For their support, I would like to thank my parents, my brothers, and Kathryn. Finally, I would like to thank the friends who kept me sane during my research, including Dave Burke, Hendrik Kück, Eric Brochu, Lisa Streit, Roger Tam, Ben Forsyth, Ritchie Argue, Matthew Brown, Derek Olive, Kristin Kopra, Alex Aylett, Shuzhen Wang, Matthew Thorne and Dan Archambault.