School of XFEL and Synchrotron Radiation Users – SFEL 2022

E-publication

Mária Ganajová-Ivana Sotáková-Petra Letošníková

The conference proceedings FORMATIVE 2025 – Implementing Formative Assessment in Schools Together constitute the output of an online conference organised by the Institute of Chemical Sciences, Faculty of Science, Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice, in cooperation with the National Institute of Education and Youth in Bratislava, within the framework of the KEGA project No. 001UPJŠ-4/2023. These proceedings present current knowledge, experience, and examples of good practice in implementing formative assessment in primary, secondary, and university teaching, with an emphasis on the use of digital tools. The papers address the foundations of formative assessment in the context of curricular changes and the ongoing educational reform, as well as specific didactic procedures for its implementation in the teaching of science and social science subjects, including mathematics, Slovak language, and foreign languages. Particular attention is paid to the development of professional teaching competences, formative assessment strategies, providing targeted feedback, and promoting students’ active participation in the assessment process. These proceedings also present the Digilib digital library, a tool developed to support the creation and management of formative assessment processes within the school environment. This publication is intended for experts in pedagogy and didactics, teachers at all levels of education, student teachers, digital coordinators, and all those interested in educational innovation and in improving the quality of teaching through formative assessment.

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E-publication
Beáta Valkay ed.
Ivana Slepáková-Andrej Mock a kol.

The textbook EFFUSE – River Landscape, Volume 1: Scientific Education for Everybody, developed within the EFFUSE project, explores the importance of water for living organisms and the specific features of water in the Transcarpathian region. It addresses the issue of water pollution and presents bioindication as an effective method of environmental research. The publication explains how the ecological status of rivers and water quality can be assessed using aquatic plants, insects, fish, and amphibians. It also raises awareness about the microbial composition of water and offers guidance on protecting oneself from waterborne infections. Finally, it highlights the significance of environmental education and awareness in strengthening the relationship between humans and the natural environment.

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E-book

Erik Čižmár

Textbook Automation of Laboratory Experiments in LabVIEW environment is devoted to the basics of graphical programming and shows the way how to communicate with measuring equipment and Arduino development boards in LabVIEW. The basic concepts of creating a virtual instrument and its interactive user environment are introduced. Three physical tasks are presented, the practical implementation of which takes place with the use appropriate instrumentation and LabVIEW. Practical tasks are dedicated to measuring the transmission characteristics of a low-pass RC filter, measuring the natural resonant frequency of a quartz tuning fork using the heterodyne pulse method, and mapping the magnetic field of a permanent magnet using Arduino.

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E-book

Katarína Cechlárová (ed.)

This year, the Student Scientific Conference was held on April 24, 2019, across 17 sections in disciplines such as biology and ecology, chemistry, physics, geography, mathematics, informatics, and their didactics. Bachelor’s and master’s students presented a total of 124 contributions. The most successful participants advanced to national or traditional Czech-Slovak student scientific showcases in fields like physics, chemistry, mathematics, informatics, and mathematics didactics.

In addition to faculty students, 10 high school students participated outside the competition. They were invited based on their achievements in subject-specific Olympiads or because they were already engaged with the faculty under the guidance of dedicated teachers in laboratory work as part of their preparation for future studies. The day also featured a programming competition with 23 participants, an IHRA contest involving 16 teams of high school students and 15 teams from elementary schools, and a new Puzzle section where 72 high school students from the region competed.

The abstracts from the Student Scientific Conference demonstrate that our faculty's students not only absorb theoretical knowledge delivered in lectures but also actively engage in solving partial scientific problems that align with research objectives at the institutes of PF UPJŠ. This collection serves as both a record of scientific activity at the faculty and a dignified presentation for the broader public.

Prof. RNDr. Katarína Cechlárová, DrSc.

Vice-Dean for Education

Doc. RNDr. Gabriel Semanišin, PhD.

Dean of the Faculty

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E-book

Peter Paľove-Balang

The text ‘Uptake and transport of mineral substances in plants’ in Slovak language provides a general overview of the uptake and distribution of substances in an easy-to-understand form.

