How does one know what is the right way to visualize the invisible nanoscale? Practices in the visualization processes are studied by moving about in the fi eld of nanoscience/technology. Nine important aspects of visualization processes have identified. Based on nanoscientists’ responses to a small survey, it is argued that some of these aspects–preparatory techniques–which link up to the experimenter’s and visualization regress, are invisible to nanoscientists. Here tacit rules are followed in the production process of visualizations. This contrasts with presentational aspects where nanoscientists are faced with choices, and have to discuss and defend them. Here it is still impossible to follow tacit rules. These presentational aspects might also be closed down in further development of nanotechnology. The paper asks whether it might be important to keep choices visible.

The problem with culture infl uencing research is visible in Nordic alcohol health promotion research. This study includes peer reviewed articles in alcohol health promotion in the Nordic countries and analyses the content of top-down vs. bottomup,and individual vs. community/governmental approaches for health promotion activities. The results shows that Sweden, Finland, Norway and Iceland tend to aim for reducing alcohol use in general, in order to decrease the incidence of alcohol related problems. Swedish articles are more often top-down, and discuss government regulations for the purpose. The Danish approach is more bottom-up and shows trust in the individuals abilities to take care of his/her health issues. The results from the research cannot serve as a guide for ordinary citizens and there is a need for a policy discussion on these issues in health promotion research, as well as policy circles.

Interdisciplinarity is usually described as different from disciplinarity: a discipline is said to generate distinct boundaries, separating it from the undisciplined, while interdisciplinarity connotes the crossing of such boundaries. Less attention is paid to how boundary crossing itself creates new boundaries. This article asks how boundary work can be understood in theory and what this understanding means to academic debate on interdisciplinarity. From this perspective, there is reason to talk of interdisciplines conducting boundary work distinguishable by the fundamental logic guiding boundary creation. In this new approach, disciplinary logic distinguishes itself by promoting the monopolization of knowledge, whereas interdisciplinary logic fundamentally promotes plurality. As opposed to much use of the term “interdisciplinarity”, this version would be conceptually meaningful in relation to “disciplinarity”. Though boundary work following an anti-boundary logic might seem contradictory, this is not necessarily so: what is guarded in an interdiscipline could well be the possibility of permeability.

The transformation of umbilical cord blood from a waste by-product to a valuable source of stem cells employed in haematological therapies has given rise to a globalised commercial sector in cord blood banking, a sector based essentially on promises of future therapies. Regulatory frameworks for these private services vary worldwide. This paper looks at the recent regulation of cord blood banking in Spain,taking this example as representative of some of the dilemmas currently faced by national regulatory agencies over biotechnological innovations. The Spanish case shows how, paradoxically, an attempt at producing a nationally comprehensive and rigorous regulatory order has led to the development of unregulated trans-national markets. This disjuncture problematises the traditional identification in transplantation practices between the nation-state, the social body and the solidarity of a national population. The paper ends by suggesting an interpretation of the cord blood case as part of recent mutations in biopolitics.

This paper studies the trajectory of modern embalming, considered as a technical innovation in the treatment of dead bodies, across time and societies. Tracing the history of technical innovations, it examines the evolution of embalming from the fi eld of medical science to its re-appropriation by a secular sphere (funeral sector). The central role of material culture in the spread of innovative embalming techniques is underlined, and notably the leading role of commercial networks and industrial actors as they support the growth of embalmers while products, equipment and technical know-how are normalized. On the basis of the contemporary funeral organization, the analysis explores how embalming has become part of the cooperative chain surrounding death. It describes how embalming innovation entails a set of ‘alignments’ (Strauss, 1988) in the management of corpse care, supporting various standardization processes, which are both practical and symbolic. Finally, the establishment of a professional body of embalmers points to a new inter-professional interpretation of the corpse and of death care, radically changing the interface between the medical world and the funeral world.

**Editorial** Science Studies 1/2007 is the first issue by its new chief editors Dr. Tarja Knuuttila and Docent Sampsa Hyysalo. The decision to appoint two editors-in-chief was motivated by the steadily increasing amount of submissions, as well as by the need to retain a good grasp of the range of focal areas that comprise science and technology studies. Tarja Knuuttila is a philosopher of science currently studying scientific modelling and representation especially in the context of computational science. Sampsa Hyysalo’s primary field is science and technology studies. He has studied change in professional and everyday practices by focussing on the development and appropriation of health ICTs. The change in its editors does not mark a great transition in the focus of the journal. Science Studies continues to be both an international and interdisciplinary journal welcoming contributions to the study of science and technology from different points of view and different disciplinary backgrounds whether philosophical, historical, sociological, psychological, educational or politicoeconomic. At the moment the journal receives contributions from all over the world, the most contributions coming from the US and from Northern European countries. The acceptance rate is 20,5 for the moment, but it will fall, since we are receiving an increasing amount of contributions. This shows that the interest towards Science Studies is steadily growing. As to our website, Science Studies is also happy to announce that it has digitized and published all of its articles from 1988 to 1997. The ten volumes which have been published comprise over 100 articles on Science and Technology Studies and represent one of the largest fully accessible online collections available today. We are committed to distributing the content of Science Studies to as broad an audience as possible at no cost. Moreover, we have decreased our moving wall from one year to six months, allowing for increased visibility and access to our most recent content. The present volume contains four full articles concentrating mainly on science and science policy. In “From Core Set to Assemblage: On the Dynamics of Exclusion and Inclusion in the Failure to Derive Beta Cells from Embryonic Stem Cells” Mike Michael et al. concentrate on a traditional STS-theme, that of experimenter’s regress. They contrast Collins’s core set model to an analysis in terms of assemblages in an attempt to show that scientific controversies need not end in the exclusion of the discredited faction of scientists from the core set. Rather, due to several reasons such as the ‘chronic uncertainty’ of stem cell research, the epistemically defeated faction can be rehabilitated because of the ‘social understandability’ of their strategies. ”Effects of ‘Mode 2’-Related Policy on the Research Process: The Case of Publicly Funded German Nanotechnology” by Andreas Wald and “Disentangling Transdisciplinarity: An Analysis of Knowledge Integration in Problem-Oriented Research” by Wolfgang Zierhofer and Paul Burger provide somewhat critical perspectives on the supposed advantages of Mode 2 policies and the very idea that transdisciplinary research, which is also referred to as Mode 2 science, represents a genuinely new model of knowledge production. Wald argues that nanotechnology research does not fit into the picture portrayed by Mode 2 literature, yet Mode 2-related policies are applied to it in the German context. As a result of this, policies are often considered harmful by the scientists. Zierhofer and Burger in turn seek to analyze the diversity of the supposed transdisciplinary mode of knowledge production in terms of various types of research objectives and related research instruments. Finally, Matt Ratto’s paper “A Practice-Based Model of Access for Science: Linux Kernel Development and Shared Digital Resources” presents a close-quarter analysis of Linux kernel development in order to build a model of access that would be apt for examining the increasingly distributed and digitally-mediated scientific work. This last paper is also a teaser for the next issue of Science Studies, which is a special issue on Free/Libre Open source software (FLOSS). Guest edited by Dr. Yuwei Lin and Prof. Lars Risan, Science Studies 2/2007 provides a set of highly interesting and in-depth studies on organization, work and development in FLOSS projects.