1 comments about Molecular Biology Techniques: An Intensive Laboratory Course.

1. Anyone who need very nice information should read it.The book provide quite day to day information to fit lab routine.It Also explain some impresive insight on future technics. Wiht out doubt I recomended.I gave it 5 star because I use it everyday at work. Lab.Gen e Molecular Biology. InCor. Brazil

1 comments about Biophysics: An Introduction.

1. it is really a well written and upto date book, with perhaps the widest coverage.

No comments about Mechanics of the Cell.

3 comments about Radiation Protection and Dosimetry: An Introduction to Health Physics.

1. This book is the coolest. Buy this book so my family can have more money, but it is a very well written, insightful book, with jokes tosses in at the right times.
   
   Check out his beard!



2. This is an excellent book for students of radiation protection and dosimetry. It provides a great overview of health physics from radioisotope decay to non-ionizing radiation. The technical content is balanced with good practical examples. I would like to recommend this book for anyone studying health physics or preparing for the certification by the American Board of Health Physics.



3. This is a much needed book. I good modern overview of what you would encounter in the field of radiation protection and dosimetry. The coverage of standards and their development is often missed in other works. Since you will spend a great deal of time referring to these standards knowing the actors and history is important. As someone in the field I would have liked to have seen a little more on international standards development. It was very refreshing to see a text where equations were defined clearly. So many physics books seem to revel in making you figure out that particulars authors flavor of equation definition.
   I have found the book to be a great general reference and starting point for those new to the field. It is actually an enjoyable read. And having a joke thrown in once and a while was great.

No comments about The UHMWPE Handbook: Ultra-High Molecular Weight Polyethylene in Total Joint Replacement.

4 comments about Psychoacoustics: Facts and Models (Springer Series in Information Sciences).

1. Eberhard Zwicker was one of the great names in psychoacoustics. This book, written with his student Hugo Fastl, is an excellent introduction to psychoacoustics, and presents a modern account with a great deal of qualitative and quantitative information. The second edition has been updated by Fastl.

   I would have liked to see more discussion of the relationships with the psychology of music, but there are now several good books available on this subject, especially a collection of essays edited by Diana Deutsch and another edited by Perry Cook.




2. Zwicker is a major name in Psychoacoustics. He references his own publications in the field well over 100 times in this book. This book is probably the most comprehensive collection of psychoacoustical information I have seen to date. As with all works, it starts with a description of sound and the human audiotory system, and then moves into how the two entities interact and how perception is modeled by this. The discussion is very technical, and he has an average of one graph per page. I do not recommend this book to anyone not interested in the details of how psychoacoustics evolve.
   It is also nice that he includes a methods section, as one would do in a technical journal. This describes how the data that he is presenting was obtained, and adds a load of credibilty to the work. Also most of the data presented is empirical, from experiments themselves. The amount of research underlying this work is huge.
   My one complaint is the pace varies a bit, but not too bad. Some parts seem fast, others seem slow. Overall however, this is a great book for technical readers. I personally found this book tremendously useful.



3. Even though it may not have been his direct intent, the (mostly) empirical information presented in Zwicker's book is essential for understanding how to integrate a customers perception of sound into the design of a consumer product (such as a washing machine or an automobile, for instance). If you are interested in the engineering field of noise and vibration, or wish to make a career out of designing for noise and vibration, this book is a MUST HAVE as a professional reference. Highly, highly recommended.



4. The book was written by "the source" for Psychoacoustics and was, as such, incredibly informative and detailed in the information provided. With that said, it read like a series of research papers (which, for all intents and purposes, is what it is) without drawing significant conclusions. The data is provided, with small inferences made about conclusions within each section. The book is provided at the graduate level of previous knowledge about physics and the functioning of inner ear. If you're looking for detailed data on Psychoacoustics, this is a tremendous book. If you're looking for an undergraduate "textbook" on psychoacoustics and what that means regarding the understanding of hearing and the microstructural anatomy of the inner ear...you may be better off with one of the other textbooks.

3 comments about Biomechanics: Motion, Flow, Stress, and Growth.

1. Fung takes a continuum mechanics approach to the principles that underly the human body. All of the ideas in the text are backed up with solid research and easy to understand equations, as well as text descriptions. Fung is also responsible for researching many of the ideas of biomechanics, and so, the text takes on a personal view not found in other books. All in all, the best book out there for introductory biomechanics, but one that you will use for the rest of your life.



2. What I would say is not a comprehensive review of what the great book talks, but just telling you a truth: if you have engineering and mathamatics background and wanna combine your background to do research in physiology, Fung's book is absolutely a must-buy. This book is profound, but it is actually rooted in nearly all fields of biomechanics research.
   It is a conclusion for biomechanics research till 1980's; also this book is a truly great reference for all current researchers who are interested in biomedical research in point of view of a mathamatician and engineer.



3. Professor Fung is considered the father of bioengineering and founder of biomechanics.
   Winner of Timoshenko and Poiseulle medals he's an Engineer that started to study physiology when his mother was diagnosed with glaucoma in 1957.
   I am trained as a Medical Doctor and Molecular Biologist but being the son of a Professor of Civil Engineering made me understand the importance that structural engineering has in Medicine and Biology.
   Now I am interested in nuclear matrix and lamins(as they are connected to aging phenomena) so I am training myself in Biomechanics, and I found that this book is the strating point.
   I recommend this book to all Structural Engineers,Biomedical Engineers, MDs and Cellular and Molecular Biologists that want to understand this field.

1 comments about Applied Biofluid Mechanics.

