(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best anatomy books

So as a fairly recent graduate, and a fellow planner, here are some things I wish I would have done to prepare for pa school. First and foremost, get yourself into a proper mindset for school. You will likely need to study more than you ever have before. Know going in that you will need put aside at least a few hours EVERY night to review your lectures and study. If you end up not needing to study that much, fantastic! But if you are like most of us it will be crucial to have good study habits to ensure you do not fall behind on your work and keep pace with the course load. As far as I know all programs will start you in anatomy doing dissection on cadavers so reviewing you anatomy if it has been a while can be a huge help. Anatomy will go very fast and throw a ton of information at you without slowing down. For the rest I will give general advice but if you can tell me more about your background I can give you more specific advice.

For things to read before hand here are a few books I recommend:

• https://www.amazon.com/Gross-Pathology-Handbook-Guide-Descriptive/dp/1550595687
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Manual-Surgical-Pathology-Expert-Consult/dp/0323065163/ref=pd_sbs_14_img_0/147-7260257-7513605?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0323065163&pd_rd_r=5e2c1867-c483-4073-880a-aa30679f4f85&pd_rd_w=7J5fC&pd_rd_wg=6m21Y&pf_rd_p=5cfcfe89-300f-47d2-b1ad-a4e27203a02a&pf_rd_r=A7PFNK4CSCH15N3QYV1J&psc=1&refRID=A7PFNK4CSCH15N3QYV1J
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Surgical-Pathology-Dissection-Illustrated-Guide/dp/0387955593/ref=pd_sbs_14_img_1/147-7260257-7513605?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0387955593&pd_rd_r=5e2c1867-c483-4073-880a-aa30679f4f85&pd_rd_w=7J5fC&pd_rd_wg=6m21Y&pf_rd_p=5cfcfe89-300f-47d2-b1ad-a4e27203a02a&pf_rd_r=A7PFNK4CSCH15N3QYV1J&psc=1&refRID=A7PFNK4CSCH15N3QYV1J
  
• https://shop.lww.com/board-review-series/c/189?sortBy=tenant~purchasedtotal1+desc
  
  These will all be helpful books during your didactic, clinical, and early career; so I find them worth the investment. The gross description book is simple and straightforward for getting an idea of descriptive terms. Reading the intros to both westra and lester can give you a great intro to the basics of grossing. I would not worry yourself too much about the details of grossing but doing a quick skim through them then now will give you some familiarity later. Reviewing the dictations for all the different organ systems and getting an idea for how they are formatted is a great step. Te board review series at the bottom is nice for summarizing some things and as exam prep with there practice questions.
  
  There are free options too for grossing information if you google. A few examples are:
  
  
• https://www.pathology.med.umich.edu/cutting
  
• https://voices.uchicago.edu/grosspathology/
  
• http://pathology.ucla.edu/gross-manual
  
  You can also watch some videos online about grossing to get a visualization of what it is like to gross. Here is a great example video of grossing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDpH9dKs8wg&t=2s .
  
  And I know you did not ask but for during your school year I highly recommend both pathoma and sketchy medical videos. Unfortunately I did not know about sketchy medical when I was in school, but I have reviewed it with some colleagues and I love their videos so much! Pathoma was a lifesaver for my exams.
  
  If you want to PM me for additional information feel free! Best of luck and congratulations on being accepted!

Yes, in fact the human respiratory system is remarkably well designed to equalize the temp of inhaled air to human core body temp in less than a second. The nasal passages and bronchi are specifically designed for this. The final bit occurs as the air is coming into the alveoli (during which the air is in such close contact with the blood that blood and air almost always are completely equal in temp).

Re your second paragraph, recall that O2 partial pressure in air is always (at sea level) 21%. The change in O2 content in air that is warmer, or cooler, than human core temp is entirely due to the air overall shrinking or expanding, not the % of O2 changing. So - the instant the temp of the inhaled air changes - which, again, has mostly taken place before air reaches the smaller bronchioles and before any gas exchange has taken place - the air has already shrunk (or expanded) accordingly. By the time it reaches the last bronchial branches just before the alveoli, you are typically dealing with 37C air, 21% partial pressure O2, or roughly 160mm Hg PPO2.

