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This essay is a comparative study of Judeo-Christian religion and religions from the ancient Middle East, mainly ancient Sumer/Mesopotamia and Egypt, with focus on the common symbols; the serpent, the cow and the tree. The comparison of the three symbols from different religious traditions highlights that there are both key differences and similarities. The differences and similarities are then explained with the help of professor Yair Zakovitch theory inverted reflections stories also referred to as mirror-narratives, which is an intertextual theory. The application of the theory helps to establish that many of the biblical myths are part of a large collection of polemical literature. A strategy within polemics was to invert symbols and motifs from the so called ”pagan” tradition and associate an old well known motif with the opposite meaning in the later biblical reinterpretations, or what Zakovitch identifies as mirror-narratives. The result of this study shows that the theory mirror-narratives is very fruitful in the comparison of Judeo-Christian religion and ”pagan” religions from the ancient Middle East.

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Approved for public release; distribution in unlimited. / In a world in which the use of violence continues to be viewed as an acceptable method to pursue political goals, the use of terrorism as a political method will also continue. And within that world, in the coming years, hostage rescues and other direct actions to combat terrorism are likely to be the most frequent type of missions conducted by state special operations forces, including those of Romania. This thesis explores the importance of integrating three types of decisions-informational, structural, and operational-for the successful outcome of special operations. The thesis analyzes four operations, conducted by American, Belgian, and Israeli forces, and the circumstances of their positive or negative outcomes. The historical cases show that, if any one of the three types of decisions was not integrated with the other two, the operation was doomed. The analysis also reveals that the integration of decision-making can best be realized by using interagency coordination mechanisms and a collocation of decision-makers, especially for situations in which command arrangements are highly complicated or unclear. In light of the findings in the four case studies, an analysis of the Romanian Special Operations Forces reveals that its overall structure does not favor either immediate-response or high-complexity missions. The thesis concludes with a number of recommendations for short- and long-term mitigation of current command and control problems faced by Romanian Special Operations Forces. / Captain, Romanian Army

L’objet de cette thèse est d’étudier plusieurs modèles probabilistes reliant les marches aléatoires et les arbres aléatoires issus de processus de branchement critiques.Dans la première partie, nous nous intéressons au modèle de marche aléatoire à valeurs dans un réseau euclidien et indexée par un arbre de Galton–Watson critique conditionné par la taille. Sous certaines hypothèses sur la loi de reproduction critique et la loi de saut centrée, nous obtenons, dans toutes les dimensions, la vitesse de croissance asymptotique du nombre de points visités par cette marche, lorsque la taille de l’arbre tend vers l’infini. Ces résultats nous permettent aussi de décrire le comportement asymptotique du nombre de points visités par une marche aléatoire branchante, quand la taille de la population initiale tend vers l’infini. Nous traitons également en parallèle certains cas où la marche aléatoire possède une dérive constante non nulle.Dans la deuxième partie, nous nous concentrons sur les propriétés fractales de la mesure harmonique des grands arbres de Galton–Watson critiques. On comprend par mesure harmonique la distribution de sortie, hors d’une boule centrée à la racine de l’arbre, d’une marche aléatoire simple sur cet arbre. Lorsque la loi de reproduction critique appartient au domaine d’attraction d’une loi stable, nous prouvons que la masse de la mesure harmonique est asymptotiquement concentrée sur une partie de la frontière, cette partie ayant une taille négligeable par rapport à celle de la frontière. En supposant que la loi de reproduction critique a une variance finie, nous arrivons à évaluer la masse de la mesure harmonique portée par un sommet de la frontière choisi uniformément au hasard. / The aim of this Ph. D. thesis is to study several probabilistic models linking the random walks and the random trees arising from critical branching processes.In the first part, we consider the model of random walk taking values in a Euclidean lattice and indexed by a critical Galton–Watson tree conditioned by the total progeny. Under some assumptions on the critical offspring distribution and the centered jump distribution, we obtain, in all dimensions, the asymptotic growth rate of the range of this random walk, when the size of the tree tends to infinity. These results also allow us to describe the asymptotic behavior of the range of a branching random walk, when the size of the initial population goes to infinity. In parallel, we treat likewise some cases where the random walk has a non-zero constant drift.In the second part, we focus on the fractal properties of the harmonic measure on large critical Galton–Watson trees. By harmonic measure, we mean the exit distribution from a ball centered at the root of the tree by simple random walk on this tree. If the critical offspring distribution is in the domain of attraction of a stable distribution, we prove that the mass of the harmonic measure is asymptotically concentrated on a boundary subset of negligible size with respect to that of the boundary. Assuming that the critical offspring distribution has a finite variance, we are able to calculate the mass of the harmonic measure carried by a random vertex uniformly chosen from the boundary.

