Subjective Well-Being in Two Himalayan Communities, Post Road Development

Although the first road to ever be built into Humla, Nepal is still under construction, it has already spurred numerous sociocultural and economic changes, including an increased integration into the market economy, changing access to market-purchased foods, and new kinds of health-seeking behavior. This paper is part of a larger research project where we examined changing health and nutrition outcomes co-synchronous with the arrival of this road. In this paper, we focus on whether and how the road is affecting villagers’ subjective well-being (SWB). We studied this while living and working with people from two Humli villages, one that is on the road, and one that is far from it. In these villages, we developed two local models of SWB, using the villagers’ own conceptual frameworks and sense of the factors that play a role in wellbeing. Our analyses showed that villagers’ conceptualization of SWB varied substantially according to road proximity. Additionally, we quantified indices from villagers’ SWB assessments and tested which variables were significant determinants of wellbeing. We discovered a significant relationship between an individual’s well-being level and two variables: available resources per household and levels of social support. The purpose of this paper is threefold: to better understand how villagers from Upper Humla define SWB, to identify which subset of the population is not benefitting in terms of their SWB from the new road, and to present a mixed-methods, anthropologically-based approach for the development of a locally meaningful measure of SWB

Mechanism of cellular rejection in transplantation

The explosion of new discoveries in the field of immunology has provided new insights into mechanisms that promote an immune response directed against a transplanted organ. Central to the allograft response are T lymphocytes. This review summarizes the current literature on allorecognition, costimulation, memory T cells, T cell migration, and their role in both acute and chronic graft destruction. An in depth understanding of the cellular mechanisms that result in both acute and chronic allograft rejection will provide new strategies and targeted therapeutics capable of inducing long-lasting, allograft-specific tolerance

Derivation of Man-1 and Man-2 research grade human embryonic stem cell lines

We report here the derivation of two new human embryonic stem cell lines, Man-1 and Man-2, and their full characterization as novel pluripotent stem cell lines. Man-1 was derived from an embryo surplus to requirement from routine IVF, while Man-2 was obtained from an oocyte classified as failed to fertilise and subsequently chemically activated. We report the characterisation of pluripotency and the differentiation potential of these lines. Work is in progress to establish novel methods of stem cell derivation and culture, which will avoid the use of xenobiotics and be relevant to clinical production of human embryonic stem cell lines. Both newly derived human embryonic stem cell lines will be available for the research community from the UK Stem Cell Bank (http://www.ukstemcellbank.org.uk)