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The Hirsh Health Sciences Library offers full online access to The CRISPR Journal, a peer-reviewed publication dedicated to cutting-edge research in the field of gene editing. The bimonthly journal features research articles, perspectives and commentaries, editorials, and more written by experts in the field.

Green and white text reading "The CRISPR Journal" on a dark colorless background.

Topics covered by The CRISPR Journal include:

  • Bioethics
  • Bioinformatics
  • Cancer immunotherapy
  • Embryonic development
  • Gene drives
  • Gene therapy
  • Genetic diseases
  • Genetically modified foods
  • IP and patenting
  • Microbial immunity
  • Organ transplantation
  • Synthetic biology

Recent articles discuss the ongoing ethical debate around editing the genomes of human embryos, the merits of genetically modifying fish to meet food supply demands, and the development of a breed of hypoallergenic cat.

If you are interested in submitting an article to be published by CRISPR, you can find more information here.

Summer’s already well underway, and we’ve got you covered for all your beach read needs. If you enjoy fiction, try one of these books available in the Hirsh Health Sciences Library leisure reading section!

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51791252-the-vanishing-half

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

“The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it’s not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it’s everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters’ storylines intersect?

Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person’s decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.” (Goodreads)

 

Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34467031-manhattan-beach

Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan

“Anna Kerrigan, nearly twelve years old, accompanies her father to visit Dexter Styles, a man who, she gleans, is crucial to the survival of her father and her family. She is mesmerized by the sea beyond the house and by some charged mystery between the two men.

‎Years later, her father has disappeared and the country is at war. Anna works at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that once belonged to men, now soldiers abroad. She becomes the first female diver, the most dangerous and exclusive of occupations, repairing the ships that will help America win the war. One evening at a nightclub, she meets Dexter Styles again, and begins to understand the complexity of her father’s life, the reasons he might have vanished.

With the atmosphere of a noir thriller, Egan’s first historical novel follows Anna and Styles into a world populated by gangsters, sailors, divers, bankers, and union men. Manhattan Beach is a deft, dazzling, propulsive exploration of a transformative moment in the lives and identities of women and men, of America and the world.” (Goodreads)

Less by Andrew Sean Greer

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39927096-less?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=avQcQrcQiY&rank=1

Less by Andrew Sean Greer

“PROBLEM: You are a failed novelist about to turn fifty. A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: your boyfriend of the past nine years now engaged to someone else. You can’t say yes–it would all be too awkward–and you can’t say no–it would look like defeat. On your desk are a series of half-baked literary invitations you’ve received from around the world.

QUESTION: How do you arrange to skip town?

ANSWER: You accept them all.

If you are Arthur Less.

Thus begins an around-the-world-in-eighty-days fantasia that will take Arthur Less to Mexico, Italy, Germany, Morocco, India and Japan and put thousands of miles between him and the problems he refuses to face. What could possibly go wrong?

Well: Arthur will almost fall in love in Paris, almost fall to his death in Berlin, barely escape to a Moroccan ski chalet from a Sahara sandstorm, accidentally book himself as the (only) writer-in-residence at a Christian Retreat Center in Southern India, and arrive in Japan too late for the cherry blossoms. In between: science fiction fans, crazed academics, emergency rooms, starlets, doctors, exes and, on a desert island in the Arabian Sea, the last person on Earth he wants to see. Somewhere in there: he will turn fifty. The second phase of life, as he thinks of it, falling behind him like the second phase of a rocket. There will be his first love. And there will be his last.

A love story, a satire of the American abroad, a rumination on time and the human heart, by an author The New York Times has hailed as “inspired, lyrical,” “elegiac,” “ingenious,” as well as “too sappy by half,” Less shows a writer at the peak of his talents raising the curtain on our shared human comedy.” (Goodreads)

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17333223-the-goldfinch?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=tWbAO6PNFJ&rank=1

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

“Aged thirteen, Theo Decker, son of a devoted mother and a reckless, largely absent father, survives an accident that otherwise tears his life apart. Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. He is tormented by an unbearable longing for his mother, and down the years clings to the thing that most reminds him of her: a small, strangely captivating painting that ultimately draws him into the criminal underworld. As he grows up, Theo learns to glide between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love – and his talisman, the painting, places him at the centre of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.

