Twenty four Cowpea varieties were raised at NIAB and ARRI, Faisalabad selected for plant height (42-136cm) days taken to 95 % flowering (62-79 days) and for diseases resistance (0.67-7 rating). Infestation was maximum on IT-97K-461-4, 1068-7, IT-97K 1042-8 and IT-98k-558-1 and was graded as susceptible. Maximum grain yield was recorded in Elite (649 kg/ha) and lowest grain yield was observed in IT-95K-1156-3 (332.3 kg/ha). Yield and yield contributing characters of twenty four entries tested revealed that they differ significantly from each other. The stability parameters for 12 locations indicated that the interaction was of cross over nature because the ranking of mean seed yield at 12 locations was dissimilar except NCP-1 which stood first at all the 12 locations. Regression coefficient of the six genotypes was non significant from zero. Standard deviation to regression S2d was also non significant except IT-97k-1042-8 genotype Elite with second highest yield performance had 0.982 non significant value of b near to unity and non significant S2d almost equal to zero (0.001). In addition to Elite the highest yielding line NCp-1 also showed stability because it had non significant regression coefficient (b) value from unity and non significant standard deviation to regression (S2d) from zero.

Key words: Waste Generation, Artificial Neural Network, Sensitive Analysis, Mashhad.

Population growth and urbanization increase the demand for developing new roads. Heavy traffic of the east of Tehran imposes high pressure on transportation. Network of this city and old road of Tehran-Rudehen does not meet this need. Therefore, constructing the new highway (Tehran – Pardis) in the east of Tehran would be needed. But the new highway passes through protected area of Jajrood and next to Khojir National Park. These areas include ecologic values as well as national importance. Therefore, constructing the new highway next to or inside these regions, have potential impacts. In this study, parameters such as noise and air pollutions in 10 stations were measured. Also, for anticipating the effects, simple Matrix & Pastakia matrix methods, were used. The results of the research show that noise and air pollutions have no effect on mammals and birds of Khojir National Park. It is assessed that constructing of new highway has less environmental impacts when compared with the option of widening the present road.

A research was conducted at Kauma oxidation ponds, a Sewage water treatment plant found in Lilongwe, Malawi with an aim of establishing the efficiency of these sewage treatment ponds in treating sewage wastewater. Water samples from the effluent discharging points in the maturation ponds were collected and analysed in the labouratory for, BOD, Coliform bacteria, Total Nitrogen (TN), Phosphorous and Chlorophyll-a. Other parameters like Temperature, DO, and pH were measured on site. It was found out that FCB, TP, TN, Chlorophyll a and BOD were 4.59x103CFU, 1.94x103μg/L, 1.78x103μg/L, 2.68x103μg/L and 10.6mg/L, way above the WHO guidelines for drinking, swimming and bathing waters for which uses is the Lilongwe river to which this effluent is discharged. The presence of FCB, BOD, P, chlorophyll-a, in large quantities indicates the inefficiency of the oxidation ponds. Furthermore, the presence of high concentration of chlorophyll-a indicated a heavy loading of the river with organic matter found in phytoplankton demanding a tertiary treatment to have a clean water discharged into the river system.

Organochlorine and Organophosphate pesticides are likely to pollute lipid-containing food sources, like milk (3-5% fat), owing to their lipophilicity, thereby jeopardizing the benefits of milk as a health food. Pesticide load in bovine milk may be from the leaching of pesticides persisting in the adipose tissue of the animal, or through direct contamination during milking or improper handling of milk.Bovine milk samples from small-scale rural and urban dairies were collected and investigated for selected array of Organochlorines and Organophosphates. The study revealed that BHC, is still the most common pollutant being present in 75% of the samples, followed by Methyl Parathion (37.5%), Dieldrin and 2,4 DDE (12.5% each). Mean quantity of Methyl Parathion (0.3496 mg/ kg : whole milk basis) was 1.7 times higher than BHC (mean 0.2104 mg/kg: whole milk basis). The mean value was 0.35 times higher than the ADI prescribed by Prevention of Food Adulteration Act, 1992, India, in case of Methyl Parathion, 1.05 times higher for BHC, 2.30 times for Dieldrin and 0.07 times for 2,4 DDE. Rural dairy samples carried higher load of Methyl Parathion which may be attributed to the large scale agricultural practices and unsafe handling in that area.

