Lausanne, Switzerland

Computational and Quantitative Biology

Language: English Studies in English
Subject area: computer science
University website: www.epfl.ch
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.
Quantitative
Quantitative information or data is based on quantities obtained using a quantifiable measurement process. In contrast, qualitative information records qualities that are descriptive, subjective or difficult to measure.
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
Biology
Biology is not physics, because organisms are such complex physical objects, and sociology is not biology because human societies are made by self-conscious organisms. By pretending to a kind of knowledge that it cannot achieve, social science can only engender the scorn of natural scientists and the cynicism of the humanists.
Richard Lewontin (1995) "Sex, Lies, and Social Science" in New York Review of Books (4/20/95)
Biology
What is found in biology is mechanisms, mechanisms built with chemical components and that are often modified by other, later, mechanisms added to the earlier ones. While Occam's razor is a useful tool in the physical sciences, it can be a very dangerous implement in biology.
Francis Crick (1988) What Mad Pursuit
In the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster and its effect on the European continent, the EU is seeking to optimise nuclear and radiological preparedness. An EU initiative is developing effective emergency management procedures, methods and tools for such devastating incidents.
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