No comments about Physical Chemistry for the Life Sciences.

2 comments about Principles of Proteomics (Advanced Text Series).

1. This is a very good introduction and general review of the field of proteomics. It is excellent for those with little or no experience in the field. Because of the rapid changes occurring in this new science it does not include review of many of the useful software tools that have been developed.



2. The illustrations were the best I have seen for a text explaining this subject. There are not alot of books about proteomics out there, but this is a must have for the introduction to this wonderful yet esoteric field. If you have no previous knowledge of biochemistry this book will be a very tough read. Enjoy.

5 comments about Principles of Physical Biochemistry (2nd Edition).

1. THIS BOOK IS A PIECE OF CRAP AND A WASTE OF TIME TO FIGURE OUT. I WOULD SUGGEST READING STUFF OFF THE INTERNET AND READING JOURNALS RATHER THAN WASTE TIME WITH THIS PIECE OF TOILET PAPER. I AM GONNA FLUNK THE CLASS CUZ OF THIS PEICE OF CRAP BOOK.

   DONT BUY THIS BOOK!!!!!!!!!!!

   AAAHHHHH!!!!




2. I am a chem major at Duke University and we used this book in my biophysical chem class. The book is all around horrible. It doesn't introduce topics at all- just jumps right in and assumes an depth knowledge about chemistry, physics, biology. There are no sample problems worked out at all, and even though some answers are in the back of the text it's hard to know how they arrived at the answer without any examples to look at. The book is dense and difficult to read, and other books like Cantor and Schimmel are much more readable and helpful. This book presents all the topics, but still left me confused and not understanding the topics indepth enough.



3. The book offers a comprehensive review on biophysical chemistry with an emphasis on practice, although the book may not be clear for readers without good background...



4. This book was assigned as the main text in my undergraduate structural biology course. I'm not sure what the professors expected; this book does not introduce material so much as it delivers a mathematical review of each of the concepts presented (thermodynamics, structure determination, and spectroscopic techniques).
   
   Although I'm only an undergrad, I'm not sure how useful the book would be to more knowledgeable grad students. Chapters refer readers to equations found earlier in the book, making nonsequential reading a pain. Figures presenting data are taken from journal articles and their captions do a poor job of relating the data to the many equations in the text. Two professors in the course (in which different techniques were taught by different professors) commented that they found the sections of the book relating to their techniques (NMR and x-ray crystallography) confusing and poorly written.
   
   I got through the class by shelving the book and heading to the library for better written text books.
   
   If you're looking for a good introduction with a bit of math, I recommend checking out Physical Chemistry for the Life Sciences by Peter Atkins, Julio de Paula. It's not as advanced, but it'll clarify Principles of Physical Biochemistry quite a bit.



5. I'm a grad student in Physical Chemistry and from my point of view a great book! I can see how many students can rate this book as negative without the proper preperation. As a matter of fact most grad. Chem(organic, inorganic, analytical....) majors found this book and course to be very difficult. Lets face it Physical Chemistry and all of its sub-disciplanes ARE mathematical. To really appreiciate this book you need to be comfortable with single & multivariabe calculus, differential equations(basic understanding of seperation of varible, understanding how the solutions are applicable to the D.E.), basic linear algebra, and basic concepts of vectors. It's not that the math is difficult but you have to be comfortable with it. In addition, you need two semesters of undergaduate P.Chem. With this preperation this book makes perfect sense! It's geared more 4 grad. students or advanced undergrads. So if your in theoretical or physical chemistry, or any other physical science this is ur book. If you dont enjoy physics and its application to chemical systems stay away but definately an addition to ur library. Cant say enough.

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.

5 comments about Physical Chemistry: Principles and Applications in Biological Sciences (4th Edition).

1. When I received it, OH MY GOD, it had DETAILED ANSWERS to every single problem in the book. Whats more, my physical chemistry course had questions from the book on its test, and all I did was memorize the solutions and got an A+. I can't believe it!
   
   I even corrected my professor on a few problems; my professor didn't even know there was a solutions manual and I wasn't about to tell him there was.
   
   All in all, I just wanted to post my awesome experience. It was a great help. Just like in Physics, Chemistry, or biology, a solutions manual can only augment your skills. Plus it wasn't too long, about 100 pages.
   
   Also, the other reviewer who said the solutions manual was bad must've bought another edition (older one), because the solutions manual I received had ALL THE SOLUTIONS to ALL THE PROBLEMS in COMPLETELY WORKED OUT form.



2. Hello mates,
   
   I don't write any reviews, but when I got my first physical chemistry test back to day, I just had to write this out. THIS BOOK WAS IN THE COLLECTIBLE SECTION OF THE NEW AND USED SECTION. All my test had were questions from the book, and some that were very much like the book (only changed numbers). I procrastinated to study as usual, and all I did was study the solutions manual, and I was the ONLY STUDENT TO GET AN A+. THE ONLY ONE IN THE CLASS. My professor asked me to become a tutor, and now I'm getting paid.
   
