Best Biochemistry
And its profound scientific understanding of the nature and experience of the female brain continues to guide women as they pass through life stages, to help men better understand the girls and women in their lives, and to illuminate the delicate emotional machinery of a love relationship. In The Female Brain , Dr. Brizendine distills all her findings and the latest information from the scientific community in a highly accessible book that educates women about their unique brain/body/behavior. Critics debate the author's presentation and research; some extol her many and varied sources and the book's accessibility, while others take her to task for relying too heavily on anecdotal evidence and "dumbing down" the text (Robin Marantz Henig cites the author's repeated use of "cutesy language" and slang).
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"old time classic, really good and informative."
"This was a book club choice & I didn't know what to expect."
"Very insightful information to the complexity of not only the female brain, but educating the masses in how hormones directly affect one's moods and resulting thought processes."
"I ended up purchasing a Kindle version for my smart phone so I can quote her exactly on the spot!"
"I feel smarter about woman after I read this book."
"Now I can sit back and patiently wait for reason to truipmh the temporal affects of the wonderfull design of the female brain."
As the amount of information in biology expands dramatically, it becomes increasingly important for textbooks to distill the vast amount of scientific knowledge into concise principles and enduring concepts.As with previous editions, Molecular Biology of the Cell , Sixth Edition accomplishes this goal with clear writing and beautiful illustrations. "Throughout the book, emphasis is placed not just on what 'we know' but also on 'how we know' and 'what remains to be discovered'- important for engaging and enthusing students....A quarter of a century after the first edition revolutionised cell biology textbooks, the new edition is as fresh, comprehensive and above all, as readable as ever....Like its predecessors, this is a superb textbook for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students."
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"[Update, September 2017: Just a caution here that there now seem to be two Kindle editions of the book available. The original "eTextbook / Print Replica Kindle Edition" which is like a PDF file of the actual printed book, and a new "Kindle Edition" which is *not* in Print Replica format. Personally I prefer the original eTextbook edition which is an exact reproduction of the printed book. This review is based (mostly, see update at the end) on the Kindle edition of the book, which is a "Print Replica" edition which exactly matches the printed textbook (it's essentially like a PDF of the entire book). This sixth edition is very different from the fifth (the authors point out that five million scientific papers were written since the previous edition) and you might *not* get away with buying a cheaper used previous edition. If your class is going into enough depth that it needs this book over something like Essential Cell Biology, 4th Edition then chances are you really do need the correct edition. To get started I recommend reading chapter 1 thoroughly, then read chapter 2 but if your eyes start to glaze over then just skip the rest of chapter 2 for now (the chemistry, while obviously fundamental and critically important is not necessary to understand deeply in order to understand the rest of the book, just as you don't really need to understand voltages and transistors in order to learn to program a computer), and then read Chapter 3 thoroughly which is all about how proteins perform most of the work in the cell including acting as microprocessors, motors, pumps, etc. Well, first of all it has been seven years since the previous edition, which is nearly forever in the world of Biology, so just on that basis alone the new edition is going to be a big advance. In the fifth edition, the book exploded past its covers and the standard edition was forced to relegate the last five chapters to PDF supplements (a huge Reference Edition with over 1600 pages was available with all chapters printed, and the e-book versions include all chapters). The sixth edition now includes the entire content of the book, and there's no need for a "Reference" edition. Taking as an example chapter 4, Control of Gene Expression, the current edition has 79 figures where the previous edition had 115. Also the chapter on Sexual Reproduction has been eliminated entirely (you can download the fifth edition version of this chapter as a PDF, see the update below) though some of its material has been integrated into other parts of the book. It's hardbound, and has the same feel and quality as the Reference edition version of the fifth edition. The physical book does NOT come with CD media for the supplemental movies and stuff, so you need to go to the Garland Science site to find them (under the Student tab you can search for the movie numbers from the book without needing to create an account, or you can create an account and add the book to it to make accessing things a little easier). They have also now added a downloadable PDF of "MBOC, Fifth Edition - Chapter 21: Sexual Reproduction: Meiosis, Germ Cells, and Fertilization" in the sixth edition downloads area."
