RESUMO
The performance of first-year students in electromagnetism (E&M) courses of different engineering degrees at a Spanish public university was measured using the Brief Electricity and Magnetism Assessment (BEMA), a standard research-based instrument to assess students' understanding after attending introductory courses in electricity and magnetism. In all cases, Flipped classroom (FC) built on information and communications technology was used. The objective of this paper is to analyse if the gain in the BEMA pre and post-test results is influenced by several factors such as the degree, the students' academic grade, and gender. Moreover, as some studies have shown that the students' retention of the concepts was significantly stronger in active learning than in traditional approaches, a third BEMA test was performed by the students to analyse the long-term retention gain dependence on the same factors. Students from different engineering degree programs were asked to complete two BEMA tests during the course and a third one after a few months. ANOVA tests were used to analyse the existence of significant differences in gain between student degree programs, student academic level and student gender. Results have shown no differences in the BEMA performance by degree program, but significant differences were found by academic level and gender. Retention did not depend on the degree course but on the academic level. Mean gain value by academic level, and gender was obtained and concluded that the best students presented the best gain results and that gain depends on the students' gender: males outperformed females in the BEMA tests, although there were no significant differences in the course grades. It is thus necessary to understand these differences and to implement measures in daily teaching work to improve women's performance.
RESUMO
The search for platinum compounds structurally different from cisplatin has led to two new platinum(II) compounds containing quinoxaline-2-carboxamide as a carrier ligand, i.e. cis-[Pt(qnxca)(MeCN)Cl2] (1) and the [Pt(qnxca-H)(dmso)Cl] (2). Both compounds have been synthesized and characterized using different spectroscopic methods. In addition, single-crystal structures have been determined by X-Ray diffraction for both compounds. In each case a square planar Pt(II) is present; in (1) the qnxca is monodentate and neutral, whereas in (2) the ligand has lost a hydrogen, to form the anionic chelating ligand abbreviated as qnxca-H. The biological activity of both compounds has been investigated in a panel of seven human tumour cells, displaying poor cytotoxic activity, compared to cisplatin. The interaction of the new compounds with 1 or 2 equiv. of 9-ethylguanine has been studied using (1)H NMR, (195)Pt NMR and ESI-MS spectroscopy, finding poor reactivity of 1 towards the model base, forming only the monosubstituted adduct. Surprisingly, compound 2, which is more sterically crowded, interacts more efficiently with the 9-EtG, forming a bifunctional adduct with two 9-EtG with substitution of the dmso and the chloride ligand. Unwinding studies of pUC19 plasmid DNA by compound 1 show similar unwinding properties to cisplatin.
