In various areas of science and technology, active involvement of non-scientists in their practices is increasingly considered valuable, and medicine is a notable example of such areas. Patients and their families used to be perceived as passive beneficiaries of medical advancement, but today they are encouraged to become active collaborators of medical professionals. Attempts have been made to characterize this trend, and sociological concepts like biological citizenship have been introduced. While increased attention to the new role of patients and their families in medical research may promote the trend, it can also trivialize the struggles that they - not only as individuals but also as members of their disease-based community - might have to face in trying to assume the role. This problem is particularly noticeable where a history of non-scientists' successful involvement in medicine is reduced to a heroic story focusing on a single individual. By examining the case of orphan drug development for a rare genetic disease called Pompe disease and presenting its complexity that is left out in its simplified accounts, I demonstrate that studies on contemporary history of science and technology can play an important role in documenting such complexity and counterbalancing the power of simplified accounts.

The development of space infrastructure is a story often divorced from the physical context in which it occurs. Despite this lacuna, the arrival of buildings, people, and the clamour of the space race can have a tremendous impact on previously remote locations̶and breed powerful pushback against the priorities of the state and space institutions. This article explores this process through the story of the initial hesitancy, and eventual acceptance, of locals living near Japan's two most important launch sites in Tanegashima and Kagoshima. When faced with the prospect of these large, noisy ‘social bads’ facilities endangering their lifestyles, local fishermen organized to resist their construction. This in turn caused divisions within local society, as those convinced they brought more economic opportunities resisted those who would have had their construction halted. Eventually, economic interest, nationalism, and political activism converged to generate acceptance and, eventually, cooperation between rocketeers and those who lived in the shadow of their rockets.

Historically, there were two reasons why France chose the nuclear fuel cycle. The first reason is to produce plutonium by reprocessing plant for the first French atomic bombing in 1960. The second reason is that French uranium mining both in France and in French overseas territories had reached the limit at the end of the 1950s. The nuclear fuel cycle was intended for use with fast breeder reactors and France began to develop FBR from the 1960s and became the world leader in the middle of 1970s. France, which started nuclear power development later than the U.S. had a strong desire to surpass the U.S. in the development of fast breeder reactors.

The U.S. federal government has had great influence on the historical course of science and technology (S&T) since the end of World War II. This article discusses how the overall nature and structure of contemporary S&T have evolved to this day in relation with changing agendas of the U.S. federal government. Identifying six trends that have emerged in the history of contemporary S&T, the article suggests that they have been correlated to changing policy priorities of the U.S. federal government. The article also points out that the basic structure which has supported S&T in contemporary society has been transformed, that the foundations for governmental control of S&T have been fundamentally undermined, and that the way in which the government would engage with S&T is undergoing a major change.

The present paper examines the transmission of two stanzas included in the section on the "multi-part class" (prabhāgajāti) in Śrīdhara's Triśatī. The two verses are found in six manuscripts, but they are not contained in the published edition of the Triśatī. An example for calculating the sum of donation to Brahmins in one hundred years is given there. In one manuscript, the problem is solved not with the multi-part class but with the "Rule of Three" (trairāśika). Also, in the Bakhshālī Manuscript, there is a similar example of the Rule of Three whose numerical values are identical with those of the two stanzas in question. The two are composed in Anuṣṭubh meter, which is attested in only 11 percent of all the verses in the published edition. All these facts suggest that they might not be the original stanzas of the Triśatī and that they were probably composed as a problem of the Rule of Three in another work.