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     

Does nothing in evolution make sense except in the light of population genetics?

“The Origins of Genome Architecture” by Michael Lynch (2007) may not immediately sound like a book that someone interested in the philosophy of biology would grab off the shelf. But there are three important reasons why you should read this book. Firstly, if you want to understand biological evolution, you should have at least a passing familiarity with evolutionary change at the level of the genome. This is not to say that everyone interested in evolution should be a geneticist or a bioinformatician, but that a working knowledge of genetic change is an essential part of the intellectual toolkit of modern evolutionary biology, even if your primary focus is the evolution of behaviour or the diversity of communities. Secondly, this book provides excellent examples of another important tool in the biologist’s intellectual toolkit, but one that is rarely explained or illustrated to such an extent: null (or neutral) models. The role null models play in testing hypotheses in evolution is a central focus of this book. Thirdly, as an accomplished work of advocacy for a strictly microevolutionary view of evolution, this book provides grist for the mill for the important debate about whether population genetic processes are the sine qua non of evolutionary explanations.     

RobertP Vertes and RobertW Stackman Jr: Electrophysiological Recording Techniques Springer Protocols, Neuromethods Series Nr. 54

This article is a review of the book: 'Biomedical Image Processing', by Thomas M. Deserno, which is published by Springer-Verlag. Salient information that will be useful to decide whether the book is relevant to topics of interest to the reader, and whether it might be suitable as a course textbook, are presented in the review. This includes information about the book details, a summary, the suitability of the text in course and research work, the framework of the book, its specific content, and conclusions.     

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     

Finding autophagy

To tell the truth, I find it difficult to work when flying, or even when sitting in an airport for an extended period of time. So, typically I take along a book to read. And when I truly cannot concentrate, for example when a flight is considerably delayed, I have even been known to resort to word puzzles. Depending on the type, they do not require much attention (that is, you can pick up right where you left off after you glance at the flight status screen for the twentieth or so time, even though you know nothing has changed), or effort (although you need to use a pen or pencil, not a keyboard), but nonetheless they can keep your mind somewhat occupied. I even rationalize doing them based on the assumption that they are sharpening my observational/pattern-finding skills. One type of word puzzle that is particularly mindless, but for that very reason I still enjoy in the above circumstances, is a word search; you are given a grid with letters and/or numbers, and a list of “hidden” terms, and you circle them within the grid, crossing them off the list as you go along. I do admit that the categories of terms used in the typical word searches can become rather mundane (breeds of dog, types of food, words that are followed by “stone,” words associated with a famous movie star, words from a particular television show, etc.). Therefore, on one of my last seminar trips I decided to generate my own word search, using the category of autophagy.     

Modeling,simulation, and embryology

Summary A delightful book to get the whole picture of simulation applications in developmental biology and easily readable for those who would like to overlook the field in one quick sweep. If you would like to get a more detailed perspective, a great number of literature references provides this opportunity.     

Finding autophagy: It’s a question of how you look at it

To tell the truth, I find it difficult to work when flying, or even when sitting in an airport for an extended period of time. So, typically I take along a book to read. And when I truly cannot concentrate, for example when a flight is considerably delayed, I have even been known to resort to word puzzles. Depending on the type, they do not require much attention (that is, you can pick up right where you left off after you glance at the flight status screen for the twentieth or so time, even though you know nothing has changed), or effort (although you need to use a pen or pencil, not a keyboard), but nonetheless they can keep your mind somewhat occupied. I even rationalize doing them based on the assumption that they are sharpening my observational/pattern-finding skills. One type of word puzzle that is particularly mindless, but for that very reason I still enjoy in the above circumstances, is a word search; you are given a grid with letters and/or numbers, and a list of “hidden” terms, and you circle them within the grid, crossing them off the list as you go along. I do admit that the categories of terms used in the typical word searches can become rather mundane (breeds of dog, types of food, words that are followed by “stone,” words associated with a famous movie star, words from a particular television show, etc.). Therefore, on one of my last seminar trips I decided to generate my own word search, using the category of autophagy.     