Ce travail de recherche vise à présenter une collection de récits traditionnels persans, soit tirés et traduits des ressources indiennes, soit écrits et composés directement en persan dans le sous-continent. Notre attention s'est portée sur les récits en prose qui détiennent plusieurs emprunts de la tradition et la culture indienne, et ceux qui sont enrichis par des éléments narratifs et imaginaires fabuleux. Ces spécificités apparaissent dans de divers aspects : la structure du récit-cadre, les thèmes principaux et les personnages des contes. Les récits indo-persans sélectionnés sont présentés en détail par des informations sur leurs auteurs / traducteurs, la date et le lieu de composition, leurs thématiques, leurs sources originales, les manuscrits disponibles et d'autres références. La recherche actuelle est également un effort pour la pratique et le développement de la perception symbolique dans les récits classiques. Touti-Nâme, choisi comme le corpus de notre étude, nous fournit des scènes sur la vie sociale, les relations intimes et conjugales dans les contextes individuels et sociaux. J’ai examiné les thèmes dominants de la ruse des femmes, du conflit entre le désir et la loi, du rêve et du rire à travers des approches mythiques et symboliques. Le rôle prépondérant des personnages féminins et des perroquets sont étudiés profondément dans les contes. J'ai aussi essayé d'analyser les aspects psychiques des personnages par le biais de l'approche psychanalytique jungienne. Des exemples concrets de l'autorité et des jeux de pouvoir entre les sexes sont donnés dans Touti-Nâme comme spécificité des sociétés traditionnelles patriarcales. / The present research aims to introduce a collection of Persian traditional narratives, either translated from Indian sources, or written and composed directly into Persian language in the sub-continent. Our focus has been on prose narratives which hold multiple specificities borrowed from Indian tradition and culture, and are enriched by fabulous and imaginary narrative elements. Such specificities appear in diverse aspects : the frame structure of the stories, the leading themes and the typical Indian characters. These stories are presented in detail by providing information about their authors / translators, date and place of composition, themes, original sources, available manuscripts and other references.The current research is also an endeavor to practice and develop symbolic perception in classical stories. Touti-Nâme, chosen as our target text, demonstrates social life, conjugal relationships and power-struggle in both individual and social contexts. The dominant themes of women’s guiles and tricks, love and law conflict, dream and laughter have been examined through mythical and symbolic approaches. Women characters and birds such as parrots have gone through profound studies due to their predominant roles within the tales. I have also tried to study psychological aspects of story characters and their role in the events by means of the Jungian psychoanalytical approach. Concrete examples of gender authority and power-games in traditional patriarchal societies have been given in Touti-Nâme.