PPO2 in alveolar air drops due to water vapor and is almost always 105mm Hg, no matter what the environmental temperature is. (PPO2 will definitely go lower at high altitude, but at sea level it's very reliably around 105mm Hg.) It's rare to see much deviation from this, even during intense exercise, at least to any degree that would affect O2 transfer from alveolar air to lung capillaries. (exception: Olympic caliber endurance athletes can push alveolar PPO2 lower. You won't see this in a casual runner, though.)

From the blood's point of veiw, PPO2 of blood entering the lung capillaries is typically about 40mm Hg, increasing to 105mm Hg (e.g. equilibrium with the alveolar air) as it leaves the alveolus. You just don't see much deviation from that. See for example here. Notice for example the bits about "It is clear that in most individuals that at maximal aerobic exercise there is still some capacity left in the amount of air ventilated in and out of the lungs...Pulmonary blood returning to the left heart is nearly always 105mmHg and the percentage saturation of hemoglobin with oxygen rarely drops below c. 98%."

Your 3rd point: Yes, this is really true! (See above for cite) We test this in my lab all the time by popping O2 sat meters on students' fingers, putting them on a treadmill or bike and running them to VO2max. Students are always surprised that O2 sat does not drop, even when they start feeling very fatigued and/or overheated. I've tested this on mysef many times. It's really quite impressive how good the body is at keeping the arterial blood at 98-99% O2 saturation (= ~100mm O2 partial pressure). Back when physiologists were first studying this (1930s) it was quite a surprise to find that O2 delivery to the blood is really not a limiting factor.

Ref: Besides the book I linked to (which is great), also see Schmidt-Nielson's and Silverthorn's texts. (Schmidt-Nielsen is my absolute favorite) My own background - I have a phys PhD and occasionally teach exercise phys at colleges (though to be honest haven't done so since late 2009). Also btw, I wrote/cowrote the exercise & muscle chapters in 3 of the major college textbooks currently on the market (4 if you count a slightly dopey nonmajors one). It was while working on a Sinauer bio-majors text in 2010 that I got into a great discussion about the causes of exercise fatigue with the Stanford prof (the other coauthor for those chapters, amazing guy) who is the major researcher in exercise fatigue and overheating. I got a great tour of his lab. Exercise fatigue is actually really fascinating - I have a whole set of lecture notes written up on it if anybody has any interest.

tl;dr - Exercise fatigue is a neato topic, and, counterintuitively, it is almost never due to any limitation on O2 delivery to the blood. (except at high altitude. Which I have another gigantic set of notes on if anyone cares)

EDIT: rewording

Seconding u/theUnmutual6's recommendations, in addition to u/BlueSmoke95's suggestion to check out Ann Moura's work. I would like to recommend Ellen Dugan's Natural Witchery and her related domestic witchery books. Ellen is a certified Master Gardener and incorporates plants into much of her work.

Some of my favorite plant books!

Plant Science:

• Plant Physiology and Development (you can get away with the previous edition of this one!)
  
  
• Botany for Gardeners
  
  
• Essential Plant Pathology (do NOT get the first edition - the second edition is superior in almost every single way)
  
  
• American Horticultural Society Plant Propagation: The Fully Illustrated Plant-by-Plant Manual of Practical Techniques
  
  
  Foraging & Field Guides:
  
  
• A Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants: Eastern and central North America
  
  
• Edible Wild Plants: Wild Foods From Dirt To Plate
  
  
• The Forager's Harvest: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants
  
  Herbalism:
  
  
• Rosemary Gladstar's Medicinal Herbs: A Beginner's Guide: 33 Healing Herbs to Know, Grow, and Use (this is the first one I would recommend to novices)
  
  
• The Herbal Apothecary: 100 Medicinal Herbs and How to Use Them
  
  
• The Herbal Medicine Maker's Manual
  
  
• 300 Herbs: A Materia Medica
  
  
• Culpeper's Complete Herbal
  
  Ethnobotany:
  
  
• A Modern Herbal Vol I and Vol II (these could belong in the above section or here - I love love love these books. I think they are a must for any hedge witch or green witch!!)
  
