Though many international relations theorists have speculated that the spread of nuclear weapons may diminish the frequency - if not the severity - of military conflict among states, there are five reasons to expect that increased proliferation will increase the likelihood that nuclear weapons will be employed for coercive or destructive purposes. These dangers are independent of one another; that is, they are not interconnected as causes and effects. First, as nuclear weapons spread, the notion that these weapons are useful for purposes other than deterrence will spread concomitantly. Those who argue that the spread of nuclear weapons will diminish conflict wrongly assume that the leaders of new nuclear states will consider nuclear weapons useful only for deterrence. Second, actors within states may support policies that undermine deterrence stability. Specifically, such actors could support the deployment of weaponry and other technologies that could - in certain strategic contexts - provide incentives for pre-emptive attacks by one side or the other. Third, one side of an inter-state rivalry may acquire nuclear weapons long in advance of its vulnerable adversary. Often, the leaders of states that enjoy such advantages contemplate attacking their rival before it can acquire nuclear weapons, too. Fourth, though new nuclear states will be assumed to be as careful with their weapons as the older nuclear states, proliferation may nevertheless cause the probability of such accidents to grow at an accelerating rate. As the number of nuclear states increases, the distances between these states decrease, and some of them may assume dangerous launch-on-warning force postures to compensate for their perceived vulnerability to sudden attack. Launch-on-warning increases the danger that accidents could escalate into nuclear violence. Fifth, surreptitious attempts may be made by third parties to instigate nuclear war between other states. The likelihood that the provocateur of such an incident would remain undiscovered increases as the number of nuclear states grows - as does the temptation to instigate such an event.

Throughout the life cycle of a real-time, distributed computer system, numerous situations arise which require access to detailed system performance information. One important type of performance information is known as data coverage. Data coverage is the process whereby all ranges of values for a particular variable in a piece of software have been exercised. Data regarding variable values can be very useful in determining the correctness of program execution. This project investigated the design, cost and usefulness of adding a data coverage performance evaluation capability within an existing Navy weapon system. The target system used is a real-time, loosely coupled distributed computer system. Experiments were created by writing programs in a high level language and executing the programs on the target system. Several of the programs contained "seeded" errors. Experiments were monitored and data was collected by an existing performance evaluation system. The data was collected in a real-time, non-interfering manner and evaluated off-line. The off-line evaluation was accomplished by modifying an existing software package. The package did not include any capabilities for producing a data coverage report. Therefore, it was necessary to enhance the software package such that a data coverage report was created. A description of the investigation and the various factors used for the evaluation of a data coverage capability, the design proposal, and the cost analysis are included in this report. / Master of Science

The Romans were known for taking technology and advancements from other peoples they encountered and making them their own. This pattern holds true in military affairs; indeed, little of the Roman military was indigenously developed. This dissertation looks at the origins of the Roman's mainline weapons systems from the beginning of Roman Republic expansion in the fourth century BC to the abandonment of Western-style armaments in favor of Eastern style ones beginning in the late-third century AD. This dissertation determines that the Romans during that time relied predominately on the Celtic peoples of Europe for the majority of their military equipment. One arrives at this conclusion by examining at the origins of the major weapons groups: armor, shields, spears, swords, and missile weapons. This determination is based on the use of ancient written sources, artistic sources, and archaeological sources. It also uses the large body of modern scholarship on the individual weapons. The goal is to produce a unified work that addresses the origins of all weapons in order to see if there is an overarching impact on the Roman military from outside cultures. When one studies whence the weapons that ended up in Romans hands originated, a decided Celtic influence is easily found. That does not mean the Romans did not advance those weapons. The Romans proved very adroit at improving upon the basic designs of others and modifying them into new forms that met new needs. The Romans just did not develop their own technology very often. As a result, the Celts will exert a strong impact on the Roman military culture as it develops from 400 BC until it is overtaken by Eastern influences in the late 200s AD.

<p>This project was initiated in an attempt to address the current training shortfall in the Maritime Patrol Aviation community,brought about by the collapse of the Soviet Union and subsequent reductions in U.S. military funding. Commercial personal computer equipment was investigated as a possible supplement to operational flights and existing training devices. A life cycle analysis was performed to thoroughly explore all stages of design, development, and implementation. System requirements were defined, and applied to a conceptual design. A new approach to hardware and software maintenance also was proposed. The report concludes with a program plan detailed enough to initiate an efficient acquisition program for the proposed training device. / Master of Science

see document / Master of Science

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Using data from the 2007-2017 cycles of the national Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), this researcher aimed to understand how weapons carrying mediates the association between bullying and mental health outcomes. I dichotomized four bullying outcomes to create one new carried a weapon after bullied (CWB) (no/yes; e.g. did not carry a weapon post-bullying vs. did carry a weapon post-bullying) for each bullying type. Mental health outcomes included (all dichotomized, past 2 weeks, no/yes): felt sad or hopeless, seriously considered suicide, had a plan for suicide and attempted suicide. I used descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression adjusted for YRBS sampling methods and weighting (Stata 15.0). Initial results showed that weapons carrying has a complex relationship with mental health after bullying. One notable finding is that individuals who had been in a physical fight were the most likely to carry a weapon (N = 268), followed by those who had been threatened at school (N = 233). Additionally, more students who had been bullied at school (N = 185) carried a weapon than those who were victims of cyberbullying (N = 166). Another interesting result found that across all bullying types, males were 2 to 3 times more likely to carrying a weapon as a result of being bullied. In terms of mental health, being threatened at school was the most significant bullying type in relation to suicidal ideation.

