5 comments about Career Opportunities in Biotechnology and Drug Development.

1. This book is a great resource for career changers as well. I've worked in Biotech R&D my entire career, but now I'm looking for a position in marketing. An MBA gave me a solid understanding of the field but "Career Opportunities in Biotechnology and Drug Development" has given me the industry specific vocabulary and knowledge to focus my search. I only wish I had read it sooner!



2. The first 6 chapters of this book provide general career advice, giving an overview of what is expected in the biopharma industry, what it takes to succeed, how to write a resume, network, etc. The second, and major, part of the book breaks the drug discovery enterprise down into its various stages, describes the role of each step in the process, and details positions available at each stage. The positions described range from those that require a PhD or MD, to those that are accessible to those with a college degree, and so on. Freedman describes the types of positions, typical job titles and career paths, roles and responsibilities, typical tasks, and relative salaries and other compensation. She also describes in detail the pros and cons of each field, how to excel in the field, and what personal characteristics are most often found in those who succeed in that field. She predicts where the field is going and what job prospects will be like, and also talks about how to get started in each field. Finally, each chapter ends with recommendations for training, professional societies, and other resources.
   
   The entire volume is well organized, with important points in callouts, and many clarifying diagrams.
   
   Anyone who reads this book will come away with an understanding of the drug discovery industry, and how complex it really is. Hopefully, they will also come away with several ideas of places they might fit into that industry, and the resources and inspiration to follow them through. Overall, a very thorough book, and highly recommended.



3. After reading the first few of chapters of "Career Opportunities in Biotechnology and Drug Development," I couldn't force myself to keep reading, and so, I scanned the rest of the book hoping I would find something that would pique my interest. I did not. The book is very dry and boring and chockfull of business-speak generalities. It was like reading a user's manual. I expected something more interesting, exciting, and useful like "Bioevolution" by Michael Fumento.



4. In these turbulent times, uncertainty regarding job opportunities and corporate stability in biotechnology creates pause for individuals seeking to contribute to this dynamic industry. Such individuals may be recent graduates or seasoned professionals with talents spanning life sciences, business development, finance, human resources and intellectual property law. Recognizing these concerns, author Toby Freedman, drawing upon her experience as an executive recruiter and interviews with over 200 industry professionals/executives, presents a comprehensive analysis of career pathways relevant to biotechnology and drug development.
   
   "Career Opportunites in Biotechnology and Drug Development" is presented in two parts. Part one focuses on landing a job in industry. In this section, strategies are presented for finding entry into biotech, preparing a functional resume and preparing for and performing in interviews. In part two, opportunities in the various sectors relevant to biotech are presented. The book is extremely easy to navigate and provides insight on virtually all contributing components of this diverse field.
   
   In addition to supporting my insights regarding corporate structure and available career pathways, this book opened my mind to areas, ancillary to my expertise, where strong and relevant contributions can be made. I highly recommend "Career Opportunities in Biotechnology and Drug Development" to both newcomers and experienced individuals desiring to participate in this exciting industry.



5. As a newcomer making a transition to industry, this book is a very useful resource. I loved this book because it gave detailed information about different career options that one can choose in an industry. It provides pros and cons of a job, a typical day and more importantly the temperament and qualities needed to get the job done well. I absolutely loved Toby Freedman's organization and attention to details. I know that I will be using this book often as a reference.

2 comments about The Organic Chemistry of Biological Pathways.

1. This book is most suitable as an organic chemistry text for biological pathway and would be valuable for undergraduate students. Each of mechanisms are well illustrated with colorful charts. To my reglet, there is no description on the nitrogen fixation. Nevertheless I recommend it as one of the valuable study-aid book.



2. This book is simply great. The scholar and very clear presentation by the authors make the subject of each chapter almost self-explanatory. The first two chapters introduce the organic reactions which are relevant in biosynthesis, stereochemistry of biological molecules and the major classes of primary metabolites. In the following chapters the authors discuss, with care and in detail, the biosynthesis of every class of primary metabolite, showing mechanisms for every single reaction. The last chapter on biosynthesis presents examples of some natural products biosynthesis (classical examples). Unfortunately, no example on the biosynthesis of phenylpropanoid derivatives is included. However, even though, the book is worth of purchase for students and teachers interested in the mechanistic aspects of primary and secondary metabolites biosynthesis.

4 comments about The Physiology and Biochemistry of Prokaryotes.

