Book Description

'Access to safe water is a fundamental human need and therefore a basic human right' Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary General

Edited by two world-renowned scientists in the field, The Handbook of Water and Wastewater Microbiology provides a definitive and comprehensive coverage of water and wastewater microbiology. With contributions from experts from around the world, this book gives a global perspective on the important issues faced in the provision of safe drinking water, the problems of dealing with aquatic pollution and the processes involved in wastewater management.

Starting with an introductory chapter of basic microbiological principles, The Handbook of Water and Wastewater Microbiology develops these principles further, ensuring that this is the essential text for process engineers with little microbiological experience and specialist microbiologists alike.

Comprehensive selection of reviews dealing with drinking water and aquatic pollution
Provides an understading of basic microbiology and how it is applied to engineering process solutions
Suitable for all levels of knowledge in microbiology -from those with no background to specialists who require the depth of information ... Read more

Book Description

From reviews of the First Edition: 'A landmark in the field of membrane biophysics.'--Science 'A first-class laboratoryguide...an indispensable reference.'--NeuroscienceEdited by the 1991 winners of the Nobel Prize in Physiology orMedicine, this Second Edition includes new chapters covering suchapplications as capacitance measurements; single-cell PCRmeasurements; whole-cell recording from brain slices in combinationwith imaging techniques; atomic force microscopy of cells andmembranes attached to glass pipettes; and patch clamping. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

The Patcher's Bible
Single Channel Recording is the possibly the single most useful text for the patch-clamp novice, and the text continues to be a fundamental resource for veterans. Sakmann and Neher, inventors of the technique, have compiled a book to give both theoretical background and practical advice regarding both experimental setup and data analysis. Whole-cell, single channels, and perforated patch are discussed. The practicalities of suitable patch glass, noise abatement, and capacitance cancelation are also covered. This book is a must have for all electrophysiologists. ... Read more

Book Description

The field of macrophage research has grown enormously since publication of the first edition of this book.The Macrophage 2e provides a unique comprehensive review of the current scientific knowledge of the multifaceted role of this important and intriguiging cell in health and disease. In 16 chapters by experts in the field it covers the basic biology and diverse functions of macrophages in specific diseases and the complex of interactions between macrophages and other cells.Ranging from their role in the defense against pathogens, their role as hosts for pathogens (including HIV), their complex roles in diseases such as arthritis and cancer, and their potential for use in novel gene therapy approaches to disease treatment, the book gives an up to the minute account of active macrophage research. The editors have intentionally included a broad rangeof topics that will appeal not only to immunologists and cell biologists but will also be of interest to those working in the specific disease areas covered. ... Read more

Book Description

A comprehensive user-friendly introduction to biostatistics and epidemiology applied to medicine, clinical practice, and research. Features “Presenting Problems” (case studies) drawn from studies published in the medical literature, end-of-chapter, and a CD-ROM with data sets and statistical software programs. ... Read more

Reviews (8)

Pretty Good
I actually thought this book was pretty good.I haven't used the cd.The definitions are pretty clear.I use this in conjunction with Gordis' Epidemiology for quick review.I find Rothman and Greenland is not good for that.When I am thinking about research design and elements of statistical analysis this book is easy to turn to to just go over why one test may be better than another--I am a medical student with an MPH in epi who has worked on several research projects, and I think this book is pretty helpful as a simple aid in the transition from research assistant to co-investigator.

not buythis good-for-nothingbook(MUCH LESS THAN1 STAR)
If Ihadanenemy,Iwouldn'twish evenfor ananemyto buythisawfuland unusefulbook.Dosave your money. There is no any benefit in thisbook,just simple wasteoftime and money. Theauthorshave provided CD with NCSS and PASS, but forgot to describe how the reader can use this programand fulfil allcalculation. Theygive only the instruction to set up andalot of taskswithout any explanationof any actionsin these program.So, I curse any minutes of myreading, and cannot sayany good word about the book, its authors. NEVER BUY THISBOOK!!!!

Avoid it if you can
Its obvious from reading the first few chapters that the authors lack a basic understanding of the subject. For example they talk of Odds Ratio as if it was same as Relative Risk. The good thing is that they cover everything - you only have to be careful while reading it. The errata in the book is pretty obvious but the authors seem to have no time or inclination to update the website of this book.

Book Review for the 2nd edition:,
A hard plus if your looking for pregrad. introductory clinical biostatistics. However I agree with other reviews that the layout or format could be arranged more powerfully, and the mechanics explained with more and better examples with a little more detail. Some of the examples in the book are excellent. I, especially, liked the Methods for Analyzing Survival. I disliked the explanations on statististical power as well as calculating sample populations necessary (n=?)to obtain clinical significance. This book is a good bone to start knawing on, however, the meat is found in other supplemental texts; therefore, reference footnotes are needed which- nowadays- should include, reference books, journals and webpages.

