The textbook covers all of the major topics that I address in a year of non-majors biology. This helps students connect what they are learning with their lives. For my own satisfaction- I would have liked to see the citations but lack of it does not make the book any less effective. Reviewed by Julia Mabry, Adjunct Faculty, Clatsop Community College on 12/18/20, I have used chapter 1-16 of this book for a 100-level community college class "Integrated Chemistry and Cellular Biology for Healthcare Professionals". Reviewed by Robert Sorensen, Professor, Minnesota State University Mankato on 6/10/15, The 8 units this textbook, chemistry through ecology, sufficiently cover the range of topics that would be covered in an Introductory Biology series of courses.The order in which topics are addressed follows the common approach of building from The content and organization of the textbook have great potential to be a popular textbook if the clarity and interface were improved. Errors are corrected in the texts online format prior to fall and spring semesters, and the pdf version prior to fall semesters. However, the authors missed an opportunity to discuss how conservation and population control impact, influence, and are lead by local societies. I did not see any inaccuracies in my use of the book; however, there were few references available (at least that I could find). Joint and body movement illustrations and descriptions are very detailed while important concepts like trophic cascade are not included at all. I think students will appreciate this breakdown and it will help to avoid overwhelming them with new material. There are roles for deterministic processes and stochastic processes. On page 807, the text states, Based on molecular analysis, vertebrates appear to be more closely related to lancelets (cephalochordates) than to tunicates (urochordates) among the invertebrate chordates. This particular information is relatively new in the field of biology, though most of the current discoveries lie in the realm of gene function and would be included in an upper level course. It is a complete package! 1171-2 are covered with weakly explained equations and values in mm Hg. Include blood in pH figure 2.19. No grammatical errors were noted. The text book covered all the chapters I would assign for first semester General Biology course at the college level (Molecules to Cells). Author (s) OpenStax. Otherwise I had no interface issues. However, most of the scientific articles cited are more than 10 years old, being the most recent article from 2015. For example the term collagen appears well before it is described in any detail, and viruses were presented before chapters on molecular genetics. I found no problems navigating through the pages. Its nice to have a free textbook from a reputable university that can give students from lower incomes the ability to have the same depth and breadth of information for no money on or before the first day. 18.1 too dark. science that seeks to expand knowledge and understanding regardless of the short-term application of that knowledge. On page 52, the text states, Like hydrogen bonds, van der Waals interactions are weak attractions or interactions between molecules. Unless I missed it, the R in Figure 2.27 is undefined. Each chapter has a number of small photographs, 4 0 obj If you are redistributing all or part of this book in a print format, catalyst in a biochemical reaction that is usually a complex or conjugated protein. We did find a few conceptual errors with minor errors scattered throughout. read more. The authors have done a wonderful job incorporating current research in a broad perspective so that it can be updated without major changes to the content. In terms of comprehensiveness, Biology 2e is very thorough. How do they homeostatically maintain the near neutral pH inside them? Some amount of jargon is inescapable in a general biology text, where students are hit with as much new terminology as in an introductory course in a foreign language, but this book is refreshingly free of unnecessary jargon. One thing that I would have liked is greater consistency in the figures. Ive been using them for my class even before adopting the book WebAnswers will vary. Figures should be introduced after text throughout each section. Sometimes, after opening an outside resource (following a link) with the PDF version and then clicking the back arrow when you are done, you were taken back to the beginning of the text, and you would then have to find the chapter/page that you had left, but this only happened a couple of times. The authors did a good job of organizing the textbook with appropriate headings and subheadings. No cultural insensitivities were noticed as part of this course. It is as culturally relevant as would be expected for an introductory biology textbook. A comprehensive index is provided at the end of the text. I did look at the OpenStax A&P book and it looked like it would do for the "Animal Form and Function" aspects of introductory biology. Its a shame because it would have been relatively easy to bring in a great deal more diversity in portrayals of human scientists. That might be true in a sense, but relative to next generation, high throughput techniques, it is a very small portion of the sequencing actually happening in this day and age. It is a false savings to provide a free textbook that lacks features that are crucial and necessary to student understanding of what is, frankly, very challenging material. Better written than some, but I can tell they haven't spent large sums of money on editing. There could be more cultural references in the examples of careers sections. General coverage is good the text covers all of the areas Id expect to see in an introductory biology textbook, including behavior, which I find is sometimes overlooked. read more. For example, prokaryotes are consistently referred to throughout the book. For instance "anabolic pathways require an input of energy to synthesize complex.. is accurate. The text is comprehensive in its coverage of the typical materials for a non-majors introductory biology course at the 100 level. Many of the areas of