Disaster Governance and Challenges in a Rural Nepali Community: Notes from Future Village NGO

More than two years after the 2015 earthquakes devastated Nepal, Katunge village in Dhading district, Nepal, remained as destroyed as it was right after the earthquake. While the villagers were rather hopeful about rebuilding their houses and lives during the immediate relief effort in which we engaged, one month after the earthquake, now only a few are confident that they will ever rebuild their homes. In this article, we describe the reconstruction progress, followed by a critique of why the reconstruction progress has been so slow. We conclude with reflections on reconstruction challenges interwoven into the context of our NGO experience. During our trips to the region, we have observed and experienced the difficulties people and organizations are facing in the reconstruction process. We interviewed government officials and NGOs that have been involved in reconstruction, which helped us to gain insight into broader perspectives on the community or family-level realities that hinder rebuilding and community revitalization. We conclude that by mobilizing earthquake victims, it is possible to rebuild houses and revitalize communities. Conversely, little progress can be expected in Nepal’s rebuilding as long as poor governance and poor coordination between major reconstruction actors prevails

Art Music Composition in Malaysia: A Focus on Three Composers

Most researches conducted on Malaysian music thus far concentrates on the area of history and development of traditional music and popular music. There has been a lack of research in art music composed by Malaysian composers trained in the Western art music tradition. The objective of this research is to present the contribution of three Malaysian art music composers and the role they play in the formation of a Malaysian identity in the world of art music composition. This research systematically documents the work of three Malaysian composers, namely, Minni Ang, Chan Cheong Jan and Valerie Ross. These composers were chosen to represent different styles of art music composition in Malaysia. The musical backgrounds of the composers are studied in order to understand the processes that led them to art music composition. A few compositions that reflect their compositional styles are chosen and analysed.The research methodology used in this work begins with the collection of data and information on the background of the composers and their compositions. A few analysis methods are used to analyse the compositions. These include chord analysis, formal analysis, and twelve-tone analysis. The result of this research indicates that the three composers presented in this thesis compose in different styles. Ang uses various composition styles in different works. Chan quotes Malay folk tunes or Malay dance rhythms in his music and presents them in Western classical style. Ross prefers to include traditional instruments in her compositions and composes in cross-cultural fusion style. Although the composition styles of these three composers are different, their aims to assert their own identities in the world of art music composition are similar. As indicated by the three different compositional styles of the above composers, it is assumed that there is yet no common direction or trend that exists in the field of art music composition in Malaysia. As a result, it is still hard to define what stage the development of art music composition in Malaysia is at, today. With the establishment of tertiary programs in music and support from government and private sector, more Malaysian art music is projected to be composed in future, leading to a trend that should slowly emerge in the field of Malaysian art music composition

Land, Livelihood and Rana Tharu Identity Transformations In Far-Western Nepal

This paper examines the interlocking relationships between land, livelihood and the identity transformations of Rana Tharus in far western Nepal. I argue that the formation and transformation of ethnicity is not simply shaped by social changes specifically as a strategic tool for sharing more political power. It also serves as an important currency for the people to achieve a better livelihood. The nature of ethnicity is in fluidity and artificiality. While ideologies concerning ‘Sanskritization’ (the social mobility of non-high caste groups by emulating Hindu ideologies and practices) and ‘Indigenousness’ (social movements that are anti-Hindu and anti-caste) have dominated the discussion of social reforms and ethnic movements in Nepal, I find that a ‘multiple identities’ and hybrid approach is more relevant to Rana Tharus’ situation. My ethnographic data supports the contention that Ranas actively used multiple identities and cultural practices to achieve an equal social footing as the dominant hill settlers (Pahaaris). They imitated hill cultures on the one hand but also clung to some of their traditional customs and were proud of ‘being Rana’. The motivation behind this was to obtain a better livelihood. This identity and cultural management was the major force in the transformation of Rana society

Elucidating p53’s physiological and tumourigenic roles

The key role of p53 as a tumour suppressor is widely acknowledged and based on many observations that p53 suppresses oncogene-mediated transformation of rodent fibroblasts and is the most frequently mutated gene in human cancers. However, the p53 family of transcription factors is evolutionarily very ancient and already found in primordial metazoans where it acts as a pivotal coordinator of reparative responses to cellular stress, cell and DNA damage (“the Guardian of the Genome”). The best guess is that the tumour suppressor functions of p53, principally induction of cell death and senescence, are later additions that serve to rein in rogue somatic cells. The extent to which the immediate stress response and tumour suppression functions of p53 augment or antagonise each other is hotly debated, not the least because of occasional studies that indicate a paradoxical positive selective retention of p53 in some early stage cancers, suggesting that p53 function is indeed in some way beneficial for nascent tumours. Such inherent antagonistically pleiotropic properties make classical genetic analysis of p53 function complicated – as does the confounding presence in the mammalian genome of at least two additional paralogues of p53, p63 and p73 whose functions partially overlap. Therefore, to address the potentially distinct functions of p53 in development, maintenance and repair of normal adult tissues and in tumour suppression, I have built a unique, temporally switchable mouse model in which p53 function may be reversibly toggled between wild type and null states at will in vivo. I show that acute systemic repression of p53 in adult mice elicits no overt symptoms or somatic pathologies. However, spontaneous tumours emerged in the same cellular compartments and with a similar latency to those observed in germline p53-null mice. Detailed analyses of tissues and tumours have yet to be conducted. Temporal dissection of p53’s functions at different stages of chemically-induced skin cancer revealed a window during the initiation stage where p53 retention promoted early carcinogenesis (skin papillomas) while loss of p53 promoted the development of later squamous carcinomas. The ability to rapidly and reversibly switch p53 functional status and to identify windows of p53 pro-tumourigenic and tumour suppressive function will provide new insights into the diverse and perhaps antagonistic roles of p53 in development, tissue homeostasis, cancer and ageing.Cambridge Trust, Hughes Hall, European Research Council, Cancer Research U

In silico dynamic optimisation studies for batch/fed-batch mammalian cell suspension cultures producing biopharmaceuticals

Mammalian cell cultures are valuable for synthesis of therapeutic proteins and antibodies. They are commonly cultivated in bioindustry in form of large-scale suspension fed-batch cultures. The structure and regulatory responses of mammalian cells are complex, making it challenging to model them for practical process optimisation. The adjustable degrees of freedom in the cell cultures can be continuous variables as well as binary-type variables. The binary-type variables may be irreversible in cases such as cell-cycle arrest. The main aim of this study was to develop a general model for mammalian cell cultures using extracellular variables and capturing major changes in cellular responses between batch and fed-batch cultures. The model development started with a simple model for a hybridoma cell culture using first-principle equations. The growth kinetics was only linked to glucose and glutamine and the cell population was divided into three cell-cycle phases to study the phenomenon of cell-cycle arrest. But there were certain deficiencies in predicting growth rates in the death phase in fed-batch cultures although it was successful to simultaneously optimise a combination of continuous and binary-irreversible degrees of freedom. Thus, the growth kinetics was further related to amino acids concentration and cellular responses to high versus low concentration of glutamine and glucose based on a Chinese hamster ovary cell-line where amino acids data were available. The model contained 192 parameters with 26 measured cell culture variables. Most of the sensitive parameters were able to be identified using the Sobol' method of Global Sensitivity Analysis. The model could capture the main trends of key variables and be used to search for the optimal working range of the controllable variables. But uncertainties in the sensitive model parameters caused non-negligible variations in the model-based optimisation results. It is recommended to couple such off-line optimisation with on-line measurements of a few major variables to tackle the real-time uncertain nature of the complex cell culture system.Open acces