The aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR or dioxin receptor) is a ligand-activated transcription factor that heterodimerizes with the AhR nuclear translocator (ARNT/HIF-1beta) to form an AhR/ARNT transcription factor complex. This complex binds to specific DNA sites in the regulatory domains of numerous target genes and mediates the biological effects of exogenous ligands. Herein, we have investigate...

Hydraulic fracturing and matrix stimulation are two major methods of the reservoir stimulation. Hydraulic fracturing, which is the newest technique and technically more complex, is very useful in low permeability reservoirs. Although it has been used widely in hydrocarbon production wells, it is a new method in Iran. In this paper, the effect of sufficient barrier layers on hydraulic fracturing...

Preparative high pressure liquid chromatography on US-Y zeolite shape-selective molecular sieve was studied for carbon isotopic fractionation e€ects. We tested a standard mixture [17b, 21b(H)-hopane, 5a-cholestane] and complex natural hydrocarbon mixtures dominated by tetraand pentacyclic triterpenoids extracted from Oxford Clay shales. We con®rmed that steroids and hopanoids were separated on ...

In vitro cell bioassays are useful techniques for the determination of receptor-mediated activities in environmental samples containing complex mixtures of contaminants. The cell bioassays determine contamination by pollutants that act through specific modes of action. This article presents strategies for the evaluation of aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR)-(hereafter referred as dioxin-like) or e...

BACKGROUND Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) such as polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins/furans, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and organochlorine pesticides can cause a series of adverse effects on e.g. reproduction in animals and humans, many of which involve the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR). The aim of the present study was to compare the integrated serum level of AhR mediated activity...

The reaction between the radical and the stable hydrocarbon is one of the simplest 2 22 neutral-neutral hydrocarbon reactions in chemical models of dense interstellar clouds and carbon-rich circumstellar shells. Although known to be rapid at temperatures o300 K, the reaction has yet to be studied at lower temperatures. We present here ab initio calculations of the potential surface for this rea...

A well-defined N-heterocyclic carbene-palladium(II)-1-methylimidazole [NHC-Pd(II)-Im] complex 1 was found to be an effective catalyst for the Mizoroki-Heck reaction of a variety of aryl chlorides with styrenes. Both activated and deactivated aryl chlorides work well to give the corresponding coupling products in good to excellent yields by using tetrabutylammonium bromide (TBAB) as the ionic li...

Contextualist theories of utterance interpretation posit a process of free pragmatic enrichment that contributes ‘unarticulated constituents’ of the explicit content of utterances. In this paper, I address the main concern about this process, which is that it is not sufficiently constrained, and appears to allow for enrichments that clearly do not occur. One variety of this overgeneration objec...

A recent Science paper reported a purine derivative that expands human cord blood hematopoietic stem cells in culture (Boitano et al., 2010) by antagonizing the aryl hydrocarbon receptor. Major problems need to be overcome before ex vivo HSC expansion can be used clinically.