Shahram Hakimelahi

Bio: Shahram Hakimelahi is an academic researcher from University of Alberta. The author has contributed to research in topics: Prodrug & Butenolide. The author has an hindex of 6, co-authored 8 publications receiving 428 citations. Previous affiliations of Shahram Hakimelahi include Academia Sinica & Shiraz University of Medical Sciences.

A theoretical framework for narrative explanation in science

Abstract: This paper deals with a number of conceptual and theoretical issues that underlie the proposal to employ narrative explanations in science education: What is narra- tive? What is explanation? and What is narrative explanation? In answering these questions, we develop a framework of narrative elements and characteristics of narrative explanations. Two possible examples of narrative explanation are presented and examined in light of the framework. This examination brings to light various conceptual and empirical questions related to the examples and to the larger issue of the use of examples like them in science instruction. The value of the framework lies partly in its power to point to such questions. The questions can guide a program of theoretical and empirical research into the psycho- logical reality of the narrative form of explanation, the existence of narrative explanations in science, the use of narrative explanations in science teaching, and the nature and extent of the narrative effect upon which proposals for the use of narrative often are justified. C � 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 89:535 - 563, 2005

Synthesis and biological evaluation of purine-containing butenolides.

Abstract: 6-Chloropurine derivatives of γ-(Z)-ethylidene-2,3-dimethoxybutenolide 3a, γ-(Z)-ethylidene-2-methoxy-3-(4-nitro)benzyloxybutenolide 3b, γ-(Z)-ethylidene-2-(4-nitro)benzyloxy-3-methoxybutenolide 3c, γ-(Z)-ethylidene-2,3-di(4-nitro)benzyloxybutenolide 3d, and dimethylphosphono-γ-(Z)-ethylidene-2,3-dimethoxybutenolide 11 as well as the adenine derivative of γ-(Z)-ethylidene-2,3-dimethoxybutenolide 6 were synthesized. The key steps in the high-yield synthesis of 6 involved hydration/dehydration of the C4C5 in the precursor 3a. In the presence of NH4OH at elevated temperature, 3a underwent a reverse Michael-type addition with water to produce hydrate 5. At 37 °C, 6 was also hydrated in the presence of S-adenosyl-l-homocysteine hydrolase to afford 5. Butenolide 6 exhibited an inhibitory property toward the enzyme. Such type II (enzyme-mediated addition of water across C4C5) mechanism is the first example of “enzyme-substrate intermediate” inactivation of S-adenosyl-l-homocysteine hydrolase. In contrast with ty...

C-H bond functionalization: emerging synthetic tools for natural products and pharmaceuticals

Abstract: The direct functionalization of C-H bonds in organic compounds has recently emerged as a powerful and ideal method for the formation of carbon-carbon and carbon-heteroatom bonds. This Review provides an overview of C-H bond functionalization strategies for the rapid synthesis of biologically active compounds such as natural products and pharmaceutical targets.

The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality

Abstract: To raise the question of the nature of narrative is to invite reflection on the very nature of culture and, possibly, even on the nature of humanity itself. So natural is the impulse to narrate, so inevitable is the form of narrative for any report of the way things really happened, that narrativity could appear problematical only in a culture in which it was absent-absent or, as in some domains of contemporary Western intellectual and artistic culture, programmatically refused. As a panglobal fact of culture, narrative and narration are less problems than simply data. As the late (and already profoundly missed) Roland Barthes remarked, narrative "is simply there like life itself. . international, transhistorical, transcultural."' Far from being a problem, then, narrative might well be considered a solution to a problem of general human concern, namely, the problem of how to translate knowing into telling,2 the problem of fashioning human experience into a form assimilable to structures of meaning that are generally human rather than culture-specific. We may not be able fully to comprehend specific thought patterns of another culture, but we have relatively less difficulty understanding a story coming from another culture, however exotic that

Funktionalisierung von C‐H‐Bindungen: neue Synthesemethoden für Naturstoffe und Pharmazeutika

Abstract: Die direkte Funktionalisierung von C-H-Bindungen in organischen Molekulen hat sich in jungster Zeit zu einer wirksamen und idealen Methode entwickelt, mit der Kohlenstoff-Kohlenstoff- und Kohlenstoff-Heteroatom-Bindungen geknupft werden konnen. Der Aufsatz gibt einen Uberblick uber die Strategien, die durch Funktionalisierung von C-H-Bindungen eine rasche Synthese von biologisch aktiven Verbindungen wie Naturstoffen und pharmazeutischen Zielsubstanzen ermoglichen.