Learning from Blackpool Promenade: Re-enchanting sterile streets

In this article, the authors contend that contemporary urban streets are over-regulated, preoccupied with surveillance, commercial requirements and rapid transit, aesthetically homogeneous and sensually sterile. As an exemplary site of contrast, the article focuses on the recently redesigned Blackpool Promenade. First, it argues that this redesign honours the resort’s popular traditions, its potent heritage and the importance of innovation. Second, it explores how the promenade fosters playful interactions, conviviality and lingering. Third, the article focuses on sensory attributes that enhance the experience of promenaders

Hyperbolic contraction measuring systems for extensional flow

In this paper an experimental method for extensional measurements on medium viscosity fluids in contraction flow is evaluated through numerical simulations and experimental measurements. This measuring technique measures the pressure drop over a hyperbolic contraction, caused by fluid extension and fluid shear, where the extensional component is assumed to dominate. The present evaluative work advances our previous studies on this experimental method by introducing several contraction ratios and addressing different constitutive models of varying shear and extensional response. The constitutive models included are those of the constant viscosity Oldroyd-B and FENE-CR models, and the shear-thinning LPTT model. Examining the results, the impact of shear and first normal stress difference on the measured pressure drop are studied through numerical pressure drop predictions. In addition, stream function patterns are investigated to detect vortex development and influence of contraction ratio. The numerical predictions are further related to experimental measurements for the flow through a 15:1 contraction ratio with three different test fluids. The measured pressure drops are observed to exhibit the same trends as predicted in the numerical simulations, offering close correlation and tight predictive windows for experimental data capture. This result has demonstrated that the hyperbolic contraction flow is well able to detect such elastic fluid properties and that this is matched by numerical predictions in evaluation of their flow response. The hyperbolical contraction flow technique is commended for its distinct benefits: it is straightforward and simple to perform, the Hencky strain can be set by changing contraction ratio, non-homogeneous fluids can be tested, and one can directly determine the degree of elastic fluid behaviour. Based on matching of viscometric extensional viscosity response for FENE-CR and LPTT models, a decline is predicted in pressure drop for the shear-thinning LPTT model. This would indicate a modest impact of shear in the flow since such a pressure drop decline is relatively small. It is particularly noteworthy that the increase in pressure drop gathered from the experimental measurements is relatively high despite the low Deborah number range explored

Comparison of predictions of baking volume using large deformation rheological properties

Three large deformation rheological tests, the Kieffer dough extensibility system, the D/R dough inflation system and the 2 g mixograph test, were carried out on doughs made from a large number of winter wheat lines and cultivars grown in Poland. These lines and cultivars represented a broad spread in baking performance in order to assess their suitability as predictors of baking volume. The parameters most closely associated with baking volume were strain hardening index, bubble failure strain, and mixograph bandwidth at 10min. Simple correlations with baking volume indicate that bubble failure strain and strain hardening index give the highest correlations, whilst the use of best subsets regression, which selects the best combination of parameters, gave increased correlations with R-2 = 0.865 for dough inflation parameters, R-2 = 0. 842 for Kieffer parameters and R-2 = 0.760 for mixograph parameters. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Effects of triazole and strobilurin fungicide programmes, with and without late-season nitrogen fertiliser, on the baking quality of Malacca winter wheat

Field experiments were conducted over 3 years to study the effect of applying triazole and strobilurin fungicides on the bread-making quality of Malacca winter wheat. Averaged over all years the application of a fungicide programme increased yields, particularly when strobilurin fungicides were applied. Reductions in protein concentration, sulphur concentration, Hageberg failing number and loaf volumes also occurred as the amount of fungicide applied increased. However, there were no deleterious effects of fungicide application on sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS) sedimentation volumes, N:S ratios or dough theology. Effects of fungicide application on bread-making quality were not product specific. Therefore, it appears that new mechanisms to explain strobilurin effects on bread-making quality do not need to be invoked. Where reductions in protein concentration did occur they could be compensated for by a late-season application of nitrogen either as granular ammonium nitrate at flag leaf emergence or foliar urea at anthesis. These applications, however, sometimes increased the N:S ratio of the extracted flour and failed to improve loaf volume. Multiple regression analysis revealed that main effects of year, flour protein concentration and N:S ratio could explain 93% of the variance in loaf volume caused by season, fungicide and nitrogen treatments. However, an equally good fit was achieved by just including sulphur concentration with year. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Rapid quality assessment of wheat cultivars registered in Poland using the 2-g mixograph and multivariate statistical analysis

Baking and 2-g mixograph analyses were performed for 55 cultivars (19 spring and 36 winter wheat) from various quality classes from the 2002 harvest in Poland. An instrumented 2-g direct-drive mixograph was used to study the mixing characteristics of the wheat cultivars. A number of parameters were extracted automatically from each mixograph trace and correlated with baking volume and flour quality parameters (protein content and high molecular weight glutenin subunit [HMW-GS] composition by SDS-PAGE) using multiple linear regression statistical analysis. Principal component analysis of the mixograph data discriminated between four flour quality classes, and predictions of baking volume were obtained using several selected mixograph parameters, chosen using a best subsets regression routine, giving R-2 values of 0.862-0.866. In particular, three new spring wheat strains (CHD 502a-c) recently registered in Poland were highly discriminated and predicted to give high baking volume on the basis of two mixograph parameters: peak bandwidth and 10-min bandwidth