Acknowledgements

The author would like to express his gratitude to the people who have motivated or helped at various stages of writing this book. Although, the skeleton of the text was drawn in the author’s mind long back, the impetus to bring it to fruition was provided by Professor Krishna B. Misra - a ‘Guru’ of eminence who had shown the research path to the author and to many others as well.

Admittedly, it would not have been possible to complete this task without painstaking secretarial assistance provided by my student-friend, Lt Col Rajvinder Singh for proof-reading, incorporating numerous corrections on several drafts, and formatting. My research scholars, notably Mr. Gaurav Khanna (for collating the references and executing the software codes on several examples); Mr. Rajarajan, Mr. Tauheed Ahamed and Ms. Shabnam Samima deserve special thanks for providing assistance as and when it was needed.

The author also owes special thanks to his colleagues Prof. V. N. A. Naikan (Head of our Centre) and Prof. Neeraj Goyal for their helpful comments and suggestions at the early stages of this task.

Finally, the author would like to express his sincere thanks to the authority of his institution, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India, for providing the necessary facility, aura and environment to undertake this project.

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