This thesis presents Monte Carlo methods for simulations of phase behaviors of Lennard-Jones fluids. The isobaric-isothermal (NPT) ensemble and Gibbs-NPT ensemble are introduced in detail. NPT ensemble is employed to determine the phase diagram of pure component. The reduced simulation results are verified by comparison with the equation of state by by Johnson et al. and results with L-J parameters of methane agree considerably with the experiment measurements. We adopt the blocking method for variance estimation and error analysis of the simulation results. The relationship between variance and number of Monte Carlo cycles, error propagation and Random Number Generator performance are also investigated. We review the Gibbs-NPT ensemble employed for phase equilibrium of binary mixture. The phase equilibrium is achieved by performing three types of trial move: particle displacement, volume rearrangement and particle transfer. The simulation models and the simulation details are introduced. The simulation results of phase coexistence for methane and ethane are reported with comparison of the experimental data. Good agreement is found for a wide range of pressures. The contribution of this thesis work lies in the study of the error analysis with respect to the Monte Carlo cycles and number of particles in some interesting aspects.

[pt] Um sistema de TV Digital (TVD) é definido por um conjunto de especificações que determinam as tecnologias envolvidas na codificação, transmissão, recepção e apresentação de conteúdos, incluindo a especificação da aplicação (programa não-linear), seus vários objetos de mídia e metadados relacionados. Nesse cenário, o suporte a aplicações é realizado por uma camada intermediária de software, ou middleware, posicionada, no ambiente de recepção, entre o código das aplicações e a infra-estrutura de execução (plataforma de hardware e sistema operacional). O projeto e implementação de um middleware para receptores de sistemas de TVD trazem uma série de desafios. Entre eles estão: a eficiência na utilização de recursos, usualmente escassos no dispositivo receptor; o suporte à evolução dinâmica das funcionalidades do middleware; o suporte à recuperação de falhas em tempo de execução; os mecanismos para gerência de localização de recursos, permitindo o uso da mesma sintaxe de autoria em ambientes distintos de recepção; o suporte a edição ao vivo de programas não lineares, ou seja, das aplicações; a definição de uma infra-estrutura de transporte assíncrono de aplicações interativas e comandos de controle e; o controle do ciclo de vida das aplicações interativas, permitindo que aplicações possam ser iniciadas, pausadas e retomadas em qualquer ponto de sua duração, sem perder o histórico de sua evolução. As soluções da maioria dessas questões presentes nos sistemas existentes apresentam algumas limitações importantes, e em alguns casos nem mesmo existem, sendo o problema apenas contornado. O presente trabalho propõe soluções alternativas para as questões levantadas, e as incorpora na especificação do middleware declarativo Ginga-NCL e em sua implementação de referência. O middleware Ginga-NCL e sua linguagem declarativa NCL foram adotados pelo SBTVD-T em 2007. No início de 2009, Ginga-NCL e NCL se tornaram parte dos padrões ISDB-TB e parte da recomendação ITU-R BT 1699. Ainda no início de 2009, Ginga-NCL e NCL tornaram-se a Recomendação ITU-T H.761 para serviços IPTV. / [en] Digital TV (DTV) systems are defined by a set of specifications that establish the technologies involved in the content encoding, transmission, reception and presentation, including the specification of applications (non-linear programs), their various related media objects and metadata. In this scenario, support to applications is accomplished through an intermediary software layer, or middleware, positioned, in the receiving environment, between the application code and the execution infrastructure (hardware platform and operating system). The middleware design and implementation bring a number of challenging issues. Among them are: efficient resource management, since resources are usually scarce in DTV receiver devices; support to dynamic evolution of the middleware functionalities; support to fault recovery at runtime; the mechanisms for resource location management, allowing using the same syntax used in the authoring environment the different receiver environments; support to live editing of nonlinear programs (i.e. applications); the infrastructure definition for the asynchronous transport of interactive applications and control commands; and the life cycle control of interactive applications, allowing applications to be started, paused and resumed at any point in their life duration, without losing their evolution history. Most of these issues are addressed in the existing systems, however with important limitations; some of them are not even addressed, being only treated with workaround tricks. This work proposes alternative solutions to the mentioned issues and incorporates these solutions in the Ginga-NCL declarative middleware specification and in its reference implementation. Ginga- NCL and its declarative NCL language were adopted by SBTVD-T in 2007. In early 2009, Ginga-NCL and NCL have become part of the ISDB-TB standard and part of the ITU-R BT 1699 Recommendation. Even in early 2009, Ginga-NCL and NCL have become the ITU-T H.761 Recommendation for IPTV services.

