Tibetan People Research Articles

Efficient Sensitive Information Classification and Topic Tracking Based on Tibetan Web Pages

Internet is an important platform to spread public opinion for Tibetan people. The research on the Tibetan Web pages content analysis is meaningful for public opinion monitoring. Detecting sensitive words is beneficial to understand public opinion of the minority. In this paper, we present a novel sensitive information classification algorithm and topic tracking algorithm for Web pages contents. First, a text sensitive information classification method is proposed based on a vector space model and cosine theorem. The main idea is the different locations of sensitive words gives different importance degrees at term weight computing. Building sensitive word list is an artificial work. Compared with sensitive thesaurus, Web texts are classified. Sensitive word list is the foundation of classification. After the classification of each texts, a new topic tracking algorithm is introduced, which monitors sensitive words during a period of time. The first step is to compute weight of sensitive words in a fixed period of time and select the top 10 sensitive words. The second step is to select the top 3 sensitive words to track in 10 sensitive words. Experiments show that the classification of the text sensitive information is very effective and result of topic tracking is ideal.

Internal Conflict in Tibet (China)

For centuries, Tibet and China have maintained relations of mutual influence, until Beijing imposed on the Tibetan population a domination which could be compared to the colonial way. Nowadays, Tibet is considered as a province belonging to the People’s Republic of China. However, the Dalai Lama, spiritual figure for the Tibetan people, is still asking to the Beijing government for the autonomy of the region. This phenomenon is the result of a long historical, cultural, and political evolution. In a first part, this paper will introduce the geographic space of the Tibet region, then in a second, it will introduce the history of this complex area, finally this paper will go deeper into the topic to analyse the internal conflict’s development that shakes Tibet and China.

The association analysis of TLR2 and TLR4 gene with tuberculosis in the Tibetan Chinese population.

BackgroundThe present study was undertaken to explore the relationship of Toll-like receptor (TLR) 2, TLR4 genes polymorphisms with Pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) risk in a sample of Chinese population.MethodsFor this study, we recruited 467 subjects with PTB and 504 healthy subjects from a Tibetan population living in near or in Xi’an, China. Association analyses of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in TLR2 and TLR4 were performed with SPSS Statistics (version 17.0), SNPStats, Haploview (version 4.2), and SHEsis software.ResultsThe research results that is association analysis of pulmonary tuberculosis show there are two increased-risk SNPs (rs7696323, OR=1.32, 95%CI =1.08-1.62, P= 0.007; rs12377632, OR=1.30, 95%CI =1.09-1.55, P= 0.004) and three decreased-risk SNPs (rs3804099, OR=0.64, 95%CI =0.52-0.79, P= 1.9510−5; rs3804100, OR=0.67, 95%CI =0.54-0.82, P= 0.0001; rs11536889, OR=0.54, 95%CI =0.42-0.69, P= 9.1410−7).ConclusionsWe found that two SNPs are associated with increased PTB risk and three SNPs decreased PTB risk in the Chinese Tibetan population. Our findings demonstrate an association between TLR2 and TLR4 polymorphisms and PTB.

Antimicrobial peptides sourced from post-butter processing waste yak milk protein hydrolysates

Yak butter is one of the most important foods for the Tibetan people. Of note, its production yields waste yak milk as a by-product. In this work, waste yak milk protein hydrolysates made via Pepsin hydrolysis were shown to have antimicrobial activity. Furthermore, an innovative method of magnetic liposome adsorption combined with reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) was developed to screen for and purify the antimicrobial peptides. Two antimicrobial peptides were obtained and their amino acid sequences were determined by N-sequencing, namely Arg-Val-Met-Phe-Lys-Trp-Ala and Lys-Val-Ile-Ser-Met-Ile. The antimicrobial activity spectra of Arg-Val-Met-Phe-Lys-Trp-Ala included Bacillus subtilis, Staphylcoccus aureus, Listeria innocua, Escherichia coli, Enterobacter cloacae and Salmonella paratyphi, while the Lys-Val-Ile-Ser-Met-Ile peptide shows not only bacterial growth inhibition but also of fungi. Haemolytic testing suggested that these two antimicrobial peptides could be considered to have no haemolytic effect at their minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs).

