Data Analysis and Graphics Using R: An Example-Based Approach, Second Edition. * John Maindonald and John Braun

A volume in the ‘Cambridge Series in Statistical and ProbabilisticMathematics’, ‘Data Analysis and Graphics UsingR’ is presented as a gentle tour guide for new R users,aiming to help them navigate through many powerful tools thatthe open source R system offers. As the authors point out inthe Preface, the book is ‘aimed at scientists who wishto do statistical analysis on their own’. Every efforthas been made to ensure the book is useful for practical dataanalysis. This book is particularly useful for researchers inthe life science realm who     

Ecological Stoichiometry: Biology of Elements from Molecules to the Biosphere.: Sterner, R. W. and Elser, J. J. (2002) Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, USA. $29.95. ISSN 0-691-07491-7.

How often do you read a book that has a large number of ‘aha!’moments in every chapter? This is a significant piece of synthesisand scholarship that brings together a very large number ofdisciplines and disparate chunks of data into a very satisfyingwhole. The book is dense, thorough and revealing—a lightand fast read it is not, but it is well worth the effort. Thetwo     

Wimsatt and the robustness family: Review of Wimsatt’s Re-engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings

This review of Wimsatt’s book “Re-engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings” focuses on analysing his use of robustness, a central theme in the book. I outline a family of three distinct conceptions of robustness that appear in the book, and look at the different roles they play. I briefly examine what underwrites robustness, and suggest that further work is needed to clarify both the structure of robustness and the relation between it various conceptions.     

Samir Okasha: Evolution and the levels of selection

The debate about the levels of selection has been one of the most controversial both in evolutionary biology and in philosophy of science. Okasha’s book makes the sort of contribution that simply will not be able to be ignored by anyone interested in this field for many years to come. However, my interest here is in highlighting some examples of how Okasha goes about discussing his material to suggest that his book is part of an increasingly interesting trend that sees scientists and philosophers coming together to build a broadened concept of “theory” through a combination of standard mathematical treatments and conceptual analyses. Given the often contentious history of the relationship between philosophy and science, such trend cannot but be welcome.     

Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Solutions Using R and Bioconductor. * Edited by Robert Gentleman, Wolfgang Huber, Vincent J. Carey, Rafael A. Irizarry and Sandrine Dudoit

This book guides through practical bioinformatics data analysisusing the Bioconductor toolkit, which is based on the statisticallanguage R. R itself is an open-source recreation of the languageS-Plus. The Bioconductor is a collection of R-packages for theanalysis of genomic and molecular biological data generatedin high-throughput experiments. High-throughput experimentsare characterized by large amounts of data generated in shortperiods of time on a sizable number of samples. This poses newchallenges to the analysis such as assessing and adjusting fornoise, exploration using cluster-analysis, visualization, andlinking to (or ‘annotating with’) biomedical knowledgebases. The book focuses on gene expression microarrays, the high-throughputtechnology for which statistical methods are best developedtoday. In addition, a     

The Igbo of Southeast Nigeria: The Same Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow?

This paper examines Uchendu’s ethnographic study entitled ‹the Igbo of Southeast Nigeria’ with a view to interrogating its relevance in explaining the Igbo of the contemporary time. Chapter by chapter examination of the book shows that although written more than four decades ago, it is still relevant in its account of the continuity and change in Igboland. For instance, although marriage in the traditional way is still the most cherished and popular, church and court marriages are acceptable. Those who can afford it can go through the three rituals. The paper notes that although phenomenal changes in population growth, infrastructure and human resources development, modern economic activities, etc., have taken place, the very essence of Igbo world view, belief system, Igbo hospitality, marriage, kinship and non-kinship networks, Igbo traditional ways in government and affinity to fatherland as captured in the book, to a large extent, still holds true of the Igbo.     

The emerald planet

The title of this slim book doesn't give too much away. Thesub-title ‘How plants changed Earth's history’ ismore informative. Immediately we understand that it is aboutplants; but these are plants as central characters in a dramathat takes place on the global stage, not cast in the more usualrole as bit-part players. However, the sub-title is also intriguingly– and deliberately – ambiguous; on the one handthis book is about the use of fossil plants as sources of evidencethat are changing our views of the earth's     

Aquatic Food Webs: An Ecosystem Approach. Edited by Belgrano A., Scharler U. M., Dunne J. and Ulanowicz R. E. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005. 272 pp. ISBN 0198564821 (hardback). {pound}85.00.

Communicating editor: K.J. Flynn This well-produced and useful book is split into three sectionscontaining in total some 15 chapters authored by a range ofexperts in their respective areas. The book starts with a section on ‘structure and function’and a chapter (Elser and Hessen) concerning the importance ofstoichiometry in food webs; this is like most of the book wellwritten. However, the relative importance of such automaticlinks in multinutrient models may be called into question consideringthe contents of subsequent chapters which point out the significanceof the development of antigrazing mechanisms (which may oftenbe associated with changes in stoichiometry in phototrophs).Chapter 2 (Melián et al.) considers spatial structureand dynamics in marine food webs; this is a brief and, to mymind, the least satisfying of the chapters. Chapter 3 (Christianet al.) looks at the     

XML for Bioinformatics * Ethan Cerami * Berlin: Springer-Verlag; * ISBN: 0-387-23028-9; 304pp.; * 2005; {pound}42.50

Not until I received this book to review, did I realize thatI had another book on my shelf, ‘Web Services Essentials’,by the same author. This was a good omen. The Essentials bookwas where I first cut my teeth on notions such as XML-RPC, SOAP,WSDLs,     

The Lakes Handbook, Volume 1. Limnology and Limnetic Ecology. Edited by O'Sullivan P. E. and Reynolds C. S. (2004) Blackwell Science, Ltd. Oxford, UK. $204.95. ISBN 0-632-04797-6.

