Three new species of Koonunga were discovered in surface and subterranean waters in southern Australia, and were defined using mtDNA analyses and morphology. The new species are: Koonunga hornei Leijs & King; K. tatiaraensis Leijs & King and K. allambiensis Leijs & King. Molecular clock analyses indicate that the divergence times of the species are older than the landscape that they currently i...

For disaster exploration and surveillance application, this paper aims to present a novel application of a multi-robot agent based on WSN and to evaluate a multihop communication caused by the robotics correspondingly, which are used in the uncertain and unknown subterranean tunnel. A Primary-Scout Multi-Robot System (PSMRS) was proposed. A chain topology in a subterranean environment was imple...

One hypothesis for the reduction of vision in cave animals, such as the eyeless Mexican cavefish, is the high energetic cost of neural tissue and low food availability in subterranean habitats. However, data on relative brain and eye mass in this species or on any measure of the energetic cost of neural tissue are not available, making it difficult to evaluate the "expensive tissue hypothesis."...

During a two year population ecology study in a cave environment, 15 Eurycea (= Typhlotriton) spelaea were observed ingesting bat guano. Furthermore, E. spelaea capture numbers increased significantly during the time that grey bats (Myotis grisescens) deposited fresh guano. We investigated the hypothesis that this behaviour was not incidental to the capture of invertebrate prey, but a diet swit...

Three diagnostic procedures were tested to determine their potential usefulness in identifying faulty rural wells: (1) monitoring wells were constructed at three depths near each of three rural wells having a history of nitratenitrogen and/or herbicide contamination, and all wells were sampled daily for four weeks and tested for nitrate-nitrogen, atrazine, alachlor, metolachlor, and chloride; (...

The current study describes the extracellular hydrolytic activities of halophilic bacteria isolated from subterranean rock salt. The estimated number of grown colonies was approximately 3000 per gram of a rock salt on the surface of the medium MH containing 10% NaCl. The investigated strains, randomly selected from the colonies observed on the plate, showed at least one of the tested extracellu...

During the course of a "dry" season dengue vector survey, indoor and outdoor household wells were sampled for the possible presence of immature mosquitoes and copepods. With a simple floating funnel trap, Aedes aegypti immature stages were captured in over 33% of the sampled wells (n = 93) during a 24-h trapping period per well. Average number of larvae (all instars) per positive well was 8.8 (...

Background: The purpose of this study is to investigate the concentration of metals (lead, cadmium, chromium, copper, and nickel) in the landfill leachate and heavy metals in wells downstream of municipal solid waste landfill site in the city of Mashhad. Methods: In both winter and summer seasons in 2009 samples were collected from five wells that were in landfill downstream in Mashhad. Resul...

Understanding and quantification of wellbore skin improves our ability to accurately measure or estimate hydrologic parameters with tests at wells such as pumping tests, flowmeter tests, and slug tests. This paper presents observations and results from a series of field, laboratory, and modeling tests which, together, explain the source of wellbore skin at wells at a research wellfield and whic...