Molecular & Cell Biology For Dummies


Rene Fester Kratz - 2009
    You discover how fundamental principles and concepts relate to everyday life. Plus, you get plenty of study tips to improve your grades and score higher on exams! Explore the world of the cell — take a tour inside the structure and function of cells and see how viruses attack and destroy them Understand the stuff of life (molecules) — get up to speed on the structure of atoms, types of bonds, carbohydrates, proteins, DNA, RNA, and lipids Watch as cells function and reproduce — see how cells communicate, obtain matter and energy, and copy themselves for growth, repair, and reproduction Make sense of genetics — learn how parental cells organize their DNA during sexual reproduction and how scientists can predict inheritance patterns Decode a cell's underlying programming — examine how DNA is read by cells, how it determines the traits of organisms, and how it's regulated by the cell Harness the power of DNA — discover how scientists use molecular biology to explore genomes and solve current world problems Open the book and find: Easy-to-follow explanations of key topics The life of a cell — what it needs to survive and reproduce Why molecules are so vital to cells Rules that govern cell behavior Laws of thermodynamics and cellular work The principles of Mendelian genetics Useful Web sites Important events in the development of DNA technology Ten great ways to improve your biology grade

Animal Behavior: An Evolutionary Approach


John Alcock - 1975
    Notable is the inclusion, for the first time, of four-colour photographs and illustrations throughout. Like previous editions, the book shows how evolutionary biologists analyze all aspects of behaviour.

On Call: A Doctor's Days and Nights in Residency


Emily R. Transue - 2004
    Having studied at Yale and Dartmouth, Dr. Emily Transue arrives in Seattle to start her internship in Internal Medicine just after graduating from medical school. This series of loosely interconnected scenes from the author's medical training concludes her residency three years later.During her first week as a student on the medical wards, Dr. Transue watched someone come into the emergency room in cardiac arrest and die. Nothing like this had ever happened to her before-it was a long way from books and labs. So she began to record her experiences as she gained confidence putting her book knowledge to work.The stories focus on the patients Dr. Transue encountered in the hospital, ER and clinic; some are funny and others tragic. They range in scope from brief interactions in the clinic to prolonged relationships during hospitalization. There is a man newly diagnosed with lung cancer who is lyrical about his life on a sunny island far away, and a woman, just released from a breathing machine after nearly dying, who sits up and demands a cup of coffee.Though the book has a great deal of medical content, the focus is more on the stories of the patients' lives and illnesses and the relationships that developed between the patients and the author, and the way both parties grew in the course of these experiences.Along the way, the book describes the life of a resident physician and reflects on the way the medical system treats both its patients and doctors. On Call provides a window into the experience of patients at critical junctures in life and into the author's own experience as a new member of the medical profession.

The Invention of Surgery: A History of Modern Medicine: From the Renaissance to the Implant Revolution


David Schneider - 2020
    David Schneider’s The Invention of Surgery is an in-depth biography of the practice that has leapt forward over the centuries from the dangerous guesswork of ancient Greek physicians through the world-changing “implant revolution” of the twentieth century.The Invention of Surgery explains this dramatic progress and highlights the personalities of the discipline's most dynamic historical figures. It links together the lives of the pioneering scientists who first understood what causes disease, how organs become infected or cancerous, and how surgery could powerfully intercede in people’s lives, and then shows how the rise of surgery intersected with many of the greatest medical breakthroughs of the last century, including the evolution of medical education, the transformation of the hospital from a place of dying to a habitation of healing, the development of antibiotics, and the rise of transistors and polymer science.And as Schneider argues, surgery has not finished transforming; new technologies are constantly reinventing both the practice of surgery and the nature of the objects we are permanently implanting in our bodies. Schneider considers these latest developments, asking “What’s next?” and analyzing how our conception of surgery has changed alongside our evolving ideas of medicine, technology, and our bodies.

