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This study aimed to investigate the impact of automotive headlights of different correlated colour temperatures (CCT) on the visual and non-visual performance of drivers. Forty drivers participated in the study, driving in a simulated night road for 45 min in three sessions. The LED headlights had CCTs of 3176 K, 4358 K and 6923 K, with an illuminance of 5 lx perpendicular to the participants' eyes. Heart rate variability (HRV), psychomotor vigilance task and Karolinska sleepiness scale were measured before and after driving. At the end of the trials, achromatic far and near visual acuity tests, as well as achromatic far and near contrast sensitivity tests, were conducted. The study revealed that CCT did not affect achromatic far and near visual acuity. However, CCT had an impact on achromatic near and far contrast sensitivity, with higher CCT resulting in improved achromatic contrast sensitivity. As the CCT decreased, participants exhibited increased reaction time, made more errors, and reported higher sleepiness. The most significant physiological changes in HRV, including alterations in low frequency (LF), high frequency (HF) and LF/HF, were observed at lower CCT. The findings of this study suggest that both the visual and non-visual performance of drivers were enhanced when high CCTs were used for automotive LED headlights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial and urban development is a common cause of increased pollution. Pollutants are in many instances discharged untreated to rivers due to lack of adequate treatment facilities and high treatment cost. In many cases, the detriment of pollution discharge to a river exceeds its self-purification capacity, and it may cause irreparable damages to the riverine environment. In this regard, water flow in a river is an effective characteristic behind its assimilative capacity that can be used to decrease pollution damages. Determining a river's assimilation capacity and the flow necessary for dilution of pollutants are important tasks. In this paper, pollution damage to a riverine environment is a function of the pollutant's concentration and the contact duration with river water. Pollutant transport in a river is simulated based on mathematical equations of pollutant advection-dispersion. The optimum values of a river's assimilation capacity and the dilution flow required in a river to mitigate pollution are determined using a nonlinear programming (NLP) method and the nondominated sorting genetic algorithms II (NSGA-II). The optimum assimilation capacity of a river was calculated in an application example for different reservoir releases. The results show that the magnitude of river flow can improve the total riverine assimilation capacity by up to 80%. Optimal Pareto boundaries were obtained for pollutant concentration and the duration of pollutant contact by means of river flow adjustment.

Objective: Obesity is a worldwide concern that may lead to type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, etc. Several serum biomarkers have been identified in the saliva of obese individuals, including inflammatory cytokines, adipokines, insulin, and cortisol. The present study aimed to compare salivary interleukin-6 (IL-6), interleukin-8 (IL-8), C-reactive protein (CRP) levels and total antioxidants capacity (TAC) of obese individuals with normal-weighted ones.

The green hydroponics walls are among new kinds of building facades, which receive more attention from architects lately. In addition to the positive effect these walls have in maintaining humidity in arid regions, they also have positive thermal performance in both cold and hot weather conditions. Therefore, they are in the center of designers' focus for public spaces such as schools. In terms of soil-free cultures, these walls are of three general types: wide, horizontal, and vertical. The use of different types of green walls in each zone allows for different thermal performance. This paper answer the question, which hydroponic green walls in different facades of green school have a better thermal performance? Moreover, the present study only addresses green schools in cold climates by using the thermal modeling method. We conducted a simulation by using Energy Plus software with three different types of hydroponic green walls in Shahrekord city of Iran, which were monitored in 20 years" from2000 until2019".The thermal performance of each type was analyzed and compared with other samples. Finally, the best kind of green- hydroponics wall with the best thermal performance was identified for each wall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, the performance of a novel configuration of the hybrid growth bioreactor in pilot-plant scale (containing of anoxic, aerobic and sedimentation sections) was investigated for Isfahan municipal wastewater treatment plants. The bioreactor performance was evaluated after primary sedimentation tanks under the inlet COD concentration of 0.27 ± 0.02 g/L, at different suspended biomass concentrations of about 3, 4, and 5 as g/L and different total hydraulic retention times 4, 8, and 12 h. An industrial moving bed packing with protected specific surface area of 350 m2/m3was used in the bioreactor with a 30% of filling ratio. The modified Stover–Kincannon and Grau models are applied to predict the bio kinetic coefficients of COD removal. According to the results obtained, the substrate removal rate constant (ks) for Grau model was in the range of 8.23–10.96 (1/d), and the saturation constant (KB) value and the maximum total substrate utilization rate (Umax) for modified Stover–Kincannon were in the range of 57.4–87.7 (g/L d) and 62.6–91.4 (g/L d), respectively. Also, the results showed that the bioreactor follows the models with 98–99% correlation coefficients. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Dairy cattle breeding programs have been based in the selection for traits related to milk production. In this research a data set of 63 herds of East Azerbaijan province Holstein cattle, collected during 2002-2013 by the Iranian Animal Breeding Center was used to estimate the repeatability and heritability of three traits of economic importance. Genetic parameters for first three lactations of Holstein cows were estimated using repeatability models. Single-trait repeatability models were fitted for milk, fat and protein yields. The model contained milk frequency and herd-year-months of test-days (HTD) as fixed effects; effect of animals were the random effects. The estimated heritabilities in first three lactations for milk yield were 0.154, 0.263 and 0.334, for protein yield 0.134, 0.166 and 0.274 and for fat yield 0.059, 0.083 and 0.052. The estimated repeatability in first three lactations for milk yield were 0.475, 0.847 and 0.898, for protein yield 0.398, 0.479 and 0.678 and for fat yield 0.198, 0.281and 0.279. The results imply that milk traits for Holstein dairy cattle in east Azerbaijan, Iran are more heritable. Therefore, these traits can be employed by breeders as selection criteria in developing effective genetic improvement programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nitrate and diazinon pesticide is among the environmental challenges which enter water resources, mostly as a result of agricultural activities. In this study, the effects of diazinon concentration, nitrate concentration and pH on the efficiency of simultaneous removal of contaminants from polluted water were investigated, applying a commercial polyamide nanofilter. Each factor was considered in three levels where diazinon concentration, nitrate concentration and solution pH were in the range of 10–1,000 μg/L, 40–160 mg/L and 5–9, respectively. The experiments were conducted at constant pressure of 6 bar. The response surface method was adopted in the experimental design to obtain the impact of mentioned factors. It was found that increasing diazinon concentration and pH enhance the pesticide removal efficiency up to 94%, while increasing nitrate concentration increases the commercial nanofilter efficiency from 80 to 85%. The diazinon removal percentage at optimum condition was estimated to be about 93% at diazinon concentration of about 90 μg/L, nitrate concentration of about 80 mg/L and pH of 9. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]