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Steroid sulfatase (STS) is considered to be one of the key enzymes contributing to the development of breast cancer. It catalyzes the hydrolysis of inactive sulfated steroids such as estrone sulfate (ES) to inorganic sulfate active steroids such as estrone (E1), a precursor to estradiol (E2), a key stimulator for breast cancer development. Inhibitors of STS are currently being pursued in both academia and industry as potential drugs for treating breast cancer. A series of 4-substituted estrone and estradiol derivatives were examined as inhibitors of STS. Inhibition of STS with 4-FE1, an irreversible inhibitor of STS previously studied in the Taylor group, can be enhanced by introducing a hydrophobic benzyl group at the 17-positon of 4-FE1. As with 4-FE1, the inhibition was concentration and time-dependent. Only 14% of the activity could be recovered after extensive dialysis. Introducing substituents at the 2-position of 4-formyl estrogen derivatives resulted in loss of concentration and time-dependent inhibition and a considerable decrease in inhibitor affinity. Studies with estrogen derivatives substituted at the 4-position with groups other than a formyl revealed that a relatively good reversible inhibitor can be obtained simply by introducing an electron withdrawing group at this position. These types of inhibitors are non-competitive inhibitors suggesting an alternative steroid binding site. A series of estrone derivatives were examined as photoaffinity labels of STS. 4-azidoestrone suflate and 4-azidoestrone phosphate exhibited properties that are suitable for photoaffinity labeling studies with STS. These labels may be useful for ascertaining pathways of substrate entry into the STS active site. 16-diazoestrone phosphate was not a photoaffinity label of STS. 2- and 4-azido estrone and 16-diazoestrone all acted as photoaffinity labels of STS. These compounds may be useful for ascertaining pathways of product release from the STS active site.

This thesis investigates self-tracking practices of users of MyFitnessPal calorie counting app. The thesis researches everyday self-trackers users who have started using the app on their own and are not part of any self-tracking community and focuses on the practices of self-tracking. The thesis responds to the literature on self-tracking that has often neglected everyday self-trackers and practices of self-tracking. First, many studies, whether sociological investigations or human-computer interaction research, focus on members of Quantified Self (QS) community (Choe, Lee, Lee, Pratt, & Kientz, 2014; Li, Dey, & Forlizzi, 2010; Neff & Nafus, 2015; Sharon & Zandbergen, 2016). QS is a community of individuals who are interested in learning more about themselves through, oftentimes unusual and complex, self-tracking, which involves modification of existing technologies or even creation of new ones. Thus, focusing on QS members neglects the individual everyday self-trackers, their experiences and practices. Second, existing studies have mainly focused on health or social implications of self-tracking (Lupton, 2012b, 2013d, 2014a, Swan, 2012b, 2013). These include, but are not limited to, potential of self-tracking to assist diagnosis (Wile, Ranawaya, & Kiss, 2014), or behaviour change (Chiauzzi, Rodarte, & Dasmahapatra, 2015), self-tracking increasing surveillance, public pedagogy (Rich & Miah, 2014) and subjection to neoliberal values and promotion of healthism (Lupton, 2012b, 2013a) or leading to monetisation of exercise (Till, 2014). While these studies have yielded important insights, they do not help us to understand what people actually do when they self-track, i.e. what practices self-tracking involves and how people engaged in self-tracking manage them. Guided by the STS approach that highlights the importance of observing the mundane practices and need to focus on technology users, this thesis explores the practices of everyday self-trackers. The exploration of the practices of self-tracking among the everyday self-trackers is based on 31 interviews with early mid-life individuals, who were mainly recruited from gyms and shared their self-tracking experience of using the MyFitnessPal calorie counting app. The analytical chapters answer three questions: What is self-tracking by calorie counting in the everyday like? How is self-tracking by calorie counting done? What are the practices through which self-tracking affects those engaged in it? To answer the first question, I juxtapose self-tracking goals, use and effects as they are represented in the literature on the QS to those of my participants. Doing this reveals that self-tracking in the everyday is perceived and done quite differently than the QS metaphor would allow us to believe. The goals of the participants are mundane (weight loss), they do not use the sophisticated features of the app and are not interested in the historical data, the effects of