SCANZ

A neutron probe reflects the ability of hydrogen nuclei to reduce the energy of 'fast' neutrons. This means that the amount of hydrogen atoms in the soil will be indicated by the number of slow neutrons measured by the probe. The advantage of this system is that it can give a soil moisture reading for a certain volume of soil. Unfortunately, this is an expensive way of measuring the soil moisture content.

The word, first used by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in his Theory of Evolution to the stage or sphere characterized by the emergence of consciousness and mind which follows the establishment of human life... The world of the mind. also see noospheric

Any evolving system of genuine importance must stand upon something else. Nothing can support itself without recourse to a foundation of some kind, ideally a foundation both solid and robust. Rock is just such a manifest solid structure ideally suited to bear an evolving system atop it. Itself the manifest result of rock-hard physical law (like gravity) terrestrial rock, or the geosphere, is more than just densely packed minerals. Rock is like a marvellously enduring idea, an objectified layer of the Earth upon which all else of interest stands, be it an ocean teeming with fish or a forest teeming with plants and fungi. In essence, rock serves to support the biosphere, that great interwoven layer of life and gases covering our planet. Yet even the great interconnected web that is the biosphere is not the end of this layered system for, as we shall see, somewhere 'beyond' the biospheric layer of life and the Earth's atmosphere, lies the noosphere, the mind layer of the planet, that space of consciousness wherein you and I with our conscious thoughts, even now, dwell. source: http://www.island.org/prescience/noosphere.html