Background: Lithium is well described in managing certain mental illnesses including in people with intellectual disabilities (ID). It requires regular monitoring particularly of serum levels and relevant biochemistry. However, existing monitoring protocols do not provide ID-specific guidance leading to increased risk of poor-quality care. This…

A high variety of experimental model organisms have been used in developmental biology practical lectures. The work with developing embryos is crucial to make students aware of the multiple biological phenomena underlying normal animal embryogenesis and morphogenesis and represent a unique experimental platform to analyze the impact of molecular…

We investigated whether daily experiences of conflict with family and peers were associated with fluctuations in diurnal cortisol, and whether sleep buffers the associations between conflict and diurnal cortisol. A racially diverse sample of 370 adolescents (ages 11-18; 57.3% female) provided daily diaries for 5 days and saliva samples for 4 days.…

Excessive drinking is commonplace among college students and can lead to numerous negative consequences. Alcohol expectancies are a well-studied correlate of alcohol consumption, and greater understanding of expectancies in relation to drinking behavior and alcohol-related consequences could inform future assessment and intervention. Past research…

Through the special situation like the COVID-2019 lockdown, interactive techniques play a prime role in the study process. The strategy of lockdown ways of higher education was provided in Ukraine as well as in other countries since March 2020. Our investigation was performed at the Department of Biochemistry and Medical Chemistry of Dnipro State…

Biochemistry encompasses a broad range of life science disciplines. Unlike more vocational disciplines such as pharmacy or medicine, the career path associated with biochemistry is less clearly defined. An important question is whether the skills set provided by post-graduate biochemistry education, defined as BSc (Hons.), MSc, or PhD degrees, is…

The pandemic caused major shifts in the delivery of education worldwide. In the teaching of medical biochemistry, the greatest impact was towards the delivery of traditional laboratory simulations. In this study, we highlight the benefits and barriers encountered in the use of virtual laboratories (vLABs) to substitute traditional laboratory…

This paper describes the development of a fully remote upper-class biochemistry lab course. The sudden change to online teaching in the middle of spring semester 2020 had a primarily negative impact on laboratory teaching. These effects were mitigated because the students had done many of the basic hands-on procedures before the switch. A true…

Games are fully accepted by students, as they stimulate memory, activate reasoning capacities in brain, improve the knowledge and keep out the stress. Our innovation teaching group is interested in using games for teaching Biochemistry of the Chemistry degree. Most of the individual games found in Internet are classified in numerical games…

Self-compassion has been identified as a protective factor against body image concerns, but the relationship has not been explored in women in the menopausal transition, when body image perceptions may be particularly vulnerable. Women in the UK (N = 248) self-reported on levels of body appreciation, body preoccupation, self-compassion and mental…

A number of areas of difficulty in basic numeracy and mathematical skills were identified, which hinder students' success in a foundational biochemistry course. Many students have difficulty with the concepts of pH and buffers (requiring proficiency with logarithms) and enzyme kinetics (requiring algebraic manipulations and graphing). The…

This study explored the relationships between English language proficiency and performance in online, asynchronous science courses. Each participant completed a Language Background Questionnaire (LBQ) to indicate if English was not their native language, thus categorizing them as an English Language Learner (ELL). The Combined English Language…

Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) integrate active, discovery-based learning into undergraduate curricula, adding tremendous value to Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (BMB) education. There are multiple challenges in transforming a research project into a CURE, such as the readiness of students, the time commitment of the…

The present study has aimed to develop and validate a protein concept inventory (PCI) consisting of 25 multiple-choice (MC) questions to assess students' understanding of protein, which is a fundamental concept across different biology disciplines. The development process of the PCI involved a literature review to identify protein-related content,…

Concept-heavy courses such as Biochemistry in life and physical science curricula are challenging for many college-aged students. It is easy for students to disengage in a lecture and not learn the subject matter while in class. To improve student learning and participation, we employed a flipped format for the first half of the course and…