the app are not life-changing and temporary closely tied to the use of the app. This stands in contrast to QS metaphor where self-tracking is geared towards continuous self-improvement, driven by intricate data analysis and biohacking. To answer the second question, I focus on self-tracking by calorie counting with MyFitnessPal as a dieting practice. I explore how self-tracking affects the daily practices as well as is incorporated in participants lives. The users, thus, aim to find an approach to temporal aspects of tracking and precision that would fit most conveniently with their other daily practices. They manipulate their use of the app to accommodate any meals that are not in their usual dieting routine. This highlights that dieting through self-tracking is not a straightforward data collection and involves practical strategies and negotiations, and can both influence and be influenced by other everyday practices. The third question focuses on quantification, that is the production and communication of numbers (W. N. Espeland & Stevens, 2008, p. 402). Quantification has usually been discussed at institutional levels, in terms of government, science or, in the case of Espeland and Sauder s (W. N. Espeland & Sauder, 2007) seminal work, in terms of academic rankings. I adopt the insights from these studies to make sense of the quantification at the individual level using MyFitnessPal. I draw out two features of individual quantification that distinguish it from institutional one, mainly that quantification is done for oneself only and it relies on self-governance. Further, I outline how quantification affects such decisions as whether to eat, what to eat and how much to eat. Quantification also works as commensuration as participants compared different foods referring to their calorie value. However, unlike in the case of institutional quantification, individual quantification did not have to be accepted unquestionably and often other values of food would be weighted in relation to calories when participants made choices what to eat. Ultimately, this thesis contributes a new perspective on self-tracking as it explores the mundanity of it. It adds fine-grained insights into the everyday practices of self-tracking by adopting a novel analytical angle that centres on practices and by exploring a neglected user group of everyday self-trackers.

This thesis is focused on adsorption of phthalocyanines on tin and indium passivated silicon Si(111) surfaces with the √3 × √3 reconstruction at room temperature. Scanning tunneling microscopy was used for obtaining atomically resolved surface images. Molecules on these surfaces predominantly adsorb on Si-substitutional defects. Local density of states (LDOS) of strongly adsorbed molecules was obtained by scanning tunneling spectroscopy. The origin of fuzzy imaging of molecules sitting on Si-substitutional double defects was probed. Voltage dependence of mean lifetime of two observed states, between which the "fuzzy" molecule is switching, was measured by analysis of tunneling current fluctuations. We discussed the influence of external parameters on the switching between the two states. We attribute the fuzzy behaviour of the molecule and resulting tunneling current fluctuations to the motion of the molecule in a double-well potential and propose two most likely kinds of the motion which most closely agree with the obtained data.

This dissertation will have three chapters. In chapter one, a comprehensive review on defects in two dimensional materials will be presented. The aim of this review is to elaborate on different types of defects in two dimensional (2D) materials like graphene and transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs). First, different types of point and line defects, e.g. vacancies, anti-sites, guest elements, adatoms, vacancy clusters, grain boundaries, and edges, in these materials are categorized in terms of structure. Second, interactions among defects are discussed in terms of their rearrangement for low-energy configurations. Before studying the electronic and magnetic properties of defective 2D materials, some of the structures are considered in order to see how defect structure evolves to a stable defect configuration. Next, the influence of defects on electronic and magnetic properties of 2D materials is discussed. Finally, the dynamic behavior of defects and 2D structures under conditions such as electron beam irradiation, heat treatment, and ambient conditions, is discussed. Later as a case study, defects in a two dimensional transition metal dichalcogenide will be presented. Among two-dimensional (2D) transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), platinum diselenide (PtSe2) stands at a unique place in the sense that it undergoes a phase transition from type-II Dirac semimetal to indirect-gap semiconductor as thickness decreases. Defects in 2D TMDs are ubiquitous and play crucial roles in understanding and