Raising the Participation Age: Lived experiences of extended participation within low-level vocational education and training

The school-to-work transition has been a key area of analysis for sociologists of youth and education, with much attention given to the exclusion and marginalisation of disadvantaged young people. While post-16 participation has been the norm for some time, the introduction of Raising the Participation Age (RPA) has created a new dynamic in the context of Further Education (FE), by requiring extended participation in education or training to the age of 18. Primarily concerned with reducing the number of young people not in education, employment, or training (NEET), and enhancing employability, RPA has implications for what set of experiences lay between inclusionary and exclusionary school-to-work transitions. However, rich accounts of young people's experiences of extended participation in education and training are absent from recent literature. Such accounts are vital in understanding how young people are responding to the growing centrality of education for labour market opportunities, and to the intensification of policy aimed at extending and expanding educational participation. This ethnographic study examines the lived experiences of young people in low-level vocational education and training (VET), as they are the group most precariously placed on the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion. The two-year, multi-site ethnography shows that young people in low-level VET, although not NEET, still experience multiple forms of non-participation. The research revealed how deficit constructions of young people, based on notions of disengagement, implicitly and explicitly constrained opportunity and agency. Specifically, the findings highlight how factors such as teacher practices, learning cultures, and school and college policies all played a role in entrenching positions of marginality. All of which raises questions about the efficacy and value of RPA and participation in low-level VET. The thesis concludes that, to more fully understand the processes and experiences which disrupt or (re)produce marginalisation and exclusion, a more complex and nuanced conceptualisation of (non)participation is required

Digging up and digging down:urban undergrounds

This article explores the intersections between history, urban geography and archaeology in the context of the question “are we all archaeologists now?” Amongst scholars doing research around questions of space and place, increasingly consideration is being given to vertical architectures, including tunnelling infrastructures. The vertical stretch of human imagination and habitation, even upward, inevitably involves excavation that triggers encounters with material remains of the past. However, the construction of subterranean realms also creates archaeologies of the future. Here we outline the significance of a dovetailing of disciplines through vertical stretch

Maps, Memories and Manchester: The Cartographic Imagination of the Hidden Networks of the Hydraulic City

The largely unseen channelling, culverting and controlling of water into, through and out of cities is the focus of our cartographic interpretation. This paper draws on empirical material depicting hydraulic infrastructure underlying the growth of Manchester in mapped form. Focusing, in particular, on the 19th century burst of large-scale hydraulic engineering, which supplied vastly increased amounts of clean drinking water, controlled unruly rivers to eliminate flooding, and safely removed sewage, this paper explores the contribution of mapping to the making of a more sanitary city, and towards bold civic minded urban intervention. These extensive infrastructures planned and engineered during Victorian and Edwardian Manchester are now taken-for-granted but remain essential for urban life. The maps, plans and diagrams of hydraulic Manchester fixed particular forms of elite knowledge (around planning foresight, topographical precision, civil engineering and sanitary science) but also facilitated and freed flows of water throughout the city. The survival of these maps and plans in libraries, technical books and obscure reports allows the changing cultural work of water to be explored and evokes a range of socially specific memories of a hidden city. Our aetiology of hydraulic cartographics is conducted using ideas from science and technology studies, semiology, and critical cartography with the goal of revealing how they work as virtual witnesses to an 1 unseen city, dramatizing engineering prowess and envisioning complex and messy materiality into a logical, holistic and fluid network underpinning the urban machine. 1

Relationships between traditional and fundamental dough-testing methods

Two fundamental test systems were used to evaluate the visco-elastic properties of doughs from wheat samples of three varieties grown at four distinct sites. For comparison, tests were also performed with traditional equipment, namely the Mixograph, an extension tester and a Farinograph-type small-scale recording mixer. Uniaxial dough elongation (with an Instron) produced results similar to the conventional extension tester, except that results were provided in fundamental units (Pascals), the critical value recorded being the elongational stress at maximum strain. Stress relaxation measurements were performed following a small initial shear strain. With this method, it was possible to distinguish between the viscosity and the elastic components of dough visco-elasticity. In all the tests the extra dough-strength properties were evident for the variety (Guardian) that had the 5 + 10 glutenin subunits, in contrast to the other two with the 2 + 12 combination of subunits

Continuous monitoring of bread dough fermentation using a 3D vision Structured Light technique

Fermentation of the dough is an important phase in the bread-making process which is affected by several important factors related to raw materials and processing. Changes in fermentation affect parameters in the final product, such as texture, palatability and general quality. For this reason, it is important to develop dynamic methods to study this phase. In this work, a 3D vision system based on Structured Light (SL) was used to monitor the fermentation phase. The evolution of the dough was studied employing 10 wheat flours with non-physicochemical and rheological differences. However, differences in dough behaviors during fermentation were found based on SL method parameters. When the variation of the total transversal area was related to the maximum height at each fermentation time a set of peaks and valleys appeared. These sets were directly related to the fermentation capacity. Specifically, a lower number of peaks during the main fermentation time (100 min) is related to wheat flours with high fermentation capacity. Consequently, the proposed SL Technique could be used as a method to check the fermentation capacity of wheat flours according to their fermentation behavior.We thank the Polytechnic University of Valencia and Generalitat Valenciana for the financial support provided (PAID-05-011-2870 and 226 GVPRE/2008/170 projects, respectively)Ivorra Martínez, E.; Verdú Amat, S.; Sánchez Salmerón, AJ.; Barat Baviera, JM.; Grau Meló, R. (2014). Continuous monitoring of bread dough fermentation using a 3D vision Structured Light technique. Journal of Food Engineering. 130:8-13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2013.12.031S81313

