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This paper presents a longitudinal case study in UK biotechnology covering some 30 years during which genomic technologies were introduced into pig breeding. This case study demonstrates how co-innovation involving existing small and medium sized enterprises, together with contributions from academics, has enabled companies to obtain the resources needed for value creation. Important contributions at critical junctures from public funding, pivotal contributions of individuals, and entry of new enterprises supplying essential resources, have enabled the fruitful realisation of new value creation. This paper contributes to the literature by taking a historical perspective, demonstrating how enabling long-term networking relationships including relevant academics, research institutions, funders and knowledge brokers has the potential to generate an innovation ecosystem that can respond effectively to a range of external challenges and take advantage of new techno-scientific opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Societal Impact Statement: The contentious debate over genetically modified (GM) crops in Britain has entered a new era following Brexit and the development of gene editing. At the same time, the events of the 1980s and 1990s are now entering historical archives, including the GM Archive at the Science Museum in London. This article explores how fears of unnaturalness and arguments from historical continuity informed the British GM controversy. It also analyses the limitations of these modern archives. The concerns surrounding the naturalness and continuity of biotechnology have recently been resurrected following suggestions that gene editing will be employed in plant breeding. Summary: This research examines the introduction of genetically modified (GM) crops to Britain, including the backlash from environmentalist groups and the public that led to a de facto government moratorium on their commercialisation in 1998.Harnessing archival materials from the Science Museum's GM Archive, this paper shows that GM was viewed as an alien or unnatural technology in Britain, while campaigns from Monsanto and scientific supporters of GM attempted to show how recombinant DNA technology was simply the latest step in a long history of plant breeding.By moving outside the archive, it becomes clear that the creation of this narrative from continuity was a standard industry strategy. Appeals to the history of plant breeding was a strategy adopted by Monsanto well before the British GM controversy, while twentieth‐century food scares had already undermined public trust in government and industry.Public concern over the naturalness of biotechnology remains. Meanwhile, contemporary advocates of gene editing have begun to make similar arguments to those deployed in the 1990s, highlighting the similarity of gene editing to natural variation and selection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: When new technologies are developed, it is common for their crime and security implications to be overlooked or given inadequate attention, which can lead to a 'crime harvest'. Potential methods for the criminal exploitation of biotechnology need to be understood to assess their impact, evaluate current policies and interventions and inform the allocation of limited resources efficiently. Recent studies have illustrated some of the security implications of biotechnology, with outcomes of misuse ranging from compromised computers using malware stored in synthesised DNA, infringement of intellectual property on biological matter, synthesis of new threatening viruses, 'genetic genocide,' and the exploitation of food markets with genetically modified crops. However, there exists no synthesis of this information, and no formal quality assessment of the current evidence. This review therefore aims to establish what current and/or predicted crimes have been reported as a result of biotechnology. Methods: A systematic review will be conducted to identify relevant literature. ProQuest, Web of Science, MEDLINE and USENIX will be searched utilizing a predefined search string, and Backward and Forward searches. Grey literature will be identified by searching the official UK Government website (www.gov.uk) and the Global database of Dissertations and Theses. The review will be conducted by screening title/abstracts followed by full texts, utilising pre-defined inclusion and exclusion criteria. Papers will be managed using Eppi-center Reviewer 4 software, and data will be organised using a data extraction table using a descriptive coding tool. A predefined rating system (speculative, experimental or currently occurring) will be used to sort studies, and a thematic synthesis of the results will be presented. Discussion: Despite the concerns raised about the misuse of biotechnology, no previous work has been conducted from a Crime Science perspective to collate and assess the literature. This systematic review aims to identify the types of offending activity facilitated by biotechnology, including synthetic biology and genetic engineering. The objective of the review is to examine whether this offending activity can be prevented by assessing the conditions necessary for the crime events to occur. It is anticipated that evidence generated from this review will guide future research in this area and aid relevant stakeholders to prioritise and allocate limited resources to biotechnology crime prevention. Systematic review registration: PROSPERO CRD42019131685 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Debate is intensifying about how to assess the full range of impacts from medical research. Complexity increases when assessing the diverse funding streams of funders such as Asthma UK, a charitable patient organisation supporting medical research to benefit people with asthma. This paper aims to describe the various impacts identified from a range of Asthma UK research, and explore how Asthma UK utilised the characteristics of successful funding