Sharif Digital Repository

Various aspects of land use regression (LUR) models for volatile organic compounds (VOCs) were systematically reviewed. Sixteen studies were identified published between 2002 and 2017. Of these, six were conducted in Canada, five in the USA, two in Spain, and one each in Germany, Italy, and Iran. They were developed for 14 different individual VOCs or groupings: benzene; toluene; ethylbenzene; m-xylene; p-xylene; (m/p)-xylene; o-xylene; total BTEX; 1,3-butadiene; formaldehyde; n-hexane; total hydro carbons; styrene; and acrolein. The models were based on measurements ranging from 22 sites in El Paso (USA) to 179 sites in Tehran (Iran). Only four studies in Rome (Italy), Sabadell (Spain),... 

There is limited evidence for short-term association between mortality and ambient air pollution in the Middle East and no study has evaluated exposure windows of about a month prior to death. We investigated all-cause non-accidental daily mortality and its association with fine particulate matter (PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and the Air Quality Index (AQI) from March 2011 through March 2014 in the megacity of Tehran, Iran. Generalized additive quasi-Poisson models were used within a distributed lag linear modeling framework to estimate the cumulative effects of PM2.5, NO2, and the AQI up to a lag of 45 days. We further conducted multi-pollutant models and also stratified the analyses by... 

The current study was designed to assess the association between temporal variations in urban PM2.5 chemical composition, sources, and the oxidative stress and inflammatory response in an alveolar macrophage (AM) model. A year-long sampling campaign collected PM2.5 samples at the Sharif University in Tehran, Iran. PM-induced reactive oxygen species (ROS) production was measured both with an acellular dithiothreitol consumption assay (DTT-ROS; ranged from 2.1 to 9.3 nmoles min−1 m−3) and an in vitro macrophage-mediated ROS production assay (AM-ROS; ranged from 125 to 1213 μg Zymosan equivalents m−3). The production of tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α; ranged from ~60 to 518 pg TNF-α m−3)... 

Oral administration is a pillar of the pharmaceutical industry and yet it remains challenging to administer hydrophilic therapeutics by the oral route. Smart and controlled oral drug delivery could bypass the physiological barriers that limit the oral delivery of these therapeutics. Micro- and nanoscale technologies, with an unprecedented ability to create, control, and measure micro- or nanoenvironments, have found tremendous applications in biology and medicine. In particular, significant advances have been made in using these technologies for oral drug delivery. In this review, we briefly describe biological barriers to oral drug delivery and micro and nanoscale fabrication technologies....