Perhaps surprisingly, the largest experience in operating nuclear power plants has been in nuclear naval propulsion, particularly submarines. This accumulated experience may become the basis of a proposed new generation of compact nuclear power plant designs. In an effort to de-carbonise commercial freight shipping, there is growing interest in the possibility of using nuclear propulsion systems. Reactor cores for such an application would need to be fundamentally different from land-based power generation systems, which require regular refueling, and from reactors used in military submarines, as the fuel used could not conceivably be as highly enriched. Nuclear-powered propulsion would allow ships to operate with low fuel costs, long refueling intervals, and minimal emissions; however, currently such systems remain largely confined to military vessels. This research project undertakes computational modeling of possible soluble-boron-free (SBF) reactor core designs for this application, with a view to informing design decisions in terms of choices of fuel composition, materials, core geometry and layout. Computational modeling using appropriate reactor physics (e.g. WIMS, MONK, Serpent and PANTHER), thermal-hydraulics etc. codes (e.g. COBRA-EN) is used for this project. With an emphasis on reactor physics, this study investigates possible fuel assembly and core designs for civil marine propulsion applications. In particular, it explores the feasibility of using uranium/thorium-rich fuel in a compact, long-life reactor and seek optimal choices and designs of the fuel composition, reactivity control, assembly geometry, and core loading in order to meet the operational needs of a marine propulsion reactor. In this reactor physics and 3D coupled neutronics/thermal-hydraulics study, we attempt to design a civil marine reactor core that fulfills the objective of providing at least 15 effective full-power-years (EFPY) life at 333 MWth. In order to unleash the benefit of thorium in a long life core, the micro-heterogeneous ThO2-UO2 duplex fuel is well-positioned to be utilized in our proposed civil marine core. Unfortunately, A limited number of studies of duplex fuel are available in the public domain, but its use has never been examined in the context of a SBF environment for long-life small modular rector (SMR) core. Therefore, we assumed micro-heterogeneous ThO2-UO2 duplex fuel for our proposed marine core in order to explore its capability. For the proposed civil marine propulsion core design, this study uses 18% U-235 enriched micro-heterogeneous ThO2-UO2 duplex fuel. To provide a basis for comparison we also evaluate the performance of homogeneously mixed 15% U-235 enriched all-UO2 fuel. This research also attempts to design a high power density core with 14 EFPY while satisfying the neutronic and thermal-hydraulics safety constraints. A core with an average power density of 100 MW/m3 has been successfully designed while obtaining a core life of 14 years. The average core power density for this core is increased by ∼50% compared to the reference core design (63 MW/m3 and is equivalent to Sizewell B PWR (101.6 MW/m3 which means capital costs could be significantly reduced and the economic attractiveness of the marine core commensurately improved. In addition, similar to the standard SMR core, a reference core with a power density of 63 MW/m3 has been successfully designed while obtaining a core life of ∼16 years. One of the most important points that can be drawn from these studies is that a duplex fuel lattice needs less burnable absorber than uranium-only fuel to achieve the same poison performance. The higher initial reactivity suppression and relatively smaller reactivity swing of the duplex can make the task of reactivity control through BP design in a thorium-rich core easier. It is also apparent that control rods have greater worth in a duplex core, reducing the control material requirements and thus potentially the cost of the rods. This research also analyzed the feasibility of using thorium-based duplex fuel in different cases and environments to observe whether this fuel consistently exhibit superior performance compared to the UO2 core in both the assembly and whole-core levels. The duplex fuel/core consistently exhibits superior performance in consideration of all the neutronic and TH constraints specified. It can therefore be concluded from this study that the superior performance of the thorium-based micro-heterogeneous ThO2-UO2 duplex fuel provides enhanced confidence that this fuel can be reliably used in high power density and long-life SBF marine propulsion core systems, offering neutronic advantages compared to the all-UO2 fuel. Last, but not least, considering all these factors, duplex fuel can potentially open the avenue for low-enriched uranium (LEU) SBF cores with different configurations. Motivated by growing environmental concerns and anticipated economic pressures, the overall goal of this study is to examine the technological feasibility of expanding the use of nuclear propulsion to civilian maritime shipping and to identify and propose promising candidate core designs.

A breed-and-burn molten salt reactor (BBMSR) concept is proposed to address the Generation IV fuel cycle sustainability objective in a once-through cycle with low enrichment and no reprocessing. The BBMSR uses separate fuel and coolant molten salts, with the fuel contained in assemblies of individual tubes that can be shuffled and reclad periodically to enable high burnup. In this dual-salt configuration, the BBMSR may overcome several limitations of previous breed-and-burn (B$\&$B) designs to achieve high uranium utilisation with a simple, passively safe design. A central challenge in design of the BBMSR fuel is balancing the neutronic requirement of large fuel volume fraction for B$\&$B mode with the thermal-hydraulic requirements for safe and economically competitive reactor operation. Natural convection of liquid fuel within the tubes aids heat transfer to the coolant, and a systematic approach is developed to efficiently model this complex effect. Computational fluid dynamics modelling is performed to characterise the unique physics of the system and produce a new heat transfer correlation, which is used alongside established correlations in a numerical model. A design framework is built around this numerical model to iteratively search for the limiting power density of a given fuel and channel geometry, applying several defined temperature and operational constraints. It is found that the trade-offs between power density, core pressure drop, and pumping power are lessened by directing the flow of coolant downwards through the channel. Fuel configurations that satisfy both neutronic and thermal-hydraulic objectives are identified for natural, 5$\%$ enriched, and 20$\%$ enriched uranium feed fuel. B$\&$B operation is achievable in the natural and 5$\%$ enriched versions, with power densities of 73 W/cm$^3$ and 86 W/cm$^3$, and theoretical uranium utilisations of 300 $\mathrm{MWd/kgU_{NAT}}$ and 25.5 $\mathrm{MWd/kgU_{NAT}}$, respectively. Using 20$\%$ enriched feed fuel relaxes neutronic constraints so a wider range of fuel configurations can be considered, but there is a strong inverse correlation between power density and uranium utilisation. The fuel design study demonstrates the flexibility of the BBMSR concept to operate along a spectrum of modes ranging from high fuel utilisation at moderate power density using natural uranium feed fuel, to high power density and moderate utilisation using 20$\%$ uranium enrichment.