  
• Folklore and Symbolism of Flowers, Plants and Trees
  
  
• Whispers from the Woods: The Lore & Magic of Trees
  
  
• Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
  
  I also encourage y'all to look into fungi as well. I work with both plants and fungi and I think they bring a fascinating and fulfilling aspect to my work. Plus, hunting for mushrooms is super fun! I can recommend field guide books for folks who are interested, they just tend to be very region-specific so I'm not going to list all of them here.
  
  For general fungus reading I recommend the following:
  
  
• Magical Mushrooms, Mischievous Molds
  
  
• The Fifth Kingdom
  
  
• Mycelium Running
  
  
• Radical Mycology: A Treatise on Seeing & Working with Fungi
  
  
• Mushrooms Demystified

There are trade-offs to having powerful senses. It takes significant devotion of brain architecture and metabolic energy to be very proficient at a specific sense. While humans do not hear or smell well compared to other mammals, our sense of vision is MUCH better than most.

If you look back to the fossil evidence for the origins of the Primate Order, you see greater reliance on vision with a reduction in olfaction (evidence for this includes more convergent eye orbits and shorter snouts). As you move through different taxa within primates, you see varying degrees of reliance on vision. Prosimians (e.g. lemurs) are the least reliant on vision, "New World Monkeys" are intermediate, and Catarrhines (Old World Monkeys and Apes, including humans) have the best vision.

There are numerous hypotheses positing why primates evolved such a superior sense of sight. These hypotheses include a need for better depth perception in order to grasp branches while leaping between trees, to the ability to break the camoflague of common primate predators, such as snakes.

The short of it is that there has been significant selection on improved eyesight in primates, and in our Parvorder (Catarrhini) in particular. There is only so much space in the brain and so much energy which can be devoted to processing sensory information, so this improved vision came at the cost of our other senses.

If you're interested in reading more about this topic, this book would be a decent place to start.

There's quite a few books on zooarchaeology and paleoarch that you might find useful.

Starting off, there's more of a trade-appeal book that might lack more academic, research upmh but should get the overall job done - Domesticated: Evolution in a Man-Made World by Richard Francis.

However, more in the same vein but seems to be a bit more researched is Dogs: Their Fossil Relatives and Evolutionary History by a two experts in the field who have spent almost three decades researching canine evolution. Rather than link wolves to domestic dogs, it traces back for the common ancestor through genetics and fossilized remains.

Then I suggest Dogs: History, Myth, Art, if only because it's pretty and I read it over a break once. Has a lot of illustrations and material evidence of humans depicting dogs throughout the ages. Just kind of fun and relevant.

Now if you want academic papers edited into one volume, there's Dogs and People in Social, Working, Economic or Symbolic Interaction but that doesn't just look at the evolution of dogs through genetics like the first two. Rather, it examines the social place dogs have in human society, and how those roles have shifted depending on culture, location, time, and religious influences. In the same vein as Dogs (above) but not as fun? Definitely more dense and I've only read a few of the selected papers for reference.

Lastly, definitely more broad and applicable to more animals than JUST dogs, there's Care or Neglect? that seems just to be archaeological research into how people cared for animals, nursing them through diseases and injuries. It predominantly features dogs (and horses) though because of their importance to humans.

Steady reading, hope this helps that novel!

Edit: Oh! And if you want even more reads, I know there's quite a bit in Egyptology fields about animal care and remains, some of which focus on dogs and others more on myths. Not quite evolutionary track, like you seem to be asking for, but still of fringe relevance.

Ok, so you seem to be making a big assumption that is causing consternation, which is that the soul or spirit is equivalent to the consciousness produced by (in our case) the brain. These are not necessarily related at all. For instance, does a mentally handicapped person not have a soul? What about someone who is in a vegetative coma, does that mean their soul has now departed and they should be honored as an ancestor already despite still being alive? When we die, and our souls move on to Haides or wherever (depending on your beliefs), we no longer have any access to our bodies and brains, and yet our souls may still be conscious and aware (example: the ghosts you mention). Some people also have the ability to send their spirits out from their bodies while in trance. It seems clear to me that the spirit and the physical form/brain are only tenuously connected in many ways.

