Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

World Karst Science Reviews

International Journal of Speleology

No abstract provided.

Distribution Survey Of Cyanobacteria In Three Greek Caves Of Peloponnese, Vasiliki Lamprinou, Daniel B. Danielidis Associate Professor, Athena Economou-Amilli Professor, Adriani Pantazidou Assistant Professor

International Journal of Speleology

Caves and hypogean environments host various phototrophic microorganisms, with Cyanobacteria constituting the major group. The spatial and temporal distribution of Cyanobacteria (156 taxa in total) from three Greek caves, located in the limestone arc of Peloponnese and differing in morphology, was studied. The community patterns in different ecological niches were analyzed in relation to environmental parameters (Photosynthetically Active Radiation, Temperature, and Relative Humidity). Cyanobacterial communities were found to thrive in patchy biofilms and showed known protective strategies against desiccation and irradiation. The nMDS analysis of the cumulative seasonal samples per sampling site showed no general pattern of distribution, with a …

Table Of Contents

International Journal of Speleology

No abstract provided.

Cryogenic Fracturing Of Calcite Flowstone In Caves: Theoretical Considerations And Field Observations In Kents Cavern, Devon, Uk., Joyce Lundberg, Donald A. Mcfarlane

International Journal of Speleology

Several caves in Devon, England, have been noted for extensive cracking of substantial flowstone floors. Conjectural explanations have included earthquake damage, local shock damage from collapsing cave passages, hydraulic pressure, and cryogenic processes. Here we present a theoretical model to demonstrate that frost-heaving and fracture of flowstone floors that overlie wet sediments is both a feasible and likely consequence of unidirectional air flow or cold-air ponding in caves, and argue that this is the most likely mechanism for flowstone cracking in caves located in Pleistocene periglacial environments outside of tectonically active regions. Modeled parameters for a main passage in Kents …

Speleothem Microstructure/Speleothem Ontogeny: A Review Of Western Contributions, William B. White

International Journal of Speleology

Mineral ontogeny is the study of the growth and development of mineral deposits in general and, in the present context, speleothems in particular. Previous researchers, mainly in Russia, have developed a nomenclatural hierarchy based on the forms and habits of individual crystals and the assembly of individual crystals into both monomineralic and polymineralic aggregates (i.e. speleothems). Although investigations of the growth processes of speleothems are sparse, there is a large literature on growth processes of speleothem minerals and related crystals in the geochemical and materials science literature. The purpose of the present paper is to sort through the various concepts …

Table Of Contents

International Journal of Speleology

No abstract provided.

Relationship Between Carbon Dioxide In Balcarka Cave And Adjacent Soils In The Moravian Karst Region Of The Czech Republic, Jiří Faimon, Monika Ličbinská, Petr Zajíček

International Journal of Speleology

Carbon dioxide concentration, air temperature, and humidity were monitored at (1) two cave sites and (2) three adjacent karst soils. The data over a one-year period are supported by dripwater chemistry and cave visiting frequency. The results indicate that the sources of cave CO2 are anthropogenic and epikarstic ones in addition to ordinary soils. Epikarstic CO2 produced under almost stationary conditions probably control dripwater chemistry and cave’s CO2 maxima. Based on breathing and door opening, anthropogenic activity affects instantaneous cave CO2 levels, depending on site volume/position and visitor number. A conceptual model of the CO2 dynamics of the soil-cave system …

Provenance And Geological Significance Of Red Mud And Other Clastic Sediments Of The Mugnano Cave (Montagnola Senese, Italy), Francesco Iacoviello, Ivan Martini

International Journal of Speleology

The Mugnano cave is characterized by a thick clastic sedimentary fill showing a great variability of sedimentary facies, ranging from clay to coarse-grained sand deposits. This paper deals with combined sedimentological and mineralogical (XRD and SEM) studies of these sediments and bedrock insoluble residues in order to understand the origin and geological significance of cave deposits, with particular attention to red mud sediments, often considered as the residue of host rock dissolution. Three different sedimentary facies were recognized: i) YS, yellow sand with occasionally shell fragments, testifying the arrival of sediments from the surrounding landscape; ii) RS, red laminated mud; …

Editorial, Jo De Waele

International Journal of Speleology

No abstract provided.

World Karst Science Reviews

International Journal of Speleology

No abstract provided.

