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Chiral symmetry and its spontaneous breaking is an essential property of the QCD vacuum and is closely related to the generation of hadron mass. J-PARC E16 experiment measures dielectron spectra in p+A collisions at 30~GeV to study the in-medium spectral change of vector mesons that signals the partial restoration of the broken symmetry. The experiment uses the primary proton beam available at the high-momentum beam line of the J-PARC hadron experimental facility.We performed three proton-beam runs intended for beamline and detector commissioning. We are preparing for the next commissioning run in 2023 and the first physics run. We present the experimental setup, some of the expected results, preparation status, and some findings in the commissioning runs.

This article is a reply to Ruiping Ye’s article on China’s journey towards socialist rule of law. Ye argues that despite a string of legal reforms, China remains a system of rule by law rather than rule of law. Ye provides two main observations. One is the Communist Party’s instrumental perception of law, and the other is the Communist Party’s need to maintain legal legitimacy. This article agrees with Ye’s two observations, and extends the discussion further to the future of such a rule by law or what other scholars call authoritarian legality. By highlighting an intensely debated issue on whether to further legalize or constitutionalize the Communist Party’s absolute rule, this article questions the gradual and formative function of law in bringing profound change. Particularly noteworthy are the sustainability of legitimacy generated by authoritarian legality and the efficacy of a legal transformation from within.

We investigate how charmonium hadroproduction at fixed-target energies can be used to constrain the gluon distribution in pions. Using nonrelativistic QCD (NRQCD) formulation, the $J/\psi$ and $\psi(2S)$ cross sections as a function of longitudinal momentum fraction $x_F$ from pions and protons colliding with light targets, as well as the $\psi(2S)$ to $J/\psi$ cross section ratios, are included in the analysis. The color-octet long-distance matrix elements are found to have a pronounced dependence on the pion parton distribution functions (PDFs). This study shows that the $x_F$ differential cross sections of pion-induced charmonium production impose strong constraints on the pion's quark and gluon PDFs. In particular, the pion PDFs with larger gluon densities provide a significantly better description of the data. It is also found that the production of the $\psi(2S)$ state is associated with a larger quark-antiquark contribution, compared with $J/\psi$., Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures and 23-page supplementary materials. Published version

Background Approximately 3%-5% of lung adenocarcinoma is driven by anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) fusion oncogene, whose activity can be suppressed by multiple ALK inhibitors. Crizotinib and ceritinib have demonstrated superior efficacy to platinum-based chemotherapy as front-line treatment for patients with ALK-positive advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). However, the direct comparison between them in the front-line setting remains lacking. Methods A total of 48 patients with ALK-positive, previously untreated advanced NSCLC, who received crizotinib and ceritinib as front-line treatment were retrospectively investigated. The efficacy and pattern of disease progression were analyzed. Results Patients receiving ceritinib treatment were significantly younger than those receiving crizotinib treatment (52.0 vs. 63.0, P = 0.016). The median progression-free survival (PFS) was significantly longer with ceritinib than with crizotinib treatment (32.3 vs. 12.9 months; log-rank P = 0.020); the hazard ratio for disease progression or death, 0.27 (95% CI, 0.08-0.90; P = 0.033). An objective response was noted in all patients in the ceritinib group and in 23 patients in the crizotinib group (74.2%; 95% CI, 59.0 to 88.5). The rate of systemic progression was significantly lower over time with ceritinib treatment compared to crizotinib treatment (cause-specific hazard ratio, 0.21; 95% CI 0.06-0.73; P = 0.014). Serious adverse events were noted in one (2.9%) patient showing elevated liver function in the crizotinib group and three (23.1%) patients showing diarrhea in the ceritinib group. Dose reduction was needed in five out of 13 (38.5%) patients receiving ceritinib treatment. Conclusion Ceritinib showed higher efficacy associated with a better control of systemic progression compared to crizotinib for the front-line treatment of ALK-positive advanced NSCLCs.