Not to mention many of us have experiences of, say, communicating with animal spirits (dead or alive) where the spirit appears to understand and be able to communicate at a much higher level than any actual, physical animal is capable of.

Plants don't have to have developed "human-like consciousness" biologically for them to have a spirit attached, existing in parallel as it were, with some level of awareness and engagement with the world. Trees are often hundreds of years old, a spirit that old may well have developed even better awareness and engagement than some human spirits.

But possibly most importantly, plants do have senses and an ability to detect the world around them. They actually have ways of sensing light (as we do with our eyes) and chemicals (as we do with our noses and mouths), and sound vibrations (as we do with our ears), as well as some things we are actually unable to sense. They communicate with each other, with fungi, and even with animals through electrical and chemical changes. If you want to totally blow your mind, I highly recommend reading Brilliant Green: The Surprising History and Science of Plant Intelligence which will explain these things in detail much better than I can. You will never look at plants the same way again.

I was also scared of anatomy and, like nontradmd, ended up doing really well without any prior prep. It'll be daunting at first, but you'll do ok if you keep up. On the other hand, if you just want to read something light to help get your mind into it (which is what I kind of wish I did), read through The Big Picture anatomy book.

One thing I really wish I did was familiarize myself with Anki - read how-tos, watch videos, play around. It would have saved me so much time this year.

I also wish I went through my "one day I'll get to this" list - organize bookmarks, get rid of junk in my house, etc.

Nearly everyone on this thread will tell you NOT to do anything before med school or the summer between m1/m2, but you gotta do what's best for you. If you think you'll be less stressed by reading a book, do it.

[Physics PhD, theoretical soft condensed matter physics/active matter]
In short, I think interdisciplinary research is always a good thing. Both sides benefit from different ways of thinking and different methodology, which leads to an even greater understanding.

Long version:
Biology (unlike physics or mathematics) contains an “-ology” suffix, which means it is the study of something, specifically life. Whereas physics is more of way understanding and distilling nature through universal principles, and mathematics is a tool or a language to develop those principles and more. Physics/mathematics and biology meet most commonly when biologists borrow physics/math tools to understand new biology. For example, the use of optical tweezers (part of this year’s physics Nobel prize) to accurately control proteins in the subcellular environment in vivo is a vital tool in understanding vesicle transport (if I’m not mistaken). Or in general, the use of more mathematics to make biology more quantitative may help make biology experiments more reproducible.

A second way biology and physics meet is when physicist use biology as a system to understand new physics of things out of equilibrium (or active), complex/adaptive networks, or living. For example, William Bialek and Jeremy England develop general theories for living systems. Mathematics is used as a language to think about these theories. One of my favorite analogies is, “if mathematics is the language of nature, physics is the poetry”.

As for mathematics and biology without physics, ecology is a field that has been a fruitful endeavor for both math and biology.

Lastly, I’d like to add that biology is not being replaced by physics/math. The goals of the fields are inherently different. But where there’s some overlap in these goals, teams collaborate and even more can be achieved/understood than separately. This is beautiful science.

P.S. Two great textbooks where biology, math and physics (and some chemistry) meet are “Biophysics” and “Physical Biology of the Cell”.

I haven't picked it up yet, personally, but I've heard great things about Trail Guide to the Body. There is also Trail Guide to Movement by the same author, and it looks pretty interesting as well. Here is a podcast interview of the author, which is pretty interesting and should give you an idea of what to expect.

Don't bother, you'll get enough of it in med school haha.

As far as I know, one of the gold standards for anatomy is the Frank H Netter material. There's a nice Atlas of Human Anatomy (keep in mind an atlas usually doesn't have information about the functions of any anatomy, just the names), and study cards (even referenced here).

Gray's Anatomy is good (obviously), but really long. The student's version may be shorter/more manageable.

My undergrad class used Grant's Atlas of Anatomy/Grant's Dissector, and a Human Anatomy textbook. They were not bad as well. Anatomy material is always pretty dry.

If you can, maybe see what your school uses? That way you won't start reading and then have to switch to a different book (though I suppose extra reading is never a bad thing).

And congrats again on getting into med school!

BI Answers: Why do humans love sugar?

