Medical and Scientific Books

It is difficult to decide whether to praise this book for its (at the time) innovative and novel approach to gene-culture coevolution or criticize it for its endless slurry of ad hoc models with groundless or unspecified assumptions. One can do both. The idea they present, that there is a positive feedback mechanism between biological and cultural evolution, is by far the best working hypothesis for why human society "took off" after millenea of paleolithic stasis. The theory central to the book is that genetic constraints shape culture, which in turn becomes the cultural environment in which an individual's Darwinian fitness is determined, forming a positive feedback between cultural and evolutionary change. This posits a specific mechanism for the role of genetic change in cultural evolution, going far beyond the intellectually vacuous "resolution" of the nature-nurture debate by those who say "it's both." However, none of the models they present can be regarded as anything but mathematical playthings, in few cases are any of the variables or parameters quantities that can actually be measured or therefore tested. Often, it is not entirely clear what the dependent variables in the system correspond to in nature. Worse still, some of the models are completely ad hoc: first positing a dynamical behavior, then presenting an apparently arbitrary dynamical system which exhibits the property as "proof" of the theory. In essence, an uneven work, but one which I think will be at the foundation for further work in the area, at least as a basis for concepts and theory (provided the specifics are taken with a large grain of salt).

I bought this book in hopes that it would aid in my laboratory work, but it wasn't what I was hoping for. I thought it would describe what the media was used for more throughly but it only had a sentence at most saying what I already new. Some media that I commonly use I could not find in this book.

It's great as a recipe book, but like I said, I was hoping it would provide more background and explanations.

This is a comprehensive review of the influence of papiloma virus on cancer of uteri cervix. It resumes all studies done on this subject with an analytical approach. It is recommende for academic and research persons working in cancer of cervix.

although contains important subjects in clinical pharmacology it can not be used as the sole source for the exam. it is organised in topics like pediatric pharmacology. gereiatric pharmacology and so.

American Farmers are the only farmers in the world, that are under the watchful eye of a Gov't agency. NO chemicals may be sold without a "Notice of Intent" which is sent to the local agricultural commissioner of each county. Each noice of intent spells out exactly how and when each chemical is to be used. What other country even monitors chemical use? So, when it comes to true Organic Farming, who do you trust?

This books regards to a MM Congress held in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil/1992) and it is not intended for beginners. It can be valuable as a complementary material for some case studies.

This book was interesting, but still left a lot of questions open in my mine. I especially enjoyed the chapters from the theological perspectives, but did not learn much new on the neuroscience research. I liked all the different perspectives that the book had to offer. It is definately technical reading!

George Greenstein has written a very interesting book on scientific discovery. However, the information offered often seems incomplete. Some of his resources seem very thin at best - e.g. the section on Boltzmann. Furthermore, considering how much biography is involved, important dates are often left unmentioned. Here again in the section on Boltzmann he begins with a biographical sketch but the reader has no idea about the time period. A reader looking for additional information about Boltzmann is going to be very disappointed by the 'sources' on page 219 - please look elsewhere.
So I think the author must not have given much thought to potential readers when he wrote this book. He has some nice stories and insights in each section, particularly in the first chapter and later in the chapter on Feynman, but a good editor could have made some significant improvements to the overall structure and value of this book.
I myself like a well-documented book no matter the subject. If a historical perspective is involved then certainly dates and other period information are vital to a balanced discussion. Good resources/references are also a must. A good book is successful on many levels - getting the reader's interest is just the beginning.

This is a survey book, with invited chapters covering a variety of subjects. This goes way beyond the basics. For example, it doesn't address BLAST internals or usage, but does describe how it can be used as one step in more complex computations.

The good parts are quite good. The first chapter's biology review is quick but generally adequate, except for a few over-simplifications like "the disease genes for ... breast cancer ... have been identified." They have? ALL of them, or just a few of the more important ones? The "Strategy and Planning" chapter is very weak, perhaps because it addresses such a huge and varied range of topics. Chapters on neural nets, motif finding, homology search (post-BLAST), probe design, and RNA structure are good, and have enough detail for a programmer to get started on. The data mining section has some good material, but doesn't really cover the full breadth of data mining (a book-length topic in itself). Other chapters, esp. phylogeny and database issues, don't rise to the same level.

The problems: Well, no index for one. There's a huge aggregate list of references (I would have preferred chapter by chapter), and even pictures of all the authors in the back, but no index. The table of contents is quite detailed, but hardly a replacement. Also, despite editorial policies meant to ensure uniformity between chapters, some inexplicable differences showed up. Sometimes it's a "translation start site (TSS)", other times a "translation initiation site (TIS)." The editing could have been a little tighter too. Criterion should be the singular of criteria, strata should be the plural of stratum, a few other annoyances should have been addressed as well. Editing should cover the illustrations, too. The diagram on p.411 has "mosquitoes" from poor compression, and the line drawings of ch.11 don't always connect connected lines. And of course this shows the usual problem of such books - it's an idiosyncratic selection of topics, giving erratic coverage to the field. If it hits your area of interest, great, but it may miss.

What's good here is quite good. It covers topics well into the post-genome age, using genome data rather than just trying to discover it. Still, the book as a whole is spotty - considering the price, I hoped for better. Also, readers expecting "Practical" to mean "Basic" are in for an unhappy surprise. You'd better have a very solid background before you pick this up.

//wiredweird

I saw this on the library shelf and grabbed it up as an aid for planning next semester's lab. Overall, not the best use of it. It appears to consider itself a lab manual, with individual sections written up as if to be used by students. However...

As a lab manual, it spends a lot of time on textbook explanations. Useful if this were the only textbook, but there's not really enough detail for it to serve on its own.

As a source of experiments, it spends a lot of its time on methods which most undergraduate labs don't have available, such as thermogravimetry, X-ray diffraction, and neutron activation. Other methods (Ch. 16, "determination of organic functional groups") belong in a different book entirely, as they are simply volumetric methods with visible endpoints.

It offers a fairly thorough introduction to chromatographic theory, but the HPLC "experiments" are all methods for determining column/stationary phase performance (checks for metal ions, surface coverage, etc).

The range of electroanalytical methods is good, but many, again, require instruments which few teaching labs will have (an oscillotitrator? even the Karl Fischer apparatus, also included, is uncommon). The ones which can be done on general equipment are mostly the usual reduction-of-metal-ions stuff.

The UV-vis experiments are well done, and probably the most useful part of the book. Fluorescence coverage is extremely limited. The experiments are written to take advantage of very specific instrumentation. They're easy to adapt to whatever one's lab has available, but it's still an extensive rewrite.

As a practical manual for a professional who just wants to know how to do a ____ method - again, everything is written for specific instruments, so it's going to take adaptation to make work on your apparatus. And if you've got the experience to do that easily, do you really need this book? Most likely not.

The editing and graphics are fairly good. The line-art drawings of glassware, etc., are especially well done. I found a few mistakes, most glaringly a "weekly bound" species (I had no idea that dissociation equilibria were so attentive to the calendar).

A real lab manual for instrumental analysis would be quite useful. I would look forward to seeing a second edition, more focused on the techniques commonly encountered in teaching labs, and with much less emphasis on exotic hardware. (Or, if you're going to include it, give us enough detail that we can build or replace it if we really want to!)