Emotional Distress Claims, Dignitary Torts, and the Medical-Legal Fiction of Reasonable Sensitivity

Can individuals with a highly sensitive temperament recover in tort for intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED)? In 2019, an article in the University of Memphis Law Review raised this question, referring to the Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) construct in psychology and asking whether the IIED tort’s \u27reasonable person\u27 standard discriminates against highly sensitive plaintiffs. Following up on that discussion, the present article considers how the law of IIED has historically treated plaintiffs with diagnosed psychiatric vulnerabilities that are either known or unknown to the defendant. The article also extends this discussion to the law\u27s treatment of temperaments, such as high sensitivity, which are distinct from diagnosed psychiatric disorders; presents hypothetical scenarios with respect to undiagnosed but inferred or predicted vulnerabilities; and explores the history of the dignitary IIED tort and the origins of its reasonableness requirement. This discussion acknowledges that scientific advances can allow uniquely vulnerable plaintiffs to assert harm in new ways—while also (1) pointing out that scientific uncertainties regarding the mind and temperamental sensitivity persist today and (2) touching on clinical and criminal law approaches to intentionally inflicted harms, which can emphasize the defendant\u27s conduct as opposed to the plaintiff’s subjective traits or experience for victim-protecting reasons. The purpose of raising these considerations is not to suggest particular reforms or strategies but, rather, to encourage readers to consider the potential impact of focusing on the plaintiff\u27s biology on the one hand, or the defendant\u27s conduct on the other, when deciding how to remedy intentionally inflicted mental harms

Vapor pressures and heats of vaporization of primary coal tars

The vapor pressure correlations that now exist for coal tars are quite crude. Sophisticated general correlative approaches are slowly being developed, based upon group contribution methods, or based upon some key functional features of the molecules. These are as yet difficult to apply to coal tars. The detailed group contribution methods, in which fairly precise structural information is needed, do not lend themselves well for application. to very complex, poorly characterized coal tars. The methods based upon more global types of characterizations have not yet dealt much with the question of oxygenated functional groups. In short, only very limited correlations exist, and these are not considered reliable to even an order of magnitude when applied to tars. The present project seeks to address this important gap in the near term by direct measurement of vapor pressures of coal tar fractions, by application of well-established techniques and modifications thereof. The principal objectives of the program are to: (1) obtain data on the vapor pressures and heats of vaporization of tars from a range of ranks of coal, (2) develop correlations based on a minimum set of conveniently measurable characteristics of the tars, (3) develop equipment that would allow performing such measurements in a reliable, straightforward fashion

Study of Activation of Coal Char

This is the third report on a project whose aim is to explore in a fundamental manner the factors that influence the development of porosity in coal chars during the process of activation. It is known that choices of starting coal, activating agent and conditions can strongly influence the nature of an activated carbon produced from a coal. Interest in this phase of the project turned to characterization of one particular char. Results have been published on Pittsburgh No. 8 char using an entirely different porosity characterization method. The interpretation of the results in that other study is not entirely consistent with what has been observed in this study. In particular, the results of the present study seemed to indicate the opening up of existing porosity, as opposed to creation of new porosity. It is difficult to infer much, based upon the porosity characterizations alone. Instead, attention was turned to the correlation of porosity with reactivity, which can provide a clue as to whether there was actually full accessibility of all of the observed porosity. The conclusion is that the pores are not all fully accessible, and that different oxidizing gases behave differently. The suggestion is that measured porosity is not all accessible to reactants. Also, attempts to correlate reactivity of chars with surface area are likely to be problematic, if different gases behave differently in this regard

Pyrolysis process for producing fuel gas

Solid waste resource recovery in space is effected by pyrolysis processing, to produce light gases as the main products (CH.sub.4, H.sub.2, CO.sub.2, CO, H.sub.2O, NH.sub.3) and a reactive carbon-rich char as the main byproduct. Significant amounts of liquid products are formed under less severe pyrolysis conditions, and are cracked almost completely to gases as the temperature is raised. A primary pyrolysis model for the composite mixture is based on an existing model for whole biomass materials, and an artificial neural network models the changes in gas composition with the severity of pyrolysis conditions

Study of Activation of Coal Char

This is the second report on a project whose aim is to explore in a fundamental manner the factors that influence the development of porosity in coal chars during the process of activation. It is known that choices of starting coal, activating agent and conditions can strongly influence the nature of an activated carbon produced from a coal. This work has again confirmed that there is a fundamental difference in char structure that is reflective of the source of the chars. What is new in the present results is a strong indication that this difference is seen, irrespective of the conditions of char preparation. Results were compared for utility combustion chars, all of which were prepared under the very high intense heating conditions of utility boilers, and the laboratory-prepared chars prepared at orders of magnitude lower heating rates. The chars were of very similar nature regardless of the heating conditions that led to their preparation (and despite major differences in level of burnoff). On the other hand, the results from the examination of the laboratory char results do again suggest that the activation conditions play some role in determining porosity, though their effect is decidedly less important than the role of the parent material. This is true despite an enormous range of reactivity exhibited by the activating agents

Making Activated Carbon for Storing Gas

Solid disks of microporous activated carbon, produced by a method that enables optimization of pore structure, have been investigated as means of storing gas (especially hydrogen for use as a fuel) at relatively low pressure through adsorption on pore surfaces. For hydrogen and other gases of practical interest, a narrow distribution of pore sizes <2 nm is preferable. The present method is a variant of a previously patented method of cyclic chemisorption and desorption in which a piece of carbon is alternately (1) heated to the lower of two elevated temperatures in air or other oxidizing gas, causing the formation of stable carbon/oxygen surface complexes; then (2) heated to the higher of the two elevated temperatures in flowing helium or other inert gas, causing the desorption of the surface complexes in the form of carbon monoxide. In the present method, pore structure is optimized partly by heating to a temperature of 1,100 C during carbonization. Another aspect of the method exploits the finding that for each gas-storage pressure, gas-storage capacity can be maximized by burning off a specific proportion (typically between 10 and 20 weight percent) of the carbon during the cyclic chemisorption/desorption process

Pyrolysis processing for solid waste resource recovery

Solid waste resource recovery in space is effected by pyrolysis processing, to produce light gases as the main products (CH.sub.4, H.sub.2, CO.sub.2, CO, H.sub.2O, NH.sub.3) and a reactive carbon-rich char as the main byproduct. Significant amounts of liquid products are formed under less severe pyrolysis conditions, and are cracked almost completely to gases as the temperature is raised. A primary pyrolysis model for the composite mixture is based on an existing model for whole biomass materials, and an artificial neural network models the changes in gas composition with the severity of pyrolysis conditions