Extraordinary Punishment: Conditions of Confinement and Compassionate Release

People experience severe forms of harm while incarcerated, including medical neglect, prolonged solitary confinement, sexual and physical violence, and a host of other ills. But civil rights litigation under the Eighth Amendment—the most common vehicle through which people seek to redress these harms—presents significant practical and doctrinal barriers to incarcerated plaintiffs. Most notably, the Eighth Amendment’s “deliberate indifference” standard asks not whether a person has been harmed, but instead requires plaintiffs to demonstrate a criminally reckless mental state on the part of prison officials. Further, Eighth Amendment remedies are limited to damages or injunctions, which may not adequately redress a specific harm that a person is suffering. For these reasons, the Eighth Amendment has often fallen far short of providing litigants adequate relief. At the same time, once a person is sentenced, the original sentencing judge generally has no control over whether a harm suffered in prison is remedied. However, since the passage of the First Step Act of 2018, people incarcerated in the federal system have a new vehicle for getting these kinds of claims into court: federal compassionate release. Compassionate release motions are heard by the original sentencing judge, who has the authority to reduce a person’s sentence if they can demonstrate, among other things, “extraordinary and compelling” reasons (ECRs) that warrant relief. In November of 2023, the U.S. Sentencing Commission amended the Federal Sentencing Guidelines and drastically expanded the ECR definition to include claims based on the types of harms that have been traditionally litigated under the Eighth Amendment. These changes represent a watershed reform to federal sentencing law and give district courts enormous discretion to reexamine federal sentences. Given the challenge of redressing harms under the Eighth Amendment, this Article argues that the expansion of compassionate release ECRs to encompass harmful conditions of confinement makes doctrinal sense and allows for a more appropriate remedy to harms done in prison than traditional civil remedies

The causes for geographical variations in OS187/OS186 at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary

Researchers at Yale has approached the problem of the osmium isotopic composition of marine deposits formed in contact with both oxidized and reduced bottom waters. The measured (187) Os/(186) Os ratios of modern bulk sediment can be explained using mixing equations involving continental detrital, volcaniclastic, cosmogenic and hydrogeneous components. These studies show that sediments deposited under reducing marine conditions contain a hydrogenous component which is enriched in Re and has a radiogenic (187) Os/(186) Os ratio. The presence of such a hydrogenous component in the marine fish clay at Stevns Klint can account for the elevation of its (187) Os/(186) Os ration above the expected meteoritic value. Mass balance considerations require the Re/Os ratio of the phase precipitated from the terminal Cretaceous sea at Stevns Klint to have been about one tenth the value observed in contemporary deposits in the Black Sea, assuming Re has not been lost (or Os gained) subsequent to precipitation. In continental sections, the elevation of the (187) Os/(186) Os ratio in boundary layers may be due to precipitation from continental waters of crustally-derived radiogenic osmium either contemporaneous with the meteoritic (or mantle) osmium deposition or later during diagenesis

Measuring the upset of CMOS and TTL due to HPM-signals

To measure the performance of electronic components when stressed by High Power Microwave signals a setup was designed and tested which allows a well-defined voltage signal to enter the component during normal operation, and to discriminate its effect on the component.</p><p style=&quot;line-height: 20px;&quot;> The microwave signal is fed to the outside conductor of a coaxial cable and couples into the inner signal line connected to the device under test (DUT). The disturbing HF-signal is transferred almost independent from frequency to maintain the pulse shape in the time domain. The configuration designed to perform a TEM-coupling within a 50 Ohm system prevents the secondary system from feeding back to the primary system and, due to the geometrical parameters chosen, the coupling efficiency is as high as 50–90%. Linear dimensions and terminations applied allow for pulses up to a width of 12ns and up to a voltage level of 4–5 kV on the outside conductor. These pulse parameters proved to be sufficient to upset the DUTs tested so far.</p><p style=&quot;line-height: 20px;&quot;> In more than 400 measurements a rectangular pulse of increasing voltage level was applied to different types of CMOS and TTL until the individual DUT was damaged. As well the pulse width (3, 6 or 12 ns) and its polarity were varied in single-shot or repetitive-shot experiments (500 shots per voltage at a repetition rate of 3 Hz). The state of the DUT was continuously monitored by measuring both the current of the DUT circuit and that of the oscillator providing the operating signal for the DUT.</p><p style=&quot;line-height: 20px;&quot;> The results show a very good reproducibility within a set of identical samples, remarkable differences between manufacturers and lower thresholds for repetitive testing, which indicates a memory effect of the DUT to exist for voltage levels significantly below the single-shot threshold

