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The study of illiberal constitutions has recently generated enormous scholarly interests. Few, however, have focused on whether democracies may still embrace constitutionalism mixed with illiberal elements. This article explores mixed constitutions of South Korea and Taiwan, the two democracies with vibrant civil societies in East Asia. Three distinctive features in both constitutions have demonstrated illiberal elements, including duty clauses imposed upon citizens, directives requiring the State to enact laws to fulfill the goals of governance, and constitutional cultures that exhibit high deference to political elites based on the Confucian tradition. This article further examines the impacts of such mixed constitutions on three challenging issues: managing pandemic crisis, applying artificial intelligence, and combating fake news. This article finds mixed features of illiberal and democratic constitutions in the two countries by giving their governments more space in managing urgent crises, showing higher deference to experts who are generally trusted by the public, and making compromises to individual rights for greater public good. However, this does not imply that the government is not made democratically accountable, or rights and freedoms are not asserted or valued by individuals. To the contrary, nongovernmental organizations and courts in the two countries continue to act as a counterbalancing force, challenging the government’s policies and decisions if not reasonably balanced, weakening the tendency of power concentration that has been seen in other countries where democratic backsliding or authoritarian governance is gradually revived.

The pion, as the Goldstone boson of the strong interaction, is the lightest QCD bound state and responsible for the long-range nucleon-nucleon interaction inside the nucleus. Our knowledge on the pion partonic structure is limited by the existing Drell-Yan data which are primarily sensitive to the pion valence-quark distributions. The recent progress of global analysis of pion’s parton distribution functions (PDFs) utilizing various experimental approaches are introduced. From comparisons between the pion-induced J/ψand ψ(2S)production data with theoretical calculations using the CEM and NRQCD models, we show how these charmonium production data could provide useful constraints on the pion PDFs.

We present an analysis of hadroproduction of J∕ψand ψ(2S)at fixed-target energies in the framework of non-relativistic QCD (NRQCD). Using both pion- and proton-induced data, a new determination of the color-octet long-distance matrix elements (LDMEs) is obtained. Compared with previous results, the contributions from the qq̄and color-octet processes are significantly enhanced, especially at lower energies. A good agreement between the pion-induced J∕ψproduction data and NRQCD calculations using the newly obtained LDMEs is achieved. We find that the pion-induced charmonium production data are sensitive to the gluon density of pions, and favor pion PDFs with relatively large gluon contents at large x.

A prototype aluminum air battery containing 4 cells connected inseries was tested. This battery was discharged with a 3-LED flashlight. It lasted 29.6 hours before voltage dropped below 2.7 V. Anenergy density of 350 Wh/kg could be achieved. The polarizationcurves of 0.5 M KOH and 4.0 M KOH electrolyte of a single cellwith different amount of electrolytes were measured. Cell with 4.0M KOH was out performance than 0.5 M KOH. 6-layerelectrolyte was better than 2-layer electrolyte due to electrolytedrying out due to hydrogen evolution.

A one-dimensional, two-phase, steady-state, multi-component transport as well as electrochemistry behavior mathematic model of a PEM fuel cell cathode is presented in this study. The catalyst layer structure is considered to be a cylindrical thin-film agglomerate. The objective of the study is to investigate the effects of the cell performance under different design parameters, such as platinum loading, radius of catalyst pellet, Nafion film thickness, catalyst layer thickness, and porosity of catalyst layer. Results of this model was agreed reasonably with the numerical modeling and experimental data of Lin et al. In addition, the electrochemical transport phenomena, such as oxygen concentration, water concentration, water saturated, and ionic potential, were examined. The parametric analysis reveals the important role of transport mechanism in catalyst layer and our results provides useful information on the electrode design parameters of PEM fuel cells for the MEA manufacturer.

Type 316L is molybdenum-bearing austenitic stainless steel which is more resistant to general corrosion and pitting/crevice corrosion than the conventional chromium-nickel austenitic stainless steels such as Type 304. The alloy also offers higher creep, stress-to-rupture and tensile strength at elevated temperatures and thus is considered to be good candidates for bipolar plate materials for the polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). While operating at high temperatures (>100°), the stainless steel can be easily passivated. The major concern for SS316L then would be the possibility of additional film growth and its possible effect on the interfacial contact resistance and the corrosion resistance. In this study, the contact resistance has been evaluated for SS316L samples pretreated at high temperatures for different periods of time. The surface morphology and the composition change of these samples were analyzed by high-resolution SEM/EDS. Also, the polarization curves of these heated samples in 0.5M sulfuric acid solution at 25° were measured by linear scanning voltammetry. The results showed that a stable passive film formed due to the thermal treatments. The interfacial contact resistance increased with heating time but not necessary with elevated temperatures.