NOVEL TRENDS IN CHEMISTRY, RESEARCH AND EDUCATION at the Faculty of Science of Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice 2022

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Ľubomír Šnajder - Ján Guniš

The publication lists interim results of qualitative educational research focused on the development and evaluation of programming tasks being carried out by authors since 2005 in the frame of programming competition PALMA junior.

The publication consists of three chapters: Computer science competitions in Slovakia, Tasks in computer science education, Selected problems of PALMA junior competition. The first chapter provides an overview of computer science competitions for a primary and secondary schools in Slovakia. The second chapter described the issue of learning tasks - their components, focus, formulation types, and development system of tasks. The third chapter contains the assignments and commented author solutions of selected problems represented focus of PALMA junior competition – programming, algorithms and mathematics.

For each problem is mentioned analysis of pupils’ solutions aimed to ways of thinking, typical misconceptions, sets of preparatory and extended problems. The publication is addressed to computer science teacher trainers, authors of programming competitions problems, and computer science teachers.  

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Janka Vrláková - Stanislav Vokál

Atomic and nuclear physics are relatively young scientific disciplines forming the final part of the general physics course at the Faculty of Physics of the Jagiellonian University. Their aim is to explain the nature of the basic physical properties of atoms, atomic nucleus and elementary particles.

This is also the content of the lectures and exercises ‘General Physics IV’ in the 2nd year of the Bachelor's degree in Physics at the Faculty of Natural Sciences (PF) of the P.J. Šafárik University (UPJŠ) in Košice. They are followed by optional lectures ‘Nuclear Radiation in the Environment’, ‘Introduction to the Physics of the Microworld’ in the 3rd year of the Bachelor's degree of single-discipline study of physics, or teacher study of physics in combination with another subject, and ‘Subnuclear Physics’ in the 1st year of the Master's degree of teacher study of physics in combination with another subject.

In the aforementioned lectures, the latest experimental findings on the structure and behaviour of the microworld are presented by means of physical theories and their subsequent experimental verification in experiments.

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Marcel Uhrin - Petr Benda -  Peter Kaňuch

Bats represent a unique group of mammals, characterised by different life strategies. They are the only mammals capable of active flight, which, combined with their almost exclusively nocturnal activity, has led to the evolution of specific adaptations. One of the most striking is echolocation, which enables them to orientate themselves perfectly in their surroundings in the dark. Bats are mainly native to the tropics, but have also colonised areas outside the tropics, which, has led to a complex phenological cycle with active phases and interruptions during hibernation, especially in temperate zones. In this diverse and species-rich group (almost 1,500 known species), there is a wide range of social organisation as well as feeding and roosting strategies. The textbook "Fundamentals of Chiropterology" brings the current state of knowledge about these extraordinary animals in eleven chapters and two appendices for the first time in the Slovak language.

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Jana Špaková Raschmanová - Zuzana Kudličková - Kvetoslava Stanková

Organic chemistry plays a key role in our lives, from the pharmaceutical industry to the production of plastics and food additives. Additionally, it is essential in biochemistry, as it deals with the basic building blocks of living organisms, such as carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids. One of the best ways to teach organic chemistry and increase students' interest in the subject is through conducting school experiments. This study material presents a collection of visually striking practical experiments in organic chemistry that will help students better understand the chemical processes and techniques used in the field. This electronic study material is supplemented with visual material, allowing students to verify the results of experiments and better understand the individual procedures. At the end of each section, there are questions to help assess the acquired knowledge and encourage deeper understanding of the experiments conducted.

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Valéria Skřivánková - Martina Hančová

The publication is focused on discrete random processes, primarily on Markov chains, which have wide application in the field of economics and finance.

The textbook is divided into five chapters, the first of which serves as an introduction to random processes and provides definition, properties and classification of random processes in general. The second chapter discusses Markov chains with discrete time, including valuation of transitions between states and their optimal management. The third chapter focuses on special Markov chains with continuous time and emphasizes construction and solution to the system of Kolmogorov differential equations, which describe the dynamics of the process development. The last two chapters illustrate applications of Markov chains using examples of queuing system modeling and renewal theory.

Besides the explanation of basic terms, definitions and theorems with proofs, this textbook also provides number of solved examples to illustrate the discussed theory. Problem assignments are placed at the end of each chapter, so that readers can test their understanding of the content as they progress through the book. Solutions to all the problems and the list of references are provided at the end of the publication.

