1 comments about Plant Biochemistry, Third Edition.

1. This book is advanced, BUT is well written, easy to understand, and has good diagrams.
   This is an EXCELLENT book. HIGHLY recommended!

5 comments about Gay, Straight, and In-Between: The Sexology of Erotic Orientation.

1. on the formation of gender identity. Money is unquestionably one of the foremost thinkers on human sexuality of the modern era. His project is to ask questions that few dare to ask. Since those questions are about sex and gender identity, it is guaranteed that there will be howls of disagreement with his methods of study and proposed answers. "Gay Straight and In Between" is a very good book to get into the fray, and its insights can have a lot of influence given the current political debates over gay rights. You may not agree with all of its premises (I don't), but since when do we read only to confirm what we already believe?

   As for the person who thought the title was insulting to bisexuals, I am surprised--the whole point of that title seems, to me, to point out that much of the world is (happily, healthily, normally) "in between" the poles that usually frame the debate.

   Recommended.




2. Contrary to one poster who called Money the foremost thinker on this subject, the reality has proven that Money is the foremost [suspect]. His "groundbreaking" experiment in gender identity has been shown to be a complete fabrication on his part.

   While he may be a great theorizer (anyone can concoct a ridiculous and salacious theory), reality has demonstrated that his theories are false.




3. Please read of this man's (...) in the work of John Colapinto cited above--As Nature Made Him (it is the story of an identical twin whose circumcision was botched, and
   Money recommended that he be raised as a girl--this Money "guineau pig" committed suicide last week--age 38, but not before he had many, many negative words for the misguided "work" of Money). Colapinto is his exclusive biographer.
   The fact that Money's name remains prominently on the syllabus of many women's study courses is a considerable shame to both fields of psychology and women's studies.
   Recommended reading of real scholarship in the area of biological and social determination pertaining to sexual and homosexual behavior: Mean Genes by Terry Burnham and Jay Phelan



4. Looking for a book to suggest to a family that has been having trouble understanding, and continuing to love, a gay family member, I had a quick look-around for published materials. I was especially hopeful that there might be an appropriate title by Dr. Milton Diamond, but no such luck. I'll have to hope they'll view his website. That left me with two books that I would very strongly recommend: John Money's Gay, Straight, and In-Between, and Anne Fausto-Sterling's Sexing the Body. Money's book is a straightforward description of how a serious and responsible researcher has come to understand homosexuality over the course of decades of research, but Fausto-Sterling's is a more "nuanced" account of the formation of human sexualities that ruthlessly but with good humor attacks easy assumptions and over-generalizations.
   
   Money objectively synthesizes the work done during his lifetime by numerous researchers in the field of human sexuality. He gives the reader a clear way to understand that the sexual identity of a person, what the person is and is motivated to do as a sexual being, begins with the individual's genetic constitution (which is in all cases almost entirely identical to other human beings), is influenced by the complex hormonal and nutritional environment in the womb during gestation, and then is further molded by nurture and learning -- with early events, generally speaking, being more influential than later events.
   
   Criticisms of Money in the Colapinto book refer to events that occurred early in Money's career, and to an understanding that has been revised and reshaped over the years and the dozen or so books that Money has written to the point that it does Money an injustice to condemn his recent book on that account. More importantly, perhaps, it may turn readers away from a book that describes the "state of the art" at the time it was written. Anyone who wants to study this field must go over these same findings, must "re-search" them, to discover whether further refinements are needed. So, whether you end up agreeing with Money on individual points or not, his book gives in relatively short compass a survey of what is currently regarded as knowledge in this field.



5. This book is just another example of John Money making up stuff to earn a dollar. He is a known fraud and people should not be naive enough to take him seriously. In the past he has made up data and published false research to support his claims. He is a poor excuse for a scientist and nobody should buy his work

2 comments about The Immunoassay Handbook, Third Edition.

1. 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.



2. 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.

No comments about Bayesian Inference for Gene Expression and Proteomics.

No comments about Exploring the Living Cell DVD.

5 comments about Controlling Cholesterol for Dummies.

1. This is a fantastic book for learning all about the cholestrol which is the reason why I bought it. However, after I read it, I was pleasantly surprised to find this book to be better than most popular "diet" books out there. It's straight forward (with humor!), contains lots of informative facts, many handy references (web sites, phone numbers, statistics etc.,), considerate of the reader and not out to please any interest groups (i.e., honest). What more can you ask for! This book is well worth your money.



2. This book is full of helpfull information. It is fairly uptodate concidering they keep lowering the recommended cholesterol levels every year. Its not to hard ro read. The terms and explanations are easly understood.



3. The title says it all. I tried to read from cover to cover but it's just boring. So I jumped around, which be design works great that way, got the information I needed, and moved on with my life.



4. This is a great reference book for those of us fighting the dreaded cholesterol monster. I can say no more than that it is worth the money and a must have.



5. Having to recently begin watching my cholesterol I purchased this book as I thought it would be the easiest and quickest book to help me understand eating and cookiing. However, I found it more confusing than anything else and very similar to any other book as far as technical information, though, it tried to be "cute" a lot. I would have been interested in sample menus and clearly posted lists showing foods to avoid etc. The chapters on 10 foods to avoid and 10 foods to include were interesting but not enough and too much information and disclaimers throughout the book.

No comments about Biochemistry, Fifth Edition Lecture Notebook.