Probiotic Properties and Cellular Antioxidant Activity of Lactobacillus plantarum MA2 Isolated from Tibetan Kefir Grains.

Lactobacillus plantarum MA2 was isolated from traditional Chinese Tibetan kefir grains. Its antioxidant properties had been demonstrated in vitro and in vivo previously. In the present study, the probiotic characteristics of this strain were further evaluated by investigating its acid and bile salt tolerances, cell surface hydrophobicity, and autoaggregation, respectively. In addition, the cellular antioxidant activity (CAA) assay was applied to test the antioxidant capacity of the isolate in different growth phases. Same method was also used to evaluate the antioxidant capacity of its fermentation supernatant, cell-free extract, and intact cell quantitatively. The results of probiotic characteristic tests showed that MA2 could survive at pH2.5 and 0.3% bile salt. Meanwhile, the measurements of cell surface hydrophobicity and autoaggregation were 45.29 ± 2.15 and 6.30 ± 0.34%, respectively. The results of cellular antioxidant activity tests indicated that MA2 had high antioxidant potential. The CAA value of logarithmic phase cell-free extract of MA2 (39,450.00 ± 424.05μmol quercetin equivalents/100g sample) was significantly higher than that in stationary phase cell-free extract (3395.98 ± 126.06μmol quercetin equivalents/100g sample) and that of fermentation supernatant in logarithmic phase (2174.41 ± 224.47μmol quercetin equivalents/100g sample) (p < 0.05). The CAA method was successively applied to evaluate the antioxidant capacity of MA2 in this study, which suggests that it could be used as a useful method for lactic acid bacteria antioxidant potential evaluation.

Genetic diversity and phylogenetic study of the Chinese Gelao ethnic minority via 23 Y-STR loci.

Haplotype diversity for 23 Y chromosomal short tandem repeat (Y-STR) loci included in the PowerPlex® Y23 System was analyzed in the Chinese Gelao minority group of 234 unrelated males living in Daozhen Gelao-Miao Autonomous County in Guizhou Province, southwest China. A total of 216 different haplotypes were detected, of which 199 haplotypes were unique. The overall haplotype diversity (HD) and discrimination capacity (DC) were 0.9996 and 0.9231, respectively. The gene diversity (GD) ranged from 0.4159 (DYS438) to 0.9650 (DYS385a/b). The haplotype frequencies varied from 0.0043 to 0.0128. The population data presented here showed high genetic polymorphism and extraordinary discriminatory power in the studied population. Population difference was observed between the Chinese Gelao ethnicity and 42 populations out of overall 59 neighboring populations in Asia region. Both multidimensional scaling (MDS) and the phylogenetic tree demonstrated that the genetic structure affinity and differentiation with Chinese Gelao ethnicity were identified in those populations geographically adjacent (Hunan Han) and distant (Chinese Tibetan), respectively. In conclusion, our study enriched the Chinese ethnic genetic information and could be used as a powerful tool in forensic genetics for male testing, paternal lineage analysis, and Gelao ethnic population evolutionary studies.

Genetic polymorphism analysis of cytochrome P4502E1 (CYP2E1) in a Chinese Tibetan population.

Cytochrome P4502E1 (CYP2E1) gene genetic polymorphisms vary markedly in frequency among different ethnic and racial groups.We studied the genotype distributions and allele frequencies of 3 CYP2E1 polymorphisms: CYP2E1∗1A, CYP2E1∗7A, and CYP2E1∗7C by polymerase chain reaction technique in a sample of 100 healthy subjects representing Tibetan population.The frequencies of CYP2E1∗1A, ∗7A, and ∗7C alleles were 0.705, 0.125, and 0.170, respectively. Compared with other populations, we found that the allele frequencies of the variants −352A>G (rs2070672) and −333A>T (rs2070673) in this Tibetan population have significant differences compared with European-American, African-American, Japanese, Korean, and other different geographic areas in Chinese Han population. Furthermore, the results of protein prediction revealed that the variant 6397G>A (rs61710826) could influence the protein structure and function.These findings in this study would be valuable for pharmacogenetics for drug therapy and drug discovery. However, further studies in larger samples are warranted to confirm our results.