This textbook is primarily intented for students majoring in Economics and Financial Mathematics at the Faculty of Science of Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice, and it covers content of the course “Random Proceses 1“ thought there. It might however serve also students from other schools in similar progams or professionals interested in this topic.

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Mária Ganajová - Jozef Hanč - Ivana Sotáková - Petra Letošníková (eds.)

The International Conference on Research in Didactics of the Science – DidSci+ 2022, continues in the educational legacy of the successful series of the previous DidSci conferences held from 2004 in Krakow, Prague, Brno, or Trnava. The DidSci+ conferences present a platform for enduring international cooperation, focusing on the frontiers and current challenges in science education research. This special edition of DidSci conferences, celebrating its 10th anniversary, was held in Košice, at the Faculty of Science of Pavol Jozef Šafárik University, from June 26 to 29, 2022. The careful double-blind review process has led to two major publications offering a comprehensive look at the latest advances in STEM and science subjects education. The first volume of selected papers is published as the IOP Conference Series proceedings, Vol. 3037 with open access at https://iopscience.iop.org/issue/1742-6596/3037/1, and is primarily devoted to STEM education, assessment, evaluation, feedback strategies, and teacher development. The second volume of selected papers, published by ŠafárikPress, focuses more on curriculum development, educational innovation, and digital technologies, primarily in chemistry and biology. Both publications are intended for a wide audience, including in-service and pre-service teachers of science subjects, university students in scientific disciplines, researchers in science education, professionals in pedagogical and methodological centers, curriculum developers, and textbook authors.

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Rudolf Gális

The presented work provides basic knowledge of astronomy and astrophysics in a completely new multimedia format. The scope of the knowledge presented is mainly focused on stellar astrophysics and supplemented by cosmology beyond the title of the work.

A new approach in this work is the large proportion of visual materials, graphs, and video clips, contrasted with the brevity of the accompanying text. Such a form of presenting knowledge in this field is unprecedented in Slovakia, and therefore this work can be considered a completely innovative piece. It should be emphasized that the engaging form of the presented knowledge does not come at the expense of its content. The work contains all the necessary information that a physics student, especially one with a pedagogical focus, should master. The work can also be an invaluable aid to teachers in secondary and even primary schools, as well as professional astronomers in popularizing astronomical knowledge.

This suggests that the work covers a relatively wide range of needs at various institutions dealing with astronomy, from universities, through faculties of education and grammar schools, to observatories, planetariums, and astronomy clubs.

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 Matúš Harminc 

Tento učebný text je určený poslucháčom medziodborového štúdia v kombináciách s matematikou, jednoodborového štúdia matematiky ako aj rozširujúceho štúdia matematiky. Je za-meraný na kvadratické kongruencie a niektoré diofantovské rovnice.

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Karel Saksl

Solving crystal structures is the royal discipline of X-ray crystallography. Its primary task, with the exception of defects, is to describe the atomic structure of the motif that, by its repetition, fills the volume of the entire crystal or crystalline phase. This task is nowadays more or less routine for single-crystal X-ray diffraction, which can locate hundreds to thousands of non-hydrogen atoms in large unit cells. However, in real practice, we often have material available only in powder form instead of single crystals. Solving the atomic structure from its X-ray diffraction data is non-trivial, mainly because the three-dimensional diffraction space of a single crystal is reduced to one dimension by measuring a large number of randomly oriented microcrystals (crystallites). Therefore, the solution itself requires, in addition to proper measurement methodology, the selection of suitable tools, procedures, and strategies that, through optimization, will lead to the solution and refinement of the given crystalline phase. The current limit of this method is approximately 100 non-hydrogen atoms in the asymmetric part of the unit cell, which, however, is sufficient for most inorganic materials.

The goal of these educational texts is to provide students in the second and third levels of university studies with specific guidance on solving crystal structures from powder X-ray diffraction data. These scripts build upon my first monograph and require practical knowledge of its content. Similar to my previous monograph, I offer solved examples without a deep theoretical introduction, demonstrating procedures and strategies leading to the correct solution of crystalline phases using the freely available GSAS-II program. The examples are arranged from simpler to more complex, and the reader will find many useful pieces of information in the literature references as well as in the comments below the line. Part of these scripts are data intended for your individual practice of the described procedures. 

Karel Sakls

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E-book

Peter Fedoročko (eds.)

