Immunology Defind - The Latest Tizard Blizzard
924446
Concruent with previous layouts, this latest edition is repleat with photos, charts and graphics that aid in one's understanding of the fundamental principles detailed herein.  A welcome refresher for the practiced veterinarian, it remains the standard text for graduate and veterinary school students alike.
3867173
I wouldn't trust anything by Simon Wesseley; his anti-scientific biases are too profound. For example, he has done an incredible amount to retard science in ME (aka CFS).
3059521
Was watching my room mate trying to play this game.
Requiring a constant online connection to a Blizzard server, even in single player mode = no buy for me.
From the first day of release the servers could not handle the online traffic and players who paid for the game could not play.
Have a laptop and want to play this game on the go?  Hope where ever you go has a stable internet connection.
I'm sure a lot of university internets servers block battle.net servers.
I hope people don't buy this game to send Blizzard a message that if they do this, Their game won't sell well.
1597326
This issue of vaccines and developmental disorders is much like other recurrent cycles that occur when some contentious issues arise. There is a general level of incredulity, then refutations by the industries trying to prove something as safe, then extensive research over decade or two or more, and finally we say duh, this is so clear; let's ban it. So in hindsight everything will look clear and we would look foolish to believe otherwise, but it will still not affect our critical thinking on the present issues we would be dealing with - that may be, just may be there is something to it. Even thalidomide, where it is day and night in terms of its teratogenic/mutagenic effects, was met initially with incredulity about effects on fetal development. Not every other case is as lucky as thalidomide scenario, and most lie in grey area. Bisphenol A (BPA) is another one, where only two limited studies in 30's showed some malignant effects. No extensive studies were done to establish its safety, not to mention the tools for detection in cellular changes were crude at best in the 30's. With advancement in scientific tools, a revisit in 80s and 90s consistently showed "low-level" of changes induced by BPA. Working in this area, I can't tell you how many presentations I have attended recently where it has been shown to have estrogenic and other effects at doses that we are regularly exposed to (through metal can linings, sale receipts, etc). Some effects show up not in the first generation, but in second or third generations (epigenetic changes) (inferred from tissue and animal studies). And as late as 2008, the industries and institutions like NAMPA were still decrying that it is safe for babies. The case of lead toxicity and "safe levels" is another good example. So my hunch is that this is going to be the scenario with vaccines. There will likely be some fire under this smoke. Unfortunately, the tools (suitable assays) to understand the complex "low-level" neural and immune changes that occur with vaccine ingredients (be it the antigenic part, or the adjuvant/preservative parts) are not well-developed (immunity itself is a very complex topic to tackle, despite the enormous progress). So it is going to take a while and at some point we will likely see a multifaceted answer to the changes induced by vaccine ingredients in different populations, and especially some genetically predisposed, vulnerable populations, much like how diabetes turned out to be. Heterogeneity in population further muddies the water. So even though you may be genetically predisposed to something, it does not mean you will get it, unless you expose yourself to the environmental triggers. Perhaps, there will be tools to understand this genetic predisposition to vaccine ingredients, and research for safer alternatives. Until then (perhaps 2-3 decades), lets hope cooler heads prevail and doctors/people are more open to listen the opposing viewpoints, and not just brand others as conspiracy-dolts!
846133
Can NOT down load as my security keeps coming up with "malicious malware present", and it is deleted. Would like a refund on this as I am upset with this statement and don't want this game!
2492590
First the bad news:  This book's title is an outright lie and should be changed (or the book's content changed to fulfill the title's promises).  It claims to contain 350 recipes that are free of common allergens including gluten, soy, milk, etc.  This is completely untrue.  A large percentage of these recipes contain at least one of these allergens, usually with no options provided for substitutions. Particularly of note is the extensive use of items with hidden gluten and soy.  People newly diagnosed with allergies may not realize that many of the ingredients contain these allergens and the recipes are not labeled to let you know.  In spite of the claim to be milk-free, there is a whole section dedicated to milk-based recipes (using goat milk, perhaps, but still a problem for most of us).  Ironically, she mentions that beef recipes were left out of the book because some people might be sensitive (although it's not one of the allergens the book claims to be free of).  Obviously gluten is a much more common allergen and harder to substitute for than beef so it seems that which ingredients are included is more arbitrary than based on the needs of the allergy-prone.  Since most gluten-free cookbooks contain large amounts of other allergens (like dairy, corn, or soy) I was really hoping for a cookbook that wouldn't require me to make massive substitutions.

