Climate change scenarios, predicted using the regional climate modeling system of PRECIS (providing regional cli-mates for impacts studies), were used to derive three-layer variable infiltration capacity (VIC-3L) land...Climate change scenarios, predicted using the regional climate modeling system of PRECIS (providing regional cli-mates for impacts studies), were used to derive three-layer variable infiltration capacity (VIC-3L) land surface model forthe simulation of hydrologic processes at a spatial resolution of 0.25° × 0.25° in the Haihe River Basin. Three climatescenarios were considered in this study: recent climate (1961-1990), future climate A2 (1991-2100) and future climateB2 (1991-2100) with A2 and B2 being two storylines of future emissions developed with the Intergovernmental Panel onClimate Change (IPCC) special report on emissions scenarios. Overall, under future climate scenarios A2 and B2, theHaihe River Basin would experience warmer climate with increased precipitation, evaporation and runoff production ascompared with recent climate, but would be still likely prone to water shortages in the period of 2031-2070. In addition,under future climate A2 and B2, an increase in runoff during the wet season was noticed, indicating a future rise in theflood occurrence possibility in the Haihe River Basin.展开更多
Behind what is called ＂Needham＇s Grand Question＂ （why was China overshot by the West in science and technology？） lies a deeper question of how China came to lose the capacity of deeply reflective thought clearly...Behind what is called ＂Needham＇s Grand Question＂ （why was China overshot by the West in science and technology？） lies a deeper question of how China came to lose the capacity of deeply reflective thought clearly present in the ancient Chinese philosophers. This is a loss felt by all Chinese as a psychological sense of hollowness, a loss of identity, made worse by the seeming inaccessibility of the ancient Chinese wisdom to the modern Chinese mind. It is clear that at some historical point China suffered an extreme psychological blow sufficient to traumatise it at the threshold of reflective thought, unable to look inwards any more. The paper identifies that point as the utter devastation wrought by Kublai Khan and the Mongols 750 years ago. What devastates reflective thought is wilfulness, the insistent focusing of all attention and energy on external, material things, and Kublai Khan was wilful in the extreme. What confirms this as the crippling point is that, in response to Kublai Khan＇s Mongol invasion the Chinese, over time, not only completely altered the geography of China itself, moving their capital to the North （Beijing）, but have ever since fought to establish as ＂China＂ all the territory over which Kublai Khan ruled. China is clearly not free of Kublai Khan＇s shadow. But even more precisely, in the process of doing this--and showing their own wilfulness--in building the Forbidden City in Beijing they built it in the shape of the Chinese metaphysical model of the universe, the Chinese version of the Tree of Life metaphysical glyph But it has an error in it. And the error is precisely that in where it places things, it makes what would have been the attributes of reflective thought subservient to wilfulness. The model itself thus shows the hollowness of the Chinese mind from that moment on. The outer form--the ＂appearance＂---of the ancient wisdom was still there. But the content--the ＂substance＂--of it was not. And with no reflective thought, true creativity disappears.展开更多
The Lop Nur region, in the east part of Tarim Basin, was an important transportation junction between west and east,north and south Eurasia. However, previous studies on prehistoric human activity have concentrated mo...The Lop Nur region, in the east part of Tarim Basin, was an important transportation junction between west and east,north and south Eurasia. However, previous studies on prehistoric human activity have concentrated mostly on the Bronze Age,whereas that during the Stone Age remains largely unresearched. Here, we present a new direct evidence of human activity in the late Pleistocene, recorded on a grinding stone buried in a lacustrine sediment section of the Lop Nur region. The grain size distribution of the sediment section indicates that the site was probably in the center of a lake with weak hydrodynamic environment. Therefore, the stone artifact can only be carried to here by people instead of river and it was never move as soon as left here. Results of radiocarbon dating, the evident stratigraphic relations between the stone artifact and the sedimentary formation, indicate that the human activity could extend to approximately 13 ka BP. Furthermore, the results of starch-grain and use-wear analyses suggest that ancient humans gathered seeds of Triticeae, roots, and tubers and used the grinding stone to simply process selected plant as plant foodstuffs during this period. It implies that the environmental conditions in the river delta of the Lop Nur were inhabitable during the late Pleistocene.展开更多
基金the Knowledge Innovation Key Project of Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. KZCX2-SW-317),the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 90411007 and 40275023), and the Hundred Talents Program ofChinese Academy of Sciences.
