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Purpose: Grape (Vitis vinifera L.) is one of the most important horticultural products that are grown in different parts of Iran and has high nutritional values. In this study, the genetic diversity of cultivars and genotypes of some vineyards of Markazi province were investigated for the preliminary selection of superior cultivars and genotypes in terms of morphological and fruit characteristics for use in grape breeding programs. Research method: For this purpose, grouping and comparing 84 grape cultivars and genotypes were carried out using 70 traits including phenological and vegetative traits, trichome and stomata, bunch and berry traits. Findings: Based on the results, the "Sahebi Hazaveh" cultivar with 1000.17 g had highest an average bunch weight to compare other cultivars and genotypes. Results showed that, some traits such as bunch weight, bunch shoulders, fresh weight, rachis weight, the ratio of bunch weight to peduncle weight, the ratio of rachis weight to bunch weight, dry weight of bunch shoulders, length of the tail of bunch, berry weight, pedicel weight, seed weight and length of seed had a high coefficient of variation. Factor analysis reduced the evaluated traits to 10 main factors showed that they justified 78.38% of the total variance. Cluster analysis divided cultivars and genotypes into 4 main groups at five Euclidean distances. Limitations: No limitations were encountered. Originality/Value: This study indicated that grapes germplasm resources in zone are of noticeable diversities and can be promising for the utilization in the breeding programs. Based on the results, cultivars and genotypes of "Khalili Khondab" region, "Yaghoti", "Sahebi", "Fakhri", "Kharvand" and "Kondori" Hazaveh region and "Sahebi" Aghbolagh region in leafing time, late flowering, sugar percentage, bunch and berry characteristics, stomatal density, standing and lying trichome density in leaves were superior to other cultivars and genotypes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research investigated various drainage parameters for unsteady conditions, including depth of installation, reflection coefficient, and depth of water table. For this purpose, Bouwer & Van Schilfgarrd, Dumm, Glover, Hemmad, and Bouwer equations were used. For the distance of computed drainage compared with measured data in central Iran, the results showed that the Bouwer & Van Schilfgaarde equation is better than others. Additionally, the installed depth was obtained 130 cm below the exiting underground, and this depth was applicable more than other depths; 1, 3, and 5-day precipitation were used to determine water table changes. The results illustrated that a 5-day duration had a better effect, which appeared in the existing condition drainage area. The reflection coefficient for the superior equation was also obtained as 0.65, which was very close to the measured data in the area. Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE), and Standard deviation (σ) were used to evaluate the results. MAE, RMSE, and σ were computed as 1.78, 2.02, and 0.02, for the superior equation respectively, and the appropriate distance between the two drains was determined as 51.26 m. The obtained results have a close agreement with other researchers in this regard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the major concerns of developing countries, regarding public health, the economy, and the environment, is municipal solid waste (MSW) management; waste management is one of the costliest services provided by the municipality in developing countries. Because waste management imposes huge costs in developing countries, one of the most important strategies in these countries is to minimize waste production and thus to simplify the process of waste collection and transportation for disposal. The main problems of waste management in Iranian cities include low technical quality, low investment, and low attention to cost in the stages of collection, transportation, and disposal. In this study, the factors affecting costs and their impact percentages were identified by univariate analysis. The correlation between factors was determined by Pearson's correlation coefficient, and their prediction and determination were performed by factor analysis with an exploratory method. According to the results, transportation (43%) had the greatest impact on the management costs of regional waste organization, followed by: wiping and cleaning of sidewalks, sweeping, and dredging of rivers (26%); other costs (12%); burial of waste (10%); washing of urban elements (4%); wiping and mechanized cleaning of passages and refuges (3%); and collection and transportation of construction debris (2%). Determining the share of each factor is a useful and practical way of comparing different factors and planning to improve organizations activities. Moreover, the results of exploratory analysis show that two factors had the most effect on the costs of waste organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rivers are one of the most critical and common supplies for drinking water, agricultural, and industrial uses. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of land use changes on surface water quality of the Godarkhosh River as a semi-arid catchment in Iran, during dry and wet years using remote sensing, GIS and multivariate statistical techniques and compared the water quality parameters with Wilcox classification and Schuler diagram for classification of drinking water quality. Results showed that urban and barren land uses were the key factor affecting water quality variation. More minor water quality was accompanied with a more proportion of the urban and barren land uses during the wet and dry years in the catchment. No significant correlation was identified between the pH, SAR, Cl− and Ca2+ values with the land use types in both wet and dry years, whereas the EC, TDS, and Mg2+ concentrations were strongly associated with at least one land use type. A negative correlation of the most water quality parameters was obtained with grasslands and forestlands, especially in the wet year compared with other land uses. Generally, it can be concluded that the relevances between water quality parameters and land use types were stronger in the dry year than that in the wet year. Also, the correlation analysis indicated that all water quality parameters had negative relationships with the river flows. Furthermore, most of the water quality variables showed the increasing trend over time based on Mann–Kendall trend analysis. The results of this research showed that a combination of remote sensing methods, geographic information systems and multivariate statistical techniques can provide an overview of the relationship between land use and water quality and recommend that water quality can be betterment with suitable land use management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we tried to estimate the optimum linear equations among the parameters associated with different earthquake fault mechanisms for Iranian earthquakes. For this purpose, we tested different curve fitting methods in order to present the most proper empirical relationships between several seismic parameters for different fault systems. In the present paper, 46 large and destructive Iranian earthquakes whose magnitudes change between 5.8 and 7.8 from 1900 to 2014 were used for the analyses. A comparison was made by using four types of curve fitting techniques. The estimation procedures are considered as (1) L2 or Least Squares Regression, (2) L1 or Least Sum of Absolute Deviations Regression, (3) Robust Regression and, (4) Orthogonal Regression. Confidence intervals were selected as 95% for all types of regression relationships. In the selection of the best probability distribution, we considered the correlation coefficients of the linear regressions as a powerful and conceptually simple method. Correlation coefficients of all relationships change between 0.299 and 0.986 with Orthogonal regression, between 0.168 and 0.792 with L1 regression, between 0.059 and 0.829 with Robust regression. For Iranian earthquakes, the most suitable and reliable empirical relationships between moment magnitude (Mw) and surface wave magnitude (Ms), Mw and surface rupture length (SRL), Mw and maximum displacement (MD), and SRL and MD were obtained by Orthogonal regression since it supplies stronger correlation coefficients than those of the other regression techniques in most estimates. The results show that estimated empirical relationships among the different fault parameters by using the Orthogonal regression method can be accepted as more up-to-date and more appropriate in comparison with the other regression norms. Consequently, these equations were suggested as more reliable in the estimation of the maximum surface displacement, maximum surface rupture length and associated with the maximum credible earthquakes for different areas of Iran. Furthermore, obtained relationships can be statistically significant for the assessment of seismic, tectonic and geologic activities, and they can be used to evaluate the rupture hazard of the Iranian Plateau. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents ground motion models to predict vertical components of peak ground acceleration, peak ground velocity, and 5%-damped response spectral acceleration at periods ranging from 0.01 to 10 s. These models are derived from the comprehensive Iranian strong ground-motion database containing 1350 three-component time-histories recorded during 370 earthquakes with 4.5 ≤ M w ≤ 7.4. Possible regional dependency of vertical ground-motions to characteristics of three seismo-tectonic regions in Iran was investigated through analysis of variance (ANOVA) technique. Consistent models based on four distance measures; two for point-source ( R epi and R hyp ) and two for finite-fault ( R JB and R rup ), were developed. The distribution of inter and intra-event residuals presents satisfactory agreement between actual data and our proposed vertical ground motion prediction equation (GMPE). Furthermore, a detailed comparison between our predictions and four local and global GMPEs is presented, well as horizontal model of Darzi et al. (Bull Seismol Soc Am. 10.1785/0120180196, 2018). In addition, this study provides period-dependent correlation coefficients between epsilons of different GMPEs corresponds to either horizontal, vertical, or vertical-to-horizontal spectral ratio intensity measures as a function of single or two-periods of interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we aimed to derive the new and more reliable empirical relationships among different seismic parameters associated with the earthquake rupture mechanisms for Iranian earthquakes. For this purpose, we firstly converted the surface wave magnitudes into moment magnitudes in order to prepare a uniform earthquake dataset. Thereafter, we estimated the empirical relationships between moment magnitude and surface rupture length, moment magnitude and maximum displacement, and surface rupture length and maximum displacement. These linear empirical equations were obtained by orthogonal regression and the goodness of fits were discussed in terms of the correlation coefficients. The results obtained by the orthogonal regression in this paper are compared with the results obtained by the least square method