Are unmanned aerial vehicle-based hyperspectral imaging and machine learning advancing crop science?

The past few years have seen increased interest in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based hyperspectral imaging (HSI) and machine learning (ML) in agricultural research, concomitant with an increase in published research on these topics. We provide an updated review, written for agriculturalists, highlighting the benefits in the retrieval of biophysical parameters of crops via UAVs relative to less sophisticated options. We reviewed >70 recent papers and found few consistent results between similar studies.

Phenological stage and vegetation index for predicting corn yield under rainfed environments.

Uncrewed aerial systems (UASs) provide high temporal and spatial resolution information for crop health monitoring and informed management decisions to improve yields. However, traditional in-season yield prediction methodologies are often inconsistent and inaccurate due to variations in soil types and environmental factors. This study aimed to identify the best phenological stage and vegetation index (VI) for estimating corn yield under rainfed conditions.

Seasonal changes of trace elements, nutrients, dissolved organic matter, and coastal acidification over the largest oyster reef in the Western Mississippi Sound, USA.

Seasonal changes of trace elements, nutrients, dissolved organic matter (DOM), and carbonate system parameters were evaluated over the largest deteriorating oyster reef in the Western Mississippi Sound using data collected during spring, summer, and winter of 2018, and summer of 2019. Higher concentrations of Pb (224%), Cu (211%), Zn (2400%), and Ca (240%) were observed during winter of 2018 compared to summer 2019. Phosphate and ammonia concentrations were higher (> 800%) during both summers of 2018 and 2019 than winter of 2018.

Class-Aware Fish Species Recognition Using Deep Learning for an Imbalanced Dataset.

Fish species recognition is crucial to identifying the abundance of fish species in a specific area, controlling production management, and monitoring the ecosystem, especially identifying the endangered species, which makes accurate fish species recognition essential. In this work, the fish species recognition problem is formulated as an object detection model to handle multiple fish in a single image, which is challenging to classify using a simple classification network. The proposed model consists of MobileNetv3-large and VGG16 backbone networks and an SSD detection head.

Survey and Insights into Unmanned Aerial-Vehicle-Based Detection and Documentation of Clandestine Graves and Human Remains.

Numerous biological and archaeological studies have demonstrated the legitimacy of remote sensing in anthropology. This article focuses on detecting and documenting terrestrial clandestine graves and surface remains (CGSR) of humans using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), sensors, and automatic processing algorithms. CGSR is a problem of complex decision making under uncertainty that requires the identification and intelligent reasoning about direct evidence of human remains and their environmental fingerprints.

Influence of land use and land cover on the spatial variability of dissolved organic matter in multiple aquatic environments.

Water quality of lakes, estuaries, and coastal areas serves as an indicator of the overall health of aquatic ecosystems as well as the health of the terrestrial ecosystem that drains to the water body. Land use and land cover plays not only a significant role in controlling the quantity of the exported dissolved organic matter (DOM) but also influences the quality of DOM via various biogeochemical and biodegradation processes. We examined the characteristics and spatial distribution of DOM in five major lakes, in an estuary, and in the coastal waters of the Mississippi, USA, and investigated the influence of the land use and land cover of their watersheds on the DOM composition.

Multimorbidity in a marginalised, street-health Australian population: a retrospective cohort study.

Objectives: Demographic and presentation profile of patients using an innovative mobile outreach clinic compared with mainstream practice.

Design: Retrospective cohort study.

Setting: Primary care mobile street health clinic and mainstream practice in Western Australia.

Multimorbidity in patients attending 2 Australian primary care practices.

Purpose: Multiple chronic conditions in a single patient can be a challenging health burden. We aimed to examine patterns and prevalence of multimorbidity among patients attending 2 large Australian primary care practices and to estimate disease severity burden using the Cumulative Illness Rating Scale (CIRS).

Methods: Using published CIRS guidelines and a disease severity index calculated for each individual, we extracted data from the medical records of all 7,247 patients (58.

A 2D flow visualization user study using explicit flow synthesis and implicit task design.

