Medicinal plants used by Tibetans in Shangri-la, Yunnan, China

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Medicinal plants used by the local people in Xizang (Tibet) have been investigated since the 1960s. The others out of Xizang, however, have been less understood, although they may be easily and strongly influenced by the various local herbal practices, diverse environments, local religious beliefs and different prevalent types of diseases. In 2006, two ethnobotanical surveys were organized in the county of Shangri-la, Yunnan Province, SW China, to document the traditional medicinal plants used by the Tibetan people.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>After literature surveying, four local townships were selected to carry out the field investigation. Three local healers were interviewed as key informants. The methods of ethnobotany, anthropology and participatory rural appraisal (PRA) were used in the field surveys. Plant taxonomic approach was adopted for voucher specimen identification.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Sixty-eight medicinal plant species in 64 genera of 40 families were recorded and collected. Among them, 23 species were found to have medicinal values that have not been recorded in any existing Tibetan literatures before, and 31 species were recorded to have traditional prescriptions. Moreover, the traditional preparations of each species and some folk medicinal knowledge were recorded and analyzed. These traditional prescriptions, preparations, new medicinal plants and folk medicinal knowledge and principles were discovered and summarized by local traditional Tibetan healers through times of treatment practices, and were passed down from generation to generation.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>As a part of the cultural diversity of Tibetan community, these traditional medicinal knowledge and experiences may provide data and information basis for the sustainable utilization and development of Tibetan medicine, and may contribute to the local economic development. However, for many reasons, they are disappearing gradually as time goes by. Our study showed that there were abundant traditional Tibetan medicinal prescriptions and using methods. It implies that more Tibetan medicinal plants and traditional knowledge can be discovered. Further research should be done to save the wealth of these traditional medicinal knowledge and experiences before they are dying out.</p

The Unity and Diversity of Altaic

In popular conception, Altaic is often assumed to constitute a language family, or perhaps a phylum, but in reality, it involves a historical, areal, and typological complex of five separate language families of different origins-Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Koreanic, and Japonic-to which Uralic also adheres in the transcontinental context of Ural-Altaic. The similarities between the individual Altaic language families are due to prolonged contacts that have resulted in both lexical borrowing and structural interaction in a number of binary patterns. The historical homelands of the Altaic language families were located in continental Northeast Asia, but secondary expansions have subsequently brought these languages to most parts of northern and central Eurasia, including Anatolia and eastern Europe. The present review summarizes the basic facts concerning the Altaic language families, their common features, their patterns of interaction with each other and with other languages, and their historical and prehistorical context.Peer reviewe

Assessment of precipitation climatology in an ensemble of CORDEX-East Asia regional climate simulations

An ensemble of regional climate simulations from the Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment in East Asia (CORDEX-East Asia) was analysed to evaluate the ability of 5 regional climate models (RCMs) and their ensemble mean in reproducing the key features of present- day precipitation (1989−2008). We emphasised (1) an extreme rainfall event, (2) seasonal climatology, (3) annual cycles and inter-annual variability and (4) the monsoon characteristics. We highlighted 4 sub-monsoon regions, viz. South Asian Summer Monsoon (SAS), the East Asian Summer Monsoon (EAS), the Western North Pacific Tropical Monsoon (WNP) and the Australian- Maritime Continent Monsoon (AUSMC). We found that the RCMs showed a reasonable performance to capture the extreme rainfall event in 1998. The RCMs simulated the seasonal mean, annual cycle and inter-annual variability acceptably. However, individual models exhibited significant biases in some sub-regions and seasons. Moreover, most of the RCMs significantly improved their performance in capturing precipitation climatology and monsoon characteristics over the Korean Peninsula, the Korea Strait and southern Japan. Based upon this performance study, we conclude that the present set of RCMs from CORDEX can be used to provide useful information on climate projections over East Asia