Public opinion classification and text alignment based on Chinese and Tibetan corpus

To address the need for researching the security of Chinese and Tibetan networks, the classification of public opinion of Chinese and Tibetan texts is proposed. First, web pages are collected. Second, preprocessing is conducted to extract the useful information from web pages. Third, a table of the Chinese and Tibetan public opinion key words is built. Finally, text similarity calculation is proposed to classify the text according to the table of public opinion words. A Chinese–Tibetan text-level alignment approach that is based on Chinese and Tibetan translation dictionary is proposed to match word frequency and position. Furthermore, sentence-level alignment algorithm is studied. The alignment performance is related to the Chinese and Tibetan translation dictionary. Text classification of public opinion and Chinese–Tibetan text alignment system is developed. After public opinion classification of Chinese text, the alignment software can discover the most similar Tibetan text and present it to the user. This research can effectively contribute to identifying Chinese and Tibetan public opinion text and is meaningful for information retrieval, text clustering, and Chinese and Tibetan machine translation.

Dietary supplementation with Lonicera macranthoides leaf powder enhances growth performance and muscle growth of Chinese Tibetan pigs

Abstract This study was conducted to explore the effects of dietary supplementation with Lonicera macranthoides leaf (LML) on growth performance and muscle growth of Chinese Tibetan pigs. L. macranthoides leaves were harvested, air-dried, and milled to powder. Ninety-six pigs with an average initial body weight of 5.03 ± 0.24 kg were randomly assigned into four groups (24 pigs per group) in a completely randomized design according to the body weight. Pigs were fed either a basal diet with no supplement (control), or a diet supplemented with 0.5%, 1.0%, or 1.5% of LML powder. Results showed that dietary supplementation with 1.5% powder increased ADG and lean percentage, improved the gain:feed ratio, and lowered the incidence of diarrhea in Tibetan pigs (P

Associations of high altitude polycythemia with polymorphisms in EPAS1, ITGA6 and ERBB4 in Chinese Han and Tibetan populations.

High altitude polycythemia (HAPC) is a common chronic disease at high altitude, which is characterized by excessive erythrocytosis (females, hemoglobin ≥ 190 g/L; males, hemoglobin ≥ 210 g/L). It is the most common disease in chronic mountain sickness casued primarily by persistent arterial hypoxia and ventilatory impairment. However, the disease is still unmanageable and related molecular mechanisms remain largely unclear. This study aims to explore the genetic basis of HAPC in the Chinese Han and Tibetan populations. Subjects were screened for HAPC using the latest approved diagnostic criteria. To explore the hereditary basis of HAPC and investigate the association between three genes (EPAS1, ITGA6, ERBB4) and HAPC in Chinese Han and Tibetan populations. We enrolled 100 patients (70 Han, 30 Tibetan) with HAPC and 100 healthy control subjects (30 Han, 70 Tibetan). Subjects were screened for HAPC using the latest approved diagnostic criteria combined with excessive erythrocytosis and clinical symptoms. Analysis of variance was used to evaluate the impact of polymorphism on HAPC based on genetic variation. The Chi-squared test and analyses of genetic models, rs75591953 and rs75984373 in EPAS1, rs6744873 in ITGA6, rs17335043 in ERBB4 showed associations with reduced HAPC susceptibility in Han populations. Additionally, in Tibetan populations, rs3749148 in ITGA6, rs934607 and rs141267844 in ERBB4 showed a reduced risk of HAPC, whereas rs6710946 in ERBB4 increased the risk of HAPC. Our study suggest that the polymorphisms in the EPAS1, ITGA6 and ERBB4 correlate with susceptibility to HAPC.

