Sampling Strategies for Mapping Soil Phosphorus and Soil Potassium Distributions in Cool Temperate Grassland

Unlike the situation for arable soils, virtually nothing is known about the spatial dependencies of soil properties in cool temperate grassland or about what the optimal sampling strategies ought to be for mapping soil nutrient distributions in such situations. The aim of this study was to investigate the spatial variability in plant-available (soil) phosphorus and potassium in a grass silage field in Northern Ireland and devise optimal sampling strategies for mapping their distributions. Soil samples were collected from the field at 25 m intervals in a regular rectangular grid to provide a database of soil properties. Different data combinations were subsequently abstracted from this database for comparison purposes, and ordinary kriging used to produce interpolated soil maps. Soil potassium displayed greater spatial variability than soil phosphorus. In keeping with this observation, the results of three separate statistical procedures demonstrated that the optimal sample size for estimating the true population means was about twice as large for soil potassium as for soil phosphorus. Optimal sampling strategies, however, related not just to sample size but to sample combination and field shape as well.     

Radar soundings of the subsurface of Mars

The martian subsurface has been probed to kilometer depths by the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding instrument aboard the Mars Express orbiter. Signals penetrate the polar layered deposits, probably imaging the base of the deposits. Data from the northern lowlands of Chryse Planitia have revealed a shallowly buried quasi-circular structure about 250 kilometers in diameter that is interpreted to be an impact basin. In addition, a planar reflector associated with the basin structure may indicate the presence of a low-loss deposit that is more than 1 kilometer thick.     

兰州市生态农业旅游开发

系统分析了兰州市发展生态农业旅游的有利条件、开发现状和存在问题,提出了发展兰州市生态农业旅游的建议。     

Direct measurement of the current-phase relation of a superfluid 3He-B weak link

Direct measurements of the current-phase relation, I versus Deltaphi, for a weak link coupling two reservoirs of B-phase superfluid helium-3 (3He-B) were made over a wide range of temperatures. The weak link consists of a square array of 100-nanometer-diameter apertures. For temperatures T such that T/Tc >/= 0.6 (where Tc is the superfluid transition temperature), I approximately sin(Deltaphi). At lower temperatures, I(Deltaphi) approaches a straight line. Several remarkable phenomena heretofore inaccessible to superconducting Josephson junctions, including direct observation of quantum oscillations and continuous knowledge of Deltaphi, were also observed.