My thesis explores the construction of the New World mythology as it appears in early modern Italian epic poems. It focuses on how Italian writers engage with and contribute to this process of myth-creation; how the newly created mythology relates to the political, social and cultural context of the time; and investigates extent to which it was affected by the personal agendas of the poets. By analysing three New World myths (Brazilian Amazons, Patagonian giants and Canadian pygmies), it provides insights into the perception that Italians had of the newly discovered lands in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, as well as providing a greater understanding of the role that early modern Italy had in the ‘invention’ of the Americas. Italian epic poets domesticated New World myths for their own purposes, using written, visual and material sources as an anchor for their agendas. The study of these myths changes, in some cases completely, our reading of the poems. New World myths are at once an exercise in ekphrasis of the maps, cartouches, engravings and collectible objects they derived from, and a record of the impact the Americas had on the early modern Italians.

This thesis explores how Venice's church architecture was shaped by the Counter Reformation between 1550-1700. It provides a snapshot of the situation with four pertinent case studies representing the broad spectrum of Venice's churches. Chapter One focuses on San Nicolo di Ldo, a church that was part of the proactive Cassinese Congregation. The church was rebuilt entirely and represents an almost ideal response to the Counter Reformation. Chapter Two looks at the rebuilt parish church of San Moise and it tackles the compromises that inevitably came with many competing factors. Chapters Three and Four look at how older churches were renewed and retrofitted with new features, adapting their existing structures to cater for new requirements as stipulated by the Council of Trent decrees or pamphlets such as Carlo Borromeo's Instructiones. Chapter Three hones in on Santo Stefano, a large monastic Gothic church, while Chapter Four looks at the considerably smaller Byzantine parish church of San Nicolo dei Mendicoli. This thesis highlights many similarities between the four buildings (and others in Venice), which exemplify key facets of the reform movement and the pluralistic and complex challenges faced by each church.

The Roman ability to project their power and defend their empire was based on the empire having the capability to maintain a standing army. This thesis is an examination of the commissariat that supplied this army since without logistical support such an army could not survive. The basic question under consideration is how well the commissariat functioned in late antiquity, the period when it was in its most developed and best documented state. When considering the commissariat of late antiquity it is important to understand what came before and how this system came into being. Of particular importance is the office of praetorian prefect, which went from being an imperial deputy with both military and judicial functions during the Principate to the chief administrative office in the late Roman state. Once this question has been addressed it is possible to look at the late Roman commissariat. The process of supply had several different stages, from raising supplies to their storage, transport, and distribution. All of these elements must be addressed separately. The system of supply in late antiquity was not static and there were several modifications to the system over the three centuries covered, most notably the creation of new positions at the top of the supply system. Determining the quality of the commissariat from this requires contrasting the twin considerations of effectiveness and efficiency – the ability to reliably provide supplies for the army and the expenditure of the minimum amount of resources necessary towards that goal. The detailed analysis provided in this thesis supports the conclusion that the late Roman army was, in general, effectively supplied. The issue of efficiency is more difficult to assess, but it is clear that there were many areas of great inefficiency within the Roman system. This in turn implies that the emperors prioritized effectiveness over efficiency – a conclusion consistent with the importance of the army to the emperors’ position.

This thesis examines the censorship of philosophy in Italy in the period 1450-1600, seeking to establish how the scrutiny of ideas was affected by the religious crisis of the sixteenth century. One of the primary aims of this thesis is to revise older accounts of censorship, dominant in the literature of both the history of science and Italian intellectual history traditions. These historiographies suggest that the Counter- Reformation triggered the emergence of a new and repressive attitude towards the censorship of philosophy, which grievously affected Italian intellectual and scientific culture in the seventeenth century. My thesis challenges this received view by drawing upon the insights produced by historians working in other disciplines, especially institutional historians of the Inquisition and the Index of Forbidden Books, and historians of the Church who have challenged the older monolithic view of the „Counter-Reformation Church‟. It seeks to show that while there were indeed significant changes to the apparatus of censorship during the sixteenth century, notably the re-organisation of the Inquisition and creation of the Index, they did not signal an entirely new approach towards the censorship of philosophy, nor did it have the cataclysmic impact suggested by earlier historians. I argue that the attitudes towards philosophy maintained within these institutions represent a specific formulation of the relationship between philosophy and revealed faith, which was in fact consistent with ideas elaborated within the mendicant orders during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. I argue that the implementation of these ideas as the basis for censorship can only be understood by understanding complex power struggles within the Church.