Book Review for the 3rd edition: Just the Facts
1. Huge breadth: covers topics of interest to clinicians and plenty of material (see below) for aspiring researchers. Algorithms and lay-out keeps the big picture easily in view. 2. Solved problems: methodical answers, clear, instructive.3. Appropriate depth: is mathematically correct -- not oversimiplified at the cost of accuracy -- while introducing the key formulas and concepts. Much explanatory text makes the ideas clear rather than esoteric derivations. 4. Includes statistics software: menu-driven so "user friendly," has basic and advanced functions. 5. Practical approach: sample problems and exercises are modelled around cases rather than just theory. These cases have data-base directly on the accompanying software so readers may 'learn' and then 'do' immediately. 6. I learned a lot from this book :-) ... Read more

Book Description

Experiments are the plot that holds the story of biology together. ASKING ABOUT LIFE uses the process of experimentation to describe the scientific process and to illustrate the personal and professional motives that drive scientists to work so hard at asking and answering questions. In this important revision, the authors continue to use thought-provoking chapter-opening stories to engage students in the process of science. At the same time, they focus on making the text more accessible through streamlined coverage (100 fewer pages in this edition) and a refined organization and design. New features make it easier for students to remember the main ideas. For example, Key Questions begin each chapter, main headings are numbered to make it easier for students to locate previously read information, and Chapter Summaries are organized around Key Questions. All these features provide consistency throughout each chapter. Student support is also a main focus. A student CD-ROM, BiologyNow, packaged FREE with each copy of the text includes questions created around the text's opening stories and uses diagnostic pre-tests to generate a personalized learning plan for each student. Students also receive FREE access to InfoTrac® College Edition, an online university library with articles from 5,000 periodicals. vMentor, a FREE online live tutoring service rounds this powerful student supplements package.For instructors, a Multimedia Manager provides all the text art in PowerPoint® form, as well as a great Instructor's Guide, an Electronic Test Bank, and WebTutor course management options. Instructors will receive CNN clips in the multimedia manager but the full set of CNN® Today video clips (294 in all) is available to adopters as well. Updated throughout, the Third Edition captures the terrific excitement of current 21st century science and is accompanied by powerful new learning tools that expand the text's themes. ... Read more

Book Description

Written by a team of distinguished authors led by Lewis Wolpert one of the most influential developmental biologists of this century, this is a new and revised edition of the best-selling and popular textbook Principles of Development. It is designed for undergraduates and emphasizes principles and key concepts. Central to the authors' approach is the idea that understanding how genes control cell behavior is the key to understanding development. They assume that students are familiar with the basics of cell biology and genetics but provide thorough explanations of all key concepts in the text, like the control of gene activity. Instead of covering every aspect of developmental biology, the authors focus on those systems that best illuminate common principles. The theme of their book is that universal principles govern the process of development. The text also focuses on vertebrates and Drosophila, but without excluding other systems, such as the nematode and the sea urchin. Another important feature of the book is the inclusion of the development of plants--usually neglected in other textbooks--which has unique and important features. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

CAUTION: not a good intro to development
I am currently using this text for my 300 level developmental biology class. You know the saying, "a picture is worth a thousand words", well, this book is a thousand words without the pictures. It is very cumbersome to read. You know there is a problem when a book makes more sense when read in reverse. I am being very serious. FOr example, the author will be overly vague in introducing a topic, but still use specific terms without any prior introdution. Vital details necessary to understanding the text are given when needed. Throughout, terms are used before definitions are given, which makes the reader go nuts trying to figure out the meanings of more than half of the sentences.
Seriously, i do not understand the "excellent" reviews that others have given it.
I think it may be true that this book is VERY Comprehensive, but as far as clarity, theres none for students trying to understand the basics and a little more. If you are a professor, and know the material, then this book is probably a pleasure to read.
If you are like me, and just want to have a thorough understanding of the basics of developement, it would be in your best interest to look elsewhere.

An Excellent Textbook
Wolpert's developmental biology textbook is evidently an excellent text in its field. The authors are all well recognized in thier research areas. The organization of the text is also very well written. The summary of the concept presented at the end of each chapter is helpful. The figures presented througout the text are clear and the language used to explain them is simple but very understandable. Compared with the well-known Gilbert's text, this text may be less in dept but you can get the concept from this book for only half of the time reading Gilbert's. It is a nice book to have both for the new beginner in the field and for just a quick reference.

Greatest revolution of text in development
@I read this book for 2 months. Chapters of regeneration is more impressive than any other chapters.Moreover, I impressed that this bppk is best for beginners and students. Composition is also excellent. ... Read more

Book Description

A new edition of the classic handbook that has become a standard in the Drosophila field. The book is expanded to include topics in which classical genetic strategies have been augmented with new molecular tools. Included are such new techniques as homologous recombination, RNAi, new mapping techniques, and new mosaic marking techniques. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

The Bible of the Fly Pusher!!!!!
A really must-have!!!
The basics, the tips,
all for manipulating drosophila at the beginning and even later.
Here you'll find a lot of informations about balancers, recombinations, how to do crosses, markers, etc...
A very good introduction to the drosophila world!