1. I used this text as a supplement for my microbial physiology class and found the explantions good, if not complete. The problem I had was that the graphic representations used to show varying processes were either very lacking, or completely absent. Most good science texts use detailed illustrations and colored ink. This text provides neither and would probably serve the more experienced bacterial physiologist as a good reference.



2. Although it seems impossible to have just one text on the huge field of microbial physiology, this book makes a very valiant effort to be just that. The details are painstakingly researched, the text is concise and clear (no fluff anywhere!), and for such a small book, the author does a masterful job of presenting a huge amount of useful information.
   
   Of course, every book has its downfalls, the main one of this book being its lack of helpful illustrations. Sometimes you just MUST HAVE some help visually to understand something (e.g. mixed acid fermentation, sporulation) and this book often didn't offer that. (Even if there WAS a figure, it was so hard to decipher that you'd be better off with nothing at all.) Also, some huge areas of microbial physiology were completely left out like bacterial stress response.
   
   Overall, not the best but not the worst. It's certainly not a waste of money, but you might want to have some sort of companion book to supply your diagrams and illustrations.



3. This is an excellent resource for biochemical pathways, relationships, and diagrams of prokaryotic physiology. The written material is particularly lucid, which is greatly appreciated. While the diagrams are simple and in black-and-white print, their reduced complexity lends clarity to the concepts illustrated. I highly recommend this book to anyone in the microbial sciences at the upper-undergraduate level and beyond.



4. As the review title suggests, I come from the old school of studying bacterial metabolism. My choice, still all these years after grad school and years of research & work, is H.W. Doelle's Bacterial Metabolism (unfortunately out of print). However, I discovered White's text while visiting the University of Oklahoma 2 years ago (the 2nd edition). The 3rd edition is an improvement with better diagrams and drawings. The collection of symbols and equations at the front of the book is very usefull with having it all in one place. However, Doelle'a approach is in some ways more stimulating with the first 2 chapters dealing with the thermodynamics, enzymology, and growth kinetics immediately. If you are weak in the areas of bacterial structures and dynamics, White gives an excellent approach to all of the cellur structures of prokaryotes. Doelle on the other hand concentrates exclusively on the actual chemistry of bacterial metabolism. Another strength of White is his introduction to solute & protein transportation. Along with this, White's final 2 chapters on adaptation and environmental stress response are very valuable additions. Without White's approach to increasing the reader's understanding the environment and its impact on the microbe, the study of metabolism is only an esoteric exercise. One of my major frustrations with White's work was the lack of extensive references of the various metabolic pathways and types with specific genus and/or species of bacteria. It is left up to the reader to find alternate sources for this application. Doelle, on the other hand, provides copious references. In the end, I believe White's work to be a central addition to the understanding and manipulation of the microbial metabolic processes. With the microbial world being "our enemy - our friend," White's work will go along way in helping us fragile humans to compete and coexist with this diverse group that co-inhabits this singular orb with us.

2 comments about Protein Stucture and Function (Primers in Biology).

1. It is great! Concise, to the point, with good illustrations, teaches you the essentials of protein structure and function in little time.



2. Generally,the book is excellent and the information is condensed in a simple language which can be understood easily. I also liked the proteins cartoons, the protein data bank number,fantastic! In additions, the book have links,words or terms defination and further references which proves to be helpful.

5 comments about The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism.

1. This book is an excellent follow up to Darwin's Black Box. Both books seek to rescue science from materialist philosophy and do an excellent job. It was interesting to read this book next to Anthony Flew's "There Is A God" (also published in 2007). Flew, a brilliant philosopher and longtime opponent of theism, has embraced the existence of God based on evidence similar to that which Behe presents for intelligent design. Behe's books have drawn the ire of the Darwinist establishment, but his arguments are well reasoned and his evidence is sound. Read his books and decide for yourself. He deserves to be read carefully and with an open mind. Written for the lay reader, anyone who remembers some of their high school biology will have little trouble benefiting from the book.



2. This book makes clear that huge population numbers must be present for even marginally beneficial mutations to occur. Behe does this primarily by following the "war" between man and malaria. The best pure Darwinian evolution has done for man is to break some human functionality in order to stymie this disease. Of course, purist evolutionists (primarily atheists) will continue to argue that random mutations are responsible for all the diversity of life that exists on our grand cosmic "mistake", which will eventually go down as the worst case of not seeing the forests through the trees in human history. Behe lays out the forest quite well, but critics will complain about a few missing or misplaced trees.



