Thread: Science Lesson

Howdy,

Since this is a Science sub-forum, I figured it could be useful to educate ourselves about the different types of sciences that are currently available. So here's my idea... In each post, we choose a specific practice within any field or branch of science, and explain what it is and what it does, etc. The more detailed and straight forward the better, for the main purpose is really just to educate ourselves. Please do post whatever sources you use, for the sake of keeping this thread as legit as possible. I understand that some of you know a lot about science and I don't doubt your knowledge, but I do ask that you still provide us with a genuine source of information. It's just more professional that way!

By the way, definitely feel free to educate others about a certain profession or path you are currently pursuing. It could be interesting to know what you had to go through in order to get where you are, or where you are going.
Hope that makes sense...

Alright, let's educate ourselves !

Natural Sciences > Earth sciences > Geomorphology

Geomorphology is basically the study of the history, dynamics, and evolution of landforms. Landforms are the physical features of the Earth's surface, such as mountain ranges and ocean basins. They are shaped by various combinations of natural processes, such as wind, waves, weathering, mass wasting, ground water, surface water, glaciers, tectonism, and volcanism.

Through this study, Geomorphologists can predict future terrain changes, by means of field observation, physical experiment, and numerical modeling. Certain applications of this science include measuring the effects of climate change, hazard assessments including landslide prediction and mitigation, river control and restoration, coastal protection, etc.

I highly recommend reading these articles for further information.
(Nature Gallery: Geomorphology, Wikipedia: Geomorphology, Wikipedia: Landform.)


Definitely feel free to add any information you wish about this science if you want!

Natural sciences > Life sciences & Mathematical sciences & Computer science > Systems biology

Systems biology is the study of biological systems (Duh!) like metabolic pathways, signaling pathways, cells, tissues, organs, organism, even entire ecosystems.
Unlike 'traditional' biology, it is holistic in its approach. It studies dynamical and emergent properties of the entire system instead of just focusing on parts (e.g. molecular biologist tipically studies one protein or one gene, system biologist studies the entire network of interactions). In other words, it's the study of processes and interactions in biology.

Experimental systems biology is a relatively new field as it is based of technologies that became avaliable in the last decade or so. Some of these technologies are: genomics (sequencing of genomes), transcriptomics/DNA Microarrays (technology that allows monitoring of tens of thousands of genes in a single experiment), proteomics (study of all proteins in a cells/tissues) and metabolomics (study of small molecules which make up metabolism). All of these methods produce HUGE amounts of data, that's why we need:

Theoretical systems biology is concerned with analysis of data, developing models from the data, developing purely theoretical models. It's based on mathematics (ordinary and partial differential eq., dynamical systems, statistics, graph theory...) and computer science. The idea is to make a model with good predictive power so that less (in ideal case zero) experiments are needed.
Example: there is a company that makes mathematical models for cosmetic companies so they don't need to test their products on animals.

A new application field coming from systems biology is called synthetic biology. It's the use of biosystem knowledge to designe new biological systems or to 'improve' existing ones. Example of this is design of novel bioremediation bacteria - bacteria that clean up pollutants from the enviroment.