Biology & Ecology (e-books)

E-book

Katarína Kimáková

The textbook is intended for university students who are preparing for the profession of biology teacher. The structure of the book is similar to an encyclopedia, with one page devoted to each content item, but the topics of the chapters and subchapters follow each other.

The explanatory text on the page illustrates the diagram and there are notes and links to other sources of information. For better orientation, the content of the textbook is divided into 8 sections, which cover several chapters. It follows the general didactics, which it connects with the teaching of biological content. The book provides a basic orientation in the approaches to learning this subject, and also explains the relationship between biology as a science and the didactics of biology. It deals with teaching standards and curricula, advises on how to master biological concepts and understanding, how to communicate with students in biology classes, when and why are effective visual and practical methods. It acquaints the reader with the issue of setting goals for biological education in the cognitive, psychomotor and affective areas in relation to formative and summative assessment.

Hopeful as well as experienced teachers will find in this publication not only a look into the history of teaching biology, but also a look into the future. Current trends in biology teaching, the connection of teaching with digital technologies, the virtual learning environment and interactive simulations and models belong to science lessons today.

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E-book

Marián Kireš - Renáta Orosová a kol.

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E-book

Natália Raschmanová - Ľubomír Kováč

The text summarizes the basic knowledge about the functioning of the soil ecosystem with a focus on soil protists and dominant groups of soil animals. Characteristics of each soil animal group include basic morphology, ecology, distribution, population dynamics and their importance in the soil ecosystem. The aim of the text is to gain a basic understanding of the diversity and interactions of soil fauna with the soil environment. It deals with the ecological classification of soil fauna on the basis of body size, presence in the soil during the life cycle, food preference and by locomotion. It highlights important morphological and ecophysiological adaptations of soil fauna to physical and chemical environmental factors. The text also gives an overview of the basic methods in the field collection of soil fauna and their extraction from soil samples under laboratory conditions. It further informs on the method of taxonomic identification and ecological evaluation of soil fauna communities. Discusses the soil fauna of different types of ecosystems. It highlights the differences in soil fauna communities that inhabit grassland and forest habitats, and agricultural soils. This teaching material is intended for students in biology degree programmes.

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E-book

Lenka Mártonfiová (ed.)

The Index Seminum 2024 of the Botanical Garden of the Pavol Jozef Šafárik University contains a list of 260 seed samples offered for the international exchange among botanical gardens on the world. It includes seeds collected from the wild plants in natural localities of Slovakia with a detailed description of the localities with coordinates and date of collection (111 samples) and seeds of plants grown in the Botanical Garden (23 samples) and seeds from Exposition of the Tatra Mountain Nature of the State Forests of Tatra National Park, Tatranská Lomnica (64 samples) as well as 62 seed samples fromHrádocké Arboretum of the Secondary Forestry School of Jozef Dekret Matejovie in Liptovský Hrádok. The index includes a desiderata table that can be used when ordering seeds.

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E-book

Juraj Ševc - Anna Alexovič Matiašová

U študentov jednoodborového a medziodborového štúdia biológie na fakultách s prírodovedným zameraním veľakrát vzniká pri štúdiu predmetu Anatómia človeka problém s definovaním rozsahu učiva. Predložený študijný materiál si kladie za cieľ zorientovať študentov nelekárskych vedných odborov v rozsiahlej anatomickej terminológii a ohraničiť množstvo požadovaných anatomických pojmov na optimum, aby študentom ostala popri osvojení si latinského názvoslovia dostatočná kapacita aj na zapamätanie ďalších poznatkov z oblasti systémovej, porovnávacej, vývinovej a funkčnej anatómie. Dôraz na usporiadanie jednotlivých anatomických termínov do logických celkov zároveň podporuje hierarchický pohľad na architektúru ľudského tela. Napriek zdanlivej samoúčelnosti sa tak anatomická terminológia stáva kostrou, na ktorú študent v priebehu ďalšieho štúdia nabaľuje vedomosti z viac alebo menej príbuzných vedných odborov študujúcich ľudské telo  a procesy, ktoré v ňom prebiehajú. Zároveň popri tejto ambícii presahujúcej rámec vedného odboru anatómie, nadväzujú Anatomické termíny na dlhú tradíciu anatomických repetitórií s rešpektovaním platného latinského a slovenského anatomického názvoslovia.

Skriptum predstavuje praktický doplnok ku vysokoškolským učebniciam Anatómie alebo Neuroanatómie a najmä k anatomickému atlasu, rozhodne však nemá ambíciu ich nahradiť. Nájdete tu pohromade všetky potrebné termíny, ktoré môžete mať vždy poruke vo svojom telefóne, čítačke alebo notebooku. Dôraz na usporiadanie jednotlivých anatomických termínov do logických celkov podporuje hierarchický pohľad na architektúru ľudského tela a zaradenie krátkeho úvodu ku každej sústave Vás má podnietiť k vyhľadaniu ďalších, podrobnejších informácii o stavbe a funkcii danej orgánovej sú-stavy.