Chinese Herbal Medicine: Materia Medica


Dan Bensky - 1990
    It provides a wealth of new information- more than twice the content of the previous edition- and practical insight into more than 530 of the most commonly used herbs in the Chinese pharmacopoeia. Drawing from a wide range of sources, both classical and modern, this edition provides unparalleled perspective and detail that goes far beyond what is available elsewhere to the Western practitioner. Herbs are grouped in chapters by function, with expanded summaries and tables for contrast and comparison. Each herb is identified by is pharmaceutical, pinyin, botanical, and family names, as well as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and English common names. Key characteristics are provided at the beginning of each entry, along with dosage, properties, channels entered, and relevant cautions and contraindications. This provides a quick overview of essential information. Actions and indications are integrated with important combinations that illustrate the range of an herb's functions, with references to appropriate formulas. This presents a more three-dimensional picture of how each herb is actually used. Expanded commentary offers in-depth analysis and places each herb in its clinical context through rich historical references. The mechanisms of action underlying important combinations, and comparisons with similar herbs, provide a broader context for understanding how the herb can be used with optimal effect. A section devoted to nomenclature and preparation describes the most important methods of processing and preparing each herb, and the advantages of each method. It also provides information about other commonly-used names and historical background.

The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2013


Siddhartha Mukherjee - 2013
    Pulitzer Prize–winning author Siddhartha Mukherjee, a leading cancer physician and researcher, selects the year’s top science and nature writing from journalists who dive into their fields with curiosity and passion, delivering must-read articles from a wide array of fields.

Goodman & Gilman's the Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics


Laurence L. Brunton - 2005
    Updated to reflect all critical new developments in drug action and drug-disease interaction. This is the desert island book of all medical pharmacology - if you can own just one pharmacology book, this is it.

Understanding Nutrition


Ellie Whitney - 1962
    UNDERSTANDING NUTRITION is at the forefront of the latest advances in human nutrition-helping you understand what the scientific facts tell us about human nutrition and health. Ellie Whitney and Sharon Rady Rolfes begin with the basics-an introduction to the nutrients; and then guide you through every important topic covered in today's nutrition courses. Linked chapter by chapter to the CengageNOW, a new online resource that provides you with PERSONALIZED STUDY tools, Thomson Audio Study Products, animations that clarify complex processes, and much more, this Eleventh Edition of UNDERSTANDING NUTRITION features everything you need to keep on top of this quickly evolving field.

The Breakthrough: Immunotherapy and the Race to Cure Cancer


Charles Graeber - 2018
    Four years in the writing, The Breakthrough is an "exciting read" about the discoveries which received the 2018 Nobel Prize winning discoveries in October, and a dramatic and exciting turning point in our relationship with a disease that has for too long defined us.For decades, scientists have puzzled over one of medicine's most confounding mysteries: Why doesn't our immune system recognize and fight cancer the way it does other diseases, like the common cold?As it turns out, the answer to that question can be traced to a series of tricks that cancer has developed to turn off normal immune responses-tricks that scientists have only recently discovered and learned to defeat. The result is what many are calling cancer's "penicillin moment," a revolutionary discovery in our understanding of cancer and how to beat it.In THE BREAKTHROUGH, Graeber guides readers through the revolutionary scientific research bringing immunotherapy out of the realm of the miraculous and into the forefront of twenty-first-century medical science. As advances in the fields of cancer research and the human immune system continue to fuel a therapeutic arms race among biotech and pharmaceutical research centers around the world, the next step-harnessing the wealth of new information to create modern and more effective patient therapies-is unfolding at an unprecedented pace, rapidly redefining our relationship with this all-too-human disease.Groundbreaking, riveting, and expertly told, THE BREAKTHROUGH is the story of the game-changing scientific discoveries that unleash our natural ability to recognize and defeat cancer, as told through the experiences of the patients, physicians, and cancer immunotherapy researchers who are on the front lines. This is the incredible true story of the race to find a cure, a dispatch from the life-changing world of modern oncological science, and a brave new chapter in medical history

Understanding Health Policy: A Clinical Approach


Thomas Bodenheimer - 2012
    "Understanding Health Policy, 6e" makes otherwise difficult concepts easy to understand so you can make better decisions, improve outcomes, and enact positive change on a daily basis.Features:Coverage of structure, organization, and financing of the health care systemKey principles, descriptions, and concrete examples are skillfully interwoven in each chapter to make important issues interesting and understandableClinical vignettes clarify difficult concepts and demonstrate how they apply to real-world situationsComprehensive list of review questions reinforce what you have learnedUnderstanding Health Policy, 6e will help you develop a clearer, more systematic way of thinking about health care in the United States, its problems, and the alternatives for managing and solving these problems."

