Measuring Social Vulnerability to Natural Hazards in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region,China

Social vulnerability in this study represents the differences between the capacity to cope with natural hazards and disaster losses suffered within and between places.The assessment of social vulnerability has been recognized as a critical step in understanding natural hazard risks and enhancing effective response capabilities.This article presents an initial study of the social vulnerability of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei(B-T-H) Region in China.The goal is to replicate and test the applicability of the United States Social Vulnerability Index(So VI) method in a Chinese cultural context.Thirty-nine variables adapted from the So VI were collected in relation to two aspects:socioeconomic vulnerability and built environment vulnerability.Using factor analysis,seven factors were extracted from the variable set:the structure of social development,the level of economic and government financial strength,social justice and poverty,family structure,the intensity of space development,the status of residential housing and transportation,and building structure.Factor scores were summed to get the final So VI scores and the most and least vulnerable units were identified and mapped.The highest social vulnerability is concentrated in the northwest of the study area.The least socially vulnerable areas are mainly distributed in the Beijing,Tianjin and Shijiazhuang core urban peripheral and central city areas of the prefecture-level cities.The results show that this method is a useful tool for revealing places that have a high level of vulnerability,in other words,areas which are more likely to face significant challenges in coping with a large-scale event.These findings could provide a scientific basis for policy making and the implementation of disaster prevention and mitigation in China.

A Brief Analysis of the relationship between the natural sciences and humanities and social science

With the continuous development of economic and social, the category of science is no longer limited to the technical field, natural science, humanities and social science have flourished, but the study of the relationship between the two disciplines is not perfect enough, so we should follow the academic trend, clarify the relationship between the two,only in this way can we have a more specific grasp of the science, this had a profound influence on the all-round development of modern society.

Nature, Contingency, and the Limit of Socialist Literary-Artistic Practice: A Review of Zhu Yu's Socialism and "Nature"

As a review of Zhu Yu's recent book on socialist literary-artistic practice,Socialism and"Nature,"this essay explores the cultural-political concems that underlie Zhu Yu's comprehensive discussion of socialist artistic genres.While Zhu Yu touches on the aporetic structure of the production of socialist artworks through examining different texts and contexts,his emphatic delineation of the problematic culminates in his illuminating reading of the artistic practice during the Great Leap Forward movement.Pushing Zhu Yu's argument to its extreme,the essay holds that,if the self-effacing and self-negating nature of the cultural-political radically of socialist artistic practice leaves a paradoxical trace in the history of socialist China,it is the impulse of attributing"meanings"to everything eventually leads this practice to its self-destruction.When the contingency of"everyday life"appears spectrally as"nature"that is both representable and un-representable,neither representable nor un-representable in socialist literature and art,we are one small step away from the motivation of cultural creations in the 1980s,which attempt to rehabilitate the so-called"authenticity"of everyday life through a wholesale critique and negation of the revolutionary"grand narrative."

Characteristic Changes Defined via Comparison of the Big-Five Personalities in Japanese University Freshmen from Years 2000 to 2016

Introduction: With the arrival of the 21st century, drastic worldwide changes to natural, economic and social events have occurred. These include the Great East Japan Earthquake, and the global financial crisis. Furthermore, Japan experienced the introduction of a specific education system. In this study, we traced and compared the psychological characters of university freshmen for 16 years (years 2000-2016) using Big-Five personalities inventory (Japanese version). Methods: A total of 1189 physically and mentally healthy university freshmen participated in this study. They were divided into four groups according to the year they entered university. They completed a self-filled questionnaire, Big-Five personalities inventory, which consists of Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, Conscientiousness and Openness. Result and Discussion: Compared with the year 2008, Extraversion nominally increased in 2012, however, it statistically significantly decreased in 2016. Agreeableness notably decreased from 2000 to 2008, then showed an increase in 2012. Compared to 2000, Neuroticism was statistically significantly lower in 2008 and 2016. Such statistically significant differences were not observed in the other two personalities. The personalities of university freshmen have changed in the last 16 years, which may be been caused by drastic changes. However, further research (e.g., larger-scale studies or studies including other university students) is required to support the current findings.

Literary Signs:A Social Practice

This paper argues that literature is a social practical mode of production, as Marx argued.Besides, the paper continues to demonstrate that the tools of literary production, namely linguistic signs, are actually reflections of social life, which distinguish literature from other spiritual productions.Finally, the paper presents some further thoughts about the practice of literary signs, looking into the understandings of literature by Croce and Stolovich.