Pulitzer Prize FinalistSilver Gavel Award Finalist "A sobering history of how American communities and institutions have relied on torture in various forms since before the United States was ...founded."— Los Angeles Times "That Americans as a people and a nation-state are violent is indisputable. That we are also torturers, domestically and internationally, is not so well established. The myth that we are not torturers will persist, but Civilizing Torture will remain a powerful antidote in confronting it."—Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell"Remarkable…A searing analysis of America's past that helps make sense of its bewildering present."—David Garland, author of Peculiar Institution Most Americans believe that a civilized state does not torture, but that belief has repeatedly been challenged in moments of crisis at home and abroad. From the Indian wars to Vietnam, from police interrogation to the War on Terror, US institutions have proven far more amenable to torture than the nation's commitment to liberty would suggest. Civilizing Torture traces the history of debates about the efficacy of torture and reveals a recurring struggle to decide what limits to impose on the power of the state. At a time of escalating rhetoric aimed at cleansing the nation of the undeserving and an erosion of limits on military power, the debate over torture remains critical and unresolved.
Solid electrolyte is critical to next-generation solid-state lithium-ion batteries with high energy density and improved safety. Sulfide solid electrolytes show some unique properties, such as the ...high ionic conductivity and low mechanical stiffness. Here we show that the electrochemical stability window of sulfide electrolytes can be improved by controlling synthesis parameters and the consequent core-shell microstructural compositions. This results in a stability window of 0.7-3.1 V and quasi-stability window of up to 5 V for Li-Si-P-S sulfide electrolytes with high Si composition in the shell, a window much larger than the previously predicted one of 1.7-2.1 V. Theoretical and computational work explains this improved voltage window in terms of volume constriction, which resists the decomposition accompanying expansion of the solid electrolyte. It is shown that in the limiting case of a core-shell morphology that imposes a constant volume constraint on the electrolyte, the stability window can be further opened up. Advanced strategies to design the next-generation sulfide solid electrolytes are also discussed based on our understanding.
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•10-minute charging lithium metal solid-state battery achieved at low pressure.•New isotropic cell design ensures perfectly isotropic and homogenous pressure application of up to ...10 MPa.•Uniformity of pressure reduces the magnitude of pressure needed to stabilize the cell.•Pressure reduced to only 2 MPa in lithium metal pouch cell.
Solid-state batteries that utilize sulfide-based solid-electrolytes, such as the argyrodite Li6PS5Cl, have become one of the most promising directions for next-generation energy storage. However, one remaining technical challenge for such materials has been the requirement of large pressures during operation. This challenge grows as the size of the cells increase as the pressure must be uniformly distributed over a larger-and-larger area. In this work, we introduce an isotropic cell design to pressurize the cell with perfect homogeneity, which is ensured by using a fluid pressurization medium. By achieving perfect homogeneity, the magnitude of the pressure necessary to stabilize the material is greatly reduced. Using such an isotropic cell design, lithium-metal solid-state pouch cells achieve remarkable extreme-fast-charging performance even at a low-pressure of only 2 MPa.
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In solid state batteries, lithium dendrites form when the applied current density is higher than a critical value. The critical current density is often reported as 1–2 mA cm −2 at an external ...pressure of around 10 MPa. In this work, a more advanced mechanical constriction technique is applied on a solid-state battery constructed with Li 10 GeP 2 S 12 (LGPS) as the electrolyte and a lithium metal/graphite composite as the anode, where the graphite layer was applied to prevent (electro-)chemical reactions between Li metal and LGPS, as well as a short-circuit upon the application of pressure. The decomposition pathway of LGPS at the anode interface is modified by this mechanical constriction design, and the growth of lithium dendrites is inhibited, leading to excellent rate and cycling performances. No short-circuit or lithium dendrite formation is observed for batteries cycled at a current density up to 10 mA cm −2 .
Northern Hemisphere sea ice has been declining sharply over the past decades and 2012 exhibited the lowest Arctic summer sea-ice cover in historic times. Whereas ongoing changes are closely monitored ...through satellite observations, we have only limited data of past Arctic sea-ice cover derived from short historical records, indirect terrestrial proxies, and low-resolution marine sediment cores. A multicentury time series from extremely long-lived annual increment-forming crustose coralline algal buildups now provides the first high-resolution in situ marine proxy for sea-ice cover. Growth and Mg/Ca ratios of these Arctic-wide occurring calcified algae are sensitive to changes in both temperature and solar radiation. Growth sharply declines with increasing sea-ice blockage of light from the benthic algal habitat. The 646-y multisite record from the Canadian Arctic indicates that during the Little Ice Age, sea ice was extensive but highly variable on subdecadal time scales and coincided with an expansion of ice-dependent Thule/Labrador Inuit sea mammal hunters in the region. The past 150 y instead have been characterized by sea ice exhibiting multidecadal variability with a long-term decline distinctly steeper than at any time since the 14th century.
