Identification of Optimal Sampling Locations and Grid Size for Soil Moisture Mapping

The most robust site-specific management system is based in part on high quality maps of soil data. However, creating useful, accurate maps of soil information can be complicated by the natural variability of soil characteristics. This study addresses optimal sampling locations and grid sizes for soil moisture mapping, which is a valuable input for site-specific applications that depend on moisture status, such as precision irrigation and application of chemicals which require moisture transport into the root zone. Variogram analysis of surface moisture data for a central Illinois field revealed that the geospatial characteristics of the soil moisture patterns are similar from one date to another, which may allow for a single, rather than temporally variable, variogram to describe the spatial structure. For this field, a maximum cell size of 13 meters was found to be appropriate for soil moisture. This could indicate an appropriate scale for precision farming operations or for intensive ground sampling. The temporal stability of moisture patterns was studied in order to identify optimal sampling points for field-average soil moisture. Such points were identified by calculating their deviation over time from field average. Topographic data were analyzed to determine if these sampling points could be identified from time-invariant data. While no topographic indices were identified as being strong indicators of these locations, the points tended to be located in areas that were neutral in plan curvature compared to the field average

Enriching individual absorptive capacity

© 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to offer an understanding of the development and consequence of absorptive capacity (AC) at the individual level of analysis. The authors assess how perception of organizational commitment to learning and intrinsic motivation affects individual potential AC, and employee creativity and job performance as the key outcomes of individual AC. Furthermore, the authors examined the dual role of realized AC as a mediator in the potential AC-creativity relationship, and a moderator on the creativity-job performance relationship. Design/methodology/approach: This paper draws from 125 paired supervisor-employee survey data, where supervisors rated subordinates’ creativity and job performance. Hierarchical regression was used to test the proposed hypotheses. Findings: The results confirm that both perception of organizational commitment to learning and intrinsic motivation contribute to the development of individual potential AC (above and beyond extrinsic motivation). Individual realized AC mediated the potential AC-creativity relationship. Employee creativity was positively related to job performance. Research limitations/implications: This study speaks directly to the question of how an organization can encourage its employees to absorb new knowledge, and the benefits of employee learning activities on their creativity and job performance. Originality/value: This is one of the first studies to offer a more nuanced understanding of the development and consequences of individual AC – a level of analysis has been lack of empirical studies. It further point out how individual characteristic and perceptions can influence their learning capacity, and in turn, their performance

Relationship Between Soil Moisture Content and Soil Surface Reflectance

Depending on the topography and soil characteristics of an area, soil moisture, an important factor in crop productivity, can be quite variable over the land surface. Thus, a method for determination of soil moisture without the necessity for exhaustive manual measurements would be beneficial for characterizing soil moisture within a given region or field. In this study, soil surface reflectance data in the visible and near-infrared regions were analyzed in conjunction with surface moisture data in a field environment to determine the nature of the relationship between the two, and to identify potential methods for estimation of soil moisture from remotely sensed data in these wavelengths. Results indicate that it is feasible to estimate surface (0 to 7.6 cm) soil moisture from visible and near-infrared reflectance, although estimating moisture regimes rather than precise water content is perhaps more likely. Furthermore, an exponential model was appropriate to describe soil moisture from spectral reflectance data. In particular, the visible region of the electromagnetic spectrum works well with such a model. A partial least squares analysis with improved R 2 values over the single-band models indicated that mulitspectral data may add more useful information about soil moisture as compared to single-band data. The results also suggested that the performance of reflectance models for moisture estimation is a function of soil types; the estimation results were better for the lighter of the two soils in this study

Technical Note: Field-Scale Surface Soil Moisture Patterns and Their Relationship to Topographic Indices

Understanding variability patterns in soil moisture is critical for determining an optimal sampling scheme both in space and in time, as well as for determining optimal management zones for agricultural applications that involve moisture status. In this study, distributed near-surface gravimetric soil moisture samples were collected across a 3.3 ha field in central Illinois for ten dates in the summer of 2002, along with dense elevation data. Temporal stability and consistency of the moisture patterns were analyzed in order to determine a suitable grid size for mapping and management, as well as to investigate relationships between moisture patterns and topographic and soil property influences. Variogram analysis of surface moisture data revealed that the geospatial characteristics of the soil moisture patterns are similar from one date to another, which may allow for a single, rather than temporally variable, variogram to describe the spatial structure. For this field, a maximum cell size of 10 m was found to be appropriate for soil moisture studies on most of the sampling occasions. This could indicate an appropriate scale for precision farming operations or for intensive ground sampling. While some areas had consistent behavior with respect to field mean moisture content, no conclusive relationships between the overall patterns in the moisture data and the topographic and soil indices were identified. There were, however, some small but significant correlations between these two sets of data, particularly plan and tangential curvature, and also slopes. In areas of convergent flow, moisture content exhibited a slight tendency to be wetter than average. There also seemed to be a small influence of scale on the relationship between moisture patterns and topographic curvatures

Leadership, creativity, and innovation:A critical review and practical recommendations

Leadership is a key predictor of employee, team, and organizational creativity and innovation. Research in this area holds great promise for the development of intriguing theory and impactful policy implications, but only if empirical studies are conducted rigorously. In the current paper, we report a comprehensive review of a large number of empirical studies (N = 195) exploring leadership and workplace creativity and innovation. Using this article cache, we conducted a number of systematic analyses and built narrative arguments documenting observed trends in five areas. First, we review and offer improved definitions of creativity and innovation. Second, we conduct a systematic review of the main effects of leadership upon creativity and innovation and the variables assumed to moderate these effects. Third, we conduct a systematic review of mediating variables. Fourth, we examine whether the study designs commonly employed are suitable to estimate the causal models central to the field. Fifth, we conduct a critical review of the creativity and innovation measures used, noting that most are sub-optimal. Within these sections, we present a number of taxonomies that organize extant research, highlight understudied areas, and serve as a guide for future variable selection. We conclude by highlighting key suggestions for future research that we hope will reorient the field and improve the rigour of future research such that we can build more reliable and useful theories and policy recommendations

Assessment of the genetic basis of rosacea by genome-wide association study.

