Partial support for this work from the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and the Naval
Engineering Education Center (NEEC) is greatly appreciated. I would also like to acknowledge
Alejandro Rivera, Carl Moore, Juan Ordonez and Emanuel Collins, whose support and
encouragement has been indispensible, as well as Leon Van Dommelen, and Anter El-Azab,
who emphasized the role and importance of mathematics in the to me in the pursuit of scientific
concepts