Medical and Scientific Books

The book is written in a very segmented form. If you are looking for a reference book that you can look up sections for specific presentations or papers, this is the book for you. It is, however, hard to just sit down and read from cover to cover.

This book is by one of the first authors to recognise that communication skills are important in science, and that they are a craft that has rules and principles that any student can learn relatively easily. It deserves to be treated as a classic, and should be compulsory reading for any student of the life sciences.

I can recall reading it with much interest during my PhD in the 1980's, when it was about the only work available in this field, and various biochemical societies in the UK made it available to students. Much of the advice on straightforward communication style is still extremely valid today. In the later 80's and 90's, the field of writing skills took off, and now most University bookshops have several shelves of books on writing skills and how to write a thesis. Booth's book is short, direct, and the advice is very practical. Read it!

A good compendium of information on depleted uranium, but poorly organized. Needs an editor.

click on the thumbnail to view the book cover - see?

Charlotte Froese Fischer has done science in general and computer science in particular a great service by portraying the life and work of Douglas Rayner Hartree. He was not only a notable pioneer in atomic theory, numerical analysis and computer software but as well, probably more than any other person, did more to demonstrate the enormous value of the differential analyzer to science and technology - and by no means least to the theory of automatic control. The book reveals Hartree as a wonderful teacher and friend. It is sad to reflect that his intense dedication to the war effort during World War II may have shortened his life.

Arthur Porter
Professor Emeritus
University of Toronto

An interesting review of the life and work of Hartree. Though his contributions to science are significant, Froese Fischer exaggerates the impact of his contributions. Instead of giving a realistic account of an ordinary scientist, Froese Fischer attempts to give an extraordianry account of an extraordinary scientist - which Hartree is not. However, the book does provide much information that would not have otherwise been available to the public.

This gem of a book will become a classic that belongs on the shelf of everyone with an interest in congenital heart disease. It distills the essence of the elegant papers, lectures, and texts on the subject that have been presented by Dr. Anderson and his esteemed colleagues through the years. The photographs and diagrams of congenital heart disease are indispensable to the beginner who seeks to understand cardiac morphology, and will be a permanent addition to the library of anyone who hopes to pass such knowledge on to others. The only somewhat unfortunate thing about this book is that it's title is somewhat misleading, in suggesting that it is, somehow, a handbook for those who seek to learn how to press the buttons on the echo machine and produce beautiful images without perspiring like the rest of us. The title almost trivializes the value of this volume. An earlier reviewer expressed these concerns, but that neophyte pediatric cardiologist has, by now, I would hope, realized that he unwittingly bought a book that he will need to guard from theft by junior colleagues in the future. In anticipation of that I am ordering several more copies, myself.

I bought this book for my first Echo rotation in paediatric cardiology fellowship. This book concentrates on morphology of CHD in cross-sectional description with some echocardiography empasis. I must say that the echocardiographic findings were not clearly described or shown as I expected from the title of the book.. I think it is a good add to beginner library as morphology book, which can help to understand the anatomy of complex lesions better when you do Echo However, you will need another source to learn the echo finding for different CHD.

The first time I read a book by Tabachnik & Fidell, I was struggling with Multiple Regression and a friend recommended "Using Multivariate Statistics" by the same authors and I found their book to be much easier to read than the text recommended by our statistician-geek professor. So this time around when I found myself in an ANOVA class, I did a quick search on Amazon and found this book and decided to give it a try, since I had a good experience with their other book. It's expensive even by the standards of statistics books, but I found it totally worth it.

The authors use language that is easy to understand without talking down to its readers. They use interesting everyday examples that anyone from any field can relate with to explain the concepts of experimental design. Since this book just came out (2007), the SPSS examples are not too out of date. There's something comforting too about the stats output being in SPSS, the software I'm most familiar with.

Another factor in its favor is the layout of the book. I think a lot of people underestimate good page layout when it comes to textbooks, especially graduate-level textbooks. But coming from a graphic design background before going for my PhD in instructional design, I couldn't help noticing how 'friendly' the book looks even with the formulas and diagrams.