Association of IFNGR1 and IFNG genetic polymorphisms with the risk for pulmonary tuberculosis in the Chinese Tibetan population

Interferon-gamma (IFNG) and its receptor (IFNGR1) are principal genes that associated with tuberculosis. In the current study we aimed to explore the genetic association of polymorphisms of IFNG and IFNGR1 with the risk of pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) in the Chinese Tibetan population. We selected 467 PTB patients and 503 healthy controls to genotype 9 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). The unconditional logistic regression analysis was applied for assessing the associations, and the risk of PTB were evaluated by calculating the odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI). The results showed that mutants of rs9376268, rs1327475 and rs1327474 in IFNGR1 played a protective role in the PTB risk under genotype, dominant and additive model (P<0.05). On the contrary, minor allele “A” of rs2069705 in IFNG significantly increased the risk of PTB under genotype, dominant and additive model (P<0.05). However, after Bonferroni's multiple adjustment was applied to our data, which level of significant was set at P<0.0011 (0.05/45). Only variant of rs9376268 was significantly associated decrease the PTB susceptibility under additive model (OR=0.73, 95%CI=0.61-0.88, P<0.001). Furthermore, in the haplotype analysis, we found that the haplotypes “C-G-G-A-C”, “C-G-A-G-T” and “T-A-G-G-T” of rs9376267-rs9376268-rs1327475-rs7749390-rs1327474 block were extremely decreased the PTB risk (P<0.01), however, the haplotypes “C-G-G-A-T”, “T-G-G-G-T” and “C-G-G-G-T” of the block were extremely increased the PTB risk (P<0.01). These results suggested that variants of IFNGR1 may have a close relation with the PTB risk in Chinese Tibetan population.

Genetic diversity of 23 autosomal STR loci in a Tibetan population

The genetic polymorphisms of 23 autosomal short tandem repeat (STR) loci included in the Huaxia Platinum System were evaluated in 200 unrelated healthy individuals of Chinese Tibetan population living in the Tibet Autonomous Region. All of the loci reached the Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium. Totally 233 alleles were observed with corresponding allelic frequencies ranging from 0.0025 to 0.5900 and forensic statistical parameters was calculated. The total discrimination power and combined probability of exclusion of the 23 STR loci were over 0.99999999999999999999999999 and 0.999999999, respectively. Results suggested that the 23 STR loci had a relatively high genetic variation, which was suitable for forensic personal identification and paternity testing in Tibetan population.

TOBACCO GROWING AND CULTURAL IMPACTS ON SMOKING AMONG ETHNIC MINORITY WOMEN IN YUNNAN, CHINA

Tobacco growing is very popular in Yunnan, China, and be traced back hundreds of years. Smoking has been a serious threat to women’s health. This paper, based on data from anthropological fieldwork conducted on women smokers from Yi, Wa, Hani, Lahu, Miao, Zhuang, Dai, and Tibetan peoples living in the southeastern, northwestern and southern parts of Yunnan, points out that smoking is popular among ethnic minority women in mountainous areas, especially among old women. Factors affecting their smoking include socio-cultural, environmental, religious, gender, educational, and health-care causes, which should be taken into account when smoking control policies are implemented.

Exploration of mtDNA control region sequences in Chinese Tibetan Mastiffs

The control region of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) was obtained from 40 purebred Chinese Tibetan Mastiffs (TMs). Sequence structure and genetic diversity were analyzed, and a phylogenetic tree was constructed. The TM mtDNA control region was composed of ETAS (extended termination associated sequences), CD (a central domain) and CSBs (conserved sequenced blocks) and sequence length showed some diversity, which was mainly caused by the number of 10 nucleotide repeat units [5′-GTA CAC GT (G/A) C-3′] between CSB I and CSB II, which ranged from 27 to 35 among individuals. Seventy-five polymorphic sites were identified, which defined 37 haplotypes; the haplotype diversity was 0.990, and the nucleotide diversity was 1.201. Based on the control region sequences, Chinese TMs were divided into three categories, which were consistent with the origin and geographical classification of TMs. Phylogenetic analysis of 538-bp HVR-I sequences revealed that TMs were most closely related to Labrador Retrievers.

