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When their needs change, UK homeowners tend to adjust their housing by making house moves or building alterations. In the UK's low liquidity housing market however, people on the edges of homeownership lack both choice and the funds to trade-up, whilst in higher density areas, alterations are hard or impossible to make. In an age of longevity, precarity and episodic changes in housing needs, these factors mean some households experience inappropriate housing for longer. To meet this urgent but largely unacknowledged need for real choice over time, this practice-based thesis develops a transdisciplinary framework for improving adjustability during use. Taking a capabilities approach, I consider two housing models, each claiming to provide solutions for people whose needs are not met by the mainstream market. Drawing on stakeholder interviews, I ask, (1) What characteristics provide owners with longer-term adjustability? (2) What industry changes are needed to make adjustable housing attractive to developers? and, (3) How knowledge from the fields of architecture, economics and real estate might be combined to describe and implement 'adjustable housing'? My findings suggest that adjustability is not only about space (normally the primary consideration of architects), but is also a function of tenure and shared housing environment. These may be thought of as three dimensions of adjustability : adjustable dwellings, through which the housing density can vary over time; adjustable tenure, that gives residents an equity stake that can go down as well as up; and adjustable infrastructure, so that people have shared amenities and circulation that they can meet in, and meet about. This idea of living together separately, is less radical than cohousing but also - as I show - less costly, risky and exclusive to deliver, I identify six ways that regulation, planning and design could become more scenarios-led, and conclude that the architectural and real estate industries need to work more closely if they are to change the structure of housing demand in the UK.

The Italian territory is covered of approximately 384,000 ha of coastal lagoons and these could represent potential location for Pacific oyster, Crassostrea gigas (Thunberg, 1793) farming. Approximately 10,000 ha of the coastal Italian lagoons are located in the Sardinian region, these are currently not utilized for shellfish farming, and present suitable environmental conditions that allow for good growth rates and optimal market quality for Pacific oysters farming. Therefore, these lagoons can become potential farming sites to increase this industry in the Italian territory, where the demand for this shellfish species cannot be met by domestic production alone. The aim of this PhD study was to enhance Pacific oyster farming in Mediterranean coastal lagoons taking into account local aquaculture industry’s ambitions and challenges, therefore different Pacific oyster culture aspects were investigated. To achieve the goals of this PhD study, novel farming tools and their benefits to Pacific oyster farming were investigated. Moreover, the validation of ShellSIM® growth model in a new environment was carried out, providing a new validated tool to farmers and stakeholders to monitor oysters’ performances and estimate productivity in local waters. Finally, a site selection methodology was developed to identify suitable sites for Pacific oyster farming, and potential risks to consumers linked to microplastics pollution in coastal areas and uptake in Pacific oyster were investigated. Taken together, the results of this PhD study provide new insight on ways to improve C. gigas sustainable aquaculture industry in Mediterranean coastal lagoons, with particular focus on the Italian territory.

In this thesis an architecture, similar to subsumption architectures, is presented which uses low level behaviour modules, based on combinations of machine learning techniques, to create teams of autonomous agents cooperating via shared plans for interaction. The purpose of this is to perform effective single plan execution within multiple scenarios, using a modern team based first person shooter video game as the domain and visualiser. The main focus is showing that through basic machine learning mechanisms, applied in a multi-agent setting on sparse data, plans can be executed on game levels of varying size and shape without sacrificing team goals. It is also shown how different team members can perform locally sub-optimal operations which contribute to a globally better strategy by adding exploration data to the machine learning mechanisms. This contributes to the reinforcement learning problem of exploration versus exploitation, from a multi-agent perspective.

The aim of this research was to investigate the feasibility of using synthetic organic polymers to control crystal growth with a view to generating organic/inorganic composites. This work was inspired by examples of biocomposites such as bone and shell. In these organic/inorganic hybrids the identity of the mineral phase and organisation of the bioorganic domains is controlled to yield functionally optimised structures. The bio-organic assemblages are multi-component systems, where pre-organised, three-dimensional scaffolds are further decorated with organic polymers which direct crystal growth at defined loci. Here the aims were (i) to investigate possible synthetic polymers that demonstrate an ability to direct crystal growth and (ii) to fabricate a three-dimensional scaffold that may be functionalised to secure control of crystal growth.

The debate on the development of Labour politics has become more complex and it is accepted that local economic, social and political experiences are crucial to an understanding of the growth of Labour and the decline of the Liberals. The majority of regional and local studies have concentrated on the north or London. This study tries to redress the balance by looking at how and why Labour politics developed in Southampton. The economic background is considered including the dominance of port related industry and the extent of trade union organisation. The influence of socialist groups and the character of local Liberalism is examined and it is argued that Labour had made a significant political advance by 1914. Despite some wartime divisions, Labour was able to unite around the material interests of the working class and after the war consolidated its position developing a neighbourhood organisation and moving away from a purely trade union based organisation. Labour began to secure more working class wards but this was an uneven process. They faced opposition in the form of an anti- Labour alliance of Liberals and Conservatives first at local and then at parliamentary elections. Restrictions on the municipal franchise excluded parliamentary electors and this was likely to affect potential Labour voters in marginal wards. Throughout the whole period Labour highlighted the material issues of unemployment and housing which helped to establish them as the party of working class interests.