Finally, the CD-ROM itself contains:
-ASCII, Excel, Minitab, JMP, SAS and SPSS data files for using ANOVA
-R2 program
-Programs on calculating confidence intervals around effect sizes (noncf3.sps, noncf2.sas)
-Student solutions manual

So I give this book 5 stars (sheesh, never thought I'd actually write a glowing review for a statistics book, but there you go)

I took my first grad school statistics course. We were using a Maxwell and Delaney text, Designing Experiments and Analyzing Data (an impossibly convoluted text). My instructor,also my advisor, suggested this as a good supplement. It was. Between the two texts I pulled a B for the course. The SPSS portions are out of date, but that is understandable with publishing lag and the speed with which SPSS is updated. It is an excellent reference if you need to cite why you're doing a particular statistical adjustment or technique. I'm sure that I'll be using it for the rest of grad school.

This is like the Idiot's Guide to the Universal Law of Attraction, only you're NOT an idiot if you read it and certainly don't need to be a genius to understand it.

The book jumps straight to the chase and covers experiments that lend insight into the powerful connection between the mind and matter. If you've watched the movie, "What the Bleep?" then consider this the book to go with it. If you've read Joe Vitale's "Attractor Factor" or Wayne Dyer's "Power of Intention" then you'll appreciate this book more than you can imagine.

If you read those titles and felt skeptical, this is the book that may push you from the fence. I purchased it at the suggestion of two friends who said the same thing ... "Most books TALK about how mindset can affect our reality, this book PROVES it."

I'm not sure it proves it beyond a doubt, but only beyond whatever doubts YOU allow.

If I have anything negative to say, it's only due to a personal bias. The author seems to overstep himself a bit in the end, painting a universal scheme and elevating himself to the status of mystical guru when we were so comfortable enjoying the journey with him as the analytical scientist. He has a strong affinity to Transcendental Meditation that clearly shows, and I believe this brings too much bias into the conclusion (my own bias is against this as the perfect, ultimate solution as it is claimed to be in the book).

Overall, very strong and powerful reading right up to the last chapters ... then, it makes a sharp turn into ideas that simply don't seem to flow with the rest of the text.

It was intriguing enough that I read it cover to cover when it arrived, and will return to it often when I begin doubting my own power to manifest my life.

Liked this book alot even though it wasn't completely without flaws. The front section and back sections of the book were very good with some weakness in the middle part. My main problems with the middle were it gets bogged down somewhat in scientific history and repeats scientific experiments such as the quantum slit wave/particle test which have been rehashed to death in numerous other books of this type (although a first timer might get more out of it). The book does a great job of making the metaphysics-science connnection while discussing the Theory of relativity and Quantum physics. Better than most I've read that have made the same effort. For those looking for a book that blows your mind in cementing the metaphysics-science connection, I recommend it

If you need any help with the latest technology of immunoassay, this is teh book for you. It answered all of my questions and even allowed me to finish my project weeks in advance.

This book was obviously written by scientists actually working in the field and allows the reader to gain from the writers' actual experiences in development, application and trouble-shooting of various assays. This book will serve as an excellent teaching tool for lab managers to train their staff in the complexity of developing, optimizing and using immunoassays.

Microarrays are a tool for monitoring gene expression levels for thousands of genes in parallel. This technology is very useful since patterns in the gene expression can be used for molecular characterization of phenomena that range from disease states and response to stimuli to the differences between cells of different types. The amount of information obtained from one microarray experiment can be large. These large amounts of information present new challenges in the areas of data storage, management, and analysis by biologists who are not accustomed to dealing with this much data. Also, the software used for data analysis is usually written by mathematicians and statisticians that have a minimum of training in biology.

This book addresses some of the issues faced by researchers who are beginning their first microarray experiments. It covers various aspects of designing and analyzing the results of microarray experiments. Microarrays are not limited to the study of gene expression, but this remains the most common use of the technology and therefore is the only use of arrays discussed here. This book attempts to explain the underlying concepts and principles routinely used in analysis of gene expression data. The book should be accessible by statisticians, computer scientists, and students of bioinformatics who want a grounding in the types of analysis currently used to study microarray data.

