Use of remote sensing techniques to analyse lodging level in cereal crops

openNowadays, there is high attention to sustainability in all areas of human activities. But what does sustainability mean? As the World Commission on Environment and Development says, sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. Definitively, it is possible to affirm that sustainability is based on three main pillars: the social one, the economic one and the environment. If all those pillars will be met, sustainability can be reached. What about agriculture? There are several definitions for Sustainable Agriculture, one says that Sustainable Agriculture is the efficient production of safe, high quality agricultural products, in a way that protects and improves the natural environment, the social and economic conditions of farmers, their employees and local communities, and safeguards the health and welfare of all farmed species (Sustainable Agriculture Initiative Platform). The aim of this dissertation is to illustrate how Precision Agriculture can help not only farmers, but also agriculture business operators to process the right decision in order to satisfy sustainable principles. New technologies are useful to manage resources employed in agricultural processes such as soil, water, fertilizers or pesticide, but also to reduce wastage maximizing yields and, consequently farm profit. In particular, the dissertation is going to illustrate how monitoring technologies implementation is useful to manage soil, crop and weather with proximal and remote sensing. Those collected data can be processed, corrected and interpreted by operators in order to generate Decision Support System which is useful to improve company’s decision-making capability. The study focuses on one of the main extensive crops, barley, in particular on its lodging. Different barley varieties were tested on 195 plots located in Idice, province of Bologna, North-East Italy to asses which one can better resist to lodge and to demonstrate how Unmanned Aerial Vehicle can be useful to monitor crop evolution. In fact, UAV was employed to collect data and, to validate them, crop smart scouting was necessary. After data collection and correction, a Digital Elevation Model has been created in order to evaluate three classes: laid crop, partial laid crop, no laid crop. The study evidences how remote sensing, in particular UAV’s, can help to process data otherwise hard to collect, giving useful information to farmers and business operators to make the right decision with high accuracy in short time.Nowadays, there is high attention to sustainability in all areas of human activities. But what does sustainability mean? As the World Commission on Environment and Development says, sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. Definitively, it is possible to affirm that sustainability is based on three main pillars: the social one, the economic one and the environment. If all those pillars will be met, sustainability can be reached. What about agriculture? There are several definitions for Sustainable Agriculture, one says that Sustainable Agriculture is the efficient production of safe, high quality agricultural products, in a way that protects and improves the natural environment, the social and economic conditions of farmers, their employees and local communities, and safeguards the health and welfare of all farmed species (Sustainable Agriculture Initiative Platform). The aim of this dissertation is to illustrate how Precision Agriculture can help not only farmers, but also agriculture business operators to process the right decision in order to satisfy sustainable principles. New technologies are useful to manage resources employed in agricultural processes such as soil, water, fertilizers or pesticide, but also to reduce wastage maximizing yields and, consequently farm profit. In particular, the dissertation is going to illustrate how monitoring technologies implementation is useful to manage soil, crop and weather with proximal and remote sensing. Those collected data can be processed, corrected and interpreted by operators in order to generate Decision Support System which is useful to improve company’s decision-making capability. The study focuses on one of the main extensive crops, barley, in particular on its lodging. Different barley varieties were tested on 195 plots located in Idice, province of Bologna, North-East Italy to asses which one can better resist to lodge and to demonstrate how Unmanned Aerial Vehicle can be useful to monitor crop evolution. In fact, UAV was employed to collect data and, to validate them, crop smart scouting was necessary. After data collection and correction, a Digital Elevation Model has been created in order to evaluate three classes: laid crop, partial laid crop, no laid crop. The study evidences how remote sensing, in particular UAV’s, can help to process data otherwise hard to collect, giving useful information to farmers and business operators to make the right decision with high accuracy in short time

Neuropsychological correlates of eye movement abnormalities in schizophrenic patients and their unaffected relatives

Impairments on neuropsychological and eye movement tasks have been demonstrated in schizophrenic patients and also reported in their unaffected relatives. However, it is not clear to what extent these phenotypes overlap. This study examined the relationship between specific eye movement and neuropsychological measures. The relationship between performance on eye movement and neuropsychological tasks was measured in 79 schizophrenic patients (63% from multiply affected families), 129 of their healthy first-degree relatives, and 72 normal controls. Antisaccade scores were correlated with most measures of neurocognitive functioning, and this correlation was strongest in schizophrenic patients in all cases. In the schizophrenic patients, but not their relatives or controls, the antisaccade distractibility error (ADE) score correlated significantly with current intelligence, verbal memory (immediate and delayed recall), and associative learning. In the case of crystallised IQ and delayed verbal memory, smaller correlations were present in unaffected relatives, although neither survived Bonferroni correction. Smooth pursuit performance was unrelated to any neuropsychological measure. Our study suggests that antisaccade errors are likely to represent part of a generalized neuropsychological deficit in schizophrenia. © 2008 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.link_to_subscribed_fulltex

Meta-analysis of magnetic resonance imaging brain morphometry studies in bipolar disorder

Several studies assessing volumetric measurements of regional brain structure in bipolar disorder have been published in recent years, but their results have been inconsistent. Our aim was to complete a meta-analysis of regional morphometry in bipolar disorder as assessed using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). We conducted a systematic literature search of MRI studies of bipolar disorder and identified studies which reported volume measurements in a selected number of regions. Twenty-six studies comprising volumetric measurements on up to 404 independent patients with bipolar disorder were included. A meta-analysis was carried out comparing the volumes of regions in bipolar disorder to comparison subjects using a random effects model. Patients with bipolar disorder had enlargement of the right lateral ventricle, but no other regional volumetric deviations which reached significance. Strong heterogeneity existed for several regions, including the third ventricle, left subgenual prefrontal cortex, bilateral amygdala and thalamus. Regional volume of most structures we studied is preserved in bipolar disorder as a whole, which was significantly associated only with right-sided ventricular enlargement. However the extensive heterogeneity detected indicates the need for further studies to establish if consistent regional brain volume deviation exists in bipolar disorder or in specific clinical subsets of the illness.link_to_subscribed_fulltex

The relationship between eye movement and brain structural abnormalities in patients with schizophrenia and their unaffected relatives.

Schizophrenia is associated with subtle eye movement and brain structural abnormalities, but the extent to which these abnormalities occur in the same individuals is unclear. The relationship between quantitative measures of eye movement task performance (smooth pursuit and antisaccade) and MRI volumetric measurements (whole brain volume, prefrontal region, lateral ventricles, third ventricle, hippocampus, and cerebellum) was assessed in 70 patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder, 105 of their unaffected first-degree relatives and 68 controls. There was a lack of correlation between eye movement and morphometric abnormalities suggesting largely separable neurobiological pathways underlying the morphological and the eye movement deviations that have previously been identified in these patients. However, in the total sample, smaller prefrontal lobe volume was significantly associated with longer latency of correct antisaccades (partial correlation r = −0.22, p = 0.01) in line with previous studies demonstrating the importance of frontal lobe structures in performance of the antisaccade task. Also larger third ventricular volume was associated with larger mean amplitude of intrusive saccades during smooth pursuit (r = 0.28, p = 0.01). There were no significant between-group differences in the relationship between measures of eye movement and morphometry