For anyone who struggled to understand why the nephron concentrates, then dilutes, then concentrates again the urine, this book will do much to ease your pain. Since medical school I've purchased Editions 1, 3, & 5, just so that I could keep up with my interns & residents. Here's how he does it:
#1: short book, (you know how intimidating those tomes can be)
#2: lots of diagrams
#3: end-of-chapter questions (with answers & explanations)

If you want to understand the Kidney, no matter where you are in your studies or practice, I wholeheartedly recommend this text.

Renal physiology can be very difficult to truly understand, and yet an understanding of it is essential to understanding so many aspects of physiology, pathology, and pharmacology. Studying diuretics for cardio pharm is nightmarish unless you understand the physiology of the loop of Henle. Vander takes this difficult yet important subject and makes it easy to understand. The book reads extremely quickly, and the flow-charts and diagrams are amazing. I never even opened Berne & Levy for renal phys--I read Vander's book (which is no longer than B&L's renal chapters) and cruised through renal phys. I am writing this review now, a year after I took physiology, because I am now studying for the USMLE Step 1. I have not looked at Vander's book in a year, but I still remember renal phys, and reviewing it now is the easiest part of my studying (the only easy part, in fact). That is because, thanks to Vander, I actually understand renal physiology. A great book!!

For any medical student that needs a comprehensive, but easily understood explanation of the structure and function of kidneys, I highly recommend Renal Physiology by Vander. It is very well written, and covers all the basic principles that you will need to know to understand pathologies associated with the kidneys.

I think bayesian theory will be used inevery fields of our life in the future.

I just watched Lloyd's granddaughter on television talking about this book during the talk about the famous "clock hanging" scene in "Safety Last." The family member took the skewed point of view and mentioned about how all the "harrowing stuntwork" was doine by Lloyd himself, leaving out the contributions of the great stuntman Harvey Peary! Something that Hollywood officianados know. This book is another example of a relative trying to re-write Hollywood history.

A shame that one cannot be satisfied of the actual work of a great man, but must feel the need to lie.

This is a good one - especially if you are a film geek. You can impress your friends with your knowledge of this great actor. Place it on your coffee table. When guests ask you who Harold Lloyd was, you can roll your eyes and say, "what? you don't know who Harold Lloyd was, I can't believe I am friends with you."

Great pictures. Great background and gossip.

"Harold Lloyd: Master Comedian" is Jeffrey Vance's inspired follow-up to his excellent pictorial biography, "Buster Keaton Remembered." Vance showcases a remarkable series of Lloyd production stills and personal photographs with a thoughtful, revealing text (including contributions by film historian Kevin Brownlow and the late Jack Lemmon). Though Lloyd's go-getting comic persona has not endured in the same fashion as Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, his best silents -- "The Freshman" (1925), "The Kid Brother" (1927) and "Speedy" (1928) -- capture the determined spirit and optimism of the Roaring Twenties better than any filmmaker. Unfortunately, several generations know little about the bespectacled comedian, since Lloyd (who died in 1971 at age 77) rarely reissued his classic films. Thanks to the efforts of Vance and the Harold Lloyd Trust, his existing work has been well-preserved, with a long-overdue renaissance just around the corner. Hopefully, this book will encourage readers to rediscover the cinematic brilliance and comic ingenuity of a truly American artist.

In Majority Rule or Minority Will, Harold Spaeth and Jeffrey Segal provide much needed empirical examination of the influence of precedent upon the decisions of Supreme Court Justices. The central question addressed by the authors is not whether justices are influenced by the decisions that were reached in previously decided cases, but whether this influence exists at a systematic and substantively meaningful level in the Supreme Court. There are three answers to this question. First, it could be found that justices are precedental by nature and follow the doctrine of stare decisis in all or nearly all of the cases in which it could be applied. Second, justices could be "legal moderates" in that precedent is an occasional influence upon their decisions, but other factors are often present. The final possible answer is that justices are preferential by nature and are rarely influenced by precedent.

In an effort to answer their question, the authors sought to examine the decisions of the justices in the progeny of established precedents. To complete this task in an appropriate manner, the authors used a sampling of major and minor decisions in which precedent was set. The author's sampled 100% of the cases with dissent from Elder Witt's list of "Major Decisions" from his Guide to the US Supreme Court (1990). The justify their use of these cases as they see Witt's list as more broad than others and the list has been employed by the authors in earlier research. So as to inquire if their findings would be generalizable, the authors also included a sampling of minor decisions of the Court. Sampling became necessary for the authors due to the amount of cases that the Court has decided that include dissent. While a pure random sample would prove unbalanced in that dissent rates vary greatly throughout the history of the court, the authors used a stratified random sample to find their data. Using the data of Epstein et al., the authors found three distinct periods within which to sample: 1793-1867, where dissents were issued less than 10 times per term; 1868-1936, where levels of dissent began to rise; and 1937 through the present, where high levels of dissent are common. In all, approximately 100 cases and their progeny were examined for each of the defined eras. Progeny was related to its particular precedent by the authors using two different sources. First, the authors examined the case syllabi for the cases that they used. Appearance in case syllabi was not the only determinant of precedent; the authors also relied upon Shepard's Citations for this data. In the end, the authors analyzed 2,425 votes and opinions cast by 77 justices in 1,206 progeny of 341 cases spanning from 1793-1995.

After analyzing their data, Spaeth and Segal found that justices do not heed precedent unless they are in previous agreement with it. In other words, justices who dissent from original opinions will rarely reverse their votes in subsequent progeny. The findings of the authors show that roughly 12% of justices will follow precedent, while 88% of justices will continue to decide cases according to their preferences. Therefore, the influence of precedent upon the justices of the Court is neither systematic, nor is it meaningful. These findings run counter to conventional wisdom and the legal model, which have often assumed that Supreme Court justices are inclined to follow previously established legal rules (precedent) even when they disagree with the precedents. The research here is well done and I recommend this book for anyone interested in precedent in the legal system or in political science.

I was turned on to this book decades ago by one of my professors. The book bursts with useful material, but the organization is poor, the explanations almost nil, and the problems remote. (Indeed, most of the "drill" problems that the book provides are from British university honors' examinations in mathematics on which applicants are expected to score 15%.) If you are looking for a strong, harmonious collection of advanced techniques in advanced analysis, harmonic functions, and many aspects of operational calculus, you would do better to read "Applied Analysis" by the immortal Cornelius Lanczos.