Opera and poison : a secret and enjoyable approach to teaching and learning chemistry

The storyline of operas, with historical or fictional characters, often include potions and poisons. This has prompted a study of the chemistry behind some operatic plots. The results were originally presented as a lecture given at the University of Minho in Portugal, within the context of the International Year of Chemistry. The same lecture was subsequently repeated at other universities as an invited lecture for science students and in public theaters for wider audiences. The lecture included a multimedia and interactive content that allowed the audience to listen to arias and to watch video clips with selected scenes extracted from operas. The present article, based on the lecture, demonstrates how chemistry and opera can be related and may also serve as a source of motivation and inspiration for chemistry teachers looking for alternative pedagogical approaches. Moreover, the lecture constitutes a vehicle that transports chemistry knowledge to wider audiences through examples of everyday molecules, with particular emphasis on natural products.The author is pleased to express his gratitude to Jorge Calado and Michael John Smith for useful discussions. The author also thanks the reviewers of the manuscript for their helpful comments and suggestions. Thanks are due to the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT,Portugal), QREN and FEDER/EU for financial support through the research centers, CQ/UM PEst-C/QUI/UI0686/2011. Ciencia Viva, Portugal, is also acknowledged for financial support of the activities organized by the University of Minho during the International Year of Chemistry. The author also expresses his gratitude to Ana Paula Ferreira and Andre Cunha Leal from RTP Antena 2 who contributed immensely to the popularization of the lecture on which this paper is based on

Classroom management system with locator using WiFi-based RFID

This paper presents and documents the research project entitled Classroom Management System with Locator Using WiFi-Based RFID. In a nutshell, the system has three essential components of an effective classroom management system. These include classroom attendance monitoring, classroom reservation, and defective equipment reporting. Attendance information of students and faculty members gathered from their respective RFID tags are automatically processed and registered in a database through the deployment of a WiFi network. The locator system is an added feature of the attendance monitoring component. Classroom reservation and defective equipment reporting, on the other hand, are done through a keypad that communicates information to the same database. In addition, a web application for the database is developed to serve as the Graphical User Interface (GUI) of the system

Why autophagy is good for retinal ganglion cells?

13 p.-3 fig.Autophagy is a catabolic pathway that promotes the degradation and recycling of cellular components. Proteins, lipids, and even whole organelles are engulfed in autophagosomes and delivered to the lysosome for elimination. In response to stress, autophagy mediates the degradation of cell components, which are recycled to generate the nutrients and building blocks required to sustain cellular homeostasis. Moreover, it has an important role in cellular quality control, particularly in neurons, in which the total burden of altered proteins and damaged organelles cannot be reduced by redistribution to daughter cells through cell division. Autophagy occurs in all cells and tissues, and it is regulated by the Atg genes. The importance of this pathway has been recently recognized by the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine award to Professor Yoshinori Ohsumi who was the discoverer of the first Atg genes in yeast in the 1990s. Research has only begun to examine the role of autophagy in the visual system. Both the retina and the eye are exposed to a variety of environmental insults and stressors, including genetic mutations and age-associated alterations that impair their function. Here, we review studies that have sought to explain autophagy’s importance for retinal ganglion cells, and their implications for diseases like glaucoma and optic neuropathies.Peer reviewe

Functional characteristics of TauA binding protein from TauABC Escherichia coli system

Although TauA shares few common characteristics with other known periplasmic binding protein, TauA is a putative periplasmic binding protein, part of tauABCD gene cluster involved in sulfonate transport in sulphate starvation condition. This protein was expressed in E. coli BL 21 and purified before to assess its binding functionalities. Measurement of K (d) value (mean 11.3 nM) by binding/dialysis studies revealed high affinity and specificity with taurine and also indicated that TauA possessed a unique binding site for its ligand. Comparisons with other periplasmic binding proteins suggests TauA plays a major role in ABC transport system and could be ideal candidate to serve as taurine catcher in biological fluids