This paper presents a 2D flow visualization user study that we conducted using new methodologies to increase the objectiveness. We evaluated grid-based variable-size arrows, evenly spaced streamlines, and line integral convolution (LIC) variants (basic, oriented, and enhanced versions) coupled with a colorwheel and/or rainbow color map, which are representative of many geometry-based and texture-based techniques. To reduce data-related bias, template-based explicit flow synthesis was used to create a wide variety of symmetric flows with similar topological complexity.

Noodles: a tool for visualization of numerical weather model ensemble uncertainty.

Numerical weather prediction ensembles are routinely used for operational weather forecasting. The members of these ensembles are individual simulations with either slightly perturbed initial conditions or different model parameterizations, or occasionally both. Multi-member ensemble output is usually large, multivariate, and challenging to interpret interactively.

Opportunistic screening for chlamydia in young men.

Background: Information on prevalence of genital Chlamydia trachomatis in young men attending Australian general practices is scarce.

Objective: We aimed to estimate the prevalence of chlamydia in this group; establish behaviours associated with infection, and evaluate general practitioner follow up of positive cases.

Methods: Sexually active men (aged 15-29 years) attending 10 general practices in Perth, Western Australia, were tested for chlamydia and completed a self report questionnaire concerning sexual practices and symptoms.

A user study to compare four uncertainty visualization methods for 1D and 2D datasets.

Many techniques have been proposed to show uncertainty in data visualizations. However, very little is known about their effectiveness in conveying meaningful information. In this paper, we present a user study that evaluates the perception of uncertainty amongst four of the most commonly used techniques for visualizing uncertainty in one-dimensional and two-dimensional data.

Retirement intentions of general practitioners aged 45-65 years.

Objective: To ascertain the retirement intentions of a cohort of Australian general practitioners.

Design And Setting: Postal questionnaire survey of members of four Divisions of General Practice in Western Australia, sent out November 2007 - January 2008.

Participants: A sample of 178 GPs aged 45-65 years.

Breaking new ground: the story of Dagmar Berne.

In 1885 a young country girl enrolled in medicine at Sydney University. She was the first woman in Australia to enroll in a medical school. The medical school at this time was heavily influenced by academics who had graduated from the University of Edinburgh.

How Western Australian registrars choose training practices.

Background: While general practice registrars receive advice on how to choose a training practice, little is known about what underlies their decision.

Method: A questionnaire was sent to all registrars in Western Australian General Practice Education and Training practices seeking information about the choice of their practice.

Results: Most registrars reported that they had chosen their practice.

An advanced evenly-spaced streamline placement algorithm.

This paper presents an advanced evenly-spaced streamline placement algorithm for fast, high-quality, and robust layout of flow lines. A fourth-order Runge-Kutta integrator with adaptive step size and error control is employed for rapid accurate streamline advection. Cubic Hermite polynomial interpolation with large sample-spacing is adopted to create fewer evenly-spaced samples along each streamline to reduce the amount of distance checking.

Qualities of a good training practice--perceptions of advanced general practice registrars.

Background: General practice registrars report satisfaction with their placements in Australian training practices. However, more needs to be known about which criteria comprise this global satisfaction.

Method: A questionnaire was sent to 61 general practice registrars in Western Australia who had recently completed a 6 month advanced term in a training practice, seeking feedback on the practice.

Accelerated unsteady flow line integral convolution.

Unsteady flow line integral convolution (UFLIC) is a texture synthesis technique for visualizing unsteady flows with high temporal-spatial coherence. Unfortunately, UFLIC requires considerable time to generate each frame due to the huge amount of pathline integration that is computed for particle value scattering. This paper presents Accelerated UFLIC (AUFLIC) for near interactive (1 frame/second) visualization with 160,000 particles per frame.

Giving feedback to learners in the practice.

Background: Many general practitioners accept vocational registrars and medical students into their practice. Giving feedback to students on their work performance is an essential component of teaching in general

Objective: This article examines the central role of feedback in the teaching of medical students and registrars and provides practical guidelines on how to provide feedback in the setting of a busy general practice, describes some barriers and pitfalls, and provides a registrar's perspective on what learners see as important.

Discussion: For feedback to be effective, it must be given in a supportive environment.