New book about VIRUS by BG teachers
At BG, we are not only proud of our students. We are also proud of our teachers and colleagues who contribute to the educational and professional development in the upper secondary school and to research. Here you can read Hans Marker's great review of Morten Eskildsen, Michael Brix Pedersen and our former colleague emeritus Karen Helmig's new textbook on VIRUS.
Excellent book on current topic With the publication of this excellent book on viruses, the authors have hit right into one of the most current and serious biological topics of our time, namely virus epidemics.
The book is aimed at A and B level at htx, stx and hf and also extends to higher education. You can understand from this that as a teacher you must select your material carefully. On the other hand, there is really good material to choose from.
In terms of form, the authors have begun with some general chapters on viruses (chapters 1-3), which are followed by chapters 4-5 with an exemplified review of the four major groups of pathogenic viruses: double-stranded DNA virus (HPV) and single-stranded RNA virus, positive sense (SARS-CoV-2), negative sense (measles virus) and retrovirus (HIV).
It is a good choice, where as a teacher you can start with these introductory chapters and then stop there or continue with the following chapters, depending on how you place the topic in the teaching plan.
Chapter 6 is devoted to modeling epidemics with an emphasis on SIR models. The models are excellently reviewed from the simplest to the more sophisticated, and the chapter will be of great help to students who want to write SRP on virus epidemics.
Chapter 7 is about sequencing and how sequencing is used for, among other things, the characterization of new variants of, for example, SARS-CoV2. As in the other chapters, it concludes with some excellent student assignments.
There is a website with illustrations (154) and 41 exercises in addition to the tasks found in the book itself. The book is of course available both as a paper version and as an e-book.
It is an excellent book which I have no hesitation in giving the warmest recommendations.