Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common supraventricular tachyarrhythmia and its prevalence is expected to increase with the aging population. However, the mechanisms AF initiation, maintenance and termination are not completely understood. The surface electrocardiogram (ECG) characteristics are a direct reflection of pathophysiologic events in the atria and can be...
As we move into deeper sub-micron technologies, the complexity of pushing the circuit performance further is becoming an important obstacle. To achieve better performance, there is an increasing need for collaboration of higher level (e.g. microarchitecture-level) and circuit level optimizations. Traditionally for a computer system, applications lie at the top...
Synapses in the central nervous system vary widely in how they transmit and store information. The properties of short-term and long-term plasticity, in particular, seem to be specific for each class of synapse studied. The types of plasticity expressed at a particular synapse determine how it processes, transmits and possibly...
Between 1569 and 1582, the inquisitorial court of the Cardinal Archbishop of Naples undertook a series of trials against a powerful and wealthy group of Spanish immigrants in Naples for judaizing, the practice of Jewish rituals. The immense scale of this campaign and the many complications that resulted render it...
Natural tissues can have complex architectures characterized by the organization of multiple cells into structures, such as branching networks of the vascular or nervous systems. This cellular organization arises, in part, from spatial patterns in the expression of soluble factors, which create concentration gradients that direct cellular processes during morphogenesis....
This dissertation explores the ways that Chinese popular media, including film, television, and magazines, reconstruct the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-76), a traumatic historical event which tremendously affected Chinese people and society. Employing a combination of methods, including visual and narrative analysis of media and cultural forms, institutional analysis of...
This dissertation concentrates on problems of quotation, tradition, and translation in the poetry of Paul Celan and Osip Mandelstam. While examining the nature of poetic inheritance, Celan often refers to Russian poetry and, in particular, to Osip Mandelstam, who, in his turn, understands poetry as an essentially dialogic process. Both...
Live streaming media will form a significant fraction of Internet traffic in the near future. YouTube clips, animations and other video applications already account for more than sixty percent of Internet traffic and, at its current acceptance rate, streaming media could quickly surpass television in terms of the size of...
Bilinguals have been shown to outperform monolinguals on inhibitory control tasks that measure suppression of irrelevant information. However, no mechanism is established for development of this advantage. Since bilinguals activate their languages in parallel during comprehension, they may face higher processing demands. As a result, they may recruit more cognitive...
This dissertation addresses the problem of the development of cities in Upper Mesopotamia in the third millennium B.C.E. I investigate these cities through their settlement patterns and urban plans. I argue that these cities were not planned or organic, but exhibited degrees of planning. I treat my reconstruction of the...