Sharif Digital Repository

Background: Water contamination by noxious heavy metals due to urbanization is a global environmental problem. Heavy metal ions pollution makes the water unsuitable for drinking and is also highly toxic to human beings and eco-system. The remediation of heavy metals is therefore very crucial. Methods: Adsorbents based on biopolymer and eco-friendly polymer composites have been developed and fabricated to remediate and remove heavy metals from the ecosystem. Results: In recent years biocomposites have been successful as cost-effective adsorbents for the remediation of various contaminants with their eco-friendly nature and sustainability. Conclusion: This review article gives an overview on... 

The main goal of environmental education program developers is to train resourceful experts to work, study and solve environmental issues. Thus, it is essential to conform educational knowledge and skills according to countries needs along with scientific and technological progress. The present study aimed to assess needs of educational programs by considering climate change issues in Iranian Universities. Therefore, needs of higher education sector have been identified and some recommendations were given in line with objectives of training programs. The study applied random selection method to determine a number of environmental professionals to answer the designed questioner. Delphi method... 

Lake Urmia is a thalassohaline ecosystem. It is an extremely simple ecological pyramid. This makes it a very sensitive ecosystem. This ecosystem has been facing various threats regarding the amount of water released from the associated basin. To calculate the lake water requirement with an ecological approach, we identified three variables: ecology, water quality, and water quantity indices as environmental indicators. The ecological index represented by Artemia urmiana is considered as an independent variable; while, the water quality index represented by concentration of NaCl, and the water quantity index represented by water elevation are regarded as dependent variables. The salinity... 

Estimation of damage to structures after severe earthquakes is important for loss estimation and is an essential step for rescue program. Using seismic or spectral parameters could be a quick method for this purpose. In this article damage estimation for some world's destructive earthquakes has been carried out. For this purpose some earthquake seismic parameters, response spectra and damage indices have been calculated and compared. Damage indices are calculated for three types of intermediate sway concrete frame buildings, i.e. low-rise, mid-rise and high-rise, designed according to Iranian Seismic Code and ACI 318-95. Finally the trend between earthquake seismic parameters, response... 

Implementation of green management in sport complexes can ensure the continuous arrangement and assessment of activities from the environmental perspective and will end up in control and prevention of contaminants. Enghelab sport complex (ESC) in Iran is selected for this study due to its size and long-term activities. Due to the comprehensive plan of the aforesaid sports complex, numerous centers and departments were established in this site in order to materialize its envisioned sports, recreational and cultural objectives. The results of the questionnaires distributed amongst the members and the personnel of the complex revealed that approximately 50 % occupants were not acquainted with... 

The main goal of environmental education program developers is to train resourceful experts to work, study and solve environmental issues. Thus, it is essential to conform educational knowledge and skills according to countries needs along with scientific and technological progress. The present study aimed to assess needs of educational programs by considering climate change issues in Iranian Universities. Therefore, needs of higher education sector have been identified and some recommendations were given in line with objectives of training programs. The study applied random selection method to determine a number of environmental professionals to answer the designed questioner. Delphi method... 

Based on special properties of metal dampers such as high energy dissipation, stable hysteric cycles, simple application, low cost, insensitivity to changes of temperature and the ability to substitute after the occurrence of earthquakes, they are being used for structural control. One of these metal dampers which has been of special interest is the tapered steel slit damper (TSS). When shear forces are applied, this damper yields and enters the plastic zone. The TSS damper is made of pieces of standard wide flanges where slits have been extracted from their web. These dampers are connected to the top of the chevron braces and under the middle of the beams. In the endurance time (ET) method... 

In this study, we have investigated the potential of a native bacterial strain isolated from an Iranian oil field for the production of biosurfactant. The bacterium was identified to be Bacillus mycoides by biochemical tests and 16S ribotyping. The biosurfactant, which was produced by this bacterium, was able to reduce the surface tension of media to 34 mN/m. Biosurfactant production was optimized by the combination of central composite design (CCD) and response surface methodology (RSM). The factor selected for optimization of growth conditions were pH, temperature, glucose and salinity concentrations. The empirical model developed through RSM in terms of effective operational factors... 

Purpose: This research attempts to formulate an analytical model for the studying and assessment of necessary factors that have strong effects on the level of Iranian Technology Park competitiveness. The result of this model leads to increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of Technology Parks planning stage. Methodology/Approach: The main framework of this research is based on studying the projects and research, which in their methods use the Porter's diamond model or SWOT analytical method. On the other hand, this framework is customized for the future needs of Technology Parks and clarifies the kind of information that must be gathered. Finding: Identification of the core competencies... 

The main goal of environmental education program developers is to train resourceful experts to work, study and solve environmental issues. Thus, it is essential to conform educational knowledge and skills according to countries needs along with scientific and technological progress. The present study aimed to assess needs of educational programs by considering climate change issues in Iranian Universities. Therefore, needs of higher education sector have been identified and some recommendations were given in line with objectives of training programs. The study applied random selection method to determine a number of environmental professionals to answer the designed questioner. Delphi method... 

In this paper, the dynamic response of the anchored and unanchored flexible on-grade storage tanks under near-fault input ground motions has been investigated. For numerical analysis, an oil storage tank with its content has been modeled with the displacement-based elements using a general-purpose finite elements program. The fluid-structure interaction has been taken into account using the constraint equations. Non-linear behavior caused by the base uplift in unanchored tanks has been considered by implementing the gap elements between the tank base and the ground level. The results indicate that the non-linear behavior caused by the base uplift, leads to remarkable changes in most of the... 

In this paper the effects of the first reservoir filling on rockfill dams were studied numerically. To simulate the problem a simplified coupled formulation based on Biot's theory associated with unsaturated soils was presented. The finite element method was applied to the governing equations for the spatial discretization, followed by a generalized Newmark scheme used for the time domain discretization. The three effects of reservoir filling, collapse settlement produced by wetting the rockfill, water load on the dam body and buoyancy in the upstream shell were introduced. The nature of collapse settlement and how to numerically capture that by using the proper constitutive model is... 

Efficient environmental management calls for the consideration of multiple pollutants, for which two main types of transferable discharge permit (TDP) program have been described: separate permits that manage each pollutant individually in separate markets, with each permit based on the quantity of the pollutant or its environmental effects, and weighted-sum permits that aggregate several pollutants as a single commodity to be traded in a single market. In this paper, we perform a mathematical analysis of TDP programs for multiple pollutants that jointly affect the environment (i.e., interactive pollutants) and demonstrate the practicality of this approach for cost-efficient maintenance of... 

The spatiotemporal variability of ambient volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in Tehran, Iran, is not well understood. Here we present the design, methods, and results of the Tehran Study of Exposure Prediction for Environmental Health Research (Tehran SEPEHR) on ambient concentrations of benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, p-xylene, m-xylene, o-xylene (BTEX), and total BTEX. To date, this is the largest study of its kind in a low- and middle-income country and one of the largest globally. We measured BTEX concentrations at five reference sites and 174 distributed sites identified by a cluster analytic method. Samples were taken over 25 consecutive 2-weeks at five reference sites (to be used for...