3. In the United States, the public face of the science of intelligent design (ID) is an advocacy movement to change the way evolution is taught. Michael Behe is one of the leaders of the movement because of his concept of the irreducible complexity of molecular machinery (Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution). In this latest book he distances himself from this movement to a certain extent:
   
   "...I spend the bulk of the chapters drawing on molecular evidence, genomic research, and--above all--crucial long-term studies of evolutionary changes in single-celled organisms to test Darwinism without regard to conclusions of design. ... As I will argue, mathematical probabilities and biochemical structures cannot support Darwinism's randomness, except at the margins of evolution. Still, as we seek to find the line marking the edge of randomness, there is no need to infer design." (p. 8)
   
   The organisms are malaria and the HIV virus, which have evolved defenses against man-made drugs. Despite the huge numbers of organisms and cell divisions observed, there has been no build-up of molecular machinery. Behe likens these observations to the famous experiment in 1887 proving that light propagated in a vacuum, not a luminiferous ether. The ether had to behave like a solid for electric fields and behave like a gas for planets, but it was a good theory at the time.
   
   The book makes the case against Darwinian evolution so strongly that biologist will have to come to grips with ID someway. Biology has been able to avoid the question of the evolution of the human soul because it is understood that evolution only applies to the bodies of human beings. This cannot be explicitly stated because the very concept of the "body of a human being" is an existential or metaphysical concept, not a scientific concept. The following quote by a famous authority on evolution and an outspoken secular humanist proves this point:
   
   "Catholics could believe whatever science determined about the evolution of the human body, so long as they accepted that, at some time of his choosing, God had infused the soul into such a creature. I also knew that I had no problem with this statement, for whatever my private beliefs about souls, science cannot touch such a subject and therefore cannot be threatened by any theological position on such a legitimately and intrinsically religious issue." (Stephen Jay Gould, "Nonoverlapping Magisteria," Natural History, March 1997, 13th paragraph)
   
   Gould is mistaken in calling the soul a "religious issue." That God will save our souls is a religious belief, but that we have souls is a metaphysical or existential truth. The statement that human beings do not have souls is also a metaphysical statement, not a scientific statement. (I sure Gould's "private beliefs" don't make any sense. Humans have souls because they are embodied spirits. Humans are embodied spirits because they are indefinabilities. Humans are indefinabilities because free will and conscious knowledge can't be defined. Of course, Gould may think free will is an illusion, but he knows that this point of view would make him look foolish in some circles.)
   
   However, biologists cannot continue to ignore the observations about the evolution of malaria and the complexity of multicellular life. The solution can't be to consider the possibility of a designer because this would fail to keep science separate from existentialism. But the time has come for biologist to incorporate the concept of design and William Dembski's concept of specified complexity (The Design Revolution: Answering The Toughest Questions About Intelligent Design) into their understanding of evolution.



4. This book has NO scientific merit whatsoever. I'd give it zero stars if possible, but it's not. As Behe himself admitted at the famed Dover trial, "intelligent design" has no working scientific theory to build off of, as evolution does. Intelligent design cannot be tested, ID proponents do not submit their "research" for peer review (gee, I wonder why) and no one in the actual scientific community acknowledges it as a working theory. Instead, it is merely creationism in disguise as was manifested in the Dover trial by the reading of the original draft of the book "Of Pandas and People" which showed that the new edition had switched out, multiple times, the word creation for "intelligent design."
   
   Unfortunately this book will appeal to creationists who don't understand the fact of evolution, which is sad. I would recommend reading "Only a Theory" if you're interested in understanding why ID is merely a bankrupt idea being pushed by a movement (led by Behe) that seeks to undermine the rational, empirical institution of science that has made this country great.
   
   Books like this will have the whole world laughing at the magnitude of our ignorance, which is warranted considering that America now comes out second only to backward, superstitious Turkey with a majority of people not believing in evolution.
   
   The disenlightenment is here. Be very afraid.



5. Detailed information outlining evidence against random events and therefore pro-design in the universe.
   The author demonstrates the limits of Darwinian evolution.

No comments about Biomaterials: An Introduction.

1 comments about Biomechanics: From Cells to Organisms (Cambridge Texts in Biomedical Engineering) (Cambridge Texts in Biomedical Engineering).