<p>Many studies on neurogenesis in adult dentate gyrus (DG) have been performed on rodents and other mammalian species, but only a few on adult human DG.  This study is focusing on neurogenesis in adult human DG. To characterize the birth of cells in DG, the expression of the cell proliferation marker Ki67 was examined using immunohistochemistry. Ki67-positive labelling was indeed observed in the granular cell layer and the molecular layer of dentate gyrus and in the hilus of hippocampus, as well as in the subgranular zone (SGZ). The Ki67 positive nuclei could be divided into three groups, based on their morphology and position, suggesting that one of the groups represents neuronal precursors. Fewer Ki67 positive cells were seen in aged subjects and in subjects with an alcohol abuse. When comparing the Ki67 positive cells and the amount of blood vessels as determined by anti factor VIII, no systematic pattern could be discerned. To identify possible stem/progenitor cells in DG a co-labelling with nestin and glial fibrillary acid protein was carried out. Co-labelling was found in the SGZ, but most of the filaments were positive for just one of the two antibodies. Antibodies to detect immature/mature neurons were also used to investigate adult human neurogenesis in DG. The immature marker βIII-tubulin showed a weak expression. The other two immature markers (PSA-NCAM and DCX) used did not work, probably since they were not cross-reacting against human tissue. In summary, this study shows that new cells are continuously formed in the adult human hippocampus, but at a slower pace compared to the rat, and that some of these new cells may represent neuronal precursors.</p>

Many studies on neurogenesis in adult dentate gyrus (DG) have been performed on rodents and other mammalian species, but only a few on adult human DG.  This study is focusing on neurogenesis in adult human DG. To characterize the birth of cells in DG, the expression of the cell proliferation marker Ki67 was examined using immunohistochemistry. Ki67-positive labelling was indeed observed in the granular cell layer and the molecular layer of dentate gyrus and in the hilus of hippocampus, as well as in the subgranular zone (SGZ). The Ki67 positive nuclei could be divided into three groups, based on their morphology and position, suggesting that one of the groups represents neuronal precursors. Fewer Ki67 positive cells were seen in aged subjects and in subjects with an alcohol abuse. When comparing the Ki67 positive cells and the amount of blood vessels as determined by anti factor VIII, no systematic pattern could be discerned. To identify possible stem/progenitor cells in DG a co-labelling with nestin and glial fibrillary acid protein was carried out. Co-labelling was found in the SGZ, but most of the filaments were positive for just one of the two antibodies. Antibodies to detect immature/mature neurons were also used to investigate adult human neurogenesis in DG. The immature marker βIII-tubulin showed a weak expression. The other two immature markers (PSA-NCAM and DCX) used did not work, probably since they were not cross-reacting against human tissue. In summary, this study shows that new cells are continuously formed in the adult human hippocampus, but at a slower pace compared to the rat, and that some of these new cells may represent neuronal precursors.

Computing highly-accurate approximate solutions to partial differential equations (PDEs) requires both a robust numerical method and a powerful machine. We present a parallel implementation of the discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method on graphics processing units (GPUs). In addition to being flexible and highly accurate, DG methods accommodate parallel architectures well, as their discontinuous nature produces entirely element-local approximations. While GPUs were originally intended to compute and display computer graphics, they have recently become a popular general purpose computing device. These cheap and extremely powerful devices have a massively parallel structure. With the recent addition of double precision floating point number support, GPUs have matured as serious platforms for parallel scientific computing. In this thesis, we present an implementation of the DG method applied to systems of hyperbolic conservation laws in two dimensions on a GPU using NVIDIA’s Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA). Numerous computed examples from linear advection to the Euler equations demonstrate the modularity and usefulness of our implementation. Benchmarking our method against a single core, serial implementation of the DG method reveals a speedup of a factor of over fifty times using a USD $500.00 NVIDIA GTX 580.

The bishops of the 11th-14th centuries were key figures both within the church hierarchy and within state organisation across Europe. In addition to being the primary religious authorities within their dioceses they were also local or national potentates in their own right, judges, feudal lords, warriors and advisers to kings and other rulers. And yet their nature and extent of their local power is often elusive. Moreover the nature of their power changed over time making their role and their authority extremely fluid. One can hardly study the history of the medieval church without understanding how their control was exercised in the diocese, and in the city. This thesis will assess the differences, the shift and the changes in the power of the bishop in the city and the diocese of Lincoln and Cremona from mid 11th century to mid 14th century. Understanding how their power and their role changed in time is important to understand the role of the church and medieval society as a whole. Lincoln, with the biggest medieval diocese in England and with its unique series of bishops such as Hugh of Wells, Hugh of Avalon, Robert Grosseteste and Oliver Sutton, represents a substantial example to study in order to understand why and how the power of the bishop changed. On the other hand Cremona, with its unique political role during the central medieval centuries and with bishops of the calibre of Oberto and Sicardo, epitomizes the struggle for power and authority the bishops had to face in a communal Italian city. The comparison between the bishop’s powers offers us similarities and the differences between the roles and functions of the prelates in the two cities, as indicated by the available evidence and by the questions asked by historians. This study allows me to suggest a broader and more satisfying picture. The thesis uses a series of sources ranging from the bishops’ records, registers, and Episcopal Acta, manuscript and parchment sources, the Latin chronicles of the period, as well as architectural evidence.

