485 research outputs found
Personality Disruption as Mental Torture: The CIA, Interrogational Abuse, and the U.S. Torture Act
This Article is a contribution to the torture debate. It argues that the abusive interrogation tactics used by the United States in what was then called the “global war on terrorism” are, unequivocally, torture under U.S. law. To some readers, this might sound like déjà vu all over again. Hasn’t this issue been picked over for nearly fifteen years? It has, but we think the legal analysis we offer has been mostly overlooked. We argue that the basic character of the CIA’s interrogation of so-called “high-value detainees” has been misunderstood: both lawyers and commentators have placed far too much emphasis on the dozen or so “enhanced interrogation techniques” (EITs) short-listed in government “torture memos,” and far too little emphasis on other forms of physical violence, psychological stressors, environmental manipulations, and abusive conditions of confinement that are crucial to the question of whether the detainees were tortured. Furthermore, we dispute one of the standard narratives about the origins of the program: that it was the brainchild of civilian contractor psychologists because— in the CIA’s words—“[n]on-standard interrogation methodologies were not an area of expertise of CIA officers or of the US Government generally.”
This narrative ignores the CIA’s role in devising these methods, in spite of the decades of prior CIA research and doctrine about forcing interrogation subjects into a state of extreme psychological debilitation, and about how to do so—by making them physically weak, intensely fearful and anxious, and helplessly dependent. By neglecting this history and focusing on the contractors and the EITs they devised, this narrative contributes to the misunderstanding that the torture debate is about EITs and nothing else. In effect, a “torture debate” about EITs and the torture memos neglects the purloined letter in front of our eyes: the abusive conditions the CIA inflicted on prisoners even when they were not subject to EITs, including abuses that the torture memos never bothered to discuss. Unpacking what this debate is really about turns out to be crucial to understanding that such interrogation methods are torture under existing U.S. law. The U.S. Torture Act includes a clause in its definition of mental torture that was intended to ban exactly the kind of interrogation methods the CIA had researched, out of concern that our Cold War adversaries were using them: mind-altering procedures “calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality.” That is precisely the “non-standard interrogation methodology” the CIA employed after 9/11
Concerning the issue of mudding permeable beds when using clayless drilling fluids
In conditions of multi-zone hydrocarbons deposits non-uniform in depth and strike the use of carbonate blockers of the same type is ineffective due to the low reliability of the data on the size of collector pores. The problem can be solved by using composite blockers containing both rigid and elastic materials. The paper shows the results of laboratory studies and examples of practical application of the composite blockers in Biokar clayless mud system
Quantum rotational band model for the Heisenberg molecular magnet Mo72Fe30
We derive the low temperature properties of the molecular magnet Mo72Fe30,
where 30 Fe(3+) paramagnetic ions occupy the sites of an icosidodecahedron and
interact via isotropic nearest-neighbour antiferromagnetic Heisenberg exchange.
The key idea of our model (J.S. & M.L.) is that the low-lying excitations form
a sequence of rotational bands, i.e., for each such band the excitation
energies depend quadratically on the total spin quantum number. For
temperatures below 50 mK we predict that the magnetisation is described by a
staircase with 75 equidistant steps as the magnetic field is increased up to a
critical value and saturated for higher fields. For higher temperatures thermal
broadening effects wash out the staircase and yield a linear ramp below the
critical field, and this has been confirmed by our measurements (R.M.). We
demonstrate that the lowest two rotational bands are separated by an energy gap
of 0.7 meV, and this could be tested by EPR and inelastic neutron scattering
measurements. We also predict the occurrence of resonances at temperatures
below 0.1 K in the proton NMR spin-lattice relaxation rate associated with
level crossings. As rotational bands characterize the spectra of many magnetic
molecules our method opens a new road towards a description of their
low-temperature behaviour which is not otherwise accessible.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, accepted for Europhysics Letter
Application of clayless drilling fluids under conditions of high reservoir pressures and temperatures
The paper considers the application clayless drilling fluids under conditions of great depths, high reservoir pressures and temperatures. It was determined that increasing the density of clayless drilling fluids by conventional weighting agents is accompanied by increasing rate of bottomhole filtering. It is shown that the solution of this problem is possible through the use of water-soluble salts. The results of laboratory and field tests for clayless drilling fluids weighted with water-soluble salts are presented
Continuous families of isospectral Heisenberg spin systems and the limits of inference from measurements