A "must" for all fly pushers
The contents in this book are well upto the point. This book saved my skin when i first joned a fly lab. It taught me all the basics i need to know to work on Drosophila. It is been 2 years since i first read it but even today for every little doubt i have on flies, I first go back to this book to see if I got my concepts right. It is an excellent book for all fly geneticists, be it amateurs or professionals for all aspects on fly pushing. Actually i give this book 6 stars out of 5. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Its just a bunch of equations
Ok, I understand that this is an engineering book and it is going to have plenty of equations and whatnot, but it really does a poor job of placing the equations in a tangible context.

I really respect how ambitious this book is in covering models for a variety of transport phenomena, but despite my more than solid foundation in biology, physics, chemistry, and math, I have to read each chapter 3 or 4 times to be able to finally fit the new material in with the big picture. This is really frustrating. The only reason why I gave this book 3 stars and not 2 is because I realize that this type of material is difficult to "write down." It just seems like there must be something out there that does a better job of it.

Great Introduction to Biological Transport Concepts
I used this book for an introductory course in Physiological Transport Phenomena. The book is great in that the author covers most of the transport processes as they apply to biological systems and provide numerous references and useful physical property data. Its nice to see how traditional transport concepts can be applied to problems for a system which everyone of us is very familiar with, namely the human body. The only criticism is that the book does not cover heat transfer and its applications to physiological systems. Luckily my professor provided handouts and supplimental material to the lecture. One of the books he used was the fairly old text by Cooney, "Biomedical Engineering Principles: An introduction to Fluid, Heat and Mass Transport Processes". I think this book is out of print but seems to have great information contained in it as well.

This book is a definite must have for any biomedical engineering student and possibly even experienced people working in the field.

Must for Chemical Engineers
Biomedical Engineering requires chemical engineering principles in several areas. This book highlights on those in particular and is a must for chemical engineers who want to know what their challanges are going to be in such biomedical engineering research areas. This also is a primer for the subject, although from a chemical engineering point of view. Ideal for a Bioengineering/Biomedical Engineering course in any chemical/ environmetal engineering department. ... Read more

Book Description

You'll start with the basics, including analysis of variance and the t test, then advance to a multiple comparison testing, contingency tables, regression, and more.Examples from the current literature illustrate key concepts throughout.
New:
* More on multiple comparison testing, including the Holm test
* Discussion of relative risks and odds ratios
* Updated examples from the literature ... Read more

Reviews (7)

Lots of mistakes in this book
The concept of this book is good-cut to the chase and give lots of relevent examples. However, the book has innumerable typos which can make it very dificult to follow the text. Some sections are just incomprehensible such as the section on power calculations for the chi square test. Most of the exercises at the end of the chapter are heavy on arithmetic and light on conceptual issues. Often the answers to the exercises are wrong. All these typos are really unacceptable for a fifth edition. I am at Amazon looking for another text to keep as a reference. By way of disclaimer, I am taking the author's course on introductory biostatistics and am doing average.

Not a good biostats textbook
I adopted this book last year for my first year grad level course in biostatistics (for MS Biology students) and my students and I were very unhappy with it. It presents ANOVA in a very unusual (and confusing) way, and it's not easy to find the needed formulas buried in the text. The authors present some tests well (ex. Tukey) and make a very good point about the misuse of the standard error of the mean. The examples and end of the chapter problems are very good for medical applications; however, several of the problems refer to non-existent tables or problems (or ones that are numbered differently) and several provide answers that are just plain wrong! We compiled a list of errors we found and emailed both the first author and the publisher and never received a reply. It was definitely not worth the aggravation! This year we are using Biostatistics: The Bare Essentials. It, too, is flawed, but the students report that finding the appropriate formulas and examples is relatively easy. It doesn't provide enough problems for each chapter to test you knowledge, and the humor is a bit bizarre, but it is a better teaching text.

Cuts through the goop - how to DO statistics!!!
After buying and reading a number of crummy statistics books I stumbled across this one which is a lifesaver I will keep FOREVER. Clearly written and very hands-on. THIS is the book if you need to DO statistical analysis RIGHT NOW - and know what it MEANS.

I should add that I'm an engineer, not a biologist or physician, but the techniques and information are suitably general for ANYONE who needs statistics to do their work.

Outstanding text
Truly one of the best bio-statistics books available. Should be required reading for all physicians!

