Sharif Digital Repository

A novel high-throughput device based on 96-micro-solid phase extraction (96-μ-SPE) system was constructed for multiresidue determination of nine pesticides in aquatic samples. The extraction procedure was performed on a commercially available 96-well plate system. The extraction module consisted of 96 pieces of 1cm×3cm of cylindrically shaped stainless steel meshes. The prepared meshes were fixed in a home-made polytetrafluoroethylene-based constructed ninety-six holes block for possible simultaneous immersion of meshes into the center of individual wells. Dodecyl methacrylate and ethylene glycol dimethacrylate was copolymerized as a monolithic polymer and placed in the cylindrically shaped... 

Recent progress in developing artificial neural network (ANN) metamodels has paved the way for reliable use of these models in the prediction of air pollutant concentrations in urban atmosphere. However, improvement of prediction performance, proper selection of input parameters and model architecture, and quantification of model uncertainties remain key challenges to their practical use. This study has three main objectives: to select an ensemble of input parameters for ANN metamodels consisting of meteorological variables that are predictable by conventional weather forecast models and variables that properly describe the complex nature of pollutant source conditions in a major city, to... 

In this work two phenol biosensors, one based on polyaniline nanofibers (PNFs) and the other based on the newly created and introduced linear-dendritic matrix of poly(citric acid)-block-poly(ethylene glycol) copolymers (PCA-PEG-PCA), were chemically modified with horseradish peroxidase (HRP) enzyme. These phenol biosensors showed an oxidation peak at 0.55 V. The amperometric response for biosensors based on PNFs showed a linear response range from 2.5 × 10-6 to 2.5 × 10-5 mol/L, with a detection limit of 2.5 M phenol. Also, the amperometric response for a biosensor based on PCA-PEG-PCA showed a linear response range from 2.5 × 10-6 to 4 × 10-5 mol/L, with a detection limit of 1.5 M phenol  

Because of the recent frequent observations of major dust storms in southwestern cities in Iran such as Ahvaz, and the importance of the ionic composition of particulate matters regarding their health effects, source apportionment, etc., the present work was conducted aiming at characterizing the ionic composition of total suspended particles (TSP) and particles on the order of ∼10 μm or less (PM10) during dust storms in Ahvaz in April-September 2010. TSP and PM10 samples were collected and their ionic compositions were determined using an ion chromatography. Mean concentrations of TSP and PM10 were 1,481.5 and 1,072.9 μg/m 3, respectively. Particle concentrations during the Middle Eastern... 

Strategic health, safety, and environmental management system (HSE-MS) involves systematic and cooperative planning in each phase of the lifecycle of a project to ensure that interaction among the industry group, client, contractor, stakeholder, and host community exists with the highest level of health, safety, and environmental standard performances. Therefore, it seems necessary to assess the HSE-MS performance of contractor(s) by a comparative strategic management model with the aim of continuous improvement. The present Strategic Management Model (SMM) has been illustrated by a case study and the results show that the model is a suitable management tool for decision making in a contract... 

Assessment of groundwater quality monitoring networks requires methods to determine the potential efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the current monitoring programs. To this end, the concept of entropy has been considered as a promising method in previous studies since it quantitatively measures the information produced by a network. In this study, the measure of transinformation in the discrete entropy theory and the transinformation- distance (T-D) curves, which are used frequently by other researchers, are used to quantify the efficiency of a monitoring network. This paper introduces a new approach to decrease dispersion in results by performing cluster analysis that uses fuzzy... 

The main objective of the present study was to develop a valid and appropriate model to evaluate companies' efficiency and environmental performance, concerning health, safety, and environmental management system principles. The proposed model overcomes the shortcomings of the previous models developed in this area. This model has been designed on the basis of a mathematical method known as Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). In order to differentiate high-performing companies from weak ones, one of DEA nonradial models named as enhanced Russell graph efficiency measure has been applied. Since some of the environmental performance indicators cannot be controlled by companies' managers, it was... 

In this paper, principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical cluster analysis (CA) methods have been used to investigate the water quality of Jajrood River (Iran) and to assess and discriminate the relative magnitude of anthropogenic and "natural" influences on the quality of river water. T, EC, pH, TDS, NH4, NO3, NO2, Turb., T.Hard., Ca, Mg, Na, K, Cl, SO4, SiO2 as physicochemical and TC, FC as biochemical variables have been analyzed in the water samples collected every month over a three-year period from 18 sampling stations along a 50 km section of Jajrood River that is under the influence of anthropogenic and natural changes. Exploratory analysis of experimental data has been... 

Emission factors (EFs) are fundamental, necessary data for air pollution research and scenario implementation. With the vision of generating national EFs of the Iranian transportation system, a portable emission measurement system (PEMS) was used to develop the basic EFs for a statistically significant sample of Iranian gasoline-fueled privately owned light duty vehicles (LDVs) operated in Tehran. A smaller sample size of the same fleet was examined by chassis dynamometer (CD) bag emission measurement tests to quantify the systematic differences between the PEMS and CD methods. The selected fleet was tested over four different routes of uphill highways, flat highways, uphill urban streets,... 

