In last week’s post, I told you about a book I didn’t like. This week, I’ll tell you about one I liked. About a year ago, Russ Hobbie suggested I read When Death Becomes Life: Notes From a Transplant Surgeon, by Joshua Mezrich. Mezrich is a transplant surgeon at the…

Go to www.amazon.com and look up the best selling book in the category “ biophysics.” You’ll often find #1 is The Body Electric: Electromagnetism and the Foundation of Life, by Robert Becker and Gary Selden. (Selden helped with the writing, but the book tells Becker’s story.) …

This week Biophysics Reviews published my article “ Bidomain Modeling of Electrical and Mechanical Properties of Cardiac Tissue” (Volume 2, Article Number 041301, 2021). The introduction states

This review discusses the bidomain model, a mathematical description of cardiac tissue. Most of the review covers the electrical bidomain model, used to…

Suppose you’re reading Homework Problem 4 in Chapter 8 of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology, and you run across the phrase “If a shark can detect an electric field strength of 0.5 μV/m…”. What’s your first reaction? Probably you suspect a typo (it isn’t). An electric field with a…

In Chapter 7 of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology, Russ Hobbie and I discuss the 10–20 system of electrodes on the scalp used to record the electroencephalogram.

Much can be learned about the brain by measuring the electric potential on the scalp surface. Such data are called the electroencephalogram…

Will Morton, a staff writer for AuntMinnie.com, published an article about safety issues during magnetic resonance imaging. It begins

As the push toward stronger and faster MRI scanners continues, so does concern over magnet safety, according to Filiz Yetisir, who discussed the potential effects MRI has on patients at the…

In Chapter 14 of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology, Russ Hobbie and I discuss photodynamic therapy.

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) uses a drug called a photosensitizer that is activated by light (Zhu and Finlay 2008; Wilson and Patterson 2008). PDT can treat accessible solid tumors such as basal cell carcinoma…

In Chapter 9 of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology, Russ Hobbie and I mention electroporation.

Electrical burns, cardiac pacing, and nerve and muscle stimulation are produced by electric or rapidly changing magnetic fields. Even stronger electric fields increase membranepermeability. This is believed to be due to the transient formation…