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The need for higher value, reliable online services to promote new Internet-based business models is a requirement facing many technologists and business leaders. This need coupled with the trend towards greater mobility of networked devices and consumers creates significant challenges for current and future systems developers. The proliferation of mobile devices and the variability of their capabilities present an overwhelming number of options to systems designers and engineers who are tasked with the development of next generation context adaptive software services. Given the dynamic nature of this environment, implementing solutions for the current set of devices in the held makes an assumption that this deployment situation is somehow fixed this assumption does little to support the future and longer term needs within the marketplace. To add to the complexity, the timeframes necessary to develop robust and adaptive online software services can be long by comparison, so that the development projects and their resources are often behind on platform support before the first release is launched to the public. New approaches and methodologies for engineering dynamic and adaptive online services will be necessary and, as will be shown, are in fact mandated by the regulation imposed by service level guarantees. These new techniques and technology are commercially useless unless they can be used in engineering practice. New context adaptation processes and architectures must be capable of performing under strict service level agreements those that will undoubtedly govern future business relationships between online parties. This programme of engineering study and research investigates several key issues found in the emerging area of context adaptation services for online mobile networks. As a series of engineering investigations, the work described here involves a wider array of technical activity than found in traditional doctoral work and this is reflected throughout the dissertation. First, a clear definition of industrial motivation is stated to provide the engineering foundation. Next, the programme focuses on the nature of contextual adaptation through product development projects. The development process within these projects results in several issues with the commercial feasibility of the technology. From this point, the programme of study then progresses through the lifecycle of the engineering process, investigating at each stage the critical engineering challenges. Further analysis of the problems and possible solutions for deploying such adaptive solutions are reviewed and experiments are undertaken in the areas of systems component and performance analysis. System-wide architectural options are then evaluated with specific interest in using knowledge-base systems as one approach to solving some of the issues in context adaptation. The central hypothesis is that due to the dynamic nature of context parameters, the concept of a mobile device knowledge base as a necessary component of an architectural solution is presented and justified through prototyping efforts. The utility of web ontologies and other "soft computing" technologies on the nature of the solution are also examined through the review of relevant work and the engineering design of the demonstration system. These technology selections are supported directly by the industrial context and mission. In the final sections, the architecture is evaluated through the demonstration of promising techniques and methods in order to confirm understanding and to evaluate the use of knowledge-bases, AI and other technologies within the scope of the project. Through the implementation of a context adaptation architecture as a business process workflow, the impact of future trends of device reconfiguration are highlighted and discussed. To address the challenge of context adaptation in reconftgurable device architectures, an evolutionary computation approach is then presented as a means to provide an optimal baseline on which a service may execute. These last two techniques are discussed and new designs are proposed to specifically address the major issues uncovered in timely collection and evaluation of contextual parameters in a mobile service network. The programme summary and future work then brings together all the key results into a practitioner's reference guide for the creation of online context adaptive services with a greater degree of intelligence and maintainability while executing with the term of a service level agreement.

With the Haute Provence region of the external French Alps the internal zone Embrunais-Ubaye nappes rest with a shallow tectonic contact on the Dauphinois external zone. Beneath the Embrunais-Ubaye nappes, the external zone is deformed by south-west facing folds and by thrust faulting, the importance of which has only recently been recognised. The later emplacement of the Embrunais-Ubaye nappes towards the west into the area is generally thought to have been by gravity gliding. Detailed field studies within both the external zone and the Embrunais-Ubaye nappes has allowed the complex Alpine tectonic evolution of Haute Provence to be resolved. These studies have also shown the external zone deformation to be dominated by piggy-back thrust imbrication. A regional transport direction to the south-west and an overall external zone shortening of some 50% have been identified from the investigation of the three-dimensional geometry of thrust surfaces. The prominent south-west facing folds are found to have developed above a major decollement horizon and to have arcuate hinge lines concentric with the Castellane arc. Folds in general are in close association with thrust faults often developing passively as a response to thrust displacement. The Embrunais-Ubaya nappes consist of a number of thrust bounded structural units which have been emplaced into the region in an overstepping sequence. Detailed local mapping of the internal structure of these units has resulted in the identification of a major south-west directed shortening deformation of the Subbrianconnais zone dominated by thrust faulting. A restoration of Subbrianconnais structures gives an estimated north-east to south-west width for the Subbrianconnais zone of over 100km. Although the final emplacement of the Embrunais-Ubaye structural units may have been a superficial gravity gliding phenomenon, possibly as a result of tectonic uplift in the internal zones, the south-west directed thrust shortening of the external zone and probably the Subbrianconnais is the result of thrust displacements climbing from depth reflecting crustal shortening.