Purification and characterization of plantaricin SLG1, a novel bacteriocin produced by Lb. plantarum isolated from yak cheese

Yak milk cheese is one of the most important foods for the Tibetan people. Lactobacillus plantarum SLG1 isolated from yak cheese was shown to produce a novel bacteriocin, plantaricin SLG1. Production of plantaricin SLG1 in MRS medium was maximized after 24 h incubation at 37 °C (the stationary phase of growth). An innovative method, namely magnetic liposome adsorption combined with reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC), was developed to screen for and efficiently purify bacteriocin compounds from the cell free supernatants from Lb. plantarum SLG1. The molecular mass of plantaricin SLG1 is 1083.25 Da and its amino acid sequence Tyr-Gly-Asn-Gly-Val-Phe-Ser-Val-Ile-Lys was determined by N-sequencing. Analyses by Circular dichroism (CD) spectra and predicted 3D structure suggested that the peptide maintains a well-defined conformation. Plantaricin SLG1 exhibited a wide range of antimicrobial activity against many food-borne spoilage and pathogenic bacteria, as well as some fungi. Results using scanning electron microscopy indicated that the mode of action was bactericidal and plantaricin SLG1 was able to damage the cell membrane integrity ultimately causing pathogen lethality.

Writing as a Therapeutic Agent for Collective Healing in the Poems of Tensin Tsundue

&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Almost all people experience trauma in their life. Surviving in the era that has witnessed a lot of trauma, a millennium composed of two world wars and cold wars, has made every human being experience chains of trauma. Traumatic problems affect a person mentally and physically. There is a long history of human associating himself through a way or therapy to find himself out of the Post Traumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD). This paper projects the importance of writing that serves as a therapy, with the backdrop of the Tibetan writer Tensin Tsundue. Tibet at present undergoes the tough situations due to the Chinese invasion and Tibetans are mostly away from their homeland and staying as refugees in other countries. Tensin Tsundue is a Tibetan activist and writer, and his works bring out the reality of the Tibetan struggle, where his poems stand as a placard for the readers to identify the lost identity of Tibetans. This paper brings out the importance of writing as a therapy to overcome the traumatic stress, and it analyses how an individual writing brings the impact of collective healing into action.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

Functional Analyses of a Novel CITED2 Nonsynonymous Mutation in Chinese Tibetan Patients with Congenital Heart Disease.

CITED2 gene is an important cardiac transcription factor that plays a fundamental role in the formation and development of embryonic cardiovascular. Previous studies have showed that knock-out of CITED2 in mice might result in various cardiac malformations. However, the mechanisms of CITED2 mutation on congenital heart disease (CHD) in Chinese Tibetan population are still poorly understood. In the present study, 187 unrelated Tibetan patients with CHD and 200 unrelated Tibetan healthy controls were screened for variants in the CITED2 gene; we subsequently identified one potential disease-causing mutation p.G143A in a 6-year-old girl with PDA and functional analyses of the mutation were carried out. Our study showed that the novel mutation of CITED2 significantly enhanced the expression activity of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) under the role of co-receptor hypoxia inducible factor 1-aipha (HIF-1A), which is closely related with embryonic cardiac development. As a result, CITED2 gene mutation may play a significant role in the development of pediatric congenital heart disease.