The last few decades have seen growing concern about climate change caused by global warming, and it now seems that the very future of humanity depends on saving the environment. With recognition of CO2 emissions as the primary cause of global warming, their reduction has become critically important. An effective method of achieving this goal is to focus on the sectors that represent the greatest contribution to these emissions: electricity generation and transportation. For these reasons, the goal of the work presented in this thesis was to address the challenges associated with the accommodation of a high penetration of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) in combination with renewable energy sources. Every utility must consider how to manage the challenges created by PEVs. The current structure of distribution systems is capable of accommodating low PEV penetration; however, high penetration (20 % to 60 %) is expected over the next decades due to the accelerated growth in both the PEV market and emission reduction plans. The energy consumed by such a high penetration of PEVs is expected to add considerable loading on distribution networks, with consequences such as thermal overloading, higher losses, and equipment degradation. A further consideration is that renewable energy resources, which are neither exhaustible nor polluting, currently offer the only clean-energy option and should thus be utilized in place of conventional sources in order to supply the additional transportation-related demand. Otherwise, PEV technology would merely transfer emissions from the transportation sector to the electricity generation sector. As a means of facilitating the accommodation of high PEV penetration, this thesis proposes methodologies focused on two main themes: uncontrolled and coordinated charging. For uncontrolled charging, which represents current grid conditions, the proposal is to utilize dispatchable and renewable distributed generation (DG) units to address the high PEV penetration in a way that would not be counterproductive. This objective is achieved through three main steps. First, the benefits of allocating renewable DG in distribution systems are investigated, with different methodologies developed for their evaluation. The benefits are defined as the deferral of system upgrade investments, the reduction in the energy losses, and the reliability improvement. The research also includes a proposal for applying the developed methodologies for an assessment of the benefits of renewable DG in a planning approach for the optimal allocation of the DG units. The second step involves the development of a novel probabilistic energy consumption model for uncontrolled PEV charging, which includes consideration of the drivers’ behaviors and ambient temperature effect associated with vehicle usage. The final step integrates the approaches and models developed in the previous two steps, where a long-term dynamic planning approach is developed for the optimal allocation of renewable and dispatchable DG units in order to accommodate the rising penetration of PEV uncontrolled charging. The proposed planning approach is multi-objective and includes consideration of system emissions and costs. The second theme addressed in this thesis is coordinated PEV charging, which is dependent on the ongoing development of a smart grid communication infrastructure, in which vehicle-grid communication is feasible via appropriate communication pathways. This part of the work led to the development of a proposed coordinated charging architecture that can efficiently improve the performance of the real-time coordinating PEV charging in the smart grid. The architecture is comprised of two novel units: a prediction unit and an optimization unit. The prediction unit provides an accurate forecast of future PEV power demand, and the optimization unit generates optimal coordinated charging/discharging decisions that maximize service reliability, minimize operating costs, and satisfy system constraints.

The histories of particular cities and states within that myriad-faceted slice of civilisation, the Renaissance in Italy, have received more scholarly attention than have the diplomatic, ecclesiastical and cultural connections between them. This study is part of a balance-redressing process. Senior clerics traversed frontiers, owing allegiance to their native state, their benefices and, above all, to the Papacy. The purpose of this exploration of the curial careers of four later quattrocento Venetian cardinals is essentially twofold : to account for relations between Venice and the Papacy with reference to individuals who were at once Venetian patricians and princes of the Church; and to examine the cardinals' responses to this situation in terms of political, ecclesiastical and cultural patronage. Where did their loyalty lie? To Venice, with its perennial suspicion of the Church and peculiar notion of the characteristics of a Venetian cardinal? Or to the Pope, expressing overt hostility towards the Republic in the War of Ferrara and placing it under an interdict? Chapter one sets Merco Barbo, Pietro Foscari, Giovanni Michiel and Giovanni Battista Zeno in a Venetian context. Chapters two and three chart relations between the two powers, from the exposure of Cardinal Zeno's involvement in a scheme to transmit Venetian state secrets to Rome in exchange for ecclesiastical preferment, through to Ermolao Barbaro's controversial appointment to the patriarchate of Aquileia, via the short-lived Papal-Venetian league negotiated by Cardinal Foscari in 1480. The fourth chapter considers their proximity to the Supreme Pontiff and how their material fortunes varied under popes Sixtus and Innocent, after which an assessment of the nature, extent and effectiveness of their patronage is divided between chapters five and six, focussing pa.rticularly on Venetian connections. Despite diverging careers, it is concluded that all were bound by variations of the Venetian inheritance.