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E-book

Lucia Bakošová (ed.)

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E-book

Alena Gessert

Caves have always been very specific places throughout history. In some cultures, they served as sites for sacrifices or remembrance, while in others, they were seen as places where one could cross to the "other side of life." People used caves for shelter, as places to leave messages, to wait out bad weather, and in some cases, even lived in them. During wars in our region, entire families or villages would hide from enemies in caves, or they would use them to conceal weapons.

Today, in most countries, caves are destinations for tourists who want to experience something new and unknown: darkness, high humidity, and the fascinating beauty of underground formations. They are also sought after by cavers who long to explore caves, enter worlds where no human has set foot before, find evidence of previous habitation, or conduct research that continually advances our knowledge.

In the publication you are holding, we present both traditional and less conventional topics about the formation of karst and caves, selected ecological aspects, maps and their creation, significant caves of the world, and the life of people in such areas. We also offer an overview of important karst locations that are definitely worth learning more about or visiting in person. This publication is intended for readers among pupils, students, teachers, and the general public, and we believe it will draw you into this mysterious world.

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E-book

Mária Vilková - Monika Garberová - Michal Goga

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) is currently a widely used analytical tool that finds application in many fields of science and technology. The broadening of its practical use brings with it the necessity to create educational texts appropriate to the given scientific discipline.

This university textbook is intended for students of biology and serves as a supplement to the study materials for the advanced master's course "Biology of Lichens." At the same time, it represents a useful resource for master's and doctoral students involved in research, helping them interpret NMR spectra and present basic theoretical concepts.

The textbook briefly describes the important aspects of each NMR spectroscopic technique without delving excessively into the physical principles of individual methods or complex mathematical analyses. In this edition, the structures of lichen metabolites have been included, which students will isolate, purify, and identify using various analytical methods during practical exercises. An entire chapter is dedicated to a detailed description of solving the NMR spectra of isolated metabolites, with each step in elucidating the structures of both known and unknown metabolites explained in detail. The solved tasks are followed by numerous unsolved examples, including high-resolution 1D and 2D NMR spectra of metabolites, intended to further develop the acquired knowledge and skills of students and doctoral candidates in structure elucidation using NMR spectroscopy.

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E-book

Pavol Mártonfi

The university textbook deals with the latest knowledge from the systematics of vascular plants in a clear manner. Vascular plants arose in the Silurian period in the Paleozoic, when the first primitive plants moved from water to dry land, which required evolutionary progress in the morphological and anatomical structure of these plants. During about 420 million years of the existence of vascular plants, several of their main groups have evolved: the spore vascular plants, including the lycopods (branch Lycopodiophyta) and group of ferns and related plants (branch Monilophyta), and the seed plants, including gymnosperms (branch Gymnospermae) and angiosperms ( Angiospermae), which currently dominate among plants. The textbook provides a brief but comprehensive overview of the main groups, orders and families of plants with their description, distribution, main representatives, while also addressing the useful properties of selected species. The work is complemented by an overview of the system of plants by Cronquist, Tachtadžjan, APG and an overview of the families of the Slovak flora, as well as a taxonomic index.

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E-book

Vladislav Kolarčik

Flow cytometry is a diagnostic and research technique that enables rapid analysis of cells, nuclei and organelles of plants and other organisms. In plant biology, it is most often used for DNA content analysis in a wide range of applications. It is the method of first choice and its importance is even increasing compared to competing technologies. It is unrivaled in speed, accuracy, repeatability and low cost. Flow cytometry has become a standard tool in laboratories focused on biological-ecological plant research.

This textbook provides information on the historical development of flow cytometry and its establishment in the analysis of the plant genome. It describes the procedure of sample analysis to determine the nuclear DNA content and presents the basic applications, such as determination of genome size, ploidy level and reproduction modes of plants and determination of endopolyploidy level in plant tissues. These college textbooks are intended for students, teachers and anyone interested in the use of flow cytometry in scientific work with plant cells.

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E-book

Vlasta Demečková - Petra Hradická - Petra Adamková

The learning material for the course Practice in Immunology is based on several years of experience with teaching this subject, but mainly to provide students from the Biology Department at the Faculty of Natural Sciences, UPJŠ in Košice with sufficient theoretical background for practical exercises. It also serves as a scientific diary for detailed recording of all experimental data necessary for preparing laboratory protocols from individual exercises.

In studying biology, it is essential that students thoroughly understand not only the basics of each discipline but also acquire practical skills, including designing scientific experiments, selecting appropriate analytical/investigative techniques up to interpreting and presenting experimental data. The goal of this new publication is therefore to provide master's students with a practical study guide that supports and expands their knowledge about basic immunology principles.

