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According to Bruno Latour in his paper 'Give Me a Laboratory and I Will Raise the World', laboratories are irreplaceable sources of political strength which override traditional political forces. Latour's conclusions are based on a study of Pasteur and his work with anthrax in nineteenth-century France. This paper takes as case study a contemporary Australian laboratory established to work on exotic animal disease viruses, including Foot-and-Mouth Disease virus, to illustrate some of the shortcomings of Latour's approach. Laboratories do not always raise the world, whatever that may mean. Among other inadequacies, Latour fails to provide a comprehensive analysis of the complexity of the social forces that operate in any particular context. Traditional political forces provide an environment or context which may encourage or thwart the potential power of laboratories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the isolation and identification of the fur-clasping mite, Myocoptes musculinus, from the faeces of the Spinifex Hopping mouse (Notomys alexis). This investigation adds to the sparse records of ectoparasites collected from native Australian murids. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the late 1970s, there has been considerable debate surrounding the question of whether or not exposures to non-ionizing radiation and electric and magnetic fields (EMF), produced by powerlines and electrical and telecommunications technologies, are harmful to health. Whilst there has been some recent evidence of regulatory fatigue, and attempts to enforce closure, the EMF debate nevertheless still continues. This paper will explore the rôle played by competing images of scientific method in the argumentative strategies used by two of the main protagonists in an Australian public inquiry (held in 1990-91) which investigated the EMF issue: 'Inquiry into Community Needs and High Voltage (132kv and above) Transmission Line Development', the so-called Gibbs Inquiry. Apart from documenting some of the epistemologically intricate features of the EMF controversy, the following discussion will also consider the way scientific method discourses can contribute to enhancing the durability of knowledge claims in legal and regulatory settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the Australian Rabbit Calicivirus Disease (RCD) Program, an attempt at the biological control of wild rabbits, as an example of how technoscience in 'Mode-2 society' works. My aim is to illuminate the variety of, and the connections between, the diverse activities that the technoscientific actors engage in. The RCD Program brought a new entity into Australia; it was pursued by a network of actors across institutional boundaries, and it produced a public image linked to widely accepted cultural knowledge. I argue that the research articulating 'rabbit calicivirus' as a biological control agent, the extent of the supporting network and the alignment of the Program with cultural narratives about rabbits, were three aspects of the same process, and equally important. However, it also makes sense to understand each aspect in terms of both the audience addressed, and the temporal succession: hence, they can be distinguished as distinct aspects. Detailed study of projects like the RCD Program is necessary to further our understanding of the dynamics of technoscience in contemporary culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sewers are aging, expensive assets that attract public attention only when they fail. Sewer operators are under increasing pressure to minimise their maintenance costs, while preventing sewer failures. Inspection can give early warning of failures and allow economical repair under noncrisis conditions. Current inspection techniques are subjective and detect only gross defects reliably. They cannot provide the data needed to confidently plan long-term maintenance. This paper describes PIRAT, a quantitative technique for sewer inspection. PIRAT measures the internal geometry of the sewer and then analyses these data to detect, classify, and rate defects automatically using artificial intelligence techniques. We describe the measuring system and present and discuss geometry results for different types of sewers. The defect analysis techniques are outlined and a sample defect report presented. PIRAT's defect reports are compared with reports from the conventional technique and the discrepancies discussed. We relate PIRAT to other work in sewer robotics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Competency-Based Training (CBT) is a newly introduced national system of vocational skills development, designed to improve the performance of Australian enterprises through upgrading workers' skills. This paper presents a modified network analysis of the development and use of CBT by the various actors—including government, industry, unions, organizations, training practitioners, trainees, training protocols and training materials–making up this ‘social technology’. ‘Competency training’ is taken to conform to a conventional approach to systems design, where things are divided up according to the separate spheres of planned development and practical implementation. I deal, first, with the constitution of CBT's design, including its manifest and hidden heterogeneities; second, I show how this design is translated into use. I argue that relations of design and use are created and sustained together. Where this relationship is understood, design can serve as a ground for critique. More generally, I consider the limitations of actor-network conceptions of ‘heterogeneity’. I argue that translation implies exploring both similarity and difference, with difference having a positivity and non-assimilability that tend to remain hidden in actor-network theory. Using concepts from post-structuralist and feminist interactionist analysis, I argue that recovering the hidden heterogeneities of networks of technology design and use (for example, users' contribution to design) serves to complexify network accounts, and to help deal with forms of technology analysis with political relevance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the central concerns of sociologists of science has been the significance attached to received scientific collectivities such as the 'discipline 'and 'specialty' This has ranged from implicit acceptance of their centrality in scientific practice, to a rejection based on the identification of such collectivities as constructs of minimal significance to scientific work. This paper investigates the significance of collectivities in respect to solar energy research in Australia. On the basis of this study it is argued that the significance of received collectivities has been exaggerated; they do influence the way the researcher's world is perceived and organized, but this contribution is made within a network of multiple, overlapping and often -- at the margins -vaguely defined collectivities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]