The book begins with an introductory chapter which is followed by three major chapters. As with any technology that has the capacity to detect small changes in a highly dynamic system, the underlying experimental design and the manner in which an experiment is conducted is critical for obtaining high quality data. Chapter two addresses these issues. The raw data from microarray experiments are images that must be transformed and organized into gene expression matrices. These transformations are the subject of chapter 3. Finally, in chapter 4, the common methods used for analyzing gene expression data matrices with the goal of obtaining new insights into biology are discussed. The book does a pretty good job of providing the reader with a general understanding of the nature of microarray data and how it can be analyzed. It was never meant to be a reference book or a comprehensive review, just a gentle introduction.

Certainly, this book can not give a complete description of microarrays, neither from an experimental nor a theoretical side. Nevertheless, the issues presented and discussed provide the reader with a solid basis for more advanced studies.

In my opinion, this book is well written, the explanations given are descriptive and understandable and its overall organization is plausible. I recommend this book as an introduction for the analysis of microarray data, because it provides a good overview of existing methods in this field. A warning: This does not mean, that all these methods are thorougly expained! It just provides an overview!! If you want to learn, e.g., clustering methods, you should consult another book (probably no other book about microarrays but a decent book dealing only with data analysis in general or clustering methods...)

The Scientific 100: A Racnking of the Most Influential Scientists is an interesting book that provided many life facts about 100 interesting scientists. Anyone interested in science should definitely buy this book. It is packed with facts about the 100 most influential scientists in Science.

I had to put off reading this book until the summer because under normal conditions a person would pick this book up and look for a specific scientist, or science, and then get the wanted information on those specifics. This is not one of those books that you just pick up and read straight through. Most scientists are interested in a limited area of science. For example, Marie Curie was a chemist, a physicist, and interested in other sciences and the math that were involved in those sciences. Very rarely, if ever, did she wander into the domain of biological sciences (if she had, she may have been a bit more careful with the radium she and her husband were 'pocketing' on a daily basis)!

There are always a few men and women out there who remain curious about the entire world. Men like Leonardo de Vinci, Linus Pauling, even those outside of the world of science such as Thomas Jefferson. But the fact remains that this book would be used as a starting point or a reference by teachers and students to gain information about specific scientists and the fields they investigated; whether it be chemistry, physics, biology, or linguistics.

This is an excellent reference book. I can highly recommend it for use by teachers in gathering information about these famous men without going into so much detail about their scientific interests that the teachers who have not been trained in these areas, get lost. I especially recommend it for highschool and college level reference. If teachers of lower grades plan to use this book, I highly suggest they read carefully the information on specific scientists first rather than just handing the book over to a student. I am a little leery of recommending books that I have not read, or of teachers who recommend books that they have not read. The reason for this hesitation is that Simmons puts a small amount of personal information concerning these men and their families, especially their wives, in the chapters...and some of this information is not only not pertinent to their lives in science, but is actually slightly more detailed about their sex lives than a seventh grader needs to know. This is the only reason I gave the book a 4 star rating rather than a 5 star rating.

Otherwise, I enjoyed reading about so many interesting men and women (again, there is a limit on the amount of women and minorities in the book but that is in large part due to historical prejudices which were not overcome until the last century). There are definitely several scientists I am going to read more information on because of this book raising my interest in them.

Again, a highly informative reference book for science, math, and libraries.

Karen Sadler,
Science Education

This text provides a very good background for understanding the biology behind tissue healing as it relates to physical therapy practice. However, the text lacks specific information on some essential properties of human tissue. Specifically,(for example) any discussion of the arcs of Benninghoff is absent, specific discussions of bone healing are not in depth, appropriate discussions of hormonal balance and bone physiology is also lacking, and a complete discussion of collagen and the properties and biology of collagens is missing as well as an in depth understanding of the mechanical properties of articular cartilage. Also absent is an in depth discussion of the mechanical properties of human tissue in general.

Overall the text suffices for introductory understanding of tissue properties however as a classroom text it must be supplemented with relevant articles to `plug the holes'. The references provided via CD are awkward for the learner to use and in my study of those references there are too many 'books' being used as the main citation for important concepts. Also many of the figures have been "borrowed" from other texts. It seems that these authors have simply repackaged , in an incomplete manner the works of previous authors without giving due consideration to the updated evidence. The more i read the more 'incomplete' this text becomes. It is better to use Gray's Anatomy (British Edition) and supplement with relevant and current literature.

In my opinion, this is a very complete book with the best information.
No doubt, it is impossible to imagine a good physiotherapist without the knowledge that is inside this book.