This article provides a critical reflection on constitutional developments around the world since 1989, and finds that the world of global constitutionalism has primarily embodied judicial, legal and transnational constitutionalism with court-centric, legal-texted, and elite-focused features. An overemphasis of constitutions as legal texts and courts as exclusive constitutional guardians has led to the domination of legal and judicial elites in constitutional and political spheres, and such an unequal playing field between legal and political actors has inevitably triggered the recent rise and resurgence of populism and neo-authoritarianism. This article argues that rather than purely legal or political, the nature of constitutions and constitutionalism presents an intricate set of intersecting law and politics, and that it is time now for constitutional law scholars to pay attention to political foundations of constitutionalism with further democratic revivals and better civic engagements.

This article provides a dialogue with the “three waves” development of judicial review as described by Lustig and Weiler in their Foreword article and examines whether these three waves are global in nature. As this article finds, the first two waves have been quite unsettling and contested in Asia. The first wave of judicial review, in which judges can rule against legislation on constitutional grounds, has seen variations in a few Asian jurisdictions. The second wave of judicial review, in which judges can rule against the exercise of all governmental powers on transnational normative grounds, has been confronted with strong resistance in Asia right from the very beginning. National struggles for identities and fierce competitions for voices in the global legal order have been challenging Asian states, and as a result, “politicization of higher values” on both domestic and transnational grounds may persist in Asia for the foreseeable future.

This chapter analyzes Taiwan’s legal and policy responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. Given Taiwan’s geographical proximity and close economic ties with China, the initial epicentre of coronavirus, it was estimated to be hit hard by the global pandemic. Yet, defying these predictions, Taiwan maintained a considerably low number of confirmed cases and exhibited no sign of community spread. Taiwan’s near-miraculous achievement in controlling the Covid-19 pandemic proved that a democracy can successfully contain the spread of the virus. What this global pandemic reveals is that only a more transparent and responsive government can effectively deal with a public health crisis and other than legal rules, government capacity, the strength of the science and technology sector, and the vitality of civil society and local community are equally-if not more-important in forging a collective effort. © the several contributors 2021.

Background Treatment for stage III non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) of unresectable disease mainly involves concurrent chemoradiation (CRT). Post-CRT consolidation treatment with durvalumab is a major therapeutic advance that provides survival benefit in this group of patients. However, the performance of this treatment strategy remains to be studied in a real-world setting. Methods A total of 31 patients who had disease control post-CRT were included in the durvalumab early access program (EAP) as an intent-to-treat cohort and retrospectively reviewed for post-CRT progression-free survival (PFS) and time to metastatic disease or death (TMDD). The neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) at the initiation of durvalumab was analyzed in 29 patients. Results The median time from the completion of concurrent CRT to the initiation of durvalumb was 2.8 months. The objective response was 25.8% and the 12 month PFS and TMDD-free rate were 56.4% and 66.9%, respectively. The low NLR patients showed a significantly longer post-CRT PFS (not reach vs. 12.0 months [95% CI: 5.5-not estimable]; P = 0.040; the hazard ratio for disease progression or death, 0.23 [95% CI: 0.05-1.00]; P = 0.048) and the 12 month post-CRT PFS rate (82.5 vs. 42.6%). The post-CRT TMDD (not reach vs. 12.6 months, [95% CI: 10.8-not estimable]; P = 0.010; the hazard ratio for distant metastasis or death, 0.11 [95% CI: 0.01-0.88]; P = 0.037) and 12 month post-CRT TMDD-free rate (90.9 vs. 57.1%) were also significantly higher in the low NLR patients. Conclusions Durvalumab consolidation treatment in real-world patients showed substantial efficacy and the correlation with the NLR level warrants further investigation.

