ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Without the help and support from a large number of people, this work would not have been possible. First of all, I would like to thank Prof. Laurence Jacobs for making this exchange possible and for being a great advisor, supporter, teacher and friend. He opened a new door to ultrasonic wave propagation I might not have entered without him. A huge 'Thank You' goes to Dr. Jin-Y...

We report here a case of a carcinoid tumor observed in the middle ear (ME), which was initially diagnosed as ME adenoma. The patient was a 64-year-old woman who was first seen in our hospital in March 2001 for a 7-month hearing loss. On otoscopic examination, a whitish mass could be observed through the intact tympanic membrane. High-resolution computed tomography demonstrated a tumor-like lesi...

Though outdoor navigation has been used for a long time, indoor navigation has not yet been put into practice. Recent works based on geomagnetic information require a user to follow the exact path of previous users, which limits its applicability. Meanwhile, the optimal navigation path may not be provided given a large number of paths with different sources and destinations. We present MeshMap,...

Acknowledgement It would not have been possible to finish this PhD thesis without the help of many people. First, I would like to thank Prof. Peter Hellekalek for introducing me to the very rich topic of cryptography. Next, I express my gratitude towards Nicolas Sendrier for being my supervisor during my PhD at Inria Paris-Rocquencourt. He gave me an interesting topic to start, encouraged me to...

DEDICATION To my husband Jeffrey, my parents, and my son v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I need to thank of the University of Massachusetts Amherst Chemistry Department for giving me such an invaluable chance to study here. Thank you to my advisor and mentor, Professor Sankaran Thayumanavan, for the chance to do research in such a wonderful research group. Thank you for all of the direction, s...

Acknowledgments None of this work would have been possible without the guidance of my adviser, Bill Geisler. Bill is an outstanding mentor, in equal parts critical and kind. I cannot imagine a better role model for a scientist; he has unflinching integrity, unflagging diligence and a very big brain. Many thanks go to Risto Miikkulainen. Risto would always ask the hard question, challenge me to ...

Acknowledgements My greatest gratitude goes out to my supervisor Dr Daniel Chan. He helped me pick the topic for this thesis which turned out to be extremely interesting, helped me with the writing of this thesis and most importantly never refused to spend time with me to help me learn mathematics. I thank him deeply for this. I would to also like thank my high school maths teacher Ian Denton f...