From June 14 to June 17, 2022, the 8th annual Spring School for Doctoral Students at Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice will take place in Liptovský Ján. The scientific program of the spring school will comprise 3 plenary lectures by leading scientific experts and 1 workshop. Doctoral students will present their research papers in two sections: 22 doctoral students of Faculty of Public Administration, Faculty of Law and Faculty of Arts, and 26 doctoral students of Faculty of Medicine and Faculty of Science. The scientific programme of the spring school will also include a panel discussion with the management of Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice.

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Marcel Uhrin - Petr Benda -  Peter Kaňuch

Bats represent a unique group of mammals, characterised by different life strategies. They are the only mammals capable of active flight, which, combined with their almost exclusively nocturnal activity, has led to the evolution of specific adaptations. One of the most striking is echolocation, which enables them to orientate themselves perfectly in their surroundings in the dark. Bats are mainly native to the tropics, but have also colonised areas outside the tropics, which, has led to a complex phenological cycle with active phases and interruptions during hibernation, especially in temperate zones. In this diverse and species-rich group (almost 1,500 known species), there is a wide range of social organisation as well as feeding and roosting strategies. The textbook "Fundamentals of Chiropterology" brings the current state of knowledge about these extraordinary animals in eleven chapters and two appendices for the first time in the Slovak language.

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Ľubomír Antoni-Stanislav Krajči

An important part of theoretical computer science is the problem of Turing machines. This computational model has two basic properties: like any other computational program, the software of a Turing machine is composed of instructions, but in its case they are all of a single type. Every other (so far known) computer program can be transformed into a Turing machine program without loss of information. While the second feature reduces the question of what a calculator cannot do to the question of what a Turing machine cannot do, the first feature allows a much simpler investigation of such a question. Using this computational model, we can thus find concrete problems that no automaton can ever deal with (perhaps the most famous is the problem of the Turing machine stopping). Their existence demonstrates the fundamental limitations of (not only ideal) computational means, and thus encourages both criticality and humility in our thinking.

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Ondrej Krídlo

University textbooks present the basics of knowledge systems, which are divided into two parts. The first part of the publication is devoted to the basis of Formal Concept Analysis, ie the method of data analysis, knowledge representation and information processing, which is based on the formalization of the concept. In the second part we deal with the basics of logic programming, procedural semantics of logic programming, ie programs - theories, questions, SLD-derivation, SLD-tree, search strategies.

University textbooks are intended for students of master's degree programs in computer science.

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Ľubomír Antoni a kol.

In university textbooks, we present the history of data science, basic concepts in artificial intelligence, machine learning, or deep learning. We describe the relationships between data science and other disciplines and summarize the tasks of the data scientist. We present an overview of university subjects in the field of data science, which were created and innovated at Slovak universities within the national project IT Academy - Education for the 21st Century. We present extended subject annotations, application examples and case studies using various methods in the field of data science. University textbooks are intended for students of bachelor's, master's, engineering and doctoral study programs in computer science, but also in non-informatics fields.

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Mária Vilková - Zuzana Kudličková - Ján Elečko

Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon. Organic compounds in the form of large molecules (macromolecules), such as nucleic acids, proteins, carbohydrates, and lipids are the basic elements of living organisms. This study material is created for non-chemistry students, especially students of biology. Most of these students have little or no knowledge of organic chemistry. Therefore, we proceed from the basic principles of organic chemistry to biochemistry.

The basic principles of organic chemistry and biochemistry are briefly summarized in individual chapters, but the main content consists of tasks for practising basic knowledge. To check the correctness of solving the tasks, the correct solutions are also given. The importance of this study material lies in the fact that students will get additional study material that they will use in studying the subject Basics of Chemistry.

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E-book

Peter Fedoročko (ed.)

Proceedings of the 7th Annual Doctoral Spring School 2020

From November 10 to November 11, 2020, the 7th annual Spring School for Doctoral Students at Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice will take place in Košice in a modified mode in the on-line space. The scientific program of the spring school will comprise 2 plenary lectures by leading scientific experts of Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice. Doctoral students will present their research papers in two sections: 24 doctoral students of Faculty of Public Administration, Faculty of Law and Faculty of Arts, and 22 doctoral students of Faculty of Medicine and Faculty of Science.

The scientific programme of the spring school will also include a panel discussion with the management of Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice.

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