genetics books

	Orthopedic/Neurology Words and Phrases: Orthopedics, Neurology, Neurosurgery, Neuroradiology, Podiatry, Rehabilitation, Rheumatology/Genetics, Chiropractic
	By: Health Professions Institute ISBN: 0934385033 Publisher: Health Professions Institute Release Date: 15 March, 2000 Bioscience book rank: 152197	This product is disappointing. It is limited in words when compared to Stedman's books. This book combines several specialties and although in theory a good idea to cut down on cost, in reality not very practical if the words are not part of the text. Different books on the dfferent areas of practice are better.
	Survival of the Thinnest: How to Use Your Genetic Script to Stay Thin Without Dieting
	By: David Hariton ISBN: 187938454X Publisher: Cypress House Release Date: 01 June, 2004 Bioscience book rank: 581613	As a physician and a former athlete, I have been advocating much of what is presented in this book for a long time. Diet will get you nowhere. I don't have patients who seriously exercise (regardless of what they eat) with chronic health problems. <br />This book is snappy, smart, and (most importantly) short. In a fairly successful manner, it not only describes the steps one must take, but it explains why. <br />The only thing missing is the rationale for why 30 minutes is the magic number. I also believe the benefits of weight training are underrepresented here. <br />I will be purchasing a copy of this book for many of my friends who constantly ask me about different diets/pills/miracle weight loss. It'll be a great xmas present. <br />Now if I could actually get them to do it... Three weeks into this program, I have to admit: this works! I am a forty-year-old mom who had been yo-yo dieting and binge-eating for four years, struggling to lose the last five pounds of pregnancy weight-gain. Before, I was always one of those thin people who ate whatever I wanted without a thought about the amount of food I was eating. Now, incredibly, the pounds are coming off, and I am eating whatever I want. No more dieting. No more bingeing. By just working out aerobically for 30 minutes a day and eating only when I feel hungry, I am making my body slim down because my body thinks I need to work like this to survive. I was skeptical at first, and even fearful of losing control over my eating, but this book gave me a good dose of science and helped me take a leap of faith in my body's biology. This book explains how it is. I am immensely grateful for this book. Thank you, Mr. Hariton. Anyone who really wants to end the agony of yo-yo dieting should get and read this book. Just try the program for three weeks, and you'll be glad you did. <br /> <br />Update on earlier review (above): It's been two months since I gave this book a rave review for having changed my life and body for the better after only three weeks on the plan. I am back to report that, yes, this plan really, really works. The results amaze me: In less than three months I have lost seven pounds, down to my pre-pregnancy weight, and I have lost 3/4 inch off my hips, down to my pre-pregnancy measurement. And I have done this just by stationary-bicycling or speed-walking for 30 minutes a day and by eating whatever I feel like whenever I am hungry. Believe me, I eat whatever and howevermuch I want -- I even overeat at times (for example, during the recent Christmas holidays!). It's just that often I find I am not all that hungry. According to Hariton's theory, this would be because the daily 30-minute workout makes my body think that it needs to work hard physically for survival and cannot afford to carry any excess weight. <br /> <br />To be thin again now, while eating whatever I want, just as when I was younger -- this is so weird, and so wonderful! Goodness, I owe so much to this one, little gem of a book. To everyone who struggles with a weight prblem, I say this: please give this plan a sincere try. Buy this book, or just borrow it from the public library, but give it -- give yourself -- a chance. <br /> This book never addresses the fact that there are thin people in the world who DO NOT exercise for 30 minutes in their aerobic training zone every day. How do they stay thin? <br /> <br />What about physically challenged people? Sedentary people? People who can't (for whatever reason) exercise aerobically in their training zone for 30 minutes each and every day? Some are fat, some are thin. Obviously, there are other factors at work here besides activity level. <br /> <br />While I agree with Hariton that exercise is a good thing, I don't feel that it is the ultimate determining factor in fatness or thinness. How much food you eat plays an even greater role in the size of your body. <br /> <br />Hariton's premise of saying that 30 daily minutes of aerobic exercise in your training zone will somehow "trick" your body into responding like it is in caveman times is pretty flawed. How can anyone think that? Comparing modern life to life in prehistoric times is virtually impossible. Varying stresses, climates, living conditions--just to name a few differences--would all have had a MAJOR impact on shaping the prehistoric body. Not to mention that moving around for the majority of the day (not always in your "training zone") was most likely the way of life back then, and is certainly not the way of life now.
