Casper Andersen

Toward reliable gold nanoparticle patterning on self-assembled DNA nanoscaffold

Assembly of gold nanoparticles (AuNP) into designer architectures with reliablity is important for nanophotonics and nanoelectronics applications. Toward this goal we present a new strategy to prepare AuNPs monofunctionalized with lipoic acid modified DNA oligos. This strategy offers increased bonding strength between DNA oligos and AuNP surface. These conjugates are further selectively mixed with other DNA strands and assembled into fixed sized DNA nanostructures carring a discrete number of AuNPs at desired positions. Atomic force microscopy imaging reveals a dramatically improved yield of the AuNPs on DNA tile structure compared to the ensembles using monothiolate AuNP-DNA conjugates.

The Money Trail: A New Historiography for Networks, Patronage, and Scientific Careers

Money is everywhere in science. Yet historians have only rarely placed the money trail at the center of their analyses. The essays in this Focus section demonstrate that following the money offers a historiographical path for investigating a number of key issues across disciplinary boundaries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Drawing on cases and materials relating to a number of scientific fields, including electrical engineering, aeronautics, agriculture, and paleontology, the essays examine the continuous role of money in industrial and military patronage, personal connections and networks, and spatial and geographical dimensions of science, as well as in relation to state funding and ownership. Together, the contributions demonstrate how following the money offers a way of overcoming hyperprofessionalism in the history of science.

Distance dependent interhelical couplings of organic rods incorporated in DNA 4-helix bundles.

The synthesis of a conjugated linear organic module containing terminal salicylaldehyde groups and a central activated ester, designed for conjugation to amino-modified oligonucleotides, is presented. The organic module has a phenylene-ethynylene backbone and is highly fluorescent. It is conjugated to oligonucleotide sequences and incorporated into specific locations in a well-defined DNA 4-helix bundle (4-HB). The DNA-nanostructure offers precise location control of the organic modules which allows for selective interhelical coupling reactions. In this study, metal-salen formation as well as dihydrazone formation are used to covalently interlink the organic modules. Both coupling reactions are highly dependent on the distances between the organic modules in the 4-HB. Neighboring modules dimerize easier, whereas more distanced modules are less prone to react, even when the linkers are extended. The dimeric products are characterized by denaturing polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE), high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), and matrix assisted laser desorption/absorption ionization time-of-flight (MALDI TOF) mass spectrometry.

“Scientific independence”, capacity building, and the development of UNESCO’s science and technology agenda for Africa

Abstract This article analyses the shifting rationales for scientific collaboration in the work of the United Nations Economic, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in the science sector in Africa from the late colonial period through to the era of capacity building. Focusing on the late colonial period and the post-independence decades of “national science” in Africa, it analyses UNESCO’s role in science policy, engineering training, and natural resources research. It demonstrates that in the era of national science UNESCO’s activities were couched in the language of independence: developing capacities in the sciences was regarded as the key to obtaining “scientific independence” to match the recently obtained political independence. This marked a significant change from the 1950s when UNESCO based its operations in Africa on collaborations with the European colonial powers. The article argues that the link between scientific independence and political self-determination gave way as UNESCO rebranded scientific capacity-building activities as efforts in the pursuit of an unclearly-defined common good.

Affective politics and colonial heritage, Rhodes Must Fall at UCT and Oxford

ABSTRACT The article analyses the spatial entanglement of colonial heritage struggles through a study of the Rhodes Must Fall student movement at the University of Cape Town and the University of Oxford. We aim to shed light over why statues still matter in analyzing colonial traces and legacies in urban spaces and how the decolonizing activism of the RMF movement mobilizes around the controversial heritage associated with Cecil Rhodes at both places – a heritage that encompasses statues, buildings, Rhodes scholarship and the Rhodes Trust funds. We include a comparative study of the Facebook use of RMF as it demonstrates significant differences between the two places in the development of the student movements as political activism. Investigating in more detail the heritage politics of RMF at UCT we fledge out what we call an affective politics using non-representational bodily strategies. We argue that in order for actual social movements to mobilize in current political controversies, they need to put affective tactics to use.

Internationalism and Engineering in UNESCO during the End Game of Empire, 1943–68

When UNESCO was founded in 1945 the organization aimed to become a pivotal player in international collaboration in the field of engineering. UNESCO based its engineering initiatives on the World Engineering Conference, an organization espousing a politically motivated “technocratic internationalism” and on the World Power Conference, an organization promoting a business-friendly stance of “engineering internationalism.” These competing models for international collaboration curtailed UNESCO’s institutional ambitions. UNESCO’s position was further weakened by fierce opposition from British engineering institutions that pursued a Commonwealth institutional framework in direct opposition to UNESCO. This article unravels the intricate connections between empire and internationalism that shaped UNESCO’s engineering agenda during the first post-war decades. It demonstrates how competing forms of internationalism, mounting cold war tensions, and the continuous influence of a British empire-based opposition ultimately forced UNESCO to abandon its technocratic internationalist ambitions and settle for a modest coordinating role in international technical collaboration.

The Economic Normativity of British Fiscal Administration in Egypt and Nigeria, 1882–1914

Andersen analyses moral and fiscal discourses in British colonial administration. Focusing on tax policies in Egypt and Nigeria, the chapter demonstrates that entangled moral and economic vocabularies were crucial in the arguments British colonial administrators made for establishing colonial rule and for making the case that colonial tutelage would be long-lasting. The administrators saw themselves as safeguards against what they considered an inherent moral and financial failure of oriental and African despots and peoples. This view was central to their moral posture; as financially disinterested agents, colonial officials claimed to administrate deeper economic and moral laws of development. The chapter thus demonstrates how economic normativities, defined as the ‘operative indistinctions’ of economic and moral realms, functioned in the ideologies and practices of British colonial governance.

The Philae Controversy—Muscular Modernization and Paternalistic Preservation in Aswan and London

In 1882, the British occupied Egypt. A decade later British Egyptologists successfully spearheaded an international campaign against a scheme to dam the Nile at Aswan—a project that would result in the flooding of the Island and Temples of Philae. The article analyses the campaign to preserve Philae as it unfolded at the Foreign Office in Downing Street, in Egyptologistís circles in Britain, among British administrators in Cairo, and in public spheres in late‐Victorian London. Introducing the terms muscular modernization and paternalistic preservation the article analyses the tensions that the Philae controversy revealed in British imperial ideologies in relation to questions of modernity and tradition. Drawing on a uniquely well‐preserved archival record the article demonstrates how the protection of what we now call global heritage was negotiated before the birth of UNESCO.