The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling power. Combining unforgettably vivid characters and thrilling suspense, it is a beautiful, addictive triumph – a sweeping story of loss and obsession, of survival and self-invention, of the deepest mysteries of love, identity and fate.” (Goodreads)

Are you more of a non-fiction reader? There’s more than just textbooks in our stacks – try one of these books on medicine to feed your brain this summer!

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20696006-being-mortal?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=DdhKVZN6vt&rank=1

Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

“In Being Mortal, author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending.

Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit. Nursing homes, preoccupied with safety, pin patients into railed beds and wheelchairs. Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the goals of cure have become moot. Doctors, committed to extending life, continue to carry out devastating procedures that in the end extend suffering.

Gawande, a practicing surgeon, addresses his profession’s ultimate limitation, arguing that quality of life is the desired goal for patients and families. Gawande offers examples of freer, more socially fulfilling models for assisting the infirm and dependent elderly, and he explores the varieties of hospice care to demonstrate that a person’s last weeks or months may be rich and dignified.” (Goodreads)

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12609.The_Spirit_Catches_You_and_You_Fall_Down?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=FVBCZhWIGX&rank=1

The Spirit Catches You When You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman

“Lia Lee was born in 1982 to a family of recent Hmong immigrants, and soon developed symptoms of epilepsy. By 1988 she was living at home but was brain dead after a tragic cycle of misunderstanding, over-medication, and culture clash: “What the doctors viewed as clinical efficiency the Hmong viewed as frosty arrogance.” The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions, written with the deepest of human feeling. Sherwin Nuland said of the account, “There are no villains in Fadiman’s tale, just as there are no heroes. People are presented as she saw them, in their humility and their frailty—and their nobility.” (Goodreads)

 

The MedOne Education ebook collection is now available to access through the Hirsh Health Sciences Library. You can easily find it by searching “MedOne collection” on our homepage. With this ebook collection, you have online access to a wide range of medical textbooks from Thieme Medical Publishers and a host of tools to customize your learning or teaching experience. These textbooks cover subjects which include:

  • Anatomy
  • Dentistry
  • Dermatology & Venerology
  • Internal Medicine
  • Neurology
  • Neurosurgery
  • Obstetrics & Gynecology
  • Ophthalmology
  • Orthopedics & Traumatology
  • Otolaryngology
  • Pediatrics
  • Plastic Surgery
  • Radiology

For students, a useful tool that the MedOne collecti0n features is a customizable Questions & Answers section that lets you track your performance statistics as you study at your pace. You can create a review session to see your results as you go, or take a practice exam to put yourself to the test.

For instructors, the MedOne ebook collection allows you to create customizable “playlists” to feature chapters and materials across different textbooks to better suit the needs of your class. This can also be useful for students who want to create personal study guides.

We hope you’ll take advantage of everything this ebook collection has to offer!

 

New adapters have arrived at the Hirsh Health Sciences Library circulation desk…or should we say dongles? If you’re using wired headphones but your phone or laptop doesn’t have a 35mm headphone jack, these are the dongles for you!

Apple dropped the headphone jack on their iPhones in 2016, and in recent years many cell phone manufacturers including Google have followed suit. Luckily, we have both the USB-C and Lightning variety of headphone dongle available for 4-hour loans at the circulation desk. We also have wired headphones available to check out, so if you lost your AirPods on the Orange Line, we’ve got the complete package for you here at Hirsh.

Speaking of dongles – why do we call them that? I hadn’t really thought about the origin of the word “dongle” until I sat down to write this post. I learned that the etymology of the word is disputed, but it first appeared in the 1980s as a catch-all for a small external piece of hardware that provides another device with enhanced functionality when plugged into an access port. That’s some word salad, isn’t it? And so the word “dongle” was invented – possibly by a Mr. Don Gall, and probably because the dongle dangled – and we still use it today.

