The Most Useful Science Student Books for AU Universities

Alex Petrovic — Fri, 30 Aug 2013 07:09:10 +0000

Student life can be a bit of a struggle – you are at your prime, young and energetic, and you need to balance studying, fun and work, all the while trying to make ends meet on an often limited budget. Be that as it may, Australia still has some of the best universities in the world, which offer great learning opportunities to their students. When it comes to science there are a lot of options to choose, but keeping in mind that students often have to make due on a tight budget I will look into some useful general textbooks that cover all the important basics and some cost-effective purchase options. These are all textbooks that offer great information on the core principles in their respective fields and can give students a very strong scientific foundation which they can expand upon as they progress in their studies. Within this article I am going to focus just on two science fields: Bioscience and Chemistry.

Biosciences Textbooks

Biosciences are particularly interesting scientific branches that offer deeper insights into the way we are built, how our bodies work and how our body chemistry can be manipulated to improve health and fight disease. They also offer great career opportunities. Some great bioscience textbooks include:

Pharmacology for Pharmacy and the Health Sciences – a great choice for those that want to learn about the clinical use of drugs and their effects on the human body on a cellular level. This textbook can help you built a solid knowledge base in pharmacology.
Essentials of Human Nutrition – a good overall choice for those who wish to familiarize themselves with the field of nutrition. The textbook gives a broad overview of the field.
Chemistry for the Biosciences – an overview of the core concepts of chemistry and how they affect the biological world. The textbook contains numerous analogies and real world examples which help those studying biological and biomedical science get a good understanding of this crucial information and allow them to later build upon this knowledge.

Chemistry Textbooks

Chemistry is an integral part of our daily lives and even laymen will cross paths with some of its laws during simple daily tasks. Some great textbooks every chemistry student should have by his or her side include:

Inorganic Chemistry, Sixth Edition – a comprehensive and easy to read textbook that covers all the fundamental principles as well as practical applications.
Organic Chemistry: a mechanistic approach – this textbook provides a great insight into the nature of organic compounds and their reactions and serves as an introduction into more complex subjects and deeper research.
Atkins’ Physical Chemistry, Tenth Edition – an easy to read textbook that will allow you to quickly find all the information you need on physical chemistry. It contains information on areas such as thermodynamics, quantum theory, molecular structure and chemical kinetics.

Many of these books you can find online and the best thing is that you can actually get used textbooks from older students, or you can get eBook versions which are significantly cheaper or you can even rent textbooks for a limited time, e.g. for a month when preparing an exam.

All in all, these textbooks will provide you with enough material to develop a strong understanding of the basic scientific principles that you will need to call upon many times during your studies.

Cite this article:
Petrovic A (2013-08-30 07:09:10). The Most Useful Science Student Books for AU Universities. Australian Science. Retrieved: May 07, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/australian-universities/the-most-useful-science-student-books-for-au-universities/

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The post The Most Useful Science Student Books for AU Universities appeared first on Australian Science.

When a mind goes awry

Kevin Orrman-Rossiter — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 07:23:15 +0000

Trouble in Mind (Jenni Ogden, Scribe, $32.95, ISBN 9781922070562, July 2013)

I do not think I would be alone in fearing ‘losing my mind’. Even the common expression, “are you out of your mind?” gives solid form to what may seem a merely philosophical train of thought. At any given time most people will declare confidently that “I am in my ‘right mind’ and point to themselves as that ‘I’. The quandary is the ‘I’ of age eight is different to the ‘I’ of forty-eight; despite the continuity of of ‘I’ joining these two for example. Our mind then is one of those puzzling concepts at once both familiar and ephemeral. To lose ones mind, though, even partially, through trauma, disease, or disorder we would all agree is to lose some quintessential part of us. Trouble In Mind is a collection of real stories about people who have suffered just that – losing part of their minds.

The stories are from patients that the neuropsychologist author, Jenni Ogden, has worked with over her career in New Zealand, the USA, and Australia. Ten of the 15 patients portrayed in this book featured in Ogden’s 2005 textbook Fractured Minds. Trouble in Mind is neither text, nor assessment, nor treatment book. There are other books on the market that describe patients with a variety of neurological conditions. Many written by clinicians such as Ogden. Most I find fall short because the clinician writer is excited by the condition and fails to connect the human to that condition. In other examples non-clinicians often focus complete cures, without any reference to the many that underwent similar treatments – without success.

Ogden’s stories succinctly and clearly explain the medical conditions and engagingly present the human side of each in an empathetic and nuanced style. Whether talking about patients with car-crash brain trauma, rugby-induced concussion or suffering from Parkinson’s disease Ogden covers the personal, social and family elements with clarity that is often missing in clinical based non-fiction written by clinicians. In this respect Ogden writes with feeling like that of psychologist Oliver Sacks at his best.

These are stories that will have a resonance with most in our society. Three in particular I will mention as way of illustration of the breadth covered. Michael was a 24-year old motorcycle maniac. After a horrific accident, he left the critical care unit with a virtually ignored head injury; the surgeons had grappled with keeping him alive and the extensive orthopedic surgeries and specialist care. neither he nor his doctors realised that he was cortically blind. This resolved itself after two years – leaving him with object agnosia – the inability to recognise what he was seeing. Ogden then describes he many years work with Michael, his trials, tribulations and treatments to living 24 years later is a life with a most interesting disability. Amongst this we also get Ogden’s motivation – her clinician’s ‘delight’ in being asked to work with such an unusual case. Yes her delight, her excitement; those real human emotions not hidden behind neutral, banal psychology speak.

Hemispherical neglect. Wikimedia commons.

In another chapter Ogden looks at the bizarre neuropsychological disorder of hemineglect – ignoring visual stimuli in the side of space opposite to the side of their brain that is damaged. In this case though the patient is a chirpy 50 year-old female, Janet. The chapter is fascinating and the description of janet’s sessions with Ogden are sometimes, well, hilarious. But this is real-life not Hollywood. Janet’s hemineglect is caused by a brain tumor. Janet dies, four long and difficult years following her diagnosis. Ogden doesn’t just end the chapter, she humanely discusses the impact on Janet’s husband and close family and friends of her treatment and death. She also assesses the effectiveness of the treatments, looking at other cases, from her own and others’ casebooks.

The final chapter is aptly called “The Long Goodbye: coming to terms with Alzheimer’s disease.” This chapter follows Sophie’s diagnosis and cognitive decline from Alzheimer’s disease. I learnt a lot about the disease from reading this chapter. I equally learnt how it would be to watch a person who “was once active, independent, intelligent, humorous and loving gradually lose her mind”.

This collection of stories is eminently readable. I recommend it to readers with either; a specific, perhaps personal, topic of interest or those more generally who are curious and interested in how our minds work, particularly when they go awry due to damage to that squishy grey organ inside our skull.

Cite this article:
Orrman-Rossiter K (2013-06-20 07:23:15). When a mind goes awry. Australian Science. Retrieved: May 07, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/book-review-2/when-a-mind-go-awry/

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The post When a mind goes awry appeared first on Australian Science.

Book Review – Australian Science

The Most Useful Science Student Books for AU Universities

When a mind goes awry