Organophosphates (OPs) are used in agriculture via pesticides, and warfare and terrorism via nerve agents. OPs can inhibit acetylcholinesterase (AChE) activity in the nervous system, leading to the buildup of acetylcholine (ACh), and overstimulation of the nervous system and eventual asphyxiation and death. The development of novel blood-brain barrier () penetrating pyridinium oxime reactivators have previously demonstrated efficacy towards treatment of OP poisoning after exposure of rats to a sarin or a VX surrogate, nitrophenyl isopropyl methylphosphonate (NIMP) and nitrophenyl ethyl methylphosphonate (NEMP), respectively. An effective oxime antidote capable of penetrating the and restoring nervous system activity after exposure to a cyclosarin surrogate, nitrophenyl cyclohexyl methylphosphonate (NCMP), has yet to be determined. In Chapter 2, in vitro testing of the efficacy of 17 total novel oxime candidates to utilize against NCMP was conducted with a modified Ellman’s AChE assay. Pools of naïve adult male rat brains were utilized as the AChE source. The first variable investigated was the measurement of AChE activity after inhibition with NCMP and subsequent reactivation with one of the oximes. The second variable investigated restoration of AChE activity after simultaneous oxime and NCMP incubation. The final variable investigated the restoration of AChE activity after simultaneous 2-PAM, oxime and NCMP incubation. A thorough kinetic analysis of our best oximes has yet to be accomplished. In Chapter 3, the best oxime antidotes for NEMP and NIMP were used for kinetic analysis with a modified 96-well plate Ellman’s AChE assay. Protein concentrations were analyzed with a modified Lowry protein tube assay to ensure consistent analytical concentrations. The sources of AChE included pooled rat brain and skeletal muscle, and rat and human erythrocytes and plasma. Butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) activity was also measured in the rat and human plasma samples. The results of these studies strengthen the argument that our oxime antidotes can be used as potential therapeutic drugs for OP poisoning. The kinetic data provided critical information to help propose, for Chapter 4, a dynamic pharmacokinetic based model to predict human AChE or BChE activity after exposure to nerve agent surrogates (NEMP and NIMP) and the oximes (44.08 and 44.25).

Access to nuclear technology and growing concern over the spread of nuclear weapons triggered an international debate in the 1960s that led to the creation of the Nonproliferation Treaty. Ratified in 1970, NPT was designed to prevent the horizontal spread of nuclear weapons and limit destructive uses of nuclear energy. At the same time, it also normalized the arsenals of existing nuclear states and encouraged exchanges of nuclear information, technology, and materials for peaceful purposes. Nonproliferation policy relies on a theory of the development process that identifies a nuclear frontier to locate evidence of nuclear capabilities. Absent from the proliferation model, however, are cases of covert nuclear weapons programs. For almost 50 years, it has been generally accepted that Israel is a nuclear weapon state, yet Israeli officials have never confirmed nor denied the possession of nuclear weapons. Israel has not signed NPT and has not appeared to conduct a nuclear test, in effect absolving the nuclear program's main reactor from international inspections. Uncertainty surrounding the Israeli program stems from a tradition of deliberate secrecy and deception that constitutes a national policy of opacity. This study argues that opacity has armed Israel with the privilege of nuclear immunity, exempting its secret nuclear activity from the standards and regulations imposed on all other nuclear weapon states. To circumvent the barriers built by opacity, a mixture of declassified material, nuclear history and security literature, and postcolonial studies refines the history of Israel's nuclear program. By examining the American-Israeli nuclear relationship, the sources of opacity, and the framework of nonproliferation that sustains an international nuclear regime, Israel's role in the nuclear world becomes visible.

An exploration of deploying non-lethal weapons in todays chaotic post cold-war world; thereby facilitating peacekeeping deployments without casualties. Dando argues a more sinister outcome could be the result.

The latest report Mapping the Global Future on US national security by the National Intelligence Council suggests that a major threat to the country right through to 2020 will be a terrorist biological weapons attack.1 Given the recent intelligence failures concerning biological weapons in Iraq, it might be considered that there are reasonable grounds for suspicion about that conclusion. This paper attempts to answer the question of what the real threat of bioterror is by reference to the open scientific literature. Section 2 of the paper discusses the nature of the agents of concern and in section 3 various potential attack scenarios are reviewed. The overall conclusion is that there are real threats from terrorists with the capability to carry out a range of attacks with biological agents today, but that these threats do not include the one most commentators probably have in mind when they discuss the issue ¿ a weapons of mass destruction scale of attack on people. In the final section of this paper the implications of the analysis for the risk questions we have been posed are addressed.