Thoughts on Tara's Secret Life of Fat: Scientific facts, practical tips & interesting personalities, related to the cells around your waist

I read Sylvia Tara’s The Secret Life of Fat with great interest. Similar in spirit to Justin and Erica Sonnenburg’s The Good Gut, this book combines hardcore science with practical pointers for daily life. Scientifically, Tara discusses the different types of fat – such as brown, visceral, subcutaneous – and how fat can essentially act as a regulating and self-regulated organ by interacting with the endocrine system. Practically, Tara notes how it is good to fast as long as possible each day to increase fat burning and how it is important to monitor one’s daily fat intake. The Secret Life of Fat also includes interesting profiles of leading scientists, such as those involved in the discovery of leptin, and patients’ who suffer from a variety of ailments associated with obesity and dysregulated fat regulation. Overall, I found this book a good read and a complement to the Good Gut.

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The Secret Life of Fat: The Science Behind the Body's Least Understood Organ and What It Means for You
by Sylvia Tara
https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Life-Fat-Science-Understood/dp/B01N0NH7VG

https://twitter.com/SylviaTaraPhD

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https://linkstream2.gerstein.info/tag/fat0mg

Thoughts on Dataism by Steve Lohr - Vignettes on Data Science, entertaining specifics but are they representative?

I read Steve Lohr's book Data-ism with keen interest. The author is a noted reporter for The Times that writes on technology. I was looking forward to the book and found it an interesting read. However, it's a bit patchy in certain places and tends to focus specifically on one point or illustration. I'm not sure it gives a balanced view of the emerging field of data science. That said, I particularly liked the way it talked about how data science is revolutionizing farming -- how the putting together of many sensors enables one to get an overview of the field much more so than one could get normally.

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Data-ism: The Revolution Transforming Decision Making, Consumer
Behavior, and Almost Everything Else
by Steve Lohr (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062226819

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Thoughts on Dyer's Basics of Genetics: lots of real-world examples help getting up to speed quickly

Overall I found this book a good read that gives one a sense of the basics of genetics. I read it as an instructor of an upper level course in bioinformatics searching for an easy-to-read textbook that can provide students with physical science and computer science backgrounds a quick grasp of the fundamentals of genetics so that we can talk about bioinformatics. In this regard I think it is successful. It is very easy-to-read and has a lot of real world examples that are immediately gripping. For instance there is a discussion of Mendelian inheritance that talks about the coloration of plants and animals, explaining how one can see the Mendelian ratios in corn kernels at the supermarket and also there is an in depth discussion of the melanin pathway in mammals and how this becomes much more complicated in birds, which require additional pathways and even nanoscale-type structures to dictate color. Using coloration is an easy to grasp thing for people. The coloration example even extends to talking about viruses and transposons and how they can be manifest particularly in an unusual corn kernel "splotching" that one might rarely see. These real world examples provide a simple way for people to grasp genetics. There are many nice historical anecdotes about Mendel, Darwin, Watson and a number of the other founders of genetics, which are easy and engaging. My one gripe with the book is that some of the facts are often a little off. For instance the human genome is said to contain 10 percent coding regions. I think this is a little off actually by an order of magnitude and should be revised downwards. There are also a number of other facts that need to be somewhat fixed. However, overall I found the book a good read for an intro book and would recommend it.

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The Basics of Genetics
by Betsey Dexter Dyer
http://www.amazon.com/The-Basics-of-Genetics/dp/B002JKWCR8

Thoughts on Sundem's Brain Trust

Overall: Good compilation of interesting factoids

Braintrust is an entertaining book that essentially provides tons of interesting scientific factoids from many of the world's leading scientists.  Some of the factoids are interesting and some not so much so.  A few that I found particularly neat were:

* How a cat uses angular momentum to flip over when it is in the air.

* How one can sterilize rainwater with ultraviolet light by passing it through a little filter.

* How neuroscientists have determined that act itself of trying to remember a bit of information aids in memory.

* How color blindness provides an evolutionary advantage in seeing in forests .

* How important folic acid is to methylation and how this factors into chemotherapy.

* How Dunbar's number of 150 often forms a limit in social settings.

* How the aerodynamics of insects is really a fundamentally different process from that of planes.

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Brain Trust: 93 Top Scientists Reveal Lab-Tested Secrets to Surfing, Dating, Dieting, Gambling, Growing Man-Eating Plants, and More!
By Garth Sundem
http://www.amazon.com/Brain-Trust-Scientists-Lab-Tested-Man-Eating/dp/0307886131
My tag: braintr0mg
Did a review (http://www.amazon.com/review/R2LR39G0QBKOHJ)

Thoughts on Levy's In the Plex

Levy's In the Plex is a very entertaining book about the development of Google as a company, a lot of the personalities within the firm and some of the technology behind it. It is a very good read and taught me a lot about one of the most successful companies in the world. I found the little anecdotes about how people search particularly interesting -- i.e. how Google studies how people substitute words in searches (e.g. using the word puppy as opposed to dog or finding a recipe by putting in the ingredients). The book really underscored the importance of ad words for Google’s business model and had a pleasant discussion about the initial public offering and the very different philosophies of Google from Wall Street. I would highly recommend this book.

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http://www.amazon.com/Plex-Google-Thinks-Works-Shapes/dp/1416596585
In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives
Steven Levy
My tag: inplex0mg