Prolonged solitary confinement has become a widespread and standard practice in U.S. prisons-even though it consistently drives healthy prisoners insane, makes the mentally ill sicker, and, according ...to the testimony of prisoners, threatens to reduce life to a living death. In this profoundly important and original book, Lisa Guenther examines the death-in-life experience of solitary confinement in America from the early nineteenth century to today's supermax prisons. Documenting how solitary confinement undermines prisoners' sense of identity and their ability to understand the world, Guenther demonstrates the real effects of forcibly isolating a person for weeks, months, or years. Drawing on the testimony of prisoners and the work of philosophers and social activists from Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty to Frantz Fanon and Angela Davis, the author defines solitary confinement as a kind of social death. It argues that isolation exposes the relational structure of being by showing what happens when that structure is abused-when prisoners are deprived of the concrete relations with others on which our existence as sense-making creatures depends. Solitary confinement is beyond a form of racial or political violence; it is an assault on being. A searing and unforgettable indictment, Solitary Confinement reveals what the devastation wrought by the torture of solitary confinement tells us about what it means to be human-and why humanity is so often destroyed when we separate prisoners from all other people.
Metal zinc is recognized as a promising anode candidate for aqueous zinc‐ion batteries (AZIBs), however, dendrites and byproducts formation severe deteriorate its reversibility and practical ...lifespan. Herein, a polydopamine (PDA) layer, which offers the dual effects of fast desolvation and ion confinement, is constructed on the surface of a Zn anode for efficient AZIBs. The abundant polar functional groups in PDA significantly enhance interfacial contact in aqueous media, which reduces the number of water molecules reaching the zinc surface through fast desolvation, thus lowering the energy barrier for Zn2+ migration. Furthermore, the porous PDA coating controls the ion flux via the ion‐confinement effect, thereby accelerating Zn2+ kinetics on the zinc surface. Consequently, Zn@PDA exhibits significantly improved Zn2+ deposition kinetics (nucleation potential of only 32.6 mV vs 50.2 mV of bare Zn) compared with bare Zn at 2.0 mA cm−2, with a dendrite‐free surface and negligible byproduct formation. When paired with a MnO2 cathode, the Zn@PDA//MnO2 cell delivers high discharge capacity and long cycle stability without significant performance deterioration over 1000 cycles at 1.0 A g−1. Additionally, the cell demonstrates excellent shelving‐restoring performance.
A polydopamine (PDA) layer that shows the dual effects of fast desolvation and ion confinement is constructed on the surface of a Zn anode to regulate the deposition of Zn2+, resulting in fast Zn2+ transport capability and uniformly deposited Zn layers. The cells assembled with the Zn@PDA exhibit highly reversible plating/stripping behavior and excellent long‐term stability.
Abstract
The production of CH
3
OH from the photocatalytic CO
2
reduction reaction (PCRR) presents a promising route for the clean utilization of renewable resources, but charge recombination, an ...unsatisfying stability and a poor selectivity limit its practical application. In this paper, we present the design and fabrication of 0D/2D materials with polymeric C
3
N
4
nanosheets and CdSe quantum dots (QDs) to enhance the separation and reduce the diffusion length of charge carriers. The rapid outflow of carriers also restrains self‐corrosion and consequently enhances the stability. Furthermore, based on quantum confinement effects of the QDs, the energy of the electrons could be adjusted to a level that inhibits the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER, the main competitive reaction to PCRR) and improves the selectivity and activity for CH
3
OH production from the PCRR. The band structures of photocatalysts with various CdSe particle sizes were also investigated quantitatively to establish the relationship between the band energy and the photocatalytic performance.
A sulfur‐rich copolymer@carbon nanotubes hybrid cathode is introduced for lithium–sulfur batteries produced by combining the physical and chemical confinement of polysulfides. The binderfree and ...metal‐current‐collector‐free cathode of dual confinement enables an efficient pathway for the fabrication of high‐performance sulfur copolymer carbon matrix electrodes for lithium–sulfur batteries.
