In low‐relief areas, easily observed landscape features such as terrain and vegetation often do not spatially co‐vary with soil conditions to the level that they can be effectively used in predictive soil mapping. This paper proposes an approach to predicting soil spatial variation over such areas at a coarse resolution by constructing environmental covariates from the dynamic feedbacks of land surface in response to solar radiation. These feedbacks are captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) land surface temperature observations as a time series of four temperatures per day (1:30 AM, 10:30 AM, 1:30 PM, 10:30 PM) converted into five covariates representing the features of the time series. The approach is demonstrated by mapping sand, silt, soil organic matter (SOM), and pH over a 12,000‐km2 low‐relief area of Jiangsu Province, China, using a random forest model trained on 144 soil observations. The model was built and evaluated for 13 single days. For the non‐winter days with relatively high solar radiation, the covariates were strongly correlated with the soil properties, so that their use in predictive mapping gives good results for soil texture and useful results for SOM and pH. We also present plausible physical interpretations for the action of the covariates based on thermal properties of soils. We conclude that, despite the coarse resolution of the MODIS‐derived covariates, the proposed approach is a feasible solution for predictive soil mapping over large areas of low relief and should be investigated at finer resolutions.

We extract the e + e − → π + π − cross section in the energy range between 600 and 900 MeV, exploiting the method of initial state radiation. A data set with an integrated luminosity of 2.93 fb −1 taken at a center-of-mass energy of 3.773 GeV with the BESIII detector at the BEPCII collider is used. The cross section is measured with a systematic uncertainty of 0.9%. We extract the pion form factor |F π | 2 as well as the contribution of the measured cross section to the leading-order hadronic vacuum polarization contribution to (g −2) μ. We find this value to be a ππ,LO μ (600-900 MeV) = (368.2 ±2.5 stat ±3.3 sys) •10 −10 , which is between the corresponding values using the BaBar or KLOE data.

We review recent studies on the effect of stress/strain-induced island-island interaction on coarsening of strained islands. For coarsening of strained 2D islands, there always exists a stable island size against coarsening. When coarsening proceeds via only mass transport between islands, the interaction broadens the island size distribution, leading to a power-law dependence of island size uniformity on island number density. When coarsening proceeds via island migration in addition to mass transport between islands, the interaction can effectively direct island motion through island edge diffusion, leading to selfassembly of a close-packing array of 2D islands with improved size uniformity. For coarsening of strained 3D islands, a stable island size against coarsening may only exist if a stress/strain induced island edge energy dominates over island surface energy. The island-island interaction then modifies the size of stable islands, driving it to increase exponentially with increasing film coverage.