biology are constantly changing with the ever increasing research being performed. I reviewed the book for use in the In Chapter 18, the text only includes the biological species concept, with no discussion of its weaknesses or limitations. If xenon has an atomic number of 54 and a mass number of 108, how many neutrons does it have? This terminology is out-of-date and reinforces student misconceptions of evolutionary change as goal-directed and progressive. I found few errors. There are many cases in which the authors refer to plants and animals, rather than including all relevant taxa. How do the various kinds of microscopes differ as tools in the study of cells? Its generally well-written. Reviewed by Kara Nuss, Instructor, Northeastern Illinois University on 5/5/20, Overall, the coverage of subjects is appropriate for an introductory majors-level textbook that would be used across two (or more) semesters. read more. Thats because you are tearing the rigid cell walls of the celery cells with your teeth. No, its not the cell walls. I thought the explanations were very specific and well versed. Perhaps the diverse and multi-author origin of the book's content ensured the excellence of the book in this regard. I did not examine all of the review questions in the 26 chapters I engaged, but I came across one that to my mind rises to the level of error (Section 19.1 Population Evolution. Each chapter has a number of useful key terms and definitions, a chapter summary, as well as review questions for the students. The authors' voices are clear and the text is easy to follow and understand. I could probably use them! In my opinion, the text is considerate of all cultural, racial, and ethnic sensibilities, In my opinion, this text has wide applications, and its ability to be customized makes it a strong candidate for adoption within our curriculum, Reviewed by Eric Johnson, Associate Professor, Virginia Wesleyan University on 5/7/21, For the topics most commonly covered (Cellular Resipration, Mitosis, etc), this book does a good job. Reviewed by Anthony Arment, Professor of Biology, Central State University on 10/11/18. This book is perfectly appropriate for all readers. New vocabulary is introduced throughout in bold, and key terms are repeated at the end of each chapter. Atoms that vary in the number of neutrons found in their nuclei are called ________. For example, at the time of this review in December 2016, statistics and citations in the book date primarily to 2012 and earlier, and some recently hot topics like CRISPR are not yet covered. Here I think an animation or worksheet would be useful, where two alleles compete against one another over time to show the effects on allele frequency change given different magnitudes/directions of selection. I liked that chapters were separated into a handful of subsections with a concise heading -- some other texts seem to over-partition concepts which can prevent a novice from understanding the connections between sections. The text does not dive into the controversy, merely puts forward the biological information as it should. In this reviewer's opinion the modularity followed in this text is very helpful for the intented target student audience students who are freshman non-majors. Some of the figures did not match well with the text. 5. The first forms of life on Earth were ________. The table of contents and index are useful, and the PDF is searchable. They are at just the right level for a first year biology student. The labeling is not clear in many figures, the font type is distracting, labels have shadows, and they are distorted or blurry. 1999-2023, Rice University. The book is internally consistent between different sections in spite of the multi-author origin of the content. The student can use references to look up additional material. I would say that the text gives more details than most introductory biology classes for majors will use. It is mostly a long long list of descriptive paragraphs. On page 54, this sentence requires a fuller explanation: Cells can only survive freezing if the water in them is temporarily replaced by another liquid like glycerol. I like that I can find small sections throughout the book to assign to students. I felt that the eight major units of the text had a logical flow to them, moving from smaller, discrete concepts to applications and interactions among concepts. I found the index and glossary complete; it was easy to find topics of interest and the completeness of the topics matched my expectations from the index. Is able to cover aspects of biology very well. Looks like what you have put together is going to pretty much fit the bill! I was expecting to see basic cellular biology and a survey of organismal diversity including units on evolutionary change and interactions of organisms at the ecosystem level, but I was surprised to also find several chapters on human anatomy and physiology including the basics of the immune system. Furthermore, these duplicates appear to reference different pages. The text is organized in a clear and easy to follow manner and provides formative assessments throughout so that students may gauge their learning. glycogen. I personally prefer navigating a physical text to a pdf, however I have observed that students take naturally to the digital format, and stand to benefit from the convenience of carrying their books digitally wherever they go. Seems to mimick other Intro Biology for Majors organizational schemes. Thanks for all you have done !! A few images had some distortion of text. For example, Figs. There is a glaring error in Figure 15.8: Prokaryotic genes do not have introns, and there is little to no mRNA processing that occurs in prokaryotes, as transcription and translation are often coupled in time and location. glycosidic bond. I feel this book would be relevant for biology majors, learning their new field, as well as non-majors exploring the topic for the first and (maybe) only time. This is an obvious example of the fallacy of genetic determinism; its the kind of writing that instills misconceptions about the power of genes and chromosomes. 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