A Large Cervidae Holocene Accumulation In Eastern Brazil: An Example Of Extreme Taphonomical Control In A Cave Environment, Alex Hubbe, Augusto S. Auler

International Journal of Speleology

A remarkable cervid bone accumulation occurs at a single passage (named Cervid Passage; CP) at Lapa Nova, a maze cave in eastern Brazil. CP lies away from cave entrances, is a typical pitfall passage and contains bone remains of at least 121 cervids, besides few bats, peccaries and rodents remains. There is no evidence of water (or sediment) flow at the site and in general bones lack post depositional alterations and display anatomical proximity, suggesting that the majority of the remains found inside CP (mainly cervids) are due to animals that after entering the cave got trapped in the site. …

Volcanic Caves: Priorities For Conserving The Azorean Endemic Troglobiont Species, Paulo A.V. Borges Prof., Pedro Cardoso, Isabel R. Amorim, Fernando Pereira, João P. Constância, João C. Nunes, Paulo Barcelos, Paulino Costa, Rosalina Gabriel, Maria L. Dapkevicius

International Journal of Speleology

Azorean lava-tubes and volcanic pits adequately sampled for arthropod fauna were evaluated for species diversity and rarity. An iterative partial multiple regression analysis was performed to produce a multi-criteria index (Importance Value for Cave Conservation, IV-CC) incorporating arthropod species diversity indices but also including indices qualifying cave geological and management features (e.g., the diversity of geological structures, threats, accessibility). Additionally, we calculated complementarity solutions (irreplaceability and Fraction-of-Spare measures) for each cave with different targets per species, i.e., the minimum number of caves needed for each species to be represented either once or twice. Our results clearly show that to preserve …

Measurement Of Luminescent Banding In Speleothems: Some Techniques And Limitations, Bryan E. Crowell, William B. White

International Journal of Speleology

Speleothems, especially flowstone and cylindrical stalagmites, exhibit phosphorescence which is often banded on the scale of a few tens of micrometers. The luminescence bands are paleoclimatic records with a very high temporal resolution. A technique has been developed using a laser source and a high resolution Raman spectrometer with microscope and computer-controlled translation stage for both luminescence profiles and luminescence spectroscopy. Luminescence intensity could be measured as a function of traverse distance with a spatial resolution of 2 – 3 μm. Potential sources of error include loss of intensity due to radiation damage by the laser beam, irregularities, cracks, and …

Chemoorganotrophic Bacteria Isolated From Biodeteriorated Surfaces In Cave And Catacombs, Filomena De Leo, Agnese Iero, Gabrielle Zammit, Clara E. Urzi

International Journal of Speleology

The main objective of this work was the comparative analysis of a large number of bacterial strains isolated from biodeteriorated surfaces in three different sites, namely the catacombs of St. Callistus in Rome, Italy, the catacombs dedicated to St. Agatha in Rabat, Malta and the Cave of Bats in Zuheros, Spain. Our results showed that even considering only culturable chemoorganotrophic bacteria the variability is very high, reflecting the great variety of microhabitats present. Hence any strategies to prevent, control or eliminate the biofilm-embedded microbiota from an archeological surface should take into account a number of considerations as stipulated in our …

Organic Matter Of Fossil Origin In The Amberine Speleothems From El Soplao Cave (Cantabria, Northern Spain), Fernando Gázquez, Jose Maria Calaforra, Fernando Rull, Paolo Forti, Antonio García-Casco

International Journal of Speleology

Unusual amberine-coloured speleothems were recently found in El Soplao Cave (Cantabria, Spain). Chromophore elements such as Fe, Mn, Cd, Co or Ti were not present in significant quantities. Rather, our data show that their colour comes from leachates of fossilized organic material hosted in the carbonaceous Urgonian facies of the host rock. These leachates are related to the Cretaceous amber deposit that has been recently discovered in the vicinity of El Soplao Cave. The presence of humic and fulvic acids of fossil origin were confirmed by IR and Raman spectroscopic analysis of the carbonaceous strata and the speleothems. In addition, …

Bacterial Community Survey Of Sediments At Naracoorte Caves, Australia, Eric M. Adetutu, Krystal Thorpe, Esmaeil Shahsavari, Steven Bourne, Xiangsheng Cao, Ramin Mazaheri Nezhad Fard, Greg Kirby, Andrew S. Ball

International Journal of Speleology

Bacterial diversity in sediments at UNESCO World Heritage listed Naracoorte Caves was surveyed as part of an investigation carried out in a larger study on assessing microbial diversity in caves. Cave selection was based on tourist accessibility; Stick Tomato and Alexandra Cave (> 15000 annual visits) and Strawhaven Cave was used as control (no tourist access). Microbial analysis showed that Bacillus was the most commonly detected microbial genus by culture dependent and independent survey of tourist accessible and inaccessible areas of show (tourist accessible) and control caves. Sediment bacterial groups were assigned to the Firmicutes, Actinobacteria and Proteobacteria. The survey …