For people with nut allergies (which I don't have), this is probably the wrong book for you, skip it.

In spite of all this (and the warnings posted here, thanks, everyone, for that!), I decided to take a look at the book since there are so few options for people like me with multiple allergies.  Although the fact that the title is grossly misleading made me angry enough that I didn't want to buy the book, I finally decided that there was enough good information to make it worthwhile.  The first thing I did was go through the book and cross out all the recipes that contained gluten, wheat, soy, dairy, and corn (my biggest allergies and the hardest to substitute for).  There were MANY!

Finally, the good:  There is a lot of good information in this book (tempered with some bad - if you are newly gluten-free, wheat-free, etc. consult another book for information on foods to avoid).  The book includes the usual writeup on alternative flours and other substitutions.  Strangely there is no mention of rice milk as an option for those allergic to soy and dairy - and no mention that many (or most) nut milks contain soy.  She also doesn't give substitutes for margarine in recipes for those allergic to soy and dairy.

Unlike other books, she includes nutritional information related to avoiding certain foods.  For example, she lists each of the B vitamins and explains the best dietary sources.  If you are allergic to a number of these foods, you could be at risk for not ingesting enough through your diet.  For those of us forced to avoid many foods (or for people with other medical issues) this information could be critical.

Of course we're all mostly interested in the recipes.  Even after excluding the large number with  gluten, dairy, soy, etc. there were still a lot of interesting items left.  For me, the salad dressings/veggie dips were the most useful.  Since I can't have soy, dairy, or citrus, these recipes offered new hope for me (but most contain nuts, be warned).  Other recipes seemed good but not particularly simple to make.  This book is better at offering variety than quick options for a weekday.  On the other hand, if, like me, you're looking for some "real food" options for entertaining, this book offers some good ideas that aren't overly complicated.

Good luck and happy eating!
4120163
This book was a big disappointment for me. I didn't expect a book for a professional, but I did at least expect to read the background of research in computational cellular biology. The writer, Dennis Bray, is an emeritus professor, from a foregone era, not raised with computers, talking about e.g. neural networks as if it is something new and not already covered in plenty of popular books. The author who looks like a pissed off version of my dad on the cover of the book, is undoubtedly very successful as a molecular/cell biologist, but he severely lacks to convey the "computational" or "computer" part of the title. However... read this review keeping in mind that it stems from an electrical engineer dedicating his professional career to implement bio-inspired computational techniques on modular robotics...

Chapter 1, Clever Cells. No comments. Chapter 2, Simulated Life. Read random book on robots. Chap3&4. Protein switches & signals. Nice if you never heard about proteins. Chap5. Cell wiring. Some more pictures might help here. Seems core of the book and circuitry for tumbling versus not-tumbling in Fig 5.1 is very abstract. Chap6. Neural Nets. I recommend instead "Neural Networks & Animal Behavior" by Enquist and Ghirlanda if you've a biological background. Chap7. Cell awareness. Nothing special here... A cell can perceive it's environment and act upon it. If you're into consciousness read instead Koch's book on neural correlates of C. Chap8. Molecular morphing. No reference to any literature on artificial immune systems (AIS), the computational branch is disregarded again. Chap9. Cells Together. Read instead "First signals" by Bonner (very small book about evolution of multicellular development). Chap10. Genetic circuits. Another core chapter. I miss here so much work on gene regulatory networks. Such as by Josh Bongard (University of Vermont), Rolf Pfeifer (ETH, Zrich). A simulated robot body is evolved and subsequently grown by expressed genes and interchanged proteins. Other researchers in morphogenetics: Rodney Douglas (INI, Zrich), Peter Eggenberger (University of Zrich), Chrystopher Nehaniv (University of Hertfordshire), Peter Bentley (University College London), Hod Lipson (Cornell University, Ithaca, New York), Ren Doursat (Complex Systems Institute, Paris). I recommend any of their books. Chap11. Robots. Let's skip that... Chap12 & 13. The Juice and Amoeba Redux. The inevitable last chapters of the book...

