Abstract

There are many people to whom I owe a debt of thanks for their support, for the completion of my thesis and supported me in science as well in privacy during this time. First, I would like to sincerely thank my advisor, Prof. Dr Erhard Hin-richs, under whose influence the work here was initiated during my fruit-ful stay in Germany. Without his continuous and invaluable support, this work could not have been completed. I would also like to thank Prof. Dr. Eschbach-Szabo for reading this thesis and offering constructive comments. Besides my advisors, I am deeply grateful to the rest of my thesis commit-tee: Frank Richter and Fritz Hamm, for their kindly support and interesting questions. A special thanks goes to Lothar Lemnitzer, who proofread the thesis carefully and gave insightful comments. I would like to thank my parents for their life-long love and support. Last but not least, I also owe a lot of thanks to my lovely wife Hsiao-Wen, my

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