1. I have been teaching biomedical fluid mechanics at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology for the past 20 years and had been a little disappointed that I couldn't find a truly interdisciplinary book that combined engineering fluid mechanics with the physiological aspects of the topic. I searched for a book that contained information about topics like prosthetic heart valves, prosthetic arteries, and pulsatile flow, and was also readable by undergraduate engineering students. Biofluid Mechanics in Cardiovascular Systems was my first attempt to do those things; it sold well so McGraw-Hill asked me to write the textbook version - Applied Biofluid Mechanics.
   
   Applied Biofluid Mechanics contains two chapters that are explicitly devoted to cardiovascular and pulmonary physiology, as well as one chapter devoted to hematology (the study of blood). I used Biofluid Mechanics in Cardiovascular Systems as a textbook in my fluid mechanics course last fall, and it was well received by the students. Applied Biofluid Mechanics is a much improved textbook with review problem sets for each chapter, an on-line solutions manual, on-line photomicrographs, many more example problems, and expanded overall coverage. - Lee Waite

No comments about Physics in Biology and Medicine, Third Edition (Complementary Science).

5 comments about Biological Thermodynamics.

1. I teach a course in thermodynamics for college students in biology, as such, I thought the book could be useful, perhaps the new textbook for my course.
   Possitive things:
   * you will find real thermodynamics, biology and also historical notes in the book.
   * there are not too many books that blend biology and thermodynamics in forms acceptable to biologist and physicists, this one does.
   * it has an interesting selection of subjects

   Problems:
   * most of the time it has TOO many words, for those that like concise presentations, it is a problem. There are no evident forms to distinguish essential from accesory
   * there is a bias towards bio-chemistry that introduces some additional difficulties for people with other backgrounds

   My recommendation to the students
   Main text: Kondepudi and Prigogine. Modern Thermodynamics
   (extremely clear, concise and with historical notes but little biology)
   Second text: Biological Thermodynamics by Haynie




2. For people with little insight (but interest) in thermodynamics this book is mandatory. For me personally it has been a quick way to freshen up the concepts of thermodynamics. The book is in large parts well written with many easy to understand examples of otherwise diffucult topics.



3. As someone who has used the book during his graduate studies in biophysical chemistry (the field of biopolymer conformational dynamics), I warmly recomend this book to any student/researcher interested in learning more about this field. The book offers a solid foundation to those interested in exploring the field in greater details.



4. I found this text replete with misconceptions and mistakes. An interesting attempt, but it should have had a critical editor who knew something about thermodynamics. Clearly, this was not the case.
   
   I sought elsewhere, and I suggest you do too.



5. For neophytes to this field, like me, a more descriptive title for this book would be some jaw-breaker like "Thermal Physical Biochemistry". I'd picked the book up because I was interested in, e.g., the thermodynamic aspects of plant and animal physiology and morphology -- such as the shapes of leaves, snouts, beehives, etc. You won't find any of those subjects here, nor even any discussion of the thermodynamic differences between warm-blooded and cold-blooded animals other than a reference in a problem set. The book's scope is not really biology, but rather biochemistry. (According to an email I received from the author after posting an earlier version of this review, there is a professional society for "biological thermodynamics" that indeed focuses primarily on biochemistry. But if, like me, you're not a pro, you might be surprised to learn that the title phrase has such a narrow meaning. The author also tells me that there isn't enough material for a book about leaves, snouts, etc. at the undergraduate level; nonetheless, if that's what you're interested in, you should know it's not here.)
   
   On the plus side, the book does have some down to earth explanations of concepts like entropy and free energy. It's also good at explaining why, for example, sometimes you want to use enthalpy and other times free energy. Most thermo textbooks just rattle off various combinations of variables, state functions and partial derviative relationships, without giving you any practical feel for when you'd use one or the other. In keeping with its emphasis on clarifying basic concepts, this book avoids calculus, and actually is better for it in many places.
   
   That said, its approach is not purely thermodynamic. Thermo is based on macroscopic phenomena, even when discussing concepts like entropy. But this book's discussion of entropy is based on the statistical mechanics point of view from the get-go (even though stat mech isn't formally introduced until much later). It is not historically correct to say that "The Second Law is about the tendency of *particles* [emphasis in the original] to go from being concentrated to being spread out in space" (@60); the particle-based conception of the law followed the the law's discovery by several decades. The author's focus on particles fits in with the book's interest in chemistry. But the macroscopic point of view can give you many insights, too. (See, e.g., DeHoff's "Thermodynamics in Materials Science" for a non-biological example; ditto, in fact, for most engineering textbooks that deal with thermo.)
   
   The book doesn't have any self-contained hints or solutions to any of the exercises. (The author tells me that those interested in solutions should write to him or the publisher for a solution set. I appreciate this, and I hope that news benefits you if you read the book; but in future editions this would be more helpful if stated on a website or in a preface.) There are also rather more typos, awkward phrases and awkward analogies than one would like to see in a 2nd edition. E.g., @73 the description of protein denaturation mixes up "decreases" with "increases"; there are too many negative signs in Table 4.1; a reaction is described as "cooperative" @ 97, even though this term is never defined in the text, leaving one to be mystifed by the glossary entry for "cooperativity" ("the degree of 'concertedness' of a change in conformation or arrangement of particles in a system," @402). (The author tells me that he will try to correct some of these problems in the next printing.) An explantion of the First Law analogizing energy to money is kind of OK in the limited context (@6), but the analogy is generally misleading, since money is not a conserved quantity even in economics theory. The author also has a tiresome and fitful quirk of mentioning the occupations of the fathers of many, though not all, of the scientists he names in the text.
   
   Maybe the 3rd edition of this book will become a classic, but this edition isn't quite there yet.