We can blame our sweet tooth on our primate ancestors.

Millions and millions of years ago, apes survived on sugar-rich fruit. These animals evolved to like riper fruit because it had a higher sugar content than unripe fruit and therefore supplied more energy.

"Sugar is a deep, deep ancient craving," said Daniel Lieberman, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University and author of " The Story the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease."

And sugar offers more than just energy — it helps us store fat, too.

​

https://www.businessinsider.com/evolutionary-reason-we-love-sugar-2014-4

As a hospital security officer, I rarely approach any situation without putting gloves on. A couple of pairs in a keeper pouch is a good idea, but almost every hospital in the US has a glove dispenser and a hand sanitizer station within a few steps of wherever you may be at any time. When dealing with psych patients, remember it's the illness talking, not the person. Compassion is a big the biggest part of hospital security.

Keep an extra uniform at work. This is actually a requirement at the hospital I work at. Keep a Vick's Inhaler handy, a couple quick snorts will get funky smells out of your nose in a jiffy. There are lots of funky smells at the hospital.

If you stay there and decide you like the hospital setting, I'd advise you to pick up a copy of Dean Vaughn's Medical Terminology and Baron's E-Z Anatomy & Physiology. It will make following the conversations taking place around you much easier, and those two books present it in a very easy to learn manner.

I would recommend this book: https://www.amazon.com/Mismatch-Lifestyle-Diseases-Peter-Gluckman/dp/0199228388/ref=nodl_

Also if you just keep up with the literature as much as possible, like by setting up a pubcrawler account and typing in key words to do with diabetes, you’ll get new studies sent to your inbox each week. You’ll want to start with review studies first though, so you can go to pubmed or your university library and search for the best match review articles that reflect the current state of things. And you can also download the international diabetes federation report each year for free, which summarises everything, at their website.

I did my PhD at the Liggins Institute in Auckland, NZ. Just moved to California to continue my research. But the Liggins is a good place to look into for doing diabetes research.

I taught A&P at a college. Trust me dude, you will need to quit to make it happen. A&P is so much memorization you might not even be able to get an A in the summer class if you are taking micro also. This is just one part of the body, you will likely have a 1-2 days to memorize this entire thing, then move on to similar, then memorize hormones, etc. http://www.codex99.com/anatomy/images/netter/neck_lg.jpg

You could do it but you would have to start learning beforehand. The best most complete book is Netter's (http://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Human-Anatomy-Professional-NetterReference-com/dp/1455758884/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1452179938&sr=8-2&keywords=netter), many med schools use it. For a class like yours you would have to memorize all the muscles, but probably not the arteries and veins. Then maybe the major nerves, but its the the teachers call on the small stuff like that.

This book is fantastic and completely worth the money.

Trail Guide to the Body

I also recommend the anatomy coloring books, and surprisingly, if you search Pinterest there are a lot of really nice charts and pics.

>So how about the origin of male and female. How did a self replicating something mutate into two distinct types of itself that have to mate with each other in order to reproduce.

In short, that's not what happened. There are a couple of typical responses to this question - that sex, from a biological perspective is merely the specialization of reproductive cells, that species which reproduce sexually but which produce both types of gametes, that sex has evolved separately multiple times, and so on, but I think if you're interested in the topic, you might want to start here. Or, alternatively, this video might prove enlightening, though it is short. There are a few youtube videos which are generally reliable that hit upon the key points, that I can point you in the direction of, if you want something shorter and perhaps more to the point.

If you like science and are interested in learning about the history of neuroscience in an interesting way, I'd recommend The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons by Sam Kean.

If you love youtube definitely check out Armando Hasudungan
https://www.youtube.com/user/armandohasudungan

Personally I lived by Netter Atlas of Human Anatomy

https://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Human-Anatomy-Professional-NetterReference-com/dp/1455758884/ref=la_B000AQ4WBC_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1523296631&sr=1-1

The "right" conclusion? We're back to objective morality again...

I'm semi-serious. It may well be the case that eating vegetables is also considered barbaric. However, I'm not the one claiming equivalency between plant life and animal life. Taking your own argument to the logical conclusion, though, does it not make more sense to simply commit suicide? After all, if you will eat many thousands of plants in your lifetime then you are better off minimizing those plant casualties by dying early. Since that's plainly an absurd position, I posit that there is not an equivalence: not all lives are equal.

