Aleta's Book Report

by Norman Doidge visit his website Kelly Lambert recommended this book while she spoke at the DKG Southeast Regional Conference, and I downloaded it to my Kindle that day. I have learned so much about the brain repairing itself from this book! It is amazing what the brain can do in its "plasticity." HAving suffered some brain function loss after a "tick fever," I have experienced some use of new and improved brain areas. I am really glad to be able to learn student names again, but my calendar skills still need help - me, who was like Rainman with a calendar and math! I had to read the first chapter to my A&P 2 students. This chapter was about a woman who had NO sense of balance. Her "scientists" used her tongue! to send balance information to her brain! I have met many great people through this book. Dr. Edward Taub developed constrain-induced therapy to help stroke victim regain use of affected limbs. Barbara Arrowsmith Young (who cured hers...

by Kelly Lambert visit her website I am a crochet-er and have been for years, so when I heard a woman talking about how the hand-mind connection was a treatment for depression (on NPR's To the Best of Our Knowledge last fall), I perked up. She discussed how our society has worked so hard to automate things, when we actually need to do hand work to keep a healthy mind. Okay, that was my first exposure! I attended the Delta Kappa Gamma Southeast Regional Conference this summer in Little Rock - and there she was, talking about depression and the need for people to work with their hands. Kelly discussed her book and the effort-driven rewards system. She explained that making things for others made us feel good. Well, maybe I have always known that! I hardly sit down without a project in my hands! Her book is a joy to read, and can really help each of us deal with down times and maybe understand those who live in depression daily. I have decided that I will read this book to my ...

by Michael Pollan Pollan makes several statements in this book which should hit us all pretty hard. One rule to eating "right" would be "don't buy anything in the grocery store your great-grandmother would not recognize." His point is that the processing of food is what has led to a "western diet" and the ills associated with that diet. Nutrition science has stripped natural foods of the good stuff and replaced with synthetic, poor mimics of those nutrients. He mentions that usually the only area of a grocery store we should visit would be the area around the "edges." Think about that - I find that in the last few years, that is where I do 90% of my food shopping. This is a slow read, but it is full of "a-ha" moments. I will report more on this later.

by Malcolm Gladwell I have been negligent in regards to my MSTA book blog. Most of my recently read books have not been science related, but great books. This book actually came on my new, but used Kindle. So I read it. I learned so much about people, and thereby, teaching from this book that I wish every teacher would read it. It is about patterns, in numbers, in culture, in dates, in successes. Stories from Bill Gates, to Korean Air plane crashes. The 10,000 hour rule to being good at anything jumped out at me. The only thing I may have spent 10,000 hours in is reading, and maybe crocheting, and definitely teaching. I liked this book so much, that I have downloaded Gladwell's other books to my Kindle. I'll report on those soon!

by Ricki Lewis Ricki Lewis has been known to biology teachers for quite a while - as the author of the BEST genetics textbook around. She caught the "genetics" bug in 1978, and has been a major player in helping the public understand the nature of genetics, stem cell research, etc. through her writings for Nature, Discover, The Scientist and many other publications. Following the death of her parents, she felt the driving need to volunteer as a hospice worker, as others did for her father. Her first patient was a Huntington Disease patient - a perfect match. Ricki has been passionate about that disease since it caught her attention in the media in the late seventies, having received letters from Marjorie and Arlo Guthrie and others for helping spread the news about research for HD . Ricki is now very passionate about clearing the misunderstandings surrounding stem cells. This novel, while it is fiction, does just that. In a late scene in the novel, her central character (Kel...

I decided to read Finding Darwin's God by Kenneth Miller, as Dr. Miller is the special speaker at our Fall MSTA Conference. Now, I must tell you that it does not read fast like The DaVinci Code, but I did get through it. I like the way Dr. Miller approaches the “controversy.” If you are a very conservative Christian, this book might help you understand why creationism and intelligent design are not scientific. It won't do away your concerns about the influence of atheists in society but you might like knowing that there are Christians such as Dr. Miller who can champion evolution. If you are a moderate/liberal Christian, you might learn more about evolution and how to explain to others that creationism and intelligent design are not science, as well as helping others understand what evolution is. You might like knowing that God could have created a world in which evolution operates and can be studied scientifically, and that evolution could have been God's mechanism for ...

by Spencer Wells Having read the Seven Daughters of Eve, I was ready to see how Spencer Wells addressed the spread of the Y chromosome across the continents. It was not surprising to see that the mitochondrial DNA and the Y chromosome followed similar paths out of Africa. I really liked the way Spencer told the stories of our contemporaries through the research of the chromosome, and which path their particular ancestors took. While this was a great book, it was one which required thought and was not a "quick read." One reason I am glad to have read this book it that I have been following the work of Spencer Wells in National Georaphic magazine. I did not like the way he advertised for the Genographic project, but that was part of the reason for his writing this book. I will be sharing this book with other biology teachers soon. If the cost of being a part of the project was not so prohibitive, I would even encourage my students to participate.