In this article, a strongly coupled one-component plasma (OCP), where ions interact with a background of weakly coupled electrons, is considered. The thermodynamic properties of this plasma were ...studied on the basis of three types of interaction potentials. The first potential with ionic core obtained from <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">ab</tex-math> </inline-formula> <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">initio</tex-math> </inline-formula> simulations takes into account the effects of the bound electrons, the second is the well-known Yukawa potential, and the third is the effective potential derived by the method of dielectric response function taking into account electron screening and quantum-mechanical diffraction effect of electrons. The radial distribution functions (RDFs) were calculated for the first potential using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and were additionally compared with the RDFs obtained for all three potentials by solving the integral Ornstein-Zernike equation in the hypernetted chain (HNC) approximation and show that the use of the effective potential is not applicable at warm dense matter (WDM) conditions, when the ion core is significant.
The authors, editors and publisher of Molecular Simulation, have retracted the following article:
Jiaxing Yuan (2019) Ewald summation for ion-dipole mixture under the dielectric confinement, ...Molecular Simulation, DOI:
10.1080/08927022.2019.1698740
"This article was published without having recognized all of the contributors to the work. With the agreement of all authors, therefore, it is being retracted."
We have been informed in our decision-making by our policy on publishing ethics and integrity and the COPE guidelines on retractions.
The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as "Retracted".
The exploration of inexpensive, facile, and large‐scale methods to prepare carbon scaffolds for high sulfur loadings is crucial for the advancement of Li–S batteries (LSBs). Herein, the authors ...report a new nitrogen and oxygen in situ dual‐doped nonporous carbonaceous material (NONPCM) that is composed of a myriad of graphene‐analogous particles. Importantly, NONPCM could be fabricated on a kilogram scale via inexpensive and green hydrothermal‐carbonization‐combined methods. Many active sites on the NONPCM surface are accessible for the efficient surface‐chemistry confinement of guest sulfur and its discharge product; this confinement is exclusive of physical entrapment, considering the low surface area. Electrochemical examination demonstrates excellent cycle stability and rate performance of the NONPCM (K)/S composite, even with a sulfur loading of 80 or 90 wt%. Hence, the scaffolds for LSBs exhibit potential for industrialization through further optimization and expansion of the present synthesis.
A new nitrogen and oxygen in situ dual‐doped nonporous carbonaceous material (NONPCM): NONPCM, composed of a myriad of graphene‐analogous particles, is for the first time fabricated on a kilogram scale by a green hydrothermal method. Considering the favorable preparation and remarkable electrochemical behavior, NONPCM is a very promising candidate for sulfur scaffolds to bridge the practical applications of Li–S batteries.
At the heart of electrically driven semiconductors lasers lies their gain medium that typically comprises epitaxially grown double heterostuctures or multiple quantum wells. The simultaneous spatial ...confinement of charge carriers and photons afforded by the smaller bandgaps and higher refractive index of the active layers as compared to the cladding layers in these structures is essential for the optical‐gain enhancement favorable for device operation. Emulating these inorganic gain media, superb properties of highly stable low‐threshold (as low as ≈8 µJ cm−2) linearly polarized lasing from solution‐processed Ruddlesden–Popper (RP) perovskite microplatelets are realized. Detailed investigations using microarea transient spectroscopies together with finite‐difference time‐domain simulations validate that the mixed lower‐dimensional RP perovskites (functioning as cladding layers) within the microplatelets provide both enhanced exciton and photon confinement for the higher‐dimensional RP perovskites (functioning as the active gain media). Furthermore, structure–lasing‐threshold relationship (i.e., correlating the content of lower‐dimensional RP perovskites in a single microplatelet) vital for design and performance optimization is established. Dual‐wavelength lasing from these quasi‐2D RP perovskite microplatelets can also be achieved. These unique properties distinguish RP perovskite microplatelets as a new family of self‐assembled multilayer planar waveguide gain media favorable for developing efficient lasers.
A low‐threshold optically pumped solution‐processed Ruddlesden–Popper perovskite microplatelet laser that emits high‐stability linearly polarized emission is realized. The superb lasing properties are attributed to the mixed lower‐dimensional perovskite layers (acting as cladding layers) that provide both enhanced exciton and photon confinement for the higher‐dimensional perovskite layers (functioning as gain media).
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