐1 compared to 56.5 mg g^–1 in the case of synthetic solution. On the other hand U. reticulata performed well in effluent‐2 with uptakes of 53.3 and 54.3 mg g^–1 for effluent‐2 and synthetic solution, respectively. Mathematical modeling of column experimental data was performed using nonlinear forms of the Thomas‐ and modified dose‐response models, with the latter able to simulate breakthrough curves with high correlation coefficients.     

Tales of power in biotechnology regulation: the EU ban on BST

Biotechnology regulation has been dogged by allegations of bias, usually phrased in terms of ‘conflicts of interest’. Social constructionist analyses of regulatory science have shown up serious epistemological difficulties with such ‘interest’ explanations of regulatory power, but in the process they have also destabilised the platforms such as ‘objectivity’, upon which critiques of regulatory bias are usually grounded. This paper argues that their critical impotence follows from not being constructivist enough. Building on Hajer’s notions of ‘story-lines’ and ‘discourse coalitions’, it argues that recovering the non-human, material components that construct regulation offers sufficiently firm ground for evaluating regulatory power even in the absence of the firm benchmarks assumed by interest accounts. The paper develops this approach by focusing on a single story-line, characterised as ‘scientism’, as it is deployed in the build up to a European Union (EU) ban on bovine somatotrophin, the first food-related product of the ‘new biotechnology’. The essay ends by discussing how far this retrospective analysis can help us to understand and intervene in the current and future EU regulation of biotechnology.     

Locating the transgenic landscape: Animal biotechnology and politics of place in Massachusetts

The first major wave in the conflict over modern biotechnologies took place in the United States at the federal level. Biotechnology proponents were able to capture the federal regulatory structure, so today, a second wave of anti-biotech activism focused at the local and state levels is emerging. This article examines what enables or constrains place-based anti-biotech activism through a case study of the conflict over genetically engineered (GE) animals in Massachusetts. I demonstrate how, in spite of a highly visible animal advocacy and anti-GE presence, GE animal proponents have mobilized effective politics of place strategies to suppress local debate by exercising territorial control in relation to two places – the state of Massachusetts as a whole and the animal research laboratory specifically.     

Beyond techno-science: Transgenic maize in the fight over Mexico’s future

Disputes about genetically engineered crops are linked to wider debates about the globalization of agro-food systems and its consequences for food security, social equity, and rural life. Biotechnology expert discourse rarely addresses these wider issues. An exception is the assessment of transgenic maize by the NAFTA Commission on Environmental Cooperation (CEC), which recommended a moratorium on Mexican imports of US-grown maize. Controversy about “contamination” of indigenous maize varieties by US-grown transgenic corn has been intensified by rising Mexican discontent with the terms of regional economic integration. In this context, scientists and officials were pressured to consider not only risks to maize biodiversity but also the ecological, and cultural characteristics of maize in its Mexican settings and the implications of asymmetric power in North American agricultural trade. In contrast to most narrowly-framed biotechnology risk assessments, the review took account of interventions by rural social movements. While the new moratorium was not adopted by the state, continuing conflicts over GMOs in Mexico have blocked introduction of transgenic maize and have enlarged the political space for debate over Mexico’s development direction. These conflicts reflect the differing interests of various state actors and economic sectors with regard to trade liberalization. They also reveal contrasting food-system paradigms: further agricultural modernization, export competition, and food-import dependence versus an alternative vision of revitalized rural life, farmers’ rights, and national food sovereignty.     

光生物反应器的组建

于１９９７年４月在借鉴国外资料基础上,组建成了一种适用于实验室培养光自养生物（如光合细菌,微藻和单克隆无性繁殖系）的气升式螺旋管道串联的光生物反应器,该装置内可插入ｐＨ值电极,溶解氧电极,温度电极,细胞密度电极,粘度电极等,通过传感器获得的电信号,进一步传导入微机,实现按程序化自动记录和控制有关参数,进行一次性,间歇和连续浮培养,以红球藻为材料进行培养和初步结果表明,培养时间较常规方法缩短了一半,     

Governing through disorder: Neoliberal environmental governance and social theory

Recent years have witnessed the spread of an array of market-inspired environmental governance approaches, often associated with neoliberal ideas, programs and policies. Drawing on the governmentality framework and focusing on the examples of biotechnology patenting and the financialisation of climate and weather, the article argues that the conceptual underpinnings of these approaches lie in a novel understanding of the ontological quality of the biophysical world. The latter is conceived as fully plastic, controllable, open to an ever-expanding human agency. Neoliberal governance operates through, rather than despite, disorder - that is, through contingency, uncertainty, instability. In the public realm this idea constitutes a sort of shared horizon of meaning; but environmental social theory has a difficult time accounting for it. By reviewing three major perspectives, namely ecological modernization, neo-Marxism and poststructuralism, it is shown that behind contradictions and reticence in their assessments of neoliberal governance lie difficulties in making sense of the latter's theoretical core. This sets a challenging research program for social theory.