Search

Discourse Competence is essential to communicate effectively and efficiently in real life situation. Competence in speaking can equip anyone in the communication process in sending accurate and clear messages and information. However, acquiring and enhancing speaking skills particularly, discourse competence could be an agony among students nowadays. Thus, teachers need to employ some strategies and activities in the classroom to better assist the learners in enhancing their discourse competence. The purpose of this study is to determine the effectiveness of using performative classroom activities in enhancing students’ discourse competence. The study used a quasi- experimental research design which students undertaken pre-performance and post-performance through interview and conversation to gauge their oral discourse competence. The respondents of the study were thirty (30) Grade 10 students for both experimental group 1 and 2. The study was conducted during the third grading period of academic year 2022-2023. The result revealed a significant difference between the pre-performance and post-performance scores of the student- respondents from both experimental group 1 and 2 which imply that the use of performative classroom activities helped students enhance their discourse competence. This indicates a significant increase on their performance in terms of interview and conversation. Thus, the hypothesis is rejected.

Reading fluency is a crucial skill for academic and personal success, as it involves the ability to read accurately, quickly, and with expression. Fluent readers can recognize words automatically, allocate mental resources to understand the text, and make connections between words and ideas. One effective instructional approach for enhancing reading fluency among learners is the Repeated Reading Strategy. This study aimed to examine the effects of this strategy on Grade 7 struggling readers at Pres. Jose P. Laurel National High School. Thirty students participated in the study, which employed experimental research with a pre-test and post-test one- group design. The study focused on three aspects of reading fluency: accuracy, rate, and prosody. The Repeated Reading Strategy was implemented through modelling fluent reading, making error correction, and tracking reading progress. The initial performance level of the struggling readers was low in terms of accuracy, rate, and prosody. However, after using the Repeated Reading Strategy, there was a significant improvement in all three variables. The increase in accuracy, rate, and prosody scores had a large effect size, indicating a significant impact on the students' performance. In conclusion, the Repeated Reading Strategy effectively improved the reading fluency of Grade 7 struggling readers. This study suggests that incorporating this strategy into classroom instruction can be an effective approach to enhance the reading fluency of students facing difficulties in fluent reading.

This research used descriptive correlational research design to find significant relationship between the extent of school preparedness in the mandatory implementation of five days face-to-face classes and its possible impact to teaching qualities. The respondents of this study were 188 teachers of Candelaria West District of Quezon. It was conducted during the third quarter of SY 2022-2023. Description of the profile revealed that the respondents are mostly female, aged between 46-50, mostly taking their post graduate degree, and majority of them have been in the service for five years. The perceived level of preparedness of the school in terms of facilities, school programs, safety protocols, and students and parent’s awareness were always prepared. The perceived level of the teachers’ practices in the new normal in terms of Classroom Management, classroom instruction and collaborative activities was always practice while professional development was in the practiced spot. All the variables are correlated to each other indicating that school preparedness has significant relationship to the teaching qualities of the teachers as perceived by the respondents. Thus, the hypothesis stating that school preparedness has no significant impact to teacher’s teaching qualities in terms of classroom management, classroom instruction, professional development and collaborative activities.

This study focused in finding out the school head’s instructional leadership behavior and its impact to teacher’s work engagement as perceived by the teachers. Public Elementary School teachers of Tiaong II District, Division of Quezon were chosen as the respondents of the study. The adapted and modified survey questionnaire by Philip Hallinger was utilized to measure the instructional behavior of the school heads and Schaufeli and Bakker (2003), the Utretch Work Engagement Scale (UWES) was used to measure the Teachers Work Engagement in terms of Vigor, Dedication and Absorption using the Likert Scaling of 1-5. The result of the variables showed that there is a significant relationship between the Instructional Leadership Behavior and Teacher’s Work Engagement in terms of (Vigor, Dedication and Absorption). However, the results implied that school leaders with instructional leadership style manifest behavior that is expected by the teachers and make them work with energy, enthusiasm, commitment and dedication at work. Despite of this result, as for the recommendations, school heads may continue lead their teachers and do what is best for teachers and student’s welfare. Also, teachers may continue showing enthusiasm, dedication and full of commitment with their work, duties and responsibilities for their student’s development. School heads may also adopt the effective instructional leadership style and behavior to keep the teachers inspired, motivated, work with energy and dedicated with their work. However, school heads may lessen the extra-curricular and other activities and programs in the school for the teachers to continue work with energy, dedication and commitment.

