Despite considerable work on other trace elements, the incorporation of dissolved silicon from cave waters into speleothems has not been previously investigated. In this study, the controls on dissolved Si in cave waters and on adsorbed Si in resulting speleothems are therefore investigated. Bedrock (dolomite), soil water, dripping water, and cave carbonates were retrieved from Heshang Cave sit...

Caves are nutrient-limited and dark subterranean ecosystems. To date, attention has been focused on geological research of caves in China, whilst indigenous microbial diversity has been insufficiently characterized. Here, we report the fungal diversity in the pristine, oligotrophic, karst Heshang Cave, central China, using a culture-dependent method coupled with the analysis of the fungal rRNA-...

VFIVE is a scientific visualization application for CAVE-type immersive virtual reality systems. The source codes are freely available. VFIVE is used as a research tool in various VR systems. It also lays the groundwork for developments of new visualization software for CAVEs. In this paper, we pick up five CAVE systems in four different institutions in Japan. Applications of VFIVE in each CAVE...

The Robin Hood game is played as follows: On day i, the Sheriff puts s(i) bags of gold in the cave. On night i, Robin removes r(i) bags from the cave. The game is played for each i ∈ N. Robin wins if each bag which was put in the cave is eventually removed from it; otherwise the Sheriff wins. Gasarch, Golub, and Srinivasan studied the Robin Hood game in the case of random strategies where Robin...

An important allegory throughout the history of philosophy is Plato’s allegory of the cave. There are remarkable similarities between this allegory and an allegory from Islamic philosophy—that of western exile (al-ghurba al-gharbiyya) proposed by Suhrawardī. This paper seeks to consider fundamental components and issues within the two allegories, including the issue of the soul as the ...

We developed a vision interface immersive projection system, CAVE in virtual rea using hand gesture recognition with computer vis background image was subtracted from current webcam and we convert the color space of the imag Then we mask skin regions using skin color range t a noise reduction operation. We made blobs fro gestures were recognized using these blobs. Using recognition, we could im...

The oldest known spatially-explicit archaeological excavation, conducted in Brixham cave, Devon, in 1858, is reconstructed using geographic information systems technology. Two dimensional plots of individual fossil taxa and flint artefacts demonstrate the utility of the technique for elucidating taphonomy and palaeobiology.The cave served as a den for hibernating brown bears, as a den for hyena...

Altamira Cave, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, houses one of the world's most prominent Palaeolithic rock art. The conservation of the rock art is threatened by microorganisms (bacteria and recently fungi). Previous studies revealed that the entry and dispersion of microorganisms and nutrients to the interior of the cave depends on the exchange rates between the cave atmosphere and the exterior t...

Patterns of sleep vary widely among species, but the functional and evolutionary principles responsible for this diversity remain unknown. The characin fish, Astyanax mexicanus, has eyed surface and numerous blind cave populations. The cave populations are largely independent in their origins, and the species is ideal for studying the genetic bases of convergent evolution. Here we show that thi...

Kapova Cave (Shulgan-Tash) is located in Bashkortostan, the Southern Urals, in the Shulgan Tash Reserve on the Belaya River. Its coordinates are 53°02’ N; 57°03’ W. It is a large karst three-level system of chambers, galleries and wells having the total length of 3323 m with vertical amplitude of 165 m. The karst system is characterized by large chambers and galleries, great dynamics of microcl...