Faculty Publications and Creative Works 1997

One of the ways we recognize our faculty at the University of New Mexico is through this annual publication which highlights our faculty\u27s scholarly and creative activities and achievements and serves as a compendium of UNM faculty efforts during the 1997 calendar year. Faculty Publications and Creative Works strives to illustrate the depth and breadth of research activities performed throughout our University\u27s laboratories, studios and classrooms. We believe that the communication of individual research is a significant method of sharing concepts and thoughts and ultimately inspiring the birth of new of ideas. In support of this, UNM faculty during 1997 produced over 2,770 works, including 2,398 scholarly papers and articles, 72 books, 63 book chapters, 82 reviews, 151 creative works and 4 patents. We are proud of the accomplishments of our faculty which are in part reflected in this book, which illustrates the diversity of intellectual pursuits in support of research and education at the University of New Mexico. Nasir Ahmed Interim Associate Provost for Research and Dean of Graduate Studie

Vision, challenges and opportunities for a plant cell atlas

Funding Information: The PCA community-building activities are funded in part by the National Science Foundation grant numbers MCB-1916797 and MCB-2052590, Carnegie Institution for Science, and BASF. We thank Emily Fryer, Nick Melosh, Heather Meyer, Jason Thomas, Terri Tippets, Renate Weizbauer, Zhiyong Wang and Kangmei Zhao for helping with organizing the first work-shop. We thank Emily Fryer and Julie Gosse at the Science Editors Network for developing the PCA website. We are grateful to the first PCA workshop steering committee members Jim Haseloff, David Jackson, Edward Marcotte, John Marioni, Marisa Otegui, Alberto Salleo, Waltraud Schulze, Edgar Spalding, Michael Suss-man, Marja Timmermans and HS Philip Wong for their guidance and support. We thank Rachel Shahan, Shouling Xu, Kevin Cox and Erin Zess for their input in developing the manuscript. Some images in the figures were created with BioRender.com. National Science Foundation- 1916797- David W Ehrhardt, Kenneth D, Birnbaum, Seung Yon Rhee; National Science Foundation- 2052590- Seung Yon Rhee. Funding Information: Industry is another potential source of funding. Over 70% of applied research and development in the US is funded by industry (Khan et al., 2020). A thorough understanding of plant systems is essential for designing effective agro-biotech solutions leading to new crop varieties, and to innovative crop protection products that can leverage sustainable food production. A partnership with the PCA initiative would accelerate development of new solutions for customers of the agbiotech industry. Thus, funding and collaborations, ranging over multiple disciplines and countries, and multiway interactions amongst academia, industry and philanthropy will be essential to realize the vision of the PCA. Publisher Copyright: © Jha et al.With growing populations and pressing environmental problems, future economies will be increasingly plant-based. Now is the time to reimagine plant science as a critical component of fundamental science, agriculture, environmental stewardship, energy, technology and healthcare. This effort requires a conceptual and technological framework to identify and map all cell types, and to comprehensively annotate the localization and organization of molecules at cellular and tissue levels. This framework, called the Plant Cell Atlas (PCA), will be critical for understanding and engineering plant development, physiology and environmental responses. A workshop was convened to discuss the purpose and utility of such an initiative, resulting in a roadmap that acknowledges the current knowledge gaps and technical challenges, and underscores how the PCA initiative can help to overcome them.Peer reviewe

Constraints on the chiral magnetic effect using charge-dependent azimuthal correlations in pPb and PbPb collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider

Charge-dependent azimuthal correlations of same- and opposite-sign pairs with respect to the second- and thirdorder event planes have been measured in pPb collisions at √sNN = 8.16 TeV and PbPb collisions at 5.02 TeV with the CMS experiment at the LHC. The measurement is motivated by the search for the charge separation phenomenon predicted by the chiral magnetic effect (CME) in heavy ion collisions. Three- and two-particle azimuthal correlators are extracted as functions of the pseudorapidity difference, the transverse momentum (pT) difference, and the pT average of same- and opposite-charge pairs in various event multiplicity ranges. The data suggest that the charge-dependent three-particle correlators with respect to the second- and third-order event planes share a common origin, predominantly arising from charge-dependent two-particle azimuthal correlations coupled with an anisotropic flow. The CME is expected to lead to a v2-independent three-particle correlation when the magnetic field is fixed. Using an event shape engineering technique, upper limits on the v2-independent fraction of the three-particle correlator are estimated to be 13% for pPb and 7% for PbPb collisions at 95% confidence level. The results of this analysis, both the dominance of two-particle correlations as a source of the three-particle results and the similarities seen between PbPb and pPb, provide stringent constraints on the origin of charge-dependent three-particle azimuthal correlations and challenge their interpretation as arising from a chiral magnetic effect in heavy ion collisions

The provenance of late Cenozoic East Asian Red Clay : Tectonic-metamorphic history of potential source regions and a novel combined zircon-rutile approach

Constraining the provenance of aeolian mineral dust is critical in understanding past climate changes, atmospheric dust activity, circulation, and sediment generation. On the Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP), use of detrital zircon U-Pb age data as source tracers for the dust has seen a huge growth and lead to breakthroughs in understanding dust provenance. However, significant ambiguities remain especially regarding the provenance of the aeolian Neogene Red Clay (RC). To address this, here we review the state of the art of understanding of Neogene RC provenance, with a focus on single-grain analyses, and introduce detrital rutile geochemistry as a tool to complement zircon U-Pb dating. Furthermore, to better utilise the link between the detrital minerals and their primary origin, we compile primary source region geologic background and single-grain data relevant for use of geochronological and metamorphic provenance proxy minerals. We discuss four major tectonic divisions in northern China and southern Mongolia: North China Craton (NCC), Tarim Craton (TC), Central China Orogen (CCO), parts of the Central Asian Orogenic Belt (CAOB), and briefly summarize the Tibetan-Himalayan orogen. Many of these regions have been tectonically active during the same time periods in the Earth's history, and our analysis demonstrates how use of zircon age data alone has limitations in differentiating between a number of key potential dust sources to the CLP. Addition of a metamorphic source tracer such as rutile allows some of these possible source areas to be distinguished. For example, the proximal northern NCC regions that show high-/ ultrahigh-temperature metamorphic conditions can potentially be diagnostic of a northerly source component to CLP dust. Our combined zircon-rutile data analysis of ca. 4 Ma Nihewan RC in northern CLP verifies the utility of the novel rutile provenance proxy in sourcing CLP sediments. The zircon and rutile data suggest similar dust provenance: the dominant sources are proximal areas on the NCC, while contributions from the dry areas in parts of the CAOB, central deserts, and the Yellow River are also likely. Our results also hint at a minor source component deriving from distal western source regions in the TC, and/or in the central parts of the CCO, but rutile data from potential secondary source areas are needed to verify this possibility. We also conclude that multi-proxy single-grain provenance analyses are needed for more reliable provenance analyses.Peer reviewe

Third Molars as Risk Factors for Orofacial Pain. Findings from The SHIP Study

Objectives: To examine the association between third molars and orofacial pain. We hypothesized that impacted third molars are a cause of orofacial pain. Methods: Magnetic resonance images of 1808 participants from two populationbased cohorts from Northeastern Germany were analysed to define the status of third molars according to the Pell and Gregory classification. A self-reported questionnaire and a clinical dental examination were used to detect chronic and acute complaints of orofacial pain, masticatory muscle pain, migraine and other types of headache. Logistic regression models were used to analyse the associations between third molar status and orofacial pain. Results: Individuals with impacted third molars in the maxilla had a higher chance of chronic orofacial pain than those with erupted third molars (odds ratio 2.19; 95% CI 1.19-4.02). No such association was detected for third molars in the lower jaw. Third molars were not associated with masticatory muscle pain, migraine or other types of headache. Conclusions: Impacted maxillary third molars might be a cause of chronic orofacial pain. Thus, physicians should consider the eruption/impaction status of third molars in their decision-making process when treating patients who complain of orofacial pain