The Ultimate Guide to Choosing a Medical Specialty


Brian S. Freeman - 2003
    Readers will find an inside look at the issues surrounding medical specialty selection, blending firsthand knowledge with useful facts and statistics. The author includes invaluable insights from his personal experience, candid reports from current residents, and a wealth of research. This unique resource is divided into two sections, the first of which delves into the art of choosing the right specialty and covers personality assessment, considerations for women and couples who are matching, specialty overviews, and the ins and outs of the residency application and match process. The second section comprises 19 chapters, each written by a resident in a particular specialty. These chapters include: The Inside Scoop revealing specialty lifestyles, training requirements, and predominant personality types.

Runner's World the Runner's Body: How the Latest Exercise Science Can Help You Run Stronger, Longer, and Faster


Ross Tucker - 2009
    Leading the charge is a fresh generation of brilliant young exercise physiologists including Ross Tucker and Jonathan Dugas, whose work has demolished many long-standing beliefs about running. Now Tucker and Dugas, whose blog, Science of Sport, has already created a devoted readership, join with esteemed fitness author Matt Fitzgerald to provide a captivating tour of the human body from the runner's perspective.Focusing on how runners at all levels can improve their health and performance, Runner's World The Runner's Body offers in a friendly, accessible tone, the newest, most surprising, and most helpful scientific discoveries about every aspect of the sport--from how best to nourish the runner's body to safe and legal ways to increase oxygen delivery to the muscles. Full of surprising facts, practical sidebars, and graphical elements, The Runner's Body is a must-have resource for anyone who wants to become a better--and healthier--runner.

The Illustrious Dead: The Terrifying Story of How Typhus Killed Napoleon's Greatest Army


Stephan Talty - 2009
    Forty-five million called him emperor, and he commanded a nation that was the richest, most cultured, and advanced on earth. No army could stand against his impeccably trained, brilliantly led forces, and his continued sweep across Europe seemed inevitable. Early that year, bolstered by his successes, Napoleon turned his attentions toward Moscow, helming the largest invasion in human history. Surely, Tsar Alexander’s outnumbered troops would crumble against this mighty force. But another powerful and ancient enemy awaited Napoleon’s men in the Russian steppes. Virulent and swift, this microscopic foe would bring the emperor to his knees. Even as the Russians retreated before him in disarray, Napoleon found his army disappearing, his frantic doctors powerless to explain what had struck down a hundred thousand soldiers. The emperor’s vaunted military brilliance suddenly seemed useless, and when the Russians put their own occupied capital to the torch, the campaign became a desperate race through the frozen landscape as troops continued to die by the thousands. Through it all, with tragic heroism, Napoleon’s disease-ravaged, freezing, starving men somehow rallied, again and again, to cries of “Vive l’Empereur!”Yet Talty’s sweeping tale takes us far beyond the doomed heroics and bloody clashes of the battlefield. The Illustrious Dead delves deep into the origins of the pathogen that finally ended the mighty emperor’s dreams of world conquest and exposes this “war plague’s” hidden role throughout history. A tale of two unstoppable forces meeting on the road to Moscow in an epic clash of killer microbe and peerless army, The Illustrious Dead is a historical whodunit in which a million lives hang in the balance.

Chemistry: An Introduction to General, Organic, and Biological Chemistry


Karen C. Timberlake - 1976
    Now in it's tenth edition, this text makes chemistry exciting to students by showing them why important concepts are relevant to their lives and future careers.

I Wasn't Strong Like This When I Started Out: True Stories of Becoming a Nurse


Lee Gutkind - 2013
    Here, nurses remember their first “sticks,” first births, and first deaths, and reflect on what gets them though long, demanding shifts, and keeps them in the profession. The stories reveal many voices from nurses at different stages of their careers: One nurse-in-training longs to be trusted with more “important” procedures, while another questions her ability to care for nursing home residents. An efficient young emergency room nurse finds his life and career irrevocably changed by a car accident. A nurse practitioner wonders whether she has violated professional boundaries in her care for a homeless man with AIDS, and a home care case manager is the sole attendee at a funeral for one of her patients. What connects these stories is the passion and strength of the writers, who struggle against burnout and bureaucracy to serve their patients with skill, empathy, and strength.