ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Much of the work presented was done as a collaboration of Dr. Gole's entire lab group. The group includes two Ph.D. candidates, William Laminack and Caitlin Baker; the latter oversaw much of the work done by the undergraduates. The undergraduates also include Christian Reitz, who graduated in Fall 2014, and Neil Hardy.

Y. Huang acknowledges partial support from a UCF Graduate College Presidential Fellowship and National Science Foundation (NS F) grant No. 1200566. C. Li acknowledges partial support from NSF grants No. 0806931 and No. 0963146. M. Georgiopoulos acknowledges partial support from NSF grants No. 1161228 and No. 0525429. G. G. Anagnostopoulos acknowledges partial support from NSF grant No. 1263011....

Introduction Pachydermoperiostosis is a syndrome characterized by finger clubbing, periosteal new bone formation especially over the distal ends of long bones, and coarsening of the facial features, with thickening, furrowing and oiliness of the skin of the face and forehead. The first reported cases were the Hagner brothers, who had typical features of this syndrome. They were first described ...

To my family for their immense love and support And Varun for believing in me ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would first of all like to thank Prof. Aniruddha Gokhale for showing faith in my abilities throughout my stay at Vanderbilt. His research thought process and teaching skills always influenced me. I would also like to thank Dr. Jules White for his useful comments and support for my thesis. encouragem...

As markets expand due to globalization, chemical manufacturers are faced with the challenge of meeting the rapidly growing global demand for production at a time when production costs are increasing due to rising feedstock prices. One way for chemical manufacturers to ensure profitability in the current environment is to foster innovation through the use of advanced modeling techniques. The Che...

In this summary we want to present the main results which are contained in the author’s “Habilitationsschrift” (dissertation). It has been written in German and has been submitted to the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of the University of Bayreuth. Moreover we want to comment on these results, sketch some of the ideas how to prove them and give some background information. For the reader’s ...