Using geophysical techniques to characterize tillage effect on soil properties

Tillage practices influence physical, chemical, and biological soil properties, which also affect soil quality and consequently plant growth. In this study, the main objective was to evaluate the effect of different tillage systems on soil physical properties by using geophysical methods, namely, ground-penetrating radar (far-field and near-field GPR), capacitance probes (ThetaProbe and 5TE), electromagnetic induction (EMI) (Profiler and EM38), soil sampling, and by soil penetrometer. Since 2005, three contrasting tillage systems were applied on different plots of an agricultural field: i) conventional tillage (CT) with mouldboard ploughing to 27 cm depth, ii) deep loosening tillage (DL) with a heavy tine cultivator to 30 cm depth, and iii) reduced tillage (RT) with a spring tine cultivator to 10 cm depth. The geophysical and soil strength measurements were performed in April 2010. We observed that tillage influences the soil resistance (deeper tillage decreases soil resistance), which could be partly seen in the radar data. Soil water content reference measurements (capacitance probes and soil sampling) were in a relatively good agreement with the water content estimates from far-field GPR. We also observed that the tillage influences surface water content. Mean surface water content was significantly lower for CT than for DL and RT, which was partly explained by lower macropore connectivity between the topsoil and the deeper layers after conventional tillage. This study confirms the potential of GPR and EMI sensors for soil physical properties determination at the field scale and for the characterization of agricultural management practices

Near-Surface Interface Detection for Coal Mining Applications Using Bispectral Features and GPR

The use of ground penetrating radar (GPR) for detecting the presence of near-surface interfaces is a scenario of special interest to the underground coal mining industry. The problem is difficult to solve in practice because the radar echo from the near-surface interface is often dominated by unwanted components such as antenna crosstalk and ringing, ground-bounce effects, clutter, and severe attenuation. These nuisance components are also highly sensitive to subtle variations in ground conditions, rendering the application of standard signal pre-processing techniques such as background subtraction largely ineffective in the unsupervised case. As a solution to this detection problem, we develop a novel pattern recognition-based algorithm which utilizes a neural network to classify features derived from the bispectrum of 1D early time radar data. The binary classifier is used to decide between two key cases, namely whether an interface is within, for example, 5 cm of the surface or not. This go/no-go detection capability is highly valuable for underground coal mining operations, such as longwall mining, where the need to leave a remnant coal section is essential for geological stability. The classifier was trained and tested using real GPR data with ground truth measurements. The real data was acquired from a testbed with coal-clay, coal-shale and shale-clay interfaces, which represents a test mine site. We show that, unlike traditional second order correlation based methods such as matched filtering which can fail even in known conditions, the new method reliably allows the detection of interfaces using GPR to be applied in the near-surface region. In this work, we are not addressing the problem of depth estimation, rather confining ourselves to detecting an interface within a particular depth range

Estimation of root water uptake parameters by inverse modeling with soil water content data

In this paper we have tested the feasibility of the inverse modeling approach to derive root water uptake parameters (RWUP) from soil water content data using numerical experiments for three differently textured soils and for an optimal drying period. The RWUP of interest are the rooting depth and the bottom root length density. In a first step, a thorough sensitivity analysis was performed. This showed that soil water content dynamics is relatively insensitive to RWUP and that the sensitivity depends on the texture of the considered soil. For medium-fine textured soil, the sensitivity is particularly low due to relatively high unsaturated hydraulic conductivity values. These ones allow a “compensating effect” to occur, i.e., vertical unsaturated water fluxes overshadowing in some way the root water uptake. In a second step, we analyzed the well-posedness of the solution (stability and nonuniqueness) when only RWUP are optimized. For this case, the inverse problem is clearly ill-posed except for the estimation of the rooting depth parameter for coarse and the very fine textured soils. In a third step, we addressed the case where RWUP are estimated simultaneously with additional parameters of the system (i.e., with soil hydraulic parameters). For this case, our study showed that the inverse problem is well-posed for the coarse and very fine textured soils, allowing for the estimation of both RWUP of interest provided that a powerful global optimization algorithm is used. On the contrary, the estimation of RWUP is unfeasible for medium-fine textured soil due to the “compensating effect” of the vertical unsaturated water flows. In conclusion, we can state that the inverse modeling approach can be applied to derive RWUP for some soils (coarse and very fine textured) and that the feasibility is strongly improved if the RWUP are simultaneously optimized with additional parameters. Nevertheless, more detailed research is needed to apply the inverse modeling approach to real cases for which additional issues are likely to be encountered such as soil heterogeneity and root dynamics

Creating FDTD models of commercial GPR antennas using Taguchi’s optimisation method