That said, the current state of neuroscience is not the end-state of neuroscience. Studies suggest there may well be plant intelligence. To rely on the current state of a branch of science as your bedrock for an apparently objective morality is flawed due to the inherent mutability of scientific knowledge. As the science changes your morality will be forced to do so too.

Now I did explain my own position earlier to you:
>Outside actual food taste, the closer something is to being "me" the more distasteful I find the concept of eating it.
Other humans are pretty close to being actually "me" so I find the concept distasteful, but I would do it under certain circumstances.
Chickens are pretty far from being "me" so I don't find the concept distasteful at all.

>The "right" conclusion? We're back to objective morality again...

And back to the fact that you know nothing about metaethics and are merely assuming that there's no objective morality.


>I'm semi-serious. It may well be the case that eating vegetables is also considered barbaric. However, I'm not the one claiming equivalency between plant life and animal life.

I'm not claiming that either. I'm just saying that if plants feel, then going vegan still is the best way to reduce suffering and death of sentient life.

>Taking your own argument to the logical conclusion, though, does it not make more sense to simply commit suicide?

Nope.

>After all, if you will eat many thousands of plants in your lifetime then you are better off minimizing those plant casualties by dying early. Since that's plainly an absurd position, I posit that there is not an equivalence: not all lives are equal.

I agree, eating plants is fine. I was showing how your position didn't make sense. I don't think plants feel or think.


>That said, the current state of neuroscience is not the end-state of neuroscience. Studies suggest there may well be plant intelligence.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_perception_(paranormal)

"Plant perception or biocommunication is the paranormal idea that plants are sentient, that they respond to humans in a manner that amounts to ESP, and that they experience pain and fear. The idea is not accepted, as plants lack nervous systems.[1][2][3][4]Paranormal claims in regard to plant perception are considered to be pseudoscience by many in the scientific community.[1][2][5][6]"

> To rely on the current state of a branch of science as your bedrock for an apparently objective morality is flawed due to the inherent mutability of scientific knowledge. As the science changes your morality will be forced to do so too.

Again, even if plants are sentient, going vegan and eating plants directly is still the best way to reduce suffering and death of sentient life.

>Now I did explain my own position earlier to you:
>>Outside actual food taste, the closer something is to being "me" the more distasteful I find the concept of eating it.
>Other humans are pretty close to being actually "me" so I find the concept distasteful, but I would do it under certain circumstances.
>Chickens are pretty far from being "me" so I don't find the concept distasteful at all.

So it's more okay to eat someone with a different skin color than it is to eat someone who is the same race as you?

Cliff notes, dood. I have this. It's cheap and pretty easily understandable. It's also not a humongous book, so that's nice. http://www.amazon.com/CliffsNotes-Anatomy-Physiology-2ndEdition-Cliffsnotes/dp/0470878746

Usually, the equations aren't derived rigorously, and, in fact, can be so unrigorous that theoretical results are merely compared to experimental results (well, obviously, which is the principle of empiricism -> science being science).

For example, from Biophysics, page 40, figure 4.9:
> Results of experiments in which observers are asked to rate the intensity of dim flashes, including blanks, on a scale from 0 to 6... - Alongside an accompanying graph.

And if the OP is reading this comment, I suspect the aforementioned book will be one of the most valuable assets in your life if in fact, you do invest in it (not talking about money of course, rather, time and mental energy).

I'd recommend getting an undergraduate anatomy and physiology textbook, Tortora's is great, and you can buy it for about $5.

I think if you want to become educated, take an anatomy and physiology class. It really is empowering to understand how your own body works.

Unfortunately I cannot ethically answer questions for you regarding your personal health, and I would recommend that you discuss any personal health problems with your doctor.

I fell in love with Neuroscience after reading The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons

[The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Tale-Dueling-Neurosurgeons-Revealed-ebook/dp/B00GG0GIXQ) by Sam Kean

It's really good. I enjoyed it.

So, in other words, you have your fingers in your ears, singing “La la la”.