approaches to inform future research strategies. Methods: We adapted the Payback Framework, using it both in a survey and to help structure interviews, documentary analysis, and case studies. We sent surveys to 153 lead researchers of projects, plus 10 past research fellows, and also conducted 14 detailed case studies. These covered nine projects and two fellowships, in addition to the innovative case studies on the professorial chairs (funded since 1988) and the MRC-Asthma UK Centre in Allergic Mechanisms of Asthma (the 'Centre') which together facilitated a comprehensive analysis of the whole funding portfolio. We organised each case study to capture whatever academic and wider societal impacts (or payback) might have arisen given the diverse timescales, size of funding involved, and extent to which Asthma UK funding contributed to the impacts. Results: Projects recorded an average of four peer-reviewed journal articles. Together the chairs reported over 500 papers. All streams of funding attracted follow-on funding. Each of the various categories of societal impacts arose from only a minority of individual projects and fellowships. Some of the research portfolio is influencing asthmarelated clinical guidelines, and some contributing to product development. The latter includes potentially major breakthroughs in asthma therapies (in immunotherapy, and new inhaled drugs) trialled by university spin-out companies. Such research-informed guidelines and medicines can, in turn, contribute to health improvements. The role of the chairs and the pioneering collaborative Centre is shown as being particularly important. Conclusions: We systematically demonstrate that all types of Asthma UK's research funding assessed are making impacts at different levels, but the main societal impacts from projects and fellowships come from a minority of those funded. Asthma UK used the study's findings, especially in relation to the Centre, to inform research funding strategies to promote the achievement of impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the philosophical substructure to the theoretical conflicts that permeate contemporary mental health care in the UK. Theoretical conflicts are treated here as those that arise among practitioners holding divergent theoretical orientations towards the phenomena being treated. Such conflicts, although steeped in history, have become revitalized by recent attempts at integrating mental health services that have forced diversely trained practitioners to work collaboratively together, often under one roof. Part I of this paper examines how the history of these conflicts can be understood as a tension between, on the one hand, the medical model and its use by the dominant profession of psychiatry, and on the other, those alternative models and practitioners in some way differentiated from the medical model camp. Examples will be given from recent policy and research to highlight the prevalence of this tension in contemporary practice. Part II of this paper explores the deeper commonalities that lay beneath the theoretical conflict outlined in Part I. These commonalities will be shown to be apart of a captivating framework that has continued to grip the conflict since its inception. By exposing this underlying framework-and the motivations inherent therein-the topic of integration appears in wholly different light, allowing a renewed philosophical basis for integration to emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alternatives to donor blood have been developed in part to meet increasing demand. However, new biotechnologies are often associated with increased perceptions of risk and low acceptance. This paper reviews developments of alternatives and presents data, from a field-based experiment in the UK and Holland, on the risks and acceptance of donor blood and alternatives (chemical, genetically modified and bovine). UK groups perceived all substitutes as riskier than the Dutch. There is a negative association between perceived risk and acceptability. Solutions to increasing acceptance are discussed in terms of implicit attitudes, product naming and emotional responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public interest in assisted reproduction (AR) has remained high since the birth of the first 'test tube baby' in the United Kingdom in 1978. Australian scientists have been frontrunners in the development and implementation of reproductive technology and recently, there has been renewed debate about government funding and access to AR. This paper provides a timely overview of reproductive technology services in Australia and examines the body of social research on the impacts of this technology, particularly previous research on how women and their partners experience assisted reproduction procedures. The popular expectations of success are compared to the latest success rates. It is argued that there is a need for more social research to counterbalance the dominance of the biomedical aspects of AR, in particular, for more research into people's actual experiences of AR, expectations of the likelihood of success, access issues and on the general impact of involuntary childlessness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that the executive board of the Research Councils U.K. (RCUK), an umbrella organization for government funding bodies in Great Britain, has approved that all peer-reviewed journal papers produced by publicly funded research must be made available for free soon after they're completed. But the RCUK left each research council to set its own rules. The most stringent policy came from the Medical Research Council. The council declared that any papers accepted by a peer-reviewed journal must be deposited at the earliest in the PubMed Central , the free public archive run by the U.S. National Library of Medicine. However the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council adopted a softer line. It maintained that papers should be submitted only at the earliest opportunity and placed in a proper e-print repository.