in the literature. The present study confirms that representations of statistical correlations among different earthquake faulting parameters can be given more clear and straightforward by the orthogonal regression as compared to the least square method. In addition, such kind of relationships may provide some significant insights for the calculation of the maximum surface rupture length, maximum surface displacement, and associated maximum credible earthquakes for different seismotectonic regions of Iran as well as the estimation of earthquake magnitudes in paleoseismological studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Viscosity is defined as one of the principal measure of fluid resistance to shear stress. Efficiently estimating and predicting of oil viscosity in different operating conditions is vital. A new multi-hybrid model is employed to estimate the crude oil viscosity below, at, and above the bubble points using the South Pars data located in Persian Gulf. Five variables consisting oil API gravity, reservoir temperature, solution gas–oil ratio, pressure and saturation pressure as inputs are imposed to the model. A general structure of group method of data handling along with Genetic algorithm, are proposed to obtain efficient polynomial correlations to estimate oil viscosity at the aforementioned points. These correlations also are compared with seven correlations presented in previous studies. Results show that the proposed multi-hybrid model is superior to the other models for estimating the viscosity values of Iranian crude oils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The objective of this research was to evaluate the sensitivity of different precipitation-based drought indices to different lengths of record. • The results show that two indices: Effective Drought Index (EDI) and Z-score Index (ZSI) in the monthly scale and the Normal Precipitation Index (PNPI) in two seasonal and annual scales the lowest sensitivity have different lengths of record. • The Deciles Index (DI) and the Modified China Z Index (MCZI) were two indices, which had the highest sensitivity to different lengths of record among other indices. Nowadays, preparing long-term data is one of the main concerns of researchers in many countries. Many hydro-climatological studies have reported that at least 30-year data are required for such studies. Unfortunately, it is impossible to provide 30-year data in many countries (even developed countries). Even the recording the precipitation data in many of the regions varies from one station to another station. There are also regions which cannot be ignored due to data for less than 30 years. The objective of this research was to evaluate the sensitivity of the seven different precipitation-based drought indices, including the China Z Index (CZI), the Modified China Z Index (MCZI), Percent of Normal Precipitation Index (PNPI), Deciles Index (DI), the Z-score Index (ZSI), Effective Drought Index (EDI), and Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) to different lengths of record at monthly, seasonal, and annual time scales. In this research, monthly, seasonal, and annual precipitation data of 8 meteorological stations representing eight different climate classes in Iran were used for a 55-year period (1960–2014). For each of the monthly, seasonal, and annual time scales, the lengths of record 55, 50, 45, 40, 35, and 30 years were extracted from the main period (1960–2014), which each of these lengths was lengths ending to 2014. First, the correlation coefficient of the indices was obtained for all lengths of record. Then, match and non-match of the indices obtained from the longer lengths of record with the values obtained from shorter lengths of record were investigated for all three-time scales. Finally, the unique drought and flood years of stations were compared for the time scales. The results revealed that better time stability was seen in the Effective Drought Index (EDI) and Z-score Index (ZSI) compared to other indices in the monthly time scale. It means that the sensitivity of these two indices to different lengths of record was less. Percentage of Normal Precipitation Index (PNPI) in two seasonal and annual scales also shows the lowest sensitivity was seen among the studied indices. However, Deciles Index (DI) and the Modified China Z Index (MCZI) were two indices, which had the highest sensitivity to different lengths of record among other indices. It means that these two indices have more sensitivity to lengths of record studied and they should be used carefully. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 226 Ra concentration and some physicochemical parameters have been measured in thermal spring waters used for medical therapy and drinking purposes in the Astara basin of North Guilan, Iran. The radon emanation method was performed using the AB-5 photomultiplier tube to measure the 226 Ra concentration in water samples. Also, the physicochemical parameters of the water were measured in situ using a portable multimeter-VWR multi. The average concentrations of 226 Ra were ranged between 3.4 ± 0.06 to 38.2 ± 0.08 mBq l -1 . For all samples, the 226 Ra concentration values range is lower than the maximum admissible value recommended by the WHO report. The relation between the physicochemical parameters and 226 Ra activity concentration of groundwater was assessed. The results indicate a significant correlation coefficient between 226 Ra concentration and T, as well as acidity pH. Anomalously high 226 Ra concentrations in groundwater are preferentially found in high temperate and electric conductivity along with the acidic environment., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)