U.S. agrigenetics: suit filed against NIH

Three environmental groups have filed suit against the National Institutes of Health in an attempt to block an experiment approved in April by the NIH Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee. The experiment, designed by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, to enhance the frost resistance of crops, would release genetically engineered organisms into the general environment for the first time. The suit, filed in a federal court in the District of Columbia, claims that releasing frost-resistant bacteria into the environment could have damaging ecological consequences, that NIH should have issued an environmental impact assessment before approving any experiment involving the release of genetically engineered organisms, and that the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee lacks the expertise to assess environmental risks.     

用cpDNA matK基因和nrDNA ITS区序列确定我国特有植物四棱草属的系统位置

测定了我国特有植物四棱草属以及马鞭草科6属和唇形科13属共27个代表种的叶绿体DNA matK基因和核核糖体DNA ITS区序列.应用相对表观衍征分析方法(RASA)对所测DNA序列的系统发育信号及所选择外类群的有效性进行了统计评价.应用最大简约法(MP)、邻接法(NJ)和最大似然法 (ML)对matK和ITS序列进行了独立的和联合的分子系统发育分析.结果表明,四棱草与三花莸为姐妹群;Contino等提出的莸属复合群不构成单系类群,莸属4种具有复系演化关系;Contino系统中的筋骨草亚科形成一个单系分支.此外,本文结果支持马鞭草科与唇形科构成复系类群以及白骨壤属从马鞭草科中独立的观点.RASA分析和多基因联合分析为确定复杂类群间的系统发育关系提供了有效的途径.     

数字通信系统 第三版

本书全面介绍了数字通信系统的理论和实际应用方法，并且包含了在数字信号传输中需要运用的关于设计、实现和测试的最新方法和技术。此书介绍的基本技术有：纠错码、多路复用、数字调制、数字用户线路、电缆调制、移动无线网络、城域网和光纤网络。新的工业标准有：声音／视频编码、SONET/SDH、DWDM、ATM、宽带无线网、网络同步和网络管理。每一章节后都有评述和参考文献和大量习题（无答案）。     

Silent performances: Are “repertoires” really post-Kuhnian?

Ankeny and Leonelli (2016) propose “repertoires” as a new way to understand the stability of certain research programs as well as scientific change in general. By bringing a more complete range of social, material, and epistemic elements into one framework, they position their work as a correction to the Kuhnian impulse in philosophy of science and other areas of science studies. I argue that this “post-Kuhnian” move is not complete, and that repertoires maintain an internalist perspective. Comparison with an alternative framework, the “sociotechnical imaginaries” of Jasanoff and Kim (2015), illustrates precisely which elements of practice are externalized by Ankeny and Leonelli. Specifically, repertoires discount the role of audience, without whom the repertoires of science are unintelligible, and lack an explicit place for ethical and political imagination, which provide meaning for otherwise mechanical promotion of particular research programs. This comparison reveals, I suggest, two distinct modes of scholarship, one internalist and the other critical. While repertoires can be modified to meet the needs of critical STS scholars and to completely reject Kuhn's internalism, whether or not we do so depends on what we want our scholarship to achieve.