Scholars frequently distinguish between “hard” and “soft” forms of judicial review: “hard” review gives courts the final say on constitutional questions, whereas “soft” review attempts to strike a balance between judicial and legislative supremacy by giving the legislature the ability to override or set aside what the courts have done. However, the binary hard/soft distinction does not convey the full spectrum of possibilities between the extremes of legislative and judicial supremacy. On the one hand, so-called “hard” review can in practice operate like soft review because, even in systems of nominally hard review, the government usually retains the ability to effectively override the courts via constitutional amendment. On the other hand, courts have increasingly turned to options that are harder than “hard” review. A small but growing number of courts—the Taiwanese Constitutional Court among them—have claimed the power to invalidate constitutional amendments as unconstitutional. Yet even judicial review of constitutional amendments does not exhaust the options at their disposal. Analysis of Taiwan’s experience with judicial review over the last thirty years holds a number of lessons about judicial power and constitutional politics. First, “soft” review, “hard” review, and even review of constitutional amendments are merely intermediate points on a spectrum of judicial power that ranges from no judicial review to the judicial initiation of constitutional amendments. Moreover, the spectrum itself is dynamic and prone to expansion. In the face of new challenges, courts find new ways of asserting themselves, and in so doing, they continually remake the frontiers of judicial power. Second, there is no point on this spectrum where a court—or any other institution—is guaranteed the last word. Whenever courts assert themselves, other institutions have the ability to respond, and vice versa. Different responses are available at different points on the spectrum, but a response always exists. It is a defining characteristic of politics that, for every move, there exists a countermove. Finality is as elusive in constitutional politics as in any other form of politics. Third, the celebration of “dialogic” judicial review—in which constitutional questions are resolved via interaction between courts and legislatures rather than by judicial fiat—is problematic because, in some sense, all judicial review is “dialogic”. The fact that courts are never guaranteed the last word means that every plausible institutional configuration can be characterized as “dialogic” in the sense of allowing or inviting some degree of interaction, or “dialogue,” between the courts and the legislature. Finally, a court’s position on the spectrum of judicial power is not necessarily fixed by the constitution and can instead be highly fluid. As the recent history of the Taiwanese Constitutional Court demonstrates, it is possible for a court to traverse the entirety of the spectrum in a relatively short period of time without any corresponding change in the constitution itself. Major shifts in judicial power can occur without formal constitutional change because judicial power is at least as much a function of the political and institutional context as of the constitutional text.

Owing to her contested statehood, Taiwan has been barred from accession to any United Nations-related mechanisms including international human rights conventions. Beginning in 2009, Taiwan passed Implementation Acts to incorporate the fundamental rights and freedoms enshrined in several international human rights conventions, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Convention on the Rights of the Persons with Disabilities. These Implementation Acts provide binding legal effect for the rights enshrined in those human rights conventions in Taiwan’s legal system, and stipulate a legal duty of the government—including the legislative, executive and judicial branches—for implementation and enforcement. The Implementation Acts even obliged the government to issue state reports based upon the requirements of those human rights conventions and created a system of review of government implementation by independent international experts with prior experience of serving on similar international panels. Perhaps the only matter that a domestic Implementation Act cannot stipulate is Taiwan’s membership and international participation in those human rights conventions. This chapter is aimed at analyzing the special mechanism of the Implementation Acts, discussing their particular functions, challenges and difficulties in the context of Taiwan’s special international situation. Drawing on these discussions, this chapter also explores whether the model provided for by the Implementation Acts may be suitable for human rights incorporation and enforcement beyond Taiwan.

