Major and trace elements' concentrations in hard and soft tissues of kutum, Rutilus kutum, from the Caspian Sea and their potential use as biomonitoring tools.

The potential use of different hard and soft parts (otolith, scale, eye lens, dorsal spine, vertebral bone, muscle, and liver) of Rutilus kutum for biomonitoring of 13 major and trace elements (Br, Ca, Cl, Cu, Fe, K, Mg, Mn, Na, P, S, Sr, and Zn) was evaluated, for the first time. The specimens were sampled from three sampling sites in the Southern Caspian Sea in May 2016. Twenty specimens were collected from each site.

An efficient approach to integrated MeV ion imaging.

An ionoluminescence (IL) spectral imaging system, besides the common MeV ion imaging facilities such as µ-PIXE and µ-RBS, is implemented at the Van de Graaff laboratory of Tehran. A versatile processing software is required to handle the large amount of data concurrently collected in µ-IL and common MeV ion imaging measurements through the respective methodologies. The open-source freeware PyMca, with image processing and multivariate analysis capabilities, is employed to simultaneously process common MeV ion imaging and µ-IL data.

An efficient ionoluminescence analysis of turquoise gemstone as a weakly luminescent mineral.

The unique ionization pattern of MeV-energy ion beam is applied for efficient luminescence analysis of a collection of natural turquoise samples. The considerable penetration depth of tens of micrometer and enhancement of energy deposition with depth, suggests ionoluminescence as an appropriate technique for studying weakly luminescent minerals. Herein, the luminescence induced in deeper parts of turquoise samples is extracted through their relatively transparent adjacent host stones.

Elemental analysis of aerosols in Tehran's atmosphere using PIXE and identification of pollution sources.

In this study, the proton-induced X-ray emission (PIXE) technique has been applied to measure the elemental composition and concentrations of particulate matter of 220 samples of aerosols in Tehran's atmosphere within a 450-day time interval starting from March 2009 and ending in June 2010, covering all four seasons. PIXE analysis shows the samples are comprised of various elements including Al, Si, S, Cl, K, Ca, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Ni, Cu, Zn, Br, Rb, Sr, and Pb. Also, to obtain more information about the sources of pollution and to identify the major sources of urban particulate matter, principal component analysis (PCA) was used.