Remember Not to Forget Furman: A Response to Professor Smith

Professor Robert J. Smith encourages readers, lawyers, and courts to forget Furman v. Georgia and to focus instead on death penalty challenges grounded in the diminished culpability of nearly all capital defendants. We applaud Professor Smith’s call to focus on the mental and emotional characteristics that reduce the blameworthiness of so many of those charged with capital crimes; recognizing diminished culpability as the rule rather than the exception among capital defendants conveys a reality that rarely finds its way into reported cases. We are troubled, however, by Professor Smith’s call to “forget Furman.” We believe the title and the article’s efforts to undermine Furman-based challenges disserve Professor Smith’s principal goal — addressing the United States’ broken death penalty system

Steady-state charging of quantum batteries via dissipative ancillas

We investigate the steady-state charging process of a single-cell quantum battery embedded in an N-cell star network of qubits, each interacting with a fermion reservoir, collectively and individually in equilibrium and non-equilibrium scenarios, respectively. We find an optimal steady-state charging in both scenarios, which grows monotonically with the reservoirs' chemical potential and chemical potential difference. Where the high base temperature of the reservoirs has a destructive role in all parameter regimes. We indicate that regardless of the strength of the non-equilibrium condition, the high base chemical potential of the battery's corresponding reservoir can significantly enhance the charging process. On the other hand, a weak coupling strength can strongly suppress the charging. Consequently, our results could counteract the detrimental effects of self-discharging and provide valuable guidelines for enhancing the stable charging of open quantum batteries in the absence of an external charging field.Comment: 5 pqages, 6 figure

Ultrastructural anatomy of nodes of Ranvier in the peripheral nervous system as revealed by STED microscopy.

We used stimulated emission depletion (STED) superresolution microscopy to analyze the nanoscale organization of 12 glial and axonal proteins at the nodes of Ranvier of teased sciatic nerve fibers. Cytoskeletal proteins of the axon (betaIV spectrin, ankyrin G) exhibit a high degree of one-dimensional longitudinal order at nodal gaps. In contrast, axonal and glial nodal adhesion molecules [neurofascin-186, neuron glial-related cell adhesion molecule (NrCAM)] can arrange in a more complex, 2D hexagonal-like lattice but still feature a ∼190-nm periodicity. Such a lattice-like organization is also found for glial actin. Sodium and potassium channels exhibit a one-dimensional periodicity, with the Nav channels appearing to have a lower degree of organization. At paranodes, both axonal proteins (betaII spectrin, Caspr) and glial proteins (neurofascin-155, ankyrin B) form periodic quasi–one-dimensional arrangements, with a high degree of interdependence between the position of the axonal and the glial proteins. The results indicate the presence of mechanisms that finely align the cytoskeleton of the axon with the one of the Schwann cells, both at paranodal junctions (with myelin loops) and at nodal gaps (with microvilli). Taken together, our observations reveal the importance of the lateral organization of proteins at the nodes of Ranvier and pave the way for deeper investigations of the molecular ultrastructural mechanisms involved in action potential propagation, the formation of the nodes, axon–glia interactions, and demyelination diseases

Quantum battery charging by non-equilibrium steady-state currents

We present an analysis of the availability and maximum extractable work of quantum batteries in the presence of charge and/or heat steady-state currents. Quantum batteries are modelled as non-interacting open quantum systems (mesoscopic systems) strongly coupled to two thermal and particle reservoirs within the framework of non-equilibrium Green's function theory in a steady-state regime. We found that the battery can be charged manifestly by a steady-state charge current compared to heat one, especially, in an off-resonant transport regime. It allows us to reliably access the performance of the quantum batteries in the high bias-charging regime.Comment: new Refs. adde

Disquieting Discretion: Race, Geography & the Colorado Death Penalty in the First Decade of the Twenty-First Century

This Article demonstrates through original statistical research that prosecutors in Colorado were more likely to seek the death penalty against minority defendants than against white defendants. Moreover, defendants in Colorado’s Eighteenth Judicial District were more likely to face a death prosecution than defendants elsewhere in the state. Our empirical analysis demonstrates that even when one controls for the differential rates at which different groups commit statutorily death-eligible murders, non-white defendants and defendants in the Eighteenth Judicial District were still more likely than others to face a death penalty prosecution. Even when the heinousness of the crime is accounted for, the race of the accused and the place of the crime are statistically significant predictors of whether prosecutors will seek the death penalty. We discuss the implications of this disparate impact on the constitutionality of Colorado’s death penalty regime, concluding that the Colorado statute does not meet the dictates of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution