Category Archives: Book Review


Book Review : Internet Cool Tools for Physicians

by Hope Leman

Hope Leman

Guest Blogger Hope Leman: Hope Leman is a Research Information Technologist at the Samaritan Health Services Center for Health Research and Quality, co-founder of Next Generation Science, a staff writer at AltSearchEngines and the Web administrator of ScanGrants. You can find her on NextBio, FriendFeed and Twitter.

Review of Internet Cool Tools for Physicians by Melissa L. Rethlefsen, David L. Rothman and Daniel S. Mojon

Okay, this is going to one of those book reviews full of praise and every conceivable adjective connoting the concept of “must-read.” And don’t be put of by the cutesy use of “cool” in the title—this is a book of substance and not just for physicians, either. Anyone interested in the provision of health information on the Internet should buy a copy of this book and certainly all public libraries should have it on their shelves. Even experienced medical librarians should at least page through it. I can think offhand of quite a number of professionals and students who would benefit from reading it: nurse researchers, pharmacists, physical therapists, dentists, medical students, nursing students, anyone who does any sort of health sciences research. And given the rise of increasingly sophisticated laypeople as typified by the term e-patient there is a need for well-written, authoritative books such as this one that discuss how to find health information beyond Google, MedlinePlus and Wikipedia.
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Is the Human Ego good for Science?

- Jean-Claude Bradley

I have just finished reading the fascinating book “The Emperor of Scent” by Chandler Burr. It starts off describing the world of perfume with a focus on Luca Turin, a man with the unusual talent of being able to review perfumes with great eloquence, conjuring up beautiful metaphors of experiencing their scent.

The book then takes an unexpected turn into the description of Turin’s theory about the mechanism of olfaction. There is some truly interesting science there, such as Turin’s discovery of a binding site for NADPH and another for zinc on a protein thought to mediate smell. This supports his hypothesis that the protein functions as an electron tunneling spectroscope detecting differences in vibrational modes. Further evidence is provided by comparing the different smells of deuterated molecules like acetophenone and the similarity of the stench of boranes with thiols, which share similar IR spectral bands. This idea is at odds with the conventional view that molecular shape is responsible for the activity of odorants. (For a summary of Turin’s theory I would suggest watching his recent TED talk “The Science of Scent” and his Wikipedia entry).
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