Y2K Compliance
Not so much a review, but a question: Is the software for the 3rd and/or 4th edition Y2K compliant? ... Read more

Book Description

Human Anatomy Update, Third Edition uses a functional approach to explain how the shape and composition of the anatomical structures allow them to perform their functions. This gives readers the framework they need to assimilate anatomical concepts and apply them to new situations. The book is distinguished by an art program that brilliantly illuminates the complexities of human anatomy, and a writing style that is clear, informal, and accessible. For this edition, a comprehensive media supplements package has been crafted with the same careful attention to accuracy and teaching effectiveness found in the book.For college instructors and students, or anyone interested in human anatomy. ... Read more

Book Description

This book describes how cells work.It challenges the current wisdom of cell function, and presents a new, simpler approach to fundamental processes such as movement, transport, division, and communication, based on sound physical principles.The book is profusely illustrated with many color figures.It is written for the non-expert in an accessible, often humorous style. ... Read more

Reviews (15)

Changed My View of Science
During my senior year of bioengineering at ASU, one of my instructors recommended that I read this book. I went on Amazon and purchased a copy. Tragically, I let it sit on my shelf for almost six months without reading it. About a year ago, I picked it up and read it, expecting it to be a labor-intensive read. It was not. Instead, in very simple terms and using simple yet convincing examples, Pollack managed to challenge everything I ever learned in school in two days (It only took two days because I found myself reading this book every chance I got; I coult not put it down).

Challenging even many of the basic tenets of cellular biology-- from even the existance of selective ion channels in the fluid mosaic model of the cell wall to blowing the lid off of what every student is taught in school about the way muscle cells contract--Pollack writes a book that has been and will continue to be challenging, because it challenges the premises of the life-long work of many scientists.

While I'm sure that some of his critiques of the beliefs of the faith of cellular biology today will prove to be wrong, Pollack is not afraid of the challenge or the community backlash against him. I applaud the work. I recommend it as required reading for just about everybody: the writing style makes it accessible for even high school students, but it is not too plebian to challenge even a professor or researcher in the area.
-Jacob

Cells, Gels and the Engines of Life
Cells, Gels and the Engines of Life written by Gerald H Pollack is a well-written book the challenges the accepted dogma of cellular biology.

You have to read this book with an open mind as some of the information given the reader is contraversial, as the emphasis of the author's narrative is the gel-like nature of the cell. The author makes his point and builds upon this feature as we read and explore the underlying mechanisms within the cell itself. Contraction, division, transport are just a few of the mechanisms brought to light in this book... could these mechanisms be much simpler than envisioned.

I found the book to be very readable with illustrations to explain the text and complicated principles. The author makes an impressive and convincing argument with his gel theory mechanism... this book shakes the foundation from which cell biology has been built upon. This book has a detective flavor to it keeping the reader engaged as the story unfolds.

This book requires the reader to have some knowledge of chemistry and biology to understand the underlying principles, but it is not out of the realm of a layperson who has scientific knowledge. To some up this book in a single word... provocative.

A Must Read
Pollack's book is extremely insightful, although sometimes controversial. It looks at cell biology from a unique viewpoint. After reading this book, I have re-evaluated many established concepts in cell biology with new understanding and perspective. This is a must read for any serious student or researcher in the field of cell biology. I highly recommend this book.

a good book
I like this book very much. I wish I had this book as supplement reading when I took my cell biology. This book provides an alternative view and provokes many questions in modern cell biology. I highly recommend this book to senior undergraduate students and graduate students

Complete nonsense!
This is an absurd rehash of Gilbert Ling's interesting (at the time, the 1960's) theories that have been fundamentally and completely tested and found wanting. Do not waste your money or time on this vanity publication. If you want to understand contemporary cell physiology, go elsewhere. ... Read more

Book Description

The application of computational methods to DNA and protein science is a new and exciting development in biology. Bioinformatics: Sequence and Genome Analysis is a comprehensive introduction to this emerging field of study. The book has many unique and valuable features:

It is written for any biologist who wants to understand methods of sequence and structure analysis and how the necessary computer programs work

Sequence alignment, structure prediction, phylogenetic and gene prediction, database searching, and genome analysis are clearly explained and amply illustrated

Underlying algorithms and assumptions are clearly explained for the non-specialist

Examples are presented in simple numerical terms rather than complex formulas and notation

Theoretical underpinnings are linked to biological problems and their solutions

Extensive tables provide descriptions and Web sources for a broad range of publicly available software

Based on the author's extensive experience as a molecular geneticist and bioinformaticist at the University of Arizona, this is a uniquely educational book, ideal as a laboratory reference for investigators and also as teaching reference for graduate and undergraduate students studying this fast-changing discipline. ... Read more

Reviews (14)

good for computational biologist
If you are a biologist and just want to know some background information of how to apply bioinformatics to your research, do not read this book. My recommendation for you is "developing bioinformatics computer skills" and some other books like that.
If you are a student or scientist who study bioinformatics, this book is an excellent book and really worthy to read. This books gives very detailed information on algorithm to help us understand how the software such as BLAST and FASTA are designed. The illustrations are easy to understand compared with other books I have read, especially for the statistics part of any algorithm.
One weak point is that the book focus on nucleic acid sequence analysis while talk little about protein.

Horrible. A lot better books should be available nowadays
In short, the author does not have enough writing skill to write this text book.

I purchased this book a while ago. At that time, the book was really difficult to read. I thought that it is because I do not have enough knowledge to understand the material. So I stopped reading this book and studied bioinformatics by other means.

After gaining enough knowledge in bioinformatics, I re-opened this book, and it is funny to find that I still have the same amount of difficulty in understanding what the author wrote about topics that I have already built good understanding. Reading this book will only deteriorate one's understanding.

