Basic science courses

This series covers all the essential material needed in the basic science courses. Where possible, the books are organized in an organ-based system. 

Often, the medical student will cringe at the drudgery of the basic science courses and see little connection between a field such as biochemistry and clinical problems. Clinicians, however, often wish they knew more about the basic sciences, because it is through the science that we can begin to understand the complexities of the human body and thus have rational methods of diagnosis and treatment. 

Your Need for Study Time. The knowledge embedded in mathematics and basic sciences courses and all the engineering sciences and civil engineering courses are cumulative in nature. Within each course the knowledge learned in this week may be needed to learn what is going to be covered in the next week and the weeks to follow. Another important feature of these courses is the new concepts and new tools introduced weekly. The new knowledge is to be understood thoroughly and remembered, and new tools need to be practiced and mastered. That means ... 

The range of around 85 courses available for inclusion in the HSC is very broad. Of these, there are 4 maths courses, 5 basic science courses and a course in Engineering Studies that are potentially suited to students wishing to become engineers. The remaining courses cover subjects of interest in broader society from retail and hospitality studies to dance life skills. 

American Academy of Ophthalmology. Clinical Optics. San Francisco American Academy of Ophthalmology, 2006. This volume of the American Academy of Ophthalmology basic science course covers the fundamental concepts of optics as it relates to lenses, refraction, and reflection. It also covers the basic optics of the human eye and the fundamental principles of lasers. 

While many books cater for the biochemical needs of science and medical students, no modem introductory biochemistry text appears to be available that meets the specific requirements of those whose main interest is dentistry. We feel that there is a need for a book which, while explaining the basic principles of biochemistry, also includes topics that are of specifically dental interest. Also relevant are subjects, such as nutrition, that were once considered as areas of physiological chemistry but which now, despite their importance, tend to be neglected as far as basic science courses for dentists and doctors ate concerned. 

Of course, in reality new chemical substances are not synthesized at random with no purpose in mind—the numbers that have still not been created are too staggering for a random approach. By one estimate,1 as many as 10200 molecules could exist that have the general size and chemical character of typical medicines. Instead, chemists create new substances with the aim that their properties will be scientifically important or useful for practical purposes. As part of basic science, chemists have created new substances to test theories. For example, the molecule benzene has the special property of aromaticity, which in this context refers to special stability related to the electronic structure of a molecule. Significant effort has gone into creating new nonbenzenoid aromatic compounds to test the generality of theories about aromaticity. These experiments helped stimulate the application of quantum mechanical theory to the prediction of molecular energies. 

In courses offered by clinical pharmacy faculty, students are taught the diagnostic criteria for the application of basic science principles. Because... 

The study of marine chemistry is challenging but highly satisfying as you will use many of the skills and concepts learned in your basic science and math courses. Please be patient - true mastery takes time. Consider this text as a future reference book that you can return to long after graduation. 

For me, nothing illustrates this chasm between observation and chemical theory better than my experiences as a teaching assistant in the laboratory of a beginning chemistry course. Students were carefully following procedures described in the lab manuals, filling in the blanks to describe their observations. Then as a kind of climax they were asked to Write the equation for this reaction. Students were often stunned by this request, for they could perceive no connection between what they had observed and the equation they were expected to write. This gap between the perceptual experience of events and their conceptual representation is wider and deeper than for any other of the basic sciences. That fact in large part accounts for the late arrival of chemistry at its maturity, with the work of John Dalton early in the nineteenth century. 

This text is written for a second-level materials science course. It assumes that the students have had a previous course covering crystal structures, phase diagrams, diffusion, Miller indices, polymers, ceramics, metals, and other basic topics. Many of those topics are discussed in further depth, and new topics and concepts are introduced. The coverage and order of chapters are admittedly somewhat arbitrary. However, each chapter is more or less self-contained so those using this text may omit certain topics or change the order of presentation. 

Staff. First of all, who is going to teach the courses, even basic introductory courses, within the Forensic Science degree program Secondly, how do you attract them away from their present jobs, with the present level of college or university salaries Finally, how can one department justify the number of individuals (staff size) that theoretically are required to present a credible forensic science degree program ... 

Finally, it seems obvious that chemical engineering education needs to be built around a core at the graduate as well as the undergraduate level. The core should emphasize the disciplinary matrix the analysis of chemical and physical rate processes. Whatever new directions are being taken in research, whether oriented toward a traditional engineering outlook or toward basic science, the universality of the profession should be a major focus when these areas are integrated into the course of study. 

William M. Jackson, University of California, Davis The kind of description that Joseph Francisco talked about is what we actually tried at University of California, Davis, with an NSF grant. It was in physical sciences and not just in chemistry. What we found was that just by putting freshmen in the research groups and laboratories of professors, students whose average grade point levels were Cs were raised in the basic core courses—chemistry, physics, and math and calculus were raised to Bs. They were doing research, and then we had some other interventions, but it was an observation that I had made before I got to the Davis campus. 

As apart from areas of basic science (e.g., quantum mechanics) that primarily originate in physics and underlie all chemistry, including, of course, electrochemistry. 

Modified from Nichols B, ed. Basic and clinical science course. External disease and the cornea, section 7. American Academy of Ophthalmology. San Francisco, CA. 1990. 

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