Management In A Neotropical Show Cave: Planning For Invertebrates Conservation, Thais Giovannini Pellegrini, Rodrigo Lopes Ferreira

International Journal of Speleology

Lapa Nova is a dolomitic cave about 4.5 km long located in northwestern Minas Gerais state, Brazil. The cave experiences intense tourism, concentrated over a single period of the year, during the Feast of Our Lady of Lapa. In order to evaluate the impacts felt by the invertebrate community from this tourism, a new methodology was proposed. Four types of areas (intense visitation area, outlying visitation areas, moderate visitation areas and no-visitation areas) were sampled for invertebrates. There was one sampling prior and another on the last day of the 128^th feast, to evaluate the effects of visitation on …

Spatially Dense Drip Hydrological Monitoring And Infiltration Behaviour At The Wellington Caves, South East Australia, Catherine N. Jex, Gregoire Mariethoz, Andy Baker, Peter Graham, Martin S. Andersen, Ian Acworth, Nerilee Edwards, Cecilia Azcurra

International Journal of Speleology

Despite the fact that karst regions are recognised as significant groundwater resources, the nature of groundwater flow paths in the unsaturated zone of such fractured rock is at present poorly understood. Many traditional methods for constraining groundwater flow regimes in karst aquifers are focussed on the faster drainage components and are unable to inform on the smaller fracture or matrix-flow components of the system. Caves however, offer a natural inception point to observe both the long term storage and the preferential movement of water through the unsaturated zone of such fractured carbonate rock by monitoring of drip rates of stalactites, …

Speleogenetic Effects Of Interaction Between Deeply Derived Fracture-Conduit Flow And Intrastratal Matrix Flow In Hypogene Karst Settings, Alexander Klimchouk, Elizaveta Tymokhina, Gennadiy Amelichev

International Journal of Speleology

In carbonate rocks, especially in those with high primary porosity such as most Cenozoic carbonates, the interaction between deeply derived rising flow through sub-vertical fracture-controlled conduits and intrastratal matrix flow of shallower systems can invoke mixing corrosion and result in prominent speleogenetic effects. This paper outlines a conceptual model of such interaction and provides instructive field examples of relevant morphological effects from two different regions within the Prichernomorsky (north Black Sea) basin, where karst features are developed in lower Pliocene, Eocene and Paleocene limestones. In the Crimean fore-mountain region, extensive steep to vertical limestone scarps formed through recent exposure of …

Animated Transition In Similarity-Based Tiled Image Layout, Huan Zhang

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Effective techniques for organizing and visualizing large image collections are in growing demand as visual search gets increasingly popular. iMap is a treemap representation for visualizing and navigating image search and clustering results based on the evaluation of image similarity using both visual and textual information. iMap not only makes effective use of available display area to arrange images but also maintains stable update when images are inserted or removed during the query. A key challenge of using iMap lies in the difficult to follow and track the changes when updating the image arrangement as the query image changes.

For …

Poplar Gene Expression Data Analysis Pipelines, Xiang Li

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Analyzing large-scale gene expression data is a labor-intensive and time-consuming process. To make data analysis easier, we developed a set of pipelines for rapid processing and analysis poplar gene expression data for knowledge discovery. Of all pipelines developed, differentially expressed genes (DEGs) pipeline is the one designed to identify biologically important genes that are differentially expressed in one of multiple time points for conditions. Pathway analysis pipeline was designed to identify the differentially expression metabolic pathways. Protein domain enrichment pipeline can identify the enriched protein domains present in the DEGs. Finally, Gene Ontology (GO) enrichment analysis pipeline was developed to …

Reducibility, Degree Spectra, And Lowness In Algebraic Structures, Rebecca M. Steiner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation addresses questions in computable structure theory, which is a branch of mathematical logic hybridizing computability theory and the study of familiar mathematical structures. We focus on algebraic structures, which are standard topics of discussion among model theorists. The structures examined here are fields, graphs, trees under a predecessor function, and Boolean algebras.

For a computable field F, the splitting set S_F of F is the set of polynomials in F[X] which factor over F, and the root set R_F of F is the set of polynomials in F[X] which have a root in F …

Book Review: South China Karst Ii, Arrigo A. Cigna

International Journal of Speleology

No abstract provided.