The individual chapters introduce students to the properties of the soil environment, which have a significant influence on the availability of substances, as well as the transport of substances across membranes and over medium and long distances. The text contains the latest findings from the English literature, supplemented by diagrams and graphs created by the author on the basis of his own research or by compiling several sources.

The text is intended primarily for students of a master's degree in biology or ecology and assumes at least a basic knowledge of plant physiology.

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E-book

Erik Čižmár

The textbook "Special Practicum II" is dedicated to describing experimental methods used for studying the magnetic properties of solid materials, especially low-dimensional and molecular magnets. It subsequently contains instructions for the practical exercise "Special Practicum II," during which master's and doctoral students use state-of-the-art commercial equipment-an electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectrometer and a SQUID magnetometer.

The introductory chapter briefly describes the origin of magnetism in solids, the role of the crystal field, and magnetic interactions in explaining their magnetic properties. This is followed by an explanation of the principles of EPR, the operation of the EPR spectrometer, and the optimization of its parameters for the specific practical exercise.

The next part of the textbook is devoted to an overview of the behavior of magnetic quantities with changes in magnetic field or temperature in various types of magnets. The textbook concludes with a description of the operating principle of the SQUID magnetometer and an example of its use in a practical exercise measuring the magnetic moment.

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E-publication

Jozef Strečka-Katarína Karľová

The proceedings include the programme and abstracts of the workshop Magnetic Cooling and Frustrated Magnetism, held in Košice on October 27–29, 2025. The event is organized with the support of the French National Research Agency (ANR), the Faculty of Science of Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice, and the Slovak Research and Development Agency. The workshop focuses on current challenges in quantum physics, particularly frustrated magnetism and magnetic cooling. Participants will present original research results that may significantly contribute to the development of future quantum technologies.

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E-book

Renáta Oriňaková(ed.)

Trends in chemistry, research and education at Faculty of Sciences of P.J. Šafárik University Košice

November 4, 2016, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Pavol Jozef Šafárik University, Košice, Slovakia

Organized by:
Faculty of Natural Sciences
Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice
Slovak Chemical Society

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E-book

Zuzana Vargová - Miroslav Almáši - Juraj Kuchár - Jana Dinajová 

The script „Základné laboratórne praktikum z anorganickej chémie“ builds on previous editions of the script, with some thematic units updated and supplemented with new knowledge, principles, and detailed work procedures.

This script is intended as a teaching aid for first-year students of the chemistry and interdisciplinary study programs at the Faculty of Science, Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice. The introductory part of the volume acquaints students with safety regulations that they should follow during work in a chemical laboratory. Subsequently, in five chapters, basic laboratory techniques are described in detail, which students will use in the further part of the practices for preparing inorganic compounds. These chapters are enriched with illustrative images created using the freely distributable ACDFreeLabs 10 program or taken from literature listed at the end of the script. Some images were created by the authors, and others were taken from the catalog of Fisher Slovakia, s.r.o., which provided written permission for their use. The chapters describing the preparation of inorganic compounds are organized according to their composition, from simple elements or molecules, through binary compounds, acids, and salts, to complex compounds.

Within this subject, students should apply their theoretical knowledge gained during lectures on General Chemistry and Inorganic Chemistry and thereby acquire basic practical experience and skills that they will use in further studies.

The last two chapters were developed based on cooperation with Duslo a.s., Production Plant Strážske, which participates in the innovation of practical teaching through direct involvement of experts from practice as part of the KEGA project No. 008UPJŠ-4/2018.

Authors

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E-book

Vladimír Sedlák

In the presented university textbooks, so-called satellite-based augmentation systems (SBAS, from the English Satellite Based Augmentation Systems, in Slovak Systémy rozširujúce základné satelitné systémy) are also discussed. These systems enhance, expand, or refine the basic satellite navigation systems. They are supportive satellite systems for GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems). Currently, the long-operational American GPS and Russian GLONASS systems, as well as the partially operational European Galileo system (since December 2016), have and will continue to have broad applications in various fields of human activity, both professional and personal.

The university textbook Globálne navigačné satelitné systémy (Global Navigation Satellite Systems) reflects the current progressive development in the technological and instrumental principles and components of such satellite navigation systems. It presents the state of these satellite technologies from their historical origins and development to the present. The rapid advancements, particularly in the instrumental base of satellite navigation systems, will require updates on their current state in future editions of these university textbooks.