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E-book

Lenka Mártonfiová

Index The Index Seminum 2025 of the Botanical Garden of the Pavol Jozef Šafárik University contains a list of 243 seed samples offered for the international exchange among botanical gardens on the world. It includes seeds collected from the wild plants in natural localities of Slovakia with a detailed description of the localities with coordinates and date of collection (66 samples) and seeds of plants grown in the Botanical Garden (46 samples) and seeds from Exposition of the Tatra Mountain Nature of the State Forests of Tatra National Park, Tatranská Lomnica (73 samples) as well as 58 seed samples from Hrádocké Arboretum of the Secondary Forestry School of Jozef Dekret Matejovie in Liptovský Hrádok. The index includes a desiderata table that can be used when ordering seeds.

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E-book

Daniel Jancura - Erik Sedlák

The textbook "Bioenergetics" should serve as an introduction to the study of bioenergetics. This field of science is currently highly actual, as the results of the bioenergetics research in recent years clearly show that bioenergetics processes in living systems can "serve" not only to transformation of energy, but also affect the course of processes such as apoptosis, aging, origin and development of many diseases (especially neurodegenerative).

These facts clearly indicate the need for the existence of quality teaching texts that would allow students to acquire the necessary information and knowledge in this scientific discipline in an acceptable way. For the above mentioned reasons, we decided to create these textbooks, which are in the form of ten chapters, which naturally and logically follow each other. 

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E-book

Lenka Mártonfiová

The Index Seminum 2021 of the Botanical Garden of the Pavol Jozef Šafárik University contains a list of 131 seed samples offered for the international exchange among botanical gardens on the world. It includes seeds collected from the wild plants in natural localities of Slovakia with a detailed description of the localities with coordinates and date of collection (72 samples) and seeds of plants grown in the Botanical Garden (5 samples) and seeds from Exposition of the Tatra Mountain Nature of the State Forests of Tatra National Park, Tatranská Lomnica (54 samples). The index includes a desiderata table that can be used when ordering seeds.

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E-book

Erik Sedlák - Rastislav Varhač -  Patrik Danko - Helena Paulíková - Dušan Podhradský

The presented scripts were created in an effort to update and especially clarify the tasks that are solved in the basic practical exercises in biochemistry students of the 2nd and 3rd year of the bachelor's degree in chemistry, biology and their combinations with other disciplines. Most of the tasks come from the original scripts "Podhradský, Mihalovová: Praktické cvičenia z biochémie, Košice 1989".

Some of them have been modified to a greater or lesser extent and adapted to current conditions in the laboratory. New tasks were also added, such as those dedicated to nucleic acids. The scripts are thematically divided into six separate units, each of which consists of several tasks. The names of the units correspond to the nature of the biomacromolecules, which form their central theme. Theoretical introductions at the beginning of the unit are newly constructed and their main goal is to provide a brief overview of the basic biochemical methods used in the study of biomacromolecules.

These scripts are intentionally only available in electronic form. The reason is the effort to continuously update and modernize individual tasks according to the changing possibilities of our laboratory. We hope that the scripts will fulfill their role and that students will have sufficient theoretical knowledge and practical skills in the field of basic biochemical methods after completing these laboratory exercises.

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E-book

Katarína Cechlárová - Eva Pitoňáková (eds.)

Proceedings of Abstracts from Contributions by Participants of the Student Scientific Conference at the Faculty of Science, UPJŠ in Košice, Held on April 26, 2017

This is the fifth edition of the proceedings from the Student Scientific Conference (ŠVK) at the Faculty of Science, Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice. We are pleased that ŠVK has become an integral part of faculty life and a showcase for the quality of education provided. In 2017, ŠVK took place as part of the traditional Science Days on April 26, 2017. 105 students from the Faculty of Science presented their work. Contributions were organized into 15 sections, supplemented by an open programming competition involving 17 students and the final round of the IHRA competition, which included 27 teams from across Slovakia.

The abstracts in this proceedings demonstrate that students at the Faculty of Science, UPJŠ, acquire knowledge and skills in their field not only through theoretical study of disciplines but also through active engagement in solving partial scientific problems aligned with research goals at the faculty’s institutes. These abstracts also provide an overview of the faculty’s scientific activity, which we believe will be of interest to the broader public.

doc. RNDr. Gabriel Semanišin, PhD.

Dean of the Faculty

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E-book

Andrej Mock

Burda - Kováčov, Slovensko, 4.-7.10.2017

Abstracts of lectures by Czech and Slovak zoologists, ecologists, and physiologists, who study soil arthropods in the taxa Myriapoda and Oniscidea as model groups, presented at the 10th seminar in Kováčová near Chľaba, Slovakia.

