3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to thank Dr. Dina L Newman for giving me an opportunity to work in this thesis project as well as guiding me throughout the development process. I would also like to specially thank Dr. Newman for her patience and support in correcting my thesis document. I am thankful to Dr. Jai W. Kang for his valuable discussions and helpful suggestion throughout the computational part. I would like to thank Dr. David Eddins for helping me understand the database design involved in this work. My special thanks to Dr. Gary R. Skuse for his encouragement and support throughout my thesis work. Finally and most importantly I thank my parents, my brother, m