Masters of Commerce / Highly enriched uranium (HEU) is one of the most dangerous materials in the world, because it is a key ingredient in making a nuclear bomb. If a terrorist organisation can get HEU, it would be close to making a nuclear bomb. After South Africa disarmed its nuclear weapons, it kept HEU that was extracted from the nuclear bombs. The US tried to persuade South Africa to blend down its HEU into low enriched uranium (LEU) or give it up for safekeeping. However, South Africa refused to give it up. After a breach at Pelindaba, a national key point facility where South Africa stores its HEU, the US intensified its efforts to pressure South Africa to give its HEU up. It even promised incentives to South Africa should they agree to give it up, but South Africa refused. The US used the nuclear terrorism narrative to justify its initiative to eliminate vulnerable materials in the world. However, South Africa is yet to be swayed. This is odd since South Africa's refusal can negatively affect its credentials as a nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament champion and its image as a norm entrepreneur. The objective of the study was to understand the role played by HEU in South Africa's nuclear diplomacy. It was to explore HEU as a factor in the state's nuclear diplomacy and to understand the power of having HEU in nuclear negotiations, as well as what SA intends to do with its HEU. The study is framed theoretically by drawing on foreign policy theory, namely middle-power theory, and revisionism. It juxtaposed middle power, reformist, and revisionist positions with status quo foreign policy to analyse the role of HEU in South Africa's nuclear diplomacy. As a middle power with a moral high ground, South Africa hoped that it can affect change in the nuclear regime. However, when this did not occur its foreign policy shifted to a revisionist character that is discontent with the status quo in the nuclear regime. SA is dissatisfied with the current nuclear order and wants it revised towards liberal values such as equality and non-discrimination. It views the current nuclear order as nuclear apartheid. Therefore, South Africa uses HEU as leverage against nuclear weapon states in nuclear diplomacy. It is using HEU as an act of defiance against nuclear weapon states (such as the US) that are yet to disarm their nuclear weapons.

In recent years, the multilateral approach to the nuclear fuel cycle has been promoted as a potential mechanism for strengthening the nuclear non-proliferation regime. The multilateral approach has the potential to gain international favour over what has become traditional practice – the indigenous development and control of nuclear facilities. This thesis explores the way in which four states have responded to the revived attention on multilateral approaches to the nuclear fuel cycle, within the framework of the norm life cycle. The varying levels of support reflect broader international opinion on this issue, as many developing states remain concerned that they may be required to forgo not only the “inalienable right” to peaceful nuclear energy, but also the prospective economic and technological benefits of indigenous development in order to participate. However, as the risk of further proliferation and nuclear terrorism comes to the fore of international agendas, facilitating multilateral control of the most sensitive aspects of peaceful nuclear energy may be the key to strengthening the non-proliferation regime in the 21st century.

