This thesis examines the loyalty of the Shi'a of Iraq. While some Sunni Arab leaders have recently accused the Shi'a of Iraq of pledging loyalty to Iran, in fact the Iraqi Shi'a are loyal to their own nation. The Shi'a have developed different identities in Iran and Iraq due to different historical legacies and patterns of conversion. Modern religious-based political activists in the two nations have responded to their different circumstances with different policies. Ba'athist Party programs that secularized Iraqi society collapsed in the wake of events in the 1908s and 1990s. Old sources of authority reemerged among the Iraqi Shi'i community in their wake. These sources, primarily religious and tribal leaders, asserted themselves after the American invasion overthrew Saddam Hussein. Shi'i leaders such as Sadr and Sistani have sought not to work in the interests of Iran, but in what they perceive as the interest of their own constituents. They share many interests with Iran, but have been willing to work with Americans. The thesis urges American leaders to see that Shi'a of Iraq as they are, not as Sunnis Arab leaders portray them, in order to avoid alienating the Shi'a and thus pushing them further toward Iran. / US Marine Corps (USMC) author.

No description available.

Recently, the prediction of promoters has attracted many researchers' attention. Unfortunately, most previous prediction algorithms did not provide high enough sensitivity and specificity. The goal of this thesis is to develop an efficient prediction algorithm that can increase the detection power (power = 1 - false negative). We do not try to find more distinct features in promoters one by one, such as transcriptional elements. Our main idea is to use the computer power to calculate all possible patterns which are the possible features of promoters. Accordingly, we shall define some scoring methods for training a given set of sequences, which involve promoter sequences and non-promoter sequences. Then, we can obtain a threshold value for determining whether a testing sequence is a promoter or not. By the experimental results, our prediction has higher correct rate than other previous methods.

Photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) are fabricated in silica with air holes running along the entire fiber in the fiber cladding. The geometric parameters of the PCFs are fixed and it is hard to modulate their optical properties. By infiltrating index-tunable liquids into the air holes of the PCFs, we can obtain liquid-filled PCFs which can function as tunable optical devices. But the losses become large due to the lossy liquid-hole layers. In this thesis, we use a simple selectively blocking technique and the vacuum filling method to fabricate internally liquid-filled PCFs. From the measured results, the propagation losses of the internally liquid-filled PCFs can be efficiently reduced, and the thermal tunability is still maintained. Besides, we also fabricate internally liquid-crystal-filled PCFs. Not only the thermal tunability but also the electrical tunability can be retained of the loss-reduced internally LC-filled PCFs. The electrical tunability can be induced by applying an external electric field. As the applied voltage reaches 200 V, we can obtain the splitting effect of the transmission band. By using the selectively blocking technique, we also fabricate birefringent liquid-filled PCFs by asymmetrically infiltrating the liquid into the unblocked air holes. An elliptical far field can be observed for our sample. In addition, the measured polarization dependent loss (PDL) is larger than 2 dB. Compared with traditional PMFs, our fabricated sample has larger PDL values and birefringence. The measured birefringence is as high as 2.89¡Ñ10-3 at 1547.8 nm. Besides, a temperature sensor consisting of a Sagnac loop interferometer (SLI) and our fabricated birefringent liquid-filled PCF is demonstrated. The linear sensitivity is -2.12 nm/¢XC which is larger than that of other PMF-based SLI sensors.

In this study, a thermodynamic model was built to apply to discuss the defect structure of GaAs epitaxial film grown on Si substrate by MBE, and it was specially focus on the GaAs/Si growth process. . It includes the initial layer, thermal treatment, epitaxial growth, n-type doping and the high temperature thermal annealing. The defect concentrations were calculated in thermal equilibrium. The result of simulation shows that defect concentration is dependent on the growth parameters such as the substrate temperature, V/III ratio and the input reactant pressure. For the GaAs/Si epitaxial process, the buffer layer was grown at low temperature with a slow growth rate but better the film. On the result of simulations, it shows that the defect concentrations decrease very slowly as the growth temperature below 450¢J. So the substrate temperature selected for the initial film growth could be above 450oC. The defect structure of epitaxial layer grown pseudo-morphically at low temperature(~300¢J) was beyond our calculation. The re-crystallization of epitaxial layer and the redistribution of defects were occurred during the thermal annealing process. The defect structure of GaAs epilayer were simulated as a function of arsenics pressure in the annealing process. It is expected that the Ga-rich GaAs epilayer is obtained, and the AsGa is not the dominant defect in the epilayer since AsGa is a deep energy level defect. After the buffer layer was grown, the growth temperature of GaAs epilayer could be simulated by thermodynamic analysis, and the results were obtained at 450¢J~630¢J. It is important to determine the growth windows of GaAs epilayer by the thermodynamic analysis, and the results of simulation were verified by several reports. The Si-doped GaAs layers are processed by thermal annealed under an arsenic overpressure. For the Si-doped level estimated to be 1018cm-3, the annealing temperature and As4 overpressure used in simulation were at 1000¢J and 10-3 ~ 10 atm, respectively. An n-type GaAs epilayer with dominant defects SiGa and SiAs were obtained under the annealing condition. For electrical characterization of GaAs epilayer, it was found that free carrier concentration, ion-scattering mobility and neutral-scattering mobility at room temperature were relate to the defect structure of GaAs epilayer, and the nature doping of GaAs epilayer grown by MBE is usually p-type. The free carrier concentration and total mobility of GaAs epilayer are about 1015cm-3 and 300 cm2/sec-V, respectively. The result of thermodynamic analysis and calculation are very close to the data reported. Typically, it is of course, as being with any theoretical analysis, often a shortage of relevant data in which to quantify the predictions. However, the calculation of thermodynamic framework and the analysis of electrical characterization could help to decrease the minimum number of experiments needed to get the most useful data.

The essay is a system thinking approach to research the escalation ¡V case study such as War-Mart, Intel and Chi-Mei corporation To research some points, firstly to research when the enterprises face the intense competition environment, what should we do for ourselves? Besides to fight with the opponents, is there any other methods we can take? In addition, when the enterprises face the escalation, what strategies they should take in order to get rid of the troubles or solve the problems? In this research, there are also some viewpoints from the literatures that show the peaceful salutations. However, if it possible to reach that goal, there will not be so many prices and commercial wars that happen so often at present.The author tries to take some successful examples to sum up several methods and rules which are the salutations for the escalation. we also can find that while we are facing the escalation, we should take more care of how we and our opponents use the different sources each other which might make different thoughts. If we analyze this in advance, and we will find why the escalation happen so frequently just because it is the result of people¡¦s react rapidly for the threat. Thus, we should find the key point for the enterprises, to look for the people who are creative. Therefore we should cultivate ourselves every day to increase our creative personalities in order to decrease escalation.

In this work first we characterize two nondegenerate positive random variables X and Y to be gammally distributed with the same scale parameter under the assumptions X/Y}|Y~B(p,q) and E((Y-X)^k|X)=b for some fixed integer k>1 and constant b. Among others characterizations of the gamma and beta distributions based on some special quadratic forms of conditional moments are also investigated.