Rosacea is a common, chronic skin disease that is currently incurable. Although environmental factors influence rosacea, the genetic basis of rosacea is not established. In this genome-wide association study, a discovery group of 22,952 individuals (2,618 rosacea cases and 20,334 controls) was analyzed, leading to identification of two significant single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with rosacea, one of which replicated in a new group of 29,481 individuals (3,205 rosacea cases and 26,262 controls). The confirmed SNP, rs763035 (P=8.0 × 10(-11) discovery group; P=0.00031 replication group), is intergenic between HLA-DRA and BTNL2. Exploratory immunohistochemical analysis of HLA-DRA and BTNL2 expression in papulopustular rosacea lesions from six individuals, including one with the rs763035 variant, revealed staining in the perifollicular inflammatory infiltrate of rosacea for both proteins. In addition, three HLA alleles, all MHC class II proteins, were significantly associated with rosacea in the discovery group and confirmed in the replication group: HLA-DRB1*03:01 (P=1.0 × 10(-8) discovery group; P=4.4 × 10(-6) replication group), HLA-DQB1*02:01 (P=1.3 × 10(-8) discovery group; P=7.2 × 10(-6) replication group), and HLA-DQA1*05:01 (P=1.4 × 10(-8) discovery group; P=7.6 × 10(-6) replication group). Collectively, the gene variants identified in this study support the concept of a genetic component for rosacea, and provide candidate targets for future studies to better understand and treat rosacea

Making sense of a mess: “doing” resilience in the vortex of a crisis

Purpose The purpose of the paper is to investigate how human resource professionals (HRPs), in a variety of organizations, responded to the crisis brought about by the event of COVID-19. In particular, it aims to show how organizations, across all sectors, in Western Australia responded with urgency and flexibility to the crisis and showed “resilience in practice”. Design/methodology/approach The study is based on 136 questionnaire responses, 32 interviews and 25 managerial narratives. The mixed qualitative methodology was designed to enable an investigation of the impact of COVID-19 and the response of HRPs. Findings HRPs have responded with agility and flexibility to the impact of COVID-19. They have done so through extensive trial and error, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing. They have not simply activated a preconceived continuity plan. Research limitations/implications The research indicates that resilience is an ongoing accomplishment of organizations and the people in them. The objective was description rather than prescription, and the research does not offer solutions to future pandemic-like situations. Practical implications The research suggests that, given the impact of COVID-19 on organizations, HR practices, processes and policies will need to be thoroughly reconsidered for relevance in the post-COVID world. Possible future directions are highlighted. Originality/value The research considers the actions of HRPs as they responded to a global crisis as the crisis unfolded

Synergistic Effects of Climate Change and Grazing on Net Primary Production of Mongolian Grasslands

In arid and semi-arid regions, grassland degradation has become a major environmental and economic problem, but little information is available on the response of grassland productivity to both climate change and grazing intensity. By developing a grazing module in a process-based ecosystem model, the dynamic land ecosystem model (DLEM), we explore the roles of climate change, elevated CO2, and varying grazing intensities in affecting aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP) across different grassland sites in Mongolia. Our results show that both growing season precipitation totals and average temperature exert important controls on annual ANPP across six sites over a precipitation gradient, explaining 65% and 45% of the interannual variations, respectively. Interannual variation in ANPP, measured as the ratio of standard deviation among years to long-term mean, increased from 9.5 to 18.9% to 23.9–32.5% along a gradient of high to low precipitation. Historical grazing resulted in a net reduction in ANPP across all sites ranging from 2% to 15.4%. Our results further show that grassland ANPP can be maintained at a grazing intensity of 1.0 and 0.5 sheep/ha at wet and dry sites, respectively, indicating that dry sites are more vulnerable to grazing compared to wet sites. In addition, precipitation use efficiency (PUE) decreased while nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) increased across a gradient of low to high precipitation. However, grazing resulted in a net reduction in both PUE and NUE by 47% and 67% across all sites. Our results indicate that seasonal precipitation totals, average temperatures and grazing are important regulators of grassland ANPP in Mongolia. These results have important implications for grassland productivity in semi-arid regions in Central Asia and beyond

The Personal Genome Project-UK, an open access resource of human multi-omics data

Integrative analysis of multi-omics data is a powerful approach for gaining functional insights into biological and medical processes. Conducting these multifaceted analyses on human samples is often complicated by the fact that the raw sequencing output is rarely available under open access. The Personal Genome Project UK (PGP-UK) is one of few resources that recruits its participants under open consent and makes the resulting multi-omics data freely and openly available. As part of this resource, we describe the PGP-UK multi-omics reference panel consisting of ten genomic, methylomic and transcriptomic data. Specifically, we outline the data processing, quality control and validation procedures which were implemented to ensure data integrity and exclude sample mix-ups. In addition, we provide a REST API to facilitate the download of the entire PGP-UK dataset. The data are also available from two cloud-based environments, providing platforms for free integrated analysis. In conclusion, the genotype-validated PGP-UK multi-omics human reference panel described here provides a valuable new open access resource for integrated analyses in support of personal and medical genomics