The book Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences that I mentioned looks very closely at the brain organizational research mentioned in that paper. It's meticulously researched. If you read the book, or even one chapter of it, you'd be a lot less proud of the paper you're holding up from the journal Hormones and Behavior.

If you're not willing to read, just think a little. Just the other day, we had a story about identical twins, one of whom was trans and one wasn't. Same hormonal wash, same genes, same environment, different trans status. This ought to tell you that it's not as easy and simple as you'd like to imagine.

Barron's EZ Anatomy & Physiology, along with Khan Academy, has greatly streamlined my studying. On their own they're probably not enough for an A, but I'd be surprised if you couldn't pass A&P I/II with just those two resources.

https://www.amazon.com/Z-Anatomy-Physiology-Barrons/dp/0764144685

Do you honestly think that all peer-reviewed journals are equivalent? If so, maybe you shouldn't be in /r/science.

There's a lot of material in peer-reviewed journals that has later been discovered false. One of the worst areas for refuted claims happens to be the area of sex differences.

If you want to actually understand the sorry state of sex-differences research, I recommend you read Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences; check out one of the many good reviews this book got here.

I'd sell it. My Fundamentals textbook had a mini A&P review at the beginning of the chapters so that helped. Also there's tons of info online but if you'd like an actual book, try this one:

http://www.amazon.com/CliffsNotes-Anatomy-Physiology-2ndEdition-Cliffsnotes/dp/0470878746/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1449677466&sr=8-1&keywords=cliffs+notes+anatomy+and+physiology+review

I don't have any articles about it. Read an anatomy and physiology textbook. This is basic stuff. I don't mean to be a dick, but I can't be expected to have an article for every scientific fact.

I'd recommend Tortora or Saladin's anatomy textbooks. You can get an old edition for about 5 bucks on amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Anatomy-Physiology-Atlas-Registration/dp/0471689343/

Dude. I really have to warn you... I really hope you don't already know what is going to be in the chapter I am warning you about. But like dude, if you read this book, knowing what you know... it is going to be real fucked up dude. Like, I am not even fucking kidding dude... I cannot afford the amount of drugs I need to take to undo this, nor consume them since they are like 5000x my bodyweight.

Other than that chapter, the book is 10/10, so yea. But skip the shit out of it. You see a weird motherfucker biologists dude traveling to new guinea you shut that fucking book and burn it. I cannot comprehend the evil you just showed me... or more appropriately, its extent. Oh my fucking god.

https://www.amazon.com/Tale-Dueling-Neurosurgeons-Revealed-Recovery-ebook/dp/B00GG0GIXQ

I second Oliver Sacks - Hallucinations or this oliver sacks book. Also "Tale of Dueling Neurosurgeons" is good and provides a more general overview

Maynard Smith is always good to carry to your next college bible study.

I'd suggest a comprehensive anatomy book.

http://www.amazon.com/Grants-Atlas-Anatomy-13th-Anne/dp/1608317560/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1344563654&sr=1-1&keywords=grant+atlas+of+anatomy

I can get you a price below Amazon.

I'm not pro-soy or anti-soy. I'm pro-eating-the-whole food, because I believe our bodies are designed to eat whole foods.

When you isolate a single part of a food (like the fruit from a juice) you will take in an artificially large portion of it. That's why you must eat processed food in moderation, because the portion size isn't automatically moderated for you by nature anymore. Our bodies co-evolved to digest the foods in our environment... none of the food that most people eat today is in it's original (or close to original) form, or in the ratios given by nature.

For more info, read Mismatch, and In Defense of Food.

OMG freaking viruses. Seriously. Like not only on here, I am constantly-and I mean constantly- talking all about them. About how the strain of yersinia pestis that caused the black plague is the same strain of yersinia pestis today (Which interestingly, we found out by analyzing DNA from the bone of a plague victim!), which has recently cropped up in Colorado and in China (they shut down an entire town for it!).

Oooh and this ebola thing. Holy freaking moly. Ebola is such an interesting virus. It doesn't even care what you are, all it knows is that you are meat, and it devours meat ya know. Like seriously, it has absolutely no problem going from guinea pigs to monkeys to humans, killing each and every one of them without blinking. AND WE DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THE RESERVOIR IS FOR IT, SERIOUSLY. Our best guess is bats. Guess. It's a guess.