Properties of Bread Dough with Added Fiber Polysaccharides and Phenolic Antioxidants: A Review

During breadmaking, different ingredients are used to ensure the development of a continuous protein network that is essential for bread quality. Interests in incorporating bioactive ingredients such as dietary fiber (DF) and phenolic antioxidants into popular foods such as bread have grown rapidly, due to the increased consumer health awareness. The added bioactive ingredients may or may not promote the protein cross-links. Appropriate cross-links among wheat proteins, fiber polysaccharides, and phenolic antioxidants could be the most critical factor for bread dough enhanced with DF and phenolic antioxidants. Such cross-links may influence the structure and properties of a bread system during baking. This article presents a brief overview of our current knowledge of the fate of the key components (wheat proteins, fibers, and phenolic antioxidants) and how they might interact during bread dough development and baking

Temporal dominance of sensations of peanuts and peanut products in relation to Hutchings and Lillford’s “breakdown path"

Hutchings and Lillford’s (Journal of Texture Studies, 19, 103-115, 1988) proposed a “breakdown path” whereby particle size reduction occurs through mastication in conjunction with the secretion of saliva to form a swallowable bolus. The swallowing trajectory of whole peanuts, peanut meal and peanut paste were studied with the temporal dominance of sensations technique. The sensations for whole peanuts progressed from hard, to crunchy, to chewy, to soft and ended compacted on teeth. Predictably peanut meal missed out the first two sensations, progressing from chewy, to soft and ending compacted on teeth. However peanut paste, which starts as a soft suspension with relatively little structure appears to thicken and stick to the palate during oral processing. We propose that the “hard to swallow” sensation elicited by peanut paste may be due to water absorption from the saliva as they mix in the mouth

Viscoelastic properties of tablets from Osborne fractions, pentosans, flour and bread evaluated by creep tests

Little attention has been given to the influence of non-gluten components on the viscoelastic properties of wheat flour dough, bread making process and their products. The aim of this study was to evaluate by creep tests the viscoelastic properties of tablets manufactured from Osborne solubility fractions (globulins, gliadins, glutenins, albumins and residue), pentosans, flour and bread. Hard and soft wheat cultivars were used to prepare the reconstituted tablets. Sintered tablets (except flour and bread) showed similar values to those obtained from the sum of the regression coefficients of the fractions. Gliadins and albumins accounted for about 54% of the total elasticity. Gliadins contributed with almost half of the total viscosity (45.7%), and showed the highest value for the viscosity coefficient of the viscous element. When the effect of dilution was evaluated, the residue showed the highest instantaneous elastic modulus (788.2 MPa). Retardation times of the first element (λ1 ̴ 3.5 s) were about 10 times lower than the second element (λ2 ̴ 39.3 s). The analysis of compliance of data corrected by protein content in flour showed that the residue fraction presented the highest values. An important contribution of non-gluten components (starch, albumins and globulins) on the viscoelastic performance of sintered tablets from Osborne fractions, flour and bread was found.Peer reviewedRobert M. Kerr Food and Agricultural Products Cente

Mapping quantitative trait loci (QTLs) associated with dough quality in a soft × hard bread wheat progeny

Bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) quality is a key trait for baking industry exigencies and broad consumer preferences. The main goal of this study was to undertake quantitative trait loci (QTL) analyses for bread wheat quality in a set of 79 recombinant inbred lines (RILs) derived from a soft × hard bread wheat cross. Field trials were conducted over two years, utilizing a randomized complete block design. Dough quality was evaluated by sedimentation test, mixograph and alveograph analysis. Protein content was measured by near-infrared reflectance analysis and grain hardness was determined by the single kernel characterization system (SKCS). A genetic map based on 263 SSR markers and glutenin loci was constructed. Composite interval mapping (CIM) analysis detected a total of 20 QTLs distributed among ten chromosomes which were associated with variations in quality traits. Results confirmed the previous investigations on the known relationship between storage-protein alleles and dough quality, and detected new and stable QTLs related to dough quality parameters on chromosomes 2A, 7A, 5B and 1D. These new QTLs could be further investigated. Also, in this study, some RILs showed very high dough extensibility values which involve future validation studies for QTLs associated with to this trait

Taguchi-generalized regression neural network micro-screening for physical and sensory characteristics of bread

Generalized regression neural networks (GRNN) may act as crowdsourcing cognitive agents to screen small, dense and complex datasets. The concurrent screening and optimization of several complex physical and sensory traits of bread is developed using a structured Taguchi-type micro-mining technique. A novel product outlook is offered to industrial operations to cover separate aspects of smart product design, engineering and marketing. Four controlling factors were selected to be modulated directly on a modern production line: 1) the dough weight, 2) the proofing time, 3) the baking time, and 4) the oven zone temperatures. Concentrated experimental recipes were programmed using the Taguchi-type L9(34) OA-sampler to detect potentially non-linear multi-response tendencies. The fused behavior of the master-ranked bread characteristics behavior was smart sampled with GRNN-crowdsourcing and robust analysis. It was found that the combination of the oven zone temperatures to play a highly influential role in all investigated scenarios. Moreover, the oven zone temperatures and the dough weight appeared to be instrumental when attempting to synchronously adjusting all four physical characteristics. The optimal oven-zone temperature setting for concurrent screening-and-optimization was found to be 270–240 °C. The optimized (median) responses for loaf weight, moisture, height, width, color, flavor, crumb structure, softness, and elasticity are: 782 g, 34.8 %, 9.36 cm, 10.41 cm, 6.6, 7.2, 7.6, 7.3, and 7.0, respectively. Keywords: Industrial engineering, Food scienc