 
The Organ Thieves cover

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Organ-Thieves/Chip-Jones/9781982107529

…and we’re back! Physically in the library that is, which also means we can get back to adding print books to the collection. It has been too long since our last new books update. We have lots of catching up to do. Let’s start with these heavy-hitters that were released during lockdown:

You can find the titles above and all other new releases on the 4th floor of HHSL across from the Library Service Desk. As always, if there’s a book we don’t have that you would like to recommend for purchase, please let us know by filling out the form at this link.

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LWW database

https://meded.lwwhealthlibrary.com/book.aspx?bookid=2827

 

Recent updates to the LWW Health Library include a long list of new editions. Below are just some of these titles that are available to you now. For a complete listing, you can search the LWW Health Library via the following collections: Medical Education, Clerkship/Clinical Rotations, PA Rotations/Specialties, or PA Core Education.

 

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cover of first aid usmle 2021

 

E-access to the McGraw-Hill First Aid USMLE Collection is NOW AVAILABLE! The collection includes the following titles:

 

First aid for the USMLE step 1 2021

First aid for the USMLE step 1 2020

First aid for the USMLE step 1 2018

First aid Q & A for the USMLE Step 1

First aid cases for the USMLE step 1 2019

First aid cases for the USMLE step 1 2018

First aid for the USMLE step 1 2019 : a student-to-student guide

First aid for the USMLE Step 2 CS 2018

First aid for the USMLE Step 2 CS 2014

First aid for the USMLE Step 2 CK

First aid for the USMLE Step 2 CK : clinical knowledge

First aid Q & A for the USMLE Step 2 CK

First aid cases for the USMLE step 2 CK

First aid for the USMLE Step 3 2019

First aid for the USMLE Step 3 2016

USMLE road map: Pathology

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As we return to campus, you may have forgotten how to print from our printers on the 4th or 5th floors, or use the scanners on the 5th floor. (Maybe you’ve never used them before!) Below are some cursory instructions to get you started.

Scanning

Photo by Bank Phrom on Unsplash

The scanners are free to use. Each scanner is hooked up directly to a computer. Make sure the scanner is turned on, open the scanning software on the computer, and set your settings. Bring a flash drive for transporting your scanned files off the computer.

Printing

Printing is not free. Black and white printing is $0.15

per page, and color printing is $0.45 per page. In order to pay for printing, you have to check your balance on your JumboCard (your Tufts University ID). For more information on which printer to send your file to, check out our page on printing here at Hirsh.

From sending your file to print, you swipe your card at the kiosks beside the printer. (If you have a JumboCard, you type in the JumboCard number and not your UTLN) There, you select the print job and confirm it.

If you have any trouble with the printers or scanners, you can tell anyone staffed at the IT Desk or the Library Service Desk. You can also email hhsl@tufts.edu.

We’re also around to answer any other questions. Again, our webpage on printing/scanning/copying is here. See you around!

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Cover of the Diversity Promise

You now have complete access to the NEW Diversity & Culture in Healthcare eBook Collection from OVID! HHSL’s acquisition of this eBook collection was funded by the Hirsh family.

Issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in healthcare are of utmost importance —This valuable collection contains the below titles in support of this key area of medical education and practice, to allow for well-informed, culturally sensitive healthcare:

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It is writing season! Between personal statements and thesis-writing, the realm of written word can be especially daunting. Plagiarism can occur in every part of academia, from grade school up to tenureship. It happens—sometimes intentionally and sometimes accidentally—to any type of writer. What’s important is taking responsibility for your own academic integrity when possible.

A quill writing on paperIn our plagiarism LibGuide, our librarian Amy Lapidow has outlined some excellent resources for the purposes of plagiarism checks. One of these is DupliChecker, which is a free online service that checks your work for copied material. Another is TurnItIn.Com. Below is Amy Lapidow’s instructions:

  • Turnitin
  • Check your paper! Look for “Open Class for Students” Class ID 20577570 with keycode “Capstone”
  • You should be able to add yourself to the class.
  • If you cannot add yourself to this class, please let us know and we can help.

Remember, if you’re having trouble during the writing process, you can make an appointment with Christine Smith, who is our writing consultant for the Boston campus.

Best of luck with all of your writing!

 

 

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