AbstractIII-essay in political science by Christoffer Harnell, autumn -08. Supervisor: Malin Stegman-McCallion. ”Nuclear Disarmament - USA and the Soviet Union 1960-2002” This essay is about USA and the former Soviet Union and their nuclear disarmament. The purpose is to explain why and when the two states begun their nuclear disarmament, as well as what caused the start of the process. The essay investigates how well the two states have followed the NPT-Treaty’s article of nuclear disarmament. The article says that the states who have signed the NPT-treaty shall work for an disarmament of their nuclear weapons.          The arguments are that a state’s nuclear disarmament starts because of a previous action or happening, the new development of a disarmament-theory, the essay aims to proove this.Both the United States of America and the Soviet Union show evidence that they have started their nuclear disarmament after a previous action. USA started their nuclear disarmament in the period 1966-70 because of the former American minister of security Robert McNamara and his U-turn in the aggressive war politic and the former president Nixon and his ambition to lower the heat between USA and the Soviet union by signin the ABM-Treaty.          The Soviet Union started their nuclear disarmament many years later in the period of 1986-1987, the cause of this, it is believed, is the nuclear explosion in Chernobyl and the former president of the Soviet Union Michail Gorbatjov’s ambitions to end the war in the world and disarm the nuclear weapons, not just between USA and the Soviet Union, but in all states.          USA has followed the NPT-Treaty’s article of nuclear disarmament well, one reason for this is that, they started the disarmament before they signed the NPT-Treaty in 1968. The Soviet Union, however, has followed the NPT-treatys article of nuclear disarmament less well and did not start their nuclear disarmament until 1986-87, even though they signed up for the NPT-Treaty in 1968.           The NPT-Treaty will probably still be relevant in the future for the nuclear disarmament, but how well the world’s states will follow it, the future will tell. The nuclear disarmament in this two states has been caused by a previous action and the new developed disarmament-theory is avaliable for further disarmament research.

[pt] Os bombardeios nucleares contra Hiroshima e Nagasaki alteraram profundamente o conceito de guerra entre os Estados nacionais. A partir do momento em que os dois cogumelos atômicos espalharam-se as cidades japonesas, a inclusão da ameaça nuclear em conflitos interestatais passou a ser preocupação obrigatória das nações que disputariam áreas de influência diante a Guerra Fria. Estimulada por essa preocupação, a comunidade internacional tomou diversas medidas durante os últimos 50 anos para restringir o uso dos armamentos nucleares. O Tratado de não-Proliferação Nuclear (TNP) foi uma das principais iniciativas para atingir esse fim. Seus artigos determinaram a proibição do desenvolvimento e da aquisição de armamentos nucleares após 1967, além de incentivar o desenvolvimento da tecnologia nuclear civil e o encorajamento do progressivo desarmamento dos Estados.Os acordos firmados no final da década de 60, entretanto, não foram capazes de prever o avanço da tecnologia nuclear. Se o uso pacífico do átomo era permitido em 1968, hoje o desenvolvimento de tecnologias de duplo uso - tais como o enriquecimento de urânio, ainda que para fins pacíficos - não é visto com bons olhos.As dificuldades para verificar a boa-fé do desenvolvimento e do uso dessas tecnologias tornaram a possibilidade de sua proliferação um problema ainda mais temido. O surgimento de programas nucleares clandestinos e, consequentemente, de novos Estados nucleares, além da cada vez mais presente possibilidade de terrorismo nuclear, abalaram a credibilidade do Regime de Não-Proliferação. Para tentar controlar os danos causados por esse problema, diversas reuniões de revisão do TNP vêm tentando preencher as brechas que desafiam o regime.Esta dissertação mostra quais são as principais tensões existentes dentro do regime e como a comunidade internacional e a Agência Internacional de Energia Atômica estão atuando para lidar com essas dificuldades. A análise do artigo IV do TNP parece demonstrar que, se as cláusulas do contrato não forem cumpridas de forma igualitária por todos os Estados-parte, será muito difícil resolver os problemas da não-proliferação. / [en] The nuclear bombings over hiroshima and Nagasaki have deeply changed the concept of war among national States. From the moment the two atomic mushroom clouds spread in the sky over the Japanese cities, the inclusion of the nuclear threat in interstate conflicts has become a mandatory worry to the nations that would struggle for influence areas during the Cold War.Stimulated by these worries, the international community has taken several measures over last 50 years in order to curb the use of nuclear weapons. The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has been one of the main initiatives aimed at this purpose. Its articles instituted the proscription of developing and acquiring nuclear weapons after 1967, besides motivating the expasion of civil nuclear technology and heartening the progressive disarmament of states. The agreements signed by the end of the 60s, however, were not able to predict the advance of nuclear technology. If the peaceful use of the atom was allowed back in 1968, today the development of dual-use technology- such as uranium enrichment, even for peaceful reasons - is still frowned upon.The difficulties to examine the true intentions behind developing and using this technology have changed the possibility of its proliferation into a truly fearsome problem. The blossoming of rogue nuclear programs, and, therefore, of new nuclear states, allied to the growing threat of nuclear terrorism, has shaken the credibility of the non-proliferation regime. In order to control the damages induced by this problem, several review conferences have been trying to mend the gaps that challenge the regime.This paper tries to show which are the main tensions inside the regime and how the international community and the Internatonal Atomic Energy Agency are trying to cope with these matters. The analysis of Articles IV of the NPT seems to demonstrate that if the treaty provisions are not equally observed by all member states, it will be extremely hard to overcome the problems of non-proliferation.