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E-book

Tatiana Kimáková - Vladimír Pavlík

The scientific monograph focuses on the characteristics of free radicals, reactive oxygen and nitrogen species, oxidative stress, and its impact on various diseases. A significant portion is dedicated to antioxidants, their classification based on multiple criteria, the characteristics of selected antioxidants in terms of their functions, manifestations of their deficiency and excess, and the overall antioxidant capacity of the body.

A special section is devoted to enzyme-based antioxidants, natural sources of antioxidants in the form of vitamins, trace elements, flavonoids, polyphenols, and coenzyme Q10. To provide a clearer understanding of antioxidants and their influence on population health, the monograph presents results from a research project included in the program "Research Support for Enhancing the Defense Capabilities of the Czech Republic in NATO Structures."

The research was conducted between 2010 and 2012 as part of preventive rehabilitation programs for professional soldiers with a sports component. The study involved 218 professional soldiers, including 180 men and 38 women, with an average age of 33.3 years. The current health status and dietary habits of the soldiers were assessed using questionnaires.

The study described the saturation of the observed group with antioxidant vitamins and statistically evaluated the relationship between their levels and the risk indicators for the development of cardiovascular diseases. Individual analyses were performed using the Reflotron device calibrated with Reflotron Precinorm control serum. Following blood collection, all participants underwent anthropometric examinations (body weight, height, waist circumference), blood pressure measurements, heart rate monitoring, and physical fitness assessments through simple functional tests.

This scientific monograph is suitable for the scientific community, students of medical, veterinary, and natural sciences, as well as public health students at all levels of university education. It is also intended for informed members of the public.

Authors

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Božena Mihalíková - Ján Ohriska

This text is intended for first-year students in 76-12-8 ‘General Education Teaching’ in combinations with mathematics. It is based on the authors' lectures and their more than ten years of experience in teaching this subject at the Faculty of Education of the University of Applied Sciences. When writing it, the authors tried to take into account the specificity of mathematics teaching studies.

The present teaching text was not written due to the lack of textbooks on mathematical analysis. The reason for writing it was the authors' findings that the students do not have sufficient experience in working with specialized literature from secondary school, the difficulties for many of them (especially in the first semesters) are caused by even a slightly different interpretation, not rarely also by a change in labeling, which makes them miss the essence of the studied problem. The authors of the text did not set out to be original. Their aim was to make such a selection of topics as is necessary for a future teacher of mathematics and to choose such a method of interpretation which, in their opinion, is suitable for first-year students.

A good mastery of the curriculum (expansion of the mathematical apparatus and the related possibilities of applying other methods of proof as well as the acquisition of the necessary numerical skills) presupposes the use of other literary sources (textbooks, collections of problems) according to the teacher's recommendation.

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E-book

Katarína Štrofeková

Cell Biophysics II is the one semester comprehensive course textbook for PhD students. It encompasses basic principles and mechanisms underlying cell physiology and biophysics with aims:

• General knowledge of the principles of cellular function, including membrane, cytoplasmic and nuclear roles in normal and abnormal conditions.
• In-depth understanding of the mechanisms underlying the cell functions at the molecular and subcellular level.
• Awareness of cell pathologies that lead to specific disease symptoms and phenotypes.
• The ability to apply learned principles to solve new problems (analysis & synthesis).

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E-book

Jozef Židzik - Terézia Hudáková - Martina Šemeláková - Ján Šalagovič

Methods in human genetics and molecular biology encompass various experimental, diagnostic and analytical techniques used to investigate the structure, function, expression, and regulation of genes, as well as general molecular processes in human cells. The university textbook Methods in Human Genetics and Molecular Biology provides a comprehensive overview of classical and modern experimental and analytical procedures. In fifteen chapters, it addresses methods such as PCR, RFLP, FISH, Western blot, DNA sequencing, DNA microarrays, molecular cloning, cytogenetic analysis, and forensic genetic analysis. The book is primarily intended as study material for the course of the same name taught in the 2nd year of study at the UPJŠ Faculty of Medicine, but it can also be used by all university students in the fields of biology, biotechnology, and related disciplines.

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E-book

Monika Balogová - Viktória Vargová - Kristián Gulyás -Dalibor Uhrovič -Marcel Uhrin

A peer-reviewed publication dealing with the biology and ecology of the European green toad, bringing new findings through scientific research on the roosting ecology, spatial activity and dispersal of this protected species in urban environments. The subject matter of this publication is highly topical, as amphibians represent the most threatened vertebrate group in the world. This work is suitable not only for university students interested in batrachology, amphibian ecology, and vertebrate zoology, but also for conservation workers, municipalities, and specialists directly involved in the reconstruction of urban areas with green toads. Last but not least, this publication is suitable for enthusiasts with an interest in nature and its conservation.

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