Ying wu for the continuous support of my ph.d study and research, for his patience, motivation, enthusiasm, and immense knowledge. James crenshaw, for their encouragement, insightful comments, and hard questions. Qiong liu, for offering me the summer internship opportunities in their groups and leading me working on diverse exciting projects. I thank my fellow labmates in northwestern vision group: gang hua, ting yu, zhimin fan, shengyang dai, junsong yuan, jiang xu, jialue fan, and neelabh gupta, for the stimulating discussions, for the sleepless nights we were working together before deadlines, and for all the fun we have had in the last four years.

Also i thank my friends in tsinghua university: chen fan, wensheng wang, bo qin, xiwei wang, yonggang zhao, hua chen, junlin li, and rui zhou. Last but not the least, i would like to thank my family: my parents siyu yang and xiaolan ding, for giving birth to me at the first place and supporting me spiritually throughout my life.

acknowledgments

i would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor, dr. Donald kline, whose expertise, understanding, and patience, added considerably to my graduate experience. Vision, aging, ethics, interaction with participants , and his assistance in writing reports i.e.

Grant proposals, scholarship applications and this thesis , which have on occasion made me green with envy. Chris sears for the assistance they provided at all levels of the research project. Ron wardell from the faculty of environmental design for taking time out from his busy schedule to serve as my external reader. Thomy nilsson, without whose motivation and encouragement i would not have considered a graduate career in psychological research. It was under his tutelage that i developed a focus and became interested in vision and human factors.

He provided me with direction, technical support and became more of a mentor and friend, than a professor. It was though his, persistence, understanding and kindness that i completed my undergraduate degree and was encouraged to apply for graduate training. I doubt that i will ever be able to convey my appreciation fully, but i owe him my eternal gratitude.

Larchmont, new york for his suggestions for, and provision of the font materials evaluated in this study. Appreciation also goes out to sujeet paul, ivan hoza and jack moxness of the department of psychology s technical support group for all of their computer and technical assistance throughout my graduate program, and to the office staff for all the instances in which their assistance helped me along the way. Thanks also goes out to those who provided me with statistical advice at times of critical need dr. I would also like to thank my friends in the vision and aging lab, particularly lisa lynk, for our philosophical debates, exchanges of knowledge, skills, and venting of frustration during my graduate program, which helped enrich the experience. I would also like to thank my family for the support they provided me through my entire life and in particular, i must acknowledge my wife and best friend, nancy, without whose love, encouragement and editing assistance, i would not have finished this thesis.

In conclusion, i recognize that this research would not have been possible without the financial assistance of nserc kline , the university of calgary graduate studies connolly , the department of psychology at the university of calgary teaching assistantships, graduate research scholarships and the province of alberta graduate scholarship fund connolly , and express my gratitude to those agencies. This page last updated june, 1998 by: kevin connolly lt [email protected] gt it is a pleasure to thank the many people who made this thesis possible. With his enthusiasm, his inspiration, and his great efforts to explain things clearly and simply, he helped to make mathematics fun for me. Throughout my thesis writing period, he provided encouragement, sound advice, good teaching, good company, and lots of good ideas. I would like to thank the many people who have taught me mathematics: my high school math teachers especially larry rice , my undergraduate teachers at toronto especially edward bierstone, peter botta, man duen choi, andres del junco, and nathan isgur , and my graduate teachers especially raoul bott and jim fill.

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For their kind assistance with writing letters, giving wise advice, helping with various applications, and so on, i wish to thank in addition robin gottlieb, joe harris, john imbrie, jun liu, esther silberstein, and dan stroock. I am indebted to my many student colleagues for providing a stimulating and fun environment in which to learn and grow. I am especially grateful to gary baumgartner, paul geiger, leonya livshits, gordon macdonald, and phil morenz at toronto, and to eric belsley, karen chandler, shun jen chen, carl dou, martin hildebrand, peter magyar, james mckernan, and dan rockmore at harvard. Peter magyar was particularly helpful mathematically, patiently teaching me the theory of lie groups. I wish to thank my best friend in high school moshin lee , my best friend as an undergraduate aaron boxer , and my best friend as a graduate student marc goldman , for helping me get through the difficult times, and for all the emotional support, comraderie, entertainment, and caring they provided.

I am grateful to the secretaries and librarians in the math departments of toronto and harvard, for helping the departments to run smoothly and for assisting me in many different ways. Marie bachtis and ida bulat at toronto, and donna d'fini, andrea mcdonnell, nancy miller, and sarah warren at harvard, deserve special mention. I wish to thank my entire extended family for providing a loving environment for me. My brothers, my half siblings, my sister in common law, my step mother, some uncles, and some first cousins once removed were particularly supportive.

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acknowledgments

i would like to thank three important groups of people, without whom this dissertation would not have been possible: my committee, my wonderful lab mates, and my family. I would like to first thank the members of my dissertation committee not only for their time and extreme patience, but for their intellectual contributions to my development as a scientist. I am indebted to kathleen hall, who first taught me that rna genes were ``cool'' in my favorite section of the nucleic acids core graduate course. Without the appreciation and excitement in rna research inspired by those lectures, i may not have ever pursued this challenging area of biology overlooked by many. To tim schedl, i thank for being a supportive, strong guiding force as chair of my committee.

Phd Thesis Acknowledgments Text