Liverpool, United Kingdom

Tropical Disease Biology

Bachelor's
Language: EnglishStudies in English
Subject area: biology
Qualification: BSc
Kind of studies: full-time studies
Bachelor of Science (BSc)
University website: www.liv.ac.uk
Biology
Biology is the natural science that involves the study of life and living organisms, including their physical structure, chemical composition, function, development and evolution. Modern biology is a vast field, composed of many branches. Despite the broad scope and the complexity of the science, there are certain unifying concepts that consolidate it into a single, coherent field. Biology recognizes the cell as the basic unit of life, genes as the basic unit of heredity, and evolution as the engine that propels the creation of new species. Living organisms are open systems that survive by transforming energy and decreasing their local entropy to maintain a stable and vital condition defined as homeostasis. See glossary of biology.
Disease
A disease is any condition which results in the disorder of a structure or function in a living organism that is not due to any external injury. The study of disease is called pathology, which includes the study of cause. Disease is often construed as a medical condition associated with specific symptoms and signs. It may be caused by external factors such as pathogens or by internal dysfunctions, particularly of the immune system, such as an immunodeficiency, or by a hypersensitivity, including allergies and autoimmunity.
Tropical Disease
Tropical diseases are diseases that are prevalent in or unique to tropical and subtropical regions. The diseases are less prevalent in temperate climates, due in part to the occurrence of a cold season, which controls the insect population by forcing hibernation. However, many were present in northern Europe and northern America in the 17th and 18th centuries before modern understanding of disease causation. The initial impetus for tropical medicine was to protect the health of colonialists, notably in India under the British Raj. Insects such as mosquitoes and flies are by far the most common disease carrier, or vector. These insects may carry a parasite, bacterium or virus that is infectious to humans and animals. Most often disease is transmitted by an insect "bite", which causes transmission of the infectious agent through subcutaneous blood exchange. Vaccines are not available for most of the diseases listed here, and many do not have cures.
Disease
Graviora quædam sunt remedia periculis.
Some remedies are worse than the disease.
Biology
When he meets a simple geometrical construction, for instance in the honeycomb, he would fain refer it to physical instinct, or to skill and ingenuity, rather than to the operation of physical forces or mathematical laws; when he sees in a snail, or nautilus, or tiny foraminiferal or radiolarian shell a close approach to sphere or spiral, he is prone of old habit to believe that after all it is something more than a spiral or a sphere, and that in this "something more" there lies what neither mathematics nor physics can explain. In short, he is deeply reluctant to compare the living with the dead, or to explain by geometry or by mechanics the things which have their part in the mystery of life.
D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, On Growth and Form (1917)
Biology
When you study science, and especially these realms of the biology of what makes us human, what's clear is that every time you find out something, that brings up ten new questions, and half of those are better questions than you started with.
Robert Sapolsky (2003) Emperor Has No Clothes Award acceptance speech
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