Research on Tibetan hot words, sensitive words tracking and public opinion classification

The rapid development of Tibetan information technology provides rich resources for Tibetan information processing technology. The construction of Tibetan corpus is the field of Tibetan information processing of basic work. In this paper, we design the system of Tibetan network data collection and web pages preprocessing. It can timely and efficiently access to web resources, and provide a basis for further analysis of Tibetan data. It can establish the Tibetan related corpus, enrich the Tibetan digital resources. It can also alleviate the status of Tibetan corpus data sparse and lack of resources and bring the convenient condition for Tibetan information processing. The hot words reflect the hot spot of Tibetan people’s attention in a certain period of time. Firstly, the paper proposes the method for reducing the space dimension of Tibetan news text. It can effectively reduce the complexity of subsequent processing. Secondly, term weighting method is proposed based on improved TFIDF for Tibetan text information extraction. It utilizes the idea that the words of different locations are given different weights to extract the hot words. On sensitive words discovery and classification of public opinion, sensitive thesaurus are collected artificially. Through the sensitive thesaurus comparison, the sensitive words are extracted. Classification of public opinion words is based on the proposed classification formula and the public opinion thesaurus. It will classify one Tibetan text to one public opinion class. In this paper, the software is developed to automatically collect Tibetan web pages from the network, preprocess the web pages, extract the text features and hot words, discover the sensitive words and classify the Tibetan text to one public opinion class. The experiment shows that the Tibetan hot words extraction is effective and Tibetan classification results of public opinion are significant.

SNPs, linkage disequilibrium, and chronic mountain sickness in Tibetan Chinese.

Chronic mountain sickness (CMS) is estimated at 1.2% in Tibetans living at the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau. Eighteen single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from nine nuclear genes that have an association with CMS in Tibetans have been analyzed by using pairwise linkage disequilibrium (LD). The SNPs included are the angiotensin-converting enzyme (rs4340), the angiotensinogen (rs699), and the angiotensin II type 1 receptor (AGTR1) (rs5186) from the renin–angiotensin system. A low-density lipoprotein apolipoprotein B (rs693) SNP was also included. From the hypoxia-inducible factor oxygen signaling pathway, the endothetal Per-Arnt-Sim domain protein 1 (EPAS1) and the egl nine homolog 1 (ENGL1) (rs480902) SNPs were included in the study. SNPs from the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) signaling pathway included are the v-akt murine thymoma viral oncogene homolog 3 (rs4590656 and rs2291409), the endothelial cell nitric oxide synthase 3 (rs1007311 and rs1799983), and the (VEGFA) (rs699947, rs34357231, rs79469752, rs13207351, rs28357093, rs1570360, rs2010963, and rs3025039). An increase in LD occurred in 40 pairwise comparisons, whereas a decrease in LD was found in 55 pairwise comparisons between the controls and CMS patients. These changes were found to occur within and between signaling pathways, which suggests that there is an interaction between SNP alleles from different areas of the genome that affect CMS.

Rapid and Reliable Genotyping ofHLA-B*57:01in Four Chinese Populations Using a Single-Tube Duplex Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction Assay

HLA-B*57:01 is strongly associated with severe adverse drug reaction induced by the anti-HIV drug abacavir (ABC) and antibiotic flucloxacillin. This study was dedicated to establishing a new method for HLA-B*57:01 genotyping and investigating the HLA-B*57:01 distribution pattern in four Chinese populations. A single-tube duplex real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) system was established by combining the amplification refractory mutation system and TaqMan probe. The reliability of this assay was validated by comparing the genotyping results with those by sequence-based typing. With this assay, the distribution of HLA-B*57:01 in 354 blood samples from four ethnic groups, namely, Han, Tibetan, Uighur, and Buyei, was determined. A 100% concordance was observed between the results of real-time PCR and sequence-based typing in 50 Uighur samples. As low as 0.016 ng DNA that carried HLA-B*57:01 could be detected with this assay. HLA-B*57:01 carriers identified in 100 Northern Han Chinese, 104 Buyeis, 100 Tibetans, and 50 Uighurs were 0, 1 (0.96%), 3 (3%), and 6 (12%), respectively. The carrier rate of HLA-B*57:01 in Uighur was significantly higher than those in Northern Han (p = .001) and Buyei (p = .005). The newly established real-time PCR assay provides a rapid and reliable tool for HLA-B*57:01 allele screening before the prescription of ABC and flucloxacillin in clinical practice.