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I wish to express my sincere thanks to my thesis adviser, Prof. Seth Fraden, for his guidance and support in my research career at Brandeis. I would like to thank Dr. Aleksey Lomakin of MIT for his valuable insights and suggestions during the discussions. I am thankful to Prof. Dagmar Ringe and Prof. Michael Hagan for being on my dissertation committee. I would like to thank Matt McNeely and Greg Widberg for their technical support and teaching the required instrumentation skills. Last but not least, I would like to thank the National Science Foundation for the financial support.