9d Summary Sheets

9 D
Summary Sheets
Diseases
A disease makes you ill. Symptoms, such as a rash, are the signs of a disease.
● infectious/communicable disease: caused by a microbe (e.g. bacterium, single-celled
protoctist, virus) that gets into the body and changes how it works; examples – polio, Ebola
● deficiency disease: caused by the lack of a nutrient needed for good health: examples –
anaemia, kwashiorkor
● genetic/inherited disease: caused by a fault in DNA (genetic material) that changes how cells
work: examples – sickle cell disease, haemophilia
● lifestyle disease: how we live can increase the risk of getting these diseases, e.g. smoking or
eating unhealthily can cause lung cancer or heart disease
● autoimmune disease: when the body’s immune system attacks and damages cells in the
body; example – Type 1 diabetes
Viruses
Viruses are microbes that have a very simple structure.
Many scientists do not class them as living organisms as they
cannot carry out life processes on their own.
Control systems
There are two control systems in the human body: the nervous system and the hormonal system.
Nervous system
This system includes the brain, spinal cord, nerves and sense organs (e.g. eye, ear).
1 Receptor cells in sense organs detect stimuli (changes in the surroundings or inside
the body).
2 A receptor cell produces electrical impulses that travel along nerve cells in nerves to the
spinal cord, and then usually to the brain.
3 The brain processes the information in the impulses.
4 The brain sends electrical impulses through nerves in the spinal cord to effectors such as
muscles and glands.
5 Muscles respond to impulses by contracting; glands respond by releasing hormones.
Hormonal system
Hormones are chemical messengers that are released into the blood to be carried around the
body. Target organs and cells respond to hormones by changing the way they work.
Examples:
● thyroid gland releases thyroxine that controls the normal rate of respiration in cells
● adrenal gland releases adrenaline that increases heart rate and breathing rate
● sex organs (ovaries and testes) release sex hormones that control body changes
during puberty
● pancreas releases insulin that causes muscle and liver cells to take glucose from the blood.
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9 D
Summary Sheets
Testing medicines
Medicines are drugs that change how the body works and help to treat or prevent disease.
Side-effects are unintended effects that may be harmful.
New medicines must pass stages of testing to make sure they help people with the disease and to
limit side-effects.
Stage 1: on diseased cells or organs to see how well the medicine affects the pathogen and cells
Stage 2: on animals to see how a whole body reacts to the medicine, without risk to humans
Stage 3: on a few healthy people to make sure the drug is safe and to find general side-effects
Stage 4: clinical trial on many patients to make sure the drug works, to find the right dose and to
check for side-effects in different groups. A good trial tests large numbers of patients and assigns
patients randomly to a test group or control group, where the control group is given the current
treatment or a placebo (which looks like the medicine but contains none).
The placebo effect is when a patient gets better because they think they have received a medicine,
even when they haven’t. It happens because a person’s state of mind can affect their body.
Ecology
● Abundance is how many organisms there are in an area.
● Distribution is how organisms are spread out in an area.
Different sampling methods work best for different
organisms, e.g. quadrat for organisms that don’t move, such
as plants, barnacles; pitfall trap for animals that crawl on the
ground, e.g. beetles.
Surface area : volume ratio (SA : V ratio)

Larger organisms have a smaller SA : V ratio than smaller organisms. This has important effects.
● Large organisms find it more difficult to exchange all they need with the environment. They
have exchange surfaces, such as leaves, lungs or small intestine, with large surface areas.
● Small mammals and birds lose heat faster than larger ones in cool environments.
Osmosis
Osmosis is a type of diffusion. It is the overall movement of molecules of a solvent through a
partially permeable membrane (from where there are more of them to where there are fewer).
Median and quartiles

Write the values in the data set in order.
● the median is the middle value
● the lower quartile is the value one-quarter
into the data set
● the upper quartile is the value three-quarters
into the data set
● the interquartile range = upper quartile value
– lower quartile value
A large interquartile range means wide variation in the data set. A small interquartile range means
the values in the set are close together.
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Surface area : volume ratio (SA : V ratio)

Median and quartiles

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