Alternative conception is students' conception of scientific concepts that are inconsistent with the conception of scientists. Various studies show that alternative conceptions of chemical concepts occur in students, including acid-base concepts. Various identification of alternative conception methods have also been developed, including a simple multiple-choice diagnostic test. Although not too accurate, simple multiple-choice diagnostic test is easy to develop, use, and analyze, but useful enough to identify students' alternative conceptions. The aims of the study are to develop a valid and reliable simple multiple-choice diagnostic test instrument of acid-base concepts and to identify alternative conceptions of 11 th grade students and first year university students of Chemistry Program. This descriptive research design was conducted in two stages 1) development of valid and reliable of simple multiple-choice diagnostic test of acid-base concepts and (2) identification of students' alternative conceptions. Analysis of instrument validity and reliability was performed based on response of 184 students of 11 th grade students and 133 first year university students of Chemistry Program who had studied acid-base concepts before. While the identification of students' alternative conceptions was conducted to 59 students of 11 th grade and 40 first year university students of Chemistry Program. Analysis to response of 11 th grade students indicate that 8 of the 25 test items of the acid-base concepts developed in this research were invalid. Five invalid items that have a negative or very low Pearson correlation coefficient were removed, the rest having better Pearson correlation coefficient refined and used to identify students' alternative conception. The final version of the instrument has a Cronbach's alpha reliability of 0.537 (medium grade) for 11 th grade students and 0.470 (upper low grade) for first year university students. The results of the data analysis show that the alternative conceptions of acid-base concepts occurring in the 11 th grade students are more extent and intense than that occurs in the first year university students of Chemistry Program. These can be caused by the difference of age, concept ecology, learning motivation, learning fidelity, and discipline background between 11th grade students and first year university students of Chemistry Program.
Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) is a type of γ-herpes virus which cause kissing disease. The virus induces cancer and causes latent infection. EBV protease is one of the constituent capsid proteins that play an important role in assembling virions on nucleus and spreading them. Therefore, this enzyme potentially became one of inhibition target which have impact on the termination EBV life cycle. During this time, drugs to inhibit this enzyme had not been studied. This study aimed to examine dehydroevodiamine as a potential inhibitor EBV protease by molecular docking method. The docking was done through both blind and specific docking techniques and the Ki values were calculated using docking approach when RMSD is 0 Å. Molecule visualization was done using PyMol and dehydroevodiamine profile identification was done on Ro5. The results showed that dehydroevodiamine has binding affinity of -9.8 kcal/mol and -7.3 kcal/mol; predicted Ki (STP) of 1,426729x10−8 and 1,431479x10−6 for blind and specific docking, respectively. Dehydroevodiamine profiles does not violate Ro5. These values indicated the potential of dehydroevodiamine as an oral drug candidate for kissing disease. This finding opens possibility to do further work on wet-lab-levels.
Scientific inquiry is a part of scientific literacy which is probably one of the main goals of science education. This paper reports a preliminary study on chemistry teachers’ understanding about scientific inquiry carried out using a Questionnaire of Views about Scientific Inquiry (VASI) with background of chemistry knowledge. Sample of the study is 32 chemistry teachers of senior and vocational high schools. Results showed that (1) the chemistry teachers held more informed views than science teachers reported in the previous study and (2) the pattern of chemistry teachers’ understanding about aspects of scientific inquiry is the same as senior high school students’ understanding. These indicate that (1) the complexity of leraning material people learned may be influences their inference ability and (2) the first year university chemistry students’ understanding of scientific inquiry are the strengthening of the perception they get from their teachers when they were school students.
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