Complex topography and geological formation are the primary causes of frequent land deformation occurrence at Kelok Sembilan area, West Sumatra, Indonesia. This paper presents a research work on land mapping and land deformation monitoring carried out using Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI) Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) technique at Kelok Sembilan bridge region. In this work, 13 ascending Advanced Land Observation Satellite Phased Array L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (ALOS PALSAR) scenes, taken from July 2007 to November 2010, were processed using PSI-SAR technique. Then, the land deformation analysis was performed in two of the critical landslide areas near the Kelok Sembilan bridge. For validation purpose, the results were compared with in situ ground measurement data obtained using both Differential Global Positioning System (DGPS) technique, and 3D photogrammetry technique based Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). The land deformation analysis showed that both of the investigation areas are suffering a severe land movement of approximately -100 mm every year. In addition to that, the validation results showed erroneousness of less than 0.3%.

Tropical peatland in Southeast Asia has undergone rapid degradation and shows large subsidence due to oxidation and peat shrinkage. The measurement of those deformations is thus valuable for evaluating the peat condition and assessing peat restoration. The time series interferometric synthetic aperture radar (TInSAR), especially with the small baseline subsets (SBAS) method, is capable of measuring long-term deformation. However, the dynamic surface scatterers often change in tropical peatland, which degrades the coherent scatterer (CS) distribution density. This article presents a simple and efficient TInSAR approach that enhances the CS density under such dynamic surface scatter variation based on the SBAS method. In the presented approach, a long-time series of single-look complex images is separated into subsets, and deformation estimation is performed for each subset. The effectiveness of this simple solution was investigated by InSAR simulation and validated using SAR observation data. We applied the subset SBAS approach to the three-year Sentinel-1A C-band SAR dataset acquired over tropical peatland in Indonesia. The analyses showed an improved number of CSs for the introduced subset approach. We further introduce the color representation of CS temporal behavior per subset for visual interpretation of scatterer change.

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the most significant forms of human cancer. It is characterized by its heterogeneity because several molecular factors are involved in contiguity and can link it to others without having a linear correlation. Among the factors influencing tumor transformation in CRC, transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-β) plays a key promoter role. This factor is associated with human colorectal tumors with a very high prognosis: it increases the survival, invasion, and metastasis of CRC cells, thus functioning as an oncogene. The inhibition of this factor can constitute a major therapeutic route for CRC treatment. Various chemical drugs including synthetic molecules and biotherapies have been developed as TGF-β inhibitors. Moreover, the scientific community has recently shown a major interest in screening natural drugs inhibiting TGF-β in CRC. In this context, we carried out this review article using computerized databases, such as PubMed, Google Scholar, Springer Link, Science Direct, Cochrane Library, Embase, Web of Science, and Scopus, to highlight the molecular mechanism of TGF-β in CRC induction and progression and current advances in the pharmacodynamic effects of natural bioactive substances targeting TGF-β in CRC.