Seasonal soybean crop reflectance

Data are presented from field measurements of 1980 including 5 acquisitions of handheld radiometer reflectance measurements, 7 complete sets of parameters for implementing the Suits mode, and other biophysical parameters to characterize the soybean canopy. LANDSAT calculations on the simulated Brazilian soybean reflectance are included along with data collected during the summer and fall on 1981 on soybean single leaf optical parameters for three irrigation treatments. Tests of the Suits vegetative canopy reflectance model for the full hemisphere of observer directions as well as the nadir direction show moderate agreement for the visible channels of the MSS and poor agreement in the near infrared channel. Temporal changes in the spectral characteristics of the single leaves were seen to occur as a function of maturity which demonstrates that the absorptance of a soybean single leaf is more a function of thetransmittancee characteristics than the seasonally consistent single leaf reflectance

A plant canopy light absorption model with application to wheat

From the light absorption model the absorption of light in the photosynthetically active region of the spectrum was calculated for a Penjamo wheat crop for several situations including: (1) the percent absorption of the incident radiation by a canopy having a four layer structure; (2) the percent absorption of light by the individual layers within a four layer canopy and by the underlying soil; (3) the percent absorption of light by each vegetative canopy layer for variable sun angle; and (4) the cumulative solar energy absorbed by the developing wheat canopy as it progresses from a single layer through its growth stages to a three layer canopy. This calculation was also presented as a function of the leaf area index

Army of Manifest Destiny: The American Soldier in the Mexican War,1846-1848 by James M. McCaffrey (review)

May 13, 1996, marks the sesquicentennial anniversary of the United States\u27 declaration of war against Mexico. Interest in a modern reassessment popular war of conquest is beginning to stir throughout both Hidalgo County Historical Museum has mounted an important and a bill to create a military park at Palo Alto has been introduced In fact, the prospect of a free trade agreement between the U.S. and Mexico acted as a catalyst to stimulate a more general and deeper interest and culture of the borderlands

Innovations in the design of an architectural engineering curriculum

This paper introduces a new curriculum, launched in October 2021, in Architectural Engineering, designed out of London, UK for implementation in Giza, Egypt. The developers of this newly formed higher education institution, Newgiza University, sought to introduce more contemporary approaches as well as cutting-edge curricular innovations to the education landscape in Egypt. To achieve this, they enlisted curriculum developers in architecture and engineering from University College London who have expertise in education research, curricular innovation, and the delivery of engineering and architecture modules and degree programs. The team worked in collaboration with experts and educators from Egypt to create a bespoke curriculum, drawing from a range of innovative approaches and educational theories, combining these with many well-established approaches. This paper, which represents the “scholarship of integration”, highlights distinctive aspects of the curriculum, and illustrates how prior research was integrated into the curriculum design, with a focus on the first year. The paper is geared toward design educators as well as curriculum developers

Light reflectance, transmittance, and utilization within a vegetative canopy

There are no author-identified significant results in this report

Arizona’s Rising STEM Occupational Demands and Declining Participation in the Scientific Workforce: An Examination of Attitudes among African Americans toward STEM College Majors and Careers

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (2008), science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) occupations constitute a growing sector of Arizona’s economy. However, the number of African Americans earning degrees related to these occupations has not kept pace with this growth. Increasing the participation of African Americans in STEM education fields and subsequent related occupations in Arizona is vital to growing and maintaining the state’s economic stature. This objective is made even more compelling given that each year, from 2008– 2018, there are 3,671 projected job openings in STEM fields in Arizona. This study explores the extent to which the attitudes held by African Americans in Arizona toward STEM related majors and careers influence their likelihood of joining the state’s scientific workforce. Our analyses reveal the importance of career consideration, confidence in one’s ability to be successful in a STEM related field, and family support of the pursuit of STEM education and careers.Educatio

Assessing the Grit and Mindset of Incoming Engineering Students with an Emphasis on Gender

Engineering programs can be very demanding, particularly in the first years where students encounter new forms of highly challenging coursework. To better prepare and support students, educators must acknowledge non-academic factors, such as the role of self-beliefs and personal attributes. Education research suggests that students are more likely to give up and disengage from their studies when they lack grit or assume a fixed mindset. Previous studies suggest that female students are generally grittier but less confident when compared to male students. This paper presents the initial work of an ongoing study to explore self-confidence and motivations to study engineering of first year engineering students experiencing a new multi-disciplinary curriculum. A dataset collected via an online survey at the start of the academic year with 102 students was analysed. Gender comparisons were undertaken to explore the association between self-confidence and motivations with grit and mindsets

Characterizing land surface processes: A quantitative analysis using air-ground thermal orbits

A quantitative analysis of thermal orbits is developed and applied to modeled air and ground temperatures. Thermal orbits are phase-space representations of air and ground temperature relationships that are generated by plotting daily or monthly ground temperatures against air temperatures. Thermal orbits are useful descriptive tools that provide straightforward illustrations of air and ground temperature relationships in the presence of land surface processes related to snow cover, soil freezing, and vegetation effects. The utility of thermal orbits has been limited, however, by the lack of quantitative analyses that describe changes in orbits across different environments or in time. This shortcoming is overcome in the present study by developing a linear regression analysis of thermal orbits that allows changes to be tracked in time and space and as a function of depth within the subsurface. The theory that underlies the thermal orbit regression analysis is developed herein, and the utility of the application is demonstrated using controlled model experiments

Impact of using different ozone cross sections on ozone profile retrievals from Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME) ultraviolet measurements

We investigate the effect of using three different cross section data sets on ozone profile retrievals from Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME) ultraviolet measurements (289–307 nm, 326–337 nm). These include Bass-Paur, Brion, and GOME flight model cross sections (references below). Using different cross sections can significantly affect the retrievals, by up to 12 Dobson Units (DU, 1 DU=2.69×10<sup>16</sup> molecules cm<sup>−2</sup>) in total column ozone, up to 10 DU in tropospheric column ozone, and up to 100% in retrieved ozone values for individual atmospheric layers. Compared to using the Bass-Paur and GOME flight model cross sections, using the Brion cross sections not only reduces fitting residuals by 15–60% in the Huggins bands, but also improves retrievals, especially in the troposphere, as seen from validation against ozonesonde measurements. Therefore, we recommend using the Brion cross section for ozone profile retrievals from ultraviolet measurements. The total column ozone retrieved using the GOME flight model cross sections is systematically lower, by 7–10 DU, than that retrieved using the Brion and Bass-Paur cross sections and is also systematically lower than Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) observations. This study demonstrates the need for improved ozone cross section measurements in the ultraviolet to improve profile retrievals of this key atmospheric constituent