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This collection of thirteen essays, edited by historian W. Fitzhugh Brundage, brings together original work from sixteen scholars in various disciplines, ranging from theater and literature to ...history and music, to address the complex roles of black performers, entrepreneurs, and consumers in American mass culture during the early twentieth century.Moving beyond the familiar territory of blackface and minstrelsy, these essays present a fresh look at the history of African Americans and mass culture. With subjects ranging from representations of race in sheet music illustrations to African American interest in Haitian culture,Beyond Blackfacerecovers the history of forgotten or obscure cultural figures and shows how these historical actors played a role in the creation of American mass culture. The essays explore the predicament that blacks faced at a time when white supremacy crested and innovations in consumption, technology, and leisure made mass culture possible. Underscoring the importance and complexity of race in the emergence of mass culture,Beyond Blackfacedepicts popular culture as a crucial arena in which African Americans struggled to secure a foothold as masters of their own representation and architects of the nation's emerging consumer society.The contributors are:Davarian L. Baldwin, Trinity CollegeW. Fitzhugh Brundage, University of North Carolina at Chapel HillClare Corbould, University of SydneySusan Curtis, Purdue UniversityStephanie Dunson, Williams CollegeLewis A. Erenberg, Loyola University ChicagoStephen Garton, University of SydneyJohn M. Giggie, University of AlabamaGrace Elizabeth Hale, University of VirginiaRobert Jackson, University of TulsaDavid Krasner, Emerson CollegeThomas Riis, University of Colorado at BoulderStephen Robertson, University of SydneyJohn Stauffer, Harvard UniversityGraham White, University of SydneyShane White, University of Sydney
Northern peoples and those living in the Arctic and environments with broad vistas created cultural landscapes with distinctive monument traditions that supported their cultural and political ...systems. This paper explores three societies in different geographic regions and time periods during the past 10,000 years that used stone monuments to humanize their landscapes and invoke or honor gods or spirits, mythological ancestors, or deceased leaders. Canadian and Greenland Inuit and their predecessors of the past thousand years marked their lands with abstract human figures known as Inuksuit; Neolithic and Bronze Age Europeans built megaliths, henges, and passage graves; and Mongolian Bronze Age nomadic pastoralists populated the central Asian steppe with burial mounds (khirigsuurs) and anthropomorphic deer stone monuments. Each tradition contributed in different ways to shape and perpetuate the society's values by invoking spirits, ancestors, or heroic leaders. The enduring presence of these creations reinforced cultural or ethnic identity through ritual, group ceremonialism, landscape values, communal enterprise and labor, and collective memory. This paper identifies commonalities and differences between these traditions and how they functioned. We also see how successive societies perpetuate, change, reinterpret, or invent new uses and meanings for ancient monuments and their landscape settings to create new ethnicities and histories for their own times.
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BFBNIB, DOBA, EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, IZUM, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NMLJ, NUK, OBVAL, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
Baleen has been harvested by indigenous people for thousands of years, as well as collected by whalers as an additional product of commercial whaling in modern times. Baleen refers to the ...food-filtering system of Mysticeti whales; a full baleen rack consists of dozens of plates of a tough and flexible keratinous material that terminate in bristles. Due to its properties, baleen was a valuable raw material used in a wide range of artefacts, from implements to clothing. Baleen is not widely used today, however, analyses of this biomolecular tissue have the potential to contribute to conservation efforts, studies of genetic diversity and a better understanding of the exploitation and use of Mysticeti whales in past and recent times. Fortunately, baleen is present in abundance in museum natural history collections. However, it is often difficult or impossible to make a species identification of manufactured or old baleen. Here, we propose a new tool for biomolecular identification of baleen based on its main structural component alpha-keratin (the same protein that makes up hair and fingernails). With the exception of minke whales, alpha-keratin sequences are not yet known for baleen whales. We therefore used peptide mass fingerprinting to determine peptidic profiles in well documented baleen and evaluated the possibility of using this technique to differentiate species in baleen samples that are not adequately identified or are unidentified. We examined baleen from ten different species of whales and determined molecular markers for each species, including species-specific markers. In the case of the Bryde's whales, differences between specimens suggest distinct species or sub-species, consistent with the complex phylogeny of the species. Finally, the methodology was applied to 29 fragments of baleen excavated from archaeological sites in Labrador, Canada (representing 1500 years of whale use by prehistoric people), demonstrating a dominance of bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus) in the archaeological assemblage and the successful application of the peptide mass fingerprinting technique to identify the species of whale in unidentified and partially degraded samples.
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The emergence of mobile herding lifeways in Mongolia and eastern Eurasia was one of the most crucial economic and cultural transitions in human prehistory. Understanding the process by which this ...played out, however, has been impeded by the absence of a precise chronological framework for the prehistoric era in Mongolia. One rare source of empirically dateable material useful for understanding eastern Eurasia's pastoral tradition comes from the stone burial mounds and monumental constructions that began to appear across the landscape of Mongolia and adjacent regions during the Bronze Age (ca. 3000-700 BCE). Here, along with presenting 28 new radiocarbon dates from Mongolia's earliest pastoral monumental burials, we synthesise, critically analyse, and model existing dates to present the first precision Bayesian radiocarbon model for the emergence and geographic spread of Bronze Age monument and burial forms. Model results demonstrate a cultural succession between ambiguously dated Afanasievo, Chemurchek, and Munkhkhairkhan traditions. Geographic patterning reveals the existence of important cultural frontiers during the second millennium BCE. This work demonstrates the utility of a Bayesian approach for investigating prehistoric cultural dynamics during the emergence of pastoral economies.
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