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Religious places are the places for the believers to pray. Holly Qur’an clearly defines these spaces as the places that belong to Allah, and Muslims worship and express their belief there. The word ‘mosque’ is mentioned 28 times in the Holly Qur’an. The overall function of mosques aims to generate harmony, harmony of Muslims with respect to God. Mosques have two integrated purposes of religious and social activities. The religious purpose is to worship God in congregational prayer five times a day. The social purpose is to unite Muslims within the community and strengthen their social relationships. Mosque is a symbol of religion, unity, beliefs, identity, peace, strength, justice and solidarity of Muslims. It promotes collective strength; defines hierarchy and allegiance; resolves conflicts with the community; strives for social cohesion; and imparts restrictions and controls of human behavior. The ideal use of mosques was in traditional Muslim cities. They were used as multi-purpose spaces, serving for prayers, studying Holly Qur’an, making political decisions and solving socio- cultural problems. In those times, mosques had to be equally distributed in the built environment and in proportion to the size of population of various sections in the cities. Building mosques in an equal and proportional distribution provided all inhabitants equal access to the use of the spaces in a mosque. So it seems that in traditional Islamic cities mosques had more important roles; they were able to unify Islamic cities physically, socially and culturally but recently, planning of the cities lack the utilization of this characteristics. The study shows that in recent urban planning and design, religious spaces especially mosques have not been paid proper attention. This article is mainly concerned with the role of religious places and specially mosques in planning and design organization in Islamic cities. The main question here is that whether planners and designers have considered the main role of the religious spaces and mosques in planning and designing of a contemporary city for Muslims or not? It seems that there is no significant attention to religious places in the recently prepared city plans. In order to examine the above hypothesis, the comprehensive plans of five districts of Tehran Municipality (2 ^th, 3 ^th, 12^th, 17^th& 20^th regions) were selected as case studies. These parts are located in different parts of the city. To pursue the research; a number of variables were determined and defined. What we found out is that one of the reasons for the decreasing of social interaction and spiritual values in our contemporary cities, is the forgotten role of our religious magnets as a social capital of the society in the planning and designing of our cities. It means that this factor is the one that ought to be under strong consideration in all Muslim communities all over the world.

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Environmental attitudes are recognized as an indicator and component of      environmental behavior. There are many theoretical and empirical approaches to investigate attitude towards environment in the respected literatures. Most of the studies related to this issue have been conducted since 1970 onwards when conceptualization of environmental attitudes as a scientific research concept gained closer attention by researchers. Environmental quality was one of the most critical subjects of environmental attitude studies.  The formation, maintenance, and reproduction of social relationships generally occur in a spatial context. Social science has been the potential interpenetration of action and space for individual and social behavior. One approach to this subject has been taken by those working within the framework of environmental quality. This article is mainly concerned with the role of environmental quality on social relationships. The main question of the present research is, whether environmental quality have any influence on social relation or not? It seems that there is significant relation between the quality of environment and social connections. In order to examine the above hypothesis, one of the Mashhad’s neighborhoods was selected as the case study. This neighborhood has been located respectively in the zone 1 / region 2 of the city of Mashhad. Then the variables were determined and defined. There were two main variables in this paper. To evaluate the first variable (environmental quality) some indexes were determined. Also to evaluate the second variable (citizens’ social relations) several indexes were chosen. Then a questionnaire was prepared and data were collected. Finally the responds were analyzed by SPSS. The empirical results deriving from the data show that there are certain strong influences of the environmental quality and social relation. So, the hypothec of the investigation was accepted. It means that in the area under study there is a meaningful relation between social relationship and environmental quality.

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COVID-19 pandemic, as an unprecedented phenomenon in the modern world, has considerably damaged the international trade, business and supply chain. Previous researches show that although, some restrictions and quarantine are helpful for decreasing the negative impacts of the pandemic, but these have cause trade and economic crisis. In this environment, the World Customs Organization (WCO) plays a pioneering role in combating against the damaging effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. It has invited all its members to share their best practices and policies for preventing the spread of the pandemic. The WCO categorizes them into 4 distinctive groups: facilitating the cross-border movement of relief and essential supplies, supporting the economy and sustaining supply chain continuity, protecting staff and society. This research shows that the mentioned practices and policies can significantly reduce the trade and economic recession of the pandemic and implementation of these practices in critical times can be useful to promote the economy and trade and can help the researchers, policy-makers and stakeholders in combating the negative effects of the pandemic.

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There are large areas of the world where seismicity is high while they form the whole or parts of urban conglomeration. Iran can be literally compared to a large shaking table; various parts of it have been stricken by earthquake in the last four decades(1). Tehran is also expected to have a major earthquake in the near future(2). Therefore, urban design criteria for earthquake preparedness in organic urban areas of Tehran should be prepared. Among various parts of the city, the organic areas are facing more problems due to their old and unsafe structures and being located in narrow lanes and alleys while gas pipes running every where. In case of earthquake, people will be traped in these places where it will be very difficult for the fire fighting vehicles, ambulances and othe facilities to reach to the affected parts to provide health care services and aid. This paper tries to point out that although prevention of earthquake or strengthening of each and every urban structure is not possible, but at the same time the harsh effect can be toned down with the preparedness of urban transport and built form along them. It is a well known fact that after every earthquake, victims are trapped alive below the debris. This makes it imperative that a hierarchy of earthquake safe centers shall be available at all levels of the settlements and a network of roads is essential for the free flow of emergency vehicles and equipment to make the job of relief and rescue work easier.

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The interactions and linkages between urban centers and peripheral settlements are increasingly recognized as key factors in the process of social, economic and environmental changes in peripheral settlements. Despite this, most practices are implicitly based on a dichotomous view of population and activities in urban and peripheral area. This paper presents that how interactions between urban centers and peripheral settlements include spatial linkages (flows of goods, money, capital, people, information, production, technology and wastes) affect on peripheral changes. The interactions and linkages between the urban centers of Qazvin and 20 peripheral settlements there show that the effects of this interaction upon the peripheral settlements have included more inorganic effects. Urban and peripheral development need to be considered as complementary process rather than competing activities for the limited resources. The benefits of such an integrated approach will outweigh of the costs.

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Concentrations and profiles of 15 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) priority Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH) of six different edible oils consumed in Iran markets (oils of olive, sesame, coconut, sunflower, frying and blend oil) were studied. The evaluated edible oils in the present study have not previously been analyzed concerning their contents of PAH compounds. PAHs of 207 edible oil samples were determined and quantified by High-Performance Liquid Chromatography with Spectrofluorometric Detector (HPLC/FLD). The results revealed that the highest content of total PAHs was in coconut oil group (46.8 µg kg^-1), followed by blend oil (22.48 µg kg^-1), frying oil (20.67 µg kg^-1), sesame oil (19.92 µg kg^-1), olive oil (18.4 µg kg^-1) and sunflower oil (17.6 µg kg^-1). The light PAHs (Naphthalene, Acenaphtene, Phenantherern, Antrathene, and Fluorene) had the highest portion of PAHs concentration. Benzo[a]pyrene and PAH4 contents (Benz[a]anthracene+Chrysene+Benzo[b]fluoranthene+Benzo[a]pyrene) were ND-1.32 µg kg^-1 and 0.14-9.2 µg kg^-1, respectively; coconut oil had the highest content. In general, the highest values of Benzo[a]pyrene and PAH4 were not higher than the maximum allowable values of 2 and 10 in any sample, respectively. However, due to the significant content of total PAHs in some vegetable oils, such as coconut oil, it is necessary to determine the limits and evaluate it in the national standard and regulations of the country.