I WOULD LIKE IN A PRACTICAL WAY,TO SERVE THE MASSES:INTERVIEW WITH JAMPA PHUNTSOG,THE CHAIRMAN OF TAR

On May 16th,2003,Jampa Phuntsog,on wining the most votes at the second session of the eighth People's Congress of Tibetan Autonomous Region(TAR),was chosen to be the chairman of the government of TAR.Since then,the Khampa man from downtown Chamdu of TAR became the seventh chairman of the government of TAR,and the leader of 2.7 million people living on the snow-covered plateau. On January 30th,2007,the author kept an appointment at the Tibet Hotel in Beijing to hold an exclusive interview with Chairman Ja...

MOVING THE MASSES

Providing adequate transportation for visitors and athletes at the 2008 Olympics is proving the capital's biggest challenge Seven million. That's the number of tickets the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the 29th Olympiad (BOCOG) expects to sell to audiences flooding into the capital during the Olympics in 2008.

Evolution of seismic risk management for insurance over the past 30 years

During the past 30 years, there has been spectacular growth in the use of risk analysis and risk management tools developed by engineers in the financial and insurance sectors. The insurance, the reinsurance, and the investment banking sectors have enthusiastically adopted loss estimation tools developed by engineers in developing their business strategies and for managing their financial risks. As a result, insurance/reinsurance strategy has evolved as a major risk mitigation tool in managing catastrophe risk at the individual, corporate, and government level. This is particularly true in developed countries such as US, Western Europe, and Japan. Unfortunately, it has not received the needed attention in developing countries, where such a strategy for risk management is most needed. Fortunately, in the last five years, there has been excellent focus in developing ＂Insur Tech＂ tools to address the much needed ＂Insurance for the Masses＂, especially for the Asian Markets. In the earlier years of catastrophe model development, risk analysts were mainly concerned with risk reduction options through engineering strategies, and relatively little attention was given to financial and economic strategies. Such state-of-affairs still exists in many developing countries. The new developments in the science and technologies of loss estimation due to natural catastrophes have made it possible for financial sectors to model their business strategies such as peril and geographic diversification, premium calculations, reserve strategies, reinsurance contracts, and other underwriting tools. These developments have not only changed the way in which financial sectors assess and manage their risks, but have also changed the domain of opportunities for engineers and scientists.This paper will address the issues related to developing insurance/reinsurance strategies to mitigate catastrophe risks and describe the role catastrophe risk insurance and reinsurance has played in managing financial risk due to natural catastrophes. Historical losses and the share of those losses covered by insurance will be presented. How such risk sharing can help the nation share the burden of losses between tax paying public, the ＂at risk＂ property owners, the insurers and the reinsurers will be discussed. The paper will summarize the tools that are used by the insurance and reinsurance companies for estimating their future losses due to catastrophic natural events. The paper will also show how the results of loss estimation technologies developed by engineers are communicated to the business flow of insurance/reinsurance companies. Finally, to make it possible to grow ＂Insurance for the Masses - IFM＂, the role played by parametric insurance products and Insur Tech tools will be discussed.

The Integer-Fraction Principle of the Digital Electric Charge for Quarks and Quasiparticles

In the integer-fraction principle of the digital electric charge, individual integral charge and individual fractional charge are the digital representations of the allowance and the disallowance of irreversible kinetic energy, respectively. The disallowance of irreversible kinetic energy for individual fractional charge brings about the confinement of individual fractional charges to restrict irreversible movement resulted from irreversible kinetic energy. Collective fractional charges are confined by the short-distance confinement force field where the sum of the collective fractional charges is integer. As a result, fractional charges are confined and collective. The confinement force field includes gluons in QCD (quantum chromodynamics) for collective fractional charge quarks in hadrons and the magnetic flux quanta for collective fractional charge quasiparticles in the fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE). The collectivity of fractional charges requires the attachment of energy as flux quanta to bind collective fractional charges. The integer-fraction transformation from integral charges to fractional charges consists of the three steps: 1) the attachment of an even number of flux quanta to individual integral charge fermions to form individual integral charge composite fermions, 2) the attachment of an odd number of flux quanta to individual integral charge composite fermions to form transitional collective integral charge composite bosons, and 3) the conversion of flux quanta into the confinement force field to confine collective fractional charge composite fermions converted from composite bosons. The charges of quarks are fractional, because QCD (the strong force) emerges in the universe that has no irreversible kinetic energy. Kinetic energy emerged in the universe after the emergence of the strong force. The charges of the quasiparticles in the FQHE are fractional because of the confinement by a two-dimensional system, the Landau levels, and an extremely low temperature and the collectivity by high energy magnetic flux quanta. From the integer-fraction transformation from integral charge electrons to fractional charge quarks, the calculated masses of pion, muon and constituent quarks are in excellent agreement with the observed values.

Dynamical Running Mass of Quark in the Dyson－Schwinger Equation Approach

Based on the Dyson–Schwinger equations of QCD in the 'rainbow' approximation, the fully dressed quark propagator is investigated, and then an algebraic parametrization form of the propagator is obtained as a solution of the equations. The dressed quark amplitudes and built up the fully dressed quark propagator and the dynamical running masses defined by and for light quarks u, d and s are calculated, respectively. Using the predicted running masses , quark condensates for u, d quarks, and for s quark, and experimental pion decay constant , the masses of Goldstone bosons K, π, and η are also evaluated. The numerical results show that the masses of quarks are dependent on their momentum . The fully dressed quark amplitudes and have correct behaviors which can be used for many purposes in our future researches on nonperturbative QCD.

SPECIAL ISSUE： IMPORTANT ISSUES IN MARXIST PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA：The issue of style of study in research on Marxist philosophy

Style of study is a fundamental prerequisite for studies of Marxist philosophy. A Marxist way of study requires firstly taking up the standpoint of the masses; secondly, an unwavering attitude of emancipating the mind, seeking truth from facts and progressing with the times; and thirdly, consciously espousing the method of joining theory and practice. Building up Chinese-style socialism is the greatest reality in China and is the locus of the fundamental interest of the mass of the people. It is the requirement and actualization of the principle of ＂emancipating the mind, seeking truth from facts and progressing with the time.＂ It is the historical mission of Marxist philosophical studies to serve the practice of Chinese-style socialism.