Very few researchers have developed numerical models of ground-penetrating radar (GPR) that include realistic descriptions of both the antennas and the subsurface. This is essential to be able to accurately predict responses from near-surface, near-field targets. We have developed a detailed 3D finite-difference time-domain models of two commercial GPR antennas — a Geophysical Survey Systems, Inc. (GSSI) 1.5-GHz antenna and a MALÅ Geoscience 1.2-GHz antenna — using simple analyses of the geometries and the main components of the antennas. Values for unknown parameters in the antenna models (due to commercial sensitivity) were estimated by using Taguchi's optimization method, resulting in a good match between the real and modeled crosstalk responses in free space. Validation using a series of oil-in-water emulsions to simulate the electrical properties of real materials demonstrated that it was essential to accurately model the permittivity and dispersive conductivity. When accurate descriptions of the emulsions were combined with the antenna models, the simulated responses showed very good agreement with real data. This provides confidence for use of the antenna models in more advanced studies

Genes Expressed in Specific Areas of the Human Fetal Cerebral Cortex Display Distinct Patterns of Evolution

The developmental mechanisms through which the cerebral cortex increased in size and complexity during primate evolution are essentially unknown. To uncover genetic networks active in the developing cerebral cortex, we combined three-dimensional reconstruction of human fetal brains at midgestation and whole genome expression profiling. This novel approach enabled transcriptional characterization of neurons from accurately defined cortical regions containing presumptive Broca and Wernicke language areas, as well as surrounding associative areas. We identified hundreds of genes displaying differential expression between the two regions, but no significant difference in gene expression between left and right hemispheres. Validation by qRTPCR and in situ hybridization confirmed the robustness of our approach and revealed novel patterns of area- and layer-specific expression throughout the developing cortex. Genes differentially expressed between cortical areas were significantly associated with fast-evolving non-coding sequences harboring human-specific substitutions that could lead to divergence in their repertoires of transcription factor binding sites. Strikingly, while some of these sequences were accelerated in the human lineage only, many others were accelerated in chimpanzee and/or mouse lineages, indicating that genes important for cortical development may be particularly prone to changes in transcriptional regulation across mammals. Genes differentially expressed between cortical regions were also enriched for transcriptional targets of FoxP2, a key gene for the acquisition of language abilities in humans. Our findings point to a subset of genes with a unique combination of cortical areal expression and evolutionary patterns, suggesting that they play important roles in the transcriptional network underlying human-specific neural traits

The expression of HSP60 and HSP10 in large bowel carcinomas with lymph node metastase

BACKGROUND: The involvement of Heat Shock Proteins (HSP) in cancer development and progression is a widely debated topic. The objective of the present study was to evaluate the presence and expression of HSP60 and HSP10 in a series of large bowel carcinomas and locoregional lymph nodes with and without metastases. METHODS: 82 Astler and Coller's stage C2 colorectal cancers, of which 48 well-differentiated and 34 poorly-differentiated, were selected along with 661 lymph nodes, including 372 with metastases and 289 with reactive hyperplasia only, from the same tumours. Primitive tumours and both metastatic and reactive lymph nodes were studied; specifically, three different compartments of the lymph nodes, secondary follicle, paracortex and medullary sinus, were also analysed. An immunohistochemical research for HSP60 and HSP10 was performed and the semiquantitative results were analysed by statistical analysis to determine the correlation between HSPs expression and 1) tumour grading; 2) degree of inflammation; 3) number of lymph nodes involved; 4) lymph node compartment hyperplasia. Moreover, western blotting was performed on a smaller group of samples to confirm the immunohistochemical results. RESULTS: Our data show that the expression of HSP60, in both primary tumour and lymph node metastasis, is correlated with the tumoral grade, while the HSP10 expression is not. Nevertheless, the levels of HSP10 are commonly higher than the levels of HSP60. In addition, statistical analyses do not show any correlation between the degree of inflammation and the immunopositivity for both HSP60 and HSP10. Moreover, we find a significant correlation between the presence of lymph node metastases and the positivity for both HSP60 and HSP10. In particular, metastatic lymph nodes show a higher percentage of cells positive for both HSP60 and HSP10 in the secondary follicles, and for HSP10 in the medullary sinuses, when compared with hyperplastic lymph nodes. CONCLUSION: HSP60 and HSP10 may have diagnostic and prognostic significance in the management of this tumour and their overexpression in tumoral cells may be functionally related to tumoral progression. We hypothesise that their expression in follicular and medullary cells of lymph nodes may be induced by formation of metastases. Further studies based on these observations could lead to a better understanding of the HSPs involvement in colorectal cancer progression, as well as other neoplasms