	Alcoholism: The Genetic Inheritance
	By: Kathleeen Whalen Fitzgerald ISBN: 1882195019 Publisher: Whales' Tale Press Release Date: 01 August, 2002 Bioscience book rank: 683389	I can't even tell you how much this has helped my life. I now have the tools to understand alcoholism. It is a disease that has destroyed so many families and ruined so many lives. It is important for us to understand the disease in order to try and help those who suffer. We need awareness and this book indeed opens our eyes. If you or someone in your family deals with addiction, you MUST read this book. It is the only book that deals with everthing from family issues, intervention to recovery. A MUST GET! This book was very helpful for me to understand alcoholism as a family disease. I finally found a book that spoke to me in my own language. It seemed to know my life. I now know that this is a disease and not something I could control on my own. This wonderful book saved my family. Everyone in the world should read this. It relates to everyone!!! This is an inspiring book for anyone who is or knows an alcoholic. My mother-in-law is in the final stages of alcoholism. I felt like crying when I read this book because I felt like the author had met her or seen her. Just when we think there is no hope and that we are alone with this disease, we realize that others are out there, and that we can learn from their experiences. The descriptions are detailed and the personal accounts are vivid. Anyone who is an alcoholic or who knows an alcoholic should read this book.
	Practical Genetic Algorithms
	By: Randy L. Haupt, Sue Ellen Haupt ISBN: 0471455652 Publisher: Wiley-Interscience Release Date: 31 May, 2004 Bioscience book rank: 464511	<br />Based on the literature I have explored, I can unequivocally say that this is the best book that I have found on GA theory and programming. <br /> <br />In a simple but effective manner, the book explains the intricate concepts. For any one thinking of learning GA theory this is a good starting point. Also, if you want to write programs to create your own genetic algorithms, this is a must-read. <br /> <br />In my humble opinion, this is 'THE BEST' book particularly for those without much GA experience. <br /> <br />I hereby express my heartfelt gratitude to the authors and congratulate them on their effort. <br /> <br /> <br /> The text and accompanying CD can get you usefully started in understanding and manipulating genetic algorithms. Despite what the back of the book says, there is still a fair amount of maths background you need. Especially in such things as predator-prey modelling and the coupled differential equations that arise in such efforts. <br /> <br />The book also shows a natural fit between GAs and neural networks. One passage discusses how to optimise a net with feedbacks from a GAs. Along the way, the book also gives an exposure to various biological ideas. Like how artificial neural nets are inspired by actual biological neurons. <br /> <br />The authors have thoughtfully included exercises with each chapter, for you to extend the ideas for yourself. The book can be used as a university textbook for a graduate course. This book is well written, with good examples and insights. However, I think that there should be many more examples and theory to warrent the price of this book. Therefore, better take this book from a library or wait for a softcover.
	Genetics Problem Solver (Problem Solvers)
	By: The Staff of REA ISBN: 0878915605 Publisher: Research & Education Association Release Date: 1998 Bioscience book rank: 505172	The book looks great at first but after you start solving the problems you see there are many mistakes and miss errors. Needs to be seriously revised. One of the best Genetics Review Textbook I have ever read before.A highly recommended guide to study and solve problems of Genetics which is the most difficult field among the Biological Sciences.It explains very concisely complex problems related to Population Genetics,Mapping,Probabilities,and Genetic Engineering.There are lot of short answer questions for review.Excellent for undergraduate courses as well as for professional admissions tests.
