Seventy seven adult large mixed breed dogs of either sex were included in this study. The animals were randomly divided into four groups and received the following drug combinations intramuscularly: Group 1 xylazine (0.5 mg/kg) and acepromazine (0.05 mg/kg), Group 2 xylazine (0.8 mg/kg) and acepromazine (0.03 mg/kg), Group 3 xylazine (0.3 mg/kg) and acepromazine (0.08 mg/kg) and Group 4 xylazine (0.5 mg/kg) acepromazine (0.05 mg/kg) and atropine (0.04 mg/kg). Results showed no significant differences in the Pwave and QRS complex durations, PR interval and R waves among the 4 groups. QT interval significantly decreased following drug administration in group 4 compared to groups 1 (P=0.03) and 3 (P=0.004). There were significant increases in the QT interval in groups 1 (P=0.001) and 3 (P=0.01) after drug injections.Heart rate (HR) significantly decreased in groups 1, 2 and 3 after drug injections (P=0.004, 0.01 and 0.03, respectively). There was a significant negative correlation between HR, PR and QT intervals, and a positive correlation between HR and P-wave amplitude. There were no significant differences between all groups in the incidence of first and second degree AV blocks.

Uniaxial compressive strength (UCS), modulus of elasticity (E) and Brazilian tensile strength (BTS) are important properties of intact rock which are used widely in rock engineering. The determination of these parameters in laboratory is difficult, expensive and time consuming. Thus, it has been attempted that the empirical equations to estimate the mechanical properties of sandstones using Pwave velocity and Schmidt hardness as two non-destructive and easy tests were developed. For this purpose, 30 rock blocks of sandstone have been collected from several parts of Upper red formation in southwestern Qom and they were tested in the laboratory. The laboratory tests include the determination of P-wave velocity and Schmidt hardness, and mechanical properties include the uniaxial compressive strength, modulus of elasticity and Brazilian tensile strength. Empirical equations have been developed for estimating the mechanical properties from P-wave velocity and Schmidt hardness using regression analysis. To check the validity of the empirical equations, t and F test were performed, which confirmed the validity of the proposed empirical equations. Moreover, the results show that P-wave velocity appears to be more reliable than the Schmidt hardness for estimating the mechanical properties.

The mechanical characteristics of rocks and rock masses are considered as the determining factors in making plans in the mining and civil engineering projects. Two factors that determine how rocks responds in varying stress conditions are Pwave velocity (PWV) and its isotropic properties. Therefore, achieving a highaccurate method to estimate PWV is a very important task. This work investigates the use of different intelligent models such as multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS), classification and regression tree (CART), group method of data handling (GMDH), and gene expression programming (GEP) for the prediction of PWV. The proposed models are then evaluated using several error statistics, i. e. squared correlation coefficient (R2) and root mean squared error (RMSE). The values of R2 obtained from the CART, MARS, GMDH, and GEP models are 0. 983, 0. 999, 0. 995, and 0. 998, respectively. Furthermore, the CART, MARS, GMDH, and GEP models predict PWV with the RMSE values of 0. 037, 0. 007, 0. 023, and 0. 020, respectively. According to the aforementioned amounts, the models presented in this work predict PWV with a good performance. Nevertheless, the results obtained reveal that the MARS model yields a better prediction in comparison to the GEP, GMDH, and CART models. Accordingly, MARS can be offered as an accurate model for predicting the aims in other rock mechanics and geotechnical fields.

The aim of this work is to obtain recycled aggregate (RA) from construction debris in order to reduce the rapid consumption of aggregate resources and the environmental impact of these resources. In order to fulfill this aim, the density, porosity, Schmidt hardness test, uniaxial compression resistance, carbonation depth, and ultrasonic pwave velocity experiments were conducted on different construction debris transported by trucks from 9 different points in Turkey. In addition, the debris samples taken were broken down to the size of the aggregate and subjected to the tests of density, porosity, moisture content, freeze-thaw, and impact resistance. As a result of the conducted experiments, the lowest mass loss as a result of freezing-thawing was in GRA with 9. 36%, the highest mass loss was in ORA with 22. 58%, the highest ORA average aggregate impact strength index was 21. 27%, and the lowest TRA aggregate impact strength index was found to be 18. 26%. İ t was determined that most of the physical properties of RA obtained from the construction wreckage was within the limit values specified in the literature and that the recycled aggregates could be used instead of natural aggregate. With this work and these results, RA obtained could be used in many areas such as concrete aggregate in the construction sector, underground filling in mining, filling material in gunned concrete, and filling materials on highways.