Then something in specific about the use of computational modeling. The author is really arbitrary about the usefulness of software models. 1.) This is what he says on cellular automata (p. 103): "The arbitrary and unexpected nature of these efflorescences inspired Wolfram to make biological analogies, drawing parallels between his cellular automata and the patterns achieved by real cells through evolution and development. [...] Reality distortion indeed! These computer-generated spatial patterns or temporal sequences are nothing more than superficial ciphers. A single leaf of grass is immeasurably more complicated than Wolfram's entire opus." 2.) This is what the author says about a program he wrote together with Steve Lay in 1994 to examine how a simple signaling pathway might have evolved (p. 121), where he tells that some biological systems behave in a similar fashion (p. 124). 3.) And, I quote: "Kauffman developed the notion of idealized "genes" as binary devices. [...] Kauffman [...] talk with high excitement about adaptive systems, conveying a sense of euphoria and omnipotence. But in truth the practical consequences of their theories are small in number." Personally, I think here that we might very well be able to learn things from random boolean networks (but not at least not taught by Bray).

If you have never thought about cells being able to do computations and you hate math, than this book might be up your sleeve. In any other case, try to get your hands on something else.
575239
After slogging through Janeway's _Immunobiology_ and most of a course in immunology, I had memorized a lot of facts but still understood next to nothing about the overall "design" and operation of the immune system. I found _How the Immune System Works_ the perfect antidote to my existential ennui. I recommend it highly and wish there were similar books on other related subjects.

The main pleasure of this book is that it's very "why-oriented" - Sompayrac explains how each mechanism fits into the grand scheme of immunology. Another key innovation is that he points out areas of immunology that aren't well understood yet; that way, you can recognize them as gaps in the science at large rather than as gaps in your own understanding.

Other virtues include brevity, judicious omission of irrelevant detail (this book omits the customary table of 30-odd cytokines along with a list of the 10 or 15 actions of each, for example), and an engaging and readable style.

2006 UPDATE (ORIGINAL REVIEW WAS MAY, 2002): I'm so glad to see this book continuing to get great reviews. Having completed the rest of medical school, I can now say that this is the single highest-value text I encountered on any medical subject.
3082960
The latest biomedical research debunks the outdated theories this author has about ME and CFS, which should not have been included. Regrettably, it appears that the author and the publisher have not kept up with biomedical research. When asked, the author ignored all questions, and was unwilling/unable to provide any evidence for her ideas. To all discerning readers: save your money! Take a pass on this book, and check out the groundbreaking work that Stanford University and Griffith University (among others!) are doing.
2455425
In Dan Rhodes WHEN THE PROFESSOR GOT STUCK IN THE SNOW we meet Professor Richard Dawkins, a  biologist who spreads the gospel of atheism far and wide. Accompanied by his loyal and trusted male secretary Smee, he sets out to give a lecture on the subject of Science and the Non-existence of God to the All Bottoms Womens Institute. But a snow blizzard gets in the learned professors way. He then gets taken in by a good vicar and his welcoming wife.  In the rest of this short novel we learn of all the obstacles the professor runs into in his quest to point out to the stupid masses the idiocy of their belief in God. He likes to name-drop famous atheists too: Christopher Hitchens,  Ian McEwan et al.

The book is raucous, a tad bawdy; and the laughter builds up not unlike a snow bank. Mr. Rhodes uses the time-tested tricks of the comedic trade: mistaken identity, double entendres,  one person not knowing what others know. In short, nothing is quite like it appears. A lot happens: a cat gives birth to a litter of kittens, a helicopter or two flies overhead, a little nudity is thrown in as well as a camera shoot for a calendar.

I first learned of Mr. Rhodes on-so-funny novel when I read an interview of an author who named it as the last book that made him laugh. In this bleak December of both the temperature and the political climate, we all need a good laugh right now. Mr. Rhodes delivers.
377271
To norriss@spectracomp.com

 You did yourself a misservice by not reading more carefully.  The basic food lists do not take into consideration additional food allergies.  This is emphasised in the book.  Additionally, if you ate appropriate to your blood type you may be able to reduce your intollerance.