   All in all, physical chemistry is tough, BUT you WILL GET AN A with the solutions manual! You have my word, and my experience to prove it.



3. Hi everyone, I just got my exam score emailed to me from Physical Chemistry (the one with some calculus involved). Guess what? I got a 96%. The class average was 45%. The professor told me my exam had the highest score ever in this class.
   
   I found that all the test had were problems from the book. I remember procrastinating and not getting any studying done. So the night before the exam, I just memorized all the solutions, and I got a 96%.
   
   The professor told me to get an A in the class, all I need to do is get above a D on the next 2 exams. Man, what a relief. My friends envy me, my professor worships me, and I owe it all to this solutions manual.
   
   I was at first skeptical about its price, but it was worth so much more. Can you put a price on getting an A? Can you? Can you really? Its going to be alot more than $120, which was how much I paid for the well-needed solutions manual.
   
   I just hope too many students don't get the manual, because then professors might figure out that there is a solutions manual (my professor has NO IDEA THIS BOOK HAS A SOLUTIONS MANUAL!).
   
   So if you do end up getting the manual, just use it for yourself, don't even show your friends or bring it to class. Just use it on your own, memorize the solutions, get your A+ in the class, tell all your friends and your professor that you just studied VERY HARD, and leave it at that.
   
   The less the number of people that know about this solutions manual, the better. Also, since this was my first time using amazon.com, make sure that when you add the item to your card, the description should say "SOLUTIONS MANUAL." I bought it from the collectible section, and in the description it said that it was the "complete solutions manual."
   
   Good luck in mastering physical chemistry;I won't need luck, I got the solutions manual!



4. The text is poorly written and hard to understand. The solution manual is even worse!! The authors do not explain which equations they're using or where the numbers are coming from.



5. I never got the book. It is a good thing I emailed and requested it wasn't sent because I was pretty much forgotten about. The book was out of stock, but no one thought to mention that to me, even though I paid. To their credit however, after contacting them I got a full refund that I received promptly

5 comments about Medical Instrumentation: Application and Design.

1. This book is very good about medical devices and application



2. Explains dynamic characteristics of circuits very well. It has a ton of information - which can be too much. If you are just starting out in a course on instrumentation, I would recommend, "Principles of Bioinstrumentation" by Normann. His book is much simpler. Ideally, you should get both,..., it depends what level you are at (as a 4th year bioengineering student, I preferred the simple version...)



3. As a coursebook, I found 'Medical Instrumentation' to be a sound survey of electrical medical diagnostic instrumentation. The book does review electrical therapeutic medical instrumentation; however, it's coverage is not as thorough.

   This is an excellent resource for engineers planning to specialize in medical device design.

   A good understanding of physiology is necessary to fully utilize the Medical Instrumentation text. If you have little medical background, I recommend Review of Medical Physiology (by William Ganong) as a companion.




4. This book is not the best as a textbook. Might be useful as a refresher or reference, but that's not what I had to use it for. It is wordy and is sometimes too detailed and sometimes not enough. It has no consistency, thanks to numerous authors. Also, the material is often outdated. Time to look for a different book.



5. The book scans through many topics related to Bomedical Instrumentation. It gives you just a general idea of what this is about, but if you want to get serious details about anything mentioned, you will need a second source for everything, as nothing is explained or treated in enough detail. Wikipedia is more informative than this book for many of the topics.
   For example, the chapter about operational amplifiers is just a useless list of what the amps can do, but nothing really useful and complete on how to use them. The chapter about biopotentials is a bit better, though incomplete. The description of electrodes is incomplete. You just get a huge list of articles you should read to really learn something out of your time and effort.
   For the amount of topics it pretends to cover and the thin detail offererd, this book seems like a big table of contents to me, not a reference at all. I don't know of a better book on Biomed Instrumentation, though. I should write one =)

5 comments about Essentials of Writing Biomedical Research Papers.

1. Very good book for beginners and experienced researchers! I haven't come across any other book that actually describes how you should write a biomedical paper. The only critique is that the examples used are too technical for non-biomedical researchers, this makes it hard to understand the examples. But even if you do not have a biomedical background you will learn a lot from this book.



2. My close friend who is one of the nicest person I ever met, recommended me this book. Upon opening the first chapter, I already know that this book is amazing. My writing improves a lot. If you are an international student like me, you might also have hard time on writing as well. I guaranteed that this book is really invaluable.



3. we used this book as part of a class i was taking. i am so glad that the professor picked this one out!
   the beginning of the book gives you the building blocks, and the later chapters help you put it all together. i realized that a lot of people who help you with proofreading don't really look for some of the organizational items that the author stresses.
   i reccommend this book for any graduate student, as well as anyone else who is looking to improve their writing. it might also be a good tool for mentors to use to work with their students.