The Evolution of the Genome * Edited by T. Ryan Gregory * Elsevier Academic Press, Inc., London, UK; 2005; ISBN 0-12-301463-8; 768 pp.; {pound}39.99; Hardback.

The Evolution of the Genome is an ambitious project that aimsto compress a wealth of information about all kinds of genomes,and combine this with a perspective on how genomes evolve. Itis easy for volumes such as this to fall into the trap of becominglittle more than an almanac of useful facts and figures andwhilst this is something that the editor is amply qualifiedto do, the resulting tome is in fact a surprisingly interestingread, mixing evolutionary theory and conundrums, with insightsinto some of the mechanisms of genome change. The book is split into five roughly symmetrical parts, each     

Interpretation of diagnostic data: 3. How to do it with a simple table (part B).

The following guidelines are useful if you want to "do it with a simple table" (Table IV): First, identify the sensitivity and specificity of the sign, symptom or diagnostic test you plan to use. Many are already in the literature, and subspecialists should either know them for their field or be able to track them down for you. Depending on whether you are considering a sign, a symptom or a diagnostic laboratory test, you will want to track down a clinical subspecialist, a radiologist, a pathologist and so on. Start your table with a total of 1000 patients, as shown in location (a + b + c + d) of panel A. Using the information you have about the patient before you apply the diagnostic test, estimate the patient''s pretest likelihood (prevalence or prior probability) of the target disorder -- let''s say 10%. Take this proportion of the total (100) and place it in location (a + c); the remaining 900 patients go in location (b + d) (panel B). Multiply (a + c) (100) by the sensitivity of the diagnostic test (let''s say 83%) and place the result (83) in cell a and the difference (17) in cell c; similarly, multiply (b + d) (900) by the specificity of the diagnostic test (let''s say 91%) and place the result (819) in cell d and the difference (81) in cell b (panel C). If (a + b) and (c + d) do not add up to 1000, you will know you have made a mistake. You can now calculate the positive predictive value, a/(a + b), and the negative predictive value, d/(c + d), as shown in panel D. You have now reached a level of understanding a fair bit beyond the rule-in/rule-out strategy discussed in part 1 of our series. Furthermore, you can already do more than most clinicians, so you may want to stop here, at least for a while. On the other hand, you may want to go further and learn how to handle slightly more complex tables with multiple cut-off points. In the next article you will find more powerful ways to take advantage of the degree of positivity and negativity of diagnostic test results.     

Ubiquitin in health and disease.

Studies in recent years have shown that ubiquitin has increasingly important functions in eukaryotic cells; roles which were previously not suspected in healthy and diseased cells. The interplay between molecular pathological and molecular cell biological findings has indicated that ubiquitin may be pivotal in the cell stress response in chronic degenerative and viral diseases. Furthermore, the studies have led to the notion that ubiquitination may not only serve as a signal for nonlysosomal protein degradation but may be a unifying covalent protein modification for the major intracellular protein catabolic systems; these can act to identify proteins for cytosolic proteinases or direct intact and fragmented proteins into the lysosome system for breakdown to amino acids. This unifying role could explain why ubiquitin is restricted to eukaryotic cells, which possess extensive endomembrane systems in addition to a nuclear envelope. Protein ubiquitination is a feature of most filamentous inclusions and certain other intracellular conglomerates that are found in some degenerative and viral diseases. The detection of ubiquitin-protein conjugates is not of great diagnostic importance in these diseases. Protein ubiquitination is not only essential for the normal physiological turnover of proteins but appears to have been adapted as part of an intracellular surveillance system that can be activated by altered, damaged, or foreign proteins and organelles. The purpose of this system is to isolate and eliminate these noxious structures from the cell: as a cytoprotective mechanism this appears to have evolved in the cell akin perhaps to an 'intracellular immune system'. Other heat shock proteins such as hsp 70 may be involved in this process. It is apparent that ubiquitin has a role in embryonic development. Protein ubiquitination is presumably involved in the reorganisation of cytoplasm that accompanies cell differentiation. Ubiquitin is also necessary for the gross intracellular degradative processes which are consequent upon programmed cell death. Cell elimination is of key importance for a number of developmental morphogenetic changes. An understanding of the molecular details of these processes will no doubt provide further insights into the wide ranging roles of ubiquitin in the life process. As it says in the book 'Ubiquitin'; there is no doubt that ubiquitin is a 'lucky' protein. It is lucky in many ways: lucky for scientific progress, lucky for biomedical scientists and lucky for life! If you have not already done so, why don't you get lucky and look for a role for ubiquitin in your experimental system. As Avram Hershko has said "there is plenty to go round"!     