Several years ago, only just a few books were available on the market, so one needed to purchase this book. These days, there are lots of varieties to choose, and any choice is likely to be better than this book.

Horrible
While this book may, and I stress the word may, contain useful information, it is so badly written that it is incomprehensible. Dr. Mount seems to believe that ten words are better than one, making "Bioinformatics" very tedious to read. After awhile I felt like I was reading a Victorian novel.
Despite being wordy, the explanations are too brief and not clear. If you don't know what he is talking about before hand, you will never understand what he is explaining. He uses an excess of words, and rarely provides a clear, concise example of what he is referring to (or if he does it is in another chapter in the book).
It also appears that the book was never edited. For example, when trying to define "ortholog" and "homolog," he writes two opposing definitions for ortholog and none for homolog. Clearly this is a mistake and Dr. Mount accidentally used the word ortholog twice while meaning to use ortholog once and homolog the other time (pg 56). While it can be argued that this mistake is unimportant and the reader can look up the definitions, it makes me wonder what else in the book is wrong that I have no way of detecting (until I waste a bunch of time doing something incorrectly).

Strong foundation builder
This book will give you very strong foundations in
the basics of computation in the bio world. Though
this book does not give details of the computation
methods, it does give a very clear picture of math-
ematics and the science involved.

This book has a good coverage of FASTA and
BLAST. (Though a little bit short)

The programming techniques coverd are bare. Though
concepts like searching sequences using dynamic p-
rogramming are covered, you are better off reading
something like Proteome Research by wilkins et al.

I am yet to find a good book that deals only with
the technical and programming aspects of bio informatics
if you do find some thing interesting lemme know.

On the whole this book helped me understand a lot
about sequencing, alignment and prediction. The illustrations
and pictures provided are good and the text to the point.

If you are reading this review pls understand that I am
primarily a programmer trying to get into the
bio informatics business. I do not have any schooling
or degree or even experience in the bio informatics world.

Hope this helps

Santy

whatever
Decent qualitative overview. Some discussions of algorithms are so superficial that they are misleading. Slick presentation. Used at Stanford's intro to methods course - a good recommendation.

So far, the best there is for a survey course - but for depth and accuracy in sequence analysis algorithms, go to Durbin et al or Gussfield. ... Read more

Book Description

The 1986 publication of Manipulating the Mouse Embryo catalyzed the interaction between molecular biology and mammalian embryology. For the first time, detailed instructions on how to begin applying recombinant DNA technology to important questions about mammalian embryonic development were made available to a broad audience. The gathering pace of such studies in recent years has brought improvements to existing methods and fueled the creation of new and powerful technologies. The second edition of this classic manual has been completely revised and expanded to incorporate these advances. It contains new sections on the production and analysis of transgenic mice, the manipulation of preimplantation embryos to generate chimeras, the culture and manipulation of embryonic stem cells, including gene "knockouts," and techniques for visualizing genes, gene products, and specific cell types. As before, included with the protocols is a summary of current understanding of mouse development at a molecular level. In its new edition, this manual of proven distinction is again an authoritative and comprehensive source of technical guidance for experienced investigators and an essential resource for newcomers to mammalian genetics and embryology.

Please see the companion videos to this manual:

-Transgenic Techniques in Mice
-Targeted Mutagenesis in Mice ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Manipulating the Mouse Embryo
This book is essential for all who work in the transgenic and knockout mouse industry. Everything you need to know to begin, maintain, and analyze your transgenic or knockout facility is in this book. I have not required any other refernces to run my facility or perform my experiments. The books cover topics such as setting up the mouse colony, to microinjecting, to in situ hybridization, to preparing any solutions you made need. ... Read more

Book Description

The field of environmental microbiology encompasses aspects of several areas of study including microbial ecology, molecular genetics, and environmental science. Environmental Microbiology is the first book to offer a comprehensive discussion of this field as a discipline, which the authors define as the study of microbial fate and activity in air, water, and soil, and the resulting impact on human health and welfare. While the roots of environmental microbiology can be traced to sanitary engineering (water and wastewater treatment), the field has grown to include other practical issues such as bioremediation, the control of known and emerging waterborne pathogens, microbial risk assessment, and environmental biotechnology. Five general areas are emphasized in this text: (i) Foundation chapters, (ii) microbial environments, (iii) detection of microbial activity, (iv) the impact of microbial activity on the environment in terms of nutrient cycling and pollutant fate, and (v) detection and control of pathogens in the environment. Designed for courses at senior undergraduate and graduate levels, Environmental Microbiology will also serve as an essential reference for environmental microbiologists, microbial ecologists, and environmental engineers, as well as those interested in epidemiology, water and wastewater treatment, and biotechnology.

