Has Latour Real-ly Unravelled the Real: The Journey from Laboratory Life to Down to Earth?

This article traces Bruno Latour’s answer to the question ‘what is real?’ from Latour and Steve Woolgar in Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts (1979) through to Latour in Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climate Change (2018). This intriguing question arises because Latour’s hypothesis in Down to Earth presumes that climate change is ‘real’, while in Laboratory Life, hard facts were considered constructions. The journey reveals Latour’s own ‘real’ lies between the extreme science realists (facts are either true or false) and extreme social relativists (facts are a social construction), although favouring the relativists. A closer analysis, however, shows that Latour’s project is really about truth claims and that the real question is couched in terms rejecting the modernist settlement of ontological assumptions and basing truth on credibility determined by the strength of associations; the more associations, the more ‘real’ the truth claim. Ultimately, Latour elegantly sidesteps the real question and how he does this is real-ly unrivalled.

From laboratory life to newsroom practice: The use of actor-network theory and community of practice to explain newsroom practice and culture: Kurdish Network News as case study

This paper focuses on the impacts of technological changes in the newsroom practices, taking both Actor-Network Theory (henceforth ANT) developed by Latour, 1992; Callon, 1992 and Law, 1992), as well as the Community of Practice (henceforth COP) developed by Wenger, 1998 and Lave, 1991) in newsroom practices and news-making processes inside the newsroom of (KNN) a Kurdish news channel. The paper argues that both models provide a strong basis of understanding the situation of news practice and constructing a better environment of learning, shared projects, problem solving, focal actor roles, and translation processes.The paper explores how the ANT and COP models work together to provide in-depth understanding for media researchers in their study of newsroom technology. Through this paper the researcher will provide in-depth understanding surrounding the key concepts and principles of each model and employ these to analyses news practice and contemporary newsroom culture. Through the use of ANT and COP this paper seeks to understand the role of new technology tools, human and non-human actors in shaping journalists’ behavior in the newsroom.The date collection process based on the secondary data includes the in-depth interviews with news making crews in the newsroom and non-participate observation of the situation of automation system newsroom applied by KNN.

Neurons, Receptors, and Channels

Here, I recount some adventures that I and my colleagues have had over some 60 years since 1957 studying the effects of drugs and neurotransmitters on neuronal excitability and ion channel function, largely, but not exclusively, using sympathetic neurons as test objects. Studies include effects of centrally active drugs on sympathetic transmission; neuronal action and neuroglial uptake of GABA in the ganglia and brain; the action of muscarinic agonists on sympathetic neurons; the action of bradykinin on neuroblastoma-derived cells; and the identification of M-current as a target for muscarinic action, including experiments to determine its distribution, molecular composition, neurotransmitter sensitivity, and intracellular regulation by phospholipids and their hydrolysis products. Techniques used include electrophysiological recording (extracellular, intracellular microelectrode, whole-cell, and single-channel patch-clamp), autoradiography, messenger RNA and complementary DNA expression, antibody injection, antisense knockdown, and membrane-targeted lipidated peptides. I finish with some recollections about my scientific career, funding, and changes in laboratory life and pharmacology research over the past 60 years.