Systematic botany of flowering plants, 2nd edn. * Spichiger R-E, Savolainen V, Figeat M, Jeanmond D. eds. 2004. * Enfield, New Hampshire: Science Publishers, Inc. $58(softback). 413 pp. plus CD-ROM.

Spichiger et al. introduce a studentwithout too much botanical knowledge to the diversity of floweringplants in this text, which is a translation from the Frenchof the second edition, published in 2002. Five brief introductorychapters lead to the main part of the book, short and well-illustratedaccounts of 113 families. There is also a glossary and an identificationkey to tropical families; a taxon index and a CD-ROM completethe book. The CD-ROM includes 350 photographs of the familiesdescribed, separate lists of medicinal and non-medicinal usesof plants     

Interpretation of diagnostic data: 4. How to do it with a more complex table.

A more complex table is especially useful when a diagnostic test produces a wide range of results and your patient''s levels are near one of the extremes. The following guidelines will be useful: Identify the several cut-off points that could be used. Fill in a complex table along the lines of Table I, showing the numbers of patients at each level who have and do not have the target disorder. Generate a simple table for each cut-off point, as in Table II, and determine the sensitivity (TP rate) and specificity (TN rate) at each of them. Select the cut-off point that makes the most sense for your patient''s test result and proceed as in parts 2 and 3 of our series. Alternatively, construct an ROC curve by plotting the TP and FP rates that attend each cut-off point. If you keep your tables and ROC curves close at hand, you will gradually accumulate a set of very useful guides. However, if you looked very hard at what was happening, you will probably have noticed that they are not very useful for patients whose test results fall in the middle zones, or for those with just one positive result of two tests; the post-test likelihood of disease in these patients lurches back and forth past 50%, depending on where the cut-off point is. We will show you how to tackle this problem in part 5 of our series. It involves some maths, but you will find that its very powerful clinical application can be achieved with a simple nomogram or with some simple calculations.     

No correlation between lunar and menstrual cycle - an early report by the french physician J. A. Murat in 1806-

Jean Arnaud Murat was a physician at the Medical School of Montpellier in France. In 1806 he published his outstanding book “De L’Influence de la Nuit sur les Maladies ou Traité des Maladies Nocturne”. In his book he concentrated on the following questions:

- Does the night has an influence on a disease?

- Are there diseases in which this is more or less obvious?

- What is the physical background of this influence?

Murat described in detail certain diseases which dominate at night and he concluded that the most evident motivation for his observations is the constant and periodic movement of the earth around its axis, resulting in a period of about 24 h, and the elliptic rotation around the sun. Most important Murat presented for the first time data that the menstrual cycle is not governed by the lunar cycle.     

G. Ledyard Stebbins, Jr. and the evolutionary synthesis (1924-1950)

This is an historical paper examining the scientific background of George Ledyard Stebbins, Jr. (b. 1906), one of the foremost botanists of this century and one of the architects of the evolutionary synthesis, the intellectual event that brought together genetics and selection theory in the interval between 1920 and 1950. It considers his scientific influence and research, beginning with his Harvard education in 1924 and ending in 1950 with the publication of his book Variation and Evolution in Plants. The paper also more broadly assesses the contributions of other botanists to the evolutionary synthesis, including discussion of the work of Edgar Anderson (1897-1967) and others. It also traces the larger historical patterns of American botany, which saw a shift from East Coast botany as exemplified by Harvard botany, to West Coast botany, as exemplified by California botany.     

Eggs and Larvae of North Sea Fishes. Edited by Munk P. and Nielsen J. G. Biofolia, Frederiksberg, Denmark, 2005, 215 pp. ISBN 87-9131-924-2. DKr375.