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E-publication

Denisa Maceková-Monika Václavková-Marek Kvet-Ivana Sotáková
The Digilib Digital Library of Formative Assessment Tools – User Guide, Part A introduces the Digilib application as the key component of the library, designed to support the implementation of formative assessment in teaching at all levels of education. It explains the structure of the system, its modules, the principles of user roles, and the possibilities for working with the digital formative assessment tools. Particular attention is paid to the possibilities for creating, editing, and assigning the tools to students, as well as to providing personalised real-time feedback. The User Guide also explains how the Digilib application is interconnected with the affiliated applications Digiform and Digilib Images, which expand the possibilities for creating and visualising assessment tools. The guide is intended for teachers at all levels of education, student teachers, school administrators, and digital coordinators who are interested in the systematic use of the Digilib digital library to support the implementation of formative assessment, enhance the quality of the educational process, and foster the development of students’ self-assessment and reflective competences.
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E-book

Miroslav Almáši

The scientific book of abstracts from the conference „Novel Trends in Chemistry, Research and Education 2023“ is a summary of the contributions of conference participants, which contain the original results of their scientific and research activities.

The contributions published in this volume can be divided according to content into the fields of analytical, inorganic, organic, physical chemistry, biochemistry, didactics of chemistry, and NMR spectroscopy.

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E-book

Erik Bruoth - Juraj Šebej - Ľubomír Antoni

In these university-level textbooks, we present the fundamental concepts of networks and graph theory. We explore breadth-first and depth-first graph searching. We present static and dynamic network models. We describe the issue of detecting overlapping and non-overlapping communities in directed and undirected networks. Various approaches to anomaly detection in networks also form an important part of this textbook. The final chapter is dedicated to spectral clustering, which plays a significant role in data mining in network graphs for various application domains.

These textbooks are suitable for first and second-year university students in computer science programs. The study materials are also suitable for students in non-computer science fields, with the aim of improving their knowledge and practical experience in computer science-related areas, and provide an opportunity for students to find employment in IT companies to solve practical tasks.

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E-book

Adela Kravčáková - Stanislav Vokál - Janka Vrláková 

The presented “General Physics IV, Part 1: Atomic Physics” is intended as a basic study material for lectures from General Physics IV in the second year of bachelor-level study of physics and interdisciplinary study in combination with physics at the Faculty of Science, P. J. Šafárik University in Košice. The content covers the first part of the given course of physics, devoted to atomic physics.

The aim of the course is to obtain basic information about the structure of the atom and the electron shell of the atom.

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E-book

Nataša Tomášková

Selected tasks and problems from biochemistry – metabolism follow biochemistry lectures on metabolism and individual metabolic pathways for students of the second and third year of the bachelor’s degree in the fields of chemistry, biology and their combinations with other fields. Scripts provide an opportunity to better understand the lectured subject matter of metabolism through the solution of tasks and problems as serve as a basis for one-hour exercises. The scripts are divided thematically into eleven chapters, and each chapter contains 10 tasks and 7 problems. At the beginning of the chapters there is a short description and explanation of the given metabolic pathway. However, when solving the tasks, the student must focus mainly on the curriculum that was presented on the given topic in the lecture. Subsequently, at the end of chapter, answers to problems are also presented. These scripts are intentionally accessible only in electronic form. The reason is the effort to continuously update and modernize individual tasks.

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E-book

Karel Saksl

The aim of these study texts is to provide students in the second and third levels of higher education with specific guidance on processing 2D diffraction data, performing phase analysis from X-ray diffraction data, and refining microstructural parameters of identified phases using the Rietveld refinement method.

This guide is designed in the form of real-world tasks from materials research and leads the reader step by step through the processes of processing, evaluating, and interpreting the measured data. For this purpose, freely accessible programs such as Fit2D, QualX, POV-Ray, and GSAS II will be used, as well as a freely downloadable commercial program (Diamond) that allows for task execution in demonstration mode. Phase analysis will be conducted exclusively using the freely distributable crystallographic database Crystallography Open Database (COD).

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