Key Features
Among the Highlights of this state-of-the-art Textbook:
* Includes foundation chapters for background in biological and earth sciences
* Covers emerging areas such as transport of microbes and DNA, microbial risk assessment, and use of molecular detection in environmental applications
* References key or landmark works without interrupting the flow of text
* Describes the newest analytical and molecular methodologies
* Contains many detailed, full-color graphics to make the text visually stimulating
* Presents numerous "case studies" to emphasize relevance to real-life situations
* Provides study questions at the end of each chapter ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Just mediocre.
I was anxious to receive this book, since it was praised as one of the best books available in the area of environmental microbiology. After reading through the pages, I just couldn't agree with this statement.
Here are some of the good points of this book: It's written in a fairly easy to understand language and provides a lot of pictures and graphs to illustrate important concepts.
Here are the bad points: It summarizes a lot and leaves out a lot of details and information. Whoever buys this book better know something about biochemistry and microbiology already. The graphs and pictures are sometimes ridiculous and of poor quality, almost like they were done at a home PC.
The book would be best for somebody who is a hobby environmentalist that wants to expand his/her knowledge, or undergraduate students of biology who want to explore the environmental aspect of microbiology out of curiosity. If you are serious about environmental microbiology and really want to get into it on a more professional level, I suggest the "Manual of Environmental Microbiology" 2nd edition, published by the American Society for Microbiology. It's a little more expensive, but worth every penny!

Environmental Microbiology
This is one of the most detailed, interesting, well illustrated books in microbiology that I have ever read. It gets right to the information that someone working in the environmental field needs, all in one place. No more digging around through multiple sources and hunting the internet for the latest information - its all here. ... Read more

Book Description

Using an exceptionally clear writing style, minimal scientific jargon, and vivid photos and drawings, this book provides a comprehensive view of the rich diversity and complexity of insects and their influence upon the ecosystem.The Arthropod Plan. The Insect Externally. The Insect Internally. Development and Specialization. Ecology. Behavior. From Solitary to Social. Parasitism by Insects. Predation by Insects. Insects, Plants, Livestock, Domestic Animals, and Humans. Insect Pest Management. Household Insects. Classification. Making an Insect Collection.For anyone interested in insects. ... Read more

Book Description

Advances in computers and biotechnology have had an immense impact on the biomedical fields, with broad consequences for humanity. Correspondingly, new areas of probability and statistics are being developed specifically to meet the needs of this area. There is now a necessity for a text that introduces probability and statistics in the bioinformatics context. This book also describes some of the main statistical applications in the field, including BLAST, gene finding, and evolutionary inference, much of which has not yet been summarized in an introductory textbook format. This book grew out of a need to teach bioinformatics to graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania. At the same time however, it is organized to appeal to a wider audience. In particular it should appeal to any biologist or computer scientist who wants to know more about the statistical methods of the field, as well as to a trained statistician who wishes to become involved in bioinformatics. The earlier chapters introduce the concepts of probability and statistics at an elementary level, and will be accessible to students who have only had introductory calculus and linear algebra. Later chapters are immediately accessible to the trained statistician. Only a basic understanding of biological concepts is assumed, and all concepts are explained when used or can be understood from the context. Several chapters contain material independent of that in other chapters, so that the reader interested in certain areas can proceed directly to those areas.

Warren Ewens is Professor of Biology at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of two books, Population Genetics and Mathematical Population Genetics, and has served on the editorial boards of Theoretical Population Biology, GENETICS, Proceeding of the Royal Society B and SIAM Journal in Mathematical Biology. He was recently awarded the Gold Medal of the Australian Statistical Society and elected as Fellow of the Royal Society. His research interests are in evolutionary population genetics, linkage analysis for human diseases, and bioinformatics.

Gregory Grant is a bioinformatics researcher at the University of Pennsylvania in the Computational Biology and Informatics Laboratory (CBIL), where he has been since 1998. In 1995 he received a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Maryland and in 1999 a Masters in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests are in bioinformatics in general and in particular in the statistical analysis of gene expression data and significance testing methods for IBD-mapping. ... Read more

Reviews (5)

Disappointing overview
This book is a tremendous disappointment, given other Amazon reviews and the impressive Table of Contents. I picked several topics about which I know something: Likelihoods, P-values, bootstraps. I would have had NO idea about either of these subjects based on the poor delivery in this book. Topics are not well introduced, there are virtually no examples, and the introduction/discussion of most topics is wordy and not informative.

A topic such as the two-sample t-statistic is scattered throughout the book, with the main part not even cited in the index!

Unfortunately there are not a lot of books in the field of Statistics in Bioinformatics. However, I would recommend "The Elements of Statistical Learning" (Hastie et al.) for classifiers etc (Duda and Hart's classic is also good). I would recommend "Biostatistical Analysis" by Zar for a general coverage, and Terry Speed's "stat Labs: Mathematical Statistics ..." which is not comprehensive but has good lab examples with associated statistical analysis.

Pretty good overview
This book is a timely introduction to the mathematical statistics used in computational biology and bioinformatics. The authors have done a superb job in the overview of a subject that students of biology and bioinformatics can rely on for study and for reference. The mathematics is done at an advanced undergraduate level, but the authors are pragmatic in their approach, and interlace the discussion with biological applications immediately after the appropriate mathematical background has been developed. It thus seems appropriate to discuss the quality of the presentation with these applications in mind.