This work reports the pilot-scale investigation of various anaerobic reactor systems treating a fruit washing wastewater. An open cell reticulated foam was used as a biomass support media (BSM). The foam pads (25 mm cubes) were randomly packed in the 2.5 m- 3 reactor with an unpacked section beneath the bed. Four general operational regimes were evaluated. These were: single and two stage operation, with and without effluent recycle. Performance was monitored throughout each run in terms of maximum COD loading rate and minimum attainable hydraulic retention time. Biomass concentrations, both within the media and freely suspended between the biomass support particles were measured on samples from each operating regime, their acetoclastic activity being determined in a laboratory test. A method was developed to ascertain whether a difference in biomass activity existed between the outside of an individual biomass support particle and at the centre of the particle, using a radioactively labelled substrate. It was concluded that a two stage system without recycle provided the best performance with respect to the the maximum attainable loading rate (11.6 kgCOD.m- 3 .day). This was approximately twice that for any of the other systems tested. The minimum hydraulic retention time corresponding to this loading was approximately 1.0 d. The superior performance of the two stage system without recycle was attributed to the increased acetoclastic populations brought about by the pre-acidified feed and the plug flow removal kinetics exhibited in reactors without recycle. Two stage systems produced higher levels of biomass in the reactor than their single stage counterparts and a large proportion of the total biomass inventory was present as suspended growth in systems without recycle. Tracer studies showed that the actual HRT was much less than that calculated from flow rate and reactor volume, indicating that large areas of the reactor were not accessible to the substrate. Experiments investigating activity gradients in the BSM indicated that a significant difference existed between the acetoclastic activity of biomass at the centre of a colonized particle and that on the surface. It may be concluded that substrate diffusional limitations played an important role in determining the performance of this type of biomass support. Electron microscope examination of BSP fragments gave little information other than the existence of both attached and suspended growth. Most of the bio mass was present as a dense fibrillar network.

The use of speech or language produced by native speakers in real situations for teaching oral communication skills in the second language classroom is described. Three sample lessons, based on the author's teaching experience in Japan, are presented. All lessons used material called "The Bellcrest Story," produced by the British Broadcasting Corp. and Oxford University Press. The multimedia set included videotape cassettes, cassette tapes, a textbook, and a book of related documents. They were used in English as a second language classes directed at businessmen. Each lesson consisted of four parts: (1) the exposure stage, in which the material for the lesson was analyzed in detail; (2) the practice stage, in which the specific speech acts presented in the exposure stage were practiced; (3) the use stage, in which the students practiced communication through role playing; and (4) the evaluation stage, in which both the students and the teacher evaluated, through discussion, the learning that has taken place. Suggestions for applying this approach to other aspects of second language learning, such as writing skills, are included. (EKN)

Hypotheses HIV infection and combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) used to prevent mother-to-child-transmission of HIV in pregnancy increase the risk of preterm birth (PTB). We hypothesise that the use of cART, particularly protease inhibitor (PI) regimes, induce a pro-inflammatory environment at the fetal maternal unit, which triggers labour to occur at an earlier point in gestation than would occur without HIV-1 infection or cART. We also hypothesise that local cervicovaginal fluid (CVF) will be more informative regarding immune function than plasma. Specific aims -To understand the inflammatory mechanisms underlying PTB in HIV1infected and uninfected women -To elucidate if PI-based cART regimes are associated with greater concentrations of inflammatory cytokines compared to non-PI-based cART regimes in pregnancy -To characterise inflammatory and immune proteins in the CVF of HIV-1 infected pregnant women and compare by ART exposure and prematurity with a view to identifying potential PTB biomarkers. Results PTB in HIV-1 infected women was associated with greater circulating activated T cells and abundance of vaginal Gardnerella and Prevotella species. HIV-1 infected pregnant women have a high prevalence of L. iners and diverse anaerobic bacteria dominant vaginal community state types. Pre-conception cART was associated with greater abundance of Gardnerella vaginalis and a reduction in circulating activated T cells but not to the same level as observed in uninfected pregnant women. Length of time on cART was associated with an increase in plasma IL-12, the macrophage activating cytokine, indicating a pro-inflammatory 11 shift in cytokine environment. HIV-1 infected pregnant women had much higher inflammatory cytokines in their CVF. In HIV-1 infected pregnant women vaginal bacterial diversity was positively correlated with CVF pro-inflammatory cytokine IL-1E, known to be associated with PTB. Directed exploration of the CVF proteome in HIV-1 infected pregnant women revealed high abundance of immune proteins associated with macrophage and neutrophil activation, and Extracellular Matrix (ECM) modifiers such as matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs). These proteins were especially abundant in women receiving PI-based cART. Significance These data indicate that ART may modulate the local bacterial species; perhaps through selective pressure and that the vaginal bacterial communities observed in HIV-1 infected women are pro-inflammatory and associated with PTB. Local CVF inflammation and immune activation is exaggerated in these HIV-1 infected women and not fully reversed with cART. The presence of bacterial antigen in the context of enhanced local innate and adaptive inflammatory immune response is likely responsible for up-regulating downstream NFκB pathways such as induction of MMPs, known to be association with induction of labour. Contribution to academic area A greater understanding of the mechanisms behind this phenomenon enable us to greater define the toxicity of certain antiretroviral classes or specific drugs in pregnancy and assess newer drugs using the same techniques. Optimising the risk stratification in these women, perhaps through application of improved PTB biomarkers or regular vaginal bacterial screening, may enable improved targeted risk reduction strategies e.g. progesterone, antibiotics or probiotics.