"To increase public understanding and energise the political debate, we need more than facts – we need a programme that resonates with people’s everyday experiences, offering not just warnings but opportunities and improvement." On first read, this seems like a weird conflict, between facts and people's experiences. On a second read, it seems much closer to STS.

The first complete chromosome to be published from the Synthetic Yeast 2.0 project. Interesting because it stands in contrast to many visions of synthetic biology: It employed a team of undergraduates instead of robots.

A website from ASU and other people about the future that looks good. Not sure what to do with it, other than remember it exists at the moment.

Article that links to the release of the Research Council's budget new budget. The headline thing is the launch of the global challenges research fund.

Amazing description of synthetic biology PhD from Alistair Elfick at Edinburgh

Crazy case of humans intervening in bird breeding

iPhone and privacy is a neat example of how technology embeds political decisions - here regarding privacy

Neat little post about how the same knowledge can be used differently. Of course, he doesn't talk about how you could also use social changes to address it, and he doesn't talk about the contested links between the symptoms and the disease.

Early vision of autonomous cars and how we went down a different trajectory

Artemisinin drug isn't really doing anything to stabilise the drug supply because of a glut in agriculturally produced artemisinin, with a name check for Claire Marris.

Contestations over who owns CRISPR Cas 9 in the scientific community

In this video, Craig Venter announces his 'synthetic organism'. Around 13 minutes in he talks about philosophical stuff and ethics. The ethics is about policy and open access, the philosophy is about quotes about life in. Interestingly if you pull out his quotes you can probably say something about his philosophy.

This is what I think happened. The IAP is the global body for the national science academies. They produced a report on Synthetic Biology in 2014, which was fairly sensible. There was also a special issue in Nature in which the chair of that report wrote a silly article that essentially undermined the report. This letter - signed by 21 people including Jasanoff, Jane, Andy Stirling etc. - is a response to that commentary.

Nice little video from Risk Lab at CNS, ASU about Gene Drives. Presumably from someone working with Andrew Maynard?

Good website about cities

This is interesting. Seems like first cloning of pet?

This is a useful webinar from an entomologist as part of the US National Academy of Sciences inquiry into Gene Drives. It's really good. Interesting stuff in here because he sits in a weird position where in some cases he says there are really important social / environmental consequences that we need to be aware of because of the characteristics of the populations being manipulated and the locations that they're in. In other situations he seems less concerned.

some nice graphics that correlates vaccine introduction with disease reduction. note the Smallpox one, which has a really long lead in time.

Again, this is Katie Scotts website. It's really nice

Katie scott does design and illustration about how we understand nature. In this video one of the things that she talks about is 'where those categories of nature break down' - e.g. slime moulds

Nice article in Aeon about how technology (Internet) is designed to produce compulsive behaviours. Also some graphics about imagined uses vs actual

Hatchet job of the Nurse research council review published in November 2015

This was an early project (from 2008) funded by BBSRC with scientists and social scientists. It looks a little like the 2015 infrastructure project. It has some useful stuff on it

Really cool web-app that shows the infrastructure behind the internet - mainly under sea cables.

This could be a new STS case study. It has lots of hallmarks and it's only subtly in the news

This is an overview that Bev sent of teaching models that is 'bread and butter' for learning theorists. People generally focus on the Cognitive domain but affective also interesting. Useful for future reference

Website built by a Historian of Science and some other people, with Nik Rose on Advisory board about medical biotechnology.

Amazing ambivalent article about rose tinting / branding a sometimes shit but romantic (not in the soppy way) experience. And how that experience is being used by companies to hide behind.

Might be interesting, might be really basic, but worth a look

About a guy who planned to dam the Mediterranean in the 1930s to create a supercontinent, a large amount of tidal power, and a moderated climate in Africa which would allow political harmony

Anti-microbial Resistance is picking up steam in the high brow press...