	Genetic Algorithms + Data Structures = Evolution Programs
	By: Zbigniew Michalewicz ISBN: 3540606769 Publisher: Springer Release Date: 26 November, 1998 Bioscience book rank: 622474	This book is not written to be the primary text book for a Genetic Algotithm, Data Structure or a Neural Algorithm course. However this book gives an excellent introduction to modern approaches to Evolutionary Algorithm, and how/whether GAs and EAa can be applied successfully to problems of Optimisation, Navigation, and also other contemporary and emerging fields. <br /> <br />This book emphasizes on a lot of fresh ideas (which already requires background in GA, and Algorithms) and may be highly recommended for reference reading of Evolutionary Algorithms and allied Techniques. I saw this book once with one of my buddies,and read the first chapter,,,it was after looking up the first chapter i decided to buy it...I have read some other books on this topic,and since i was kinda in rush for a project which needed GA,i found no other book which explains the concepts and procedures, this straightforward and "right to the point".As far as writing this book goes, "Michalewicz" has done a really really great job.<br>Go for it guys!!!<br>cheers,<br>Amir A very good vision of the evolutionary optimisation techniques not only GA. As well there is an excellent chapter on constraints handling. Maybe it is not one of the easiest book on GA but it is definitely the most useful.
	Genetic Architectures/Arquitecturas Geneticas
	By: Alberto T. Estevez, Alfons Puigarnau, Ignasi Perez Arnal, Dennis Dollens, Alfonso Perez-Mendez, Joaquim Ruiz Millet, Ana Planella ISBN: 0930829514 Publisher: Lumen Books/Sites Books Release Date: April, 2004 Bioscience book rank: 217992
	On Genetic Interests: Family, Ethnicity, and Humanity in an Age of Mass Migration
	By: Frank Kemp Salter ISBN: 1412805961 Publisher: Transaction Publishers Release Date: 13 November, 2006 Bioscience book rank: 588932	the fact is, that the greatest hatred are amoung peoples who are genetically very similar through out human history. (German, English in WWII, Chinese, Japanese, Korean through out history etc). in the worst human conflict, WWII, American, English, Chinese, Russian on one side, German, Italian, Japanese on the other side. i can't see any "genetic" stratification in that. and now, the greatest nation(at least the most powerful one)-- America, have no genetic basis. and Germany, the country that advocated racial purity is not even a entity until a few hundred years ago.(before that, it is loosely connected tribal...) <br /> <br />anecdote evidence aside, quantitatively, traditional ethnic division can only 1% explain human genetic variation(my estimation, no hard data), so if these is a genetic base for ethnic based thinking(racism), it must be a very weak third order effect. it is akin to rate attractiveness among individuals by the body mass based on newton's law. we know it is absurd, even through newton's law is correct. <br /> <br /> The importance of this book is that it explains that racism is rational. That is, by favoring people of one's own race, a person is increasing his fitness. This means that the anti-racists are trying to convince people to lower their fitness and eventually go extinct. In evolutionary terms, racism is adaptive and anti-racism is maladaptive. A further implication is that racists are in harmony with man's nature (indeed, the nature of all living things - to pass on the unique forms of one's genes), and that anti-racists, who go ballistic at any tinge of racism, are psychologically pathological. <br /> While there is some math in the book, it can be understood by the average person who thinks carefully about the definitions of the terms. The reader should consult the glossary in the back of the book and be sure he understands the difference between "individual fitness," "absolute fitness," "relative fitness," and "inclusive fitness." Chapter 2 is the most important and difficult chapter and should be read several times. The need to identify with others like oneself, and to be with one's own kind, is a major component of human nature and so ethnic identity is a powerful force in human affairs. Group members have "ties of blood" that make them "special" and different from outsiders. This is why patriotism is almost always seen as a virtue and an extension of family loyalty. It also explains why ethnic remarks so easily become "fighting words." Culture builds on genetic similarity and is bound together by it. Patriotism is preached in kinship terms. Nations are the "motherland" or the "fatherland" and unions and churches refer to their members as "brothers" and "sisters." <br /> <br />Salter draws out the implications, however politically incorrect, for immigration policies, citizenship law, affirmative action, multiculturalism, and other ways of allocating resources within and between states. There are