4. A good book for beginers, clear and easy to read.



5. This is an outstanding book on how to improve the writing of biomedical research papers. It is well organized, well presented and extremely helpful.
   
   I bought several writing books at the same time and this one stands out because not only is it a "how-to" book, but it is a workbook and mostly consists of exercises. There is plenty of space in the book to do the exercises right in the book. This is extremely important, because you can read about the rules for improving your writing, but you really don't learn how to use them until you practice rewriting actual sentences.
   
   Significantly, this book has dramatically improved my ability to edit my own papers, which has been one of my nagging writing weaknesses.

5 comments about Understanding Molecular Simulation (Computational Science Series, Vol 1).

1. This book is how I bootstrapped my way into being a molecular simulationist. Anyone who can program in some language can get started writing simple routines for the basic MD and MC simulations.

   I do Monte Carlo simulations at Princeton, and found this book to be the most helpful available for getting my research started. It is my most common reference, and is used extensively in writing background information for various research documents.

   However, after you have written your first few codes, you will pass the level of this book and need to move on. I use it less now than I did my first year.

   Every student in my group (Panagiotopoulos) has this book I think. And like me, they started with it, but moved on.




2. Its an excellent book for those who are just beginners in MC & MD simulations. everything is very clearly explained with lot of examples and some related unsolved problems. the text explores this topic indetails with advanced chapters in later sections. Good for anybody int hsi field be it in materials science, physics or related fields.



3. There is a very strong bias to MC methods in the book. What they have to say about Molecular Dynamics methods is not really new, most of it is virtually copied from the classic by Allan/Tildesley, and many MD techniques which they consider "advanced" (such as cell list methods, verlet tables, etc.) are shifted to one of the many appendices. They do not talk about ghostparticles for instance or give a detailed account of parallelized algorithms which is really state-of-the art today.
   The code examples for download for the exercises, contain subtle errors, are not optimized for performance (which is THE most important thing in simulation business) and worst of all, are written in Fortran. The fact that they publish Fortran code must reflect the fact that at the time they learned how to program a computer there was no C, C++, JAVA, etc. and no object orientation in sight. Nowadays, probably no expert in programming would start a scientific and readable code in fortran. Also their definition of an algorithm is simply technically wrong. The authors are very sloppy here, have obviously no training in theoretical computer science and are obviously no experts for writing optimal code.
   Scientifically, as far as physics is concerned, the book is sound, they give good arguments pro and against certain methods, but when you have already worked with Allan/Tildesley or Rappaport for many years you have the eery impression that they simply repeat many arguments from these books or from other research articles (They keep citing Allan/Tildesley a lot) Those things that are not more or less copied from other sources seems to reflect their own experience in this field which seems to be strongly limited to MC methods.
   Although this book is sometimes praised I cannot really recommend it. Allan/Tildesley, and in particular the book by Rappaport are superior in stlye and in particluar as code examples are concerned. With Rappaport you get working code right away in proper C (albeit in Fortran-Style C -- again, the reason for this being the fact, that all these authors of Simulation books learned programming probably in the late 70's when Fortran was state-of-the-art). I nevertheless would recommend Rappaports book instead. The authors even offer scientific workshops based on their book (and probably make a lot of money with that). One can only hope that those are better than the coding examples of the exercises. Therefore only 2 stars.



4. I was especially delighted about the Monte Carlo methods and the free energy calculation techniques.



5. This book is goof for studying molecular. For beginner, this book is easy to understand how to do.

3 comments about Analysis, Synthesis, and Design of Chemical Processes (2nd Edition) (Prentice Hall International Series in the Physical and Chemical Engineering Sciences).

1. I really like how they focused on Hysys which is what is mostly used in industry. This is a great book for undergrads and grad taking designs in chemical engineering.



2. Item received as described. Took much longer than expected. Seller didn't notify me that there would be a two week delay until I contacted them and waited several days for a response.



3. It's a very helpful book for getting a real and useful information about the common tasks and activities in the engineering design

4 comments about Separation Process Engineering (2nd Edition).

1. Factors effecting liquid-liquid extraction. Different organic materials used in extraction of radionuclides especially crown ether



2. I'm only 3 chapters into this book and the number of mistakes in it is appalling. The author consistently refers to the wrong equations, messes up derivations of essential equations (the operating line, for one), and is not very well written, either. It also is almost entirely about distillation.
   
   I will not be looking forward to the rest of the semester with this book.



3. An abomination. Clarified nothing. Obfuscated everything. Poorly illustrated. Sent me running to the library for alternate sources.



4. If you really need to learn distillation, liquid-liquid extraction and other equilibrium-staged separations this is the book. Clear, straight and concise. Small printing mistakes can be easily overcome.