"8 emphasizing the need for mathematics to unravel the massive complexities of cellular functions (e.g. the use of differential equations to shed light on the incredible amounts of chemical dynamics in cellular processes - similar to how engineers have been using these keep track of system dynamics); focusing on cell signaling with emphasis on key principles in the circuitry of signaling systems; new sections on timing, growth control, and morphogenesis of multicellular organisms; updates on stem cell biology and technologies, etc. One sample on the current flood of data on biological systems, they wrote: "Empowered by knowledge of complete genome sequences, we can list the genes, proteins, and RNA molecules in a cell, and we have methods that allow us to begin to depict the complex web of interactions between them. Most often, cell biologists studying the cell's control systems sum up the knowledge in simple schematic diagrams - this book is full of them - rather than in numbers, graphs, and differential equations. They implicitly show that molecular biology is leaning a bit more towards studying cells as Systems Engineering matters. A good intro to thinking in terms of systems is Systems Engineering and Analysis (5th Edition) (Prentice Hall International Series in Industrial & Systems Engineering) and also Design and Analysis of Biomolecular Circuits: Engineering Approaches to Systems and Synthetic Biology. The general Table of Contents for the 6th edition is at the very bottom of the review, but I wanted to point out some of the differences compared to the 5th edition early on: 5th edition, there were 25 chapters total, but the last 4 chapters were on a DVD, not the book. 6th edition, there are 24 chapters and everything is in one book, but one chapter was left out - can be downloaded from the Garland Science website. 5th edition, Ch.2 title was "Cell Chemistry and Biosynthesis". 6th edition, Ch.2 title was replaced with "Cell Chemistry and Bioenergetics". 5th edition, Ch.8 title was "Manipulating Proteins, DNA, and RNA". 6th edition, Ch.8 title was replaced with "Analyzing Cells, Molecules, and Systems". 5th edition, Ch.13 title was "Intracellular Vesicular Traffic". 6th edition, Ch.13 title was replaced with "Intracellular Membrane Traffic". 5th edition, Ch.15 title was "Mechanisms of Cell Communication". 6th edition, Ch.15 title was replaced with "Cell Signalling". 5th edition, Ch.18 title was "Apoptosis". 6th edition, Ch.18 title was replaced with "Cell Death". 5th edition, Ch.19 title was "Cell Junctions, Cell Adhesion, and the Extracellular Matrix". 6th edition, Ch.19 title was replaced with "Cell Junctions and the Extracellular Matrix". 5th edition, Ch.21-25 were: 21. The Innate and Adaptive Immune Systems...NOTE: Chapter 21: Sexual Reproduction: Meiosis, Germ Cells, and Fertilization from the 5th edition can be downloaded from the Garland Science website for the 6th edition for free since it was left out of the 6th edition. 20 Cancer (the whole chapter) and the detailed Table of Contents. Cells are not simple things at all, rather they are ridiculously sophisticated nanomachines with self-coding and transcribing capabilities, automated control systems, self-reproductive capabilities, informational and chemical programming, they have multiple energy-source harnessing abilities, etc. What makes it even more mind boggling is that trillions of cells (37 trillion based on an updated estimate as of 2013) make up our own bodies and we have have 200 different cell types with numerous specializations that allow us to fight off diseases, repair our cellular machinery without disrupting the processes of living, execute multiple simultaneous development programs, repair damaged DNA from mutations, reproduce, preform emergency protocols, recover and replenish homeostasis, process and convert food into chemical energy and reserves, give ourselves momentary boosts of energy at will, etc. For those interested in a system views of life from cells to society, please check out The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision. The discourse on the chain of prebiotic complexity (molecules to biomonomers to macromolecules to compartments to genetic code to metabolic networks to cells) and also the downward causation triggered by cellular signalling resulting in feedback looping to and from "genes to proteins to pathways to sub-cellular mechanisms to cells to tissues to organs to organism" are worth checking out. For those interested in the impact of cellular research on evolutionary theory - shifting towards a dynamic systems view of cells and life - one can check out Evolution: A View from the 21st Century and The Logic of Chance: The Nature and Origin of Biological Evolution. Table of Contents for the 6th Edition: INTRODUCTION TO THE CELL. 1. Cells and Genomes. 2. How Cells Read the Genome: From DNA to Protein. 7. Analyzing Cells, Molecules, and Systems. 9. Visualizing Cells. INTERNAL ORGANIZATION OF THE CELL. 10. Cell Death. CELLS IN THEIR SOCIAL CONTEXT. 19."
