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Acknowledgments
I am indebted to my present and past doctoral students who have shared
with me the trials and tribulations of carrying out this largely experimen-
tal research work with a signicant research and development component,
including theory and computer simulations, as described in this book.
Among them I would like to particularly thank Dr. Indranuj Dey,
Dr.Jose V. Mathew, Mr. Debaprasad Sahu, Mr. Samit Paul, Mr. Abhishek
Chowdhury, and Ms. Shail Pandey. I am grateful to the Indian Institute
of Technology (IIT) Kanpur for nancial support under the Centre for
Development of Technical Education (CDTE) program, which helped me ...