Active and Passive Electro-Optical Sensors for Health Assessment in Food Crops.

In agriculture, early detection of plant stresses is advantageous in preventing crop yield losses. Remote sensors are increasingly being utilized for crop health monitoring, offering non-destructive, spatialized detection and the quantification of plant diseases at various levels of measurement. Advances in sensor technologies have promoted the development of novel techniques for precision agriculture.

Ultrahigh Dimensional Variable Selection for Interpolation of Point Referenced Spatial Data: A Digital Soil Mapping Case Study.

Modern soil mapping is characterised by the need to interpolate point referenced (geostatistical) observations and the availability of large numbers of environmental characteristics for consideration as covariates to aid this interpolation. Modelling tasks of this nature also occur in other fields such as biogeography and environmental science. This analysis employs the Least Angle Regression (LAR) algorithm for fitting Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO) penalized Multiple Linear Regressions models.

Guided-mode refraction model for optical fiber sensing of surface crystal growth.

An empirical "guided-mode refraction model" has been invoked to explain the optical attenuation of radiation in an exposed core optical fiber sensor subject to heterogeneous (surface) crystal growth. Based on Fresnel reflectance values at the internal fiber-crystal and crystal-solution interfaces, the model predictions agree with experimental observations of radial loss of radiation from the fiber core through the crystals as well as attenuation of guided radiation as a function of the radiation launch angle into the fiber.

Laser-optical fiber Bragg grating anemometer for measuring gas flows: application to measuring the electric wind.

A novel laser-optical fiber Bragg grating anemometer (FBGA) has been devised for measuring the speed of a moving gas in the range 0-1.5 m s(-1). As a test, the FBGA was applied to measuring the speed of the electric wind generated in the particularly harsh, high-voltage environment of a dc, negative-polarity, partial (corona) discharge in atmospheric air.