Chinese law and comparative constitutional law are both thriving fields, but the comparative study of Chinese constitutional law remains rare. Part of the explanation may lie in skepticism on the part of comparative constitutional scholars as to whether China can be said either to possess a genuine constitution or to practice constitutionalism, due to its lack of judicial review and disregard for civil and political rights. This chapter seeks to explain why it is not only appropriate, but also highly beneficial for comparative constitutional scholars to study Chinese constitutionalism. First, we argue that “Chinese constitutionalism” is not an oxymoron, and that definitional objections to the study of Chinese constitutionalism are therefore misplaced. We articulate a pluralistic framework for defining the terms “constitution” and “constitutionalism” that incorporates three types of criteria: regime goals, regime characteristics, and regime performance. The result is a rich matrix of definitional possibilities, many of which are capable of encompassing China and other authoritarian regimes without either implying approval of their practices or conflating them with liberal democracies. Second, we explain why the study of Chinese constitutionalism would affirmatively benefit both the field of comparative constitutional law and the development of constitutionalism in China. Not only is scholarly engagement with China more likely to promote constitutional development than scholarly indifference, but it also provides an opportunity to broaden and enrich the discipline of comparative constitutional law by focusing our attention on important and recurring constitutional phenomena other than judicial review. Prominent features of the Chinese constitutional experience that render China a valuable case study for comparative constitutional scholars include: (1) the use of quasi-constitutional statutes that shape the powers of the administration and the courts; (2) the articulation and enforcement of constitutional norms by political means, such as popular movements; (3) the role of transnational law in supplementing constitutional law; and (4) the phenomenon of dissonant constitutionalism, wherein a constitution is blatantly violated yet at the same time commands too much normative authority to be simply ignored. In such situations, the constitution may function as a constructive irritant: in the best-case scenario, the unresolved contradiction generates genuine constitutional discourse that in turn fuels the development of the constitutional order.

We developed a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) TDC module for the tracking devices of Fermilab SeaQuest (E906) experiment, including drift chamber, proportional tube and hodoscope. The requirement of time resolution is better than 4 ns. This 64-channel TDC is made of a 6U VMEbus unit equipped with a Microsemi ProASIC3 Flash based FPGA of low power and high radiation tolerance. The new FPGA firmware (Run2-TDC) is designed to reduce the data volume and data acquisition (DAQ) deadtime. The firmware digitizes multiple input hits of both polarities while allowing users to turn on a multiple-hit elimination logic to remove after-pulses in the wire chambers and proportional tubes. A scaler is fitted into the firmware of each channel to allow for recording the number of hits in its respective channel. The TDC resolution is determined by internal cell delays of 450 ps, and a measurement precision of 200 ps has been achieved. As a demonstration of constructing the Wave Union TDC using an existing multi-hit TDC without modifying its firmware, external wave union launchers are utilized in our test to improve the TDC's measurement precision. Measurement precision is nearly halved (108 ps) in data based on a four-edge wave union. An even larger improvement of measurement precision (69 ps) has been reached by combining the approaches of Wave Union TDC and multiple-channel ganging.

The only experimental information on the parton distribution of kaons was obtained from the scarce kaon-induced Drell-Yan cross section data. From these data, evidence for a valence $u$ quark distribution of kaon softer than that of pion was found. We study the feasibility to extract kaon's valence quark distribution via the existing kaon-induced J/psi production data. We compare the NA3 data on the K- / pi- and K+ / pi+ ratios for J/psi production on a platinum target with theoretical calculations based on the color-evaporation model. We show that the NA3 data on J/psi production provide an independent evidence for a valence $u$ quark distribution softer in kaon than in pion. The data also suggest different gluon distributions for kaon and pion., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures

Calcium looping (CaL) CO2 capture process using calcium oxide as a regenerable solid sorbent has been under development at the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) of Taiwan for several years. At 2013, the 1.9MWth pilot plant has been fully constructed, and the trial runs have been progressed for almost one year. The CO2 was captured by CaO from the flue gas of the cement plant in a bubbling fluidized-bed carbonator while diesel oil oxy-combustion in the rotary kiln provides the heat required to regenerate the sorbent. The start-up progress of carbonator does not use pre-heating system, but take advantage of heat dissipated by the hot sorbent form the calciner. The flow rate of the flue gas from the stack of the cement plant was 3400 Nm3/h with the CO2 concentration higher than 15 vol%. The test results showed the CO2 capture efficiency higher than 85% for 7 hours and the CO2 concentration of the outlet gas was under 2%. The accumulated time of unit operation test in this pilot plant is more than 600 hours, and that for the fully-continuous looping test is more than 300 hours, respectively. The CO2 capture rate higher than 1 t/h was obtained, which reached the design point of this pilot plant. It is considered as an important milestone for the future construction of a 30 MWth demonstration plant.