Our research group has a keen interest in drug discovery through the exploration of new biologically active products that display potential for anticancer or antibacterial use. Additionally, we aim to develop and optimise flow chemistry methodologies that allow access to these products in a rapid and improved manner. This thesis is presented as a series of four publications; Paper I details the SAR of structurally diverse cantharidin-based scaffold that show good growth inhibition potential of cancer cell lines. Using flow chemistry techniques, Paper II reports the improved synthesis of the most potent products from Paper I under optimised conditions. Additionally, further derivatisation of the product was carried out using flow hydrogenation and a robust method optimised to effect chemoselective hydrogenation of a single olefin bond over the other. Further, a streamlined approach to hydrogenate dual olefin bonds with a degree of stereoselectivity. Additionally, our group is interested in cyclic peptides capable of preventing quorum sensing between bacterial cells and thus acting as a potential antibacterial through the reduction of bacterial virulence. Paper III describes the use of flow chemistry techniques for the systematic optimisation of reaction parameters used to synthesise linear peptide sequences on solid-phase. This technique was then used to synthesise the linear sequence of potential quorum sensing peptides and other biologically relevant peptides. Further, Paper IV adds to the overall goal of continuous flow solid-phase peptide synthesis by focusing on the initial resin loading step. With the combined protocols and total continuous flow sloid phase peptide synthesis method was created. Collectively, the four articles represent a step forward and contribute to the field of flow chemistry, and drug discovery through the use of flow assisted methodologies.

Titanium diboride (TiB2) has been investigated as a potential candidate for several industrial applications, such as: cutting tools, electric devices, wear parts and many more fields of application. The main drawback of TiB2 is its brittle nature, which has limited its range of applications. Diamond-like Carbon (DLC) has been used in industrial applications, mainly for wear resistant parts. However, the application of DLC films has been limited by the level of internal stress accumulated during deposition. This thesis investigates the deposition of TiB2/DLC multilayer wear resistant coatings to overcome these limitations. The thesis focuses on the tribological effects caused by different deposition techniques on TiB2 ceramic used by the coatings industry today, in order to overcome the brittle nature of TiB2 and the lack of adhesion of DLC films. The multilayer coatings consisted of 25 bi-layers of TiB2/DLC. These TiB2/DLC coatings were fabricated, maintaining a constant composition wavelength (sum of two layers λ =200 nm) for an array of ceramic fractions ranging from 25% to 95% by volume using as substrates, tool steel AISI 1095 and powder metallurgy aluminium alloys, type 2618. The effect of the DLC content on the structure and performance (hardness, adhesion and wear) of the films was investigated. The bi-layer thickness influences the failure patterns observed in the scratch testing. These observations have been used to optimise the multilayered coating structure. Multilayer coatings have been manufactured to increase surface hardness and wear resistance as applied to a commercial powder metallurgy Al alloys (Al 2618) used in the automotive industry. Optimum coatings have found hardness values of 27.8 GPa, with a critical load of 20 N and a friction coefficient of 0.47. As a result of wear tests the multilayer with 10% of DLC was found to be best compromise between high hardness (23.8 GPa), good adhesion (critical load higher than 20 N), low friction and low wear rate.