Chapter one begins, appropriately, with an introduction to probability theory, with a consideration of discrete probability distributions of one variable beginning the chapter. The Bernoulli, binomial, uniform, geometric, generalized geometric, and Poisson distributions are discussed. The authors point out the use of geometric-like distributions in the BLAST application. The also caution the reader as to the difference between the mean and the average of a random variable. They then move on to consider continuous distributions, discussing briefly the uniform, Normal, exponential, gamma, and beta distributions. Moment-generating functions are also introduced, and they prove a "convexity" theorem for these functions that is important in the BLAST application. The authors also introduce the relative entropy and generalized support statistics, the later also being used in BLAST.

The next chapter is an overview of probability theory in many random variables. The results in chapter one are discussed in this context, and the authors give an interesting application to the sequencing of EST libraries. The authors also point out that the variance of the maximum of a collection random variables is finite as the number of variables increases, a fact that is used quite often in bioinformatics. Transformations of random variables are also discussed, with the goal of showing how these can be used to find the density function of a single random variable, this also being important in BLAST.

The most important subject of the book begins in chapter 3, wherein the authors introduce statistical inference. They begin with a very brief discussion of the differences between the frequentist and Bayesian approaches to statistical inference and then move on to classical hypothesis testing and nonparametric tests. This chapter is of great value to those readers, for example biologists/would-be bioinformaticists who are approaching statistics for the first time.

Chapter 4 introduces concepts that are of upmost importance in probabilistic computational biology, namely Markov chains. The discussion in this chapter sets up the strategies used in the next chapter on analyzing a single DNA sequence and a latter chapter on hidden Markov models. Shotgun sequencing is discussed as a tool to determine the an actual DNA sequence, and the authors discuss the probabilistic issues that arise in the reconstruction of long DNA sequences from shorter sequences. Missing in this chapter is a mathematical analysis of the advantages/disadvantages between shotgun and whole genome sequencing strategies.

Chapter 6 then generalizes the analysis of chapter 5 to multiple DNA and protein sequences. It is here that one begins to talk about alignments between sequences, which bring about some very subtle mathematical problems in computational biology. The computational complexity of the (global) alignment problem entails the use of softer techniques, such as dynamic programming, which is discussed in this chapter. The (local) alignment problem is also discussed in some detail, using the linear gap model. The alignment problem and the issues with scoring for protein sequences are also discussed in detail. The reader first encounters the famous PAM and BLOSUM matrices in this chapter. The authors do not discuss any connections with the protein folding problem, unfortunately.

The next chapter introduces the basic probability theory behind the BLAST algorithm, namely random walks. They do so with emphasis on moment generating functions, which might be a little abstract for the biologist reader.

The authors return to tatistical estimation and hypothesis testing in chapter 8, with maximum liklihood and fixed sample size tests discussed in some detail. Again connecting with the BLAST algorithm, the sequential probability ratio test is treated.

The authors finally get down to the BLAST algorithm in chapter 9, using an older version of the software (1.4). The connection of the algorithm with random walks and how to assign scores is immediately apparent, as is the ability of BLAST to do database queries against a chosen sequence. The algorithm is compared with the sequential analysis discussed in the last chapter.

The authors return to Markov chains in chapter 10, and give some numerical examples. In addition, they treat the important topic of Markov chain Monte Carlo via the Hastings-Metropolis algorithm, Gibbs sampling, and simulated annealing. An application of simulated annealing to the double digest problem is described. The authors also spend a litte time discussing continuous-time Markov chains.

Hidden Markov models are finally discussed in chapter 11. These have been the most effective tools in sequence analysis and the authors give a nice overview of their construction and properties in this chapter. The Pfam package is discussed as a software implementation of HMMs for determining protein domains. Unfortunately, they do not discuss the excellent package HMMER for implementing HMMs in sequence analysis.

Chapter 12 discusses computationally intensive methods in classical inference. One of these methods, the bootstrap procedure, which is used for large sample sizes, is described. Used to estimate confidence intervals in situations where there is not enough information to employ classical methods, the authors detail a method using quantiles to estimate the confidence interval for the standard deviation of the expression intensity of a gene. This is followed by a return to the multiple testing problem of chapter 3 in the context of the data analysis of expression arrays.

I did not read the last two chapters on evolutionary models and phylogenetic tree estimation so I will omit their review.

guide into the right direction
This is one of the books I have been waiting for. For a population geneticist who wants to learn bioinformatics, most texts are unacceptable: They present heuristic methods in a cookbook fashion, with little reference to what is going on biologically as well as mathematically.

This book is the first exception I know of. It builds, and rests on, solid foundations of genetic stochastic processes and still goes all the way to real-life problems. Let me illustrate this by means of an example, rather than enumerating all the topics in the book.