tuning electronic, optical, and magnetic properties. Here intrinsic point defects in ultrathin 1T-PtSe2 layers grown on mica were investigated through the chemical vapor transport (CVT) method, using scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy (STM/STS) and first-principles calculations. Five types of distinct defects were observed from STM topography images and the local density of states of the defects were obtained. By combining the STM results with first-principles calculations, the types and characteristics of these defects were identified, which are Pt vacancies at the topmost and next monolayers, Se vacancies in the topmost monolayer, and Se antisites at Pt sites within the topmost monolayer. Our study shows that the Se antisite defects are the most abundant with the lowest formation energy in a Se-rich growth condition, in contrast to cases of 2D molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) family. Our findings would provide critical insight into tuning of carrier mobility, charge carrier relaxation, and electron-hole recombination rates by defect engineering or varying growth condition in few-layer 1T-PtSe2 and other related 2D materials. Also, in order to investigate the layer dependency of vibrational and electronic properties of two dimensional materials, 2M-WS2 material was selected. Raman spectroscopy and DFT calculation proved that all Raman active modes have a downshift when material is thinned to few layers (less than 5 layers). It was proven that there is a strong interaction between layers such that by decreasing the number of layers, the downshift in Raman active modes is mostly for the ones which belong to out-of-plane atomic movements and the most downshift is for the Ag2 Raman active mode. Also, I investigated the effect of number of layers on the band structure and electronic properties of this material. As the number of layers decreases, band gap does not change until the materials is thinned down to only a single monolayer. For a single monolayer of 2M-WS2, there is an indirect band gap of 0.05eV; however, with applying in-plane strain to this monolayer, the material takes a metallic behavior as the strain goes beyond ±1%. / Doctor of Philosophy / Graphite (consisting of graphene as building blocks) and TMDS in bulk form are layered and with exfoliation one can reach to few layers which is called two-dimension. Two dimensional materials like graphene have been used in researches vastly due to their unique properties, e.g. high carrier mobility, and tunable electronic properties. Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) with a general formula of MX2, where M represents transition metal elements (groups 4-10) and X represents chalcogen elements (S, Se or Te), are another family of two-dimensional materials which have been extensively studied in the past few years. Besides exfoliation, there are also synthesis methods to produce two dimensional materials, e.g. chemical vapor deposition and chemical vapor transport. Normally, after synthesizing these materials, researchers investigate structure and electronic properties of these materials. There might be some atoms which no longer exist in the structure; hence, those are replaced by either vacancies or other elements which all of them are called defects. In chapter 1, defects in graphene and transition metal dichacolgenides were investigated, carefully. Later, dynamic behavior of defects in these materials were investigated and finally, the effect of defects on the electronic properties of the two dimensional materials were investigated. Chapter two talks about a case study which is two dimensional 1T-PtSe2. In this chapter, 5 different kinds of defects were studied using scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy investigations and density functional theory was used to prove our assumptions of the origin of defects. Also, another thing which is investigated by researcher is that how atoms in two dimensional materials vibrate and how the number of layers in the two dimensional material influences vibrations of atoms. Other than this, electronic properties of these materials is dependent upon the number of layers. When these materials are synthesized, there is a stress applied to the material due the mismatch between the material and its substrate, so it is worth investigating the effect of stress (strain) on the structure, and electronic properties of the material of interest. For this purpose, 2M-WS2 was exfoliated on Si/SiO2 substrate and the layer dependency of its vibrational modes was investigated using Raman spectroscopy and density functional theory calculation. Also, in order to investigate the influence of stress (strain) on the electronic properties of two dimensional 2M-WS2, a single monolayer of this materials underwent a series of strains in density functional theory calculations and the effect of strain on the electronic properties of this material was investigated.