文摘Climate change scenarios, predicted using the regional climate modeling system of PRECIS (providing regional cli-mates for impacts studies), were used to derive three-layer variable infiltration capacity (VIC-3L) land surface model forthe simulation of hydrologic processes at a spatial resolution of 0.25° × 0.25° in the Haihe River Basin. Three climatescenarios were considered in this study: recent climate (1961-1990), future climate A2 (1991-2100) and future climateB2 (1991-2100) with A2 and B2 being two storylines of future emissions developed with the Intergovernmental Panel onClimate Change (IPCC) special report on emissions scenarios. Overall, under future climate scenarios A2 and B2, theHaihe River Basin would experience warmer climate with increased precipitation, evaporation and runoff production ascompared with recent climate, but would be still likely prone to water shortages in the period of 2031-2070. In addition,under future climate A2 and B2, an increase in runoff during the wet season was noticed, indicating a future rise in theflood occurrence possibility in the Haihe River Basin.
文摘Behind what is called ＂Needham＇s Grand Question＂ （why was China overshot by the West in science and technology？） lies a deeper question of how China came to lose the capacity of deeply reflective thought clearly present in the ancient Chinese philosophers. This is a loss felt by all Chinese as a psychological sense of hollowness, a loss of identity, made worse by the seeming inaccessibility of the ancient Chinese wisdom to the modern Chinese mind. It is clear that at some historical point China suffered an extreme psychological blow sufficient to traumatise it at the threshold of reflective thought, unable to look inwards any more. The paper identifies that point as the utter devastation wrought by Kublai Khan and the Mongols 750 years ago. What devastates reflective thought is wilfulness, the insistent focusing of all attention and energy on external, material things, and Kublai Khan was wilful in the extreme. What confirms this as the crippling point is that, in response to Kublai Khan＇s Mongol invasion the Chinese, over time, not only completely altered the geography of China itself, moving their capital to the North （Beijing）, but have ever since fought to establish as ＂China＂ all the territory over which Kublai Khan ruled. China is clearly not free of Kublai Khan＇s shadow. But even more precisely, in the process of doing this--and showing their own wilfulness--in building the Forbidden City in Beijing they built it in the shape of the Chinese metaphysical model of the universe, the Chinese version of the Tree of Life metaphysical glyph But it has an error in it. And the error is precisely that in where it places things, it makes what would have been the attributes of reflective thought subservient to wilfulness. The model itself thus shows the hollowness of the Chinese mind from that moment on. The outer form--the ＂appearance＂---of the ancient wisdom was still there. But the content--the ＂substance＂--of it was not. And with no reflective thought, true creativity disappears.
基金supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (Grant No. 2014FY210500)the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41372187)
文摘The Lop Nur region, in the east part of Tarim Basin, was an important transportation junction between west and east,north and south Eurasia. However, previous studies on prehistoric human activity have concentrated mostly on the Bronze Age,whereas that during the Stone Age remains largely unresearched. Here, we present a new direct evidence of human activity in the late Pleistocene, recorded on a grinding stone buried in a lacustrine sediment section of the Lop Nur region. The grain size distribution of the sediment section indicates that the site was probably in the center of a lake with weak hydrodynamic environment. Therefore, the stone artifact can only be carried to here by people instead of river and it was never move as soon as left here. Results of radiocarbon dating, the evident stratigraphic relations between the stone artifact and the sedimentary formation, indicate that the human activity could extend to approximately 13 ka BP. Furthermore, the results of starch-grain and use-wear analyses suggest that ancient humans gathered seeds of Triticeae, roots, and tubers and used the grinding stone to simply process selected plant as plant foodstuffs during this period. It implies that the environmental conditions in the river delta of the Lop Nur were inhabitable during the late Pleistocene.