The determination of in-hospital outcome in patients with Acute Myocardial infarction (AMI) is important for choosing the therapeutic method, management, kind of care and duration of hospitalization. Electrocardiogram is a cheap, simple and available method for AMI diagnosis and it will be more valuable if its findings can help to determine in-hospital prognosis and identification of high risk patients. In this study, one hundred patients with AMI were randomly chosen; fifty of them died in hospital (main group) and he other fifty were discharged alive (control group). Their demographic data and electrocardiogram findings at the time of admission were extracted. This investigation showed that more patients of the main group, in comparison with the control group, had no sinus rhythm; their heart Rate> 100 beats/min, P wave amplitude> 1 m.v, QRS duration> 0.12 s. In the main group, the prevalence of ST elevation in anterior and aVR leads was higher than control group. The proportion of patients who had one kind of cardiac block, was higher than other main group. Patients in the main group had higher sum of ST elevation than those of the control group. According to our current study, in patients with AMI , some electrocardiogram findings including Rhythm, Heart Rate , P wave amplitude, QRS duration, Location of ST elevation, high sum of ST elevation and Variety of cardiac blocks are important for determination of in-hospital prognosis.      

High pressure and temperature in the earth's crust lead to fracture and microcracks in rocks. Direct access to earth crust rocks at great depths is very costly and, in most cases, impossible. The study of the condition of rocks at great depths is often done using indirect methods such as seismic waves. The results of these studies are compared with the results of laboratory studies of wave velocities in different rocks and the conditions of the rocks are simulated. At high depths, hydrostatic stress is applied to the rocks of the earth's crust, and tectonic, earthquake and other stresses cause it to be anisotropic. The primary purpose of this study is to investigate the change in compressive wave velocity due to the change in compressive stress in rocks. At first, a cylindrical core of different stones with a length to diameter ratio of 2 to 2. 5 is prepared according to the standard test method (ASTM D4543) and their dimensions and weight are determined. after measuring the unconfined compressive strength of cores according to the standard test method (ASTM D2938), the hydrostatic pressure of 50% to 95% of it is applied to the rock samples prepared from the earth. This pressure is applied to the cores by using the Hoek cell (for lateral pressure) and the axial load machine and using an ultrasonic device, determine the compressive wave velocity (ultrasonic pulse) is determined according to the standard test method (ASTM D2845) in the axial direction of the sample. Then, the wave velocity was measured by decreasing the lateral pressure (increasing deviatoric stress) in a stepwise manner and the wave velocity was measured at each step. In the following, comparative diagrams of compressive wave velocity (Vp) with density (ρ, d), uniaxial compressive strength (UCS) and the effect of hydrostatic stress (σ, hyd) and deviatoric stress (σ, dev) on P-wave velocity in each sample are drawn. The results show linear relationships between compressive wave velocity and the physical properties of rock samples. Also, the Pwave velocity at hydrostatic pressure is the highest and as the lateral pressure decreases (increasing the deviatoric stress), the velocity also decreases.