constraints on how much diversity can be appreciated. <br /> <br />On Genetic Interests extends evolutionary theorizing, including my own Genetic Similarity Theory, to the new ground of interpersonal and ethnic relations such as within-group cohesion and between-group conflict. It discusses studies on likeness in social partners such as spouses and best friends. Most importantly, it applies genetic calculations and finds that the average coefficient of kinship within most ethnic groups is about as high as between half-siblings, aunt and nephew, or grandparent and grandchild. Thus, ethnic nepotism is no mere poor relation of family nepotism-it is virtually a proxy for it. Because we have many more co-ethnics than relatives, the aggregate mass of genes shared with the former dwarfs that shared with the latter. <br /> <br />Frank Salter, a political scientists and ethologist at the Max Planck Institute in Munich, argues persuasively in this book that shared genes are the glue of sociality.On Genetic Interests goes so far as to refer to the mind as having an "innate descent-group module" (p. 102). It uses this concept to explain the universality of ethnic nepotism. This is heartening because many social scientists and sociobiologists alike have been reluctant to even consider applying gene-based similarity to ethnic and national preferences. Following World War II, few political scientists and historians have considered inter-group conflict from a Darwinian viewpoint. Partly in an effort to insure that they are perceived as in no way condoning racism, many evolutionists have minimized the theoretical possibility of a biological underpinning to ethnic, national, and racial favoritism. As the late, great, evolutionary biologist William Hamilton himself remarked in 1987, while noting why kin discrimination even among animals is not more readily expected, "in civilized cultures, nepotism has become an embarrassment." <br /> <br />Social scientists and historians have been quick to condemn the extent to which political leaders or would-be leaders have been able to manipulate ethnic identity. But the questions they never ask, let alone attempt to answer is, "Why is it always so easy?" and "Why can a relatively uneducated political outsider set off a race riot simply by uttering a few well delivered ethnic epithets?" On Genetic Interests provides an illuminating answer. <br /> <br />
	Unlocking Your Genetic History: A Step-by-Step Guide to Discovering Your Family's Medical and Genetic Heritage (National Geneological Society Guide, 6)
	By: Thomas H. Shawker ISBN: 1401601448 Publisher: Thomas Nelson Release Date: 11 August, 2004 Bioscience book rank: 554012	This is the fifth in a new series of instructional volumes sponsored by the National Genealogical Society, and when I read and reviewed the first four in September 2004, I was very impressed. The authors all were well known and trustworthy and their treatment of old subjects (such as basic research principles) and not so old (setting up a genealogy web site) was generally quite well done. But this one is somewhat different. The subject of "genetic genealogy" is still very much unknown territory to almost all genealogists, even the professionals. It's not even a "social science," so one has to acquire a certain amount of new background knowledge even before delving into it. This author is also less likely to be known to most genealogists outside his own specialty: He's a medical doctor, a Section Chief at the National Institutes of Health -- although he has also been president of the Prince George's County Genealogical Society and chairs the NGS committee on Family Health and Heredity, so he certainly can't be called a beginner. Personally, I've been "doing genealogy" for more than three decades, but my background is in history, library science, and archival management, with no training and very little experience in the life sciences. Over the past few years, I've read dozens of articles in all sorts of journals on the subject of applying recent breakthroughs in DNA mapping to family lineages, but even though I've been intrigued by the possibilities, the result has generally been to confuse myself even further. I'm pleased to say that Shawker has supplied an antidote to my ignorance. <br />The first section lays out the reasons you need to know about your family's health history, because "ignorance is not bliss." This is especially true among Acadian families, as in other geographically or culturally isolated populations (Ashkenazic Jews, Amish, Afrikaners, Pacific Islanders) which suffer from a predisposition to assorted diseases and conditions. He follows this with a primer on the nature and process of genetics that is very well written and easy to understand (even for me), with a full explanation of dominant and recessive traits. He includes plenty of case studies, too, from King George III and the Romanovs to Gilda Radner. Then