Wild relatives of wheat serve as an extraordinary source of variability for breeding programs due to their capabilities to respond to various environmental stresses. Here, we investigated some species possessing a D genome (T. aestivum, Ae. tauschii, Ae. crassa and Ae. cylindrica) in terms of relative water content (RWC), stomatal conductance (Gs), relative chlorophyll content, initial fluorescence (Fo), maximum quantum yield of PSII (Fv/Fm), maximum primary yield of PSII photochemistry (Fv/Fo), as well as shoot fresh and dry biomasses under control and water deficit conditions. Our results revealed that water deficit negatively affected all traits; shoot fresh weight, Gs and RWC showed the highest reduction compared to the control condition. Principal component analysis (PCA) identified two PCs that accounted for 53.36% of the total variation in the water deficit conditions. Correlation analysis and PCA-based biplots showed that stress tolerance index (STI) is significantly associated with Fv/Fm and Fv/Fo under water stress conditions, suggesting that these are the best parameters to evaluate when screening for tolerant samples at the seedling stage. We identified 19 accessions from Ae. crassa and one from Ae. tauschii as the most tolerant samples. In conclusion, Ae. crassa might provide an ideal genetic resource for drought-tolerant wheat breeds.

Abstract. One of the main problems of rescue workers in confrontation of fired complex buildings is the lack of sufficient information about the building indoor environment and their emergency exit ways. Building information modeling (BIM) is a database for building a 3D model of building information to create a 3D building geometry network model. This paper has implemented some GIS and BIM integration analyses to determine the shortest and safest paths to people under fire risk and simulate their movement in the building. Plasco building was a multi-story shop in Tehran which has been fired in 2017 and destroyed. This paper attempts to simulate the firefighting and rescue operations in Plasco Building using an integration of BIM and GIS. There is no detailed information about the building and the fire incident, therefore the developed BIM and corresponding geometric network might differ slightly. The shortest and safest paths to the exit door or windows where the fire ladders are located are computed and analyzed. As a result of 15 scenarios developed in this paper, it was found that at 87% of the cases, the safest paths for the emergency exit of the people at risk were longer than the shortest paths. This study has evaluated different scenarios for the shortest and safest paths using Dijkstra algorithm considering different origins and destination points in the 3D indoor environment to assist the rescue operations.

Abstract. Electromagnetic phenomena, especially those in the Very Low Frequency/Low Frequency (VLF/LF) bands are promising for short-term earthquake prediction. Seismo-ionospheric perturbations cause a variety of changes in different receiver-transmitter VLF/LF signal paths. Therefore, independent and simultaneous observations at different points thus in different VLF/LF signal propagation paths are necessary to better predict the earthquake. Most of the previous research on VLF data have been based on one path or limited number of paths which examined perturbations in the time domain and less attention has been paid to estimate the location of the earthquake. In the present research, using wavelet analysis, the temporal variations of seismo-ionospheric perturbations and the approximate time of earthquake are predicted. Clear disturbances are observed two weeks before the Kumamoto earthquake happened in Japan in 2016. The novelty of this study is to present an approach called Intersection-Union method to predict earthquake location. Based on the geometry of a VLF/LF network, the Intersection-Union method was introduced to estimate the earthquake epicenter. This method is based on the overlay of earthquake occurrence probable areas. With simultaneous use of different propagation paths by the Intersection-Union method, an area with a radius of about 300 km was determined as the probable location of the earthquake epicenter. The accuracy of the proposed method is 300 km compared with 1000 km accuracy of other earthquake location prediction scenarios.

Background: Environmental stresses are the most important factors limiting crops production in worldwide. Tocopherol, belonging to family of vitamin E compounds, is an amphipathic antioxidants involved in oxidative responses. In the current study, we generated transgenic canola plants overexpressing Arabidopsis VTE1 gene (At.TC) through Agrobacterium tumefaciens system. Methods and results: The putative transgenic plants were successfully regenerated and acclimated in greenhouse conditions. The transcriptional activity of the At.TC gene was evaluated by RT-PCR. In addition, the relative gene expression analysis by qRT-PCR confirmed an increased expression pattern of the transformed gene in canola transgenic lines, with the highest level in R. Line1. Given the results, the transgenic plants, particularly H. Line1 and R. Line2 showed a lower lipid peroxidation compared to WTs under FC 30%. Moreover, two ROS scavenging enzymes including CAT and PPO were up-regulated in transgenic lines; however, no significant pattern was observed for Ascorbate Peroxidase. Also, the amount of leaf tocopherol was significantly more in all T1 lines under drought stress (FC 30%). Conclusion: Taken together, here we successfully developed transgenic lines overexpressing At.TC gene constituently throughout the plant. The results confirmed that the generated transgenic plants are resistant to drought stress, thereby paving the way toward introducing canola plants to deal with the climate change and water shortage.