No comments about Student Lecture Notebook for Garrett/Grishman's Biochemistry, 3rd.

No comments about Introduction to Protein Science: Architecture, Function, and Genomics.

5 comments about Oxford Dictionary of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

1. Great for Science majors, all the definitions or words you used to know but can't remember from class to class. Very thorough. much better than a textbook glossary.



2. This revised edition of "Oxford Dictionary of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology" is comprehensive, clinically relevant, and fairly up-to-date. It has a good coverage (for degree students), although that advanced researchers may need something more extensive. Its ability to correlate biochemical terms and data is appreciated. But with just over 17,000 definitions, its listed price is a bit on the high side. Buyers could get a better illustrated, more voluminous Biochem dictionary at that price.



3. As someone involved in biochemical research, I spend loads of time reading a variety of life science journals. Just keeping up with the latest research is hard enough, but as my areas of interest become ever larger and intermeshed with other disciplines such as medicine and physics, I've found myself delving into this book more and more. But the pace of research is also a problem for a book like this, because to remain useful, new editions cannot appear fast enough to keep up with the latest batch of techniques, genes and proteins. Ultimately an Internet version of this book that gets updated on a regular basis would be the most useful. Never the less, once you get in the habit of using this dictionary, you'll want to keep it nearby when you're browsing the life science literature. Is this book good value? I think it's expensive compared to all other books, but well priced for an academic textbook. I find that using this book is still more rapid and direct than browsing the web for the definition of a word I don't know, and the brief definition given in this book is a good starting point for hunting down more detailed information.



4. I have been using this book as a general reference since I bought it three years ago. It describes most terms in general biochemistry, molecular biology, organic chemistry and genetics. I find it easier to have one reference book where one can look up terms, than having to search through various textbooks to find the descriptions.



5. How does one review a dictionary? If the aim is to arrive at a reasoned and mature assessment of the book the ideal way would be to keep it on my shelf for five years or so, noting how often I find it useful to consult it, how often I am happy with the result of the consultation, and how often I am unhappy. Unfortunately, however, the job needs to be done more quickly than that, so I shall adopt a more superficial approach, checking a selection of definitions to see how accurate and helpful they are.
   
   Opening the book at random led the definition of "elasticity coefficient". The definition given is accurate enough as far as it goes (setting aside the presence of two undefined quantities in the equation given), but I wonder how much illuminated a reader will be who consults the dictionary in the hope of understanding the (important) difference between an elasticity coefficient and a control coefficient. The definition fails to mention that elasticity coefficients are usually called just elasticities, and it fails to give a cross-reference to "control coefficient" (perhaps just as well, as the dictionary has no entry for control coefficient), but it does give a rather unhelpful suggestion to "see controllability coefficient" --- unhelpful because following the suggestion leads only to the information that this is a "former name for elasticity coefficient". Would it not save the reader trouble just to include this information in the main entry?
   
   What about something that I knew nothing at all about before, such as myocilin? This is apparently also called TIGR, which was news to me as I thought TIGR was The Institute for Genome Research, and that is also what the entry for TIGR says, without any cross-reference to myocilin. Anyway, myocilin is a protein of no known function expressed in many tissues---not especially muscle, despite the entry a few lines up that says that myo+ is a prefix denoting muscle. Is this important enough to justify a five-line definition? Apparently it is, because the gene for myocilin is implicated in glaucoma.
   
   As an illustration of the maxim that one picture is worth a thousand words, the definition of "Fischer projection" runs to more than 150 words, but lacks the simple diagram that would have rendered the words more readily intelligible.
   
   A common fault in elementary biochemistry textbooks is the lack of understanding that some authors display of the ionic states of biochemical species in neutral aqueous solution. This is now far better than it was a generation ago, but there are still some authors who have not yet seen the light. So how well does the dictionary fare? Less well than I would have hoped. Phosphoric acid derivatives are normally shown in ionized states, but carboxylic acids and primary amines do less well: threonine, thyronine, thyroxine, tranexic acid, tryptophan and tyrosine all appear in physically impossible states in the space of a few pages.
   
   All this led me to consult the entry on "zwitterion", which defines it as "an alternative name for dipolar ion". This seemed to be an example of defining the familiar in terms of something less familiar, but I see that several textbooks do prefer the latter term. Anyway, a dipolar ion or zwitterion is "a molecule containing ionic groups of opposite charge in equal numbers". So the form of aspartate that exists in neutral solution is not a zwitterion? If we want a word that includes all the common amino acids at pH 7 we need amphion (or amphoion if we prefer it and can think of a way to pronounce it), a term that I have never encountered (in either spelling) in any paper I have seen in the biochemical literature. Anyway, it would have been nice to see more expansive definitions of these terms, and it would be hard to argue that there was no space available in a dictionary that has room for nine lines to discuss the pronunciation of Linux. It is dangerous, anyway, for a biochemistry dictionary to include terms from computing that are in danger of becoming obsolete before the ink is dry: Netscape, for example, is "a popular browser available for a variety of computers and operating systems", but this is 2006, and who uses Netscape Navigator in 2006? Have young biochemists even heard of it? Incidentally, despite the bold type there is no entry for browser.
   
   If any of the editors read this review they will doubtless find it very pedantic. I have to plead guilty to that, but reviewers of dictionaries need to be pedantic, and in an ideal world compilers of dictionaries would be pedantic as well.