Interaction between membrane proteins and ligands is key to control a wide spectrum of cellular processes. These interactions can provide a cooperative-type regulation of protein function. A wide diversity of proteins, including enzymes, channels, transporters, and receptors show cooperative behavior. The variety of possible ligands is also huge and includes specific molecules or ions that bind to an also specific binding site. In this review, we focus on the interaction of membrane proteins with ligands that present many binding sites, such as protons or membrane phospholipids. The study of the interaction that protons or lipids have with membrane proteins does not always allow a clear and classic mechanistic modeling approach. In this regard we show that, like Hill´s pioneering work on hemoglobin regulation, phenomenological modeling constitutes a powerful tool to describe relevant features of these important systems.

Sodium dodecylsulfate (SDS) is a well-known protein denaturing agent. A less known property of this detergent is that it can activate or inactivate some enzymes at sub-denaturing concentrations. In this work we explore the effect of SDS at sub-denaturing concentrations on the ATPase activity of a hyper-thermophilic and a mesophilic Cu(I) ATPase reconstituted in mixed micelles of phospholipids and a non-denaturing detergent. We first develop an iterative procedure to evaluate the partition of SDS between the aqueous and the micellar phases. This procedure allows to determine the composition of micelles prepared with variable amphiphiles content. When incubating the enzymes with SDS in the presence of different amounts of phospholipids, it can be observed that higher SDS concentrations are required to obtain the same degree of inactivation when the initial concentration of phospholipids is increased. Notably, we found that, if represented as a function of the mole fraction of SDS in the micelle, the degree of inactivation obtained at different amounts of amphiphiles converges to a single inactivation curve. To interpret this result, we propose a simple model involving active and inactive enzyme molecules in equilibrium. This model allowed us to determine the Gibbs free energy change for the inactivation process and its derivative respect to the mole fraction of SDS in the micellar phase, this last being a measure of the susceptibility of the enzyme to SDS. Our results showed that the inactivation free energy changes are similar for both proteins, and indicate that the equilibrium is highly shifted towards the active form in both enzymes. Conversely, susceptibility to SDS is significantly lower for the hyperthermophilic ATPase, suggesting an inverse relation between thermophilicity and susceptibility to SDS.

Citrate is a useful additive for measuring ATPase activities avoiding the interference of phosphate release after catalysis. In this work we explore this effect, and optimize the malachite green procedure for determination of phosphate.

We study how crystal size influences magnetic ordering in arrays of molecular nanomagnets coupled by dipolar interactions. Compressed fluid techniques have been applied to synthesize crystals of Mn6 molecules (spin S=12) with sizes ranging from 28μm down to 220 nm. The onset of ferromagnetic order and the spin thermalization rates have been studied by means of ac susceptibility measurements. We find that the ordered phase remains ferromagnetic, as in the bulk, but the critical temperature Tc decreases with crystal size. Simple magnetostatic energy calculations, supported by Monte Carlo simulations, account for the observed drop in Tc in terms of the minimum attainable energy for finite-sized magnetic domains limited by the crystal boundaries. Frequency-dependent susceptibility measurements give access to the spin dynamics. Although magnetic relaxation remains dominated by individual spin flips, the onset of magnetic order leads to very long spin thermalization time scales. The results show that size influences the magnetism of dipolar systems with as many as 1011 spins and are relevant for the interpretation of quantum simulations performed on finite lattices., We acknowledge support from Grants No. RTI2018- 096075-B-C21 and No. RTI2018-096075-A-C22, funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and ERDF A way of making Europe, Grant No. RYC2019-028429-I, funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and ESF Investing in your future, the Gobierno de Aragón Grant No. E09-20R-QMAD, and the CSIC Quantum Technology Platform PT-001. This letter used resources of the Advanced Light Source, a Department of Energy, Office of Science User Facility under Contract No. DEAC02-05CH11231. The synthesis and size measurements of Mn6 micro- and nanocrystals were done at the U6 unit of NANBIOSIS ICTS, located at the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (CSIC)., With funding from the Spanish government through the ‘Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence’ accreditation (CEX2019-000917-S).