 The premise is, as food broken down into simple sugars enters the blood stream, it reacts with the antigens of your particular blood type.  If incompatible, the body will treat the molecules as invaders with a process called agglutination.  Your food molecules are stuck together in clumps and eliminated or stored in fat cells.  You lose the nutrients you thought you were getting and waste your immune system on the food you eat. Basically it's like getting a bad transfusion every time you eat an incompatible food.  I can't tell you how logical this sounds to me.  I hope you will reconsider your opinion so that you can have the same rewards that I have received just by changing a few of the foods I eat. Yours truly nan
381812
What Unzicker says about the Higgs boson is outside of my area of expertise.  Its also not obvious to me that anyone fooled the Nobel Committee.  So Ill leave these things for others to comment on.  But I will comment on Unzickers critique on the state of particle physics.

He gives us plenty to back his claim that particle physics fails to live up to sciences basic requirement to be falsifiable, measurable, accessible and as easy to understand as possible.  He also mentions physics internal contradictions.  Science that contains internal contradictions can only be a template for predicting phenomena.  It cant be truth.  I think that Unzicker and others are frustrated because no one is making any progress toward a theory of everything that would resolve these contradictions.

He offers some good proposals for improvement, the best being putting the data and the methodologies on the internet.  Finding something as small as a software bug would prevent propagation of errors and wasted resources.  You can already download collision data from both ATLAS and CMS.  Thats a start.

To decrease complexity by modularizing the processes, Unzicker advocates horizontal structure.  That is, every part of the process is treated as a separate process of its own, complete with full reports.

Unzicker is cranky and he doesnt pull any punches.  So, youll see a few swear words that are very lightly scattered throughout the text, mostly damns, hells and a few scatological words.

2.88 stars
4133970
Rigor Mortis: How Sloppy Science Creates Worthless Cures, Crushes Hope, and Wastes Billions is a brand-new book by the highly revered NPR science writer Richard Harris. I have long enjoyed his reports on NPR (hes been there since 1986), and this book read like a multi-week expos on the entire field of biomedical research and drug development. Let me state right up front: I have complete faith in modern Western medicine, have all my kids fully vaccinated (of course), and when sick seek out a physician (the MD type). However, this book adeptly documents the shortcomings of biomedical research ranging from poor science to gross negligence. Its all here, laid out in a chapter by chapter tour de force (and, again, with extensive references and footnotes): lack of reproducibility of experimental results, wrong interpretation of statistical results, cherry-picking data, falsified data in high profile published resultsand the continued citation of those results, in some cases for years, even after the retraction of publications, mixed up or misslabelled cell lines or mice or rates from commercial suppliers, poor experimental design, and the list of grievances goes on. The causes are writ large: biomedical research is a field where a LOT is on the line. Money. Careers. And of course many researchers really are working as hard as they possibly can to improve and save lives. Harris not only throws back the veil on the dirty little (and not so little) secrets of biomedical research, he offers up some solutions and, indeed, gets many other experts and journal editors to join in the conversation. This book would be interesting to anyone with an interest in how science gets done. It should be mandatory reading for college students who need to understand and employ experimental design in their studies.

-Britt A. Bunyard

(This review originally appeared in FUNGI vol 10 no. 3)
4008005
Nice update on immunology that includes more recent findings at the molecular/cellular level.  This is a more general, broad review of the field that takes you to where immunologists are focusing their efforts today. A good example is the chapter on vaccines and vaccines in development.  However, if I were someone who was needing a textbook to review medical immunology for a licensing exam, this is not the book to use.  This text is more appropriate for graduate students or others engaged in research who want a more detailed overview of the field.
4789442
I think that he main thesis of this book, that lectins is inflammatory and the cause of health problems and overweight, is true. But the book is not well written and have a clear bias against meat and dairy products with weak arguments. The writer use too much speculation to support his claims. What is said about the Neu5Gc and IGF-1 is just not well supported by data and we have the traditional manipulation of data to support vegetarian and vegan diets. Also, plant have many others antinutrients then just lectin, why he don't said nothing about?
2231996
I read this book. In a quest to curb some serious auto-immune and inflammatory processes in my own body, I have started to follow the diet. I am not doing it for weight loss.

It looks like good, healthy food and a reasonable eating plan that does not deprive you, once you get past the first three days.

My question about this plan include how the author introduces new foods into the diet to see if they are reactive.

