Geno-technology is a technology unlike any other, with significant implications for life in the 21st century. It directly affects us at a deeply personal level, it poses a threat to the boundaries which conventionally define selfhood, it generates potentially novel risks and dangers, and it threatens the very basis of accepted understandings of culture and society. This unique, exploratory volume discusses the ethical, cultural and philosophical issues surrounding the search for the 'book of life', focusing on the mapping of the human genome in Britain, the USA and Europe. It examines the impact of genetically modified crops, food and pharmacogenomics, along with the science and technology policy issues deriving from the human genome project. The authors investigate the potential risks and implications of the new genetics and conclude with a discussion of how nature may be reconfigured to underpin developments in health, commerce, state regulation and the law, both on a local and global scale.

This book is an interdisciplinary, multi-author work, based upon a recently completed international study by Brazilian and British experts and will prove a valuable reference to all those working in this field.

'[I] highly recommend the book to students and professionals in the energy policy and energy conversion fields...all energy specialists.' - Energy

The title of this book derives from C. Wright Mills' classic The Sociological Imagination (Penguin, 1970), in which he sees the essential project of social science as the use of the imagination to 'grasp history and biography and the relations between the two in society'. This enables the social scientist to 'range from the most impersonal and remote transformations to the most intimate features of the human self'. Another of Mills' concerns was the relationship between 'the personal troubles of the milieu' and 'the public issues of social structure' and these are most acutely illustrated in human genetics, the most personal of the new technologies. The chapters in this volume address these issues through discussions of choice and informed decision-making, risks and hazards, the economic and political organization of new technology, and the public as well as the scientist's understanding of science. The methods used range from detailed ethnographies, through deconstruction's of text and action, to surveys and interviews.

Both strategic and economic considerations make desirable the development of alternatives to petroleum as a source of energy and chemicals. Alcohol is one such alternative, and the experience of Brazil, a world leader in its production, provides a unique contribution to industrial policy for other nations. This book will be a valuable reference for all those concerned with energy sources for the future.

Geno-technology is a technology unlike any other, with significant implications for life in the 21st century. It directly affects us at a deeply personal level, it poses a threat to the boundaries which conventionally define selfhood, it generates potentially novel risks and dangers, and it threatens the very basis of accepted understandings of culture and society. This unique, exploratory volume discusses the ethical, cultural and philosophical issues surrounding the search for the 'book of life', focusing on the mapping of the human genome in Britain, the USA and Europe. It examines the impact of genetically modified crops, food and pharmacogenomics, along with the science and technology policy issues deriving from the human genome project. The authors investigate the potential risks and implications of the new genetics and conclude with a discussion of how nature may be reconfigured to underpin developments in health, commerce, state regulation and the law, both on a local and global scale.

Industrial Uses of Biomass Energy demonstrates that energy-rich vegetation, biomass, is a key renewable energy resource for the future. Most energy scenarios recognise bioenergy as an important component in the future world's energy outlook, both in developed and developing countries. Brazil, uniquely, has a recent history of large-scale biomass industrial uses that makes it a specially important test-bed both for the development of biomass technology and its utilisation, and for understanding how this is shaped by political and socio-economic forces. Perhaps their most famous development was PROALCOOL, the national programme for producing fuel for the nation's automobiles from alcohol derived from sugar, as a substitute for petrol. But other sectors of the Brazilian economy traditionally, and presently, use biomass as a major energy source. The book analyses the cause for this and the alternatives. Finally, it is argued that Brazil's experience with the development for industrial biomass use provides wider lessons and insights in the context of the international movement for sustainable economic development.
This book is an interdisciplinary, multi-author work, based upon a recently completed international study by Brazilian and British experts at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Energy Planning-NIPE, State University Campinas and King's College, University of London.