Land use regression (LUR) has not been applied thus far to ambient alkylbenzenes in highly polluted megacities. We advanced LUR models for benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, p-xylene, m-xylene, o-xylene (BTEX), and total BTEX using measurement based estimates of annual means at 179 sites in Tehran megacity, Iran. Overall, 520 predictors were evaluated, such as The Weather Research and Forecasting Model meteorology predictions, emission inventory, and several new others. The final models with R2 values ranging from 0.64 for p-xylene to 0.70 for benzene were mainly driven by traffic-related variables but the proximity to sewage treatment plants was present in all models indicating a major local... 

A dense monitoring network is vital for the reliable assessment of PM10 in different parts of an urban area. In this study, a new idea is employed for the re-construction of the 20 shut-down PM10 monitoring stations of Berlin. It endeavours to find the non-linear relationship between the hourly PM10 concentration of both the still operating and the shut-down PM10 monitoring stations by using a fuzzy modelling technique, called modified active learning method (MALM). In addition, the simulations were performed by using not only raw PM10 databases but also log-transformed PM10 databases for skewness reduction. According to the results of hourly PM10 simulation (root mean square error about... 

Rare earth elements (REEs) are becoming significant due to their huge applications in many industries, large-scale mining and refining activities. Increasing usage of such metals pose negative environmental impacts. In this research ICP-MS has been used to analyze soil samples collected from former ex-mining areas in the depths of 0–20 cm, 21–40 cm, and 41–60 cm of residential, mining, natural, and industrial areas of Perak. Principal component analysis (PCA) revealed that soil samples taken from different mining, industrial, residential, and natural areas are separated into four clusters. It was observed that REEs were abundant in most of the samples from mining areas. Concentration of the... 

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... 

In this research, a new approach for extraction and determination of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from sea and rain water samples was developed by implementing a superhydrophobic substrate and consuming the least amount of solvent. This version of solvent–supported microextraction enabled us to perform the procedure in the immersion mode with the slightest troubles arising from water leakage into the gas chromatography. The superhydrophobic property leads to the fixation of extracting solvent on the substrate surface during water sampling. To prepare a superhydrophobic substrate, a piece of melamine foam was coated by tannic acid and silica nanoparticles using methyltrimethoxysilane and... 

Currently PM2.5 is a major air pollution concern in Tehran, Iran due to frequent high levels and possible adverse impacts. In this study, which is the first of its kind to take place in Tehran, composition and sources of PM2.5 and carbonaceous aerosol were determined, and their seasonal trends were studied. In this regard, fine PM samples were collected every six days at a residential station for one year and the chemical constituents including organic marker species, metals, and ions were analyzed by chemical analysis. The source apportionment was performed using organic molecular marker-based CMB receptor modeling. Carbonaceous compounds were the major contributors to fine particulate mass... 

Considering their special features and numerous applications, sensor networks are noticed so much nowadays. A sub-group of these applications is underwater sensor networks, which encounter some challenges like reliable transportation, routing, MAC, positioning, limited bandwidth, high and variable propagation delay, defective underwater channels and low battery capacity. Acoustic technologies are a particular technology which can make strong underwater communications for Civilian and military applications. These networks are used in oceans for environmental monitoring, under sea discovery, unexpected events prevention, ships assisting, tactical monitoring and naval mine detection, but there... 

In the present research work, an environmental policy procedure for setting a cap on emissions, as a crucial step in any total emission control system, has been provided and evaluated. It is shown that general regulations on emission intensities and rates do not guarantee that ambient air quality standards are met in intense industrial zones. Local emission limits are necessary to meet ambient air quality standards in these zones. To that end, we used dispersion simulators to back-calculate pollutant concentration thresholds for a large and intense energy system in the Assaluyeh region of southern Iran. Verified modeling results indicate 218 d of pollutant concentration threshold exceedance... 

Microfluidic systems (MFS) provide a range of advantages in biomedical applications, including improved controllability of material characteristics and lower consumption of reagents, energy, time and money. Fabrication of MFS employs various materials, such as glass, silicon, ceramics, paper, and metals such as gold, copper, aluminum, chromium and titanium. In this review, gold thin film microfluidic channels (GTFMFC) are discussed with reference to fabrication methods and their diverse use in chemical and biomedical applications. The advantages of gold thin films (GTF) include flexibility, ease of manufacture, adhesion to polymer surfaces, chemical stability, good electrical conductivity,... 

As the emergence of Internet of Things (IoT) brings the realization of ubiquitous connectivity ever closer, our reliance on these applications gets more important. Nowadays, such connected devices could be found everywhere, from home appliances to industrial control systems and environmental monitoring applications. One of the main challenges in IoT infrastructures is that of reliability, which emboldens itself in the context of Low-power and Lossy Networks (LLN) as they are inherently prone to packet loss as a result of their environmental and design constraints. Therefore, reliability of IoT devices becomes crucially important. With communication, the most important consideration in these...