"Not only is this a great text, but the Kindle version is amazing."
"A great introductory molecular/cell biology text book."
"The newest editions of these books unreasonably cost way too much, but it's easy to buy past editions from Amazon, for example, that are plenty good and mucho cheaper."
"This would be great... except the digital edition doesn't have a solutions cd, and solutions are not included in the text."
Derived from the classic text originated by Lubert Stryer and continued by John Tymoczko and Jeremy Berg, Biochemistry: A Short Course focuses on the major topics taught in a one-semester biochemistry course. He then moved to Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine as Professor and Director of the Department of Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry, where he remained until 2003. He received the American Chemical Society Award in Pure Chemistry (1994) and the Eli Lilly Award for Fundamental Research in Biological Chemistry (1995), was named Maryland Outstanding Young Scientist of the Year (1995), received the Harrison Howe Award (1997), and received public service awards from the Biophysical Society, the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the American Chemical Society, and the American Society for Cell Biology. He also received numerous teaching awards, including the W. Barry Wood Teaching Award (selected by medical students), the Graduate Student Teaching Award, and the Professor s Teaching Award for the Preclinical Sciences. Lubert Stryer is Winzer Professor of Cell Biology, Emeritus, in the School of Medicine and Professor of Neurobiology, Emeritus, at Stanford University, where he has been on the faculty since 1976. Professor Stryer has received many awards for his research on the. interplay of light and life, including the Eli Lilly Award for Fundamental Research in Biological Chemistry, the Distinguished Inventors Award of the Intellectual. Property Owners Association, and election to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"dense but very clear language."
"I have another great book to read and study from this semester."
"Got the book very quickly, exactly like the description said."
"Fantastic and comprehensive book."
"It's a great asset in my biochem class, but oddly enough the book smells really funky."
"At this point you might as well rewrite the book if you wrote down everything that’s highlighted."
Best Biotechnology
**From the author of the phenomenal million copy bestseller Sapiens **. **The Sunday Times # 1 bestseller**. While Sapiens looked back at our evolutionary development, this new book examines where we might be headed ( Homo Deus is subtitled “A Brief History of Tomorrow”). His innovative new book blends science, history and philosophy to explore the future of humanity in the face of artificial intelligence and examine whether our species will be rendered completely redundant.” – Cambridge Network “Spellbinding. “ It’s a chilling prospect, but the AI we’ve created could transform human nature, argues this spellbinding new book by the author of Sapiens .” – The Guardian. “Nominally a historian, Harari is in fact an intellectual magpie who has plucked theories and data from many disciplines — including philosophy, theology, computer science and biology — to produce a brilliantly original, thought-provoking and important study of where mankind is heading.” – Evening Standard. He’s opened a portal for us to contemplate on what kind of relationships we are forming with our data-crunching machines and whether ‘right’ must be determined by empirical evidence or good old ‘gut instinct.’” – The Hindu “[Harari’s] propositions are well-developed, drawing upon a combination of science, philosophy and history. While the book offers a rather pessimistic and even nihilistic view of man’s future, it is written with wit and style and makes compelling reading.” – iNews.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Yuval Noah Harari's "Homo Deus" continues the tradition introduced in his previous book "Sapiens": clever, clear and humorous writing, intelligent analogies and a remarkable sweep through human history, culture, intellect and technology. He starts with exploring the three main causes of human misery through the ages - disease, starvation and war - and talks extensively about how improved technological development, liberal political and cultural institutions and economic freedom have led to very significant declines in each of these maladies. Continuing his theme from "Sapiens", a major part of the discussion is devoted to shared zeitgeists like religion and other forms of belief that, notwithstanding some of their pernicious effects, can unify a remarkably large number of people across the world in striving together for humanity's betterment. As in "Sapiens", Mr. Harari enlivens his discussion with popular analogies from current culture ranging from McDonald's and modern marriage to American politics and pop music. Mr. Harari's basic take is that science and technology combined with a shared sense of morality have created a solid liberal framework around the world that puts individual rights front and center. Ranging from dating to medical diagnosis, from the care of the elderly to household work, entire industries now stand to both benefit and be complemented or even superseded by the march of the machines. For reading more about these aspects, I would recommend books like Nick Bostrom's "Superintelligence", Pedro Domingos's "The Master Algorithm" and John Markoff's "Machines of Loving Grace". As a proficient prognosticator Mr. Harari's crystal ball remains murky, but as a surveyor of past human accomplishments his robust and unique abilities are still impressive and worth admiring."