Disarmament remains a contested topic within the nuclear weapons debate and it is included as one of the mutually reinforcing pillars of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). However, when the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) was mandated by UNGA in 2016 and later entered into force in 2021, it was immediately rejected by all nuclear-weapons states – China, France, Russia, the UK and the US – and their allies. The paradox of such a negative response to the new treaty despite their alleged loyalty to the disarmament pillar of the NPT was the starting point of the thesis and was examined through the theoretical lenses of constructivism, neo-liberal institutionalism and structural realism to pinpoint which offered the most tangible answer to the question at hand. The research was conducted by utilizing the method of qualitative content analysis on statements and working papers by the five nuclear-weapons states, and it concluded that – while all theories brought up interesting points – structural realism provided the most useful perspective on the matter through its take on states’ insecurity towards each other

Objective: The promotion of self-management support for people with LTCs is a health policy priority across the UK (LTCAS 2008; DoH 2012). Self-management support is designed to change and improve care for people with LTCs, who form an increasing proportion of the population requiring healthcare and treatment. For health organisations models of care, which support self-management, require greater emphasis on person-focused rather than disease-focused manifestations of health and represents a new model of care delivery requiring changes in practice. Current research demonstrates that health policies are increasingly complex, involve multiple organisations and often fail to translate into effective practice (Noyles et al. 2014). The deficit between what works and what happens in practice is referred to as the “implementation deficit” (Pressman and Wildasky 1984) and traditionally it has been difficult to breakaway from the idea that the policy process is best viewed from the top-down (Barett and Fudge 1981). However, there remains a need to understand the processes of implementation, which takes account of the variation, the multiple layers and interactions which takes place between policy-maker and -implementer as policy becomes practice (Hupe 2011). Implementation of self-management is a contemporary focus in UK health policy and this thesis explains what processes are used to implement self-management policy for people with LTCs into everyday practice in one health board. Methods: A case study approach was used to investigate the policy process with data collected using thirty-one semi-structured interviews with policy-makers and regional and local policy-implementers plus eight hours of observation of national and regional policy meetings. To provide context to the implementation process data also included thirteen policy documents. Data analysis used the retrospective application of NPT as a theoretical framework with which to explore the implementation processes. NPT is an emerging theory that is being promoted as a means of understanding implementation, embedding and integration of new ideas in healthcare (McEvoy et al. 2014). The application of NPT focuses on four mechanisms, termed work (May and Finch 2009: 547), which promote incorporation of new ideas in practice. These areas of work are coherence, cognitive participation, collective action and reflexive monitoring (Mair et al. 2012). Findings: The findings suggest that there are a number of important influences operating behind or as part of the policy implementation process. These included the need for a shared understanding, getting stakeholders involved to drive forward policy, work promoting collaboration and participation was the most detailed and important in the process of policy implementation; the course of policy was affected by factors which facilitated or inhibited stakeholders acceptance of self-management; and NPT fosters key analytical insights. Conclusion: Understanding the process of policy implementation in healthcare and how practice changes as a result of policy is subject to a wide range of influences. What emerges are five key recommendations relating to understanding policy implementation. (1) understanding the concept of self-management is important in promoting policy implementation. This understanding benefits from dialogue between policy-makers and -implementers. (2) stakeholder involvement supports implementation particularly the role of clinical leadership and leadership through existing networks but also value in establishing new organisational structures to create a receptive context. (3) develop participation and collaboration through use of the patient voice which helped simplify the policy message and motivate change. (4) other resources help policy implementation and where these are evident then policy is implemented and where they are absent then implementation is not embedded. Lack of evidence was a particular area of constraint. (5) NPT has shown that social context is important, and provides for this. But in addition there is evidence that historical perspectives and previous experience are also important influence on receptivity to implementation. This research contributes to the development of theory and practice in the area of implementation science. The exploration of the policy implementation has revealed the action and work which policy-makers and -implementers are engaged in while implementing policy. It has tested the utility of NPT in a real-life setting using all four mechanisms.