Excitonic - vibronic coupled dimers: A dynamic approach

The dynamical properties of exciton transfer coupled to polarization vibrations in a two site system are investigated in detail. A fixed point analysis of the full system of Bloch - oscillator equations representing the coupled excitonic - vibronic flow is performed. For overcritical polarization a bifurcation converting the stable bonding ground state to a hyperbolic unstable state which is basic to the dynamical properties of the model is obtained. The phase space of the system is generally of a mixed type: Above bifurcation chaos develops starting from the region of the hyperbolic state and spreading with increasing energy over the Bloch sphere leaving only islands of regular dynamics. The behaviour of the polarization oscillator accordingly changes from regular to chaotic.Comment: uuencoded compressed Postscript file containing text and figures. In case of questions, please, write to [email protected]

Effect of Length of Feeding Period of Performance of British and Exotic Crossbred Yearling Heifers

Producers very often question the additional length of time they should feed exotic-cross cattle as opposed to the feeding period required for the traditional British breeds of cattle. Also implied in this question in this question is the additional amount of feed needed for the exotic-cross animal to attain an optimum weight and an acceptable grade. This trial was conducted in an attempt to help answer these basic questions

Investigation and management of primary immunodeficiency in South African children

The primary immunodeficiency diseases (PIDs) are inherited, non-communicable diseases that cause immunological dysfunction. PIDs are seldom reported in South Africa (SA). Based on a mid-2013 population estimate of 52.98 million and assuming that the prevalence of PIDs is similar to that in well-resourced settings, the total number of individuals with PIDs in our country should range between2 850 and 45 723. However, fewer than 500 cases of PID have been reported in SA. Between five and 15 new, fully characterised PIDs are reported annually. Our understanding of the physiology of the immune system has been substantially enhanced by these discoveries, and consequently the international classification of PIDs has been updated

Development of an innovative validation strategy of gas–surface interaction modelling for re‑entry applications

Abstract This paper summarises the final synthesis of an ESA technology research programme entitled “Development of an Innovative Validation Strategy of Gas Surface Interaction Modelling for Re-entry Applications”. The focus of the project was to demonstrate the correct pressure dependency of catalytic surface recombination, with an emphasis on Low Earth Orbit (LEO) re-entry conditions and thermal protection system materials. A physics-based model describing the prevalent recombination mechanisms was proposed for implementation into two CFD codes, TINA and TAU. A dedicated experimental campaign was performed to calibrate and validate the CFD model on TPS materials pertinent to the EXPERT space vehicle at a wide range of temperatures and pressures relevant to LEO. A new set of catalytic recombination data was produced that was able to improve the chosen model calibration for CVD-SiC and provide the first model calibration for the Nickel–Chromium super-alloy PM1000. The experimentally observed pressure dependency of catalytic recombination can only be reproduced by the Langmuir–Hinshelwood recombination mechanism. Due to decreasing degrees of (enthalpy and hence) dissociation with facility stagnation pressure, it was not possible to obtain catalytic recombination coefficients from the measurements at high experimental stagnation pressures. Therefore, the CFD model calibration has been improved by this activity based on the low pressure results. The results of the model calibration were applied to the existing EXPERT mission profile to examine the impact of the experimentally calibrated model at flight relevant conditions. The heat flux overshoot at the CVDSiC/PM1000 junction on EXPERT is confirmed to produce radiative equilibrium temperatures in close proximity to the PM1000 melt temperature.This was anticipated within the margins of the vehicle design; however, due to the measurements made here for the first time at relevant temperatures for the junction, an increased confidence in this finding is placed on the computations