Styrene is an important constituent of widely used organic solvents in industries for production of various synthetic materials. The use of solid-phase extraction (SPE) has grown and is a fertile technique of sample preparation as it provides better results than those produced by liquidliquid extraction. In this study, SPE has been optimized, regarding sample pH, sample concentration, sample flow rate, elution solvent, washing solvent, sample volume, elution volume, and sorbent mass. Through experimental evaluation, a strong anion exchange silica cartridge has been found successful in simplifying sample preparation. The present approach proved that, mandelic acid, as a urinary metabolite of styrene, could be retained on solid phase based on specific interaction.
Further study was employed 10% acetic acid to extract the analyte from spiked urine and gave a clean sample. In this study, a high performance liquid chromatography, using reverse-phase column was used. The isocratic run was done at a constant flow rate of 0.85 ml/min, the mobile phase was water/methanol/acetic acid and an ultra violate detector was used, setting at 225 nm. At the developed conditions the extraction recovery was exceeded 98%. The factors were evaluated statically and also validated with three different pools of spiked urine samples and showed a good reproducibility over six consecutive days as well as six within-day experiments.

Key words: Solid phase extraction, Biological monitoring, Optimization, Chromatography

* Corresponding author Email: shahtaheri@tums.ac.ir

In the present study, an indigenous medicinal plant, Tridax procumbens (Asteraceae) was used as bioadsorbent for the removal of Cr (III) ions from synthetic wastewater and the method was also applied for real sample analysis. The biosorption of Cr (III) was a two-stage batch reactor process. In the first stage, raw biomaterial was used to the conversion of Cr (VI) into Cr (III). The amount of the biomaterial was 2.5g. The percent conversion was 100. The second stage involved the biosorption of Cr (III) onto the activated carbon of the biomaterial. The result indicated that, the biosorption of Cr (III) was 98.5 % at the optimum pH of 3.2. The experiments were carried out at the temperature of 25 ± 20C. The optimum contact time was 150 min and the adsorbent dose was 2.5g of activated carbon. The effect of concentration was also studied for the design of the treatment systems and this methodology is highly suitable for the treatment of chromium containing wastewater.

Key words: Wastewater, Biosorption, Biomaterials, Chromium (III), Medicinal plants, Tridax procumbens

* Corresponding author Email: msinganan@yahoo.com

The quality of wastewater generated in any process industry is generally indicated by performance indices namely BOD, COD and TOC, expressed in mg/L. The use of TOC as an analytica parameter has become more common in recent years especially for the treatment of industrial wastewater. In this study, several empirical relationships were established between BOD and COD with TOC using regression analysis, so that TOC can be used to estimate the accompanying BOD or COD. A new, the use of Artificial Neural Networks has been explored in this study to predict the concentrations of BOD and COD, well in advance using some easily measurable water quality indices. The total data points obtained from a refinery wastewater (143) were divided into a training set consisting of 103 data points, while the remaining 40 were used as the test data. A total of 12 different models (A1-A12) were tested using different combinations of network architecture. These models were evaluated using the % Average Relative Error values of the test set. It was observed that three models gave accurate and reliable results, indicating the versatility of the developed models.

Key words: Neural Networks, Regression Analysis, BOD, COD, Prediction, Average Relative Error

Diazinon is commonly used for pest control in the agricultural fields surrounding freshwater reservoirs. This study was conducted to determine the chronic toxicity of organophosphorous pesticide and its effects on some hematological parameters and biochemical blood plasma profiles of common carp, Cyprinus carpio. Diazinon was applied at concentrations of 60 and 120μg/L preparations in 10, 20 and 30 days since the experiments were initiated. The experimental groups showed significantly lower values (p < 0.05) of erythrocyte count, haemoglobin content, haematocrit, leucocytes, Lymphocyte and monocyte, as well as in alkaline phosphatases and significantly higher (p<0.05) values of plasma glucose, alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase, lactate dehydrogenase, neutrophile and eosinophile compared to the control group. There was not significant difference in value of total protein (p< 0.05) in the experimental groups and control group. Values of MCV, MCH and MCHC of experimental species were compared to the control groups. The results of examinations of the biochemical blood plasma profile indicate a marked neurotoxic effect of diazinon in fishes. Changes in values of both erythrocyte and leukocyte profile after exposure to diazinon-based preparation may be referred to disruption of haematopoiesis as well as to a decrease on non-specific immunity of the fish.

Key words: Diazinon, Common carp, Hematological parametrs, Biochemical, Blood