Exposure of organisms to high temperatures and various chemical and physical stressors can cause protein misfolding and aggregation. In turn, this can disrupt the functions of proteins, threatening both development and homeostasis. To overcome this, cells can initiate the highly conserved heat shock (HS) stress response pathway. In eukaryotes,…

Over the last decade, course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) have been recognized as a way to improve undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education by engaging students in authentic discovery. CUREs have been shown to have positive benefits similar to traditional undergraduate research experiences;…

Crowdsourcing is an important tool for collecting spatio-temporal data, which has various applications in education. The objectives of this study were to develop and test a laboratory exercise on soil erosion by water and field data crowdsourcing in an online introductory soil science course (FNR 2040: Soil Information Systems) at Clemson…

This paper describes the transfer from face-to-face education to emergency remote teaching of chemistry laboratory courses in a bachelor's degree in Pharmacy during the COVID-19 pandemic. The virtualization was carried out using videos of each experimental practice and questionnaires containing the experimental data needed. The contents were…

Titration is a common introductory experiment performed across teaching laboratories from high school to university. Yet, its setup remains inaccessible for students with disabilities, denying them the opportunity for experiential learning. Therefore, rethinking such a setup is required to increase laboratory participation for these students. To…

Integrating authentic research-based experiences that mimic real-world scientific practices and relevance to student personal life into a chemistry curriculum can make abstract chemical principles more palpable to students. Unfortunately, many reported research-based experiences chemistry laboratory experiments lack relevance to a student's…

The purpose of this study was to develop a modern experimental apparatus using an Arduino with LabVIEW instead of the classical experiment. The wavelength of the sound was determined using the resonance of an air column. The smartphone app was used to generate the desired frequencies. A sound intensity and ultrasonic sensor was used to read the…

A bioinformatics laboratory experiment was designed to help undergraduate students learn RNA structure and function in biochemistry courses. In this laboratory experiment, students used 5S rRNAs as material to predict secondary structure and visualize three-dimensional (3D) structure. Students first downloaded molecular information from the 5S…

This paper describes the design of a new practical class in pharmaceutical chemistry, which creatively guides the students through the subject area of physical and analytical sciences with the help of a 'virtual client'. The design focuses on the active integration of knowledge and professional skills in an area which has been seen to be typically…

Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPRs) represent a novel type of adaptive immune system found in eubacteria and archaebacteria. CRISPRs have recently generated a lot of attention due to their unique ability to catalog foreign nucleic acids, their ability to destroy foreign nucleic acids in a mechanism that shares some…

Since at least the 1960s, organic chemistry textbooks have featured pK[subscript a] tables for organic acids that include values for H[subscript 2]O and H[subscript 3]O[superscript +] (15.74 and -1.74, respectively) that are thermodynamically and chemically indefensible. Here we trace this error back to Brønsted's early contributions in the 1920s…

Synthesis of quantum dots is a valuable experiment for demonstration and discussion of quantum phenomena in undergraduate chemistry curricula. Recently, a new class of all-inorganic perovskite quantum dots (QDs) with a formula of CsPbX[subscript 3] (X = Cl, Br, I) was presented and attracted tremendous attention. Here we adapt the synthesis of…

Quantum mechanics is a notoriously difficult subject to learn, due to a lack of real-world analogies that might help provide an intuitive grasp of the underlying ideas. Discrete energy levels and absorption and emission wavelengths in atoms are sometimes described as uniquely quantum phenomena, but are actually general to spatially confined waves…

An advanced undergraduate experiment involving the synthesis and characterization of a series of six unique cinnamamides is described. This experiment allows for a progressive mastery of skills students need to tackle more complex NMR structure elucidation problems. Characterization of the products involves IR spectroscopy, GCMS, and proton,…

We propose to attach a small stroboscopic light source to a moving object and connect the source to a pulse generator with the help of insulated thin flexible multi-cored wires. Students can assemble such a device independently in a school laboratory. The device can be used to obtain trajectories with time marks in students' research projects in…