This dissertation is a study of groundwork in Engaged Science, Technology, and Society (STS) research. Engaged STS scholars reframe STS knowledge and move it beyond the traditional scope and boundaries of the field. They use various methods such as critical participation, making and doing, situated interventions, and experimentation to critically engage with their fields of study. These scholars have evaluated their work within the context of the disciplinary outsider, described their use of high-level pragmatic frameworks, and used the arts to bring critical social issues to the public eye. Yet, when I decided to use STS engagement methods to bring visibility to the lesser-known communities in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Virginia Tech, I found a lack of work documenting the groundwork and experience of engagement. I could not locate groundwork regarding negotiation, designing the most appropriate intervention, collaboration strategies, or confronting my fears and doubts about being in the field. Therefore, in this dissertation, I identify and examine my engagement experience in three interventions within the ECE department to bring visibility to the groundwork of STS engagement. The limited-series podcast Engineering Visibility was a platform to bring visibility to the less dominant communities in the ECE department. Highlighting the experiences of women in engineering, the first-generation student, inclusion and diversity, and the non-traditional student fostered a shared identity and sense of belonging within the ECE department. On the ground, this project examined the need to protect participants' visibility through invisibility. Interventionist Protectivity conceptualizes how I combined trust, accountability, and social awareness to protect my participants' from social scrutiny. The second project was a seminar titled "Expand Your ECE Career." The seminar exposed students to a "broader range of careers" by challenging the traditional ideas of success. The seminar featured four ECE alumni with successful careers in law, finance, and fashion entrepreneurship. Additionally, this intervention pointed out the inadequacies of traditional forms of project assessment. I describe how I measured intervention success through other assessment methods such as "assessment per mobility." The last project was a data-driven white paper that translated the care work of the undergraduate academic career advisors and framed it to be understood by the ECE faculty. The care work done by the academic advisors was underappreciated in its connection to undergraduate student success. On the ground, I discussed the importance of identifying the advisors and the faculty's social construction to create an intervention that translated the advisors' work to be valued by the faculty. Lastly, I conclude with a discussion summarizing the overall lessons learned from the three interventions and discussing my experience of engagement. My engaged STS experience is discussed through my framing of the concept of self-confrontation and the work of avoiding the term of STS being deemed as useful. / Doctor of Philosophy / This dissertation is a study of groundwork in engaged Science, Technology, and Society (STS) research. Recent advances such as critical participation, making and doing, and situated intervention are reframing boundaries between knowledge and action in STS, offering scholars new approaches for improving scientific and technological communities. When I attempted to utilize these theories and methods in a culture change project, however, I found a lack of scholarship documenting the experience of engagement. How does one design the most appropriate intervention? What strategies are required to collaborate and negotiate? How do engaged scholars confront their fears and doubts in their communities and concerning the knowledge they bring back to STS? These groundwork questions confront both novice and seasoned STS scholars and are crucial to successful engaged scholarship, but they rarely are documented and analyzed. Utilizing a matters-of-care framework and self-reflective methods, I describe how and why I sought to change the culture of a large engineering department by making visible unseen and sometimes under-appreciated stakeholders. To do so, I created three interventions: a limited-series podcast to showcase the diversity of experiences in the department, an alternative-career seminar to redefine what counted as success in engineering, and a data-driven white paper to showcase the indispensable care work of academic advisors. I analyzed these projects' construction, application, and outcomes to highlight the complexities and significance of groundwork for STS engagement.

Damming is one of the most high-profile forms of human intervention in the environment, and it is commonly found across the modern Korean landscape. Since the 1960s, under the name of "Comprehensive Water Resources Development," South Korean state engineers have constructed more than a dozen large multi-purpose dams on rivers in the nation. The prevailing Korean narrative tends to regard the surge of large dam-building as the outcome of modern state authority. Rather than granting all agency to the state, this dissertation shifts focus to newly emerged water experts who rationalized the damming of the nation. These new experts with backgrounds in civil engineering embraced hydrology as part of their research agenda to lead a comprehensive dam construction plan from a perspective of national water circulation. By examining the work of these experts, I demonstrate that river engineering became crucial for Korean engineers to position themselves in the developing nation that stood between the colonial legacy on the one side and American hegemony on the other. By utilizing both colonial data and Western development models, hydrological engineers quantified rivers, a process that compressed complex understandings of and interactions with unruly rivers into a singular vision—rivers as a manageable national resource. This conceptual and physical infrastructure naturalized a form of life dedicated to industrial South Korea while marginalizing social and cultural lives in rural areas. I ultimately argue that the modern dammed riverscape of the nation is the product of engineers' precarious and contested efforts to build their own professional identities and research programs in developing South Korea. This contextualization of river engineering allows us to examine the violence of river engineering not just from a lens of top-down state authority but from compromises, contestations, and negotiations over the legitimate forms of rivers, modern South Korea, and how they are related. / Doctor of Philosophy / Damming is one of the most visible forms of human intervention in the environment, and it is commonly found across the modern Korean landscape. Since the 1960s, under the name of "Comprehensive Water Resources Development," South Korean state engineers have constructed more than a dozen large multi-purpose dams on rivers in the nation. The prevailing Korean narrative tends to regard the surge of large dam-building as the outcome of modern state authority. Rather than granting all agency to the state, this dissertation shifts focus to newly emerged water experts who rationalized the damming of the nation. These new experts with backgrounds in civil engineering embraced hydrology as part of their research agenda to lead a comprehensive dam construction plan from a perspective of national water circulation. By examining the work of these experts, I demonstrate that river engineering became crucial for Korean engineers to position themselves in the developing nation that stood between the colonial legacy on the one side and American hegemony on the other. By utilizing both colonial data and Western development models, hydrological engineers quantified rivers, a process that compressed complex understandings of and interactions with unruly rivers into a singular vision—rivers as a manageable national resource. This conceptual and physical infrastructure naturalized a form of life dedicated to industrial South Korea while marginalizing social and cultural lives in rural areas. This historical investigation of river engineering shows that the current riverscape and its violence in modern South Korea are the products of compromises, contestations, and negotiations over the legitimate forms of rivers, modern South Korea, and how they are related.