So, this is like the only thing that I have that even really relates to diseases...not much you can add that has to do with them, sigh!

Honestly, I don't even care about entering. I just really really love disease and talking about them :D

You might also want to read Brilliant Green. It has very relevant info.

>why or how a species would have become sexual, or having two compatible sexes.

Read a book

As someone who knows chemistry and genetics, it all makes sense and fits together -- but you have to actually build an understanding of things from the ground up in order to grasp some of these concepts.
That requires reading.

This book taught me more than trying to slog through my actual textbook

De forskelle der er i dyr kan ikke overføres problemfrit til et væsen med en så udvidet metabevidsthed om dem selv som mennesker. Desuden slås der tvivl om en del af disse studiets validitet, fortolkning og motivationer og afledte konsekvenser, de sidste to mindre vigtige for folk der et 100% naturvidenskabeligt posivistisk indstillet:
http://www.liseeliot.com/pink-brain-blue-brain

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674057309?ie=UTF8&tag=slatmaga-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0674057309

Der er selvfølgelig biologi i vores opførsel, men at benytte deterministiske ideologier om et emne vi simpelthen ikke ved særlig meget om er amoralsk. Vi ved drenge og piger kulturelle roller ændrer sig over tid, vi ved at der stort set ingen generelle totale forskelle er da den stærkeste pige eksempelvis er stærkere end den svageste dreng og det er derfor moralsk angribeligt at mene at vide noget om individer ud fra yderst generelle forskelle (statistik siger ikke noget om enkelte mennesker så brug det ikke som forklaring på alt).

Vi bør ikke lade vores forestillinger om hvad folk kan gøre, indvirke på, hvad de i vores samfund har mulighed for at gøre.

no no its a book called

Big picture anatomy
http://www.amazon.com/Gross-Anatomy-The-Picture-LANGE/dp/0071476725

^^ like so. Read that

The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GG0GIXQ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_9AKaAbMAQ6CXF

I see a guy that does trigger point work, told me to get this book https://www.amazon.com/Trail-Guide-Body-Locate-Muscles/dp/0982978650/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1537202882&sr=8-1&keywords=trail+guide+to+the+body+5th+edition
Shows trigger points, shows pain areas and the muscles that cause the pain and how to release them.

And as I said, as we currently understand, the jury is still out on whether or not plants are able to feel and perceive. Yes plants do have responsiveness, but so does a light bulb attached to a wire when we run a current through it. We do not know if there is someone home with plants. The lightbulb isn't feeling or perceiving anything but it is responding to stimuli.

I realize this sounds similar to Cartesian animal-machine thinking of the past and I will be checking out this book in the future, as there is lots of interesting work being done with regards to plant 'neurobiology'. However, as I said, I don't think this in anyway justifies the exploitation of animals we know to be sentient.

You're right, CAFO farms are not the only source of animal flesh. However, there is debate whether or not small production can ever be mainstream given supply and demand. There will always be someone willing to purchase and sell at a lower price, a lower prices usually include increases in production efficiency at the expense of animals. That's also ignoring a large amount of people who can't afford "humane" products.

For me, all of this is aside from the point. I think it is wrong to exploit sentient animals in any setting.

Sentient plants
As in regards to the sentient versus non-sentient debate, most vegetarians seems to have agreed upon ignoring scientific explorations and research that dates back even way back from Greek philosophers to Charles Darwin, and plant neurobiologists of today have made a wide variety of research and reports which findings seem to conclude that plants are indeed sentient.

examples are:

Plant-Environment Interactions: From Sensory Plant Biology to Active

Plant Behavior (Signaling and Communication in Plants)3 Mar 2009
by František Baluška

https://www.amazon.com/Brilliant-Green-Surprising-History-Intelligence/dp/1610916034

And I know most of you would use: But but but, more plant lives is being harvested to feed farm animals rather than if only consuming the plants.

But that argument is absolutely invalid in this specific debate, since the debate goes on: It's okay to kill plants rather than animals, just because plants are "non-sentient".