We start with 3-day "cleanse" using foods that do not cause a reaction in most people...flax, carrots, lettuce, coconut milk, broccoli, chick peas, chicken and zucchini. Logic tells me that someone is going to react to one of these foods, but introducing them all at once will not help a reactive person know what they are reacting to.

On day five you are instructed to eat a rye cracker. As someone with celiac, this is a no-no anyway, but for most people who do not think twice about rye, the author should mention that most rye crackers have wheat in them, so when you test the rye cracker to see if you have a reaction, you truly will not know if you are reacting to the rye, or the wheat in the cracker. Readers who do this diet need to find 100% rye crackers, if they exist, and this should be stated in the book.

Also, unless I read like an idiot, on day four, you are adding goat cheese and dark chocolate and whipped cream on the same day.  If you have a reaction, you will not know which of these three caused it. This is dairy from two different animals *plus chocolate*, which cause problems for many people.

I suppose this book is fine for people who want to lose weight and are new to the idea of food intolerance, not for people who are in serious medical need of sleuthing out their food intolerance issues. Likely, these folks have already been through ringer and will know to take this diet very slowly, logically stretching out the number of days and introducing one food at a time, though this might mess with the food combination methods that the author uses.

I agree that when you maintain a spell of clean eating of non-reactive foods, it is easy to see when you do have a reaction. I forgot and "cheated" today, on day four, with a five ingredient "primal/paleo" cookie that I make for my children, and within twenty minutes I was ready to fall asleep and had a bright red rash on both my cheeks. I put all of the ingredients on my "test list" and will get to them in due time. Egg and pumpkin and chocolate were in there (uh-oh), as well as almonds, which I have already been eating these past few days without a problem. We'll see. I have suspected eggs and chocolate for a while now, anyway, long before I read this book.

I do think this is a good book, but I think the author does not handle wheat and gluten, and possibly dairy introductions, correctly. She labels some foods as "high-gluten" bread, and calls refers to whole wheat pasta as "higher gluten."  For people who cannot tolerate gluten, there is no high or low gluten bread or pasta. Most will react to any amount of gluten. It might be nice to see GF alternatives to food combinations when you are testing, because anyone with celiac or gluten intolerance would rather eat a live beetle than a rye cracker. It might be nice to have some guidance about substitutions.

Also, the author says that "Spices are your best friend when it comes to cooking," but I do not see where she has built in a way to test for spices, which can cause reactions in some people. And she does recommend, when testing for egg and bread combination, that it would be good for those who love Eggs Benedict. As far as I know, there was no way to test for the *other* ingredients in Eggs Benedict before she mentions that. I have a feeling that the ingredients that cure ham or bacon can really cause reactions.

Overall, interesting, safe book and I will post follow-up once I finish the elimination cycle.
1075132
This book appears to be an intellectual assault on the logic behind a beleif in god.  But if this was all the book discussed, the logic or illgoic of why people beleive in a higher being.  But if it was just a critique of religion, or rather a critique of why religion is inherently causing violence, then it wouldn't use such strong hyperbole describing Jesus as having "dodgy morals" or claiming that the Christian god is "racist" takes any semblance of honest deducation from the text and turns it into another hate text, predictably bashing Christianity while apparenlty claiming all other religions are acceptable and not 'racist'.  Everyone knows there is nothing in the Bible bordering on racism, since racism wasn't invented in the time the Bible was compiled(1000 B.C-400 A.D).  There was no concept of race then, a concept that largely is drawn from Darwinism and the increased exposure of the world's peoples to eachother in the 19th century.  There was no 'race' in 200 B.C.  There were 'tribes' and 'nations'.

Beyond this there is the claim that religion is inhernelty violent while iedology based on science and athiesm is more peaceful.  But apparently this book doesnt take into account the violence carried out in the name of communism and nazism, both secualr ideologies and yes, both racist at one time or another.

Religion is not inherenlty violent which is why this book doesnt touch on Buddhism or Taoism or other religions that are rarely violence prone.  But it turns out that man made ideologies based on athiesm are just as violent and racist as religion has been accused of being.  Perhaps a better conclusion to this book would have been that humans are violent, after all it was science that allowed for the horrors of the Holocaust and nuclear bombs.

Seth J. Frantzman