Mundialmente, a soja é considerada uma das principais fontes de produção de óleos e proteínas vegetais para alimentação humana e animal. Constitui-se atualmente um dos produtos de maior importância na economia brasileira. É notório o crescimento das áreas ocupadas pelas lavouras de soja no Brasil, que na safra 2014/2015 atingiram 32,09 milhões de hectares, com previsão de expansão para 32,20 milhões de hectares para a safra 2015/2016. Outro aspecto a ser salientado é que as lavouras de soja RR (Roundup Ready) corresponderam a 93,5%, da área total cultivada com soja no Brasil na safra 2014/2015. Cultivares STS (Soja Tolerante à Sulfoniluréias) contém um gene que aumenta a degradação de alguns herbicidas na planta, como por exemplo, o chlorimuron-ethyl, para o qual são posicionados tolerando doses até quatro vezes as doses recomendadas para cultivares não tolerantes, sem apresentar danos significativos. A soja STS foi desenvolvida através da técnica de mutagênese de sementes utilizando o agente alquilante etilmetanosulfonato (EMS), não sendo uma cultura transgênica. Os objetivos do presente trabalho foram: avaliar a seletividade do herbicida chlorimuron-ethyl aplicado em pós-emergência de soja RR/STS; avaliar a seletividade de herbicidas inibidores da ALS aplicados em pós-emergência de soja RR/STS. Para tanto foram conduzidos dois experimentos principais. O primeiro conduzido durante quatro safras (2011/2012 a 2014/2015), os tratamentos foram constituídos por sete doses do herbicida chlorimuron-ethyl (0, 15, 30, 45, 60, 75 e 90 g i. a. ha-1). Foi realizada avaliação das variáveis relacionadas ao desempenho agronômico (altura, número de vagens por planta, produtividade, e massa de mil sementes). O segundo durante a safra 2014/2015 no campo e casa de vegetação, em que a soja RR/STS foi submetida à aplicação de herbicidas inibidores da ALS, associados ou não ao glyphosate. Foi realizada avaliação de fitointoxicação, índice SPAD, bem como variáveis relacionadas ao desempenho agronômico para o experimento no campo (número de vagens por planta e produtividade). Os cultivares de soja CD 250 e CD 2630 RR/STS apresentaram-se tolerantes para aplicação, em pós-emergência (V4), do herbicida chlorimuron-ethyl até a dose de 90 g i. a. ha-1. O cultivar de soja CD 2630 RR/STS apresentou-se tolerante à aplicação, em pós-emergência, dos herbicidas utilizados, isolada ou em associação com glyphosate. Exceção feita ao metsulfuron-methy (2,4 g i. a. ha-1), associado ou não com glyphosate (960 g e. a. ha-1). / Worldwide soybean is considered one of the major sources of production of vegetable oils and proteins for food and feed. It currently is one of the most important products in the Brazilian economy. It is notable growth areas occupied by soybean crops in Brazil, that in the 2014/2015 season reached 32.09 million hectares, with expansion forecast to 32.20 million hectares for the season 2015/2016. Another aspect to be noted is that the RR soybean (Roundup Ready) crops corresponded to 93.5% of the total area cultivated with soybeans in Brazil in the 2014/2015 season. Cultivars STS (Sulfonylurea Tolerant Soybeans) contains a gene that increases the degradation of some herbicides in the plant, for example, chlorimuron-ethyl, to which are positioned tolerated doses up to four times the recommended dosages for nontolerant cultivars, without presenting significant damage. STS soybean was developed by seed mutagenesis technique using the alkylating agent ethyl methane sulfonate (EMS), not being a transgenic crop. The aims of this study were to evaluate the selectivity of the herbicide chlorimuron-ethyl applied post-emergence of RR/STS soybean; evaluate the selectivity of ALS-inhibiting herbicides applied postemergence of RR/STS soybean. Therefore, two main experiments were conducted. The first conducted for four seasons (2011/2012 to 2014/2015), the treatments were seven doses of the herbicide chlorimuron-ethyl (0, 15, 30, 45, 60, 75 and 90 g a. i. ha-1). Performed an assessment of variables related to agronomic performance (height, number of pods per