This is not a book designed to be read from cover to cover.It is an identification guide for 96 species of fish commonlyfound in and around the North Sea which aims at supplementingexisting books on the topic. The opening chapter offers a briefaccount of research on the early life stages of fishes, whichincludes a useful résumé of previous publicationson the     

Maclean, J.L., Dawe, D.C., Hardy, B. and Hettel, G.P. (eds) Rice almanac. 3rd edn

This book is the third in the series called Rice Almanac publishedby the International Rice Research Institute, Los Banos, Philippines.It will serve as a standard source book for the most importanteconomic activity on earth. The Almanac provides fully updatedrice production and consumption statistics from the top tenrice-producing countries, in addition to 54 other countriesfrom Afghanistan to Venezuela. The book is composed of chapterson     

Claude Bernard Distinguished Lecture. Becoming a truly helpful teacher: considerably more challenging, and potentially more fun, than merely doing business as usual

Few medical faculty members are adequately prepared for their instructional responsibilities. Our educational traditions were established before we had research-based understandings of the teaching-learning process and before brain research began informing our understandings of how humans achieve lasting learning. Yet, there are several advantages you may have. If your expertise is at one of the frontiers of human biology, your teaching can be inherently fascinating to aspiring health professionals. If your work has implications for human health, you have another potential basis for engaging future clinicians. And, thanks to Claude Bernard's influence, you likely are "process oriented," a necessary mindset for being an effective teacher. There are also challenges you may face. Your medical students will mostly become clinicians. Unless you can help them see connections between your offerings and their future work, you may not capture and sustain their interest. To be effective, teachers, like clinicians, need to be interactive, make on-the-spot decisions, and be "emotional literate." If you aren't comfortable with these demands, you may have work to do toward becoming a truly helpful teacher. Program changes may be needed. Might your program need to change 1) from being adversarial and controlling to being supportive and trust based or 2) from mainly dispensing information to mainly asking and inviting questions? In conclusion, making changes toward becoming a truly helpful teacher can bring benefits to your students while increasing your sense of satisfaction and fulfillment as a teacher. If you choose to change, be gentle with yourself, as you should be when expecting your students to make important changes.     

Review of Cognitive Therapy and Dreams.

In this article I review the book, "Cognitive Therapy and Dreams" (see record 2004-00029-000). I came across this book as I was recently searching psychological abstracts for dreams and cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and for hypnosis and CBT. Of the 9 references I found on dreams and CBT, all were in one issue of the Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy: An International Quarterly (Vol. 16, No. 1). I read a good number of the hypnosis-CBT articles and books, and all were written to integrate CBT into the field of hypnosis. Conversely, the dream articles integrating dream work and CBT were written by a range of people, some with a primary interest in dreams, but some with a more central interest in cognitive therapy. Apparently, a few cognitive-behavioral therapists and researchers have taken some interest in dream work, whereas the hypnosis interest in CBT continues mostly outside the domain of CBT. The collection of the nine articles published in the journal was an impressive enough accomplishment that eight articles of this collection plus four additional articles are now published in this book. The fact that these articles are now in a book may encourage researchers to perform the necessary therapy outcome research to validate the integration of dream work and CBT. The book adds significantly to the journal by drawing a distinction between objectivist approaches (Part II) and constructivist approaches (Part III), a distinction that unifies the articles in this book. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Whole Genome Amplification * Edited by S. Hughes and R. Lasken * Scion Publishing Ltd, Bloxham, UK; * 2005; ISBN 1-904842-07-0; 193 pp.; * Paperback.

With increasingly powerful methods of genomic analysis becomingavailable in the last few years, the availability of genomicDNA in sufficient quantities can become a limiting factor. Thisrequirement for the unlimited supply of DNA has acceleratedthe development of reliable methods of amplifying the wholegenome. This book outlines various methodologies that could be adoptedto enhance and optimise ‘Whole Genome Amplification’(WGA). Each chapter contains a concise introduction that leadsthe reader into the practical approaches of the