comes a section on compiling a health history, drawing up a medical pedigree, interpreting the results, and being aware of the warning signs for various important and common genetic diseases. <br />The part of the book I read most closely is that which explains in great detail, with many examples and illustrations, how the Y-chromosome is passed on, unchanged, from father to son to grandson, and so on, through the male line, and how the mitochondrial DNA is likewise passed without change from mother to daughter to granddaughter. The famous Thomas Jefferson-Sally Hemmings case provides a good example of how all this works, and how one can use deduction to track lineages that are a mix of males and females. Numerous charts and diagrams also increase one's understanding. Shawker also lays out a strategy for developing a family association DNA project to determine the relationships between groups with identical surnames, and he repeatedly makes the point that no testing program can prove anything: It can only serve as another research tool in conjunction with more traditional genealogical methods. <br />Finally, the author addresses the ethical and legal issues inherent in genetic testing, whether for family research or to identify an inherited tendency to contract a disease, and includes a lengthy guide to other resources on the Internet - especially important in a fast-developing area like this. There's an excellent bibliography, too. Shawker is that rare scientist who can write coherently for the layman and I can recommend this excellent work to any individual or library with an interest in genealogical methodology.
	Genetic Analysis of Complex Traits Using SAS
	By: Arnold M. Sexton ISBN: 1590475070 Publisher: Books by Users Press Release Date: 10 November, 2004 Bioscience book rank: 319606	Regardless of how one feels about SAS as a programming language, it is readily apparent that it is very popular in areas such as financial and biological modeling. This book gives an introduction to how it is used in genetic analysis, and even though each chapter is written by a different author, the book can be useful to those (such as this reviewer) who are not experts in genetics but who may be called upon to apply their mathematical and statistical knowledge to problems in genetics (but using SAS instead of some other programming language to do so). Although the book assumes a thorough knowledge of genetics, it can still be read profitably by anyone who has a background in SAS and some knowledge of genetics. Being an interpreted language, SAS performance can be a problem with many applications, and its value in science is questionable for projects that require heavy computational power. For medium-sized projects though it can be helpful, even though its semantics can be hard to get used to for those who have programmed in more object-oriented environments. <br /> <br />SAS has been used widely to perform statistical studies in genetics using "classical" tools such as multivariate analysis and maximum likelihood, but there is one chapter in this book where Bayesian inference techniques are used for genetic analysis. In addition, and this makes the discussion in the chapter even more valuable, is that the estimation of the posterior distribution is done using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) techniques. The first genetics problem on which this is done regards two-point linkage analysis where Bayesian inference is used to estimate the recombination rate in a backcross between two completely homozygous lines for each of two loci. Even though this problem has an analytical solution, the authors use a simple Monte Carlo simulation to estimate the posterior mean and variance of the recombination rate to motivate how SAS can be used in this case.It should be pointed out here that the authors use SAS PROC Capability in their code and not all readers have this in their SAS implementation, but it can be replaced by PROC Univariate with no problems. This problem is generalized to the case of where there are three linked marker loci, with Bayesian inference and MCMC (via the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm) used to estimate the loci order and the recombination rates between the markers. The authors give the actual SAS code to implement this analysis, which is very readable (in spite of the ancient and annoying "goto" statements that are used within it). MCMC techniques are essential though in more general problems where analytical solutions are not possible. This is the case for a general genetic map construction that the authors discuss but do not give the explicit SAS code for (but it can be found on the Website that is associated with the book). They discuss briefly the pitfalls in doing MCMC for this case, and give a few alternatives. Bayesian inference is then applied to QTL analysis for the simple case of a single QTL model for backcrossing.