There is a lot to like about this book. There is also some disappointment.Because the list of chapter authors was such a stunning collectionof talent, I happily volunteered to read the book for the Journalof Plankton Research. It took less time to read it than thevolume’s five year gestation, but it was not all smoothsledding through 700     

The Charms of Nature: Darwin on Meaning and Value

I review George Levine’s provocative and highly original book Darwin Loves You. Levine, whose “home discipline” is English Literature, offers a compelling interpretation of Darwin’s works, evaluating their content and Darwin’s prose style to identify a distinctly Darwinian attitude toward nature as a source of meaning and value. Levine believes that Darwin exemplifies the capacity to feel “enchantment” about the natural world, suggesting that, if Darwin’s example were followed, a “Darwinian re-enchantment of the world” would be brought about. This would offer a secular, non-supernatural basis for purpose, meaning, and value. I conclude with a few critical remarks about the scope and cogency of Levine’s proposal.     

Alberts, B., Johnson, A., Lewis, J., Raff, M., Roberts, K. and Walter, P. Molecular biology of the cell. 4th edn.

First edition, 1983; 2nd edition, 1989; 3rd edition, 1994; 4thedition, 2002. Any book that appears in so many editions insuch a relatively short space of time must be doing somethingright. And so it is, for Molecular Biology of the Cell (‘MBoC’as the authors refer to it) is arguably setting the pace—andthe standard—that other textbooks on the subject mustaspire to. Although not familiar with the previous incarnationsof MBoC, I do note that the line-up     

Mengel, K. and Kirkby, E. A. Principles of plant nutrition

That this text book is now in its fifth edition clearly showsthe strength of its content and presentation, and its relevanceto the scientific community, which should include all thoseinterested in plants and their growth. There are 20 chapters.The first is an overview of definitions and processes whichare considered in much greater depth later. Then follow substantialchapters on ‘The Soil as a Plant Nutrient Medium’,     

Lam, E., Fukuda, H., Greenberg, J., eds. Programmed cell death in higher plants

‘For everything there is a season . . . a timeto build up and a time to break down . . . a timeto live and a time to die.’ The quotation comes from the work of a Jewish scholar writingunder the pen name Ecclesiastes or The Preacher, several centuriesBC. His words capture the theme of the book under review here:that death is part of life and may be regulated by factors thatinclude time and season. Programmed cell death in higher plantsis a hardback reprint of a special edition of Plant MolecularBiology, devoted to scholarly     

New frontiers in bryology - physiology, molecular biology and functional genomics. * Wood AJ, Oliver MJ, Cove DJ, eds. 2004. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. {pound}63 (hardback). 203 pp.

This book is a collection of papersfrom the major researchers involved in physiological, molecularand genomic research on bryophytes, mainly, although not exclusively,using the moss Physcomitrella patens. This is a growing areaof research and the book aims to provide ‘... a synopsisof the outstanding basic research being conducted using mossesas a model multi-cellular eukaryote’. Bryophytes (mosses, liverworts and hornworts) are an importantand often neglected group     

Theodoropoulos, D.I. Invasion biology. Critique of a pseudoscience.

The back cover of this book states that ‘contrary to theclaims of the nativists, research shows that man-dispersed speciesincrease biological diversity, benefit ecosystems, and act asan important force for healing the planet’. This is anuncompromising statement, and David Theodoropoulos divides hisdevelopment of the arguments supporting this statement intothree parts. Part I (Chapters 1–6) is ‘Nature, Dispersaland Reaction’. Part II (Chapters 7 and 8) is ‘Why?Psychology, Politics and Pseudoscience’. Part III (Chapters9–11) is ‘Humanity and Diversity’. There isalso an ‘Introduction’ including a summary of findingsand ‘An outline for a new theory of anthropogenic dispersal’,     

Karnosky, D.F., Ceulemans, R., Scarascia-Mugnozza, G.E., Innes, J.L., (eds.) The impact of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases on forest ecosystems. IUFRO Research Series 8

This book is the eighth in a series of monographs publishedby CABI in association with the International Union of ForestryResearch Organisations (IUFRO), and is the third report of theIUFRO Task Force on Environmental Change. The report has beencompiled by an impressive array of editors, and comprises 11 chapterswritten by a total of 28 authors, drawn from a range ofrecent experimental projects in Europe     

The ecology of seeds. * Fenner M, Thompson K. 2005. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. {pound}26 (softback) {pound}55 (hardback) 260 pp.

This volume is a timely updateand considerable expansion of the small book Seed Ecology, publishedby the first author twenty years ago, and long out of print. Is it useful to separate a particular branch of study such as‘seed ecology’ from the wider field of plant ecology?Aren't seeds just a particular packaged form of the sporophyte,at a certain stage in its life cycle? While some may ask thosequestions, a major strength of this book is the care that theauthors take throughout to set their review in the context ofcurrent ecological