This review covers papers from the previous two years not being represented at this conference. Optically stimulated luminescence detectors, diamond detectors and radiochromic film are the major topics. An effort to link these papers to 3D dosimetry is included in this brief report. An overall theme of linear, water equivalent response is seen throughout the topics included.

Closed-form analytical expressions and normalized charts provide the conditions for the maximum sensitivity of transverse electric (TE) and transverse magnetic (TM) evanescent-wave step-index waveguide sensors. The analysis covers both cases where the measurand is homogeneously distributed in the semi-infinite waveguide cover, and where it is an ultrathin film at the waveguide-cover interface.

Conservation tillage is commonly used in regions affected by water and wind erosion. To understand the effects of conservation tillage on soil nutrients and yield, a long-term experiment was set up in a region affected by water and wind erosion on the Loess Plateau. The treatments used were traditional tillage (CK), no tillage (NT), straw mulching (SM), plastic-film mulching (PM), ridging and p...

Mulching and tillage are widely considered to be major practices for improving soil and water conservation where water is scarce. This paper studied the effects of FM (flat mulching), RFM (ridge-furrow mulching), SM (straw mulching), MTMC (mulching with two materials combined), MOM (mulching with other materials), NT (no-tillage) ST (subsoiling tillage) and RT (rotational tillage) on wheat yiel...

The ridge and furrow farming system for rainfall concentration (RC) has gradually been popularized to improve the water availability for crops and to increase the water use efficiency (WUE), thereby stabilizing high yields. In the RC system, plastic-covered ridges are rainfall harvesting zones and furrows are planting zones. In this study, we optimized the mulching patterns for RC planting to m...

Humidity induced change in the refractive index and thickness of the polyethylene glycol (PEG) coatings are in situ investigated for a range from 10 to 95%, using an optical waveguide spectroscopic technique. It is experimentally demonstrated that, upon humidity change, the optical and swelling characteristics of the PEG coatings can be employed to build a plastic fibre optic humidity sensor. T...