Chap. 14, entitled `phylogenetic tree estimation' (as opposed to the more common term `phylogenetic tree reconstruction' - not without reason, I presume) builds on, and is firmly interlaced with, Chap. 13 about `evolutionary models', which systematizes the zoo (if not jungle) of substitution models in both discrete and continuous time. On this basis, the overview of tree-building methods makes a lot of sense. Even better, it does not stop here, but presents an application (to real sequence data), followed by a careful analysis of where the various methods agree, and where - and maybe why - they disagree. This way, it clears away some common misconceptions; in particular, it presents a careful analysis of what bootstrap does and what it does not in this context. The chapter closes with a discussion of unresolved problems (like inhomogeneity of substitution rates), and methods and possible pitfalls related to testing of nested and non-nested hypotheses in tree estimation.

The book is written in an informal style without being imprecise, which makes it pleasant reading. It is particularly suitable for teaching at a high level. This is enhanced by realistic (and even real-life) examples that furnish the text, as well as carefully chosen exercises at the end of each chapter.

Certainly, this first edition of `Statistical Methods in Bioinformatics' cannot be the last word in this fast-moving field. But it is an excellent guide into the `right' direction.

poor delivery but potentially useful
The book is written for practicing statisticians who gave a good command of mathematical aspects of statistics. It presents classical topics in statistics (such as statistical inference, random variables and estimation theory) in a flavor of the author's impressions about bioinformatics. It is an excellent idea to present statistics that way. However I also feel that the authors failed to clearly distinguish statistical theory from its specific implementations. Departure from the typical definition-theorem-proof style of mathematical texts is hard on mathematically literate readers for whom this book was written in the first place. It is painful to try to find needed definitions and provable statements in the text even if formulas are numbered. In addition melanges of rigorous theorems with implementations of their consequences make parts of the book devoted to DNA sequence analysis difficult to read.

The authors appear not to have much personal experience with sequence analysis and their exposition seems to be dominated by suggestions from not very honest or objective colleagues. At least that much can be inferred from the list of references given at the end of the book and the content of sequence-analysis-oriented chapters 5, 6 and section 11.3 of chapter 11. On the other hand, chapters 9 (about BLAST statistics), 13 (about evolutionary models), and 14 (about phylogenetic trees) are excellent. Every practicing bioinformatician should read them as a required reading before doing anything with BLAST or with construction of evolutionary trees.

Chapter 12 about computationally intensive methods is also very well written. However, the authors fail to notify the reader that many of the methods (such as bootstrap) have a really bad reputation among researchers involved in sequence analysis. Perhaps at least one sentence of warning (with references) could be in order.

In summary: The book is a mixed blessing but I would recommend it to statisticians who desire to do some work in bioinformatics. I also believe that chapters 9, 13 and 14 should be read by all practicing bioinformaticians.

great book on hot new topic
This topic should be of prime interest to statisticians. The authors are mathematical biologists and they bring out the theory and methodology in probability and statistics that is applicable to DNA and protein sequencing and matching. They provide a treatment of probability, stochastic processes and statistics that starts with the very basics and builds up.

Topics include basic probability and statistical inference, Poisson processes and Markov chains, DNA sequencing, hidden Markov models, computer intensive methods, evolutionary models and phylogenetic tree estimation.

Of particular interest to me is the material on permutation methods and the bootstrap. The bootstrap has been applied in phylogenetics and there has been some controversy about its application there. The authors cover this in Chapter 14 where they appear to have a resolution for the controversy.

Permutation tests are first discussed in Chapter 3 "A Introduction to Statistical Inferrence" and are compared with other computer intensive methods in Chapter 12. In Section 12.3 they discuss the Behrens-Fisher problem pointing out why permutation tests are not possible due to the unequal variances. They give the bootstrap t solution. Section 12.2.2 gives a brief, but nicely described, account of bootstrap estimation and confidence intervals and provides a number of references including the following books: Efron and Tibshirani (1993), Davison and Hinkley (1997), Efron (1982), Hall (1992), Manly (1997), Sprent (1998) and Chernick (1999). Bootstrap and permutation approaches to multiple testing are covered in Section 12.4. ... Read more

Book Description

The generation of mutant mice raises many questions about the best means of phenotypic analysis, breeding, and maintenance. The answers are now available from two experts with a wealth of detailed knowledge never previously assembled in one volume. Informal and highly practical, this handbook provides step–by–step methods for troubleshooting experiments, from the basics of gene targeting through the analysis of postnatal effects. ... Read more

Book Description

Charles Darwin's health improved substantially in 1866 under a dietary and exercise regime prescribed by his physician Henry Bence Jones. With renewed vigour, he worked steadily on his manuscript of Variation of Plants and Animals under Domestication, submitting all but the final chapter to his publisher in December. He also worked on the fourth, and much revised, edition of Origin which was delivered to printers in July, and preparations were begun for a third German edition of Origin.His improved health allowed him a more active social life. At Down, Darwin entertained a number of scientific colleagues whom he had known previously only through correspondence. He also made his first appearance in London scientific society in many years, touring the Zoological Gardens at Regent's Park, and appearing at a soirée at the Royal Society. ... Read more