1. I bought this book because it had significant discounts here on Amazon and, from various previews, seemed to cover the material that my biomechanics course covered. My class uses a biomechanics book by YC Fung, but that book is far too dense and unclear; Fung often dives into topics without establishing clear reasons why.
   
   This book is well made. It covers many of the same topics that Fung covers in his book, but without the ambiguous mathematical explanations Fung uses. The math that is used here is clearly explained and justified. It goes into the level of depth that is appropriate for an undergraduate without much background in biology. Overall, it's a great book that hopefully becomes a primary textbook for biomechanics classes, and it makes a great, cheap (at least for now) supplement to any biomechanics course, especially if your course uses a YC Fung book.

No comments about Tissue Engineering (Academic Press Series in Biomedical Engineering).

5 comments about Bioprocess Engineering: Basic Concepts (2nd Edition) (Prentice Hall International Series in the Physical and Chemical Engineering Sciences).

1. im going to use this book the next semester in the univesity of puerto rico, mayaguez campus, and i need a copy of it to be sure, if this one is what I want. If you can help i'll be glad of you



2. This was the book for my introductory bioprocess engineering course. I felt it covered the quantitative areas, such as enzyme kinetics, bioreactor design, stoichiometry, etc.., quite well. However, the qualitative sections, such as DNA replication, metabolic pathways, and cell function, etc.., are explained way too quickly and lightly for someone with little or no training in Biology. Upon reading a few pages into one of these qualitative sections, you quickly find the author throwing terms at you that he never defined (to be fair, it would take an extra 100 pages to define all of these terms). Also, the text has some really unfortunate typos, typos so severe they may actually hinder your learning (subscripts change for no reason, two different constants given the same symbol, etc.) Biology folks will be happy, but ChEs with no knowledge of Biology may want to stick to the section on bioprocess engineering in Fogler.



3. This volme I have purchased yesterday from the local Book Seller. I had gone through first three chapters. Since I am teaching Biochemical Engineering to my Undergraduate and Post Graduate students for last three years, I understand this volume is very much helpful in addition to some volumes I have in this subject like, Biochemical Engineering by Humphrey, Aiba and Millis (Academic Press), Fundamentals of Biochemical Engineering by Baily & Ollis (Mc Graw Hill). However, in teaching the tutorials in this subject, an instruction manual consisting of solution of unsolved problems given at the end of each chapter of the book would be very much helpful. I have collected a such instruction manual (solutions to unsolved problems given in the Fundamentals of Biochemical Engineering)(Gift copy) from McGraw Hill Publishing Company . I hope any such volume might be available for Bioprocess Engineering by Shuler and Kargi. If so, I would appreciate for detail information and way to procure it. It will not only help the teacher but the students as well.



4. Pros: Good layout and order of material. Fairly clear in bridging theory with practice.
   Cons: Bad binding, had to replace once already. Some of the example questions are put together poorly; i.e. bad data, poor use of equations and material.
   Overall: 5 stars for effort and material, 1 star for quality and thoroughness = 3 stars overall.



5. Good overview and introduction for bioprocess engineering. However, it's not so good if you want to know more detail, but it does say it covers "basic concepts", which is what it does in a clear concise way.

5 comments about Structure Determination of Organic Compounds: Tables of Spectral Data.

1. If you are taking a class in organic spectroscopy or use NMR all the time in your lab, then this book is a must. Gives you table after table of chemical shifts for C-13 NMR, H1-NMR, IR, Mass Spec, and UV/Vis. It also comes with a very useful NMR Predictor CD.



2. This is the best organic spectroscopy book I have ever found. If you have to take any kind of organic spec class, this is definitely a must.



3. I'm taking an organic spectroscopy course for my graduate program in Organic chemistry and my exams consist of MS, IR, proton NMR, and C13 NMR spectra.
   
   This book is absolutely incredible. It gives you chemical shifts for nearly every conceivable structure for proton and C13 NMR and it also gives you absorptions for the IR frequencies of known functional groups. It has helped me many times in trying to determine the structure of an unknown compound.
   
   Like the other reviewer said, this book is the bible of organic spectroscopy. I see it being used all the time in the organic research lab when graduate students are trying to figure out what they synthesized.



4. The book was in perfect condition and was sent at time.
   I will agree that my first experience with Amazon was an excellent one.
   
   Thank you



5. this book contains a lot of information, but organized in such a way that is easy to find what you need.