plant, yield and mass of one thousand seeds). The second during the 2014/2014 season in the field and the greenhouse, where RR/STS soybean was subjected to application of ALS inhibitor herbicides, with or without glyphosate. It was conducted evaluation phytointoxication, SPAD index, as well as variables related to agronomic performance (number of pods per plant and productivity). The soybean cultivars CD 250 and CD 2630 RR/STS were tolerant to application, post-emergence (V4) of herbicide chlorimuron-ethyl up to a dose of 90 g a. i. ha-1. Cultivar CD 2630 RR/STS presented tolerance to application in postemergence herbicides used alone or in combination with glyphosate. Except for the metsulfuron-methy (2.4 g a. i. ha-1), associated or not with glyphosate (960 g a. e. ha-1).

Qu’est-ce que la bio-ingénierie ? Assimilée à l’essor des nouvelles manières de manipuler et contrôler le vivant par la modification du génome depuis les années 70-80, la bio-ingénierie est fréquemment identifiée et restreinte aux biotechnologies à ADN. Ingénieriser le vivant est alors synonyme du développement des plantes génétiquement modifiées et des transformations de l’industrie pharmaceutique qui témoignent de l’apparition d’un nouvel agencement entre science, industrie et politique. Au milieu des années 2000, une communauté d’ingénieurs se rassemble autour du terme de « biologie synthétique » avec pour ambition de faire advenir la « vraie » bio-ingénierie. Davantage qu’un nouveau domaine scientifique, cette communauté naissante revendique une véritable utopie technique de modification du vivant sur le modèle de l’électronique et de l’informatique en rupture avec les biotechnologies à ADN et leurs régulations. Cette utopie est néanmoins marginalisée et la biologie synthétique se range alors comme un domaine scientifique stabilisée.La thèse enquête à partir de l’émergence de la biologie synthétique pour interroger les pratiques et les régulations de la bio-ingénierie depuis le milieu des années 80. Suivre la bio-ingénierie permet alors de mettre à jour un régime de production de savoir à l’ombre des biotechnologies à ADN et des récits dominants sur la manière dont le savoir contemporain est produit. L’expression « à l’ombre » renvoie alors aux régulations délaissées, aux applications peu révolutionnaires, aux acteurs puissants et discrets, aux secteurs économiques peu enquêtés, aux programmes peu étudiés pour rendre compte de ce que l’on appelle les biotechnologies et de la production de savoirs contemporaine. / What is bioengineering? Associated to the rise of the ways of manipulating and controlling the living through the modification of the genome since the 70s-80s, bioengineering is frequently identified and restricted to DNA biotechnologies. Engineering the living is then synonymous with the development of genetically modified plants and transformations of the pharmaceutical industry which testify to the appearance of a new arrangement between science, industry and politics. In the mid-2000s, a community of engineers gathered around the term "synthetic biology" with the ambition to bring about the "true" bio-engineering. More than a new scientific field, this emerging community claims a real technical utopia of modification of life based on the model of electronics and computer technology breaking with DNA biotechnologies and their regulations. This utopia is nevertheless marginalized and synthetic biology ranks as a stabilized scientific domain.The thesis starts from the emergence of synthetic biology to interrogate the practices and regulations of bioengineering since the middle of the 80's. Following bioengineering then allows to update a regime of production of knowledge in the shadow of DNA biotechnologies and dominant narratives of how contemporary knowledge is produced. The term "in the shadow" then refers to neglected regulations, non-revolutionary applications, powerful and discrete actors, the economic sector under investigation, under-researched programs to account for is commonly called biotechnology and contemporary knowledge production.