Rapid estimation of the epicentral distance and magnitude is of fundamental importance for real time earthquake detection and earthquake early warning systems (EEWS). Earthquake magnitude and P-wave amplitude are important parameters for EEWS, yet their dependence on source mechanism, focal depth and epicentral distance (Δ ) has not been fully studied. We examined a method to estimate an earthquake’ s magnitude and epicentral distance using the initial part of P-wave data (within 3 s) for application in EEWS. The B-Δ method is used to estimate the epicentral distance from a single station data in a short time. In order to quantitatively evaluate the difference in observed seismic waveforms, we used a simple function with the form of y(t) = B. t. exp(-At) and determined A and B in terms of the least-squares method by fitting this function to the initial part of the waveform envelope. logB is inversely proportional to logΔ , where Δ is the epicentral distance. This relation holds true regardless of earthquake magnitude. By using this relation, we can roughly estimate the epicentral distance nearly immediately after the Pwave arrival. Then, we can readily estimate the magnitude from the maximum amplitude observed within a given short time interval after the P-wave arrival by using an empirical magnitude– amplitude relation that includes the epicentral distance as a parameter. B values are calculated on the basis of 76 vertical-component accelerograms of the Alborz region in a magnitude range Mw 4. 5-6. 2 and epicentral distances less than 100 km. By using this method, we could estimate the epicentral distance and earthquake magnitude by specific relations for this region. We showed the amplitude of the large earthquake increases gradually with time, whereas that of the small earthquake decreases soon after P-wave arrival, which is consistent with the observation by other researchers. This method, as a whole, works well for estimating an earthquake magnitude from a B value and the maximum amplitude observed within a quite short time (e. g., 3 sec) from the P-wave arrival. However, some improvements may be required for near earthquakes and for ill-natured earthquakes for which the fault rupture process is rather complicated, such as the Mosha fault with different segments. One measure that we can take to cope with this difficulty is to estimate the magnitude repeatedly with time as the amplitude increases. The term logB may be replaced with other functions such as log(log B). In order to determine the best functional formula for this term, we need further investigations with more earthquake data covering a larger range of magnitudes, depths, and distances. The other parameter A, may be useful for distinguishing shallow and deep earthquakes and large and small earthquakes. This can be an option for future studies. This method can apply as a new stand-alone seismographic system that detects an earthquake and issues a warning immediately after the arrival of P-wave. The greatest advantage of this method is its accuracy and rapidness.

Alborz mountain belt in the North of Iran is known as a tectonically and seismically active region. Determination of shear wave velocity structure is important to interpret the tectonic activities. In this study, we determine 1D shear wave velocity structure beneath 12 seismic stations in the Eastern part of Alborz and also 2D shear wave velocity structure along to two profiles (one is along to the trend of Eastern part of Alborz and another one is perpendicular to its trend), based on the joint inversion of Pwave receiver function (PRF) and dispersion curves of Rayleigh waves. To obtain the PRFs of each seismic station, we lonsider three-component body wave seismograms of 177 teleseismic earthquake events with magnitude Mw>5.2 and epicentral distance range 30° to 95°, related to the study region. Also the dispersion curves of Rayleigh waves in the vicinity of each station are extracted from surface wave tomographic study reported by Rahimi et al. (2014). Then these two group data are regarded as the input data for the joint inversion process using “joint96” program (Herrmann and Ammon, 2007).). In this study, the initial models are taken from shear wave velocity models reported by Rahimi et al. (2014), based on tomographic inversion of Rayleigh wave dispersion for various tectonic region of Iran. We regard the maximum depth of investigation about 300 km (upper mantle) in this joint inversion process based on sensitivity kernels of the dispersion curves of the Rayleigh wave fundamental mode with respect to the shear wave velocity at different periods (Rahimi et al., 2014). To find the most robust final velocity model for each station, we regard two stability tests: first, searching for the optimal parameterization for the joint inversion process; second, simplify of the representative solution of the joint inversion process (Motaghi et al., 2015). According to the obtained results, the depth of Moho boundary beneath the eastern part of Alborz mountain range is relatively uniform and following 47±2 km. By attention to the absolute shear wave velocity structure along the two profiles, depth of lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary beneath covered area is roughly constant and mainly varies around 86±6 km. Also there are high velocity anomalies in depth range 120-180 km. These high velocity anomalies in the upper mantle are consistent with the presence of under thrusting of Caspian lithosphere beneath Alborz. This observation is reported previously by Jackson et al., 2002. These observations may support the remaining question about higher surface topography in the study region without enough supporting crustal thickness. Maggi et al. (2000), using the admittance between topography and gravity in frequency domain mentioned that the only very short period topography could be supported by the flexure of the layer, whilst any longer period topography must be supported by an isostatic response. This result supports our observations, which shows an isostatic compensation for much of the long period topography. On the other hand, for short period topography, the mechanism of elastic flexure layer beneath Alborz, allowing high topographies to be supported by thin crust. We observed almost well correlation between the thickness of high velocity under thrusted layer and surface topography and also our observation could support higher surface topography in study region without enough supporting crustal thickness.