We investigate classes of quantum Heisenberg spin systems which have
different coupling constants but the same energy spectrum and hence the same
thermodynamical properties. To this end we define various types of
isospectrality and establish conditions for their occurence. The triangle and
the tetrahedron whose vertices are occupied by spins 1/2 are investigated in
some detail. The problem is also of practical interest since isospectrality
presents an obstacle to the experimental determination of the coupling
constants of small interacting spin systems such as magnetic molecules
Discordant Evolution of the Adjacent Antiretroviral Genes TRIM22 and TRIM5 in Mammals
TRIM5α provides a cytoplasmic block to retroviral infection, and orthologs encoded by some primates are active against HIV. Here, we present an evolutionary comparison of the TRIM5 gene to its closest human paralogs: TRIM22, TRIM34, and TRIM6. We show that TRIM5 and TRIM22 have a dynamic history of gene expansion and loss during the evolution of mammals. The cow genome contains an expanded cluster of TRIM5 genes and no TRIM22 gene, while the dog genome encodes TRIM22 but has lost TRIM5. In contrast, TRIM6 and TRIM34 have been strictly preserved as single gene orthologs in human, dog, and cow. A more focused analysis of primates reveals that, while TRIM6 and TRIM34 have evolved under purifying selection, TRIM22 has evolved under positive selection as was previously observed for TRIM5. Based on TRIM22 sequences obtained from 27 primate genomes, we find that the positive selection of TRIM22 has occurred episodically for approximately 23 million years, perhaps reflecting the changing pathogenic landscape. However, we find that the evolutionary episodes of positive selection that have acted on TRIM5 and TRIM22 are mutually exclusive, with generally only one of these genes being positively selected in any given primate lineage. We interpret this to mean that the positive selection of one gene has constrained the adaptive flexibility of its neighbor, probably due to genetic linkage. Finally, we find a striking congruence in the positions of amino acid residues found to be under positive selection in both TRIM5α and TRIM22, which in both proteins fall predominantly in the β2-β3 surface loop of the B30.2 domain. Astonishingly, this same loop is under positive selection in the multiple cow TRIM5 genes as well, indicating that this small structural loop may be a viral recognition motif spanning a hundred million years of mammalian evolution
BCS-BEC crossover at finite temperature in the broken-symmetry phase
The BCS-BEC crossover is studied in a systematic way in the broken-symmetry
phase between zero temperature and the critical temperature. This study bridges
two regimes where quantum and thermal fluctuations are, respectively,
important. The theory is implemented on physical grounds, by adopting a
fermionic self-energy in the broken-symmetry phase that represents fermions
coupled to superconducting fluctuations in weak coupling and to bosons
described by the Bogoliubov theory in strong coupling. This extension of the
theory beyond mean field proves important at finite temperature, to connect
with the results in the normal phase. The order parameter, the chemical
potential, and the single-particle spectral function are calculated numerically
for a wide range of coupling and temperature. This enables us to assess the
quantitative importance of superconducting fluctuations in the broken-symmetry
phase over the whole BCS-BEC crossover. Our results are relevant to the
possible realizations of this crossover with high-temperature cuprate
superconductors and with ultracold fermionic atoms in a trap.Comment: 21 pages, 15 figure
Supersymmetric version of a Gaussian irrotational compressible fluid flow
The Lie point symmetries and corresponding invariant solutions are obtained
for a Gaussian, irrotational, compressible fluid flow. A supersymmetric
extension of this model is then formulated through the use of a superspace and
superfield formalism. The Lie superalgebra of this extended model is determined
and a classification of its subalgebras is performed. The method of symmetry
reduction is systematically applied in order to derive special classes of
invariant solutions of the supersymmetric model. Several new types of
algebraic, hyperbolic, multi-solitonic and doubly periodic solutions are
obtained in explicit form.Comment: Expanded introduction and added new section on classical Gaussian
fluid flow. Included several additional reference
Genomics in premature infants: A non-invasive strategy to obtain high-quality DNA
We used a cost-effective, non-invasive method to obtain high-quality DNA from buccal epithelial-cells (BEC) of premature infants for genomic analysis. DNAs from BEC were obtained from premature infants with gestational age ≤ 36 weeks. Short terminal repeats (STRs) were performed simultaneously on DNA obtained from the buccal swabs and blood from the same patient. The STR profiles demonstrated that the samples originated from the same individual and exclude any contamination by external DNAs. Whole exome sequencing was performed on DNAs obtained from BEC on premature infants with and without necrotizing enterocolitis, and successfully provided a total number of reads and variants corroborating with those obtained from healthy blood donors. We provide a proof of concept that BEC is a reliable and preferable source of DNA for high-throughput sequencing in premature infants
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