Duality Of Terrestrial Subterranean Fauna, Tone Novak, Matjaž Perc, Saška Lipovšek, Franc Janžekovič

International Journal of Speleology

Terrestrial animals in subterranean habitats are often classified according to their degree of morphological or ecological specialization to the subterranean environment. The commonly held view is that, as distance into a cave increases, the frequency of morphologically specialized, i.e., troglomorphic, species or ecological specialization will increase. We tested this hypothesis for the fauna in 54 caves in Slovenia–the classical land for subterranean biology. We found that there exist two ecologically well separated terrestrial subsurface faunas: one shallow and one deep. 1) The shallow subterranean fauna, adapted to the terrestrial shallow subterranean habitats (SSHs) in the upper 10 m of subsurface …

Petrographic And Isotopic Evidence For Late-Stage Processes In Sulfuric Acid Caves Of The Guadalupe Mountains, New Mexico, Usa, Margaret V. Palmer, Arthur N. Palmer

International Journal of Speleology

Caves of the Guadalupe Mountains have experienced many modifications since their final phase of sulfuric acid speleogenesis several million years ago. Petrographic and geochemical data reveal details of the change from H₂SO₄ to CO₂-dominated reactions. The H₂SO₄ dissolution front acquired a coating of replacement gypsum with local pockets of anhydrite and by-products of altered clay, including Fe-Mn oxides. Alteration of bedrock beneath the gypsum produced a white micritized rind with small negative shifts in δ¹³C and δ¹⁸O. Solution basins contain records of the earliest post-speleogenetic processes: corroded bedrock, …

Coming Out Of The Dungeon: Mathematics And Role-Playing Games, Kris H. Green

Mathematical and Computing Sciences Faculty/Staff Publications

After hiding it for many years, I have a confession to make.

Throughout middle school and high school my friends and I would gather almost every weekend, spending hours using numbers, probability, and optimization to build models that we could use to simulate almost anything.

That’s right. My big secret is simple. I was a high school mathematical modeler.

Of course, our weekend mathematical models didn’t bear any direct relationship to the models we explored in our mathematics and science classes. You would probably not even recognize our regular gatherings as mathematical exercises. If you looked into the room, you’d …

A New Phase Speciation Leaching Procedure For The Determination Of Metals In Oxic And Anoxic Sediments, Brandon R. Gipson

OES Theses and Dissertations

Toxic trace elements such as cadmium, lead, chromium, and arsenic released by human activities can accumulate in marine and estuarine sediments, where these metals are often sequestered until local environmental changes (e.g., redox, salinity, and/or pH) allow these elements to be reintroduced into the food web. In order to assess the extent of toxic trace element contamination in sediment, numerous leaching schemes have been developed that separate sediment-bound trace metals into operationally defined geochemical phases. These "phase speciation" leaching schemes are typically designed with the purpose of being used on either oxic or anoxic sediments. However, natural sediments often contain …

Eukaryotic Microbes In The Deep Sea: Abundance, Diversity, And The Effect Of Pressure, Danielle Morgan-Smith

OES Theses and Dissertations

The dark ocean is vast, high in pressure, cold, and scarce in resources, but has been shown to support a diverse and active microbial community wherever it is studied. Such studies, however, are scarce due to the difficulty of sampling at such depths, and are difficult to interpret due to compounding effects of pressure and temperature on physiology. Protists, functionally defined as the microbial portion of the domain Eukarya, are particularly neglected in studies of deep-sea microbiology. Here, I present three studies on microbial eukaryotes in the deep sea: first, a study of the abundance of microbial eukaryotes in the …

Grazing On Synechococcus Spp. By The Red-Tide Dinoflagellate Karenia Brevis: Implications For Bloom Dynamics In The Gulf Of Mexico, Leo A. Procise

OES Theses and Dissertations

Karenia brevis, the toxic dinoflagellate responsible for massive red tides in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM), causes fish kills, shellfish poisoning, and acute respiratory irritation in humans. Bloom initiation and maintenance have been linked to the physical environment as well as various nutrient input mechanisms. To date, efforts to quantify nitrogen (N) sources fueling K. brevis blooms in the GOM have not included mixotrophic grazing although many dinoflagellates, including K. brevis, are known to be capable of mixotrophy. This dissertation reports field and laboratory results demonstrating that natural bloom populations and K. brevisisolates from the West Florida …

Partitioning Method For Emergent Behavior Systems Modeled By Agent-Based Simulations, O. Thomas Holland

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Used to describe some interesting and usually unanticipated pattern or behavior, the term emergence is often associated with time-evolutionary systems comprised of relatively large numbers of interacting yet simple entities. A significant amount of previous research has recognized the emergence phenomena in many real-world applications such as collaborative robotics, supply chain analysis, social science, economics and ecology. As improvements in computational technologies combined with new modeling paradigms allow the simulation of ever more dynamic and complex systems, the generation of data from simulations of these systems can provide data to explore the phenomena of emergence.

To explore some of the …