All the ducks are in a row, all the t's have been crossed and we have tied up all the lose ends. It's not very often you get a sentence with 3, count them 3, cliches, but it was needed to celebrate the official release of the 4th edition of Through the Microscope.

You can get full access to Through the Microscope in 2 ways.

1. Purchase a subscription to the web site by going to PayPal. This, in my opinion, is the best way. If you want to read parts of the web site on paper, you can always print them out.
2. If you like, you can also get a hard copy of Through the Microscope from lulu.com This is a black and white version of the website. Purchase of the hard copy of the book provides a free subscription to the website. However, you still have to register for the website and then request authorization. You can request authorization by going to the contact form. You will need to provide proof of purchase of the hard copy, namely your lulu receipt.

For full instructions go to Buy this Book.

The eBook is also now complete. This is available to all subscribers to the website. To obtain the eBook, purchase a subscription to the website by clicking on the PayPal button. Once you have paid for a subscription at PayPal, come back to Through the Microscope and log into the site.* Once you are logged in click on the Download Ebook link in the Main Menu to download your copy of the eBook in epub format (compatible with iPad and many other readers) or mobi format (for use on the kindle).

*To verify that you are logged into the site, look in the upper right of the site and look for a LOGOUT link. If it says LOGIN, you are logged in and should have access to the downloads page.

I have completed work on the web site and the book is now live. The Table of Contents has links to all the sections of the textbook. Chapters 1, 2, 3, 15, and 16 are open to the public. Subscribers can view the entire 4th edition. I am working on the paperback textbook and ebook that you can purchase from lulu. At this moment, no book is available from lulu, as I don’t want students buying the old edition. Enjoy!

Work continues on the textbook. Many late nights and vacation days have been spent getting the book refreshed and ready for the next round. A total of 23 chapters have been added to the text and are already available to subscribers of the textbook. With only 5 chapters left to revise, it’s time to start talking about what else will be added to the text.

1. A forum will be added to the site to allow students to ask questions and get them answered by the author of the textbook
2. An ebook compatible with iPad, Kindle, and any other electronic book reader that is compatible with the ePub format will be created. The ebook is DRM-free, meaning you won't have any hassles with digital rights management software getting in the way of you enjoying your purchase
3. A print version of the text will also be available at lulu.com.

I hope you are as excited about the new edition as I am. OK you probably aren't, but it's gonna be awesome!

This past summer and fall I have been working on the new edition of Through the Microscope and it is now taking shape on the web site. If you are a subscriber, you can already have access to the new edition as it is being built — yet another advantage of this effort being primarily a web textbook. Every part of the text was examined for effectiveness and relevance. Some chapters only went through minor editing changes, while others are in the process of being completely rewritten. You can check out the growing Table of Contents.

Both the content of the text and the organization were examined.

A study of pap smears by Julia Brotherton and Dorota Gertig (among others) has shown that the HPV vaccine is decreasing the occurrence of precancerous cells in young women. In contrast to other vaccines, where the benefit is immediately observable, since HPV causes gential warts and years later potentially cervical cancer, it was thought it would be up to a decade before a discernible effect was seen. This study was undertaken 3 years after the HPV vaccine became widespread in Australia in girls 12 to 26 and has shown a halving of the rate of high-grade abnormalities in pap smears. Encouraging news, but more data will be needed before a definitive conclusion can be reached.

Hemorrhagic E. coli causes a nasty gastrointestinal infection that afflicts at least 73,000 patients yearly in the United States. During a recent outbreak of the illness in Germany, doctor Franz Schaefer reported successfully treating a patient with eculizumab, a drug that inhibits the complement system. Recent research suggests that the complement system may be involved in Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome, and inhibition of complement could possibly prevent death from HUS. A young girl suffering from HUS, was treated with eculizumab and showed marked improvement in 24 hours. If this turns out to be true, it would be a *#*$ big deal (as our Vice President likes to say) as HUS is a major cause of death in hemorrhagic E. coli infections.

My place of employment just announced that they have not only accomplished, but exceeded their goal of decreasing energy usage on campus by 20%. The final number was a 25% reduction in energy use. When this goal was announced in 2006, many were skeptical, since the campus had just gone through an energy upgrade, capturing all the easy fixes (changing light bulbs, lighting usage and removing low-efficiency motors). The main savings came from aggressively pursuing heating and cooling issues and further lighting upgrades in buildings and parking ramps. The cost of the program was 40 million dollars and the UW should recover that cost in energy savings within 5 years. Go Badgers.

Through the Microscope is now available as an eBook on any reader that can handle Adobe Digital Editions ebooks. This includes the iPod and iPad if you download the free Bluefire reader. Textbook consortia yet again shows that the little guys can beat the big guys to market. The eBook costs $30.00 and includes a subscription to the website. You can get the book at Lulu's website

Felisa Wolfe-Simon at the U.S. Geological Survey had an idea. Arsenic (As) is just below phosphorus (P) in the periodic table, and due to the way electrons buzz around in its orbitals, it has many of the same properties. It is just a little bit heavier. As might serve as a stand-in for P in living systems, especially in places where P concentrations are low and As is abundant. Understandably, scientists were skeptical. While As does share many properties with P, it is not as stable in water. It did not seem possible that living systems could put up with this greater instability.

Dr. Wolfe-Simon set out to find microbes that were As users, starting with isolates from Mono Lake. Mono Lake is a hypersaline lake with high As concentrations, where the water leaves only by evaporation. An enrichment medium was set up containing glucose as a carbon source, vitamins, trace metals, no P, and the addition of As. She then inoculated a sample of sediment from this lake and demanded the cells grow without phosphate. Something grew! The microbe was transferred to fresh medium multiple times to make sure it was not just using stored P, yet it continued to prosper. Extensive analysis was performed and many of the experiments suggest that the arsenate is indeed incorporated into macromolecules. More analysis needs to be performed, but it appears this microbe is substituting As for one of the six major elements of life. This flies in the face of current dogma and will certainly need to be investigated further.

A new functionality has just been added to the microbiology textbook. You can now create self-study quizzes to test your comprehension of the material. To create the quiz, go to the Quiz Creation Page and choose the chapters and number of questions that you want from each chapter. When finished, hit the Create Quiz button.

The next page will have a quiz created from the extensive quiz test bank of the book, with the questions focusing on the material you asked for. Answer the questions and when finished, click the Grade Quiz button. The quiz will be graded and you will be taken to a page that shows your score, how you answered each question, the correct answer for each question and explanations. This is open to anyone who wants to use it, so test it out.