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Social media have become an important aspect of people's everyday life. Despite the popularity of social media networks and applications, only few educators utilize them to improve teaching and learning. A flipped learning is an innovative approach that changes the traditional way of delivering lectures in the classroom by inverting the instructional cycle so that students can gain knowledge before the class. This paper presents a flipped learning approach for teaching using social media. Students were exposed to the lecture content before the class in a collaborative and interactive learning environment using a well-known social media application. The course instructor served as a facilitator rather than a dominator for the instructional process. The proposed approach was applied to teach an undergraduate introductory course on health informatics, a dynamic and emerging academic discipline. In this paper, a focus group research technique was utilized to evaluate the educational effectiveness of this approach. The results of the evaluation revealed that students were comfortable and satisfied that this approach helped them understand the course concepts in an interactive and collaborative learning environment. The results of the study also identified some educational benefits as well as limitations and drawbacks of using social media as a flipped learning approach. These results can provide an educational framework to improve the implementation of flipped learning approaches using social media.

The Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) that originated in Chinese city of Wuhan has caused around 906,092 deaths and 28,040,853 confirmed cases worldwide (WHO, 11 September, 2020). In a life-threatening situation, where there is no specific and licensed anti-COVID-19 vaccine or medicine available; the repurposed drug might act as a silver bullet. Currently, more than 211 vaccines, 80 antibodies, 31 antiviral drugs, 35 cell-based, 6 RNA-based and 131 other drugs are in clinical trials. It is therefore utter need of the hour to develop an effective drug that can be used for the treatment of COVID-19 before a vaccine can be developed. One of the best-characterized and attractive drug targets among coronaviruses is the main protease (3CL pro ). Therefore, the current study focuses on the molecular docking analysis of TAT-peptide 47–57 (GRKKRRQRRRP)-conjugated repurposed drugs (i.e., lopinavir, ritonavir, favipiravir, and hydroxychloroquine) with SARS-CoV-2 main protease (3CL pro ) to discover potential efficacy of TAT-peptide (TP) - conjugated repurposing drugs against SARS-CoV-2. The molecular docking results validated that TP-conjugated ritonavir, lopinavir, favipiravir, and hydroxychloroquine have superior and significantly enhanced interactions with the target SARS-CoV-2 main protease. In-silico approach employed in this study suggests that the combination of the drug with TP is an excelling alternative to develop a novel drug for the treatment of SARS-CoV-2 infected patients. The development of TP based delivery of repurposing drugs might be an excellent approach to enhance the efficacy of the existing drugs for the treatment of COVID-19. The predictions from the results obtained provide invaluable information that can be utilized for the choice of candidate drugs for in vitro, in vivo and clinical trials. The outcome from this work prove crucial for exploring and developing novel cost-effective and biocompatible TP conjugated anti-SARS-CoV-2 therapeutic agents in immediate future.

Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the most common type of dementia in older people, causes neurological problems associated with memory and thinking. The key enzymes involved in Alzheimer’s disease pathways are acetylcholinesterase (AChE) and butyrylcholinesterase (BuChE). Because of this, there is a lot of interest in finding new AChE inhibitors. Among compounds that are not alkaloids, flavonoids have stood out as good candidates. The apple fruit, Malus domestica (Rosaceae), is second only to cranberries regarding total phenolic compound concentration. Computational tools and biological databases were used to investigate enzymes and natural compounds. Molecular docking techniques were used to analyze the interactions of natural compounds of the apple with enzymes involved in the central nervous system (CNS), acetylcholinesterase, and butyrylcholinesterase, followed by binding affinity calculations using the AutoDock tool. The molecular docking results revealed that CID: 107905 exhibited the best interactions with AChE, with a binding affinity of −12.2 kcal/mol, and CID: 163103561 showed the highest binding affinity with BuChE, i.e., −11.2 kcal/mol. Importantly, it was observed that amino acid residue Trp286 of AChE was involved in hydrogen bond formation, Van Der Walls interactions, and Pi–Sigma/Pi–Pi interactions in the studied complexes. Moreover, the results of the Molecular Dynamics Simulation (MDS) analysis indicated interaction stability. This study shows that CID: 12000657 could be used as an AChE inhibitor and CID: 135398658 as a BuChE inhibitor to treat Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological disorders.