‘A Special Zone for Confucianism’? Theses of the Academician Zhang Xianglong on Traditional Chinese Culture”

This article introduces the work of the academician Zhang Xianglong (b. 1949), focussing on his idea of establishing a “special zone for Confucianism” in China. Zhang argues that special protection is needed for Confucian traditions which he perceives as the leading culture of China. Confucian culture should find its way out of the museum, says Zhang. He also refers to the political concept of “one country, two systems” that was implemented when Hongkong was restored to Chinese rule. Zhang applies this to his idea of a “special zone for Confucianism”, suggesting that this political concept could be extended to “one country, three systems”. In my view Zhang is developing new, creative ideas for possible experimental fields dealing with Confucianism in the context of the People’s Republic of China. In the end it is my argument that it would be helpful to conduct in-depth research on the possible role of Confucianism in today’s China. Ta članek predstavlja delo akademika Zhang Xianglong (r. 1949) in se osredotoča na njegovo idejo o ustanovitvi »posebne cone za konfucianizma« na Kitajskem. Zhang trdi, da je potrebna posebna zaščita za konfucijansko tradicijo, za katero meni, da je vodilna kultura Kitajske. Konfucijska kultura bi po njegovem morala najti svojo pot iz muzeja. Sklicuje se tudi na politični koncept »ena država, dva sistema«, ki se je izvajal, ko je bila obnovljena kitajska nadvlada Hongkongu. Zhang to povezuje s svojo idejo o »posebni coni za konfucianizem« in predlaga, da bi se ta politični koncept razširil na »ena država, trije sistemi«. Po mojem mnenju Zhang razvija nove, ustvarjalne ideje za morebitna poskusna področja, ki se ukvarjajo s konfucianizmom v okviru Ljudske republike Kitajske. Tako je moj argument, da bi bilo koristno, da se naredi poglobljena raziskava o morebitni vlogi konfucianizma v današnji Kitajski.

An Instability-driven Dynamo for Gamma Ray Bursts

We show that an MHD-instability driven dynamo (IDD) operating in a hot accretion disk is capable of generating energetically adequate magnetic flux deposition rates above and below a mildly advective accretion disk structure. The dynamo is driven by the magnetorotational instability (MRI) of a toroidal field in a shear flow and is limited by the buoyancy of `horizontal' flux and by reconnection in the turbulent medium. The efficiency of magnetic energy deposition is estimated to be comparable to the neutrino losses although an MHD collimation mechanism may deem this process a more viable alternative to neutrino-burst-driven models of gamma ray bursts.Comment: 4 pages, no figures, to appear in Proc. of the 10^th Annual Maryland October Astrophysics Conference: "Cosmic Explosions". Eds. S. S. Holt and W. W. Zhang (AIP Press) (2nd revision AIP LaTex, extended text and equations

The non-perturbative constraint on sea quarks --the strange sea quarks in the nucleon and the soft pion contribution at high energy--

The mean charge sum rule for the light sea quarks in the nucleon which holds under the same theoretical footing as the modified Gottfried sum rule shows that a usual parameterization of the strange sea quark distribution underestimate its contribution in the small $x$ region. We give a discussion of the soft pion contribution at high energy as a possible explanation of the saturation of the sum rule and show that it naturally explains why the strange sea quark is suppressed in the region above $x \sim 0.01$ while it becomes abundant below it.Comment: 5 pages, Talk presented at the International Conference on Flavor Physics(ICFP2001) in Zhang-Jia-Jie City,Hunan,China,June 200

Current Issues

Cosmic explosions are observed in many astrophysical environments. They range in scale from hydromagnetic instabilities in the terrestrial magnetotail and solar ``nanoflares'' to cosmological gamma ray bursts, supernovae and the protracted intervals of nuclear activity that produce the giant quasars and radio galaxies. There are many parallels in the analyses of the explosion sites that are highlighted at this workshop, specifically stellar coronae, accretion disks, supernovae and compact objects. In this introductory talk, some general issues are discussed and some more specific questions relating to the individual sites are raised.Comment: To appear in Cosmic Explosions: Proc. 10th Maryland Conference on Astrophysics. Ed. S. Holt and W. Zhang AI