"And he claims that humanism believes that individuals always know best about their own needs (when in fact, many have emphasized the importance of education in our development--he does not even reference John Dewey). For most of the book, Harari appears to be adopting a materialistic perspective, and one which is also extremely unsentimental and discounts the significance of human morale and character. He also discusses how animals and people have consciousness and subjective experiences, and presumes that artificial intelligence will remain unconscious (the "weak AI" hypothesis of John Searle). And on the very last page, he makes us wonder if his hardcore materialistic perspective has just been a long, extended ruse: he asks us to question a worldview that would deny the significance of consciousness. So it seems likely that in a future book he will focus on the nature of consciousness, and argue for non-theistic Buddhism (an understated agenda in Harari's writing--perhaps he thinks that this is the way for humanity to avoid the grim fate predicted here?). The comment begins with "Harari indeed believes that developing an understanding of consciousness, a science of mind, or however else one wishes to phrase it is the best and perhaps the only way to avert the grim fate that threatens humanity in this century."
Best Biomedical Engineering
In her six years at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Adele Levine rehabilitated soldiers admitted in worse and worse shape. Reading this book brought me right back to the hours I spent on a treatment table surrounded by my fellow Wounded Warriors as we pushed each other, using grit, gallows humor and even bribes of cookies in order to face yet another day of pain on our road back to our new futures. —Josh Hanagarne, author of The World’s Strongest Librarian “An amputee rehabilitation center is a crucible of emotion, and this book throbs with the pulse of a human heart. A master of understatement, she paints a picture of what it's like to work at this strange job, patching up broken soldiers only to be sent back to war— and tells her own story, setting her own sorrows and struggles beside the pain of her amputee patients.”. —Lydia Netzer, author of Shine Shine Shine.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"I'm a Critical Care Air Transport Team physician and an ICU doc. When I'm in charge of the ICU, I see my patients leave with 2 women wearing big belts and wheeling a walker and a patient."
"Adele Levine's stories of her work at Walter Reed Army Medical Center as a physical therapist during the height of the casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan give us a poignant, at times sobering, but at more times touching and humorous account of her daily experiences there."
"It gets gritty as Levine honestly describes the burnout of the second hand smoke of war and dealing with an extremely difficult (and famous) patient population."
"Having spent a lot of time as a Marine w/ recovering wounded from Vietnam in 67 and the last 10+ years, I can not recommend this book enough."
"I can't tell you how disappointed I was when years later I finally forced myself to go to Bethesda to "give it a chance" and had to ask about ten people how and where to find that bust. There was something SO special about being even a minuscule piece of the jigsaw puzzle of history and accomplishment and service and legend that was Walter Reed - I will ALWAYS treasure the blessing of having been a part of that. I was able to tour the MATC in 2010 during a reunion of the Army Nurse Corps Association - so it was easy for me to visualize everything Adele described, just like watching a movie!"
"You might think reading about wounded warriors would be depressing, but Levine manages to reveal the heartache with humor and a dose of humanity. Wounded vets walk our streets, are interviewed on news channels and populate television commercials, but what we see is far different from what Ms. Levine beheld in the amputee clinic."