There is a consensus within the United Nations (UN), as well as various governmental entities, politicians, individuals, scholars, and academic communities, on the need to reform governmental performances. However, there is no unanimity among them pertaining to a specific reforming model that is valid for all contexts worldwide. Accordingly, many performance management processes and practical techniques have been put into practice, which aim at improving governmental institutions' performance. Hence, the purpose of this research is to develop, by studying the public health services that are provided by the government, an effective model, with the aim of improving governmental performance in the context of Bahrain. With regard to originality and values, the research discerns that among the many factors affecting governmental entities' performance, there are two dominant contextual factors, i.e. the sociocultural and political forces, both of which synergise with the so-called United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Good Governance Approach. The study develops a new perspective on the Interactive Complex Intervention Model (ICIM), stemming from the Grounded Theory (GT) and Normalisation Process Theory/Model (NPT/M), as disclosed in practical terms by the outcomes of the data gathered and its analysis. In fact, although those elements influence all other factors, there are interactive correlative impacts among all factors. Despite these outcomes, the data obtained from the research cannot be generalised, as they are derived from the local context of Bahrain; certainly until now, they can allow other similar contexts in particular to implement the insights reported in this study. It is important to note that the most influencing factor enabling this research, which aims to develop the ICIM for reforming governmental entities' performance in Bahrain, is the salient points raised in Imam Ali's famous consultative letter to the Governor of Egypt, Malik Ashtar, which he wrote while he was the Caliph, as scholars regard this letter as a basic guide for the Islamic administration and the UNDP Good Governance Approach. Regarding the practical implications, the research has attempted to empirically understand the role of the aforementioned primary contributing forces, that are regarded as the critical prerequisite - the first step that allows the governments' decision makers, based on the underlying knowledge involved in the work, to forthwith provide them with several contextual practical insights towards adopting the ICIM in order to enhance and reform the government entities' performance.

由於蘇聯解體所導致的核擴散，這個世界比起過去更加危險。新的安全威脅源自於俄羅斯核物質、武器與科學家的擴散。另一方面，俄羅斯軍事力量的下降導致俄羅斯提高了核武器在未來戰爭中的作用。俄羅斯國家安全構想與軍事學說的轉變可能升高核戰爭的可能性。在本文中，筆者將探討由俄羅斯所引起的核擴散風險。 / Because of the nuclear proliferation caused by the collapse of USSR, the world is more insecurity than before. The new security threat comes from the spread of Russian nuclear materials, weapons and scientists. On the other hand, the decline of Russian military leads Russia to pay much attention on the use of nuclear weapon in the future warfare. The change of the Russian national security concept and military doctrine may raise the possibility of nuclear war. In the paper, author will study the risk of nuclear proliferation caused by Russia.